10 things you need to know today: July 15, 2020

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1. ICE rescinds international student visa ban
2. Biden unveils $2 trillion climate plan
3. Trump uses White House China event to attack Biden
4. Miami becomes coronavirus 'epicenter' as Florida reports record deaths
5. U.S. carries out 1st federal execution in 17 years
6. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized with possible infection
7. Jeff Sessions loses Alabama GOP Senate runoff to Tommy Tuberville
8. Bari Weiss resigns from The New York Times over 'bullying'
9. Moderna reports 'robust' immune response in early coronavirus vaccine trial
10. Ghislaine Maxwell denied bail in Epstein case

published 15 July 2020

1. ICE rescinds international student visa ban

The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded an Immigration and Customs Enforcement rule change that would have stripped visas from international students attending schools that planned to offer only online classes in the fall, a federal judge in Boston announced. The judge, Allison Burroughs, was set to preside over a challenge to the policy filed by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and supported by numerous other schools. Burroughs said the parties involved had reached a resolution, agreeing to "return to the status quo." Harvard and MIT were among the schools that decided to go fully remote to reduce the risk of coronavirus infections. They had argued that the ICE policy "would bar hundreds of thousands of international students" from the United States.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a proposed $2 trillion plan to rebuild cities and towns across the country by investing in clean energy. The former vice president criticized President Trump for promising a major infrastructure plan during his 2016 campaign, but failing to deliver. "He's never even really tried," Biden said. "I know how to get it done." Biden dropped a proposal to make the U.S. economy 100 percent clean-energy based by 2050, and instead said he would put the country on track to cut its carbon footprint in half by 2035. The plan was released a week after a task force jointly created by Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a progressive primary-season rival, proposed eliminating carbon emissions from power plants by 2035.

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President Trump on Tuesday held a Rose Garden news conference to announce sanctions punishing China for its treatment of Hong Kong, but spent much of the event attacking his presumptive Democratic presidential challenger, Joe Biden. In what analysts described as a replacement for a postponed New Hampshire campaign rally that had been scheduled for last Saturday, Trump said the $2 trillion climate plan Biden announced earlier Tuesday was part of "a hard-left crusade against American energy." Breaking with a presidential tradition to avoid overt campaigning from the White House, Trump also criticized Biden's positions on the U.S. military, immigration, and China. In interviews, Trump rejected complaints of police violence against Black people, saying "more white people" die at the hands of police officers.

Florida reported Tuesday that it had 132 coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, a single-day record for the state. The previous high of 120 deaths was reported last Thursday. Hospitalizations also reached record levels. Public officials in Miami-Dade County have said Miami has become the new "epicenter" of the coronavirus crisis, as the state's cases continue to surge. Florida confirmed nearly 10,000 new cases on Tuesday, bringing its total to 291,629. North Carolina, Alabama, Nevada, and Utah also reported record fatalities on Tuesday as the nationwide death toll surpassed 136,000. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield on Tuesday said if everyone in the United States wore face masks, the coronavirus could be "under control" within one to two months.

A federal prison in Indiana carried out America's first federal execution since 2003 on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a lower judge's block on the punishment. Daniel Lewis Lee was executed via lethal injection after the court ruled 5-4 he was unlikely to win his Eighth Amendment claim challenging the injection as cruel and unusual punishment. Lee was slated to be executed Monday afternoon, but a federal judge blocked it, saying he and three other death row inmates could pursue their claim that the execution drug would cause needless suffering. The Supreme Court's decision will also let the other three inmates be executed soon at the Terre Haute prison. Lee was convicted for his role in killing an Arkansas man, his wife, and her 8-year-old daughter in 1996.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent an endoscopic procedure at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on Tuesday to treat a possible infection. Ginsburg had a fever and chills late Monday, and she was hospitalized "to clean out a bile duct stent that was placed in late August," court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg said. The 87-year-old justice is "resting comfortably and will stay in the hospital for a few days to receive intravenous antibiotic treatment," according to a press release from the court. Ginsburg, a cancer survivor, has been hospitalized several times in recent years. In May she underwent nonsurgical treatment for a benign gallbladder condition and participated in oral arguments from her hospital bed.

Tommy Tuberville, who was endorsed by President Trump, defeated former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Alabama's Republican Senate primary runoff. Tuberville, a political neophyte and former Auburn football coach, won 60.7 percent of the vote, while Sessions received just 39.3 percent in his bid to reclaim the Senate seat he held for 20 years before leaving to join Trump's administration. Sessions helped legitimize Trump's 2016 campaign as the first senator to endorse him, but he fell out of favor with the president over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Trump denigrated Sessions and enthusiastically endorsed Tuberville, who will now face Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who won a special election to replace Sessions and is considered the most vulnerable Senate Democrat facing re-election in November.

Bari Weiss resigned as an op-ed staff editor and writer for The New York Times on Tuesday, saying in a letter to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger that she had been "subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree" with her "centrist" views. Weiss said she was hired to bring "first-time writers, centrists, conservatives," and other new voices to the paper, and wound up having to endure being called a "Nazi," a "racist," and "a liar" by colleagues who disagreed with her. In another move linked to allegations of bias stifling public discourse, conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan announced that this would be his last week at New York magazine, saying he had "no beef" with his colleagues but would discuss the "broader questions involved" in his final column on Friday.

Drugmaker Moderna said Tuesday that its potential coronavirus vaccine resulted in a "robust" immune response in the 45 patients participating in its early stage human trial. The patients, divided into groups of 15, received doses of 25, 100, or 250 micrograms of the drug, and after two vaccinations all of them had produced neutralizing antibodies, according to data published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine. Moderna shares jumped by 16 percent in after-hour trading on the news. Other stocks particularly sensitive to the lifting of coronavirus lockdown measures, including American and United airlines, and Royal Caribbean Cruise all gained more than 4 percent. U.S. stock index futures also rose before the start of trading Wednesday.

Ghislaine Maxwell pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to helping accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein recruit and abuse girls as young as 14. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan denied Maxwell bail and ordered her to remain in jail until her trial, which Nathan set for July 12, 2021. "The court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that no combination could reasonably assure her presence in court," the judge said. "The risks are simply too great." Maxwell, 58, was arrested this month in New Hampshire after an indictment was unsealed in Manhattan federal court accusing her of conspiring to lure minors and transporting them to engage in illegal sexual activity. She also faces two counts of perjury.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.