A Hub For Extremists, Biden's Vaccine Push, 10-Hour Freestyle Rap

Some of the digital spaces where far-right extremists gather went dark after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in January. Others keep attracting new members, even as they are criticized by activists and are dropped by advertisers.

One of those growing spaces is MyMilitia, a site that helps users browse, join and form unlawful paramilitary groups. It's been compared to the dating app Tinder and currently counts some 30,000 users.

While some of these groups call themselves a militia, constitutional experts argue that the only legal militia in the U.S. is the National Guard.

Most of the people who stormed the Capitol were not part of such groups, but some are associated with far-right organizations like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Joseph Prezioso

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AFP via Getty Images

An NPR investigation found that 16% of the more than 450 individuals facing criminal charges have ties to "extremist or fringe groups or ideas."

Joshua Ellis, who owns MyMilitia, characterizes the site as a forum for free speech and says no one charged over the insurrection has any connection to it.

MyMilitia has faced some consequences: Google stopped placing ads on its site, and it's been dropped by payment services like Venmo and PayPal.

But activists on the left say those steps don't go far enough, especially since falsehoods about the 2020 election keep circulating on the site.

Read the full story, or take a listen:

Martin Bureau

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AFP via Getty Images

When Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open earlier this week, she said the post-match news conferences were contributing to her depression and anxiety.

Some elite tennis players were supportive. Others said the press events are just another part of the job.

So we reached out to sports psychologist Kanyali Ilako, who works with Kenya's Summer Olympics team.

It's more than the game

She says the anxiety and nervousness an athlete might feel isn't just about winning.

"A lot of the time we forget that athletes are humans, too," Ilako says. "They have lives outside their sports, [and] it could be the thing that's bringing them that pressure or anxiety to perform."

Struggling with stress?

Ilako suggests finding balance by engaging your five senses: Focus on five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can smell, two things you can touch and one thing you can taste.

She says the practice helps her athletes "get out of their heads."

More from our conversation with Ilako

Ilako isn't the only one encouraging athletes (professional or not) to find balance.

Osaka was fined $15,000 for skipping a news conference before withdrawing from the tournament, prompting the meditation app, Calm, to match the fine (and any future fines for athletes at the French Open who skip a news conference for mental health reasons) with a donation to the Laureus Sports for Good project.

Laureus Sports recently named Osaka their World Sportswoman of 2021.

Kaz Fantone for NPR

It's Pride Month, and issues of equality and acceptance of transgender and nonbinary people have become major topics.

So it's a good time to check in on yourself (and others!) about what words you use to talk about gender identity. Are you choosing inclusive language? Are the terms you use accurate? Do you know what to do if you mistakenly misgender someone?

Answering those questions might involve some self-reflection and research, especially if some of these words, ideas or identities are new to you. NPR's Laurel Wamsley created a thorough glossary and guide that can help.

Click here to read the guide, and if you're confused about pronouns, make sure to scroll to the bottom for some questions and answers.

But be aware that this isn't an exhaustive list! Plus, it's Western and U.S.-centric, so expect that other cultures may have different terms and conceptions of gender. Another thing to remember: language evolves. As the guide notes, the most important part here is respecting and recognizing people as individuals.

Looking to learn more? You could keep going by checking out this episode from NPR's Life Kit on queer-inclusive sex education.

At the start of May, President Biden shared a goal: Get 70% of U.S. adults at least one vaccine shot by July Fourth.

The incentive? We'd be able to safely gather in small groups for the holiday.

With less than a month to go and vaccination numbers declining, Biden's calling for a national month of action to reach that goal.

The administration is working with pharmacies to extend their hours and with child care providers like the YMCA to give parents free kid-watching while they get their vaccines.

They've also partnered with dating apps to encourage users to make sure they're vaccinated and make it easier for vaccinated singles to find one another.

According to NPR's vaccination tracker, 50.9% of the eligible population has received at least one dose as of June 4.

Rob Schmitz

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NPR

Stuffed frogs, 507 of them. And they’ve been dead for more than a century. They’re all arranged in imaginative exhibitions where they’re acting out human situations.

There’s one scene where a froggy teacher is trying to restore order in a classroom. Then there’s a ballroom scene, with frogs dancing, drinking, smoking and playing cards.

Sound bizarre? This is Froggyland, a museum in the coastal city of Split in Croatia.

Over the years, it’s gotten a lot of attention from tourists. The museum has more than 600 reviews on TripAdvisor. Most are five stars:

Putting Martin’s stellar tongue-in-cheek review to the side, the museum also has its critics:

Rob Schmitz

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NPR

NPR’s Rob Schmitz had a chance to visit Froggyland and meet the museum’s owner Ivan Medvesek, known to his employees as “Boss Itzo”.

Boss Itzo talks about the positive and negative buzz behind Froggyland and how the pandemic’s impact on Croatia’s tourism industry has forced him to sell the museum to American investors.

He says he’s hopeful that a museum that began with his parents finding these frogs in an abandoned attic in Serbia 50 years ago might be headed to the United States.

Monika Evstatieva

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NPR

Today marks five years since David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna were killed while on assignment for NPR in Afghanistan. We remember them as colleagues, as professionals and as friends.

If you have a moment, take time to revisit their work and remember all that they brought to NPR, their families and the world.

Here are just a few of the many remembrances that have been published over the years from friends and colleagues:

• Pictures on the Radio, a book published earlier this year compiling David's work
• Reflections on Twitter from Monika Evstatieva
• Reflections by John Poole
• Reflections by Phil Reeves
• Reflections on Morning Edition

Bob Self for NPR

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A school district in Jacksonville, Fla., voted this week to rename six schools that are named for members of the Confederacy. The decision from the Duval County Public Schools Board came after a year of intense public debate.

One school was at the center of the debate.

The Robert E. Lee High School, which will now be named Riverside High School. It’s been around since 1927 and was all-white for decades. The school was fully integrated in 1971. More than 70% of the students today are Black and many wanted the school’s name changed.

The biggest division has been among white alumni.

Julie Moore and Rob Lawrence both went to the school some 30 years ago. They have very different opinions.

Julie had been pushing for the school to be renamed. There’s one memory that sticks in her mind:

Rob says his position against renaming the school was based on practical grounds:

Both Julie and Rob went to the town halls before the vote to speak up.

As part of NPR’s series on democracy "‘We Hold These Truths" we brought them together to work through their differences. You can listen to that conversation, which happened before the vote took place, here:

Freestyle rapper Harry Mack spent a lot of time during the pandemic video chatting with strangers. They'd suggest words, and he'd come up with verses on the spot — often leaving them speechless, and building up his fanbase in the process.

In fact, he recently reached 1 million subscribers on YouTube. So to celebrate, he took things to the next level ... by live-streaming 10 hours of improvised rap:

"It's a pretty insane thing to do," Mack admitted earlier in the week.

But performing is in his nature: he's been freestyle rapping since age 12, studied jazz in college and is also a drummer. He says the energy he gets from people lifts him up and makes him feel like he's living out his purpose.

Mack even dropped a few verses during his interview with Morning Edition. If you've ever wanted to hear a rap about NPR, now's your chance:

Luke Medina for NPR

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With each new scandal, horrific video of misconduct, evidence of assault or act of fatal negligence involving law enforcement, police officials tell the public: "We're investigating."

But then what? For decades, the process for how police actually police themselves has been inconsistent, if not opaque. So member station KQED in San Francisco and NPR went looking for answers.

The result is a new podcast — On Our Watch — that brings you into the rooms where officers are interrogated and witnesses are questioned to find out who this shadow system of police accountability really serves, and who it protects.

Listen to the first episode, about a woman named Katheryn Jenks who called 911 for help and ended up injured, inside a jail cell and facing serious charges.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Getty Images North America

Hopefully you celebrated National Donut Day yesterday — a milestone both delicious and, apparently, controversial.

It got some of us thinking (read: fighting about): What's the proper spelling of these goodies, and does anyone actually still go with "doughnut?"

NPR's Vanessa Romo did some digging to get to the bottom — or should we say, center — of it.

As it turns out, "doughnut" came first (along with some other short-lived variations, like "downut") in the late 18th century, but there's been a near-even split in how most American cookbooks have spelled the word since.

Get the full story here.

Many aspects of daily life in the U.S. are looking increasingly like they did before the pandemic.

But recovery doesn't happen overnight, and that's especially true for the economy.

NPR journalists spoke to economists, experts and everyday people to make sense of the latest numbers. Here's what they learned:

Hiring picked up last month

U.S. employers added 559,000 jobs in May. That's about twice as many as were added in April, but considerably less than the 770,000 created in March.

More on the May jobs report here.

Unemployment dropped from 6.1% to 5.8% — in part because people found work, and in part because some 53,000 people dropped out of the workforce.

Many women are unable to rejoin the workforce

There are about 1.8 million fewer women in the labor force now than before the pandemic. Many lost their jobs in the past year and have yet to return to work full time.

Labor and workplace correspondent Andrea Hsu spoke to two of them: Valerie Mekki and Katherine Gaines.

Andrea Hsu/NPR

Mekki worked in fashion merchandising for nearly two decades. She says she hid from her children for nearly an hour on the day she lost her job last April.

She began blogging during the pandemic, and is now hoping to find a job as a writer, even though it will pay less.

Gaines, a longtime legal assistant, couldn't job hunt during the worst of the pandemic because she was living with her mother, who has Alzheimer's disease.

"I knew I couldn't work in retail, because I couldn't be exposed and bring it home to my mother," Gaines says.

Read or listen to their stories here.

There are several reasons people may not be returning to work yet

More than 15 million Americans are out of work, yet many employers say they are struggling to find people to hire.

NPR's chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley points to three main reasons: health concerns, caretaking responsibilities and enhanced unemployment benefits that could make low-wage jobs unattractive.

Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says those factors should improve in the next few months as schools reopen, infection rates decline and federal unemployment benefits end.

He stressed that it's important to put people back to work as soon as possible but that the process is complicated and it's important to be patient. Hear more.

Unemployment benefits are one piece of the puzzle

Many Republican lawmakers say that enhanced unemployment benefits are dissuading people from returning to work, and governors in some two dozen states are moving to end them early.

State and federal unemployment benefits average out to about $750 a week across the country, says Dan Alpert, a senior fellow in macroeconomics and finance at Cornell Law School.

Employers in low-wage sectors may struggle to bring people back to work if they pay less than that, he explains.

Alpert worries that cutting unemployment benefits early could actually hurt the economy by reducing spending. For more, catch the full interview or read the story.