New satellite images catch world’s worst polluters red-handed: ‘Now we really know exactly where it’s coming from’

The Cool Down

New satellite images catch world’s worst polluters red-handed: ‘Now we really know exactly where it’s coming from’

Leslie Sattler – January 26, 2024

The world’s 1,300 largest methane-polluting sites have been identified from space, thanks to an endeavor by environmental intelligence company Kayrros.

The identification of these methane leaks is an urgent call to action but also a great opportunity.

Thanks to Kayrros’ satellite surveillance, the exact sources of potent planet-warming pollution are finally exposed. “Previously, we could measure the amount of methane in the atmosphere, but now we really know exactly where it’s coming from,” Antoine Rostand, co-founder of Kayrros, told Sky News.

Pursuing the where, what, and why of these polluting leaks has led Kayrros to gas wells, pipelines, coal mines, and waste sites in countries like Turkmenistan (home to the single largest oil and gas source), India, Russia, Australia, and the United States, as Sky News has reported.

With the “who” and “where” made clear, targeted reduction is finally possible.

Methane is a greenhouse gas, meaning its presence in the atmosphere can alter Earth’s temperature, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Methane only lingers in the atmosphere for about a decade, but it has an intense effect during that time (per NASA), so fixing methane leaks is immediately impactful.

Simultaneously, plugged leaks can significantly slow near-term temperature rises while improving air quality and public health.

Researchers at universities like MIT are also hard at work developing ways to capture escaped methane from the atmosphere.

The U.S. recently implemented national methane monitoring and repair policies, which are expected to eliminate 58 million tons of toxic gas over 15 years — a decisive climate victory.

Additionally, over 150 world governments have joined the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane output by 30% by 2030. If realized, the Pledge could quickly curb rising temperatures and prevent over 250,000 heat-related deaths annually (as projected by the World Health Organization).

With exact methane leak sources now in plain view from space, the path to a cooler future is illuminated.

In the meantime, Kayrros plans to continue its monitoring — and to share its findings with the world.

“Open-access climate data has a huge role to play in the climate crisis by holding governments and businesses to account,” Rostand said, as reported by InsideEcology.

“We intend to increase access to climate data and increase the basic knowledge and understanding of the harm methane does and of the failure of many governments and organizations to report their emissions of it accurately.”

Groundwater levels are rapidly declining around the world — with a few notable exceptions

CNN

Groundwater levels are rapidly declining around the world — with a few notable exceptions

Katie Hunt, CNN – January 24, 2024

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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.”

On a dead-end street in north Denver, migrants are surviving winter with the help of an army of volunteers

Colorado Sun – News, Immigration

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.

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What’s Going On With Brett Kavanaugh?

Slate

What’s Going On With Brett Kavanaugh?

Mark Joseph Stern – January 23, 2024

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 oldestmost 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 votes attempting 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.

The Farmers Had What the Billionaires Wanted

The New York Times

The Farmers Had What the Billionaires Wanted

Conor Dougherty – January 21, 2024

Jan Sramek, the CEO of California Forever and Flannery Associates who has bought up over 60,000 acres of nearby farmland with plans to build a new city, in Solano County, Calif. on Dec. 21, 2023. (Aaron Wojack/The New York Times)
Jan Sramek, the CEO of California Forever and Flannery Associates who has bought up over 60,000 acres of nearby farmland with plans to build a new city, in Solano County, Calif. on Dec. 21, 2023. (Aaron Wojack/The New York Times)

RIO VISTA, Calif. — When Jan Sramek walked into the American Legion post in Rio Vista, California, for a town hall meeting last month, everyone in the room knew that he was really just there to get yelled at.

For six years a mysterious company called Flannery Associates, which Sramek controlled, had upended the town of 10,000 by spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy every farm in the area. Flannery made multimillionaires out of some owners and sparked feuds among others. It sued a group of holdouts who had refused its above-market offers, on the grounds that they were colluding for more.

The company was Rio Vista’s main source of gossip, yet until a few weeks before the meeting no one in the room had heard of Sramek or knew what Flannery was up to. Residents worried it could be a front for foreign spies looking to surveil a nearby Air Force base. One theory held the company was acquiring land for a new Disneyland.

Now the truth was standing in front of them. And somehow it was weirder than the rumors.

The truth was that Sramek wanted to build a city from the ground up, in an agricultural region whose defining feature was how little it had changed. The idea would have been treated as a joke if it weren’t backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires who included Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist; Reid Hoffman, an investor and co-founder of LinkedIn; and Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the Emerson Collective and the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. They and others from the technology world had spent some $900 million on farmland in a demonstration of their dead seriousness about Sramek’s vision.

Rio Vista, part of Solano County, is technically within the San Francisco Bay Area, but its bait shops and tractor suppliers and Main Street lined with American flags can feel a state away. Sramek’s plan was billed as a salve for San Francisco’s urban housing problems. But paving over ranches to build a city of 400,000 wasn’t the sort of idea you’d expect a group of farmers to be enthused about.

As the TV cameras anticipated, a group of protesters had gathered in the parking lot to shake signs near pickup trucks. Inside, a crowd in jeans and boots sat in chairs, looking skeptical.

Sramek, 36, who is from the Czech Republic and had come to California to try to make it in startups, was now the center of their economy. Flannery had become the largest landowner in the region, amassing an area twice the size of San Francisco.

Christine Mahoney, 63, whose great-grandfather established her family’s farm when Rutherford B. Hayes was president, said that, like it or not, Sramek was now her neighbor. Mahoney had refused several offers for her land, and Flannery’s lawsuit — an antitrust case in federal court — described her as a conspirator who was out to bilk his company.

But she had never met the man in person, so she came to say hello.

“You might be asking yourself, ‘Why is this guy with a funny accent here?’” Sramek began the meeting.

He spent about 20 minutes pitching his plans before submitting to questions and resentments. People accused him of pushing small farms out of business. They said Flannery’s money was turning families against each other.

“Good neighbors don’t sue their neighbors!” one man yelled to applause.

Sramek, who is tall, intense and practiced in the art of holding eye contact, stayed up front after the meeting to glad-hand.

When Mahoney and her husband, Dan, 65, approached him, Sramek said, “Hi, Christine!” as if they had met several times before and he wasn’t currently suing her.

“I’d like to welcome you as our neighbor, but it’s kind of difficult,” Christine Mahoney said.

She talked about how much stress the lawsuit had put on her family.

Sramek nodded, as if she were talking about someone else, not him. Then he asked the couple to dinner. The Mahoneys agreed.

Going to the Ballot

One key difference between building an app and building a city is that a city requires permission. On Wednesday, Sramek’s company officially filed a proposed ballot initiative that would ask voters to buy in. Specifically, the measure aims to amend a long-standing “orderly growth” ordinance that protects Solano County’s farms and open space by steering development to urban areas.

Solano’s residents have consistently backed the city-centered-growth laws, so Sramek’s project is bound to be controversial. To overcome resistance, the initiative includes a long list of promises like new roads, money to invest in downtowns across the county and a $400 million fund to help Solano residents buy homes.

Sramek also revealed that he hoped to build directly next to Rio Vista, with a half-mile-wide park separating the old farming town from the new tech city. Renderings that his company released this month portray a medium-density community that is roughly the opposite of a subdivision, with a grid of row houses that lie a short walk from shops and have easy access to bike lanes and bus stops. He said the first phase of building could accommodate about 50,000 people.

Even if the measure gets on the ballot and passes, it will be one step on a path requiring approval from county, state and federal agencies — a long list of ifs that explains why large projects are usually measured in decades, not the few years that Sramek seems to imagine.

It’s a crucial step, however. Beyond amending the ordinance, a win would pressure county officials to work with Sramek, so opponents are already lining up. A group called Solano Together, a mix of agricultural and environmental organizations like Greenbelt Alliance, recently created a website that characterizes the project as harmful sprawl that would destroy farms.

The fight is something of a throwback. Whether it was paving over San Fernando Valley orange groves to build out Los Angeles or ripping out apricot farms in what is now Silicon Valley, California became the nation’s biggest state and economy largely by trading open and agricultural land for population and development.

That shifted in the 1960s and 1970s, when a backlash against the growth-first regime and its penchant for destroying landscapes helped create modern environmentalism. In the half-century since, this turn has been codified in laws that aim to restrict development to existing cities and their edges. It has protected farms and open space, but also helped drive up the cost of living by making housing scarcer and more expensive to build.

Sramek framed his proposal as a backlash to the backlash, part of an ideological project to revive Californians’ appetite for growth. If the state is serious about tackling its dire affordable housing problem, he argued, it doesn’t just have to build more housing in places like San Francisco and its suburbs — it also has to expand the urban footprint with new cities.

As a matter of policy, this is hard to dismiss. This is politics, however, so the bigger question is whether voters share his desire to return California to an era of expansion. And whether — after six years during which Sramek obfuscated his role in Flannery’s secret land acquisition, along with the company’s billionaire backers and true purpose, all while pursuing farmers with aggressive tactics and lawsuits — they find him trustworthy.

The Golden Boy vs. 1877

Christine and Dan Mahoney’s house looks onto a barn that says 1877, the year Christine Mahoney’s great-grandfather built it.

When I met the couple for an interview at their house last year, Christine Mahoney had decorated the dining table with black-and-white pictures of relatives in button dresses and bonnets. Later we drove along roads named for her ancestors.

Winding through the hills, Christine Mahoney ticked off parcels that belonged to the family, others that were owned by neighbors and more owned by Flannery. When I asked how she discerned the lines of ownership in an expanse of yellow grassland, she said: “You live here a hundred years.”

Sramek, meanwhile, talks about growth in moral terms, as if progress and wealth are simpatico and the most consequential people are those who build big things and a fortune along the way.

Driving near the Mahoneys’ ranch recently, through the same yellow hills, he posited that the mix of wealth and innovation that has exploded in the Bay Area has happened only a handful of times in history. (Florence, Paris, London, New York, Chicago and “maybe LA” were some others.) We were 60 miles from San Francisco in a place where the tallest structures are wind turbines, but his message was that the region could be an economic sun, and that bringing more people in the orbit was worthy of the trade-offs.

An immigrant and striver who at 22 was a co-author of a book called “Racing Towards Excellence,” Sramek got his first spurt of publicity at Goldman Sachs, where the financial press hailed him as a “Golden Boy” trader and considered it newsworthy when he left, after two years of employment, to chase a bigger dream in startups.

His tech career was less sparkling. After Goldman, he moved from London to Zurich and started a corporate education company called Better. It operated for two years and prompted a move to San Francisco, where he founded a social media company, Memo, in 2015.

Memo was billed as a higher-minded version of Twitter and won praise from venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. That praise was delivered on Twitter instead of Memo, which was pretty much the story: Memo failed to rack up users and shut down after a year.

His failures aside, Sramek was smitten with the Bay Area’s culture of creative capitalism. He was less enamored with the actual place.

The mythical Silicon Valley was in reality a bunch of office parks and cul-de-sacs where subdivision-grade homes went for $2 million. The more picturesque and urban San Francisco was being consumed by rising rents and their attendant homeless problems.

Complaining about the cost of living, and the region’s inability to fix it, had become something of a side hustle for many Bay Area CEOs. And after Memo, Sramek started looking for a big disruptive idea for them to fund.

“If we go back six or seven years, the popular hit in the press was ‘Silicon Valley is not doing enough in the real world,’” he said. “And I was sitting there working on this.”

Flannery Associates

Sramek likes to fish. The way he tells it, around 2016 he and his girlfriend (now wife) started making the one-hour drive from San Francisco to Rio Vista to catch bass on the Sacramento River. One of those trips, driving past pastures and grazing sheep, sparked an idea.

“What if you could start from scratch?” he said.

In a state whose agricultural bounty has historically been a function of moving water great distances, the area is something of an anachronism. For generations, families like the Mahoneys have practiced “dryland farming,” which means they rely on rain, not irrigation.

The Mahoneys talk about this the same way they talk about their land and family: with an emphasis on tradition and the romance of continuity. Sramek described the land as “not prime.”

The phrase angered several farmers at the Rio Vista town meeting, but in dollar terms it’s accurate. At the time of Sramek’s first fishing trip, land in the area was trading around $4,000 an acre — a pittance compared with a Central Valley almond orchard (about $10,000 to $55,000 per acre) or a Napa Valley vineyard (anywhere from $50,000 to more than $500,000 per acre), according to the California chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers.

Sramek starting doing research and soon found himself immersed in zoning policy and poring over old development maps dreaming of a startup city. Investors were initially reluctant, he said, so he borrowed $1 million from friends and banks to put a deposit on a handful of properties, then hired consultants and land-use lawyers to assess what it would take to build there.

By now Sramek was well networked. He had done a fellowship at Y Combinator, a startup incubator. He was in a book club with partners at Sequoia Capital. He was friends with billionaires like Patrick and John Collison, the sibling founders of the payments company Stripe.

The Collisons became two of Flannery’s first investors. Andreessen and Chris Dixon, also of the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, joined soon after, along with Moritz, who was Sequoia’s chair. All of them helped Sramek solicit others.

In a 2017 note to potential investors I obtained, Moritz wrote that if “done right” the project could help relieve congestion and housing prices in the Bay Area, and mused about the potential to experiment with new kinds of governance. It could also be spectacularly profitable, he said: Moritz estimated that investors could make 10 times their money even if they just got the land rezoned, and far more if and when it was developed.

Flannery Associates was named for Flannery Road, which borders the first property Sramek bought. Aside from that detail and its Delaware incorporation, residents and public officials could find almost nothing about its shareholders or intentions. Just that it wanted a lot of land, didn’t care about the price and was willing to strong-arm owners when money didn’t work.

In addition to working their own land, many farmers in the area lease parcels where they grow crops and graze animals. As Flannery consumed more and more property, people like Ian Anderson found themselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to rebuff its offers for parcels they owned — while at the same time farming land they rented from Flannery.

Anderson learned how vulnerable he was after a local newspaper quoted him saying that the company had begun insisting on short-term leases and that this made it increasingly difficult to farm. Later, Flannery’s lawyer sent him a letter informing him that it was terminating multiple leases covering thousands of acres.

“The Andersons have made it clear that they do not like Flannery,” according to the letter. “The Andersons are of course free to have their opinions, but they cannot expect that Flannery will continue to just be a punching bag and lease property to them.”

Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat from the area, characterized moves like this as “mobster techniques.” The bigger concern was that Flannery’s holdings had grown into a giant mass that butted against Travis Air Force Base on three sides.

The proximity to the base alarmed both the county and the Department of Defense, which prompted local officials and members of Congress to call for investigations. The investigations elevated the mystery of Flannery Associates into a mainstay on local TV news.

“The FBI was investigating this, the State Department was investigating this, the Treasury Department was investigating this — all the local electeds were trying to get information and calling their legislators,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, another Democrat from the area.

The company remained silent.

Sramek said Flannery had operated in secret to prevent landowners from jacking up prices, and defended the lawsuits as just. He argued that while some farmers didn’t want to sell, most had done so willingly — at prices no other buyer could offer.

“We paid way over market value, and created hundreds of millionaires in the process,” he said. “We are glad that we have been able to settle most of our disputes, and we are open to settling the remaining ones.”

A Simple Case of Wealthy Landowners?

By 2023, Sramek and his investors were in deep. Flannery had spent some $900 million buying 60,000 acres. The first two rounds of funding, at about $10 million each, had ballooned to several more rounds at $100 million each. (Sramek said the company had now raised “more than $900 million” but would not be more specific.)

Big investors begot bigger investors, and the list expanded to a roster of Silicon Valley heavyweights including Hoffman and Powell Jobs.

The company’s offers became so generous that many farmers decided they couldn’t refuse.

The Mahoneys sold Flannery a few hundred acres early on. (Their land is owned by several different entities and hard to tally overall, but in the 1960s Christine Mahoney’s father told a newspaper that he had 16,000 acres in the area.) But as Flannery gobbled more of the land around them, Christine Mahoney said, she realized that something big was happening and that their entire farming business could be at risk. So the family stopped selling to Flannery. The company persisted with more offers, however, improving terms and increasing prices to levels that would have netted tens of millions of dollars. The family continued to say no.

Flannery arrived while the Mahoneys were in the midst of transition. Over 150 years, the family’s company, R. Emigh Livestock, had expanded from two dozen lambs to one of largest sheep farmers in California. Christine Mahoney’s father was in his 90s (he died last year) and she was passing leadership to her son Ryan, who said his wish was to stay there until he was in his 90s, too.

You wouldn’t know it from her jeans or penchant for nostalgia, but Christine Mahoney had spent her career running a corporation, one whose business was raising lambs and cattle. She was, like Sramek, a CEO.

And after years of back and forth, one thing Flannery’s entreaties had made clear was that there was one property the Mahoneys owned that it coveted above the others: Goose Haven Ranch. But Goose Haven was the one the family was most protective of. It had been the center of the lambing operation long enough that the road leading up to it was designed for wagon traffic.

Elsewhere in the county, Flannery had started buying into farms by acquiring shares from family members who wanted out, then becoming what amounted to unwelcome partners with the ones who remained. Two of these arrangements led to lawsuits between Flannery and the other owners. Both settled, but one of them netted a trove of emails and text messages among several neighbors including the Mahoneys.

In May, Flannery used those messages to file an antitrust suit against the Mahoneys and several holdouts. The suit contended that the farmers were colluding to raise prices, describing them as “wealthy landowners who saw an opportunity to conspire, collude, price fix and illegally overcharge Flannery.” It asked for $510 million in damages.

The complaint describes the messages (like Christine Mahoney writing to a neighbor, “That’s great that we can support each other!”) as “a smoking gun” proving that the defendants did want to sell but at even higher prices than Flannery was offering.

In a joint motion to dismiss, lawyers for the Mahoneys and other defendants described Flannery’s lawsuit as “a ham-fisted intimidation technique” designed to smother them with legal fees.

Even after being sued, the Mahoneys still had no idea who Flannery actually was.

The Campaign Apology Tour

In August, The New York Times broke the news of who was behind the purchases. Sramek confirmed his role, and soon topped his LinkedIn profile with a new title: CEO of California Forever, the company’s new name.

He has been in campaign mode ever since, meeting with elected officials, union leaders and environmental groups. California Forever has opened four offices across the county, and Solano’s freeways are now plastered with California Forever billboards.

In a state where it can take years to get a duplex approved, Sramek seems to have calculated that his project is too big to fail. Developers, planners and lawyers I spoke to all expected the project to either never happen or take at least 20 years. Whether out of bluster, delusion or confidence, Sramek, who recently bought a house in nearby Fairfield, said he had promised his wife that their infant daughter would start school in the development he wanted to build.

He didn’t find some secret hack that can make California an easier place to build. Rather, he believes the state’s attitude toward growth is changing. Californians, he thinks, have grown frustrated — with punishing housing costs, with homelessness, with the state’s inability to complete projects like the high-speed rail line that was supposed to connect the Bay Area and Los Angeles but has stalled. So just maybe his will, and gobs of money, can create a new posture toward growth.

“There’s a cultural moment where we realize the pendulum has gone too far,” Sramek said. “We can’t say we are about economic opportunity and working-class Californians are leaving the state every year.”

Last year’s event in Rio Vista was held at the end of lambing season in December. Before the meeting, I dropped by a barn with the Mahoneys where a group of “bummers” — lambs born weak or to overburdened ewes — were in sawdust pens drinking milk. They would be chops in less than a year, and Christine Mahoney cooed to them between my questions.

I asked her a crass but obvious one: why the money from Sramek, those tens of millions, wasn’t enticing.

“Everybody has their price, right?” she said. “I’ve heard that so many times. ‘Everybody has their number — what’s your number?’ I guess I haven’t found it yet.”

“When God calls us home, that’s our number,” Dan Mahoney joked. “Totally different philosophy.”

On Wednesday, Sramek returned to the American Legion post in Rio Vista. This time he had arrived as part of a kickoff event for the ballot initiative. Neighbors and protesters had returned but were prohibited from going inside, where slides of maps and renderings were presented to the press, and details about design were discussed.

The maps had a curious detail: On the edge of the proposed community’s downtown, was Goose Haven Ranch.

The night before the meeting, the Mahoneys sold it. They got about $23 million.

I Was Diagnosed With Colon Cancer at 32. Here Are the First Symptoms I Had

Self

I Was Diagnosed With Colon Cancer at 32. Here Are the First Symptoms I Had

Julia Ries – January 18, 2024

Raquel A./powerofforever/Getty Images

Raquel A., 33, never guessed she had cancer, even though she had symptoms that worried her. A few years ago, her bowel movements became increasingly frequent and abnormal, which she figured was due to undiagnosed irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or a food intolerance. She didn’t have health insurance, so she put off going to the doctor and tried to ease her discomfort with fiber supplements and dietary changes. After getting a job that offered medical coverage, she saw a primary care physician, who told her she likely just had anxiety. Her symptoms worsened, and in 2023, she was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. Raquel has been sharing her experience with the condition—as well as what she wants others to know about seeking help as early as possible—on TikTok. Here’s her story, as told to health writer Julia Ries.

I first started having noticeable gastrointestinal issues in 2019, right before the pandemic. I was living with a roommate, and one day we started talking about how I was going to the bathroom all the time. I could go number two 8 to 10 times a day and never feel like I had a complete bowel movement. I told my roommate I suspected I wasn’t getting enough fiber, or perhaps I simply wasn’t eating “healthy enough.” Maybe I had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or a gluten or dairy sensitivity. It never occurred to me that I might have cancer.

I didn’t have health insurance. As a result, going to the doctor—unless I had an absolute emergency—wasn’t something I did in my 20s. Instead of checking in with a primary care doctor, I started intermittently taking Metamucil, a fiber supplement, to help regulate my bowel movements and treat random bouts of diarrhea. This helped, at least for a little while.

In 2021, I moved to the greater Seattle area, where I landed a job in the tech industry and, with it, good health insurance. My symptoms remained quiet until they came back in 2022. I was going to the bathroom a lot again, and my bowel movements became uncomfortable. My stools were pencil-thin, sometimes orangish-red in color, and occasionally there’d be a little blood. I got abnormally full after eating. I was bloated, no matter what I ate—I tried being dairy-free, then gluten-free. Looking back, these were major warning signs that something was wrong, and I wouldn’t find out until later that they were classic signs of colorectal cancer.

I scheduled a physical—my first in over a decade—in May of 2023. I told my doctor about the digestive issues I’d been experiencing since 2019: the frequent—and sometimes painful—bowel movements, the bloody stools, the early satiety. I shared that it felt like my symptoms were getting worse, and she said I likely had anxiety—and maybe gas—and scheduled a psychiatric appointment for me.

I believed her. I thought, “Maybe she’s right: I’m worrying too much about these symptoms and should just let it go.” In retrospect, she was incredibly dismissive, which I think was a result of my being so young at the time—I was 32, a woman, and a minority. Statistically speaking, people who fall into any of those categories, let alone all three of them, tend to have their health issues dismissed by doctors.

Three weeks after that exam, I developed severe abdominal pain. It wasn’t just localized to my lower stomach or my side—the pain radiated throughout my entire abdomen and toward my lower back. It was unbearable. I nearly fainted in my apartment. I’m not somebody who’s quick to take medication or go to the doctor, but I knew something was wrong, so I went to the emergency room. Again, I doubted myself and thought that perhaps I was making a big deal out of nothing. Fortunately, my ER physician took my pain seriously—she ordered a CT scan, scheduled an abdominal ultrasound, and ran a full panel of blood work. When the results came in, she sat down and told me they found cancer on my ovaries and liver. I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

I met with an oncologist and had a liver biopsy. That’s when they discovered that the cancer, adenocarcinoma, had originated in my colon and metastasized, or spread, to other organs. I was diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer. I had an endoscopy and a colonoscopy so the doctors could get a better look—my colorectal cancer was so large and so advanced that they had trouble getting the scope through my colon.

I learned that colorectal cancer is very slow-growing. I could have had cancer for 8 to 10 years, potentially all of my 20s, without knowing it. With colon cancer, you usually don’t start having noticeable (or even severe) symptoms until it’s progressed to stage three or four. Plus, the symptoms, like nausea, constipation, diarrhea, or difficulty going to the bathroom, can be due to so many other conditions—some serious, like ovarian cancer, but others more benign, such as IBS.

After my diagnosis, I started chemotherapy. The cancer had caused a buildup of fluids in my stomach, the source of the bloating, that I had to have drained. I met with a GI specialist who advised me to tweak my diet—for example, I had to limit how much meat I was eating, cut out raw fruits and vegetables, and stick to soft foods, like pudding and mashed potatoes—which immediately improved my bowel movements. I’ve done various blood tests that assess how my cancer is progressing—including a CEA (a marker for colorectal cancer), CA125 (a marker for ovarian cancer), and CA19 (another cancer marker) tests—and have undergone genetic testing to better understand how my genes may have contributed to the cancer.

I continue to get chemotherapy biweekly, though I’ve switched to another chemotherapy drug because I experienced unpleasant side effects with the first type, and the cancer on my liver and lungs wasn’t responding to that treatment. My doctors informed me that eventually the chemo will stop working because my condition is terminal. I don’t qualify for surgery, since my cancer has spread so deeply, but I’m continuing to look into surgical options along with new treatments and clinical trials I can participate in. My chances of reaching survival two years after the diagnosis was 20%. At five years, that drops to 5%, but I’m determined to beat the odds.

Throughout this entire experience, I’ve learned how to advocate for myself. After I received my diagnosis, doctors took my condition very seriously and quickly scheduled multiple procedures and appointments for me—but that wasn’t always the case. I’d been dismissed for years, and even after I started chemotherapy, I felt as though my doctor wasn’t listening to my concerns, so I found a new oncologist who has been very responsive and attentive. I’ve learned how important it is to get a second opinion—all you need is that one doctor who is going to listen and fight for you. You might not find that person right away, but keep pressing: Getting screened could be a matter of life or death.

If I hadn’t followed my intuition—if I skipped going to the ER that day in 2023, or stuck with doctors who said nothing was wrong—there’s a chance I wouldn’t be alive. It’s so easy to doubt yourself, especially if medical professionals are downplaying your symptoms, but if you feel like something is wrong, go with your gut. It’s usually right.

Related:

Colon cancer is killing more younger men and women than ever, new report finds

NBC News

Colon cancer is killing more younger men and women than ever, new report finds

Erika Edwards and Jessica Herzberg – January 17, 2024

Report shows colorectal cancer is deadliest cancer for men under age 50Scroll back up to restore default view.

Colorectal cancer is the deadliest cancer for men under age 50 — and the second deadliest cancer among women in the same age group, behind breast cancer.

The incidence of colon cancer has been rising for at least the last two decades, when it was the fourth-leading cause of cancer death for both men and women under 50.

Among men and women of all ages, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death. Prostate cancer is second for men, and breast cancer is second for women. Colorectal cancer is third, overall, for both sexes.

The diagnosis of late-stage colorectal cancer was a shock to Sierra Fuller, 33. (Courtesy Sierra Fuller )
The diagnosis of late-stage colorectal cancer was a shock to Sierra Fuller, 33. (Courtesy Sierra Fuller )

Even as overall cancer deaths continue to fall in the U.S., the American Cancer Society is reporting for the first time that colon and rectal cancers have become leading causes of cancer death in younger adults. The finding was published Wednesday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

Cancer is traditionally a disease among the elderly, although the percentage of new cases found in people 65 and older has fallen from 61% in 1995 to 58%. The decrease, attributed mainly to drops in prostate and smoking-related cancers, has occurred even though the proportion of people in that age group has grown from 13% to 17% in the general population.

In contrast, new diagnoses among adults ages 50 to 64 have increased since 1995, from 25% to 30%.

Rates of breast and endometrial cancer, as well as mouth and throat disease, have been on the rise. The report did not break down those diagnoses by age.

The findings reflect what cancer doctors have observed for years.

“For a couple of decades now, we have been noticing that the patients coming into our clinic seem to be younger and younger,” said Dr. Kimmie Ng, the director of the Young Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “What this report now cements for us is that these trends are real.” Ng was not involved with the new report.

Dr. William Dahut, the chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society, said younger people tend to be diagnosed at later stages, when the cancer is more aggressive.

“So it’s not only having a colorectal cancer — it’s colorectal cancer that’s more difficult to treat, which is why we’re seeing these changes in mortality,” Dahut said.

The diagnosis of late-stage colorectal cancer was a shock to Sierra Fuller, 33, of Acton, Massachusetts, just outside Boston.

It was around Christmas 2021 when Fuller noticed blood in her stool when she went to the bathroom. With no family history of colon cancer, she figured the problem was most likely an annoying hemorrhoid.

Weeks later, the blood deposits worsened, and she started having abdominal pain.

Sierra Fuller and her husband. (Courtesy Sierra Fuller)
Sierra Fuller and her husband. (Courtesy Sierra Fuller)

“It was a month from when I got the symptoms to when I sought help, and I realize that I was pushing it,” she said. Tests revealed she had stage 3b colorectal cancer. That usually means the cancer has started to spread through the colon and possibly to nearby lymph nodes, but not any farther, according to the American Cancer Society.

It was a blow to Fuller and her husband, who had just started talking about whether to try for a baby. They decided to freeze embryos before Fuller’s treatment protocol, which would include radiation, chemotherapy and surgery.

It is an example of how cancer uniquely affects young patients.

Sierra Fuller. (Courtesy Sierra Fuller)
Sierra Fuller. (Courtesy Sierra Fuller)

“People younger than 65 are less likely to have health insurance and more likely to be juggling family and careers,” Dahut said in a news release announcing the new report. “Also, men and women diagnosed younger have a longer life expectancy in which to suffer treatment-related side effects, such as second cancers.”

Just over a year later, Fuller is cancer-free but must get regular scans and blood tests. She said that she feels good but that she is “always going to have that worry” that her cancer will return.

“If I have to go through this again, whatever that looks like, I’ll cross that bridge if it comes,” Fuller said.

Why is cancer rising in younger people?

Doctors do not know why cancer, especially colorectal cancer, is becoming more common in younger adults. Some hypothesize that increasing obesity rates, sedentary behavior and unhealthy diets could be playing roles.

“But honestly, the patients we’re seeing in clinic often do not fit that profile,” said Dr. Kimmie Ng, the director of the Young Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “A lot of them are triathletes and marathon runners. I mean, super healthy people.”

Ng suspects something in the environment may be behind the rise.

“What we suspect may be happening is that whatever combination of environmental factors is responsible for this, that it’s likely changing our microbiomes or our immune systems, leading us to become more susceptible to these cancers at a younger age,” Ng said.

How to protect against colorectal cancer

Colonoscopy screening is generally recommended starting at age 45. People with family histories of the illness may need to begin screening earlier.

A person whose parent was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 50, for example, would need to start screening at age 40, Dahut said.

However, only about a third of people diagnosed with colon cancer have some kind of family history or predisposition to the cancer.

Maintaining a healthy body weight and minimizing red meat in the diet may help reduce risk, Ng said.

Signs that could signal a problem, Ng said, include blood in the stool, abdominal pain, unintentional weight loss and changes in bowel habits.

“If it’s getting worse, if it’s not going away, you know, that’s when somebody really needs to start paying attention and talk to their primary care doctor about what’s happening,” she said.

Why the World Is Betting Against American Democracy

Politico

Why the World Is Betting Against American Democracy

Nahal Toosi – January 15, 2024

Liesa Johannssen/AP

When I asked the European ambassador to talk to me about America’s deepening partisan divide, I expected a polite brushoff at best. Foreign diplomats are usually loath to discuss domestic U.S. politics.

Instead, the ambassador unloaded for an hour, warning that America’s poisonous politics are hurting its security, its economy, its friends and its standing as a pillar of democracy and global stability.

The U.S. is a “fat buffalo trying to take a nap” as hungry wolves approach, the envoy mused. “I can hear those Champagne bottle corks popping in Moscow — like it’s Christmas every fucking day.”

As voters cast ballots in the Iowa caucuses Monday, many in the United States see this year’s presidential election as a test of American democracy. But, in a series of conversations with a dozen current and former diplomats, I sensed that to many of our friends abroad, the U.S. is already failing that test.

The diplomats are aghast that so many U.S. leaders let their zeal for partisan politics prevent the basic functions of government. It’s a major topic of conversations at their private dinners and gatherings. Many of those I talked to were granted anonymity to be as candid with me as they are with each other.

For example, one former Arab ambassador who was posted in the U.S. during both Republican and Democratic administrations told me American politics have become so unhealthy that he’d turn down a chance to return.

“I don’t know if in the coming years people will be looking at the United States as a model for democracy,” a second Arab diplomat warned.


Many of these conversations wouldn’t have happened a few months ago. There are rules, traditions and pragmatic concerns that discourage foreign diplomats from commenting on the internal politics of another country, even as they closely watch events such as the Iowa caucuses. (One rare exception: some spoke out on America’s astonishing 2016 election.)

But the contours of this year’s presidential campaign, a Congress that can barely choose a House speaker or keep the government open, and, perhaps above all, the U.S. debate on military aid for Ukraine have led some diplomats to drop their inhibitions. And while they were often hesitant to name one party as the bigger culprit, many of the examples they pointed to involved Republican members of Congress.

As they vented their frustrations, I felt as if I was hearing from a group of people wishing they could stage an intervention for a friend hitting rock bottom. Their concerns don’t stem from mere altruism; they’re worried because America’s state of being affects their countries, too.

“When the United States’ voice is not as strong, is not as balanced, is not as fair as it should be, then a problem is created for the world,” said Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s longtime ambassador in Washington.

Donald Trump’s name came up in my conversations, but not as often as you’d think.

Yes, I was told, a Trump win in 2024 would accelerate America’s polarization — but a Trump loss is unlikely to significantly slow or reverse the structural forces leading many of its politicians to treat compromise as a sin. The likelihood of a closely split House and Senate following the 2024 vote adds to the worries.

The diplomats focused much of their alarm on the U.S. debate over military aid to Ukraine — I was taken aback by how even some whose nations had little connection to Russia’s war raised the topic.

In particular, they criticized the decision to connect the issue of Ukrainian aid and Israeli aid to U.S. border security. Not only did the move tangle a foreign policy issue with a largely domestic one, but border security and immigration also are topics about which the partisan fever runs unusually high, making it harder to get a deal. Immigration issues in particular are a problem many U.S. lawmakers have little incentive to actually solve because it robs them of a rallying cry on the campaign trail.

So now, “Ukraine might not get aid, Israel might not get aid, because of pure polarization politics,” said Francisco Santos Calderón, a former Colombian ambassador to the United States.

Diplomats from many European countries are especially unhappy.

They remember how, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many Republicans downplayed concerns about the far-right fringe in their party that questioned what was then solid, bipartisan support. Now, as the debate over the aid unfolds, it seems the far-right is calling the shots.

There’s a growing sense among foreign diplomats that moral or national security arguments — about defending a country unjustly invaded, deterring Russia, preventing a bigger war in Europe and safeguarding democracy — don’t work on the American far-right.

Instead, some are stressing to U.S. lawmakers that funds for Ukraine are largely spent inside the United States, creating jobs and helping rebuild America’s defense industrial base (while having the side benefit of degrading the military of a major U.S. foe).

“If this doesn’t make sense to the politicians, then what will?” the European ambassador asked.

A former Eastern European ambassador to D.C. worried about how some GOP war critics cast the Ukraine crisis as President Joe Biden’s war when “in reality, the consideration should be to the national interests of the United States.”

Foreign diplomats also are watching in alarm as polarizing abortion politics have delayed the promotions of U.S. military officers and threaten to damage PEPFAR, an anti-AIDS program that has saved millions of lives in Africa. That there are questions about America’s commitment to NATO dumbfounds the diplomats I talked to. Then, there are the lengthy delays in Senate confirmations of U.S. ambassadors and other officials — a trend exacerbated by lawmakers from both parties.

“There was always a certain courtesy that the other party gave to let the president appoint a Cabinet. What if these courtesies don’t hold as they don’t seem to hold now?” a former Asian ambassador said. “It is very concerning.”

When Republicans and Democrats strike deals, they love to say it shows the system works. But simply having a fractious, lengthy and seemingly unnecessary debate about a topic of global security can damage the perception of the U.S. as a reliable partner.

“It is right that countries debate their foreign policy stances, but if all foreign policy issues become domestic political theater, it becomes increasingly challenging for America to effectively play its global role on issues that need long-term commitment and U.S. political capital — such as climate change, Chinese authoritarianism, peace in the Middle East and containing Russian gangsterism,” a third European diplomat warned.

The current and former diplomats said their countries are more reluctant to sign deals with Washington because of the partisan divide. There’s worry that a new administration will abandon past agreements purely to appease rowdy electoral bases and not for legitimate national security reasons. The fate of the Iran nuclear deal was one example some mentioned.

“Foreign relations is very much based on trust, and when you know that the person that is in front of you may not be there or might be followed by somebody that feels exactly the opposite way, what is your incentive to do long-term deals?” a former Latin American diplomat asked.

Still, there’s no ambassadorial movement to band together and draw up a petition or a letter urging greater U.S. unity or focus.

The diplomats’ countries don’t always have the same interests. Some have plenty of polarizing politics themselves. In other words, there will be no intervention.

Some of the diplomats stressed they admire America — some attended college here. They acknowledged they don’t have some magical solution to the forces deepening its political polarization, from gerrymandered congressional districts to a fractured media landscape.

They know the U.S. has had polarized moments in the past, from the mid-1800s to the Vietnam War, that affected its foreign policy.

But they’re worried today’s U.S. political divisions could have lasting impact on an increasingly interconnected world.

“The world does not have time for the U.S. to rebound back,” the former Asian ambassador said. “We’ve gone from a unipolar world that we’re familiar with from the 1990s into a multipolar world, but the key pole is still the United States. And if that key pole is not playing the role that we want the U.S. to do, you’ll see alternative forces coming up.”

Russia’s diplomats, meanwhile, are among those delighting in the U.S. chaos (and fanning it). The Eastern European ambassador said the Russians had long warned their counterparts not to trust or rely on Washington.

And now what do they say? “We told you so.”

So the world’s envoys are reconsidering how their governments can deal with this America for many years and presidents to come.

Some predicted that a Republican win in November would mean their countries would have to become more transactional in their relationship with the United States instead of counting on it as a partner who’ll be there no matter what. Embassies already are beefing up their contacts among Republicans in case they win back the White House.

“Most countries will be in defensive positions, because the asymmetry of power between them and the United States is such that there’s little proactively or offensively that you can do to impact that,” said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States.

When I asked diplomats what advice they’d offer America’s politicians if they were free to do so, several said the same thing: Find a way to overcome your divisions, at least when it comes to issues that reverberate beyond U.S. borders.

“Please create a consensus and a long-term foreign policy,” said Santos, the former Colombian ambassador. “When you have consensus, you don’t let the internal issues create an international foreign policy crisis.”

Davos: Global crises set to dominate gathering of business leaders

BBC News

Davos: Global crises set to dominate gathering of business leaders

Faisal Islam – Economics editor – January 15, 2024

A woman takes a picture in front of a screen displaying AI-generated artwork
A woman takes a picture in front of a screen displaying AI-generated artwork

Just a week ago, the expectation about the latest gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was of a line being drawn under three years of pandemic, lockdown and Ukraine war energy shocks.

Inflation is falling, and 2024 was set to be the year that central banks start cutting interest rates, including here in the UK. In three years of different rolling, merging global crises, the world economy has been in the shadow of massive geopolitical shifts.

The events of the past few days shows that the “polycrisis” is far from over.

Perhaps the most telling development has been the ability of the Houthis to use relatively cheap drones and armaments to cause havoc with world trade. Air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen were carried out explicitly to keep the currents of trade and economic recovery flowing through the straits leading to the Suez Canal.

But oil prices jumped on Friday because the risk of a wider confrontation in the region has also gone up. In three months the crisis in Gaza has led to RAF jets attacking targets in Aden. What will be happening three months from now?

As it happens, this sort of fundamental diplomatic challenge is made for the World Economic Forum. Launched in 1971, and held every year in the Alpine ski resort of Davos, the conference puts together the world’s top business people and politicians, as well as key players from charity and academia.

Where else would the Israeli president, Saudi foreign minister and Qatari prime minister be present in the same space at the same time, alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Premier Li Qiang?

Expectations are low surrounding the grim situation in the Middle East, but this is the sort of place where constructive and unexpected conversations can take place discreetly.

There had been a whiff of decay about Davos since the pandemic. G7 leader appearances were getting rarer. Rishi Sunak hasn’t been and isn’t going this week. In a huge year for elections across the globe the US delegation this year is particularly thin. Republicans in particular view the event with some suspicion.

The Republican Party’s Ron DeSantis, a potential presidential candidate, last year called Davos a “threat to freedom” run by China. The Florida governor said any policies emerging from the forum were “dead on arrival” in his state. The view in Davos is that he thought that such rhetoric would play well in the presidential primaries which also start this week.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is attending, and will be mindful of “Ukraine fatigue” reaching Washington DC and becoming prevalent in developing countries.

Police at Davos
Security is always tight at the Davos gathering

For the UK, some in the business community appear ready to go beyond a curious interest in the Labour Party in this election year.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves will be competing for the attention of UK business leaders and international investors.

If business investors are worried about Labour’s economic plans, for example for extra investment spending, the World Economic Forum is exactly where it may, or may not surface. I recall then-opposition leader David Cameron’s parade of meetings with world leaders, just before he became prime minister in 2010.

There has been a backlash against some of the corporate do-gooding typical of the event, especially the recent focus by investors on companies’ environmental and social policies.

Put brutally, the world of the past two years has seen massive returns for hydrocarbon extractors, carbon emitters and arms companies.

The optimism will come from a hope that disturbed geopolitics can somehow settle without a further energy shock.

Artificial intelligence will be everywhere, with the ChatGPT-creating Open AI boss Sam Altman being paraded to the world’s business and political leaders by Microsoft, which is now vying with Apple to be the world’s biggest company.

So at the start of a delicate year of disorder and uncertainty in global politics and diplomacy, and question marks about economic recovery from years of such crisis, it is difficult to imagine a better moment for a gathering like the World Economic Forum this week.

The task is to travel towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It will not be easy.

Davos Elite Size Up the Global Risks of Another Trump Presidency

Bloomberg

Bloomberg

Davos Elite Size Up the Global Risks of Another Trump Presidency

Francine Lacqua – January 15, 2024

(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump is thousands of miles away from the Alpine Swiss town of Davos but talk of his possible return to the White House is on everyone’s lips even before the annual shindig of the global elite has kicked off.

On Monday, in the subzero temperatures of Iowa, he’s set to cement his status as the Republican frontrunner in the first GOP contest of the 2024 election. His crushing lead over rivals appears unsurmountable and polls show Trump and US President Joe Biden facing off and in a dead heat.

Last seen mingling with the Davos crowd in 2020, when he made a dramatic entrance by landing with a squadron of helicopters, Trump is the last US leader to have shown up at the World Economic Forum but has remained a popular topic of conversation for attendees ranging from CEOs, financiers and policymakers.

“You know, we’ve been there before, we survived it, so we’ll see what it means,” BlackRock Inc. Vice Chairman Philipp Hildebrand said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Certainly from a European perspective, from a kind of globalist, Atlanticist perspective, it’s of course a great concern.”

The former Swiss National Bank president shared the assessment of European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, who last week said in plain language unusual for a central banker that another term of Trump would clearly be a threat.

Former US Vice President Al Gore, of course, is no stranger to political shocks having come within a whisker of becoming president himself almost a quarter of a century ago. These days he’s better known for being a climate warrior but he shared some caveats about assuming Trump is an inevitability even as the Republican candidate.

“I don’t think that it’s a foregone conclusion,” he told Bloomberg Television in Davos. “I’ve been through the process, I’ve run four national campaigns over the years and seen it from that perspective. I’ve seen a lot of surprises over the years. Something tells me this may be a year of significant surprises. I hope it’s the case because I don’t want to see him re-nominated and re-elected.”

He even issued a warning about not overplaying the importance of the Iowa vote.

“I’m not sure they’re as significant as some believe, he said. “There have been so many examples – last time in 2016 Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucus, and then it mattered not a whit. We’ve seen others win the Iowa caucus on the Republican side and then disappear.”

–With assistance from Laura Millan and Zoe Schneeweiss.