A new national poll is out showing former Vice President Joe Biden with a significant lead over President Trump.

In a New York Times/Siena College national poll of registered voters released on Wednesday, Biden leads Trump by 14 percentage points, earning 50 percent support compared to Trump's 36 percent. Biden leads by "enormous margins" among Black and Hispanic voters, and the two are roughly tied among "male voters, whites and people in middle age and older — groups that have typically been the backbones of Republican electoral success," the Times reports.

The Times' Alex Burns points to Biden's lead among white women with college degrees as "just staggering," as well, as in the poll, the presumptive Democratic nominee beat Trump among this group by 39 percentage points; exit polls from 2016 showed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading with this group by seven points. Biden "is improving on Clinton's performance vs. Trump almost across the board," Burns says.

The poll also shows Trump taking a hit on the issues of the coronavirus pandemic and race relations. Particularly "striking," the Times says, is that even among one of Trump's "strongest constituencies," whites over 65, about two-fifths disapprove of the way he's handled race relations and the pandemic.

This is another tough poll for Trump to emerge in recent weeks, including one from CNN that also showed Biden with a 14-point lead over the president. The Trump campaign sent CNN a cease and desist letter over this poll, a letter that the network promptly rejected. A forecast on the 2020 election from The Economist now shows Biden with an 85 percent change of winning the Electoral College.

The poll from The New York Times and Siena College was conducted by speaking to 1,337 registered voters from June 17-22. The margin of error is three percentage points. Read more at The New York Times. Brendan Morrow

In a letter sent to his Republican colleagues on Monday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that after having conversations with "so many of you in recent days," it's clear there needs to be a "change" in GOP leadership, and "as such, you should anticipate a vote on recalling the Conference Chair this Wednesday."

The position is now held by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), but over the last few weeks, there has been a movement to vote her out, replacing Cheney with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). Stefanik's voting record is more moderate than Cheney's, but she is a supporter of former President Donald Trump, while Cheney is not.

It's Cheney's criticism of Trump, his false claims of election fraud, and his incitement of a mob ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that has led many Republicans to want her removed from the conference chair role, making it ironic that McCarthy wrote in his letter that the GOP is a "big tent party," and "unlike the left, we embrace free thought and debate."

McCarthy, who confirmed during an interview with Fox News on Sunday that he supports Stefanik as the new conference chair, said he wants Republicans to gain control of the House in 2022, and "if we are to succeed in stopping the radical Democrat agenda from destroying our country, these internal conflicts need to be resolved so as to not detract from the efforts of our collective team." The Week Staff

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorized the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 15.

Pfizer has said clinical trials show the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with BioNTech to be 100 percent effective in this age group. The vaccine already has been approved for people aged 16 and up.

The approval sets the stage for many middle schoolers and young high-school students to be vaccinated before the next school year. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must approve the authorization as well before vaccinations for the age group can begin. The Week Staff

If Los Angeles County continues to administer 400,000 COVID-19 vaccine shots a week, it will likely reach herd immunity among adults and older teenagers by mid- to late-July, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Monday.

"The focus from here on in for us is to make it as easy as possible for eligible residents to get vaccinated," Ferrer told reporters during a news conference.

To reach herd immunity, a community must have enough people who have either been inoculated or have natural immunity to protect the rest of the population against the coronavirus. In Los Angeles County, more than 3 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, with 84 percent getting a second dose on schedule, 7 percent getting a second dose late, and 9 percent still waiting to get their second dose, the Los Angeles Times reports.

If 2 million more get their first doses, 80 percent of all residents 16 and older will have received at least one shot. Ferrer stressed that for the county to reach herd immunity in mid- to late-July, vaccine rates must stay steady. There are 750 vaccination sites across Los Angeles County, and mobile vaccination teams are visiting communities where people have mobility issues or there is a lack of health care facilities.

California has recovered from the surge in cases over the fall and winter, with the state now seeing its lowest hospitalization rate since the beginning of the pandemic. Catherine Garcia

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has written the perfect song for that surely very large group of people who equally love space, old-timey sea shanties, and internet trends.

The heliophysics and solar wind sea shanty, set to the tune of "Soon May the Wellerman Come," takes the original lyrics and makes some galaxy-themed edits. For example, instead of traditional lines "Soon may the Wellerman come / To bring us sugar and tea and rum," the researchers chant in unison, "Soon may the solar wind come / To bring us plasma and magnetism."

The research laboratory's catchy jam "illuminates one of the primary connections between the Sun and the Earth, the solar wind," NASA writes. "The solar wind is a constant outflow of magnetized material released by the Sun and causes a cascade of effects on space and Earth. The most visible of these from our planet is the aurora borealis, displays of colorful light in the sky that provide a stunning example of the Sun-Earth connection."

Typically performed by fishermen, merchant sailors, and whalers, sea shanties were a type of folk song sung on ships to pass time. After a recent resurgence on TikTok (thanks to a viral video from aspiring Scottish musician Nathan Evans), even Andrew Lloyd Webber has found himself playing along. Perhaps NASA can recruit him to help write its next hit single. Brigid Kennedy

Amid escalating violence in Jerusalem on Monday, at leat 20 Palestinians, including nine children, have been killed after Israel launched air raids on the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian health ministry told Al Jazeera.

Jerusalem has been the site of unrest for the last several days as Palestinians protested against potential evictions in east Jerusalem, and Israeli police met the demonstrations, which took place at the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, with force. Earlier Monday, Hamas fired several rockets at Israel after the group's ultimatum demanding Israel withdraw its security forces from Al-Aqsa, where they clashed with Palestinians inside, resulting in injuries to 300 Palestinians and 21 officers, The Guardian reports. In response to the rockets, Israel carried out the deadly airstrikes.

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said both Hamas' and Israel's actions were "war crimes" that endangered civilian lives. Read more at Al Jazeera and The Guardian. Tim O'Donnell

His mission was to no longer accept his Golden Globe Awards.

Tom Cruise has returned his three Golden Globes to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in protest of the embattled organization, Deadline reports.

This was the latest blow to the group that puts on the Golden Globes after NBC announced Monday afternoon it would not air the awards show in 2022. The HFPA drew heavy criticism ahead of this year's ceremony after it was revealed that its voting body doesn't consist of a single Black member. The HFPA recently announced planned changes to address a number of issues including the group's lack of diversity, but major studios called the reforms out for not going far enough, and NBC on Monday officially pulled the plug on next year's ceremony.

"This is a new tack," Deadline writes of Cruise's move, "but I wouldn’t be surprised if others follow his lead and that the reception area of the HFPA could be crammed with golden trophies." Cruise twice won a Best Actor Golden Globe for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire, and he also won Best Supporting Actor for Magnolia.

The news was just another example of the major crisis the Golden Globes group is facing amid questions over whether the ceremony will even return to NBC at all. Even though NBC said Monday it hopes to "be in a position to air the show in January 2023," Variety writes dropping it in 2022 "could very well serve as a permanent break between the Globes and NBC." Clearly, it hasn't been a golden afternoon for the HFPA. Brendan Morrow