Your Thursday Evening Briefing

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

1. Senate Democrats planned a surely doomed vote on Roe.

The Senate’s majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said he will introduce a bill next week that codifies abortion rights into federal law, following the leaked Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The bill will almost certainly fall short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster or even obtain a simple majority.

Still, Schumer called the vote one of “the most important we ever take,” framing it as a reminder to voters of the party’s stance. A majority of Americans support some form of abortion.

If the Court overturns Roe, medication abortions, which account for more than half of recent abortions, will be the next battleground. A senior official said that the Biden administration is looking for further steps to increase access to all types of abortion, including the pill method.

In other fallout, a stark divide has grown between Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito Jr., author of the leaked decision.

2. The U.S. shared intelligence that helped Ukraine kill Russian generals. About 12 have died, according to Ukrainian officials, an astonishingly high number.

The Biden administration’s help is part of a classified effort to give Ukraine real-time battlefield intelligence. Officials wouldn’t specify how many of the generals were killed with U.S. assistance and denied that the intelligence is provided with the intent to kill Russian generals.

“Heavy, bloody battles” were fought at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the city’s last pocket of resistance, after Russian forces breached the perimeter. Seizing Mariupol would let President Vladimir Putin claim a major victory before Moscow’s Victory Day celebration on May 9.

Fighting raged across the eastern front, from Mariupol to the northern Donetsk area. “The front is swinging this way and that,” a Ukrainian medic told The Times.

3. Nearly 15 million more people died during the first two years of the pandemic than would have been expected during normal times.

That estimate, which came from a panel of experts the World Health Organization assembled, offered a startling glimpse of how drastically the death counts reported by many governments have understated the pandemic’s toll.

Most of the deaths were from Covid, the experts said, but some people died because the pandemic made it more difficult to get medical care for ailments such as heart attacks. The previous toll, based solely on death counts reported by countries, was six million.

In other virus news, BA.2.12.1, a subvariant of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, is likely to soon become the dominant form of the virus in the U.S. There’s no indication yet that it causes more severe disease.

4. Fire season has arrived earlier than ever.

Enormous wildfires have already consumed landscapes in Arizona and Nebraska. More than a dozen wildfires are raging this month across the Southwest. Summer is still more than a month and a half away.

A time-lapse image from space shows the scope of the Western catastrophe: Smoke from fires in New Mexico can be seen on a collision course with a huge dust storm in Colorado. Both are examples of natural disasters made more severe and frequent by climate change, which has also made a vital tool for controlling wildfires — intentional burns — much riskier.

The country’s largest active blaze, a megafire of more than 160,000 acres in northern New Mexico, has grown with such ferocity that it has threatened a multigenerational culture that has endured for centuries.

5. Britain is holding local elections in a big test for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

His scandal-prone leadership is again on the line, with Conservatives trailing the Labour Party in polls and his own lawmakers mulling a no-confidence motion that could evict him from Downing Street. A poor election result could tip them over the edge.

One thing that has saved Johnson so far is his reputation as an election winner and his strength in the so-called red wall regions of the north and middle of England, which have traditionally voted Labour. Many voters are skeptical that the opposition can solve issues such as soaring prices.

6. Elon Musk has brought in 18 new investors and $7 billion for his Twitter deal.

Among them are Larry Ellison, who put in $1 billion; Fidelity; and the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. Musk is paying $21 billion from his own very deep pocket, and an investment firm analyst called Musk’s move a smart deal.

In 2019, Musk tweeted “I hate advertising,” — but ads account for about 90 percent of Twitter revenue. Some agencies already say Twitter ads aren’t targeted well. Now, numerous advertising executives say they’re willing to move their money elsewhere, especially if he removes the safeguards that allowed Twitter to remove racist rants and conspiracy theories. Musk has mentioned potentially charging some users.

Two of our colleagues, John Eligon and Lynsey Chutel, interviewed friends and relatives — including Musk’s estranged father — in South Africa, where he grew up, to better understand the mysterious entrepreneur.

In other business news, stocks dove on Thursday, erasing gains from their best day since 2020.

7. The authorities thought gang violence explained a stash of skulls found in a Mexican cave. Instead, they were remains of thousand-year-old human sacrifices.

Ten years ago, officials in Chiapas were alerted to 150 or so skulls in a cave near the border with Guatemala. Police started investigating, believing migrants had been killed in gang violence near the border.

Then, the National Institute of Anthropology and History got involved. Last week, it was announced that the skulls are likely remains of sacrificial killings performed between A.D. 900 and 1200, when they were common practice. The bones would have been part of a tzompantli, an altar for worshiping gods that would look like a modern-day trophy rack.

8. The “hand of God” soccer jersey sold at auction for $9.3 million.

The shirt, worn by the Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona when he scored two fabled goals during a 1986 World Cup match against England, fetched what is believed to be the highest price ever paid for a sports item.

One of Maradona’s goals became one of the most talked-about in professional soccer: In a fast-moving sequence, Maradona got away with using his left hand to palm the ball. He later invoked “the hand of God” to explain what had occurred.

9. How does it feel to be inside the new Bob Dylan Center? Our music reporter Ben Sisario described his visit before Tuesday’s opening in Tulsa, Okla.

The $10 million, 29,000-square-foot center, at the far end of a building displaying Woody Guthrie’s archives, houses 100,000 Dylan items. The center’s overarching goal is to inspire creativity in viewers and — given Tulsa’s complex racial history — to be socially involved.

On display are items including Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival jacket, a duffel bag of unopened fan mail from 1966 and little-seen notebooks with original lyrics. One of the ironwork gates Dylan created is at the center’s entryway. And some artifacts are available only to serious scholars.

10. And finally, Big Macs on the Alaskan tundra.

With the help of bush pilots, residents of remote Alaskan villages are increasingly using DoorDash, Uber Eats and other food-delivery services to get their “city food” fixes.

Natalia Navarro and her family live in Nikolai, a community of fewer than 100 people where there are no grocery stores or restaurants. So once or twice a month, her family orders from DoorDash to break the monotony of chicken- and moose-based soups and stews. The food arrives cold after a daylong journey.

“It’s not hot. It’s not fresh,” she said. “But at the same time, it has the flavor you’re wanting.”

Have a tasty night.

Victoria Cagol compiled photos for this briefing.

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