Weather report: 29.3646° S, 51.6658° W. Last week, in the member’s despatch, we looked at the flooding in Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. More than 350 millimeters of rain fell there on June 18. As it happens, the same region was hit with catastrophic flooding in 2024 that reached all the way to Porto Allegre, Rio Grande do Sul’s capital city, significantly to the east of the 2025 flooding.

That system, in April 2024, dropped more than 300 millimeters of rain in less than a week, closing the international airport, sweeping through major sports stadiums, and closing several highways. The floodwater didn’t recede for a month. 

That’s your opinion, man. While the American media’s news cycle has become higher-paced than ever, millions among the American people are turning away from it. According to the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute, there’s “a clear decline in interest in news” in the U.S. 43 percent of those polled say they avoid some form of the news, and 8 percent follow it either less than once a month or never.

What’s happening?

—Gustav Jönsson

‘Sunbeam Path.’ The British synth ace James Holden has collaborated with the Polish clarinet star Waclaw Zimpel before, mostly on singles and short formats—but now, they’ve moved up to a first full, freeform-improvisational album. It’s deeply spacey and warm, like a stroll along a burbling stream. On this track, Holden plays instruments including “walnuts” and “teacups” while Zimpel plays a radiant lap steel guitar.

—Brendan Hasenstab

A fistful of minerals. When U.S. President Donald Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs on nearly every country in the world on April 2, it seemed like the day might transform the global economy. But one week later, after stock and bond markets plummeted worldwide, Trump paused the tariffs for 90 days.

Except on China.

What began as a round of universal tariffs turned into an exceptional new trade war with Beijing. Each side raised rates multiple times, with the U.S. eventually putting a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports and China imposing import duties of 125 percent on American goods.

But a month later, in Geneva, each side agreed to reduce tariff levels by more than 100 percentage points. Soon after, though, the U.S. enacted a new array of tough trade restrictions on China, mostly on high-tech items. Yet by June, Washington had canceled those policies. At the end of the month, Trump declared the trade war was over and the two countries had made a deal.

Neither side has released details of the agreement, but it looks like China didn’t have to make any concessions or change anything in the way it had traded with the U.S. before the tariff fight.

Why not?

—Michael Bluhm

Hong Kong’s League of Social Democrats announced its dissolution on Sunday, June 29, marking the end of the territory’s final pro-democracy opposition group. The LSD cited “immense political pressure” from a five-year-long national-security crackdown, leaving the China-ruled enclave with no formal pro-democracy opposition presence. Established in 2006, the League became one of the rare political groups in Hong Kong to openly challenge both the Hong Kong government and Beijing’s growing presence in the city’s affairs.

The party’s demise follows a systematic elimination campaign. Its founder Leung Kwok-hung, commonly known as “Long Hair,” is currently serving time under the National Security Law, while Jimmy Sham, another central figure, was detained in 2021 for allegedly plotting to subvert state power. In February, the Democratic Party, the city’s largest and most popular opposition party, announced it would disband after senior members told Reuters they’d been warned by Beijing that failure to do so would mean serious consequences including potentially new arrests.

The LSD’s closure completes what amounts to the political sterilization of Hong Kong. The key question is what it says about Beijing’s ultimate intentions for the territory—and what the broader implications might be, in turn, for the international order.

‘Sad Piano House.’ The Canadian electronic musician Dan Snaith, who releases music under the names Caribou, Manitoba, and Daphni, has done something surprising with this new single. It’s a sequel to his 2022 hit ‘Cloudy.’ Same sort of descending piano riff, and a slow-to-emerge vocal sample. It’s a touch faster—but if you listen to the two back-to-back, you won’t miss it.

—Brendan Hasenstab

Governing on the edge. U.S. President Donald Trump’s massive tax-cut and spending legislation cleared its final hurdle in Congress on Thursday, as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives narrowly approved the package in a 218-214 vote. The legislation— dubbed oddly, if in a distinctively Trumpian idiom, the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—contains trillions of dollars in tax cuts and enhanced immigration-enforcement spending, offset by significant reductions in spending on Medicaid—the U.S. government’s health-insurance program for low-income Americans—and other programs. The bill would add US$3.4 trillion to America’s $36.2 trillion debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The final push was dramatic. The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, broke records with a nearly nine-hour filibuster speech—the longest in the chamber’s history—decrying the bill before the final vote. Despite concerns within Trump’s own party over the bill’s price tag and health-care cuts, only two of the House’s 220 Republicans voted against it, following an overnight standoff. Trump signed it into law at 5 p.m. ET on Friday, the United States’ Independence Day.

The scope of the new law is staggering. It represents the most significant U.S. domestic-policy overhaul in decades. But as such, it also raises the question of what it means to American democracy for such massive changes to pass by a handful of votes in what’s at the moment—and foreseeably—a deeply divided country.

Well?

‘Vladimir, STOP!’ Russia launched its largest drone attack of the war in Ukraine against Kyiv on July 3-4, killing one person and injuring at least 23 others in a massive assault involving 539 drones and 11 missiles. The attack lasted from early evening until dawn, forcing families to shelter in underground metro stations as acrid smoke hung over the city center. Kyiv officials reported damage to about 40 apartment blocks, railway infrastructure, five schools and kindergartens, and numerous vehicles across six districts.

The attack happened just hours after a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Trump said there was “no progress at all” on efforts to end the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “deliberately massive and cynical,” noting that air-raid sirens began blaring at the same time as news of the Trump-Putin call came out.

It’s a striking sequence of events—that pose a fundamental question about the American president’s approach to ending the conflict: Can diplomatic engagement with his Russian counterpart effectively de-escalate the war, or is the outreach to Putin just providing cover for more escalation?

Which is it?

‘8.’ Michael Gordon is a prolific classical composer based in New York City. Here, back in 2021, he collaborated with the European ensemble Cello Octet Amsterdam. In the studio, they played in a circle—an arrangement they seemingly ended up reflecting in the album’s cover art. Best experienced with good headphones. And if you happen ever to have heard of the influential art-music collective Bang on a Can, Gordon is one of its founders.

What is Bang on a Can?

—Brendan Hasenstab