GETTING WARMER:  The National heat wave continues today with temperatures from 98 in Southern California to 107 in Arizona, 93 in Illinois, and 96 in Pennsylvania. The tip of Maine, which almost hit 100 earlier in the week, is cooling down to a high of 77.

  Overall, 20 percent of Americans are under an extreme heat warning this week.

  Global warming appears to be the suspect for temperature records all over the world. As the globe’s industrial countries continue to spew climate warming exhausts, particularly China and the US, deadly heat waves are becoming more common. The NY Times reports according to Climate Central that between May 2023 and May 2024 roughly 4 out of 5 people in the world lived through at least a month of abnormally high temperatures in their area.

  Tourists have dropped dead in Greece and religious pilgrims have expired in Saudi Arabia. Mexico has been setting heat records in dozens of cities. The temperature in the Indian capital of Delhi has been in the 90s even overnight. It hit 99 in Beijing.

THE SUPREMES: The Supreme Court upheld a tax on foreign income that helped pay for the cuts President Trump imposed in 2017 in a case that some experts had said might undercut the nation’s tax system.

  The vote was 7-2 with conservatives Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch in dissent.

  The question was whether Congress had the power to levy the foreign tax and the answer was “yes.” But the case also opened the door on whether Congress has the power to create a wealth tax as proposed by Joe Biden and other Democrats.

LEGALITIES: Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, who has delayed the secret documents case of Donald Trump to the point that it is unlikely to be tried before the election, is set to hear arguments today on a defense motion to dismiss the charges on the grounds that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the indictment, was improperly funded and appointed.

  Cannon has demonstrated that she’s willing to consider things that would have other judges tell the defense to “get out of here.” Trump’s lawyers claim that Attorney General Merrick Garland had no legal power to appoint Smith and that he should have been named by the president or the Senate. It’s a question that has been repeatedly rejected by judges going back to Richard Nixon and Watergate, but Cannon appears to be seriously considering whether the Smith appointment was constitutional.

  Trump’s lawyers are also presenting the twisted argument that because the Constitution says a president can be criminally prosecuted after conviction on impeachment, that president can’t  be prosecuted without first being convicted on impeachment. Cannon is giving her tie to that one as well. 

THE MONEY RACE: After trailing far behind, Donald Trump is pulling even with President Joe Biden in the collection of campaign cash. Timothy Mellon, an heir to the family fortune, donated $50 million to a super PAC supporting Trump the day after the former president’s criminal conviction.

  Of course, Trump has diverted just about as much to pay his legal bills.

  On the other side, New York’s wealthy former mayor Michael Bloomberg has given $20 million to support the Biden campaign.

THE OBIT PAGE: Donald Sutherland, the actor who could be goofy, menacing, endearing, and a whole range of characteristics in between, died yesterday in Miami after a long illness. With his long face and hangdog eyes, Sutherland was never the leading man, but always a star.

  He said he was once rejected for a part because it called for a “guy-next-door type” and the producer said, “You don’t look like you’ve lived next door to anyone.” He actually became handsome as time passed.

  He was the father of actor Kiefer Sutherland, also very successful.

  In a career that began with television in the 1960s, Sutherland made more than 200 movies from “M*A*S*H” and “Klute” in 1971 to “1900” (1976) “Ordinary People” (1980), and “Eye of Needle” (1981) He has one movie yet to be released.

  Sutherland made his name among movie audiences with The Dirty Dozen in 1967, an improbable star-studded World War II picture in which he played the wisecracking soldier Vernon Pinkley.

THE SPIN RACK: A federal appeals court panel rejected the bid by Trump ally Steve Bannon to stay out of prison while he fights his contempt conviction for defying a subpoena from the House January 6^th committee. He gets his orange suit on July 1. — American Airlines suspended several employees after an incident in which three Black men were removed from a flight after someone complained about their body odor. The three men are suing the airline. — Even as he is supplied with weapons by North Korea for his continuing assault on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said South Korea would be making “a big mistake” if they send weapons to Ukraine for its defense. — Amazon says it will stop using inflated plastic pillows for packing, eliminating 15 billion pillows a year. Plastic film is a major contributor to pollution.

BELOW THE FOLD: As we predicted, the last shoe had not dropped at The Washington Post. News broke this morning that Robert Winnett, the British journalist recently appointed to become editor of the Post later this year, will not take the job and will remain at the Daily Telegraph in London.

  The Post’s own reporters have been investigating the journalistic ethics of Winnett and fellow Brit William Lewis, the Post’s current publisher who was involved in the infamous phone hacking scandal in England. Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, has been turning to British journalists to save the iconic American newspaper.

  We think there may be at least one more shoe to drop.

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