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Graham introduces nationwide 15-week abortion ban legislation

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday introduced a bill that would ban abortions nationally after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The legislation includes exceptions for incest, rape and for saving the life of the mother if she is in danger from a physical condition. 

Graham, who previously said abortion decisions should be left up to states, on Tuesday said elected officials have the power to define and regulate abortion, including in Congress.

Graham indicated he was motivated to act following attempts by Democrats to enshrine abortion protections into federal law

Graham said he hopes to have a vote on his bill, especially since Democrats voted on their abortion legislation. 

“We should have a law at the federal level,” Graham said during a briefing. “If we take the House and Senate, I can assure you we’ll have a vote.”

Developing.

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Most Americans don’t want Trump or Biden to run in 2024: poll

Most Americans don’t want either President Biden or his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, to run for the White House again in 2024, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll shared exclusively with The Hill. 

Two-thirds of voters surveyed – 67 percent – said that Biden shouldn’t seek another term in the Oval Office, with nearly half citing their belief that he’s a bad president as the reason why. Another 30 percent said it’s simply because Biden, who would be 84 by the time he takes the Oath of Office again, is too old for the job. 

Trump, meanwhile, doesn’t fare much better when it comes to a 2024 rum. Fifty-seven percent said that the former president shouldn’t mount another bid for the White House, despite his repeated hints that he plans to do so. 

When it comes to the reason why most voters aren’t keen on another Trump White House run, respondents were divided. Thirty-six percent said that it’s because he is “erratic,” while another 33 percent said they believe he will divide the country. Nearly as many – 31 percent – pointed to his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

If the two men end up in a 2024 rematch, however, 60 percent of voters said they would be open to supporting a moderate independent candidate in the election.

The poll suggests that voters on both sides of the aisle are largely ready to move on from the bitter rivalries that have dominated U.S. politics in recent years, especially given the possibility that the 2024 presidential election could end up looking a lot like it did in 2020.

“Americans want a clear change from this president and the last one,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, said. “There will be a virtual voter revolt if these are the two candidates once again.” 

Republicans, however, remain loyal to Trump, with 59 percent of GOP voters saying they would cast their ballot for him in the 2024 presidential primary. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, comes in a distant second place at 17 percent support.

Without Trump on the primary ballot, however, DeSantis would be the clear favorite for the GOP nomination. Thirty-nine percent of Republican respondents said they would support him, putting the Florida governor well ahead of the second-place finisher, former Vice President Mike Pence, who notched 18 percent.

Nevertheless, if asked to choose only between Biden and Trump, the former president would come out on top, according to the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. Forty-five percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump over Biden in a head-to-head matchup, while 42 percent said they would reelect the Democratic incumbent.

Vice President Harris fares even worse in a matchup with Trump, notching only 40 percent support to his 47 percent. Still, she has a fighting chance against DeSantis. In a head-to-head contest, 41 percent said they would vote for Harris compared to 38 percent who would choose DeSantis, the poll found.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey was conducted between Sept. 7-8 among 1,885 registered voters. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.

The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.

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The Hill's Morning Report — Is Ukraine’s recent success against Russia a turning point?

Some optimistic Ukrainians in Kyiv have opened new restaurants, and city dwellers casually stroll along streets draped under yellow and blue flags. But near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city to the northeast, Russian forces on Sunday shelled a power station and the water supply, plunging the war-torn area into darkness and turning off the taps.

The message from Russian military forces located far from the front lines in response to a startling weekend offensive by Ukraine: One humiliation does not end the war.

Russia continued today to pound Ukrainian positions by shelling the city of Lozova in the Kharkiv region, killing three people and injuring nine. At the same time Ukrainian troops on Tuesday worked to hold swaths of terrain under their control with unrelenting pressure on retreating Russian forces. Ukrainian flags fluttered amid some of Kharkiv’s bombed-out structures (The Associated Press).

Military analysts believe Ukraine’s apparent ability to retake hundreds of square miles of weakly defended Russian-occupied territory could be a turning point, perhaps leading to the expulsion of Moscow’s forces from areas Russia has held since its February invasion.

The Ukrainian military said it freed more than 20 settlements in 24 hours. In recent days, Kyiv’s forces have captured territory at least twice the size of greater London, according to the British Defense Ministry and reported by The Associated Press. One big “if”: whether Ukrainian forces can hold those gains and expand on them, which would require long supply lines, more troops, more weapons and plans to outsmart Russia’s inevitable retaliation.

The Washington Post: Russia is showing no signs of giving up.

Analysts interviewed by The New York Times said such a prospect might not be realistic before next year at the earliest, in part because winter will most likely lead to a slowdown in offensive operations.

Reuters: A Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Monday said that Ukrainian forces outnumbered by a factor of eight the Russian and pro-Russian forces who were overrun and forced into retreat over the weekend.

A Washington Post map of the reclaimed territory is HERE.

Ukraine’s dramatic advance, the first since the war began, stunned Russians who are allied with President Vladimir Putin. One called the retreat of Russian forces “astounding” (The Hill). The news triggered something rare and customarily frowned on in Moscow media circles: public debate (The New York Times).

More than 30 Russian municipal deputies signed a petition calling for Putin’s resignation (The Hill). Some Russian military bloggers and patriotic commentators were critical of the Kremlin for failing to take stronger action against Ukraine and the West.

“People who convinced President Putin that the operation will be fast and effective … these people really set up all of us,” former Russian parliament member Boris Nadezhdin said on the Russian state-owned NTV station.

The Hill: Why Ukraine’s successful offensive is bad news for Putin.

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, interviewed Monday on Bloomberg TV’s “Balance of Power,” said Ukraine’s advances were both uplifting and “dangerous” because Putin, facing new criticism at home, could decide to attack with new force. “Putin, if he’s boxed in, obviously will have to strike back,” Panetta said. “Whether he resorts to more, including the possibility of battlefield nuclear, all of that creates a dangerous moment.” 

Ukraine’s counteroffensive cheered U.S., U.K. and European leaders who acknowledge that a winter of war will be grim, including for some of those living in democracies outside Ukraine now experiencing supply shortages, soaring fuel prices and warnings of recession as world powers ratchet up penalties aimed at Russia.

Ukraine’s ability to drive Russian troops out of the Kharkiv region presented “significant implications for Russia’s overall operational design,” as well as for the morale of soldiers, The Guardian reported from an appraisal by Britain’s Ministry of Defence: “The majority of the force in Ukraine is highly likely being forced to prioritize emergency defensive actions. The already limited trust deployed troops have in Russia’s senior military leadership is likely to deteriorate further.”

In Congress, lawmakers in both parties say they back billions more dollars in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine as part of a must-pass spending measure that would fund the U.S. government beyond Sept. 30, when the current fiscal year ends.

Before Labor Day, President Biden proposed another $11.7 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine, including $7.2 billion in military aid — for replenishment of U.S. weapons and equipment — and $4.5 billion in direct budget support to the Ukrainian government. The administration said about two-thirds of previously appropriated funds for Ukraine have been spent, with the remainder expected to run out by the end of September (Reuters and Roll Call). Another $2 billion, for a total supplemental package worth nearly $14 billion, is sought by the administration to offset the impact on energy supplies from Russia’s war (The New York Times).

Related Articles

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Ukraine signaled to Congress and U.S. allies that it will make major new requests for weapons, including a long-range missile system the U.S. previously declined to provide, according to a list of armaments Ukraine says it will need to pressure Russia into 2023 — a document now circulating among lawmakers.

▪ Reuters: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky calls on the West to provide anti-aircraft systems.

▪ The New York Times: International Atomic Energy Agency leader says there are active discussions to end fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant held by Russian forces while being operated by Ukrainian engineers.

▪ Reuters: Maps: Ukraine’s stunning counteroffensive.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS

Progressives were dealt a blow on Monday as Democratic leaders indicated that they would plow ahead with the plan to attach permitting reform legislation to the year-end stopgap spending bill.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Monday said the leadership’s plan is still to honor a deal struck between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to include language that would speed up permits for fossil fuel projects. 

“We will have to convince our members if it is included,” Hoyer told Bloomberg TV’s “Balance of Power” on Monday. “Our members are concerned about that,” he continued, adding there is “no doubt” the provision is controversial for some Democrats (Bloomberg News). 

The decision comes amid rising opposition to its inclusion in the short-term spending bill. Late last week, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said that more than 70 House Democrats had signed on to a letter opposing the maneuver (The Hill). 

Hoyer also said the Senate will likely vote before the House on the stopgap funding package. The aim is to resolve outstanding issues before Oct. 1. Schumer told reporters on Monday that temporary funding would be extended through mid-December, setting up yet another potential fight to keep the government’s lights on after the midterm elections and before Christmas. 

Across the aisle, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) on Monday introduced separate legislation to overhaul the permitting process. Capito, the ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, argued the bill would give the industry “regulatory certainty.” 

The West Virginia Republican also pressed that the blueprint would expedite the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project set to run through West Virginia that Manchin is seeking to have completed via the permitting language in the continuing resolution (The Hill). 

▪ Politico: “Sleazy backroom deal”: Progressives tangle one more time with Manchin.

▪ The Hill: Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) pushes back on GOP arguments against pending same-sex marriage legislation.

▪ Axios: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to propose new 15-week national abortion restrictions bill.

▪ The Hill: Hoyer suggests Congress could move to stop rail strike if needed. 

▪ The Washington Post: A congressman wasn’t allowed on a flight — because of his wheelchair.

➤ POLITICS & INVESTIGATIONS

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) faces one of the toughest reelection fights of the 2022 midterms, and unlike her first Senate campaign six years ago, she will not be able to count on a powerful home-state influencer, one who helped her in the past. 

As The Hill’s Alexander Bolton writes, she is massively outspending challenger and former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R), but she is likely to miss the influence of the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) get-out-the-vote operation that buoyed Democrats in the Battle Born State for years. 

Six years ago, Cortez Masto was among the few Democratic candidates who earned victories in tough races and did so in part because of Reid’s efforts. The longtime Nevada senator was still in office at the time but died last year, prompting Democrats to wonder if the absence of Reid’s political muscle will cost them this time around. 

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Monday admitted that Nevada is a “tough state” for the party in power. 

“It’s been up or down 1 or 2 points for a long time,” Durbin said. When asked if Democrats are missing Reid, Durbin exclaimed, “I miss him every day.”

“There’s no replacement for Harry. He was Mr. Nevada, and he knew how to make it work,” said Durbin, who was Reid’s longtime deputy in the upper chamber. Nonetheless, he predicted that Cortez Masto will “do very well” in November. 

According to the latest survey commissioned by AARP, the battle between Cortez Masto and Laxalt is a statistical tie. 

▪ The Hill: Far-right candidate causes headaches for GOP in New Hampshire. 

▪ Nate Cohn, The New York Times: Polling warning signs are flashing again, raising the possibility that the apparent Democratic strength in Wisconsin and elsewhere is a mirage — an artifact of persistent and unaddressed biases in survey research. 

▪ The Hill: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Republican J.D. Vance locked in tight Ohio Senate race: poll.

▪ The Hill and CNN: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) says that Trump’s reported insistence to aides in 2020 that he would stay in the White House after Biden’s inauguration, as reported in a forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, “affirms the reality of the danger.”

On the investigatory side, the Justice Department on Monday said in a filing that it would accept a nominee put forward by former President Trump’s attorneys to serve as a special master to review documents seized by investigators from his Mar-a-Lago residence early last month.

Prosecutors gave the green light to appointing Raymond Dearie, a former chief federal judge in New York, to fill the role. Judge Aileen Cannon must still approve the appointment. The move by the Justice Department came days after Dearie was proposed by Trump’s legal team to examine whether any of the materials should be kept from federal prosecutors’ probe into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified and sensitive documents. 

Dearie, 78, still serves as a judge in Brooklyn federal court on a senior status. He was nominated to the court by former President Reagan in 1986 (The Washington Post).

The New York Times: Justice Department issues 40 subpoenas in a week, expanding its Jan. 6 inquiry.

Separately, Trump’s legal team is fighting the Justice Department’s request to allow the government to continue reviewing classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago as part of its investigation. The former president’s lawyers argued in a Monday filing that the investigation “at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control.” 

They assert that Trump’s possession of sensitive materials should be the purview of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) because classification status matters little within the Presidential Records Act. 

NARA sought the return of the Mar-a-Lago documents from the former president for more than a year, eventually turning to the Justice Department for assistance (The Hill).

Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill: Trump wants it both ways on “declassified” documents.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ ADMINISTRATION

On the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s “moonshot” speech — where he announced his goal to land a man on the moon — Biden outlined his own moonshot: cutting the U.S. death rate from cancer in half in the next 25 years.

Biden addressed supporters at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, where he highlighted a new “federally backed study that seeks evidence for using blood tests to screen against multiple cancers — a potential game-changer in diagnostic testing to dramatically improve early detection of cancers” (The Associated Press).

Early Monday at Boston Logan International Airport, Biden touted a $62 million federal investment that resulted from the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law enacted last year. Airports receiving federal funds are able to make renovations and other improvements, which means a modernization at Logan airport of its international terminal and improvements to roadways, according to the president (The Hill).

“Not a single solitary American airport, not one, ranks in the top 25 in the world,” Biden said. “The United States of America — not one airport ranks in the top 25 in the world. What in the hell is the matter with us? It means commerce. It means income. It means security. And we don’t even rank in the top 25.”

Meanwhile, Biden’s team on Monday moved to tighten offshore oil and gas drilling safety regulations, which were relaxed by the Trump administration in 2019 to be more industry-friendly. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and fire in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, which resulted in the deaths of 11 workers and released 134 million gallons of fuel into the ocean, sparked tougher safety rules during the Obama administration.

The Department of the Interior on Monday released yet another set of regulations, which modify the requirements under the two previous administrations (The Hill).

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said she believes the changes will “improve conditions for offshore workers and the public.”

“This proposed rulemaking will help ensure that offshore energy development utilizes the latest science and technology to keep people safe,” she said.

But some environmentalists still say the new regulations fall short of what’s necessary to prevent another large-scale spill.

“Offshore drilling is inherently dirty and dangerous, and blowout preventers are not reliable,” Diane Hoskins, a campaign director with the Oceana conservation group told Bloomberg News. “While the new safety measures being proposed are a step in the right direction, no operator can promise there won’t be another disaster like BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout.”

The president, eager to use his executive pen for additional environmental purposes, is reportedly poised to designate a historic military site in Colorado as his first national monument.

“Colorado’s Camp Hale, a World War II-era military training ground along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains, and the Tenmile Range have attracted visitors for their stunning landscapes and provide habitat for wildlife including elk, bears, otters, lynxes and migratory songbirds,” The Washington Post reports.

A national monument designation would bar mining and drilling in the area. The move would bypass gridlock in Congress, where GOP lawmakers have opposed legislation sponsored by Colorado Democrats that would permanently protect Camp Hale, the Tenmile Range and other historic landscapes across the state.

OPINION

■ The queen could have redressed Britain’s colonial sins. She didn’t, by Saim Saeed, agriculture editor, Politico Europe. https://politi.co/3qvVETR 

■ John Fetterman needs to debate more than once for the U.S. Senate, by The Washington Post editorial board. https://wapo.st/3QC7CWW 

■ The wives of Republican candidates are getting personal, by Michelle Cottle, editorial board member, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3QD38iG

WHERE AND WHEN

The House meets at 2 p.m.

The Senate convenes at 10 a.m. and will resume consideration of Arianna Freeman to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the 3rd Circuit. The Senate Judiciary Committee convenes a 10 a.m. hearing to question a whistleblower who alleged widespread security failures at Twitter. The Hill’s Rebecca Klar reports what to expect during the hearing.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will speak at 3 p.m. during a South Lawn event to champion provisions of the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act.

Vice President Harris at 10:10 a.m. will participate in a conversation with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Leadership Conference in downtown Washington. She will join the president at 3 p.m. and speak about the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will attend the South Lawn event for the Inflation Reduction Act at 3 p.m.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo at 9 a.m. will tour the Birck Nanotechnology Center in West Lafayette, Ind., and participate in a moderated and live streamed discussion at 10:45 a.m. about fostering U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors. They will be joined by Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R), Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), and Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, a former Republican governor of the state and former director of the Office and Management and Budget.  

First lady Jill Biden at 3 p.m. will join the president at the South Lawn event for the Inflation Reduction Act. She will speak at 5 p.m. to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America during the organization’s meeting in Washington.

Economic indicator: The Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30 a.m. will issue a report on the August consumer price index as well as real earnings last month.

The White House daily briefing is scheduled at 1:35 p.m.

🖥  Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features news and interviews at http://thehill.com/hilltv, on YouTube and on Facebook at 10:30 a.m. ET. Also, check out the “Rising” podcast here.

ELSEWHERE

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC

The Food and Drug Administration scheduled a joint meeting on Nov. 18 to discuss the application for the first over-the-counter daily birth control pill in this country, manufacturer Perrigo, headquartered in Ireland, announced Monday.

If approved, Perrigo’s progestin-only pill would be the first non-prescription birth control pill available in the United States. The company filed the application to change the pill’s status in July (The Hill).

In Minnesota, 15,000 nurses are on strike, which union leaders say marks the largest private sector nurses’ strike in U.S. history. The strike, which began at 7 a.m. on Monday in the Twin Cities and Duluth, is expected to last through 7 a.m. on Thursday (Axios).

According to The Washington Post, “The strike spotlights nationwide nursing shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that often result in patients not receiving adequate care. Tensions remain high between nurses and health-care administrators across the country, and there are signs that work stoppages could spread to other states.”

Most local hospitals have been able to hire temporary nursing staff to fill gaps in care, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports, but some elective surgeries have been postponed. Union leaders are asking for pay raises for nurses following pandemic burnout and staffing shortages.

“It’s frustrating, and that’s why we’re in this position,” union vice president Chris Rubesch, a nurse in Duluth, told the Star Tribune. “We cannot go another three years without addressing this crisis.”

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,050,767. Current average U.S. COVID-19 daily deaths are 328, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

➤ TECH

Twitter argued in a new filing that Elon Musk’s latest maneuver to nix a deal to purchase the social media giant for $44 billion over the company’s handling of a whistleblower is “invalid and wrongful.” Twitter’s attorneys pushed back against the Tesla CEO’s third attempt to back out of the agreement, saying that the social media platform has “breached none of its representations or obligations” under the agreement. Musk’s attorneys last week made their latest effort to cancel the deal when they claimed Twitter should have alerted him before it paid $7.75 million in a separation agreement with Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, Twitter’s former security chief who has come out with accusations of widespread security deficiencies at the company (The Hill). The move took place on the eve of a vote where Twitter shareholders are expected to overwhelmingly approve Musk’s takeover of the platform (The Wall Street Journal).

The Associated Press: Twitter whistleblower bringing security warnings to Congress.

➤ CITIES & STATES

Environment:Utah’s Great Salt Lake — the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere — is drying up amid rapid climate change, and the effects are impacting the whole state. The lake, which sits just northwest of Salt Lake City, is sending dust laced with toxic metals, including arsenic, into the air, which is spreading to a metro area of approximately 1.2 million people. As The Hill reports, small particles like these have been linked to health complications ranging from asthma to heart attacks, worsening lung function and premature death.

Utah is not alone in experiencing this kind of pollution; in California, the drying Salton Sea is also releasing dust.

🍎 Schools: States and local school districts complaining about teacher shortages may have a different kind of staffing problem. There is no evidence of a national teacher shortage; the challenges are related more to recruiting and hiring, especially for non-teaching staff positions. Schools flush with federal pandemic relief money are creating new positions and struggling to fill them at a time of low unemployment and stiff competition for workers of all kinds, according to The Associated Press. 

Race and equity: South Side Chicago native Jitu Brown, the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, is a member of a new generation pursuing civil rights along a path created by predecessors such as the late activist Fred Hampton, the former deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party, and Martin Luther King Jr. Brown’s focus is equitable education, inspired by his upbringing in the Windy City (The Hill). 

Child poverty: New data from The New York Times and Child Trends, a nonpartisan group, shows a drastic reduction in child poverty rates across all 50 states. Child poverty fell by 59 percent from 1993 to 2019, due largely to an increase in subsidies and government aid — especially for working families. Total federal spending on low-income children almost doubled, the investigation found.

“In 1993, safety net programs cut child poverty by 9 percent from what it would have been absent the aid,” according to the Times. “By 2019, those programs had cut child poverty by 44 percent, and the number of children they removed from poverty more than tripled to 6.5 million.”

In West Virginia, the Times found the poverty rate among children fell by nearly three-quarters, compared to a 59 percent drop nationwide. For Cecelia Jackson and her family, the government aid has made a big difference.

“The kids get plenty to eat,” she told the Times. “If they’re sick, we can take them to the doctor. I’ve got dreams and goals not to need it one day, but for now I’m grateful it’s here.”

THE CLOSER

And finally … 📺 Hollywood gathered in Los Angeles Monday night for the 74tth primetime Emmy awards, hosted by comedian Keenan Thompson. The HBO drama “Succession” led the night with 25 nominations, taking home four, while limited series “The White Lotus,” also streaming on HBO, took home 10 statuettes (Variety).

Highlights of the ceremony included Sheryl Lee Ralph’s acceptance speech after winning an Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy series for ABC’s “Abbott Elementary.” She celebrated by belting out lines from “Endangered Species” by Dianne Reeves (the Washington Post). Many of this year’s winners looked familiar; shows such as “Ted Lasso” and “Euphoria” picked up awards for a second consecutive year. Lee Jung-jae, of Netflix’s “Squid Game,” became the first Asian to win lead actor in a drama, and the fourth Asian to be awarded an acting Emmy, while Zendaya, the star of HBO’s “Euphoria,” became the first Black woman to win lead actress in a drama (Variety).

As Variety tweeted: “The biggest surprise of the 2022 #Emmys is that there were almost no surprises at all.”

▪ The Hollywood Reporter: Emmys: Winners of color equally split behind and in front of camera.

▪ Variety: HBO and HBO Max reclaim most Emmy wins crown as “White Lotus” snags 10 awards.

▪ The Washington Post: A stale 2022 Emmys show is saved by — get this — the speeches.

▪ The Cut: The highs and lows of the 2022 Emmys.

Stay Engaged

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver. Follow us on Twitter (@alweaver22 & @asimendinger) and suggest this newsletter to friends!

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Democrats wonder if they're missing Harry Reid in Nevada

Democrats are questioning whether they’re missing former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), as Nevada now looms as Republicans’ best chance of picking off a Senate Democratic incumbent amid stumbles by GOP candidates in Arizona and Georgia.  

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) entered the 2022 election cycle as a strongly positioned incumbent who was viewed as holding a safer seat than several of her colleagues, including Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).  

Less than two months from Election Day, however, Senate Republicans now view Cortez Masto as their most promising target, raising questions about how much Democrats’ strength has slipped in Nevada since Reid’s retirement and death.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) on Monday pointed to Ohio and North Carolina as other states where Democratic candidates are exceeding expectations, but he admitted that “Nevada is a tough state for us.” 

“And Catherine will tell you the same,” he added, referring to Cortez Masto. “It’s been up or down 1 or 2 points for a long time.”  

Asked if Democrats are missing Reid, Durbin exclaimed, “I miss him every day.” 

He also said that “of course” Democrats miss Reid’s political muscle in Nevada, acknowledging, “There’s no replacement for Harry. He was Mr. Nevada, and he knew how to make it work.” 

Even so, Durbin insisted that “Catherine’s the best” and predicted that “she’ll do very well.”  

But polls show that if Cortez Masto hangs on to win reelection, it will be by the slimmest of margins.  

An AARP-commissioned poll conducted last month showed Cortez Masto leading her Republican opponent, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, by less than 4 points, within the survey’s margin of error.  

Another poll conducted last month by the Republican Trafalgar Group showed Laxalt leading by nearly 3 points.  

The tight polling numbers are all the more concerning for Democrats because Cortez Masto has received significantly more support from outside groups than Laxalt.

Outside groups have spent $7.9 million in support of Cortez Masto compared to $4 million in support of Laxalt and $13.9 million against Laxalt compared to $8.5 million against Cortez Masto, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan research group.    

Laxalt’s resilience in the polls also comes despite vulnerabilities as a candidate.  

Like other Trump-backed candidates who won Senate primaries this year, Laxalt embraced former President Trump’s false allegation that the 2020 election was stolen because of voter fraud. He has also claimed that ballots for ineligible and dead voters were fraudulently counted for President Biden in Nevada.  

Jon Ralston, the CEO of The Nevada Independent and the most respected political commentator in the state, said, “Harry Reid’s acolytes are still around and are still running the machine, so to speak.”  

Ralston said Cortez Masto has proved to be a “formidable fundraiser.”  

Her campaign reported raising more than $7.5 million in the second quarter of this year after raising $4.4 million in the first quarter, giving her campaign $10 million in cash on hand to start July.  

But Ralston added that “if you don’t have Harry Reid … you can’t raise as much money, and so you are handicapped to some extent.” 

Ralston said Reid and his political machine were “huge” factors behind Cortez Masto’s victory in 2016, an otherwise a disappointing election cycle for Democrats. She won the seat that Reid held from 1987 to 2017.   

He also argued that she ran against “a much better candidate” in former Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) than she is facing now.  

“Adam Laxalt, who I’ve told virtually anyone who will listen, is an absolutely terrible candidate,” Ralston said, citing his embrace of Trump’s election fraud claims and ethical issues related to his term as state attorney general.  

Yet National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (Fla.) on Monday pointed to Nevada and Georgia as the two most promising pickup opportunities for Republicans, pointing to the low approval ratings of Biden and the Senate Democratic incumbents.  

“If you look at the polls, it would suggest [in] those two states we have every opportunity,” he said. “Biden’s numbers in all of our swing states are under 40 [percent] … and all the Democratic candidates are under 50 [percent]. It’s rightful to tie every one of those candidates to Biden.”  

Ralston said it’s somewhat easier to tie Cortez Masto to Biden, whose approval rating in Nevada stood at 41 percent last month, because she doesn’t have as strong a brand as some other politicians.  

“[Because] she’s much more of a work horse than a show horse, it’s easier to define her as a just a Biden clone,” he said. “I think that definitely has hurt her.”  

Democrats familiar with Reid’s famed political machine say it’s still a force to be reckoned with and will churn out large numbers of voters for Cortez Masto. But Democratic strategists also acknowledge there’s been a major void in Nevada’s Democratic power structure since Reid died in December at the age of 82.  

Kami Dempsey-Goudie, a Nevada-based political consultant who mainly works with Democrats but has worked with Republicans as well, said Democrats miss Reid but are still benefiting from the political operation he built over the decades.  

“I think they miss him a lot, but I think they also feel a lot of his presence here. A lot of his original staff and what they call the Reid machine is functioning and working aggressively,” she said, noting that former Reid staffers are still involved in state political races.  

She cited Rebecca Lambe, who worked closely with Reid to rebuild the state party after 2002, and Megan Jones, a longtime Reid aide who recently joined Vice President Harris’s staff, as two key political players active in the state.  

But she said the machine doesn’t run quite as efficiently without Reid.  

“I think he’s missed in a way where one phone call from him to certain people got a job [advanced] further down the road in a quicker time frame, so that’s really missed by Democrats,” said Dempsey-Goudie.  

Democrats don’t have as big a lead over Republicans in voter registration as they have in past election cycles, which will make Laxalt more competitive, Democrats acknowledge.  

Mike Lux, a longtime Democratic strategist, hailed Reid as a political mastermind. 

“Nevada’s always been a close state,” he said, noting that Reid won reelection in 1998 by fewer than 500 votes. “A number of Harry’s elections were quite close so this is a swing state. … It’s been a swing state for about 20 years.  

“If Harry were still around, it would make it easier to win because he was a brilliant political strategist and he was a great leader and he brought people together. Obviously he is sorely missed so that makes it tougher,” he said.  

When asked about Reid’s missing influence on the Nevada race, Cortez Masto told The Hill that voters would make up their own minds about who to support.  

“Nevadans are always going to decide their races, no matter what,” she said, adding that Nevada is “independent, strong” and that “ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s the voters who decide who they’re going to elect.” 

Asked whether the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote operation remains as strong as it used to be now that Reid is gone, Cortez Masto replied, “Absolutely. Yup. Absolutely.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump wants it both ways on ‘declassified’ documents

Former President Trump’s legal team is trying to have it both ways — insinuating he declassified the documents stored at his Florida home without directly claiming he did so. 

Trump’s legal team in a Monday court filing failed to fully premise its argument on the excuse the president has repeatedly offered since confirming his home was search: that he had already declassified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. 

Instead, it noted he had the power to do so without “approval of bureaucratic components of the executive branch” — seemingly offering an air of mystery around whether the former president ever declassified the tranche of more than 300 intelligence documents in his home.  

But experts say if you take Trump at his word, the secretive nature through which he would have declassified those records is itself problematic. 

“If he did, and he did it in the way that he claims he did, that’s actually not really the flex he thinks it is. It actually suggests that he had a nefarious purpose,” Asha Rangappa, a lecturer at Yale University and a former FBI special agent, said of Trump. 

Sitting presidents have broad power to declassify documents, but doing so sets off a chain of events, including notification of the many intelligence agencies that produce and manage that information. 

Rangappa said a failure to alert the intelligence community shows Trump wanted the information he took to still have value — something that would be lost in the declassification process. 

“The full declassification process will then end up protecting sources and methods, so that if these secrets become known to people, they can’t do anything with it,” Rangappa said, essentially “neutralizing” the information. 

Rangappa gave the example of a list of all U.S. informants scattered across the globe. If those people became compromised, the U.S. would need to spring into action. 

“They would be moved, they would be protected [and] they would be exfiltrated so that when that list becomes public or when our adversaries get a hold of that list, they can’t do anything to those sources because they’ve already been protected. … In other words, to go through the whole declassification process renders this information largely invaluable to people who might be interested in it because they can’t really take advantage of it,” she said.  

The same thing would happen in the case of other methods for collecting and intercepting information. 

Kash Patel, who most recently served as chief of staff to Trump’s secretary of Defense, told The Wall Street Journal he witnessed Trump give verbal declassification orders, but they appear to have been related only to the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, and it’s not clear how that order would have been carried out.  

“If your defense is ‘I declassified it, but I did it really secretly so that none of these things could be neutralized,’ then the only reason you would do that is if you still wanted these sources and methods to continue operating, even as you treated these secrets as being something that you could disseminate or share,” Rangappa said. 

Trump’s motives for retaining the roughly 300 classified records or nearly 10,000 government documents in his home are not clear. In court filings, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has noted that Trump’s legal team has never offered an explanation for why he retained the records beyond arguing that he has a right to do so under executive privilege. 

The DOJ noted in a filing last month that Trump and his team never raised the declassification claim in their months of negotiations, and as a defense, it may do little considering the government argues he has no right to retain any of the records.

But experts say the revelation that Trump’s declassification claim may have come only after the fact indicates there would have been little benefit in doing so.  

“There’s no value in having information that everybody else has,” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, a nonprofit law firm specializing in national security law. 

“He wanted this information because it was valuable to him, and it was extra valuable because he knew he was one of the only people that had it,” McClanahan added.

Declassification is not a defense for the charges laid out in the DOJ warrant to search Trump’s home. The Espionage Act deals only with “national defense information,” while another one of the statutes covers willful concealment of government records.  

Rangappa lamented that Trump appears to be using declassification claims as a Get Out of Jail Free card but noted that the status is not stagnant — some presidents have opted to reclassify information declassified by their predecessors, another detail she said makes Trump’s storage of the documents alarming. 

The Trump legal team’s failure to directly assert the claim is also telling given the span of time the records were sought — a process that started with outreach from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) just months after Trump left office.  

“They had over a year of interactions with NARA. They’ve had months of interactions with the Department of Justice. They’ve had two legal filings and now one court hearing. And not once in any of those interactions have they claimed that any information at issue was declassified,” said Brian Greer, a former CIA attorney.

“They have claimed so on television, but there’s no criminal penalty for lying on television. There are, however, criminal penalties for lying to federal agencies, to federal investigators and to courts,” he added.  

Even on Friday, Trump’s team seemed to raise the specter that he may have declassified the documents, writing only that the government “wrongly assumed that if a document has a classification marking, it remains classified in perpetuity.”

The Justice Department on Thursday asked a federal district court judge to reconsider her decision granting Trump’s request to allow a special master to review the documents, asking that it be allowed to carry on with its review of all the classified records. 

It remains unclear how nearly 11,000 government documents, classified and unclassified, made it to Mar-a-Lago and the extent Trump played a role in directing documents to be removed and stored there. Some of the classified records, however, were found in his office among his personal belongings. Also among the tranche are empty folders that once housed the documents. 

Throughout his presidency, intelligence community officials were often alarmed by Trump’s cavalier attitude toward classified information; Trump once tweeted a photo of sensitive surveillance image of an Iranian space facility.  

Recent reporting from The New York Times indicates he would occasionally ask to hold on to various documents. 

Former intelligence officials told the outlet Trump gravitated toward charts and other visuals and was particularly interested in information about how he was perceived after meeting with other world leaders as well as intelligence gathered about the personal lives of statesmen, including their extramarital affairs.

McClanahan said classification status alone may not have generated interest in the documents. 

“He saw the value in the information, not in the fact that it was classified,” McClanahan said.  

“The nature of the intelligence community is to classify things that are damaging, to classify information that could hurt national security. By definition, if they’re doing it right, anything they classify would damage the national security, which would make it important. So I think it’s sort of a mirage, it’s an optical illusion, that he took information because it was classified. He took the information because it was useful information. It was classified because it was useful information,” he added.  

It’s not clear what was among the classified records recovered from Mar-a-Lago, but court filings indicate that they include some of the most restricted information, including Special Access Programs materials limited only to those with a specific need to know. 

Also collected in the search were documents dealing with information about the “President of France” and Trump’s pardon of ally Roger Stone. 

“I think that you’d probably be able to file most of this information into one of three categories: It’s information that can hurt him, so he doesn’t want other people to have it; information that can hurt other people, and he wants to have it; or information that other people would want, and they’ll have to come to him to get it,” McClanahan said.  

“Between those three categories I think you can probably account for like 95 percent of all the materials he took, whether they be classified or unclassified,” he said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Far-right candidate causes headaches for GOP in New Hampshire

Republicans are staring down the possibility that a far-right candidate will prevail in New Hampshire’s GOP Senate primary, complicating what should be a prime pickup opportunity in the upper chamber.

Retired Army Gen. Don Bolduc (R), who’s accused the state’s governor of being a “Chinese communist sympathizer” and falsely claimed former President Trump won the 2020 election, has been leading a field of 11 GOP candidates to take on Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) in November.

In a sign of growing concern among Republicans in the state, Gov. Chris Sununu (R) made a last-minute endorsement of Senate President Chuck Morse (R), seen as the other leading GOP contender, in the hopes of shifting the race’s trajectory.

“This time there’s a real question, a concern that people like me have, that Gov. Sununu have, that if we nominate Bolduc our chances of winning this seat are greatly diminished,” said Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP and a supporter of Morse.

“It’s pretty clear that the Democrats are salivating at the idea of running against him,” he added.

Republicans point to the fact that while Bolduc holds some name recognition after previously running for Senate, he performed poorly in the last GOP primary. Members of the party also say they’re less certain that the retired Army general can transition his campaign into general election mode just eight weeks out from the midterms.

“We don’t have any evidence that that’s the way he ran the last time,” said Thomas Rath, a former New Hampshire state attorney general and GOP strategist, adding, “I think it’s, especially with someone like Hassan, who’s a sort of centrist Democrat, it’s harder to paint her as an extremist.”

High-profile Republicans have lamented about what a possible Bolduc nomination could do for Republicans’ prospects for flipping the Senate seat in the Granite State.

Sununu said in a radio interview in August that “if he were the GOP nominee, I have no doubt we would have a much harder time,” and called the retired Army general a “conspiracy theorist-type candidate.”

The governor, however, said this past weekend that he would back whoever the GOP nominee is, even if Bolduc prevails on Tuesday.

Recent polling suggests that Bolduc enjoys a significant level of support from Republicans. A University of New Hampshire Survey Center Granite State Poll released late last month showed Bolduc leading Morse by 21 percent among likely Republican primary voters. 

“Republicans are excited and energized to defeat liberal Maggie Hassan, who has delivered historically high inflation, gas prices that are out of control and she can’t break her spending habit. Gen. Don Bolduc is the outsider, the fighter Granite Staters are getting behind because he’s one of them,” Rick Wiley, an adviser for Bolduc, said in an email.  

T.W. Arrighi, national press secretary for the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, contended that Republicans would still have a shot at the Senate seat, saying that “whoever wins the New Hampshire Republican primary will be well-positioned to beat Maggie Hassan.”

Some Republicans believe the primary landscape has evolved over the past several weeks since the polls showing Bolduc leading were conducted, arguing that voters have only just started tuning into the primary. But some political observers question whether Morse has enough momentum to cross the finish line.

“My expectation is this will be a light- to moderate-turnout tomorrow, which means the more anti-establishment or sort of Trump-following Republicans will be the biggest percentage of voters, and if that is the case, then I think it helps Bolduc,” said Jim Demers, lobbyist and former Obama New Hampshire campaign chair. 

“I know that the governor endorsed Morse last week, but I don’t know if that’s going to be enough considering what group may be the dominant sector that votes tomorrow.”

The primary comes against the backdrop of larger concerns Republicans are having about their prospects of flipping the Senate. In a midterm environment that should otherwise be favorable to the GOP, Senate Democratic challengers in multiple battleground states have gained momentum as they’ve raised eye-popping sums of money against their competitors.

In pre-primary reports filed earlier this month, Hassan’s campaign reported $7.3 million cash on hand, while Bolduc’s campaign reported about $83,900 cash on hand and Morse’s campaign said it had $582,000 cash on hand.

Some GOP candidates have also been mired in negative headlines or scandals. The evolving nature of some Senate races led Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last month to hedge that the upper chamber may be less likely to flip than the House over concerns of candidate quality.

The stakes of having a competitive edge in this Senate race are high. Hassan’s seat has been rated by the nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report as “lean Democrat,” and the McConnell-tied Senate Leadership Fund announced earlier this month that beginning Tuesday, it would be launching a $23 million-worth TV ad campaign in the state.

Hassan herself won her first election in 2016 within about a tenth of a percentage point, and some Republicans see her as an especially weak candidate. 

“She is the juiciest target we have, it’s just we need a strong, capable candidate who won’t blow it,” said Dave Carney, a general consultant for Morse’s campaign.

In recent weeks, outside spending has flooded the state in an effort to sway which candidate will prevail on Tuesday. One super PAC reportedly tied to McConnell, White Mountain PAC, has aired ads in the state, spotlighting the retired Army general’s previous criticism of former President Trump and pointing to controversial statements he’s made. 

At the same time, the Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC announced earlier this month that it was launching a $3.2 million ad campaign targeting Morse and calling the state Senate president “another sleazy politician.”

“We won’t sit idly by while Chuck Morse is currently on air attacking our candidate and hiding from his shameful ethics record — Granite Staters deserve to know the truth: Morse is beholden to his lobbyist donors and he’d be an automatic ‘yes’ vote for Mitch McConnell’s extreme agenda on abortion,” Veronica Yoo, a spokesperson for the Democratic PAC, said in a statement. 

Carney called Democrats’ ads hitting the Republican candidate a “badge of honor,” noting later that “Democrats have been, in New Hampshire … trying to undercut Chuck because they know they want to run against Bolduc.”

Some Republicans, however, believe that Democrats’ meddling in the GOP Senate primary comes with its own set of risks.

Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, acknowledged while their meddling in the primary was “smart politics,” he also noted that “the risk, as someone who cares about public policy and thinks this isn’t just about winning elections, is that some of these yahoos are going to end up in public office in some of these states.”

The Senate Majority PAC contends that it’s simply going on offense against Morse’s ads attacking Hassan. The super PAC argued that if Bolduc launched similar ads against the first-term incumbent, it would have responded similarly.

Other Republicans believe that their primary voters wouldn’t get caught up in Democrats’ onslaught of ads. 

“New Hampshire voters are very savvy. Republican primary voters are going to see Democrats’ meddling in our primary and recognize that it for the stunt that it is,” said Jeff Grappone, a former aide to Republican Sens. John E. Sununu and Kelly Ayotte.

Source: TEST FEED1

DRIED UP: In Utah, drying Great Salt Lake leads to air pollution  

The American West is experiencing its driest period in human history, a megadrought that threatens health, agriculture and entire ways of life. DRIED UP is examining the dire effects of the drought on the states most affected — as well as the solutions Americans are embracing.

Air pollution in Salt Lake City was so bad last year it set off the fire alarms in Elizabeth Joy’s clinic.   

Joy, a family and sports medicine doctor, said that her patients had to be evacuated as part of the emergency response.   

Yet in sending the patients outside, the alarms actually put people in an even more dangerous position given the city’s air quality at the time — which was judged to be the worst in the world on that particular day. 

“They moved people outside where they stood for 45 minutes,” said Joy, a former chairwoman of the Utah Clean Air Partnership. “They evacuated the clinic, not knowing, initially, that it was actually the outdoor air pollution that set off the fire alarms in our building.”  

Cars and wildfires contribute to Utah’s air pollution, but the Great Salt Lake is a less obvious but important contributor. Sitting just northwest of Salt Lake City, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere is drying up because of water use and drought amid a changing climate, sending dust with toxic metals — including arsenic — in the air of a metro area with approximately 1.2 million people. 

Particle pollution in the air has been linked to asthma, heart attacks, worsened lung function and premature death.  

^{People walk on a section of the Great Salt Lake that used to be underwater on August 02, 2021 near Magna, Utah. Getty Images}

Utah is hardly alone in experiencing air pollution resulting from bodies of water drying up amid climate change. 

Similar issues are playing out near California’s Salton Sea, where the drying sea is also kicking up dust. Across the world, Iran’s salty Lake Urmia has also been shrinking, as has Africa’s Lake Chad and the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia.  

Carly Ferro, the director of the Sierra Club’s Utah chapter, said that on a particularly dusty day, the mountains typically visible near her home disappear, and “you can almost taste” the dust.  

“It really does impact all of the senses,” she said. “Your eyes — not only visibly see it, but it also can burn.”  

In the Salton Sea area, Mariela Loera, a policy advocate for the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, said that respiratory problems plague many families.   

In the Salt Lake City area, heavy metals including arsenic are also being found in the dust from the lake. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that inhaling arsenic may cause lung cancer, as well as skin, cardiovascular and neurological effects.   

Kevin Perry, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Utah who has studied the dust coming from the lake, said that he views the general dust issue as a more immediate problem, describing the toxic metals as more of a “long-term” concern.   

For the toxic dust, “it takes decades … of exposure in order to manifest itself in health issues and so it’s a long term concern,” Perry said. “If the lake remains low for decades and the surface continues to pump dust into the communities, then we’ll eventually start to see impacts.“

“What I’m more concerned about are these short duration plumes that come off the lake that impact people’s health immediately,” he added.   

Joy said the toxic metals issue leaves the public with a lot of uncertainty.   

“[Arsenic] can have system-wide effects on the human body, the heart, the brain, the [gastrointestinal] systems, your lungs, your nervous system,” she said. “But in terms of arsenic in the air combined with other forms of air pollution, I think the effect it has on the human body largely remains unknown.”  

Water use is a big part of Utah’s problem  

A combination of drought and water usage are causing the Great Salt Lake’s water level to plummet, exposing more of the lake-bed and releasing more dust.   

Wayne Wurtsbaugh, a professor emeritus of watershed sciences at Utah State University, said a combination of human activity and drought has left half of the lake gone. 

The lake has a maximum depth of 35 feet, the state division of water resources says, but according to Wurtsbaugh’s research, water use alone has shaved off 11 feet and reduced the lake’s volume by 48 percent. 

“That’s about half the volume of the lake, and it exposed about 50 percent of the lakebed,” Wurtsbaugh said. “A lot of that is creating the dust problems.”  

A white paper written by Wurtsbaugh and other researchers has sought to estimate how various uses of water have contributed to the lake’s shrinkage. They estimate that among the causes of the water loss are agriculture (responsible for 7 feet), mining operations (1.4 feet) and municipal and industrial uses (1.3 feet). 

One major water use item is hay: a water intensive crop that’s used to feed cattle. Gabriel Lozada, an associate professor of economics at the University of Utah estimates that hay represents 68 percent of the state’s water use while making up just 0.2 percent of its GDP.  

“From a society’s point of view, this doesn’t make any sense,” Lozada said.   

“Water is valuable, but currently, we don’t treat it that way. We don’t assign it the value that it deserves,” he said.  

Both Lozada and Wurtsbaugh suggested that paying farmers not to grow the crop is one possible solution.   

“In a decade you could probably get a good share of that water back,” Wurtsbaugh said.

Agricultural interests disagree, noting that while hay itself only makes up a small portion of the area’s GDP, it’s important for the local livestock industry.  

“When we talk about using that agricultural water for alfalfa, we need to not be thinking about ‘we’re using it for one crop’ we need to be thinking about all the implications that that one crop has,” said Ron Gibson, president of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation.   

“That one crop turns into milk, it turns into beef, it turns into pork,” Gibson said.   

He disagreed with suggestions that farmers should be paid not to grow hay, saying it would raise the price of feed for other farmers.   

“That kind of program right there would be a javelin in the heart to agriculture in the state of Utah,” Gibson said.   

Lynn de Freitas, executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, pointed to the state’s “use it or lose it” water rights laws — which incentivize farmers to use as much water as possible so that they don’t lose their rights in the future — as another contributor to the problem.   

^{A chair sits on an exposed sand bar on the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake on March 3, 2022 near Salt Lake City, Utah. Utah lawmakers passed a $40 million proposal through the state Senate that would pay water rights holders to conserve and fund habitat restoration to prevent the lake from shrinking further. Associated Press-Rick Bowmer}

She and others cited a new state law that allows farmers and other water rights holders to rent out their water for other uses — including for lease by conservation groups who want to return water to the lake —  as one way the state is addressing the issue.   

But she said, more work is needed, including changes in how water is used by industry and the general public.   

“We have a lot of work to do to reduce the way that we consume water in our municipal and industrial operations,” she said. “We’ve got to figure out how we can educate the public and engage them in being a part of this solution by using less water overall.”  

Wurtsbaugh also raised concerns about the area’s growing population, noting that more people means more water use.  

A January projection from the University of Utah found that by 2060, the state’s population is expected to grow by 66 percent from where it was in 2020.    

“There’s a big effort to get people to have smaller lawns … or just don’t quite make them quite as green or overwater,” he said “Even if we save on a per capita 30 percent and we increase the population 30 percent … we’re right where we are now. That population growth is something that needs to be dealt with.”  

Drought also plays a role, and Utah state climatologist Robert Gillies said that climate change worsens the problem.   

“It’s not directly causing the drought. Droughts have been in our past,” Gillies said. “But there’s no doubt about it: climate change is altering the trajectory of storms, it’s altering the magnitude of these storms.”  

He said specifically that precipitation in the area that would have fallen as snow in the past is now more likely to fall as rain, which contributes to drier conditions.  

“We rely on that snow to melt slowly into the soil and then down into the aquifers, and we draw that water from the aquifers for our irrigation, for our municipal and for our industrial needs,” Gillies said.   

Different state, similar problems  

People who live near Southern California’s Salton Sea are facing similar challenges.   

One assessment found that 22.4 percent of elementary school children in the northern Imperial Valley, near the Salton Sea, have asthma at a time when that body of water is also shriveling up.   

The Salton Sea is fed by a few rivers, as well as runoff from local agriculture. Ryan Sinclair, an associate professor at Loma Linda University, said that the Salton Sea is being shrunk by an agreement to divert water.   

^{An irrigation pond is viewed near an agricultural field with the shrinking Salton Sea in the distance on July 12, 2022 near Mecca, California. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 97 percent of the state of California’s land area is in at least severe drought status, with nearly 60 percent in at least extreme drought. California is now in a third consecutive year of drought amid a climate-change fueled megadrought in the Southwestern United States. Getty Images}

Some water that would have flowed into the Salton Sea was diverted instead to San Diego.  

“We did have water flowing in from the Colorado River,” Sinclair said. “That stopped with the quantification settlement agreement.”  

That 2003 agreement, aimed at reducing California’s dependence on the Colorado River, transferred water out of the Imperial Valley that otherwise was expected to flow into the Salton Sea.  

“The water balance is now that there’s not enough to maintain the level, so now the water level is shrinking,” he added.   

As the water level shrinks, more of the seabed is exposed, sending dust into the air.   

David Lo, senior associate dean for research at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine, said in the Salton Sea area, the dust’s composition appears to be part of the problem.   

Lo conducted research in which mice were exposed to both general dust and dust from the Salton Sea. He said that when exposed from dust near the Salton Sea, the mice experienced lung inflammation.   

“We’re now trying to figure out, if it’s from the Salton Sea, well what’s in there?” Lo said.   

Lo said in lab studies the mice appear to be experiencing an atypical type of asthma, which the body treats more like a bacterial infection. He added that if people are also experiencing this atypical asthma, it’s not clear whether there are different symptoms, but it’s something he’d like to study further.   

It’s also not clear whether typical treatments, like inhalers, are working, he added.   

“This community is immigrant, Mexican agriculture workers. Many of them are undocumented, so actually many of them don’t have insurance, so they don’t see doctors for diagnosis, they go see family in Mexico and inhalers are cheap there,” he said.   

“So you can just go see family, get an inhaler because you think that’s what they need, but nobody’s doing the clinical study” to determine whether they actually help, he added.   

Sinclair said that many residents have also reported bloody noses.   

“There’s some other documents about bloody noses and having this sort of severe bloody nose issue that comes up in children around the Salton Sea,” he said. “It’s something that all the community members I’ve talked to — everybody says it.”  

As hotter temperatures caused by climate change cause more lakes to dry up, people all over the world could face similar problems. “There are going to be similar impacts in other communities affected by increasing temperatures, drying lakes, increasing dust emissions,” Lo said.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden predicts ‘a really difficult two years’ if Democrats lose the midterms

President Biden on Monday acknowledged “a really difficult two years” if Democrats lose control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

Biden said at a Democratic National Committee fundraising event in Boston that he would spend a lot more time “in the veto” because he would have difficulty getting “anything done” legislatively if Republicans take over.

“We need to control the House and the Senate to win the race up and down the ticket,“ Biden said, according to a pool report. “If we lose the House or lose the Senate, it’s going to be a really difficult two years. I’ll be spending more time in the veto, being able to get anything done.”

Biden, however, also said that he was “optimistic” about the country and noted that he believes young people aged 18 to 30 are “the single most engaged generation.”

“I genuinely am more optimistic about the prospects for America, not because I’m president, because of the nature of where we are as a country,” he said.

He noted the midterm elections being less than two months away, again marking the urgency of issues that are on the line such as the right to privacy, school safety for kids and the climate.

“It’s about democracy itself,” he said.

He also warned that if Democrats lose the election, they will also lose a chance to codify Roe v Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned in June. Biden reiterated his support for codifying the right to an abortion and said if Republicans take over, they likely will seek ways to instead codify the Supreme Court decision making it illegal.

“And mark my words, you’re gonna see a move on other privacy issues from contraception to marriage, a whole range of things,” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Cheney: Trump's reported insistence he would stay in White House 'affirms the reality of the danger'

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in an interview that a report about former President Trump insisting that he would stay in the White House after losing the 2020 election “affirms the reality of the danger” of trying to overturn its results.

A new book to be published next month by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reportedly reveals that Trump told aides he would remain in the White House event after President Biden’s inauguration, CNN reported early Monday.

“I’m just not going to leave,” Trump reportedly told an aide. “We’re never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?”

When asked about the book’s revelation, Cheney said she wasn’t surprised by Trump’s reported comments but said it exposed an issue of people believing his efforts to overturn the election “wasn’t as dangerous as it really was.”

“And when you hear something like that, I think you have to recognize that we were in no man’s land and territory we’d never been in before as a nation,” Cheney told anchor Jake Tapper in an interview set to air Sunday evening as part of a CNN documentary titled “American Coup: The January 6th Investigation.”

“And if you have a president who’s refusing to leave the White House, or who’s saying he refuses to leave the White House, then anyone who sort of stands aside and says someone else will handle it is themselves putting the nation at risk, because it’s clear that, when you’re at a moment that we faced, everyone’s got to stand up and take responsibility,” Cheney said.

“It’s not surprising that those are the sentiments that he reportedly expressed,” Cheney added. “I think, again, it just affirms — affirms the reality of the danger.” 

Cheney, who lost her bid to retain her congressional seat in Wyoming last month, has been a frequent critic of Trump and is the co-chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the Jan 6., 2021, attack at the Capitol. 

Source: TEST FEED1