Many parts of the world are experiencing a rapid depletion in the subterranean reserves of water that billions of people rely on for drinking, irrigation and other uses, according to new research that analyzed millions of groundwater level measurements from 170,000 wells in more than 40 countries.
It’s the first study to piece together what’s happening to groundwater levels at a global scale, according to the researchers involved, and will help scientists better understand what impact humans are having on this valuable underground resource, either through overuse or indirectly by changes in rainfall linked to climate change.
Groundwater, contained within cracks and pores in permeable bodies of rock known as aquifers, is a lifeline for people especially in parts of the world where rainfall and surface water are scarce, such as northwest India and the southwest United States.
Reductions in groundwater can make it harder for people to access freshwater to drink or to irrigate crops and can result in land subsidence.
“This study was driven by curiosity. We wanted to better understand the state of global groundwater by wrangling millions of groundwater level measurements,” said co-lead author Debra Perrone, an associate professor in University of California’s Santa Barbara’s Environmental Studies Program, in a news release on the study that published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
The authors found that groundwater levels declined between 2000 and 2022 in 71% of the 1,693 aquifer systems included in the research, with groundwater levels declining more than 0.1 meter a year in 36%, or 617, of them.
The Ascoy-Soplamo Aquifer in Spain had the fastest rate of decline in the data they compiled — a median decline of 2.95 meters per year, said study coauthor Scott Jasechko, an associate professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at University of California Santa Barbara.
Several aquifer systems in Iran were among those with the fastest rate of groundwater decline, he added.
The team wasn’t able to gather data from much of Africa, South America and southeast Asia because of a lack of monitoring, but Jasechko said the study included the countries where most global groundwater pumping takes place.
Declines not universal
The study also highlighted some success stories in Bangkok, Arizona and New Mexico, where groundwater has begun to recover after interventions to better regulate water use or redirect water to replenish depleted aquifers.
“I was impressed by the clever strategies that have been put into action to address groundwater depletion in several places, though these ‘good news’ stories are very rare,” Jasechko said via email.
To understand whether the declines seen in the 21st century were accelerating, the team also accessed data for groundwater levels for 1980 to 2000 for 542 of the aquifers in the study.
They found that declines in groundwater levels sped up in the first two decades of the 21st century for 30% of those aquifers, outpacing the declines recorded between 1980 and 2000.
“These cases of accelerating groundwater-level declines are more than twice as prevalent as one would expect from random fluctuations in the absence of any systematic trends in either time period,” the study noted.
Donald John MacAllister, a hydrologist at the British Geological Survey who wasn’t involved in the research, said it was a really “impressive” set of data, despite some gaps.
“I think it’s fair to say this global compilation of groundwater data hasn’t been done, certainly on this scale, at least to my knowledge before,” he said.
“Groundwater is an incredibly important resource but one of the challenges is… because we can’t see it, it’s out of mind for most people. Our challenge is to constantly bang the drum for policymakers — that we have this resource that we have to look after, and that we can use to build resilience and adapt to climate change.”
Is the border deal falling apart because of Donald Trump? Sen. Mitt Romney thinks so
Gitanjali Poonia – January 25, 2024
Migrants walk along the highway through Arriaga, Chiapas state in southern Mexico, on Monday, Jan. 8, 2024, during their journey north toward the U.S. border. | Edgar H. Clemente, Associated Press
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a private GOP meeting Wednesday that his conference is in “a quandary” with the proposed supplemental funding that links foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel with border security.
Neither House Republicans nor former President Donald Trump, who is the likely GOP presidential nominee after his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, back the border reforms negotiated in the last few months. McConnell’s suggested solution? Split up the two funding agendas.
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But this proposition has fueled infighting among Republicans who want stricter border reform versus those who want to stick to the $1.66 trillion deal congressional leaders shook hands on earlier in January. Sen. Mitt Romney falls in the latter camp.
What did Romney say about Trump and the border deal?
After the closed-door meeting, Romney, a Utah Republican, blamed Trump for dividing Republicans.
“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling,” he told reporters, as posted on X by CNN’s Manu Raju.
“But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border,” he said, adding, that Trump’s strategy is to allow the Republicans to “save that problem,” and let him “take credit for solving it later.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told Politico that this issue is “all about politics and not having the courage to respectfully disagree with President Trump.”
“I didn’t come here to have a president as a boss or a candidate as a boss,” he added.
Will Trump not support the border deal?
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday night, said he and Trump have been talking about the deal “pretty frequently,” and “it doesn’t sound good at the outset.”
Meanwhile, Trump in a post on Truth Social Wednesday did not hold back. He said he is against the package “unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION,” while giving Johnson a shout-out for only making “a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER.”
Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, reportedly appealed to his backers, asking those who endorsed Trump to ask him to not slash the deal, per The Hill.
But more conservative lawmakers, like Utah Sen. Mike Lee, point fingers at McConnell, and not Trump, for agreeing to the deal in the first place when all it did was “sharply divide Republicans while uniting Democrats.”
Trump Privately Pressuring GOP Senators To ‘Kill’ Border Deal To Deny Biden A Win
The former president is telling Republicans he “doesn’t want Biden to have a victory” in 2024, said a source familiar with the bipartisan negotiations.
By Jennifer Bendery and Igor Bobic – January 24, 2024
WASHINGTON – Donald Trump on Wednesday privately pressured Senate Republicans to “kill” a bipartisan deal to secure the U.S. border because he doesn’t want President Joe Biden to chalk up a win ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a source familiar with the tenuous negotiations on the package.
Trump directly reached out to several GOP senators on Wednesday to tell them to reject any deal, said this source, who requested anonymity to speak freely. The GOP presidential frontrunner also personally reached out to some Senate Republicans over the weekend, the source told HuffPost.
“Trump wants them to kill it because he doesn’t want Biden to have a victory,” said the source. “He told them he will fix the border when he is president… He said he only wants the perfect deal.”
Trump’s meddling generated an “emotional” discussion in a closed door meeting between Senate Republicans on Wednesday, as senators vented their frustrations for hours about the largely secret negotiations over emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel and immigration. The conference is splintering into two camps: those who believe Republicans should take the deal, and those who are opposed at any cost.
“The rational Republicans want the deal because they want Ukraine and Israel and an actual border solution,” said the source. “But the others are afraid of Trump, or they’re the chaos caucus who never wants to pass anything.”
“They’re having a little crisis in their conference right now,” the source added.
A bipartisan group of senators has been working for months to craft a border deal, and Trump has made it no secret that he opposes it. Last Wednesday, he wrote on Truth Social, his conservative social media site, “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions and Millions of people.”
What’s different now, though, is that Trump, who appears to have the GOP presidential nomination locked up, is now directly telling GOP senators to oppose any deal. His meddling has left their conference in even more disarray than it was already in, and a potential border deal in limbo.
Donald Trump is privately telling Senate Republicans to kill a bipartisan deal to secure the U.S. border because he doesn’t want President Joe Biden to chalk up a win ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) demurred when asked if he thinks it’s constructive for Trump to tell Republicans not to make any border deals.
“I could probably go through any number of things that Biden is saying that are not constructive when he’s on the campaign trail, but that’s the nature of campaigns,” Tillis said. “So I’m not going to criticize President Trump or his positions.”
But, bucking Trump, he said he supported passing the bipartisan border deal, which Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) has been working on with Democrats.
“Based on what I’ve seen and based on the work that James Lankford has put in, it goes far enough for me,” said Tillis. “If anyone’s intellectually honest with themselves, they all know these would be extraordinary tools for President Trump.”
During Wednesday’s meeting, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) referenced comments Trump made as president in 2018 about the difficulty of getting Democrats to agree to changes to immigration laws. McConnell, who is no fan of Trump, was making the case that Republicans should agree to a border deal now, since the likelihood of Democrats potentially cutting a deal with Trump in the White House again would be highly unlikely.
At the meeting, senators also viewed footage of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) making a prophetic warning about Russia’s designs on Europe after Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Crimea in 2014 — a bid by Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) to build support for Ukraine aid.
Tillis, who is an advocate of aid to Ukraine, told HuffPost there is “a general consensus in the majority of our conference that we need to support Ukraine.”
He warned what it would mean if the U.S. gives up on Ukraine: “This won’t take decades to regret. This will be in a matter of years. People who choose to ultimately exit Ukraine, if they are successful, for as long as I am breathing, I will remind them of the consequences I am convinced we will have to live through.”
Multiple senators described the meeting as a healthy airing of views, but none believed that it changed any minds.
“I don’t think Russia’s going to keep going,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), said when asked about the dangers of abandoning Ukraine.
“They have fought for two years just to try to get 50 miles in Ukraine. How in the hell are they going to go to Poland, Sweden, keep going through Europe?” he wondered. “That’s not going to happen.”
The United States may yet buck up Ukraine, but if it doesn’t, the isolationist obstruction of some Republicans in Washington could turn out to be an epic mistake that costs Americans vastly more than it saves. History is replete with examples of pennywise decisions that led to disastrous outcomes — and many analysts think China, North Korea, and Iran could follow Russia’s expansionary example if America goes soft on Ukraine, with devastating economic consequences.
So far, the United States has provided about $46 billion in military aid to Ukraine, plus another $29 billion in financial assistance. The military aid amounts to less than 5% of the US defense budget, which exists in part to counter Russia. President Biden wants another $60 billion for Ukraine, and a bipartisan group of senators has crafted legislation that would provide much of that aid, while also funding immigration reforms and other priorities.
Worth the investment: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The snag is a faction of House Republicans who say they won’t vote for Ukraine aid unless it’s coupled with draconian immigration changes Democrats are dead set against. Cheering them on is Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, who has suggested he’d end US support for Ukraine altogether.
The Republican withdrawal on Ukraine suggests Russian president Vladimir Putin has guessed right. Putin obviously hoped for a quick Ukrainian surrender after Russian forces invaded in February 2022, which he didn’t get. But Putin’s Plan B was a long war in which Western resolve to help Ukraine would fade well before Russia’s ability to keep the war going.
That seems to be happening. While a majority of Americans still want to help Ukraine, Republican support has dropped from 80% when the war started in 2022 to just 50% now, giving conservative Republicans in Congress plenty of leeway to cut off Ukraine. As Putin well knows, a small group of naysayers can block US policy if the minority party controls just one chamber of Congress, as Republicans do in the House.
If Republican isolationists get their way, the ramifications could stretch far beyond Europe. As Hal Brands and many other foreign policy experts argue, the American abandonment of Ukraine could be a green light for China, North Korea, and Iran to attempt their own land grabs on the premise that they’d be able to outlast Western resistance led by a fickle United States.
China may be the most unnerving scenario. President Xi Jinping seems more determined than any Chinese leader of the last 25 years to “reunite” communist China with democratic Taiwan. That would have to involve military intervention, given that Taiwan has no interest in a reunion.
The idea that an isolationist United States could stand on the sidelines and remain unscathed is folly.
A recent analysis by the Rhodium Group found that a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, without an outright invasion, could cost the world economy $2 trillion, mainly from disrupted trade with both Taiwan and China. A Bloomberg analysis finds that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would raise the cost to $10 trillion, “dwarfing” the economic cost of the war in Ukraine, the COVID pandemic, and the 2008 financial crash.
In an invasion scenario, the Taiwanese and Chinese economies would crater while US GDP would plunge by 6.7% — the worst wipeout since the Great Depression in the 1930s. In a milder blockade scenario, US GDP would still drop by 3.3%, also unprecedented since the Depression.
China would likely try to take control of Taiwan’s advanced semiconductor industry, which could cause acute shortages of electronics, cars, and more sophisticated products that would make the empty shelves of the COVID pandemic look like a time of plenty.
Loss of trade with China would be devastating, too. Donald Trump and other nationalists want to “decouple” the US economy from China’s, but that’s facile and naive. Despite efforts by both US political parties to pull away from China, the two countries hit a record level of trade in 2022 and remain deeply intertwined, with China still supplying huge amounts of pharmaceutical ingredients, auto parts, lithium-ion batteries, lower-end computer chips, and hundreds of other things. In many cases there’s simply no other reliable source for the quantity of stuff Americans consume. Reestablishing US supply chains for all of those goods could take decades and be prohibitively expensive.
Iran and North Korea are lesser economic problems, given that the United States has no meaningful direct trade with those countries. Yet North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has renounced his nation’s longstanding goal of peacefully reuniting with South Korea. Some analysts see unusual signs of preparation for war, which would endanger the world’s ninth-largest exporter, whose commodities include Samsung electronics and Hyundai automobiles.
Iran aims to be the dominant power in the Middle East. Its main leverage over adversaries would be the ability to interdict Persian Gulf oil shipments, plus a nuclear weapons program that may soon be able to threaten Israel and maybe Europe. The United States is less dependent on Middle East oil than during the energy crises of the 1970s, but an energy crunch could still reignite inflation and cause a recession.
In all of these scenarios, the aggressor nation would pay a steep price in treasure, blood, and possibly prestige. So maybe they wouldn’t try it. But the same rationale applied to Putin before he ordered an invasion that has damaged the Russian economy and caused several hundred thousand Russian deaths. Yet Putin still faces no serious domestic opposition. The Russian economy is faring better than many expected and Putin seems to be finding the resources to wage his war indefinitely.
History suggests that billions of dollars in prevention is way better than trillions in triage. The United States tried to stay out the mayhem that led to both world wars, but got dragged into them anyway. The result was 117,000 American deaths in World War I and 407,000 dead in World War II.
Many historians think American suggestions that it would not defend South Korea after World War II influenced the communist North’s decision to invade in 1950 — which brought the United States into the war after all, leading to 37,000 American deaths. Anybody who feels sure the United States can stay out of big faraway wars probably needs to do a little more research about what happened the last time we tried to stay out.
On a dead-end street in north Denver, migrants are surviving winter with the help of an army of volunteers
As the city reinstates time limits on hotel stays, volunteers are making plans to help hundreds more migrants in camps
Jennifer Brown – January 22, 2024
Dusk falls over a migrant encampment of about 10 as Juan Carlos Pioltelli, of Peru, walks into the community warming tent in subzero temperatures in Denver on Jan. 15, 2024. An American flag hangs upside down after migrants, in a hurry and out of excitement for being in the U.S., accidentally put it up upside down. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Footprints in the snow lead from the sidewalk to a path through the weeds, opening to a field that is almost invisible from the road.
North of Interstate 70, in a part of Denver filled mostly with warehouses and gas stations, the tents are flapping relentlessly in the wind. About 10 migrants from South America hunkered down here during four days of subzero temperatures, and the volunteers who brought them heaters and propane, hot meals and fresh water, are prepared to help hundreds more as Denver pushes migrants out of their city-provided hotel rooms in the coming weeks.
The dozen or so brightly colored tents were mostly concealed from view by the field’s dirt mounds, despite that they were just across the South Platte River from the National Western Stock Show, one of Denver’s biggest events of the year. As the city stayed home during last week’s deep freeze, the Venezuelans and other South Americans in the encampment zipped into sleeping bags and gathered in a “warming tent” to play dominoes and eat a pot of homemade noodle soup.
The camp lasted about two weeks, until Friday, when crews from Denver Parks & Recreation arrived and helped the migrants bag up their belongings and dismantle the tents.
They moved a couple of blocks away, out of the field and at the dead end of a street to nowhere.
The men in the encampment, near Washington Street and East 50th Avenue, are among the few migrants who are still living outside after the city’s massive effort to get migrants indoors before the January freeze and snowfall. Because of the cold, Denver paused time limits on stays in the seven hotels it has rented out for migrants, but that pause is ending Feb. 5 after the number of people staying in hotels has surpassed 4,300.
Hundreds of people — including families with children — will have to leave their hotel rooms in the coming weeks.
Jose Giovanis, left, leaves his tent as he and other South American migrants get ready to take showers in Denver on Jan. 15. Giovanis and about nine other migrants lived in the encampment with heated tents and other provisions through January’s deep freeze. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
They were offered mats in city shelters, hotel rooms and even to go home with some of the volunteers who stop by to make sure they survived another frigid night. But they chose to stay outside for various reasons — because sleeping mat to mat makes them anxious, because they didn’t want to leave their belongings or lose their campsite, because they would rather try to make it on their own, no matter how cold.
“The snow makes you shiver so much you can’t talk or anything,” said Kevin Bolaño, who is from Colombia. “Sometimes we go out to shake the tents around and remove the snow.”
Bolaño, 33, arrived in Denver just over a month ago, one of 37,600 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, who have come through the city in the past year. He spent his allotted 14 days in a hotel room, then camped outside the Quality Inn in northwestern Denver until earlier this month, when city crews bused more than 200 people in that sprawling camp to shelters and scooped left-behind tents, mattresses and furniture into garbage bins.
Bolaño, a chef who specializes in Chinese dishes, wants to work in a restaurant or for a construction company, but he has struggled so far because he does not have a work permit. “If we were working for a company, we would not be here in the cold,” he said.
He left his home in Colombia, where he lived with his parents and children, because of terrorism and poverty, he said. “The government wanted all of a person’s salary. The food went up, the services and the houses went up and nothing was enough,” Bolaño said in Spanish. “It makes a person want to leave their own country in order to be able to help the family they left behind.”
Jose Giovanis, nicknamed Valencia after the Venezuelan city he’s from, sits on his phone as he shows his heated tent in a migrant encampment where he and about nine other migrants are living, despite the frigid weather, in Denver Jan. 15. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
On a blustery day last week, Bolaño smoked a cigarette in his tent with Elis Aponte, 47, who left Venezuela to escape discrimination he felt as part of the LGBTQ community. “Here, people don’t bully me,” said Aponte, who arrived in Denver four months ago and is now living in a house with a friend after weeks in a hotel and then an encampment along the sidewalk.
In Venezuela, Aponte studied radiology and forensic anthropology, and worked in a morgue. But like many migrants, he has struggled to find work here without the required legal documents. Still, Aponte said he is glad he made the journey to the United States.
“There is a lot of good stuff here,” he said in Spanish. “The only bad thing was that we arrived in a season when the snow was coming. I wear one, two, three sweaters and a jacket here, and even with all that, it’s cold. But I like Denver.”
They likely would not attempt surviving a Colorado winter outside, though, if it weren’t for the local army of volunteers who drive them to get showers and bring the propane needed to keep the heaters running in every sleeping tent and community warming tent.
Food and other cooking and eating supplies are stored in their designated tent at a Denver migrant encampment of 10 people. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Denver locals mobilize to help via social media
The calls to help Hugo, the lone man left in an encampment under a north Denver bridge near West 48th Avenue and Fox Street, went out daily.
“We need someone to bring Hugo a hot meal for dinner tonight after he gets home from work,” volunteer Chelsey Baker-Hauck posted on a migrant support Facebook page. “He may also need drinking water and some additional propane for tonight. He has a thermos you can also fill with hot water so he can make coffee/cocoa.”
Not long after her post, another Denver resident who is part of the “mutual aid” network responded that he would bring Hugo dinner and fresh water as soon as he finished work.
The Facebook page has 1,200 members and counting, hundreds of whom are actively helping, Baker-Hauck said. She and others started the page as an encampment began to spread under a bridge in their north Denver neighborhood. For weeks, they were delivering hot food and blankets, helping migrants find apartments and taking them into their homes.
“If they choose to stay outside,” she said, “we try to help them stay alive.”
Mutual aid volunteer Chelsey Baker-Hauck, right, and David Amdahl, a volunteer with the Denver Friends Church, organize, salvage and save items left behind at a migrant encampment on Jan. 16 near 48th Avenue and Fox Street in Denver, ahead of a city cleanup. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
It was devastating, Baker-Hauck said, when the city posted notice that crews would clean up the camp last Thursday. Ahead of the cold snap, the city offered bus rides to shelters and hotels. But Hugo, who has no vehicle and found steady work in construction within walking distance of the bridge, refused to go.
For a week, volunteers packed up tents, gathered and washed coats and clothing, and saved paperwork left behind as the migrants — all but Hugo — rushed to take buses to shelters. The volunteers want to return it to the people who left the camp or save it for other migrants who end up on the street when their hotel stays expire, Baker-Hauck said. Either way, they didn’t want the city to stuff it all in the trash.
“When the city does it, everything goes in the garbage,” she said. “It’s a lot of waste.”
The tents and winter gear will likely go to other encampments, including the one near the Denver Coliseum, Baker-Hauck said.
The group operates under the “mutual aid” concept, meaning no one is in charge and everyone pitches in when they can. Baker-Hauck posts the needs of the day, and people respond. When the deep freeze began, a volunteer called the mayor’s office and said she had 15 people who were freezing at a camp near Tower Road and East 56th Avenue. The mayor’s staff made room inside a city building near Civic Center park that was opened as a migrant shelter a couple of weeks ago.
Then Baker-Hauck asked the volunteer group if anyone could pick up the migrants and drive them to shelter. Nine drivers went out in the subzero temperatures.
“They responded within minutes,” she said. “It was amazing.”
As for Hugo, he finally agreed to stay with Baker-Hauck as the city crews were coming to clean up what was left of the camp. His first night in her home, Hugo took a hot shower, called his family in Ecuador and asked if she had any books in Spanish that would teach him about Colorado history.
He insisted on walking to work, an hour each way.
Families will get 42 days in hotel rooms
The camp near the Stock Show has its own set of volunteers, including Amy Beck, a Denver resident who for years has been helping the city’s homeless population through her group, Together Denver. She focused her efforts on migrants in the past few months because they were so unprepared for the cold weather and it was so upsetting to her to see children in tents.
Beck chose the vacant field in the weeds, then helped coordinate efforts to gather tents and propane deliveries. She spent the past weekend helping set up the new camp in a culdesac that backs up to the field after city officials cleared the first one. Each sleeping tent has a Little Buddy propane heater, and the community tent — with a table in the center for meals and games — has a 20-pound propane tank that keeps it surprisingly warm.
“It’s so warm, you have to take your coat off,” she said.
Still, Beck and fellow volunteers say they have done everything they can to persuade people to move indoors. At the encampment, she pulled out her phone to show the men photos of unhoused friends she brought to the hospital for amputations last spring because of frostbite. One man lost both of his feet; another lost all of his toes.
The volunteers offer bus tickets to warmer cities, rooms in their homes, calls to Denver Human Services to find housing.
“As a last resort, we set them up in a tent,” Beck said.
Amy Beck, part of Together Denver and a volunteer working to help newly arrived migrants, stands for a portrait at a migrant encampment of 10 people in Denver on Jan. 15. Upset after seeing children in tents, Beck coordinated donations and volunteers to help migrants survive January’s deep freeze. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
She helped set up the encampment as the city dismantled the one outside the Quality Inn, which had stretched multiple blocks in the Highland neighborhood, across Interstate 25 from downtown. That camp, Beck said, was “complete mayhem,” with tents lining the sidewalk and blocking traffic, and dozens of nonprofits and volunteers coming by daily with breakfast burritos, medicines and boxes of snow boots.
“Having children in tents, that crosses the line for me,” she said. “I can’t bring myself to go through a city sweep with children present. Children are not criminals, but that’s the law of Denver.”
Beck liked the new encampment because it was so out of the way. Volunteers have collected 200 tents, which they expect to fill in the coming weeks as people time out of hotels. They said they will squeeze more into the encampment near the Stock Show and look for other spots as needed. Individuals get 14 days, while families get 42 days.
They are going to exit everyone who queued up during the severe weather. That is going to be disastrous.
— Amy Beck, volunteer
“They are going to exit everyone who queued up during the severe weather,” Beck said. “That is going to be disastrous. That said, we are prepared. It’s not going to be super comfortable but we will be able to make a very good attempt to keep everyone safe.”
She wants the city, since the Stock Show ended Sunday, to turn the Denver Coliseum into a shelter as it did during the height of the COVID pandemic. “We’re hoping the city is going to make some humane decisions,” Beck said.
The city has no plans for that, as of now.
“All options are on the table, but there’s nothing happening with that space at the moment,” said Jon Ewing, spokesman for the Denver Department of Human Services.
Denver Parks & Recreation said they provided 48 hours notice that they would clear the camp in the field Friday. “Park rules do not allow individuals to set up tents or structures of any kind so as to ensure that public parks remain open for all,” spokesperson Yolanda Quesada said via email.
In November and December, Denver was receiving multiple busloads and 100-200 migrants per day, mostly from Texas. The buses keep coming, though the pace is now from 20-100 people per day.
“I’m getting the sense that this is not going to be resolved any time soon,” Beck said.
The outhouse sits under a tree as the sun sets and temperatures remain below zero at a migrant encampment of 10 people in Denver. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Migrants in apartments facing steep rent after initial aid runs out
Volunteers are also helping hundreds of migrants who have moved into apartments in the Denver area, many of them with help from the city and nonprofits to pay their deposit and first month’s rent.
Shari Spooner, who runs a marketing agency in Denver and has family in Venezuela, started volunteering with an organization called Para Ti Mujer when migrants began arriving in Colorado. “It pulls at my heartstrings, obviously,” she said.
Spooner delivers donated clothes and gift cards to Venezuelans around the metro area, and helps navigate bureaucracy to help people get information about unpaid wages and health care. She recently directed a pregnant woman to Denver Health, after explaining to her that she could receive care without insurance or citizenship.
The woman lives with her husband and children in an apartment that costs $2,400 per month, though the first two months have been covered by the city and a foundation. Spooner worries about how they will make rent when the third month is due, especially after the woman’s husband was cheated out of his wages for construction work.
“The vast majority of the people I’ve met and helped are looking for jobs,” Spooner said. “They are looking to be part of Colorado and build their life here in a positive way. They just need that first step. I think it’s important for people to know that.”
Snow rests atop a tent at a migrant encampment of about 10 people as temperatures dip to minus 6 degrees in Denver on Jan. 15. (Eli Imadali, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Some of the men in the encampment near the Stock Show are hoping to share apartments once they earn enough money. For now, they say they are content staying put.
Daniel Escalona, 21, said he does not want to sleep in a shelter where there are wall-to-wall mats on the floor and regular outbursts among people crowded into the room. And the heaters at the encampment are keeping him warm enough.
“We don’t want to sleep here,” said Escalona, who traveled from Venezuela on his own. “With a job, I can rent an apartment. But if I don’t get a job, I cannot.”
Jennifer Brown writes about mental health, the child welfare system, the disability community and homelessness for The Colorado Sun. As a former Montana 4-H kid, she also loves writing about agriculture and ranching. Brown previously worked at the Hungry Horse News in Montana, the Tyler Morning Telegraph in Texas, The Associated Press in Oklahoma City, and The Denver Post before helping found The Sun in 2018.
On Monday, the Supreme Court affirmed the federal government’s supremacy over the states, a principle established explicitly in the Constitution, enshrined by centuries of precedent, and etched into history by the Civil War. The vote was 5–4. Four dissenting justices would have allowed the state of Texas to nullify laws enacted by Congress, pursuant to its express constitutional authority over immigration, that direct federal law enforcement to intercept migrants crossing the border. These justices would have allowed Texas to edge ever closer to a violent clash between state and federal forces, deploying armed guardsmen and razor wire to block the president from faithfully executing the law.
It was no surprise that three of these dissenters—Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch—sided with Texas, given their overt hostility to the Biden administration’s immigration policies, which verges on rejecting the president’s legitimate right to govern. It was, however, deeply alarming to see who joined them: Brett Kavanaugh, the justice who expends tremendous energy assuring the nation that he is reasonable, moderate, and inclined toward compromise. Kavanaugh’s vote on Monday was none of those things; it was, rather, an endorsement of a state’s rebellion against federal supremacy.
Really, though, should we be shocked that Kavanaugh sided with the Texas rebels over the U.S. president? Maybe not. After spending his first few years on the bench role-playing as a sometimes-centrist, Kavanaugh appears to be veering to the right: His votes over the past several months have been increasingly aligned with Alito and Thomas rather than his previous ally, Chief Justice John Roberts. This shift is still nascent, but it grows more visible with each passing month. And it bodes poorly for the country as we careen toward an election that Donald Trump openly seems to hope the Supreme Court may rig for him.
Start with that jaw-dropping vote on Monday. It’s difficult to overstate how dire the situation had become in Eagle Pass, Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott mounted his insurgency against the federal government. Migrants frequently cross over at Eagle Pass, so Border Patrol has a major presence in the area. Federal law grants border agents the right to access all land within 25 miles of the border and requires these agents to inspect and detain unauthorized migrants. Yet Abbott defied these statutes: He ordered the Texas National Guard to erect razor wire at the border, a barrier that ensnared migrants (to the point of near death) and excluded Border Patrol. Federal law enforcement was thus physically unable to perform the duties assigned to it by Congress, or to rescue migrants drowning in the Rio Grande. In response, border agents began cutting through the wire, prompting Texas to sue. The far-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit dutifully issued an injunction prohibiting any federal destruction of the wire fencing.
The 5th Circuit’s injunction effectively allowed Texas to nullify federal law, in direct contradiction of the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Some of the oldest, most entrenched Supreme Court precedents forbid states from interfering with the lawful exercise of federal authority. It should have been easy for SCOTUS to grant the Biden administration’s emergency request by shooting down the 5th Circuit. Instead, the justices spent a baffling 20 days mulling the case—and, presumably, debating it behind the scenes. In the end, all the court could muster was a 5–4 order halting the 5th Circuit’s injunction, with Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the liberals. There were zero written opinions. The dissenters, including Kavanaugh, felt no obligation to explain their votes.
In a sense, Kavanaugh’s silence makes his vote even worse: Having lodged a protest against the single most important principle governing the relationship between the federal government and the states, the justice kept mum, forcing us to guess why he voted in support of nullification. Kavanaugh evidently felt that he owed us no explanation, no reasoning behind his desire to subvert executive authority in favor of a Confederate-flavored conception of state supremacy. His extremism was therefore compounded by an arrogant refusal to justify power with reason, an attitude fit more for a king than a judge.
And not for the first time: Just last month, Kavanaugh cast another silent, startling vote that aligned him with Alito and Thomas. On Dec. 11, the court refused to take up a challenge to Washington state’s ban on LGBTQ+ “conversion therapy” for minors, dodging a case that imperiled similar bans in nearly half the states. Even Gorsuch, Barrett, and Roberts wouldn’t take the bait—perhaps because the case was entirely bogus, cooked up by anti-LGBTQ+ activists despite the absence of a live controversy. But there was Kavanaugh, dissenting from the court’s rejection of the case, telegraphing his hunger to shoot down conversion therapy bans without even the fig leaf of a genuine dispute. Thomas and Alito each wrote angry dissents arguing that the court should’ve taken the case, while Kavanaugh stood alone in his reticence to explain himself. It seems the justice wants to establish a constitutional right to “convert” LGBTQ+ kids, an act that can amount to torture, but lacks the courage to even describe why.
Kavanaugh’s hard-right turn arguably began earlier, in an Aug. 8 order that flew under the radar. It emerged out of a conflict between the Biden administration and gun advocates over a new federal rule that restricts the sale of “ghost guns.” A ghost gun comes in a “kit” that’s almost fully assembled, and a buyer can easily finish putting it together with the help of a YouTube tutorial. Once completed, the gun fires like a semi-automatic firearm. To buy a regular handgun, you have to prove your identity, undergo a background check, and satisfy other federal requirements. To buy a ghost gun, you need only place an anonymous order online. These guns lack a serial number—which are mandatory for regular guns—rendering them untraceable by law enforcement. For this reason, ghost guns are overwhelmingly favored by criminals.
Federal law regulates the sale of “firearms,” the definition of which includes any weapon that “may readily be converted” to shoot a bullet. In 2022 the Biden administration issued a regulation clarifying that ghost guns fit this definition and may therefore be sold only by licensed dealers. This limitation neatly fit the federal statute, which, after all, encompassed partially assembled firearms. Yet, a federal judge halted the rule nationwide, and the 5th Circuit backed him up. The Biden administration sought relief at the Supreme Court, which granted it—by a 5-to-4 vote: Roberts and Barrett joined the liberals, while Kavanaugh joined Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch in dissent.
Once again, Kavanaugh gave no explanation for his vote. Had he prevailed, the justice would have freed criminals to anonymously purchase untraceable, almost-finished guns online and use them to maim and kill Americans without consequence. Doesn’t such a radical outcome cry out for an explanation? Apparently not to Kavanaugh, who likes to depict himself as a commonsense conciliator on firearms, except when it actually counts.
What’s going on here? One possibility is that Kavanaugh moderated himself during his early years on the bench in the hopes of salvaging his public image after furiously assailing Democrats during his confirmation hearing. After latching himself to the chief justice for half a decade, Kavanaugh may now be showing his true colors, breaking away from the chief’s tactical restraint to chart his own rightward course. Or maybe the justice is being pushed toward the MAGA fringe by contempt for Biden, whose policies he has routinely struck down. Kavanaugh was, after all, a Republican political operative in his past life; it has always been doubtful that he truly slipped his partisan moorings when donning the robe. (Trump’s lawyers put this less subtly, saying that Kavanaugh will soon “step up” for the man who appointed him.)
If partisan discontentment is driving Kavanaugh’s growing alliance with the hard-right bloc, the development has ominous implications for the 2024 election. Already, one major Trump case has hit the court, forcing the justices to decide whether the candidate’s incitement of an insurrection disqualifies him from running for president. Another one is hurtling toward the court, asking whether the Constitution somehow grants Trump absolute immunity from prosecution for his involvement in that insurrection. More election cases will arise as the election draws nearer (presuming Trump is the nominee), many involving access to the ballot. And during the 2020 election, at Trump’s behest, Kavanaugh cast several dubious votesattempting to void valid mail ballots in swing states.
It is encouraging that Barrett has stepped up as an unexpected voice of reason when Kavanaugh defects to the MAGA wing of the court. But Barrett herself is also very conservative, and certainly not a reliable vote for democracy. If a principle as fundamental as federal supremacy can only squeak by on a 5–4 vote, no law is settled and everything is up for grabs. And that, of course, is exactly how Trump wants it.
Russian parliament examines plan to seize dissidents’ assets
Reuters – January 22, 2024
Victory Day Parade in Moscow
(Reuters) – Russia’s parliament began considering a draft bill on Monday which would give the state the power to seize the property of people convicted for defamation of the armed forces or for calling publicly for actions that undermine state security.
The move has drawn comparisons with the witch hunts of the 1930s under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin with their “enemy of the state” rhetoric, and could affect thousands of Russians who have spoken out against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Criticising what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine has effectively been a crime in Russia from the day it began almost two years ago, but the new bill aims to make penalties for that even tougher.
It would allow the state for example, to seize the property of Russians who have left the country and have criticised the war but who continue to rely on revenue from renting out their houses or apartments in Russia.
The speaker of the State Duma lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has dubbed the new bill “the scoundrel law”.
“Everyone who tries to destroy Russia, betrays it, must be pubished accordingly and repay the damage to the country in the form of their property,” he said at the weekend while announcing the submission of the bill.
America is hitting “peak 65” in 2024, breaking retirement records
Anne Marie Lee – January 22, 2024
2024 will be a record-breaking year for retirement in the U.S., with an average of 11,000 Americans a day expected to celebrate their 65th birthday from now until December.
Approximately 4.1 million Americans are poised to turn 65 this year and every year through 2027, according to a report from the Alliance for Lifetime Income. Dubbed by experts as “peak 65” or the “silver tsunami,” the figure represents the largest surge of retirement-age Americans in history.
If you’re one of the many riding the retirement wave this year or next, here’s what you should know, according to one expert.
Enrolling in Medicare
The age of 65 is “a critical year,” Elizabeth O’Brien, senior personal finance reporter for Barron’s, told CBS News.
“That’s the year you become eligible for Medicare, so most people when they care 65 can sign up for that, unless you’re still working and still in a job with health insurance,” she said.
Asked whether everyone who turns 65 should enroll in Medicare, even if they receive health care through their employer, O’Brien says in part, yes, but full enrollment also depends on the situation.
“First of all, Medicare has two parts: Part A [hospital insurance] and Part B. Even if you are working, you should enroll in Part A because you don’t pay premiums for that,” she said.
Medicare Part B covers medical services including certain doctor’s appointments, outpatient care and preventive services. For those who already receive health coverage through an employer, Medicare may be your “secondary payer,” that is, the secondary insurance plan that covers costs not paid for by the primary insurance plan, or “primary payer.”
Whether or not Medicare is your primary or secondary payer depends on coordination of benefits rules which decide which insurance plan pays first.
“Part B is a different story,” O’Brien said. “If you’re still working, and if your company has 20 people or more, then that is primary. If you’re working for a very small company, Medicare does become primary so there’s a little bit of nuance there, but basically, you want to avoid late-enrollment penalties if you miss your sign-up window which is right around your 65th birthday.”
While late enrollment penalties exist for both Medicare parts A and B, those for Part B are an even more serious issue. For each full year you delay enrollment once you reach eligibility at the age of 65, an additional 10% is added to your Medicare Part B premium. Unlike late enrollment penalties for Medicare Part A, which are temporary, late penalties for Medicare Part B are permanent.
Retirement savings
In addition to health care decisions, there are also financial decisions that must be made at the pivotal age of 65, beginning with choosing whether or not to retire, O’Brien said.
“You’ve got to think about what you’re gonna do with your 401(k). If you’re still working and you’re retiring, are you gonna roll that over into an individual retirement account? Are you gonna leave that where it is with your company?” she said, adding that there are emotional factors to consider when deciding what’s right for you.
“If you leave your job, what are you going to be doing all day — it’s good to think of that before you get there,” she said.
“If you love what you do, there is no reason to stop at 65. You know there are financial benefits and cognitive benefits for continuing to work, so I would say absolutely keep working,” she added.
A recent Pew Research Center analysis finds that 1 in 5 people over 65 choose to continue working. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that Americans over 65 will continue to rise in labor force participation over the next decade.
For those who have “had enough” of the daily grind, she suggests semi-retirement. “Maybe you’re ready to retire but you still want to do something, there’s a lot to be said about downshifting into a part-time job.”
Never too early to prepare
And to those for whom retirement still seems eons away, O’Brien says there are many advantages to starting on your savings sooner than later.
“One of the biggest mistakes is simply just to not start to save for retirement. And, you know, it’s understandable. When you are young there’s not a lot of extra money in your budget, you’re paying student loans, your rent is too high,” she said. “But that’s precisely when it’s important to start, because you really get more bang for your buck if you start young, do the compound interest.”
What’s more, while O’Brien assures young people that Social Security will most likely be around for them, she notes that it may pay out significantly less. That’s because the program’s trust funds are on track to be depleted in 2033, unless lawmakers shore up the program before then, and which could lead to benefits getting shaved by about 20%.
But that forecast is another reason for younger generations to get an early start on savings, O’Brien said.
“You’re going to be able to count on Social Security, but probably less than today’s retirees do,” she said.
McCarthy: Freedom Caucus has ‘stopped Republicans from being able to govern’
Emily Brooks – January 22, 2024
McCarthy: Freedom Caucus has ‘stopped Republicans from being able to govern’
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused the House Freedom Caucus of preventing the Republican majority from governing.
Speaking to Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo Monday morning, McCarthy the ousted former Speaker who resigned from Congress at the end of December, said questions about why Republicans opted to “kick the can down the road” and avert a government shutdown should be directed at the hard-line conservative group.
The stopgap funding measure passed last week extends government funding levels originally set under Democratic control until March 1 and March 8.
“You really should be asking the Freedom Caucus. They are the ones who have stopped the Republicans from being able to govern,” McCarthy said.
The Freedom Caucus opposed the continuing resolution (CR) to extend government funding last week, which Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said was necessary to complete work on regular full-year spending bills.
But McCarthy’s comment was an apparent reference to members of the group and their allies opposing full-year funding deals that House GOP leadership struck with Democrats — such as a debt ceiling deal McCarthy struck last year — and blocking several funding measures from coming to the House floor over the past year, preventing the slim House GOP majority from approving some funding measures sooner.
“What they are doing is they’re locking in the Democratic policies,” McCarthy said. “They’re actually spending more money now than if we go to the debt ceiling numbers. That would mean government would spend less, we could put Republican policies in. But they continue to stymie this majority to be able to do anything.”
The Freedom Caucus opposes the top-line spending number that Johnson struck with Democrats and the White House, which is largely in line with the debt ceiling deal that McCarthy struck with Democrats that they did not think was low enough.
The top-line agreement includes a $1.59 trillion base top line, a number Johnson and McCarthy have highlighted. But it also includes around $69 billion in budget tweaks to plus-up nondefense dollars for most of fiscal 2024, which enraged the Freedom Caucus. Johnson, meanwhile, has touted additional funding clawbacks he secured beyond the original McCarthy agreement.
Freedom Caucus leadership had also made a last-minute pitch to Johnson last week to try to attach border and migration policies to the stopgap measure, which he rejected.
Just more than half of House Republicans voted with Democrats last week to extend part of government funding to March 1 and the rest until March 8. McCarthy, notably, was forced out of the Speakership after pushing through a continuing resolution at the end of September.
“It really comes down to, what’s a true conservative? And I look for Ronald Reagan. A conservative is one that can actually govern in a conservative way,” McCarthy said. “But what you’re finding now is, what they’re doing is doing nothing but locks in Democratic Pelosi policies.”
“I don’t think they should continue to move to CRs. They should actually follow the numbers that was in the debt ceiling, which is lower than what they’re spending today. You get to reform it with Republican policies, because you’re in the majority now in the House. You get to move forward and layout and show the American public why they should give you more seats in the House and actually capture the Senate,” McCarthy said.
You can still be contagious with COVID if you have a negative test — here’s why
Shiv Sudhakar, MD – January 21, 2024
Michael Siluk
As the nation experiences what many experts believe is the second-largest wave of COVID infections since the pandemic started, many Americans will be checking to make sure they don’t have the respiratory illness.
COVID testing guidelines and what we know about how long you’re contagious have changed since the start of the pandemic. So we sat down with a leading epidemiologist, who provided guidance on which tests to do, when to do them and how to interpret them.
If you were exposed to COVID, you should take a test at least five days after your exposure.
If you don’t have symptoms or any known COVID exposures, you can may also consider testing before an even where you’ll encounter a lot of people or if you’re spending time with someone high risk for severe illness, such as an older or immunocompromised person. Test right before the event or visit, if possible.
How accurate are COVID tests now?
A positive result on an at-home COVID test is very reliable, according to the CDC. However, a single negative result with an at-home test may not be accurate because you may have taken it before the virus reached detectable levels.
That’s why, if you’re using at-home tests to detect an infection, you should test more than once.
If you have symptoms and test negative with an at-home rapid test, test again 48 hours later, the CDC advises. If you were exposed to COVID, do not have symptoms and test negative, test again 48 hours later. If that test is negative, test again another 48 hours later.
The emergence of new variants, in particular JN.1, has not affected the accuracy of at-home tests, TODAY.com previously reported.
If you want to take only one test, the CDC recommends what’s known as PCR test for the most reliable result. PCR tests are usually administered in medical settings, and they detect a virus’s RNA, which is similar to human DNA, Dr. Michael Mina, a leading epidemiologist and chief science officer at the telehealth company eMed in Miami, Florida, tells TODAY.com. (At-home tests are usually antigen tests, which look for proteins of the virus.)
He notes that PCR tests often stay positive for days or even weeks longer than people are contagious, making them ideal for diagnosing COVID, but less ideal for knowing when you no longer need to worry about spreading an infection to others.
Can you be contagious after a negative COVID test?
If you test negative with a PCR test, you are likely not contagious.
But if you test negative with an at-home test, the answer will depend in part “on whether the negative COVID test is at the beginning of feeling sick or on the way to recovery,” Mina says.
“If you have already been positive and are testing to see if you are recovering or recovered, then as soon as you become negative, it is appropriate to assume you are no longer infectious,” he explains.
When a positive rapid antigen test goes from a dark line to a very faint line, this means that the virus load in the swab is probably less than when then line was dark, he adds.
“So even a faint line after a really dark line means you are likely much less contagious, and no line means you are likely very low risk of being infectious,” Mina says.
But at the beginning of an COVID illness, an at-home antigen may come back negative, even though you may become infectious as the viral load increases.
“You may be starting to feel symptoms because your immune system is activating, but the virus might not yet be high enough in your nose to cause a test to turn positive,” Mina says. In this scenario, you may test positive several hours later, the next day or the day after that.
If you get a negative at-home test result at the beginning of a possible infection, keep the following guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in mind when weighing your risk of having COVID:
If you have typical symptoms with a known exposure, assume you have COVID (despite the negative result). Take precautions and test again 48 hours later.
If you have typical symptoms but no known exposure, you might have either COVID or another illness. Take precautions and test again 48 hours later.
If you have no COVID symptoms but a known exposure, you might still have COVID. Take precautions, test again 48 hours later, and if the second test is negative, take a third test 48 hours later.
If you have no COVID symptoms without any known exposure, you probably don’t have COVID. Test again 48 hours later, and if it is negative, take another 48 hours after that.
When are you no longer contagious from COVID?
If you get a negative at-home COVID test result after previously testing positive, you are likely no longer contagious, Mina says.
But how long that will take is “wholly dependent on the person,” he explains says. How long you are contagious depends on:
Your underlying medical problems
Your immunization status
Severity of your illness
The predominant circulating variant at the time
If you have mild illness or no symptoms, you’re less likely to be contagious after day five of your illness (with day 0 being the day your symptoms started or you tested positive if you have no symptoms), per the CDC.
If you have moderate to severe illness, you may have to wait 10 to 20 days after your symptoms started to no longer be contagious. It may take people who are immunocompromised 20 days or more to no longer be infectious.
If you continue to test positive for COVID after 10 days, continue to take precautions until you have a negative test result, experts previously told TODAY.com.
How long should you isolate and mask if you have COVID?
The CDC recommends using its isolation calculator to determine how long you should take precautions. Here’s a summary:
No symptoms: Stay at home for at least five days but wear a mask when around others in at home.
Symptoms improving: End isolation after five days (as long as fever-free for 24 hours without fever-reducing medication).
Moderate illness (like breathing difficulty): Isolate for 10 days.
Symptoms not improving: Isolate until your symptoms are improving and you have had no fever for 24 hours (without the use of any medication to reduce fevers).
Severe illness (hospitalized or have a weakened immune system): Isolate for 10 days but check with your doctor first before ending isolation.
Regardless of when you stop isolating, the CDC advises wearing a mask around other people through day 10 of your illness — unless you get two negative antigen test results 48 hours apart prior to day 10. (In Mina’s opinion, one negative antigen test after previously testing positive is sufficient to know you’re no longer infectious.)
Mina also provides these examples of using rapid antigen testing to see when you can end isolation.
If you test yourself and you’re positive, stay in isolation (even if it’s after day 10).
If you have access to several tests, consider repeating the test several days after you turn positive on the test. If your repeat test is negative, you can likely exit isolation — assuming you don’t have any symptoms anymore and fever-free.
If you have multiple tests with a faint positive line over several days, “you’re probably have very, very, very low infectivity, if at all,” Mina says, adding, “But maybe wear a mask, maybe don’t go to a cancer hospital or a nursing home, but you’re probably good to go back out and be with your family.”
