Good morning. It is July 12th. It is a swampy morning in New York City with resurgent humidity making up for any drop in the temperature, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news story is about the life -threatening, unprecedented heat gripping the country.

"Record heat persists stunning even forecasters says the lead news column." Ah, just kidding. That story is down in the middle of the top of the front page to make room in the lead spot for two columns of "Biden's isolation deepens as doubters ranks grow." You know, it's good when they're doing "deepening isolation." They did that one with Trump right after Access Hollywood right before party discipline kicked in and he went on to eke out an electoral college victory. They have three writers banging away at Biden's troubles here. Unfortunately, none of them have a time machine, so they couldn't incorporate the fact that Biden went on TV last night for a no -holds -barred press conference, and he did fine. He's physically bad at talking still. He fumbled a few words, but he talks like a president who is in command of his faculties and basically understands what's going on with foreign policy. 

Anyone who thought the crucible of an encounter with the press corps would melt him out of the presidential race was under or overestimating one side or the other of the encounter. The four -column photo for Biden's increasing isolation shows him at the NATO summit with about a dozen other people in the frame. Although it looks like he has about eight feet of elbow room on either side. Apropos of absolutely nothing, it's always funny to see the relentless perversity of the French language immortalized in the NATO OTAN logo. But who cares about our foreign policy, let alone the graphics that go with it, when there's a Biden Biden Biden panic panic panic to attend to, "Donald Trump has basically won the election" on page 16. "Back on scene, Trump with cruelty revels as a rival swoons."

"The word landslide is now credibly being mentioned about Mr. Trump for the first time in his political career." The story says, "on Tuesday, the nonpartisan election forecaster, Cook Political Report slid six states in his direction." Below that news analysis, "Schumer quietly plots a course for November. In conversations with donors, colleagues and others who have talked to him," the Times writes, "the majority leader has cautiously opened the door to the idea of replacing Mr. Biden if it proves to be the most politically advantageous outcome." Cautiously opened the door to the idea. Got it. On the facing page, "how Democrats could lose New Hampshire" and "voters, not the elites, may be Biden's undoing." The New York Times writes. Then there's "campaign has long fed questions to radio hosts to help Biden perform." More investigation that might have been useful a year ago a slightly less self -confident institutional take, and on politics piece, "president's words hard to understand, but does it matter?" Meanwhile, finally, a little bit of substance about Trump does make it into the paper on page A15. "Debt and deficits once a rally in crime fall from the GOP platform." And below that, an online explainer about Project 2025 makes it into the print paper. "The right's radical plan to remake government is a reflection of Trump." 

Anyway, meanwhile, NPR is reporting this morning that the "race for the presidency remains statistically tied despite President Biden's dismal debate performance two weeks ago. A new national NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll finds Biden actually gained a point since last month's survey, which was taken before the debate. In this poll, he leads Trump 50 percent to 48 percent in a head to head matchup. But, Biden slips when third party options are introduced, with Trump holding the slightest advantage with 43 % to 42%. Those numbers, though, do not represent statistically significant differences, as the margin of error in the survey is plus or minus 3 .1 percentage points, meaning results could be three points higher or lower. The poll also found that at this point, no other mainstream Democrat who has been mentioned as a replacement for the president on the ticket does better than Biden." So that's your politics news. 

Meanwhile, yes, it's been 118 degrees in Las Vegas, more than a million people in Houston had to ride out a heat wave without electricity after Hurricane Beryl took out the city's share of Texas's terrible power grid. On page A5 in the International Section, The Times reports that "June was the Earth’s 13th consecutive month to break a global heat record. It beat the record set last year for the hottest June on record, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service of the European Union."

It beat the record that was on record. Maybe someday the climate crisis will be so severe that the Times edits the stories about it. 

In the national section, along with the jump on the record heat story, there is an explainer about how hot it gets inside airplanes when they wait around the airport, as the auxiliary power units that run the ACs when the engines aren't doing it are too weak to keep up with heat wave temperatures.

And there's a story about how the remains of Hurricane Beryl dropped half a foot of rain on Vermont, reflooding the places that were flooded last summer. That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again on Monday.