Good morning! On this day in 1942, a little girl named Anne Frank got a diary for her 13th birthday. And in 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who’d survived the invasion of Normandy during World War II, was gunned down in his driveway by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. (Sorry for the depressing history.)
Stat of the day: 40 percent — the reduction in Minnesota’s uninsured population since last September, according to a new report (via: Vox).
Unconstitutional –> A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the warrantless collection of “cellphone tower tracking data that is widely used as evidence to show suspects were in the vicinity of a crime” violates the Fourth Amendment.
Falling apart –> Days after seizing Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, the BBC reports that militants have now occupied Tikrit, and stand within striking distance of Baghdad. Agence France Presse reports that they’ve also destroyed a barrier separating Iraq from Syria. Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt report for the NYT that the Iraqi government secretly asked the US to launch strikes on militant staging areas but was “rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.”
Filibustered –> Although it had 58 votes, Senate Republicans blocked Elizabeth Warren’s student loan bill on Wednesday. Erica Warner reports for The Boston Globe.
Sensible people –> Lisa Lerer at Bloomberg: “Americans by 2 to 1 Would Pay More to Curb Climate Change.”
Shockwaves –> Jia Lynn Yang reports for WaPo that the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups lost a staunch ally when Eric Cantor was defeated in a Virginia primary on Tuesday. ALSO: A NYT editorial argues that in today’s GOP, being “far right is still too moderate” for some districts’ voters. ALSO, TOO: At The Root, Charles Ellison argues that with enough African-American support, Dems might just pull out a win in Cantor’s heavily gerrymandered district this November.
$15 –> San Francisco already has one of the highest minimum wages in the country. But in November voters will have an opportunity to follow Seattle’s lead and raise it to $15 per hour by 2018. Bryce Covert has the details at ThinkProgress.
Bitter dead-enders –> Speaking of San Francisco, at a Wednesday event there, Texas Gov. Rick Perry drew a “murmur of disbelief” when he compared homosexuality to alcoholism, according to David Baker at The Chron. AND: Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reports that a tea party-backed candidate for the Oklahoma legislature stirred up some controversy by saying that “we would be totally in the right” to stone gay people to death, before conceding that the idea “goes against some parts of libertarianism.”
Trying to save a man she condemned –> MoJo’s Stephanie Mencimer has the story of a Missouri woman who in 1998 served on a jury that handed down a death sentence. She now says that “court officials pressured the jury to continue deliberating, even though at least two jurors wanted to vote for life without parole.”
“Mass civil breakdown” –> Nafeez Ahmed reports for The Guardian that the Pentagon is sponsoring research into what sparks social upheavals around the world.
Friday the 13th –> Colleen Curry reports for ABC News that “the sun has had three major solar flares on its surface in the past two days that have affected communications on Earth and could send a shockwave through Earth this Friday.”
