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--:-- Traci Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Tuesday, June 3rd.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Here's what we're covering. This morning in Gaza, the Israeli military said its soldiers opened fire near crowds of Palestinians walking toward a new food distribution site.
--:-- Traci Mumford: According to Gaza health officials, at least 27 people were killed and dozens were injured. The Israeli military said it fired at people who strayed from the designated route, saying they posed a threat to soldiers, but a military spokeswoman declined to offer details.
--:-- Traci Mumford: A doctor at a nearby hospital a few miles from the site told The Times most of the victims they received there were children aged between 10 and 13, many with gunshot wounds to the head or chest.
--:-- Traci Mumford: He said their bodies were carried much of the way to the hospital because ambulances could not safely reach the area where the shooting occurred.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's the second time in three days Israeli soldiers have opened fire along a route to this aid site. Palestinian officials said 23 people were killed Sunday.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The location is part of the contentious new system for distributing aid in Gaza. Hundreds of locations run by humanitarian groups were replaced with just four controlled by foreign contractors.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That's forced many Palestinians to travel for miles and cross Israeli military lines to get aid.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In Washington... Mr. President, we're kicking off the June work period today. It's going to be a busy month.
--:-- Traci Mumford: We have a lot to get done. Senators are back from recess and will soon take up President Trump's massive domestic policy bill, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The package, which already passed the House, slashes multiple federal programs in order to offset the costs of the president's priorities, including tax breaks and increased immigration enforcement.
--:-- Traci Mumford: There's been intense pushback, even from some Republicans, about the scale of the planned cuts.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And the Times has found that Trump and his allies have been using falsehoods and inaccurate claims to try and promote the bill to the public.
--:-- Traci Mumford: We are not cutting Medicaid in this package. There's a lot of misinformation out there about this, Jake.
--:-- President Trump: In one case, House Speaker Mike Johnson and I have both said the bill contains no significant cuts to Medicaid.
--:-- President Trump: The only thing we're cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse. We're not changing Medicaid.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But the bill cuts hundreds of billions of dollars of Medicaid spending and will leave an estimated 10 million people without coverage over the next decade.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And when it comes to the bill's impact on the federal deficit, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said it would bring the country's debt down.
--:-- Traci Mumford: By carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency, disagrees. Analysts there estimated the bill would actually add almost $4 trillion to the deficit, even after they factored in economic growth.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Levitt accused the office of using, quote, shoddy assumptions. But its projections have historically been more or less accurate.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And several other budget models have made similar predictions about the bill.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Now, three more updates on the Trump administration. After losing nearly 600 employees to the recent federal staffing cuts, the National Weather Service is now trying to hire another 100 or so to, quote, stabilize the department.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Some forecasting offices no longer have enough staff to operate overnight when they used to be 24-7.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Others cut back on critical data collection that fed forecast models.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The restaffing plan comes just as forecasters are gearing up for hurricane season in the Atlantic, which started Sunday.
--:-- Traci Mumford: On that topic, the acting head of FEMA told staff he didn't know the U.S. had a hurricane season.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Two staffers told The Times it was unclear if he was serious. The agency has said he was joking.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Also, a Senate committee will hold a confirmation hearing today on President Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Forest Service, Michael Boren.
--:-- Traci Mumford: He's the founder of a billion-dollar tech company and a Trump donor who has clashed with the service for years.
--:-- Traci Mumford: He's been accused of putting a cabin on federal land, flying a helicopter so close to a crew that was out building trails that officials sought a restraining order, and building a private airstrip without a permit in a national recreation area.
--:-- Traci Mumford: While Boren owns a large ranch in Idaho, he has little experience in public lands management.
--:-- Traci Mumford: If confirmed, Boren would be charged with carrying out the president's executive order to increase logging in national forests.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And across the country scientists are increasingly concerned that American research labs may no longer be able to attract the world's best and brightest under the Trump administration.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Federal science budgets have been slashed, grants have been frozen, and stricter immigration policies have targeted many international students.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's not that uncommon to go into a scientific lab in the United States and find that there are more students from China working there as graduate students and postdocs than there are American-born citizens.
--:-- Traci Mumford: My colleague Kate Zernicki has been talking with researchers who say America's status as an international science mecca was carefully and intentionally cultivated going back to the 1950s.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Now, the system that delivered breakthrough after breakthrough in tech, physics, healthcare, you name it, is under stress.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That talent is going to either be forced to go home or they're just going to look elsewhere for jobs.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In France and Germany, some of the most prominent institutions of science are already adding extra money to their budgets and saying, if you've lost your grants, come work with us. We have money for you.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And so what researchers I've talked to are really concerned about is that the United States will actually increasingly be isolated from the rest of the scientific community and ultimately lose its preeminence in science.
--:-- Traci Mumford: For anyone drinking coffee right now, prepare to be validated. A new study found that coffee may help with healthy aging on top of that caffeine fix.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The data was presented yesterday at the annual meeting for the American Society for Nutrition.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, but the study was rigorous and extensive.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It followed more than 47,000 female nurses starting in the 1970s.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Over several decades, they were asked questions about their diets, like how much coffee, tea, or soda like Coca-Cola and Pepsi they drank.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Ultimately, the group who consumed the most caffeine had 13% higher odds of healthy aging than those who consumed the least.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The study defined healthy aging as no cognitive impairment and no cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or other chronic diseases.
--:-- Traci Mumford: They did not find the same association between healthy aging and drinking tea or decaf coffee, and drinking cola was associated with significantly decreased odds of healthy aging.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The findings add to a large body of evidence linking coffee consumption with longevity, though some studies suggest that benefit can disappear if people regularly add more than half a teaspoon of sugar or about one tablespoon of half and half to their coffee.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And finally, it is summer book season, and every year The Times puts out its list of the latest releases not to miss, from breezy beach reads to riveting nonfiction.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The editor of The Times Book Review, Gilbert Cruz, has narrowed down his list to just a few favorites.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The first is called King of Ashes. This is by S.A. Cosby, a crime writer who's written four crime novels set in the South in Virginia.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And in this new one, a finance manager named Roman has to come back to his small town after his father is in a terrible accident.
--:-- Traci Mumford: He discovers that his brother, who's sort of a screw-up, has gotten them all involved with the local crime gang, and he has to figure out how to extract his family from this very dicey situation.
--:-- Traci Mumford: As with all of Cosby's books, it has a gripping plot. It's pretty violent. It's very dark.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And if these are the kind of things that you're into, I can attest that it is very, very entertaining.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The next one is a nonfiction book, the conceit of which has obsessed me.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's called A Marriage at Sea. It's by Sophie Elmhurst.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And it's about a married couple who, in the 1970s, they say, we've been together for quite a while. Let's do something crazy. Let's sail around the world.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And they start to do that. And then when they are in the great expanse of the ocean, a whale bumps into their boat.
--:-- Traci Mumford: They have to jump into a life raft where they have to survive for 117 days or something like that.
--:-- Traci Mumford: So it's about their journey. It's about their attempt to survive.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And I just want to know how a married couple does it in a life raft for 117 days.
--:-- Traci Mumford: So that's King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby for crime fans and the new nonfiction account, Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst.
--:-- Traci Mumford: You can find more summer reading recs from Gilbert and the Whole Books team at nytimes.com slash books.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, what a new Times analysis of voting records from every county in the country found, and why it set off alarm bells for Democratic strategists.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Traci Mumford: I'm Traci Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
