(Re)opening day

The MLB starts a shortened season; the US forces a Chinese consulate in Houston to close. Tonight's Sentences was written by Cameron Peters. TOP NEWS Sports are back. Stadiums are still empty. Scott Taetsch/Getty Images - After a months-long hiatus, baseball is (mostly) back. The last games of spring training took place Wednesday, and Thursday is opening day. The Washington Nationals will kick things off against the New York Yankees, and the LA Dodgers will face the San Francisco Giants. [[USA Today / Aria Gerson](] - When the Nationals-Yankees game gets underway, a familiar face will be throwing out the first pitch: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the prominent disease expert in the federal government, is set to open the season at Nationals Park Thursday. [[NPR / Rachel Treisman](] - The Nationals will be missing one of their star players, however. On Thursday, ESPN reported that Juan Soto tested positive for Covid-19. [[Twitter / Marly Rivera](] - Baseball usually starts in the spring for a 162-game season, but that didn't happen this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The league is set to play only 60 games, and teams will be playing to empty stadiums instead of a crowd of fans. [[NYT / Tyler Kepner](] - But the stadiums won't be completely dead: At least one broadcaster says it plans to add virtual fans to games, and ESPN says it will include "crowd audio." [[Variety / Brian Steinberg](] - One team, the Toronto Blue Jays, won’t even get the chance to play in their own empty stadium. Over the weekend, Canada decided that the risk from the US coronavirus outbreak was such that the Blue Jays won’t be allowed into Canada to play. [[AP / Rob Gillies](] - Still, baseball teams will be traveling for their games. When the NBA officially restarts next week on Thursday, they won’t even be doing that. Instead, players congregated in Orlando, Florida, earlier this month, and they will live and play inside a “bubble” there for the rest of the season. But the bubble may be hard to maintain, as Florida currently has a large coronavirus outbreak. [[Vanity Fair / Tom Kludt](] - The NBA isn’t the only sports league to bubble up for its postseason. The NWSL’s month-long bubble will draw to a close with a championship match on Sunday, and so far, no positive coronavirus tests have been reported. [[WSJ / Louise Radnofsky, Rachel Bachman, and Ben Cohen](] - Things are looking less promising for the NFL. The football season isn’t set to start until September, but at least 59 players have already tested positive for the coronavirus. Players have also been vocal about the league’s failure to implement sufficient safety measures. [[Axios / Jacob Knutson](] 72 hours to leave Houston - In yet another escalation of rising US-China tensions, the US on Tuesday ordered a Chinese consulate in Houston to close within 72 hours. No specific reason was given by the US State Department. [[Houston Chronicle / Jay R. Jordan, Nicole Hensley, and Julian Gill](] - However, the consulate’s closure was announced the same day as the DOJ indicted two Chinese hackers for attempting to steal vaccine research. [[Washington Post / Ellen Nakashima and Devlin Barrett](] - According to NPR, the indictment also charges the hackers with targeting “companies, nongovernmental organizations as well as Chinese dissidents and clergy in the United States and around the world,” both independently and on behalf of Beijing. [[NPR / Ryan Lucas](] - Shortly after the consulate was ordered to close, video surfaced of documents being burned in the building’s courtyard as Chinese officials prepared to vacate the consulate. [[KHOU / Doug Delony, Janel Forte, and Matt Dougherty](] - In a statement, Beijing promised that China would respond with “legitimate and necessary reactions” unless the decision was reversed and described the closure as illegal and unwarranted. [[NYT / Edward Wong, Lara Jakes, and Steven Lee Myers](] - And the Houston consulate isn’t even the only Chinese diplomatic facility to make headlines this week. On Wednesday, Axios also reported that the Chinese consulate in San Francisco is harboring a researcher wanted by the FBI. [[Axios / Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian](] - As Vox’s Alex Ward points out, this week’s events represent a major acceleration in the brewing US-China cold war. In recent weeks, both countries have also enacted new sanctions on each other’s officials. [[Vox / Alex Ward](] MISCELLANEOUS “Not great”: Federal officers tear-gassed Portland’s mayor on Wednesday [[Oregon Public Broadcast / Anna Griffin, Dirk VanderHart, and Rebecca Ellis](] - With 1 million new cases in the past 15 days, the US has now passed 4 million total coronavirus cases. And hospitalizations are at a record high. [[Vox / Dylan Scott and Eliza Barclay](] - What Joe Biden is doing to ward off foreign election interference this November [[Politico / Natasha Bertrand](] - China launched its first-ever Mars mission on Thursday morning. [[Popular Mechanics / Jennifer Leman](] - A very important update on the Oregon Zoo’s red panda cub [[Twitter / Oregon Zoo](] VERBATIM "Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man. And when a decent man messes up, as we all are bound to do, he tries his best and does apologize." [[Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Republican Ted Yoho refusing to apologize for calling her a "fucking bitch" / NPR](] LISTEN TO THIS [The moral urgency of the Uighur crisis]( Zack, Jenn, and Alex talk about the Chinese government's systematic detention of tens of thousands of Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, where many are subjected to torture, brainwashing, and other human rights abuses. [[Spotify / Zack Beauchamp, Jenn Williams, and Alex Ward](] [Read more from Vox](#) [Representation is deeper than putting Black icons on magazine covers]( [Trump’s deployment of federal agents in Portland is exactly how not to police protests]( [The case for and against banning TikTok]( [It’s “white supremacy normalized”: A historian on why Stone Mountain should come down]( [How politics, inequity, and complacency undermined Texas’s fight against Covid-19]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. 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