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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday.


1. The school district police chief arrived at the scene of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, without a radio, a Times examination found.
Pete Arredondo arrived two minutes after the gunman began shooting inside Robb Elementary School last month. But because he did not have his police radio, Arredondo’s immediate ability to communicate with police dispatchers was likely impeded.


Dozens of interviews with law enforcement, children who’d survived, witnesses outside and experts found that the breakdowns in communication and tactical decisions that day were out of step with years of police preparations for school shootings. Those missteps may have contributed to additional deaths and certainly delayed critical medical attention to the wounded.
In New York, Representative Chris Jacobs abruptly abandoned his campaign for re-election after his support for a federal assault weapons ban led to G.O.P. backlash — a day after President Biden emphatically called on Congress to pass gun legislation.


2. Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election results left Mike Pence’s staff fearing for his safety.


On Jan. 5, 2021, the vice president’s chief of staff, Marc Short, warned the lead Secret Service agent of a security risk to Pence. Short told the agent that Trump was going to turn publicly against his vice president. A day later, more than 2,000 people — some chanting “Hang Mike Pence” — stormed the Capitol.
Separately, Peter Navarro, a former Trump adviser who has defied a subpoena to provide information to the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, was indicted on Friday by a federal grand jury on charges of contempt of Congress.


3. The economy added more jobs in May.
The Labor Department reported that employers had added 390,000 jobs, the 17th straight monthly gain, while the unemployment rate stayed low and average hourly earnings rose.
“We’re in the homestretch here,” said Andrew Flowers, a labor economist. “We could be about two months from being at the employment level that we had in prepandemic times in February 2020.”


But many economists and policymakers say a slowdown is just what the economy needs right now. Stocks fell after the jobs report was released, as the strong numbers could encourage the Federal Reserve to continue raising interest rates aggressively to rein in inflation.


5. Two French graffiti artists took a trip to New York City that ended tragically on the subway tracks.
Julien Blanc and Pierre Audebert were eager to explore a city they had long admired for its storied graffiti history. They visited famous sites and met with artists in the Bronx.
But their trip took a tragic turn when they tried to make a canvas out of the city’s famous subway trains — a dangerous rite of passage. “It’s like the Vatican for the Catholic,” said Loic Le Floch, another French graffiti artist. “You go there, you want to meet the guys you like, and one of the major goals is to paint a subway.”
Several days into their trip in April, Blanc and Audebert were struck by a train and their bodies were spotted on the tracks in Brooklyn. Cans of spray paint were found nearby, and there was no sign the men had painted anything.


6. Tennis is top in women’s sports, yet athletes are still fighting for equal billing.
When Iga Swiatek, a 21-year-old Polish champion, takes on Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American, in the French Open final this weekend, the championship will be closely watched — and for good reason.
But our columnist Kurt Streeter wonders why there seems to be room at the top for only one women’s sport, leaving soccer, basketball and others with a lesser share of the limelight. Part of the reason, he says: We still live in a world where strong, powerful women who break the mold struggle for acceptance.
In Los Angeles tonight, the Dodgers will belatedly celebrate the life of Glenn Burke, the M.L.B.’s first player to come out as gay — and also the inventor of the high-five.


7. How a same-sex take on “Pride and Prejudice” came to life.
“Fire Island,” a rare romantic comedy that puts gay Asian American men at its center, endured a tumultuous ride through Hollywood on its way to the streaming service Hulu. Joel Kim Booster, who wrote the film, stars as Noah, a narrator who makes knowing observations about the titular gay enclave and its social mores.
Though there have recently been more gay rom-coms from big studios than ever before, that’s not exactly saying much: They still come around as rarely as comets, Kyle Buchanan writes.
For more weekend viewing, here are our staff picks for the best movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime.


8. And the winner is: an eighth grader from San Antonio.
Harini Logan, 14, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night in a dramatic first-of-its-kind spell-off.
Harini beat Vikram Raju, 12, a seventh grader from Denver, rattling off daunting word after word in the 90-second speed round. Both students spelled so fast that the judges had to watch replay video to determine a winner: Harini spelled 21 words correctly, compared with 15 for Vikram.
Words in the final rounds included challenging terms from botany, medicine, folk art and other specialist realms, like noctivagant, which means “going about in the night.”


9. A season of beach reading begins with three new novels.
The author Aamina Ahmad has three books for your summer shortlist: A 28-year-old experiences new hues of motherhood and daughterhood in Morocco in “Mother Country.” In “Hurricane Girl,” a protagonist escapes horrors with offbeat humor. And a reclusive artist narrates “The Cherry Robbers” for a riveting, gothic page-turner.
In new paperbacks, a lyrical memoir focuses on one gay bar per chapter, jumping from San Francisco to London to Los Angeles; and a posthumous short story collection about Cambodian life in Southern California explores questions of identity, tragedy and belonging.


10. And finally, a $1 second-hand sale is a Sunday ritual.
A parking lot on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles has for years been home to the infamous Jet Rag $1 sale. With inflation raging and bargain hunting rebranded as glam at the hands of Gen Z, the market has remained a fixture in time that attracts the city’s most dedicated vintage enthusiasts.


As shoppers grab armfuls of clothes, elbows are thrown and fist fights aren’t entirely out of the question. The whole spectrum of human experience — joy, panic, anger, fear — is on display. One regular shopper said: “This is like church.”
What are they in search of? Perhaps something in cobalt blue. The suddenly omnipresent hue is believed to be a response to current events — a highly saturated shade that is bold yet soothing.
Have a thrifty weekend.
Eve Edelheit compiled photos for this briefing.
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Source: New York Times

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