Israel Protests Continue, Heat Wave Study, Emmett Till Memorial

How does the opposition respond to the right-wing move against the Supreme Court?

A climate scientist finds this fact so obvious, it's a little boring.

How can people respond to the heat?

1955.

His murder became a symbol for the civil rights movement.

How do new national monuments honor his story?

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Israelis woke up today to their three largest newspapers carrying a black front page.

Israel.

Defying more than six months of street protests, the government passed a law limiting a check

on its own power.

Until now, the Supreme Court in Israel has had the right to reject some government actions

it did not consider reasonable.

So what happens now that the Knesset stripped that power away?

Good morning, Daniel.

Hospitals are operating on limited schedule.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on TV last night saying he was extending

a hand to the opposition.

And at the very same time, police trucks were spraying water on protesters who were blocking

major roads for hours.

There were some injuries.

And also on live TV, we saw in Parliament a right-wing minister brush off a plea for

compromise on the law, while Netanyahu sat next to that minister and was just stone-faced

and didn't say anything.

And commentators today are calling that a symbol that Netanyahu, they say, isn't the

one in the driver's seat here.

It's his far-right cabinet ministers driving this new law.

And one of them said, quote, this is just the beginning.

Okay, so for Israel's government, let's take a broad look at this.

How might the government use this law to advance its wider goals?

to block the hiring and firing of officials.

And legal experts are concerned that the Israeli government could use this to replace professional

watchdog officials throughout the civil service with yes-men, yes-people for the ultra-nationalist

government.

And that could help them rubber-stamp discriminatory policies against Palestinians.

Just for an example, one Palestinian lawyer told me about a case where the Supreme Court

in the past blocked Israel from building its West Bank separation barrier right through

the middle of a Palestinian village.

And the court said that was unreasonable.

And now the court won't be able to do that.

Now experts say that there are still other legal principles the court can take in Israel

to protect Palestinian rights.

But advocates say this law is, you know, it's a bigger picture here.

It's a first step in a wider move to change democratic institutions to further target

Palestinian rights and other things that an ultra-nationalist government doesn't like.

For instance, the Justice Minister recently raised the case of Arab citizens moving into

a Jewish-majority town as something that should be prevented.

What will you be looking at in the coming days and weeks?

The question is, will the Supreme Court intervene?

It never has intervened with the kind of law that was passed yesterday.

It's equivalent to a constitutional amendment in Israel.

And also defense experts are worried about the readiness of Israel's military.

Thousands of volunteer reservists are saying they will not serve now in protest.

And there are many enemies on Israel's border, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah,

who said this crisis in Israel puts Israel on the path of collapse.

So Israel is worried about its security right at this moment.

I'm sure we'll be hearing from you much more in the coming days.

Thank you, Daniel.

as they always do.

Is this climate change?

Hi, Nate.

records as you said, and put tens of millions of people under heat advisories and warnings,

would be, quote, virtually impossible, end quote, without human-caused climate change.

And that recent heat waves in China were made 50 times more likely because of it.

I mean, this research was conducted by a team of international scientists working in

a collaborative group called World Weather Attribution.

We should say this study has not been peer-reviewed yet because it's what scientists call a rapid

attribution study, which is kind of a growing field in climate science.

It aims to show the role climate change is playing in an extreme weather event as it's

happening or soon after while it's still on the public mind and being talked about on

news programs.

And the researchers found that climate change has not only made these kinds of extreme heat

waves more common, but it's also making them hotter.

They added El Nino, a natural weather phenomenon, is likely contributing to some of the heat,

but the main driver, they say, is fossil fuels.

Here's Frederica Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, who was involved

with the research when she was speaking at a press event yesterday.

From a scientific point of view, there is nothing new because we have known this for

a long time and we see exactly what we expected to see.

Wow, she sounds annoyed, frustrated.

that a lot because this isn't new, right?

I got pretty much the exact same reaction from other climate scientists and researchers

I talked to yesterday who were not involved in this study but had reviewed its findings.

Here's Bernadette Woods-Plackey, the chief meteorologist at Climate Central, a non-profit

climate science group.

that we're seeing around the world right now.

We know what adding more greenhouse gases to our atmosphere does and we continue to

add more of them through the burning of fossil fuels.

So the more heat that we put into our atmosphere, it will translate into bigger heat events.

records that we're seeing broken right now in Europe, Asia, America, they are probably

going to be broken again in the years to come.

What should people do?

The international community has pledged to limit global warming increases to about 2.7

degrees Fahrenheit compared to what they were in pre-industrial times.

A lot of climate scientists think that goal is already out of reach.

The planet has already warmed nearly two degrees.

But the science is overwhelmingly clear that the fewer fossil fuel emissions we put in

the atmosphere means a more hospitable planet for humans and animals alike.

The other thing that we can do is to look out for each other during a heatwave.

Public health officials have been urging people to check in on their neighbors, especially

elderly or immunocompromised people, as these hot temperatures continue.

Thanks for your reporting.

Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till Mobley.

Miller.

She's with the Gulf States Newsroom.

And she's with us now.

Good morning.

Hi.

Tell me about them.

That's where Emmett Till's pulled out of the Tallahatchie River.

What struck me there was the sign explaining what happened.

It's bulletproof, and that's because at least three previous signs had been shot up.

And it was just really quiet considering the violence of that place.

Emmett Till, he was killed because he allegedly whistled at a white woman.

He was only 14 when men kidnapped him from his family's home in Money, Mississippi.

And they took him to a barn where they tortured and shot him and then threw him in that river.

The other memorial site is the courthouse in Sumner where the trial of two men took

place.

They were found not guilty of murder by an all-white, all-male jury.

And that courthouse has been reconstructed to what it looked like in 1955.

And the third site for this monument designation is in Chicago, and it's the church where

his funeral was.

If you could just remind us of the impact of that day because of the decision of his

mother.

It's where his mother Mamie insisted on an open casket funeral, and she invited the press

and everyone to come and see the violence that had happened to her son.

And his body was on view.

Thousands of people came and a photo was taken and published in Jet Magazine.

And it really publicized the brutality of the Jim Crow South.

This church is already a Chicago landmark, so adding it into the monument designation

just sort of made sense.

Hill for decades now.

What are they hoping to accomplish with this designation?

more resources towards teaching what really happened.

And there's this belief among those who've been really pushing on the designation that

racial reconciliation begins with telling the truth.

And I asked Alan Spears, who's been at this for a while, he's with the National Park

Conservation Association, what a national park means for Emmett Till and Mamie Till

Mobley's legacy.

And as long as their names are spoken, they will never be forgotten.

justice, since Till couldn't get justice while he was alive, and hopes that more people

will engage with this story of Emmett Till, who would have been 82 years old today.

Maya Miller is a Mississippi-based reporter with the Gulf States Newsroom.

Thanks for your reporting.

I'm Layla Falden.

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