2019
June
26
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 26, 2019
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Welcome. In today’s edition, some stories you won’t want to miss: The “electability” debate behind the Democratic debates; the question of allegation fatigue on sexual assault; tourists and safety in the Dominican Republic; progress on child mortality; and a reporter’s encounter with a famous, and receding, glacier.

First, a noteworthy happening in the Monitor’s backyard today. 

The border crisis just got personal for some office workers who live very far from Texas. Many employees of the online retailer Wayfair walked off the job to protest in Boston’s Copley Square, saying the company shouldn’t be selling beds for use in border detention facilities. 

It may sound counterintuitive: Aren’t mattresses better than concrete floors? But news of Wayfair’s sale landed just as humanitarian concern for those detained – notably children – have flared anew nationwide. Candice Woodson, a Boston worker who came out to show solidarity with the Wayfair walkout, put it this way to Monitor reporter Thomas Shults: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you’ve chosen the side of the oppressor.”

“I don’t support companies profiting off the incarceration of children, so I came out here,” another Boston protester told our reporter Danny Jin.

The company has stood by what it says is its standard practice: selling legal goods to legal customers (in this case a nonprofit that contracted with the U.S. government to house detained children). It’s a complex situation. Beds aren’t barbed wire, for one thing. But today’s drama is an example of a growing debate about the role corporations should play on questions of societal or political values. We’re planning a deeper dive on that later this week.  

Meanwhile, we’ll also keep watching the other aspects of border and immigration policy, such as congressional funding and the instability in Central America, that lie at the root of recent migration.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Mike Segar/Reuters
An empty stage awaits the first 10 of 20 Democratic candidates who are set to debate over the course of two nights at the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center in Miami June 26.
dpa/AP/File
A beach resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. A spate of highly publicized deaths of U.S. tourists at large resorts has led to a drop in summer vacation bookings on the tourism-dependent Caribbean nation.

Points of Progress

What's going right

Child mortality rates decline worldwide

SOURCE:

JAMA Pediatrics "Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors in Child and Adolescent Health, 1990 to 2017"

|
Jacob Turcotte/Staff

A letter from

Colorado
Ann Hermes/Staff
Christian Science Monitor reporter Simon Montlake looks out on Exit Glacier on May 17 in Alaska's Kenai Fjords National Park.

The Monitor's View

AP
Joel Barker gives his newly adopted daughter, Lylah, a kiss as his biological daughter, Noel, looks on during adoption proceedings in Bloomington, Ind., in 2017.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa/AP
A polar bear swims in the water at the zoo in Hannover, Germany, June 26, during a heat wave that has spread across Europe. On Wednesday, Germany set a new national temperature record for June at 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

That’s all for today. Come back tomorrow for coverage including our diplomacy writer’s take on what’s shaping up as a G-20 summit with more than ordinary importance. See you then.

More issues

2019
June
26
Wednesday
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