Trump Attempted a Coup. Here’s Why That Still Matters
Molly Jong-Fast
The last couple of weeks have yielded a flood of insights about what, exactly, happened in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection, and they paint a picture of a president who would do anything—*anything—*to stay in office. A lot of people had long suspected that Trump would use dubious means to remain in power, but there was no concrete proof of an attempted coup until now. This was not a coup like the one in Myanmar where the military seized the government, nor was this coup successful, because our democratic institutions held. But just because Trump’s attempt didn’t work this time doesn’t mean that it won’t work the next.
The story itself—like so many things in Trump world—is comically bad, like something out of Veep. The New York Timesreported in January that Trump had tapped Jeffery Clark, the assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division of the Department of Justice (and acting head of the DOJ’s civil division), in the weeks prior to help him undermine the election results when then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen wouldn’t.
A little background about Clark: He’s most famous for being one of the lawyers who defended BP after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an event that many have called the largest environmental catastrophe in American history. He’s also famous for saying that efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions were “reminiscent of a Leninist program from the 1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy.” Anyway, that guy was basically the engine of Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.
According to The New York Times, all of this started after Trump announced the resignation of Attorney General Bill Barr on December 14. The next day Trump called acting A.G. Rosen to the Oval Office, hoping to pressure the DOJ to back his supporters’ lawsuits to overturn his loss and “urged Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate not only unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud but also Dominion, the voting-machines firm.” Rosen wouldn’t do it, however, nor would Richard Donoghue, the deputy attorney general.
Yet Trump had a believer in Clark. In December, Clark gave Rosen and Donoghue the rather Trumpy line that he had “spent a lot of time reading on the internet—a comment that alarmed them because they inferred that he believed the unfounded conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had won the election,” according to the Times.
Shortly after New Year’s, according to the Times, Clark told Rosen that “the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results.” But that didn’t happen; according to Donoghue’s notes, Trump told Rosen to just “say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” later adding, “You guys may not be following the internet the way I do.”
And then The New York Times reported last weekend that Rosen on Friday told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that Clark and Trump had “unauthorized conversations” about getting the DOJ to cast doubt publicly on Biden’s victory. The goal was to undermine the count in the battleground states—Trump’s obsession, the red-to-blue state of Georgia, among them. Clark drafted a letter that he wanted acting A.G. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators, contending that they should void Biden’s victory because the DOJ was investigating voter fraud in the state (though they were not). But that plot didn’t work, either—Clark wasn’t able to get his way, Rosen and Donoghue stayed on, and Congress certified the election on the morning of January 7, despite the best efforts of Trump and many of his supporters in the Republican Party.
The coup didn’t happen, but now that we are learning the details, I’m a little surprised that there isn’t more outrage. Perhaps the problem is that a human being can only contain so much of it or that—from the vantage of the Biden era—it all seems like it happened such a long time ago. Either way, you should care that a coup almost happened in this country because democracy isn’t a given; much of the world struggles under leaders who don’t care about the will of the people. As Ben Franklin once famously said to a lady at the constitutional convention in 1787, America is only a republic “if you can keep it.”
Why should this failed coup matter to you? Because next time it may work. Because the Republican Party is already behaving like the election was stolen from Trump, when what actually happened is that Trump tried to steal the election. You should care about this failed coup because each and every attempt to undermine an election frays the fabric of democracy. (Maybe this one didn’t work, but coups aren’t generally a sign of a healthy, functioning state.) We need a narrative to fight the backslide into authoritarianism. We need reporting and clarity on just what happened between the election and January 6. Trump’s first attempted coup failed—but history is filled with failed coups that led to successful ones.
Evicted, Despite a Federal Moratorium: ‘I Do Not Know What I am Going to Do’
Neil MacFarquhar
Vanessa Merryman stands for a portrait outside of the Las Vegas Justice Court in Las Vegas on Aug. 4, 2021, after finding out she would be evicted from her home. (Joe Buglewicz/The New York Times)
LAS VEGAS — Inside Courtroom 8A of Las Vegas Justice Court last week, the benches were packed with renters and landlords battling over evictions that continued at a brisk pace despite a last minute, two-month extension of the federal protections meant to keep people in their homes.
Vanessa Merryman, 41, was among the tenants ordered to leave her apartment.
“I have never been homeless in my life,” she said through tears, slouched on a metal bench outside the courtroom as the scorching Las Vegas sun beat through the windows. She was shell-shocked that the court session that upended her life lasted all of 15 minutes. “I do not know what I am going to do,” she said. “It is really scary.”
The federal moratorium on evictions — combined with billions of dollars in rent subsidies — was supposed to avert the scenario of millions of Americans being turned out of their homes after they lost their jobs during the pandemic and were unable to afford their rent.
Yet despite these efforts, many local governments and courts were not sure how to apply the extension, and desperate tenants continued to flood local government websites seeking rental assistance that was usually slow in coming.
“The lay of the land has been confusing at every level, not just to tenants, but also to landlords, court personnel and judges,” said Dana Karni, manager of the Eviction Right to Counsel Project in Houston. “While the extension of CDC protections is much needed, the confusion that surrounds its existence waters down its impact.”
In extending the moratorium last week, the Biden administration hinged it to high local coronavirus infection rates — the idea being that protection was warranted in areas where the virus was surging. Clark County, including Las Vegas, was among hundreds of counties that meet the criterion for high infection rates, but the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave some leeway to judges to instead apply state laws, which at times allowed for evictions.
For many tenants, it was too late anyway. With state moratoriums expiring and the expectation that the federal guidelines would be gone soon, court dockets like those in Las Vegas overflowed with eviction cases. Tenants had to actively file for protection under the CDC measures, but many of them were unaware of that. And as eviction proceedings rolled forward, some landlords won, citing reasons other than nonpayment of rent for seeking to remove tenants.
More than 1.4 million Americans expect to be evicted in the next two months, according to a survey completed by the U.S. Census Bureau in early July. For another 2.2 million people, the prospect is “somewhat likely.”
The areas bracing for the hardest hits are in high-population, high-rent states such as California, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, along with other states across the South including Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
Organizations that advise low-income tenants from Atlanta to Houston to Las Vegas all said that they feared the fallout.
“The volume is unlike anything we have ever seen before,” said Bailey Bortolin, the statewide policy director for the Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers.
The moratorium is intended to help states buy time to distribute the aid. Congress allocated some $47 billion in rental assistance, but just $3 billion had been distributed by June, according to the Treasury Department. Many county governments, the branch usually designated to process applications, are straining to build systems from scratch to distribute the money even while the tempo of evictions increases.
Georgia has paid out just over $16 million from $989 million in federal rental assistance funds. Florida got $871 million, but has only disbursed $23.2 million.
In Clark County, home to most of Nevada’s population, the CARES Housing Assistance Program has distributed more than $162 million in rent, utilities and mortgage payments to more than 29,500 households since July 2020, but that is still less than half the state’s full allocation.
Around 50,000 people are behind on rent and could face eviction in Clark County, where the state moratorium expired on June 1, said Justin Jones, a county commissioner.
“It would be devastating if we have that number of people evicted from their homes in the near future,” he said. “The reality is that we do not have anywhere for them to go.”
Thousands of homeless people already crowd downtown Las Vegas and elsewhere in the county.
After the state moratorium expired, Nevada implemented a new law pausing evictions so long as the tenant had an application for rental assistance pending.
At the Las Vegas Justice Court, the largest of some 40 courts hearing eviction cases in Nevada, Hearing Master David F. Brown did not allow for much wriggle room. If tenants showed proof that they had applied for rental assistance, they could stay in their homes. If not, or if they had more than a year of late payments, the maximum amount covered by the assistance program, they were usually forced out. Nevada judges tended to emphasize state laws rather than the CDC guidelines.
Dejonae King, 33, held back tears after she lost her eviction appeal. King was laid off from Walgreens and has been without a job for most of the pandemic. She had not paid the $253 weekly rent on her one-bedroom apartment since July 2020.
“I thought the rules would protect me,” she said.
Merryman had managed to pay $10,000 in rent from government subsidies last year, but she lost her business and her boyfriend’s lengthy struggle with COVID interrupted her efforts to apply for more. It took her four months to reset her lost password for the website to apply for government payments.
Meanwhile, many landlords are caught in a vicious cycle, constantly in court but never quite made whole, said Susy Vasquez, executive director of the Nevada State Apartment Association, the largest organization for landlords.
Ron Scapellato, 54, a landlord in Clark County with 50 units and an air-conditioning business, said he soured on the moratorium after he watched some tenants spend their stimulus checks on new televisions rather than paying back rent. His mortgage and other bills continued to pile up, he said, so he went to court.
“I understand that they do not want to throw people out, but I also want my rent,” he said.
The extension still might face legal challenges. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court questioned whether the CDC had the authority to issue such a sweeping national mandate.
Because the federal moratorium technically lapsed for a few days, some landlords went ahead with evictions.
Hours before the reprieve from the White House, sheriff’s deputies arrived outside Hope Brasseaux’s house in Columbus, Georgia, to implement an eviction order issued a month earlier. Brasseaux, an unemployed waitress, received just 12 hour’s notice. She applied for assistance toward her $700 monthly rent in the spring, but the government portal shows her request as still under review.
“I wish it would have happened a day sooner,” she said of the two-month extension by the Biden administration.
In Nevada, evictions are designed to move faster than in most states, with renters in debt typically given seven days to pay what they owe or move out. Unique to the state, the onus is on the renter to initiate a court challenge, which can pause the process, but many residents do not know that.
Most evictions do not make it to court, Bortolin said. “When people hear the word moratorium they think they don’t have to act,” she said. “Thousands of people in Nevada alone were evicted because they thought they could not be.”
The strain of the pandemic has been especially hard on hourly workers in Las Vegas. Unemployment in Clark County hit a high of almost 370,000 in April 2020, more than 33%. It remains at almost 10%, according to state labor statistics.
After the casinos shuttered last year, Stephanie Pirrone, 52, said her husband’s Lyft customers disappeared, while she lost her job at an Amazon returns center.
She and her husband, angered that their landlord chipped away at their $15,000 government rental assistance with late fees and other fines, decided to fight their eviction, but many of their neighbors did not, she said. “People are scared so they just move out.”
Tawana Smith, who in April 2020 lost her $45,000-a-year job managing a convenience store, has returned to Las Vegas Justice Court three times since November to fight eight attempts at eviction.
The moratorium had blocked the first few attempted evictions, said Smith, whose five children range in age from 2 to 12.
But when the most recent notice appeared last week, she decided to relinquish the low, brown stucco house that her family has called home for almost two years, paying $1,400 in monthly rent.
The family tried unsuccessfully to raise the $5,000 needed to rent a different house by selling crafts and through a crowdfunding campaign. They now dread the next step, living in one hotel room, she said. Smith said she wanted to avoid getting the children settled in school and then pulling them out when one eviction notice or another eventually succeeded.
“We don’t want to fight anymore to stay here,” she said. “We want to put this madness behind us.”
The war against the coronavirus is now a ‘war against ourselves:’ Doctor
Anjalee Khemlani, Senior Reporter August 10, 2021
Government officials and health experts are leaning on the private sector to lead the U.S. out of a coronavirus surge caused by the highly infectious Delta variant.
The reason lies largely in the fact that the federal government won’t issue a blanket mask or vaccine mandate, and some states are actively fighting mitigation measures.
“We don’t have the ability to function as a country,” said Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a top infectious disease expert.
We are facing a “formidable version of the virus, and we have no unity in the battle against it,” he added.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said as much on MSNBC Tuesday, noting that while the federal government won’t implement mandates, “under certain circumstances, mandates should be done” in the U.S.
New York and Washington are among states mandating government employees be fully vaccinated, while Florida’s governor has threatened to withhold funding to schools and salaries of school officials that try to implement mask mandates.
On the flip side, the private sector has taken on the burden to implement mandates — whether it be mask mandates in buildings or vaccinations for employees.
“I think it’s sad that it’s come to that, we shouldn’t need to do that,” said Dr. Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a top vaccine expert.
Offit told Yahoo Finance that in addition, vaccination certificates or vaccine passports — required in some European countries and, similarly in New York City — are another key tool the U.S. is not implementing.
It’s why the steps Norwegian has taken against Florida could just be the first of many, as the private sector takes on the role of public health officiant, he said.
“That’s the fight you’re about to see,” Offit said.
“It’s hard to watch us fight in this because it’s not a war just against the virus. In many ways, it’s become a war against ourselves,” he said.
Offit had particularly strong words for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his school mask moratorium. “The governor of Florida has served as a friend of SARS-CoV-2 virus,” he sad. “For children less than 12 years of age, the only chance they have of avoiding this virus is to mask. That’s it.”
Though while the surge is mostly in the South, it could move north, Topol said.
Another concern is that the U.S. is unable to accurately track cases — as it is not monitoring how many breakthrough cases of vaccinated individuals are among the newly reported cases.
Topol said the U.S. is “flying blind,” setting the nation up for an even more difficult experience. And reports that the vaccine is 99.99% effective against breakthroughs leading to hospitalizations are misleading Americans into a false sense of security,
The vaccine trials didn’t turn up similar results, so the reports are “a bad, disingenuous presentation of data,” Topol said.
The one silver lining, he noted, is that other countries have seen a short burn time for Delta surges, so it could be a few more weeks before the rise in cases tapers.
“I still think within three to four weeks we may see things get better,” Topol said. “Everywhere the Delta is, it makes an abrupt turn at some point because it burns through. It’s so efficient, and it doesn’t find any more hosts.”
But until then, the full picture is out of view.
“We don’t know what’s going on. We just know that it’s bad,” Topol said.
Criminal Justice Prof Set Blazes Across NorCal as Dixie Fire Raged: Cops
Blake Montgomery
Sonoma State University/Getty
A criminal justice professor allegedly went on an arson spree in Northern California along the edges of the gargantuan Dixie Fire in late July.
Gary Maynard, age 47, set a series of fires in Lassen National Forest and Shasta Trinity National Forest, an area in rural Northern California near where the Dixie Fire, the second-largest in state history, still burns, federal prosecutors allege. California Forestry Department agents arrested him Saturday. He is charged with intentionally setting fire to public land and is being held without bail in the Sacramento County Main Jail.
“There are simply no conditions that could be fashioned that could ensure the safety of the public with respect to this defendant,” a federal prosecutor told the presiding judge Tuesday, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Police described Maynard’s temperament as highly flammable.
He has denied the allegations against him. According to court filings, he screamed at police in the Lassen County Jail, “I’m going to kill you, f—king pig! I told those f—kers I didn’t start any of those fires!”
Maynard appears to have taught at Sonoma State and Santa Clara Universities, according to faculty pages at both colleges, which list a Dr. Gary Maynard as a lecturer in criminology. His research covers “criminal justice, social science research methods, cults and deviant behavior.” Maynard’s Sonoma State faculty page describes him as having three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in sociology.
A spokesperson for Sonoma State told the Bee was a part-time lecturer in the Criminal Justice Department filling in for a faculty member on leave.
“He was employed with Sonoma State University in Fall 2020, but did not have an appointment for Spring 2021. He taught two seminars in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies in Fall 2020,” she said.
Forest Service agents began looking into him on July 20, when an agent discovered him on Mount Shasta beneath his Kia Soul, the wheels of which were stuck in a ditch. The investigator had come to the area after mountain bikers reported a burgeoning fire. When the agent asked Maynard to come out from under the car and identify himself, the professor refused, only murmuring words the agent could not hear.
The agent eventually coaxed Maynard out from under the car and asked him about the fire, to which the professor said he did not know anything about any fires. Maynard asked for assistance towing his vehicle, and when the agent said he could not help, Maynard became “uncooperative and agitated” and crawled back underneath. A witness said they later saw Maynard brandishing a large knife.
Forest Service investigators said they found tracks similar to Maynard’s Kia near a fire that began overnight at a different location on Mount Shasta.
In the course of their investigation of Maynard, Forest Service investigators placed a tracker on the Kia. The tracker allegedly showed them that the academic traveled to the areas within Lassen National Forest where both the Ranch and Conard fires sparked Saturday night. Forest Service agents arrested Maynard later that day.
Court filings describe the professor’s behavior in blunt terms: “It appeared that Maynard was in the midst of an arson-setting spree.”
Maynard even allegedly attempted to trap firefighters between the fires he was setting and the boundaries of the Dixie Fire.
“He entered the evacuation zone and began setting fires behind the first responders fighting the Dixie Fire,” court filings read. “In addition to the danger of enlarging the Dixie fire and threatening more lives and property, this increased the danger to the first responders.”
Severe drought devastates Washington state’s wheat crop
Nicholas K. Geranios
A combine transfers wheat into a grain truck, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, near Pullman, Wash. Across eastern Washington, a drought the National Weather Service classified as “exceptional” has devastated what is normally the fourth largest wheat crop in the nation. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
A combine harvests wheat, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, near Pullman, Wash. Across eastern Washington, a drought the National Weather Service classified as “exceptional” has devastated what is normally the fourth largest wheat crop in the nation. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
A combine harvests wheat, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, near Pullman, Wash. Across eastern Washington, a drought the National Weather Service classified as “exceptional” has devastated what is normally the fourth largest wheat crop in the nation. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Two combines harvest wheat, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, near Pullman, Wash. Across eastern Washington, a drought the National Weather Service classified as “exceptional” has devastated what is normally the fourth largest wheat crop in the nation. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren).
Rockford, Wash (AP) – The wheat harvest on Marci Green’s farm doesn’t usually begin until late August, but a severe drought stunted this year’s crop and her crews finished harvesting last week because she didn’t want what had grown so far to shrivel and die in the heat.
It’s the same story across the wheat country of eastern Washington state, a vast expanse of seemingly endless stretches of flatlands with rolling hills along its edges that produces the nation’s fourth largest wheat crop. It’s been devastated by a drought the National Weather Service has classified as “exceptional” and the worst since 1977.
“This is definitely the worst crop year we have had since we started farming 35 years ago,” said Green, whose family is the sixth generation on the same farming land just south of the city of Spokane.
She estimated her farm’s wheat crop this year at half of normal, and of poor quality.
Green grows soft white winter wheat, a variety that is prized in Asian countries because it is excellent for making pastries, cakes, cookies and noodles.
At least Green will have some wheat to sell. Some Washington wheat farms produced almost none because of the drought.
“We’re seeing complete crop failure in some areas,” said Michelle Hennings, executive director of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers in the small community of Ritzville, in the heart of the state’s wheat growing region.
Only about 10 percent of Washington’s wheat crop comes from farms with irrigation. The rest of the farms rely on rain, which has been rare in what is shaping up as one of the hottest summers in the state’s history.
The current estimate for the crop is 117 million bushels, down from last year’s 165 million, and there is a good chance the crop will be smaller than 117 million, said Glen Squires, director of the Washington Grain Commission, which represents farmers. A bushel is about 60 pounds (27 kilograms).
Oregon and Idaho also produce soft white winter wheat, and their crops have also been hurt by drought, Squires said.
The National Weather Service in Spokane said the state’s wheat region has received only about half its normal rain this year, and that the zone is in what the agency calls an “exceptional drought,” the worst category.
“The lack of significant spring and early summer precipitation has led to record dryness across much of the Inland Northwest,” the agency said. “The record breaking heat wave in late June made conditions even worse as multiple stations recorded their hottest temperature on record.”
About 90% of Washington’s soft white winter wheat is exported from Portland, Oregon, to countries like the Philippines, South Korea, China and Japan, Squires said.
The wheat is fetching about $9 a bushel, which is higher than last year, but that is only for farmers who have wheat to sell, Squires said.
Washington has about 3,500 wheat farmers, who last year exported $663 million worth of wheat. With yields expected at 40% to 60% of normal, revenue will drop significantly, Squires said.
Many of the state’s farmers have crop insurance that covers up to 80% of losses, but some do not, Squires said.
Officials believe it’s inevitable that some wheat farmers will be bankrupted by the drought because “there is always a thinning” of them following severe droughts, Squires said.
Green’s farm has crop insurance which will help pay bills so the operation can survive another year, she said.
“Years like this are the reason we have crop insurance,” Green said. “But usually if you get crop insurance, you are not getting any profits.”
The state’s wheat farmers face another problem: Next year’s crop must be planted in September, but there is no moisture in the ground to help the seeds take hold.
“We need a lot of rain,” Squires said. “But nothing says a change in the weather is coming.”
After the 1977 drought, scientists started creating wheat varieties that survived better with little water, Squires said.
But farmers using those varieties will still likely have to wait beyond the September planting season to sow their seeds to plant if the region doesn’t get a good soaking soon. And delaying planting might mean that the wheat grows too short in the fall to survive the winter.
During the winter and amid the region’s snowfall, the planted wheat stops growing and goes into a kind of hibernation. If the wheat isn’t tall or fully developed enough, it can result in a phenomenon called winter kill, Squires said.
He said there is only one solution: “We need moisture.”
Sicily may have set Europe’s all-time heat record as temperatures climb to nearly 120 degrees
Andrew Freedman
A weather station in Sicily may have set an all-time high temperature record for all of Europe on Wednesday, when the temperature climbed to a scorching 48.8°C (119.8°F) amid a regional heat wave that has shown few signs of relenting.
The big picture: The intense heat wave continues to roast the Mediterranean and northern Africa. The hot and dry weather has played a large role in creating the conditions conducive for explosive and devastating wildfires in Turkey and Greece.
Details: Numerous monthly and national temperature records have fallen during the heat wave, including in Greece, Turkey and Tunisia, but if verified through an examination of the weather instruments, the Sicily observation would be the most noteworthy. The previous continental heat record was 48°C (118.4°F), set in Greece in 1977.
For the record to be considered, a committee from the World Meteorological Organization would need to investigate the instrumentation and circumstances of the data, including whether similar temperatures were observed nearby.
Context: As detailed in the IPCC climate report released Monday, human emissions of greenhouse gases are dramatically escalating the risk and severity of extreme heat events across the globe.
This summer has featured unprecedented heat in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., as well as in Europe. In the U.S. on Wednesday, about 170 million are under heat advisories or excessive heat warnings from the Northwest to East Coast.
The intrigue: There are some questions about the validity of the temperature reading, however. Randy Cerveny, the World Meteorological Organization’s rapporteur for weather records, told the Associated Press the reading is “suspicious, so we’re not going to make any immediate determination.”
“It doesn’t sound terribly plausible,” Cerveny said. “But we’re not going to dismiss it.”
What’s next: The hottest temperatures associated with this particular heat dome are expected to shift to Spain and Portugal in coming days, raising wildfire concerns in both nations.
In photos: 7 countries where wildfires are raging right now
Ivana Saric
Wildfires raging around the world this week have forced thousands of people to evacuate as flames raze homes and burn across hundreds of thousands of acres of land.
Why it matters: Record heat waves propelled by human-caused climate change have triggered many of the fires burning across the U.S. West, Canada, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Algeria and Italy. A new climate report from the UN’s IPCC concludes that human influence on the climate system “is now an established fact.”
Greece
A volunteers holds a water hose near a burning blaze as he tries to extinguish a fire in the village of Glatsona on Evia (Euboea) island, on Aug. 9. The IPCC report concluded human activities are making extreme weather and climate events more common and severe — including droughts, heat waves, and wildfires. Photo: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Getty Images
What’s happening: Dozens of wildfires broke out in Greece last week after the country suffered its worst heat wave in decades.
Firefighters are facing extremely dry conditions. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the situation a “nightmarish summer.”
U.S. West
A home and garage destroyed by the Dixie Fire sits on the roadside on Aug. 9 near Greenville, California. Photo: Maranie R. Staab/Getty Images
The largest burning in the U.S. is California’s Dixie Fire — the second-biggest wildfire in the state’s history. Thousands of residents have been evacuated as the blaze has razed nearly 500,000 acres.
Algeria
A house burns during a wildfire in Tizi Ouzou, one of the most populous cities in Algeria’s Kabylie region, on Aug. 10. Photo: Ryad Kramdi/AFP via Getty Images
What’s happening: Wildfires in Algeria’s north have killed 42 people, including 25 soldiers who helped evacuate residents.
Dozens of fires broke out in the remote Kabyle region and elsewhere on Monday.
Russia
Extinguishing works continue for the wildfire in the village of Kuel in Yakutia, Sakha, Russia on Aug. 8. Photo: Ivan Nikiforov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
What’s happening: Intense wildfires burning across Siberia’s Sakha Republic have been active for months.
The Canadian province surpassed its 10-year wildfire average by 87% as thousands remained under evacuation notices on Tuesday, CBC notes.
Turkey
Burned facilities after a wildfire raged in Milas, Mugla province, Turkey, on Aug. 9. Photo: Xinhua via Getty Images
What’s happening: More than 100 blazes broke out in Turkey at the start of the month, forcing thousands of people to evacuate.
At least eight people have died as the fires ripped through tourist resorts this weel, per the BBC.
Italy
A wildfire in Sicily’s Etna regional park has triggered a large deployment of both ground and air forces to combat the blaze that’s fueled by the wind on Aug. 5. Photo: Salvatore Allegra/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
What’s happening: Wildfires have been raging across southern Italy since last month, with many regions under evacuation orders.
The islands of Sicily and Sardinia have been among the hardest hit.
Nearly 200 million in U.S. under heat advisories, warnings as two heat domes form
Andrew Freedman
Nearly 200 million Americans are under heat advisories or excessive heat warnings as dual “heat domes” affect the Pacific Northwest, Central states and East Coast.
Why it matters: Extreme heat can kill, and it can also greatly aggravate wildfire conditions, making it even harder for thousands of firefighters to contain California’s Dixie Fire, the state’s second-largest on record.
Although it is summer, it’s unusual to see so much of the Lower 48 states experiencing extreme heat simultaneously.
The big picture: An area of upper level high pressure, also known as a heat dome, is parked over the Pacific Northwest, just off the coast of Washington State. The air circulation around this high is bringing winds off land areas land areas in British Columbia, rather than the typical cooling ocean breezes that this region is more known for.
The Northwest is a region that has already seen a record-shattering heat wave that set all-time temperature milestones in late June into early July.
High temperatures in Portland, Ore., are forecast to reach 98°F Wednesday, and 100°F on Thursday and Friday before cooling down for the weekend. The typical high temperature in Portland at this time of year is 83°F.
Red flag warnings are up for wildfire zones in northern California and parts of Oregon, and excessive heat warnings stretch from extreme northern California into Washington State. A state of emergency due to the heat wave is in effect in Oregon.
The heat is also worsening fire conditions in British Columbia, where blazes started during the June heat wave.
Heat advisories also extend from Michigan to Texas, with high humidity making for especially dangerous conditions near the urban heat islands of Kansas City and St. Louis.
Threat level: Heat advisories also stretch from North Carolina to Maine, which are under the influence of a “Bermuda High,” so named for its tendency to be located near Bermuda or between Bermuda and the East Coast at this time of year.
Currently, the high pressure area is located over the Southeastern U.S. and the southwesterly flow of air up the East Coast is bringing the heat and humidity.
Excessive heat warnings, which are a more severe type of alert, are in effect for New York City and Philadelphia, where heat indices will reach or even exceed 105°F on Wednesday and Thursday, with the hottest conditions expected Thursday.
“Extreme heat and humidity will significantly increase the potential for heat related illnesses, particularly for those working or participating in outdoor activities,” the National Weather Service said.
Washington, D.C. could hit 100°F on Thursday, with a heat index higher than that.
Context: Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy is causing a significant rise in the intensity and probability of extreme heat events, a landmark U.N. sponsored scientific panel in a report released Monday concluded.
It warned of even more “unprecedented” heat events, like the one in the Pacific Northwest in June, to come as global warming continues.
What’s next: The heat in the Pacific Northwest should abate during the next several days, while conditions gradually moderate in the East as well. However, an overall pattern of above average temperatures in the West, in particular, is likely going to continue, in large part due to the severe drought in place in the region.
From the looks of things, willful ignorance is going to be the death of us | Opinion
Leonard Pitts Jr.
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King
Dr. King didn’t know the half of it.
Those words, after all, are from 1963. Back then, the idea of U.S. citizens and lawmakers attacking their own democracy would have been unthinkable, flouting precautions in a deadly pandemic unimaginable, ignoring a threat to our very planet inconceivable. Of course, back then, information came through a few reliable conduits: Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, the local paper.
There was no social media. The production and distribution of information had not yet become the province of any and everybody.
Things have changed. The unthinkable, the unimaginable and the inconceivable are hard upon us. We face not one, but three simultaneous existential emergencies, and while each is distinct, it’s time we understood that, ultimately, they are not different threats at all, but rather different manifestations of the same threat. Meaning that the insurrection crisis, the COVID crisis and the climate-change crisis are really, at bottom, just facets of a misinformation crisis.
If you consider how belief in risibly false information ginned up by social media — e.g., Donald Trump won, vaccines magnetize skin, cold snaps disprove global warming — has impeded if not paralyzed our response to these and other issues, the truth of it becomes evident. Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley are long dead, the local paper just a shadow of itself. Social media purport to fill the void and as a direct result, misinformation has reached critical levels.
It’s not that no one saw this coming. Warnings go back at least two decades, including in this very space. But the threat seemed so theoretical. Who knew that it would have such real and profound effects? Who knew it would cleave this country — this planet — like an axe, splitting the informed off so decisively from the proudly misinformed, the adherents to crackpot theories and screwball beliefs that would have been laughed off the public stage in 1963 but that, in 2021, find strength in numbers and validation online? And that now emerge as a clear and present danger.
Just this week, for instance, a United Nations panel issued a report warning that climate change has brought us to the point of catastrophe: “code red for humanity.” It’s a truth underscored by our own eyes, by the hundred-year events that now happen every year: devastating floods, blistering heat, raging fires, rampaging storms. The damage, we are told, is irreversible. We can only mitigate it.
You’d think such a dire prognosis would leave us united on the need for immediate action, but Fox “News” saw little to worry about, bringing on climate denier Marc Morano to assure viewers that the U.N. just wants to take their cars. “You’re being conned,” he said, “if you’re falling for this U.N. report.”
And so it goes.
The need to teach our children well — media literacy and critical thinking, in particular — has never felt more urgent. Indeed, it is not too much to call it a matter of survival. After all, the insurrection crisis threatens our country, the COVID crisis threatens our health and the climate crisis threatens the only planet we’ve got. But the misinformation crisis either caused or exacerbated them all. So the obvious epitaph if we do not survive these challenges would be ignominious, but fair:
Chile’s record-breaking drought makes climate change ‘very easy’ to see
Esteban Medel
A cow is seen on a land that used to be filled with water, at the Aculeo Lagoon in Paine
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – A punishing, decade-long drought in Chile has gone from bad to worse due to a scorching July, a month which typically brings midwinter weather showering the capital Santiago in rain and snow.
But a lack of precipitation this year has left the towering and typically snowcapped Andes above the city mostly bare, reservoir levels low and farm fields parched. The scenes, government officials say, are clear evidence of global warming.
On Tuesday, a central Santiago weather station had recorded just 78 mm (3 inches) of rainfall so far this year compared to last year’s 180 mm and an average amount of 252 mm, according to Chile’s Meteorological Service.
Science Minister Andres Couve told Reuters on Tuesday that the steady decline in water reserves due to climate change was now a “national priority.”
He added the government was addressing the crisis by investing in water conservation and storage, creating a post for a subsecretary of water and establishing a scientist working group on water management, as well as a climate change observatory.
“We already have overwhelming evidence and it is climatic evidence,” he said. “We are seeing a very significant decrease in rainfall and that is generating water shortages.”
On Monday, United Nations climate scientists warned that extreme heat waves, which not long ago struck once every 50 years, are now to be expected once per decade.
Droughts and downpours are also becoming more frequent, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said, and humans are “unequivocally” to blame through greenhouse gas emissions.
Couve said Chile, a long thin nation with the world’s driest deserts at its north, glaciers, forests and wetlands throughout and the Antarctic at its south, had bountiful proof of climate change in action.
“The scientific evidence is there but also the weather events are happening with a frequency and intensity that makes it very easy for people to see,” he said.
‘DAY ZERO’
Some scientists and politicians in Chile are warning of growing, and potentially irreversible, water shortages in the central region whose Mediterranean climate has made it home to vineyards and farms, as well as a third of its population in Santiago, the country’s economic engine.
Two rivers that provide Santiago with water – the Mapocho and the Maipo – are drier than they were in 2019, the driest year in Chile’s history, Public Works Minister Alfredo Moreno said, prompting regulators to clamp down on water use and seek alternative sources.
Chile’s utilities companies have invested heavily in new infrastructure to avoid the arrival of “Day Zero,” – the day the taps run dry, a threat which prompted major water restrictions in Cape Town, South Africa, and Chennai, India, in recent years.
That day however “arrived almost a decade ago for nearly 400 thousand people who inhabit rural areas of Chile and today receive water in tanker trucks,” said Raul Cordero, University of Santiago climatologist and leader of its Antarctic Investigation Group.
Cordero said the situation faced by rural communities in central Chile is likely to spread and worsen over time.
“It is unlikely the precipitation we once had in the central region in the 1980s and 1990s (will) return, or that we recover that climate,” he said.
Chile must build more reservoirs and desalination plants, which are increasingly relied on by its critical mining sector, he added.
“Our only advantage is we now know how climate change will hit us hardest, so we know what we need to do to face the consequences,” he said.
(Reporting by Reuters TV, writing by Dave Sherwood and Aislinn Laing; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
