Women bring home the most medals for Team USA and Biden to call for Supreme Court reforms: Morning Rundown

In today’s newsletter: Team USA’s women secured a large medal haul over the weekend. President Biden is to back Supreme Court term limits. And why Marvel fans aren’t thrilled about Robert Downey Jr.’s comeback.

Here’s what to know today.

Women bring home the most medals for Team USA

Team USA’s women won nine of the 12 medals Americans collected in Paris over the weekend. That includes two of the three gold medals — one earned by Lee Kiefer in women’s individual foil fencing and one achieved by Torri Huske in the 100-meter butterfly. Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook won silver in the women’s 3-meter synchronized springboard event, securing Team USA’s first medal of the Games.

Japan and Australia are tied with four gold medals each, but the U.S. thus far have the most medals overall. 

This is the first time that the Olympic Games will have an equal 50-50 ratio between male and female athletes, IOC President Thomas Bach said.

At the 1900 Paris Olympic Games, which were the first to include women at all, only 2.2% of athletes were women. That number has steadily risen, with the female field at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics reaching 48%.

As Paris hosts the Olympics for the third time, women officially comprise half of the Olympic field.

Stream every moment and every medal of the 2024 Paris Olympics on Peacock.

More Olympics news:

• A Speedo-clad mystery man saved the day when one of the women’s 100-meter breaststroke swimming heats faced a hiccup.
• Simone Biles pushed through calf pain in gymnastics qualifiers and is now expected to compete in five finals, including the individual all-around and team finals.
• French swimmer Léon Marchand electrified a partisan crowd yesterday with a win in the 400-meter individual medley. His time of 4:02.95 broke the Olympic record of all-time great Michael Phelps.

Biden to call for constitutional limits on presidential immunity

President Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks today calling for a constitutional amendment, saying former presidents don’t have any immunity from federal criminal indictments, trials, convictions or sentencing, according to a White House official. 

The amendment is in line with Biden’s recent statements that “no president is above the law,” a refrain he has repeated several times since the Supreme Court said some actions related to the duties of a president can’t be prosecuted. The decision favors former President Donald Trump in criminal cases against him.   

Biden also wants Congress to create term limits for members of the Supreme Court, the White House official told NBC News, adding that Biden favors an 18-year term for justices, which he believes would avoid any single president having multigenerational influence on the judiciary. Biden will call on Congress to make the Supreme Court subject to the kind of enforceable ethics requirements imposed on other federal judges regarding gifts, political activities and financial dealings, according to the official.

More on the 2024 election: 

• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s allies argue his appeal to working-class and progressive voters could offer Kamala Harris a boost as her running mate.
• Trump spent much of his Minnesota rally focused on Biden, mirroring key points his campaign had before he dropped out. 
• And while in Florida, Trump tried to rally Christian voters to turn out in November, saying: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed.”

Fears that war in Middle East will widen grow

A single black flag of mourning and growing numbers of wreaths and bouquets mark the site where a rocket struck Saturday night at a soccer field in Majdal Shams, an Israeli-controlled town in the Golan Heights.

The Israeli military said that the attack, which killed at least 12 people, most of them children and teenagers, was the deadliest strike on civilians in Israeli territory since Oct. 7. Israel blamed the attack on Hezbollah and warned that it’s approaching “an all-out war” against the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon. Hezbollah has denied responsibility, but the Israel Defense Forces carried out a retaliatory strike and hit seven targets “deep inside Lebanese territory.”

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has so far been subdued compared with Israel’s assault on Gaza, but the latest strikes have renewed fears of escalation.

Robert Downey Jr. returns to Marvel — to fans’ dismay

TTony Stark died a hero. But Robert Downey Jr. lived long enough to become a villain. On Saturday, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige surprised the crowd at San Diego Comic-Con when he announced Downey’s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — this time as Doctor Doom.

But many online have expressed confusion about the casting choice and questioned how exactly the role would work. Some fans are speculating that Downey will play a variant of Doctor Doom who’s actually an evil multiverse version of Stark, while others are wondering if Downey will simply play a character with no links to Iron Man.

Politics in brief:

Parody ad: Elon Musk, the owner of X, retweeted a parody Harris campaign ad Friday without labeling it as misleading, an apparent violation of his own platform’s rules.

Election 2024: Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship on day one of his presidency would face a mountain of opposition and kick-start a legal fight that could lead to a Supreme Court ruling.

Exclusive: Harris will fly to Houston to attend funeral services for longtime Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, according to an official who shared the details first with NBC News. 

Staff Pick: Extreme heat makes flying harder. Airlines aren’t sweating it.

Record passenger volumes are coinciding with record summer temperatures. So how are airlines and airports coping? Their response: We’re doing just fine. But their mitigation strategies can lead to delays. High temperatures sometimes require longer runways for heavy planes to get off the ground (physics!). And, as Harriet Baskas reports, in some cases aircraft have to shed baggage, passengers and even fuel. While extreme heat isn’t causing travel meltdowns this summer, Harriet gives us a glimpse of what it takes to sustain air travel in a warming planet.

— Rich Bellis, senior business/economy editor

NBC Select: Online Shopping, Simplified

When was the last time you washed your water bottle? If you have to think about it, it’s been too long — even if it looks and smells clean, it may not be. So NBC Select asked the experts how to properly clean your reusable water bottle, and just in case you’d like a new one, the editors tried a bunch to find the best ones.

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• Three members of the family gospel group The Nelons were killed in a plane crash in Wyoming.
• “Deadpool & Wolverine” raked in a staggering $205 million domestically, the highest debut ever for an R-rated movie.