By Hiroko Tabuchi & Coral Davenport @ NYTimes.com, May 1

A coalition led by California sued the Trump administration over car emissions rules on Tuesday, escalating a revolt against a proposed rollback of fuel economy standards that threatens to split the country’s auto market.

In a lawsuit filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, California and its coalition — 16 other states and the District of Columbia — called the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to weaken auto emissions rules unlawful and accused the agency of failing to follow its own regulations, and of violating the Clean Air Act [....]

In 1931, Zora Neale Hurston sought to publish the story of Cudjo Lewis, the final slave-ship survivor. Instead it languished in a vault. Until now.

@ Vulture.com, April 29, also published in the April 30 New York Magazine

Their Eyes Were Watching God is required reading in high schools and colleges and cited as a formative influence by Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. It’s been canonized by Harold Bloom — even credited for inspiring the tableau in Lemonade where Beyoncé and a clutch of other women regally occupy a wooden porch — but Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel was eviscerated by critics when it was published in 1937. The hater-in-chief was no less than Richard Wright, who recoiled as much at the book’s depiction of lush female sexuality and (supposedly) apolitical themes as its use of black dialect, “the minstrel technique that makes the ‘white folks’ laugh.”

Six years earlier, Hurston had tried to publish another book in dialect, this one a work of nonfiction called Barracoon. Before she turned to writing novels, she’d trained as a cultural anthropologist at Barnard under the famed father of the field, Franz Boas. He sent his student back south to interview people of African descent [....]

intro. followed by excerpts from the book 

 Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” by Zora Neale Hurston. Published by Amistad Press. Copyright © 2018 by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust.

By Donald G. McNeil Jr. @ NYTimes.com, May 1

The number of people who get diseases transmitted by mosquito, tick and flea bites has more than tripled in the United States in recent years, federal health officials reported on Tuesday. Since 2004, at least nine such diseases have been newly discovered or introduced into the United States.

Warmer weather is an important cause of the surge in cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the lead author of a study in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

But the author, Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, the agency’s director of vector-borne diseases, repeatedly declined to connect the increase to the politically fraught issue of climate change, and the report does not mention either climate change or global warming. Many other factors are at work, he emphasized, while noting that “the numbers on some of these diseases have gone to astronomical levels.”

C.D.C. officials called for more support for state and local health departments. Local agencies “are our first line of defense,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C.’s new director. “We must enhance our investment in their ability to fight these diseases.”  [.....]

By Kyra Phillips,Stephanie Ebbs,John Santucci & Matthew Mosk @ ABCNews.com, Apr 30, 7:35 PM ET

A whistleblower from the Environmental Protection Agency says that Administrator Scott Pruitt was "bold-faced" lying when he told members of Congress that no EPA employees were retaliated against for raising concerns about his spending decisions.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News' Kyra Phillips, former deputy chief of staff Kevin Chmielewski said he was "100 percent" forced out after raising concerns about Pruitt's spending on first-class travel.

Chmielewski said chief of staff Ryan Jackson called him into his office and said [....]

Alt. title: Mueller Has List of Questions for Trump; Majority Relate to if Trump Obstructed Inquiry on Russia

By Michael S. Schmidt @ NYTimes.com, 44 minutes ago

• Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has at least four dozen questions he wants to ask President Trump.
• The Times obtained the list, which provides the most detailed look yet inside an investigation that has been shrouded in secrecy.

Read the Questions: What He Wants to Ask and What It Means

By Adam Liptak @ NYTimes.com, April 30

Twitter users have created a hashtag to mock the prose of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, the newest Supreme Court justice, but a study found it pleasingly informal and accessible.

I promised myself when I was young that when I got this old I would keep up with the hipster elite! So thank you for reporting on what this sector of them are up to, Adam.

Hours after a mysterious “earthquake” — 2. 6 on the Richter scale — registered on the devices of the European Mediterranean Seismological Center, the circumstances behind the series of explosions that shook Syria overnight Sunday-Monday are starting to become clear. ... the latest strike was carried out at a time when the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is visiting the region, and just a few hours after he held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu... The Syrian Human Rights Observatory (based in London) reported that 26 people were killed in this attack, Iranians among them.

Behind just about every divisive Senate Republican primary this year, an amiable Midwestern businessman is bankrolling the candidate who claims to be the most hard-charging, anti-establishment conservative in the race.

Richard Uihlein, a wealthy shipping-supplies magnate from Illinois who shuns the spotlight, has risen to become one of the most powerful — and disruptive — GOP donors in the country.

For years, Uihlein has given money to isolated races in the service of his anti-union, free-market and small-government views. But he has dramatically increased his giving this cycle, pouring $21 million into races from Montana to West Virginia to ensure more conservative victories in the upcoming midterm elections, Federal Election Commission records show.

The beneficiaries of Uihlein’s largesse include upstart candidates such as Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who has made preserving the Confederate symbol in the state flag a centerpiece of his campaign for U.S. Senate. Uihlein gave tens of thousands of dollars to support failed Senate hopeful Roy Moore (R) in Alabama, doubling down even after multiple women accused Moore of unwanted sexual advances toward them when they were in their teens, FEC records show.

.....

Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Michael Scherer, WaPo last night

Photographs taken by Yuri Gripas of Reuters on Saturday showed only a yellow patch of grass in the spot on the White House grounds where the tree was planted.  French media were quick to take notice. The French edition of Huffpost quoted a French government official as saying the oak was “doing well” but was under quarantine.

The White House did not immediately comment.

By Doreen St. Felix @ Culture Desk @ NewYorker.com, April 26

The rap world’s new-money devotees once had an affinity for Donald Trump. They saw in his rudeness and in his excess the ideal of a man who knows how to supplant old powers. “Fuck Black Caesar, niggas call me Black Trump,” Bun B gloated on UGK’s “Pocket Full of Stones,” from 1992. Raekwon called himself “Black Trump” twice. Rick Ross, a poet of free enterprise, invoked Trump’s name in lyrics at least nine times. The businessman, in return, regarded these black men as curios, symbols of ambition, posing with them at events held at his towers, his smile wide. “You know, it’s amazing—all the rappers, all his African-American friends, from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, have pictures with him,” Donald Trump, Jr., said, of his father, in February.

Kanye West also had a Donald Trump line, on the track “So Appalled,” from the 2010 album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”: “I’m so appalled, Spalding ball / Balding Donald Trump taking dollars from y’all.” Back then, the fleeting identification read as a funny detail in an extended boast about individualism. Now it looks like the first blush of a vacant and galling conceptual romance. Released in June of 2016, the video for “Famous,” West’s take on Vincent Desiderio’s “Sleep" [.....]