Deadly Heat Wave Grips Europe, and Congress Passes a Landmark Housing Bill

0:00Emma Goldberg:This podcast is supported by BetterHelp. Summer can feel like a sprint. Kids home, trips to plan, routines flipped upside down. It's easy to slip into survival mode just trying to get through it. Then suddenly it's over and you're wishing you enjoyed the days just a little bit more. Therapy can help you slow down and actually be present for the moments that matter. With BetterHelp, you can connect with a licensed therapist from anywhere on your schedule. Don't just survive this summer. Thrive. Visit BetterHelp.com slash New York Times.

0:34Maya King:From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Wednesday, June 24th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45Ronda Kaysen:A heat wave has gripped Europe, with high temperatures threatening to shatter records. Britain, France, and Spain are facing the most intense conditions, with temperatures soaring well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, often in places that were not built for that. Many homes, schools, and businesses there were designed for the cooler climate of the past. Air conditioning is not standard. Some buildings were even designed to retain heat. But Europe is now warming faster than any other continent.

1:17Nazaneen Ghaffar:It has been very difficult out here in Paris for the past couple of days. You see people holding portable fans. water sprayers clinging to areas with shade.

1:29Ronda Kaysen:My colleague Ségolène Lestradique says that in France, the heat has driven some people out of their homes.

1:35Nazaneen Ghaffar:Because of the extreme temperatures, the mayor of Paris has decided to keep parks open 24-7. They usually close at night. So I went for a walk very early yesterday morning, and I could tell people had spent the night sleeping in the park.

1:52Ronda Kaysen:In the last few days, at least 40 people in France have drowned as crowds have poured into any swimming spot they can find. Officials say many of the victims were young and swimming in unsupervised areas. Across the continent, the current temperatures are being driven up by a heat dome, a kind of high-pressure system that basically acts like a lid on a pot of boiling water. Because of climate change, heat domes are becoming more common worldwide. In Europe, they'd been trying to prepare for this. Two decades ago, a summer heat wave caused a staggering 70 ,000 deaths. In response, countries created early warning systems and organized more cooling shelters.

2:33Ronda Kaysen:Paris even built a registry of elderly and vulnerable residents who get check-in calls when temperatures rise. This summer, experts say, will be a test of many of those systems. One public health expert in France told the Times, quote,

2:48Maya King:quote, we have adapted, but it is far from enough for what is coming.

3:05Ronda Kaysen:In New York last night, a set of primaries for House seats delivered a resounding win for the left wing of the Democratic Party, bolstering the political movement championed by New York City's mayor, Zoran Mamdani.

3:18Eli Tan:The old politics that got us to this crisis is not the politics that's going to get us out of this crisis.

3:24Ronda Kaysen:Mamdani had called the congressional primaries a referendum on the direction of the Democratic Party, and he endorsed a series of candidates who won last night, including two who ousted Democratic incumbents. The winning candidates share Mamdani's progressive economic platform. They'd also all been outspoken about ending American support for Israel, a sign of how many in the Democratic Party have grown increasingly critical of Israel and its government. Overall, last night's results in New York show voters

3:55Maya King:hunger for insurgency over incumbency and their hopes for a political shakeup heading into the midterm elections this fall.

4:04Ronda Kaysen:Meanwhile, one of the candidates who came up short last night in New York was Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy. Before he announced his run for Congress, Schlossberg had made a name for himself online as a combative, sometimes crude social media personality and provocateur who cracked jokes and went after his famous uncle, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Early polling had shown Schlossberg with a path to victory, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even endorsed him. But Times political correspondent Lisa Lair says that in the end, it wasn't enough.

4:40Sally Goldenberg:While Schlossberg was able to get attention and raise money based on his famous last name and his active presence on social media, he was hampered by his lack of experience in government or really politics at all. So I think his campaign here really just shows how social media and a social media presence can get a candidate on the ticket and put them in the running, but it can't necessarily win them the seat.

5:08Ronda Kaysen:You can find the full results from last night's primaries in New York and other races around the country at nytimes.com.

5:19Nick Cumming-Bruce:On this vote, the yeas are 358, the nays are 32. And without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.

5:30Maya King:In Washington yesterday, Congress passed a landmark bipartisan bill aimed at boosting the supply of U.S. homes and tackling the country's housing crisis. For a long time, the high cost of housing had been seen mostly as a big city issue. But during the pandemic, prices shot up around the country in places like Boise, Bozeman and Kalamazoo, partly due to a lack of inventory. Today, experts say the U.S. has a shortage of up to 6 million homes, and the new bill, which is the most significant piece of housing legislation in almost four decades, will try and change that. It's coming at the problem from a couple of angles.

6:11Ronda Kaysen:It will loosen federal regulations, making it easier, faster, and cheaper to build.

6:16Maya King:And it gives grants to communities hoping to repair existing housing. The bill is also designed to limit the reach of large institutional landlords who've bought up hundreds of thousands of single-family homes. Now, the number of homes those investors can own will be capped. Overall, housing experts told The Times that the measures will help boost the U.S. housing supply and bring down prices, but that it will take time.

6:43Ronda Kaysen:For one thing, it could be years before some construction projects actually break ground. Plus, high interest rates are still keeping a lot of potential buyers out of the market.

7:02Maya King:Yesterday, the United Nations released a report accusing Israeli security forces of deliberately killing Palestinian children in the months after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire. The report was compiled by an independent commission, which concluded the killings were part of a strategy to destroy the future of Palestinians in Gaza, and said that amounted to genocide. The findings underscore the increasing alarm from the UN and other humanitarian agencies that the ceasefire in October has failed to stop the violence. UNICEF has said that one Palestinian child has been killed on average every day since the start of the truce,

7:42Ronda Kaysen:calling the peace agreement a, quote, "...cruel and deadly illusion." Israeli officials dismissed the report as a libelous sham and accused the commission of trying to single out and vilify the country. Israel's foreign ministry also criticized it, saying it ignored the deaths of Israeli children who were killed by Hamas.

8:12Maya King:And finally, not too long ago, tech companies were pushing their employees to use AI as often as possible. The idea was to cut down on busy work and boost productivity. Some companies even posted big leaderboards showing which workers were using AI the most. It led to the term token maxing, tokens being essentially a unit of AI use. But tokens cost money. Companies like Anthropic and OpenAI charge their corporate subscribers for each token they use. And now that the bills have come due, the new word in Silicon Valley is token minning, as in, let's maybe cut back.

8:54Ronda Kaysen:That's partly because the more advanced AI has become, like with the rise of AI agents that can work unsupervised for hours at a time writing entire software programs, the more tokens they use. As a result, software engineers can now be burning through tens of thousands of dollars worth of tokens every month. Recently, Uber said it had already blown through its entire projected AI spending budget for the year. Amazon and Meta have taken down their token-maxing leaderboards. The abrupt reversal after just a few months underscores how much uncertainty there is about the best strategy for using AI tools, since many companies still aren't seeing a clear return on their investments.

9:37Ronda Kaysen:In a recent podcast interview, the COO of Uber said the link between AI use and new features or functionality is, quote, not there yet.

9:49Maya King:Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how the relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump is rupturing,

9:58Ronda Kaysen:and what that could mean for the future of U.S. support for Israel. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.