News with Nuance: July 28, 2023

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

You’d think in these dog days of summer that it would be a slow news week, where I could share with you some fun or off-the-wall not necessarily breaking news type stories - but alas - we are in the midst of a record-setting heat wave that’s a direct consequence of the human-caused climate change scientists have been warning us about for years, new indictments in the cases against former President Donald Trump are literally being handed down as I write this — and the music world saw yet another tragic death this week in the loss of Irish singer Sinead O’Connor, whose music and witness have long affected me.

I’ll have all that and more for you this week (although I’ll let the political and legal writers cover the indictments) - as well as our special corner on how all of this news intersects with the rising tide of American white Christian Nationalism. And maybe - as we read together and search for the humanity in it all - we might be able to share some hope, too. Let’s get to the news - with nuance …

An incredible illustration from Jim Cooke, Los Angeles Times

The Headline: I searched hell on Earth for a story. What I found will haunt me forever

As I write to you today, it’s 91 degrees in Minnesota, with a heat index of 98.

We can get hot here in the North Star State, but 98 is relatively unheard of. Not at 5:44 p.m. I’m indoors in the air conditioning with shades covering our windows, and still my laptop feels like it’s overheating in my lap. I’ve had my kids put in sunscreen and change sweaty outfits twice today, and I’m constantly telling them to drink more water. Still, my oldest son’s face is tomato red after just a few minutes of shooting baskets at the local park (hopefully due to heat, not sunburn - but still).

I see rabbits, known for their frolicking and constant movement, splayed out in yards in any corner of shade they can find. I haven’t heard the birds sing all day.

Humans, not to mention birds and plants alike, just don’t seem to be built for this.

Unbelievably, though, in Phoenix their overnight lows are just a few degrees cooler than our daily highs. What feels like a roasting oven to me might feel like a respite to an Arizonan.

I remember the last August we lived in Vegas in 2012, when I was eight months pregnant and one day attempted to go for a walk at a local park. It felt like desperation after just a few minutes, and I nearly hallucinated a desert mirage.

At this point, this summer in the Northern Hemisphere, I think we’ve all felt and experienced the extreme heat. There’s only so many ways you can say how hot it is. Maybe we’re hard to shock anymore, with our air-conditioned homes and ice cold freezers.

Then, I read this story by Hayley Smith, and I gasped aloud. As I believe all journalists and writers are compelled to do in these dire days for our planet, she found a way to retell again the story of extreme heat: to give its suffering a name and a face, and to burnish it into our memories.

She writes of a 71-year-old hiker in Death Valley named Steve. He was wearing the proper clothing and carrying a liter of water, but still, she and her friend worried for his safety, on a day where the temperature read 128 degrees. He told them he was well-trained and preparing for another hike next month.

So they left, desperately, scurrying back into their air-conditioned cars. Three days later, Smith found herself writing Steve’s obituary. He had died that afternoon, not long after finishing his hike.

It would be easy to blame Steve, but I think most of us are naive to the killing power of this heat, which will undoubtedly only get worse, and plague those who are most vulnerable, especially children, the elderly, and the unhoused.

The Quote: Steve’s death brought me face to face with the harsh reality of our worsening climate crisis. Because while he may be the first person I have interviewed to succumb to extreme heat, he almost certainly will not be the last.

Story by Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times

For more stories on this summer’s extreme heat, and the effects of human-caused climate change, I also recommend this story and this one, both from the L.A. Times, which does an excellent job covering the climate crisis.

The Headline: Oppenheimer’s test site wasn’t remote. It was populated by Hispanos and Native Americans

One of my principal goals of News with Nuance is to cover the stories behind the stories, and to highlight the people who are too often left out of the headlines. So while I don’t want to diminish the good news coming out of dual box-office smashes Oppenheimer and Barbie - I thought this article was a must-read for the kind of stories I want to tell here.

As I wrote earlier this week, I want to love both of these movies: Barbie for its feminist subversion of the male gaze, despite the fact that the doll’s proportions always reflected the male gaze; and Oppenheimer because it’s the type of movie I’ve always loved, based on a true and historical story, with great writing and dialogue, and covering a complex topic with nuance, depth, and heart.

AND YET.

Maybe because of their mass appeal, both of these stories, while trying mightily to subvert the very messages both hold up nonetheless, fail to really tell me anything new or revolutionary. Their messengers are the same messengers we always tend to get. And the people they erase (like women whose femininity is not expressed in pink hues) or the people whose stories are told in this article are the very people whose stories we need to hear most in 2023.

I know there’s all kinds of economic and power-analysis reasons for why the stories of the marginalized aren’t the stories Hollywood and New York publishers most want to tell, and yeah, that is depressing - but still I think it’s important anyway to keep pushing back and lifting up the unheard (not untold!) stories. Even if you go to and love Barbie and Oppenheimer alike. They can still be good movies! (Don’t go see Sound of Freedom, though. Or if you do - be real suspicious. Here’s a good analysis of why that film is dangerous on a number of levels).

The Quote: As radiation contaminated the air, water and soil throughout the Tularosa Basin, cancer became a reality — as predictable as New Mexico’s yearly monsoons. “We don’t ask if we’re going to get cancer, we ask when,” (Tina) Cordova said. “In my own family, just look at the level of loss my mom experienced. She lost my dad, her sister, her mother, a sister-in-law. I had cancer myself. Imagine the trauma associated with that, and that’s what we live with every day.”

For Mary Martinez White, a Tularosa native, her journey from understanding the truth of the bomb to learning its effect on her own family has been difficult to process. “It was unnerving to know that the federal government did this and turned their backs on us,” White said. “My family is very patriotic. My dad, my brothers, my nieces and nephews have served in the military. I want to believe in this country, and I believe that they still have an opportunity to make this right.”

Cordova said the group tried to get in contact with the filmmakers while they were shooting in New Mexico but was told that there wasn’t interest in meeting with them. “All we wanted was a panel at the end of the movie to acknowledge the sacrifice and suffering of the people of New Mexico as part of the Manhattan Project,” she said.

Story by Cat Cardenas, for De Los/Los Angeles Times

And don’t miss the viral Twitter thread from writer Alisa Lynn Valdés that brought more awareness to the people Oppenheimer erased, and likely sparked this news story.

This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism

While this newsletter won’t focus overall on Christian Nationalism, each Friday I will