Texas announces takeover of Houston schools, stirring anger
Juan A Lozano and Paul J. Weber – March 15, 2023
People hold up signs at a news conference on Friday, March 3, 2023, in Houston while protesting the proposed takeover of the city’s school district by the Texas Education Agency. Local and federal officials say state leaders are preparing to take over the Houston Independent School District over allegations of misconduct by district board members and the yearslong failing performance of one campus. ( Juan A. Lozano/AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
HOUSTON (AP) — Texas officials on Wednesday announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political.
The announcement, made by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner, amounts to one of the largest school takeovers ever in the U.S.
It also deepens a high-stakes rift between Texas’ largest city, where Democrats wield control locally and state Republican leaders have sought increasing authority in the wake of election fumbles and pandemic restrictions.
Other big cities including Philadelphia, New Orleans and Detroit in recent decades have gone through state takeovers, which are generally viewed as last resorts for underperforming schools and are often met with community backlash. Critics argue that past outcomes show little improvement following state interventions.
The state began making moves toward a takeover of the Houston Independent School District in 2019, following allegations of misconduct by school trustees, including inappropriate influencing of vendor contracts, and chronically low academic scores at one of its roughly 50 high schools.
The district sued to block a takeover, but new education laws subsequently passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and a January ruling from the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for the state to seize control.
Schools in Houston are not under mayoral control, unlike in cities such as New York or Chicago, but as expectations of a takeover mounted, the city’s Democratic leaders unified in opposition.
Most of Houston’s school board members have been replaced since 2019. District officials also say the state is ignoring academic strides made across city schools.
Race is also an issue because the overwhelming majority of students in Houston schools are Hispanic or Black. Domingo Morel, a professor of political science and public services at New York University, has studied school takeovers nationwide and said the political dynamics in Texas are similar to where states have intervened elsewhere.
The demographics in Houston, Morel said, are also similar.
“If we just focus on taking over school districts because they underperform, we would have a lot more takeovers,” Morel said. “But that’s not what happens.”
Russia is so cut off from the international financial system that the Kremlin thinks Western sanctions have ‘insured’ the country against the banking crisis
Huileng Tan – March 15, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin.Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
The Kremlin said Russia will not be impacted by the US bank crisis.
Kremlin’s spokesperson said Russia is ‘insured’ against the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.
Sanctions over the Ukraine war have cut Russia off from the international financial system.
It’s been a rocky week for US banks. But the Kremlin’s looking at the bright side of things.
Russia is now so cut off from the global financial system that the Kremlin thinks it will face no impact from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
“Our banking system has certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but it is mostly under illegal restrictions from the collective West,” the spokesperson for Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, said Tuesday, according to TASS state news agency. He was referring to sanctions against the country over its invasion of Ukraine one year ago.
“We are, to a certain extent, insured against the negative impact of the crisis that is now unfolding overseas,” Peskov said, per the media outlet.
In contrast, Russia — like much of the world — faced a credit crunch due to the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, which ultimately led to the Global Financial Crisis.
International banks and accounting giants have pulled out of Russia or are working on their exits over the Ukraine war. Two days after the invasion, some Russian banks were also banned from SWIFT, the Belgium-based messaging service that lets banks around the world communicate about cross-border transactions. This ban has hampered cross-border transactions for Russia’s trade and financial systems, isolating the country economically and financially. The country is also facing restrictions on its key energy exports, including a $60 per barrel oil price cap.
Still, Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted the resilience of Russia’s economy and the country’s statistics service said its GDP contracted by just 2.1% in 2022 — although there are some questions over its numbers because it stopped publishing certain key economic statistics last year.
Russia wants to recover debris of US drone from Black Sea
Elena Becatoros and Darlene Superville – March 15, 2023
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, right, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, attend a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Wednesday, March 15, 2023, at the Pentagon in Washington. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Pool via AP)A view of the town of Bakhmut, the site of the heaviest battles with the Russian troops, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Roman Chop)Curtains blow in a flat in the building damaged by shelling at the scene of the heaviest battles with Russian troops in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Roman Chop)In this handout photo taken from video and released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, the Russian army’s 152-mm howitzer “Hyacinth-B” fires at Ukrainian troops at an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia wants to recover the fragments of a U.S. surveillance drone that American forces brought down in the Black Sea after an encounter with a Russian fighter jet, a Russian security official said Wednesday.
Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, claimed in televised remarks that Tuesday’s incident was “another confirmation” of direct U.S. involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. He said Russia planned to search for the drone’s debris.
“I don’t know if we can recover them or not, but we will certainly have to do that, and we will deal with it,” Patrushev said. “I certainly hope for success.”
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the drone was flying in international airspace and over international waters when a Russian fighter jet struck the propeller of the MQ-Reaper drone.
U.S. officials accused Russia of attempting to intercept the unmanned aerial vehicle, although its presence over the Black Sea was not an uncommon occurrence.
“It is also not uncommon for the Russians to try to intercept them,” Kirby said, adding that such an encounter “does increase the risk of miscalculations, misunderstandings.”
Kirby said the drone had not yet been recovered and it was unclear whether it would be, but the U.S. “took steps to protect the information and to protect, to minimize any effort by anybody else to exploit that drone for useful content.”
“It is also not uncommon for the Russians to try to intercept them,” Kirby said, adding that such an encounter “does increase the risk of miscalculations, misunderstandings.”
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said Russia has the technological capability to recover the drone’s fragments from deep in the Black Sea.
Earlier Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement that Russian jets didn’t use their weapons or impact the U.S. drone.
Peskov described U.S.-Russia relations as being at their lowest point but added that “Russia has never rejected a constructive dialogue, and it’s not rejecting it now.”
At the Pentagon, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the intercept by the Russian jet was part of a “pattern of aggressive, risky and unsafe actions by Russian pilots in international airspace.” He said Russia must operate its aircraft in a safe manner.
“Make no mistake, the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows,” Austin said in opening remarks before a virtual meeting of a U.S.-led effort to coordinate Western military support for Ukraine.
While encounters between Russian and NATO aircraft are not unusual — before the invasion of Ukraine, NATO planes were involved in an annual average of 400 intercepts with Russian planes — the war has heightened the significance and potential hazards of such incidents.
“The last thing that we want, certainly the last thing that anybody should want, is for this war in Ukraine to escalate to become something between the United States and Russia, to have this actually … expand beyond that,” Kirby said, speaking Wednesday on CNN.
The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, tweeted Wednesday that the drone incident was “a signal from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin that he is ready to expand the conflict zone, with drawing other parties in.”
Separately, the U.K. defense ministry said British and German air force fighter jets were scrambled Tuesday to intercept a Russian aircraft flying close to Estonian airspace. The U.K. and Germany are conducting joint air policing missions in Estonia as part of NATO’s bolstering of its eastern flank.
The defense ministry said the Typhoon jets responded after a Russian air-to-air refueling aircraft failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control. The Russian plane did not enter the airspace of Estonia, a NATO member.
On the ground in Ukraine, the fighting ground on. At least three civilians were killed and another 23 wounded in the country by Russian strikes over the previous 24 hours, Ukraine’s presidential office said Wednesday morning.
In eastern Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk province, where much of the heaviest fighting has been concentrated, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said a total of 14 cities and villages were shelled. That included Kramatorsk, a city where some of Ukraine’s military forces are based.
In embattled Bakhmut, where Russian forces have pressed a months-long assault to capture the city, Ukrainian forces have successfully fought for northern parts of the city, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said.
“There are certain and significant successes of the armed forces of Ukraine who were able to achieve something in the north of the city,” Maliar told Ukrainian television. “Bakhmut is the epicenter (of fighting in the Donestk region), the Russian occupiers are tryng to encircle and seize the city.”
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, one person was killed and another was wounded in Vovchansk, a city near the border with Russia that is regularly shelled. Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces also hit a civilian area of Kharkiv itself, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
“There is no military or infrastructure facility in the vicinity of the place of the strike,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. “Only residential buildings and urban infrastructure.”
Speaking on Ukrainian television, Terekhov said a boarding school, where only employees were present, had been damaged, as well as an apartment building. No casualties were immediately reported.
In the south, Russian forces shelled the city of Kherson seven times in the last 24 hours, hitting an infrastructure facility and residential buildings and wounding four people. In Dnipropetrovsk province, Russian forces shelled Nikopol and Marhanets, towns located across a river from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Texas announces takeover of Houston schools, stirring anger
Juan A. Lozano and Paul J. Weber – March 15, 2023
People hold up signs at a news conference, Friday, March 3, 2023, in Houston while protesting the proposed takeover of the city’s school district by the Texas Education Agency. Texas officials on Wednesday, March 15, announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political. (AP Photo/Juan A. Lozano)People hold up signs at a news conference, Friday, March 3, 2023, in Houston while protesting the proposed takeover of the city’s school district by the Texas Education Agency. Texas officials on Wednesday, March 15, announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political. (AP Photo/Juan A. Lozano)Houston Independent School District Superintendent Millard House II answers questions from the media, May 21, 2021, in Houston. Texas officials on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political. (Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)
HOUSTON (AP) — Texas officials on Wednesday announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political.
The announcement, made by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner, Mike Morath, amounts to one of the largest school takeovers ever in the U.S. It also deepens a high-stakes rift between Texas’ largest city, where Democrats wield control, and state Republican leaders, who have sought increased authority following election fumbles and COVID-19 restrictions.
The takeover is the latest example of Republican and predominately white state officials pushing to take control of actions in heavily minority and Democratic-led cities. They include St. Louis and Jackson, Mississippi, where the Legislature is pushing to take over the water system and for an expanded role for state police and appointed judges.
In a letter to the Houston Independent School District, Morath said the Texas Education Agency will replace Superintendent Millard House II and the district’s elected board of trustees with a new superintendent and an appointed board of managers made of residents from within the district’s boundaries.
Morath said the board has failed to improve student outcomes while conducting “chaotic board meetings marred by infighting” and violating open meetings act and procurement laws. He accused the district of failing to provide proper special education services and of violating state and federal laws with its approach to supporting students with disabilities.
He cited the seven-year record of poor academic performance at one of the district’s roughly 50 high schools, Wheatley High, as well as the poor performance of several other campuses.
“The governing body of a school system bears ultimate responsibility for the outcomes of all students. While the current Board of Trustees has made progress, systemic problems in Houston ISD continue to impact district students,” Morath wrote in his six-page letter.
Most of Houston’s school board members have been replaced since the state began making moves toward a takeover in 2019. House became superintendent in 2021.
He and the current school board will remain until the new board of managers is chosen sometime after June 1. The new board of managers will be appointed for at least two years.
House in a statement pointed to strides made across the district, saying the announcement “does not discount the gains we have made.”
He said his focus now will be on ensuring “a smooth transition without disruption to our core mission of providing an exceptional educational experience for all students.”
The Texas State Teachers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas condemned the takeover. At a news conference in Austin, state Democratic leaders called for the Legislature to increase funding for education and raise teacher pay.
“We acknowledge that there’s been underperformance in the past, mainly due to that severe underfunding in our public schools,” state Rep. Armando Walle, who represents parts of north Houston, said.
An annual Census Bureau survey of public school funding showed Texas spent $10,342 per pupil in the 2020 fiscal year, more than $3,000 less than the national average, according to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston.
The state was able to take over the district under a change in state law that Houston Democratic state Rep. Harold Dutton Jr. proposed in 2015. In an op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle on Monday, Dutton said he has no regrets about what he did.
“We’re hearing voices of opposition, people who say that HISD shouldn’t have to face consequences for allowing a campus to fail for more than five consecutive years. Those critics’ concern is misplaced,” Dutton wrote.
Schools in other big cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans and Detroit, in recent decades have gone through state takeovers, which are generally viewed as last resorts for underperforming schools and are often met with community backlash. Critics argue that state interventions generally have not led to big improvements.
Texas started moving to take over the district following allegations of misconduct by school trustees, including inappropriate influencing of vendor contracts, and chronically low academic scores at Wheatley High.
The district sued to block a takeover, but new education laws subsequently passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and a January ruling from the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for the state to seize control.
“All of us Texans have an obligation and should come together to reinvent HISD in a way that will ensure that we’re going to be providing the best quality education for those kids,” Abbott said Wednesday.
Schools in Houston are not under mayoral control, unlike in New York and Chicago, but as expectations of a takeover mounted, the city’s Democratic leaders unified in opposition.
Race is also an issue because the overwhelming majority of students in Houston schools are Hispanic or Black. Domingo Morel, a professor of political science and public services at New York University, said the political and racial dynamics in the Houston case are similar to instances where states have intervened elsewhere.
“If we just focus on taking over school districts because they underperform, we would have a lot more takeovers,” Morel said. “But that’s not what happens.”
Weber reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
Texas Lawmakers Have a New Scheme to Punish Renewables and Prop Up Fossil Fuels
Molly Taft – March 14, 2023
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick waves to a crowd at a Trump rally.
Texas Republicans are at it again. Last week, Republican politicians in the state legislature introduced a package of bills intended to punish renewable energy and boost fossil fuels, despite the fact that Texas is currently one of the nation’s top generators of renewable power.
On Thursday, Texas state senators Charles Schwertner and Phil King introduced nine bills that they said would help solve issues with Texas’s beleaguered power grid. According to the Dallas Morning News, the bills include one that would create up to 10,000 megawatts of natural gas-fueled generation; one to smooth out what Schwertner said were pro-wind and solar “market distortions” that federal tax breaks create; one to get rid of any remaining state tax credits for renewables; and one that would limit new renewable energy facilities being built based on how much natural gas facilities are also being built, in an attempt to keep natural gas competitive.
As the Dallas Morning News reported, Texas leadership are all for these types of measures. Earlier this month, Governor Greg Abbott said he would not allow wind and solar companies to get corporate tax breaks under a new state program. Meanwhile, last week Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick praised the bills at the press conference, saying in a release that they will “fix the Texas power grid once and for all.” Patrick said that he has designated two of the bills—the one to create the new natural gas generation and one dealing with the “market distortions”—as part of his hand-picked suite of 30 priority bills that he would be pushing during this legislative session.
What’s truly wild about this set of possible laws is just how well renewable energy is doing in Texas. Last year, the state was the number one producer of wind energy in the country and the number two producer of solar. The International Energy Agency predicted last year that renewables’ work on the grid could grow even more in 2023, pushing natural gas use down.
“These bills will subsidize those dirty energy sources at a big cost to consumers and the environment,” Luke Metzger, executive director at Environment Texas, told Earther in an email. “Folks at the Texas Legislature used to speak of the importance of not picking winners and losers in the energy marketplace. Well, that’s exactly what these bills do. The state of Texas is dispensing with the free market to subsidize polluting power plants and discriminating against wind and solar energy.”
The Texas power grid’s issues are a hell of a lot more complex than ‘renewables bad, fossil fuels good.’ It’s going to take more uncomfortable reforms to iron out what actually is going to work for the state, but we can count on Republicans to take any opportunity to use renewable energy as a political punching bag.
Federal manhunt underway for man who was Larry Hogan’s chief of staff
Kathryn Watson – March 14, 2023
FILE: Prosecutors have accused Roy McGrath of collecting excessive expenses while in office, for illegally engineering a $233,647 severance payment from the Maryland Environmental Service when he left the organization to be Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s chief of staff and for fabricating a memo from Hogan’s office that showed the governor’s approval of the payment. / Credit: Pamela Wood/The Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
A federal manhunt is underway for Roy McGrath, once the chief of staff to ex-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, after he failed to appear in court Monday for the first day of his trial on wire fraud and embezzlement charges.
The U.S. Marshals Service launched an interstate fugitive search after a federal judge issued a warrant for McGrath’s arrest. McGrath’s face is plastered on a U.S. Marshals poster, which highlights charges against him for wire fraud, theft in programs receiving federal funds and falsification of records in federal investigations.
Roy C. McGrath Wanted poster. / Credit: U.S. Marshals
A law enforcement source tells CBS News that McGrath’s family was at his home in Florida when FBI visited the house Tuesday morning. The source said his high profile and the widely circulating photos will make it difficult for him to remain at large.
McGrath was scheduled to appear in federal court in Baltimore on charges related to his tenure running the Maryland Environmental Service before joining Hogan’s office as chief of staff in 2020. The 2021 indictment against McGrath says he sought to enrich himself personally by using his position as executive director of the agency and his role as chief of staff to the governor to engineer a payment from the agency he shouldn’t have received. Prosecutors also allege that McGrath falsified his time sheets while he took a vacation to Europe and that he stole money for classes at Harvard. McGrath resigned from Hogan’s office weeks after assuming the chief-of-staff job after an investigation found he wasn’t forthcoming about the $230,000 severance package he had received for leaving the quasi-government agency, according to court filings.
McGrath, 53, has been living in Naples, Florida, and was supposed to travel to Maryland for the trial, according to court records. It’s possible Hogan could testify in the trial. He was Maryland’s governor from 2015 until earlier this year; he has denied knowing about or approving McGrath’s severance payment.
McGrath has pleaded not guilty on all charges. His attorney, Joseph Murtha, said he doesn’t know where his client is.
“Unfortunately, I have no idea of Roys’s whereabouts,” Murtha said. “I hope that he is safe, and that we will soon have an opportunity to speak with one another.”
Murtha told CBS Baltimore’s WJZ on Tuesday he has yet to hear from his client. He confirmed McGrath’s wife spoke to law enforcement at the couple’s home in Naples, Florida. And he said she is cooperating with the investigation and has no idea of her husband’s whereabouts.
Rob Legare, Scott McFarlane and Matthew Mosk contributed to this report.
Illinois enacts mandatory paid leave ‘for any reason’
Claire Savage – March 13, 2023
CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois will become one of three states to require employers to offer paid time off for any reason after Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law on Monday that will take effect next year.
Starting Jan. 1, Illinois employers must offer workers paid time off based on hours worked, with no need to explain the reason for their absence as long as they provide notice in accordance with reasonable employer standards.
Just Maine and Nevada mandate earned paid time time off and allot employees the freedom to decide how to use it, but Illinois’ law is further reaching, unencumbered by limits based on business size. Similarly structured regulations that require employers to offer paid sick leave exist in 14 states and Washington, D.C., but workers can only use that for health-related reasons.
Illinois employees will accrue one hour of paid leave for every 40 hours worked up to 40 hours total, although the employer may offer more. Employees can start using the time once they have worked for 90 days. Seasonal workers will be exempt, as will federal employees or college students who work non-full-time, temporary jobs for their university.
Pritzker signed the bill Monday in downtown Chicago, saying: “Too many people can’t afford to miss even a day’s pay … together we continue to build a state that truly serves as a beacon for families, and businesses, and good paying jobs.”
Proponents say paid leave is key to making sure workers, especially low-income workers who are more vulnerable, are able to take time off when needed without fear of reprisal from an employer.
But critics say the law will overburden small businesses already struggling to survive the post-pandemic era amid the high inflation that has gripped the nation for nearly two years.
National Federation of Independent Business Illinois state director Chris Davis said that business owners are best positioned to work with their employees one-on-one to meet their needs.
The new law is “a one-size-fits-all solution to a more intricate problem,” he said.
Bill sponsor Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth, a Peoria Democrat, said the bill is the product of years of negotiations with businesses and labor groups.
“Everyone deserves the ability to take time off,” she said in a statement. “Whether it’s to deal with the illness of a family member, or take a step back for your mental health, enshrining paid leave rights is a step forward for our state.”
“This is about bringing dignity to all workers,” she said at the signing.
Ordinances in Cook County and Chicago that already require employers to offer paid sick leave have been in place since July 2017, and workers in those locations will continue to be covered by existing laws rather than the new state law.
Any new local laws enacted after the state law takes effect must provide benefits that are greater or equal to the state law.
Molly Weston Williamson, paid leave expert at the Center for American Progress, said the law “creates a strong foundation for employers to build from while generating a healthier, more productive workforce.”
But Williamson added that while Illinois’ law is a step in the right direction, U.S. paid leave laws remain “wildly out of line with all of our economic peers internationally.”
“In the United States, federal law does not guarantee anyone the right to even a single paid day off work. Not when you’re sick, not when you have a baby, not when your mom has a stroke. Not a single paid day,” she said.
Joan Van, a server at an international hotel chain and single mother of three, currently has no paid time off.
But the Belleville parent leader with Community Organizing and Family Issues said that knowing that she will have five days next year brings a smile to her face.
“It’s going to help out a lot of people, a lot of mothers, a lot of single mothers at that,” she said.
Trump tells Iowa campaign stop he’ll revamp ‘insane’ US schooling
March 13, 2023
Former president Donald Trump on Monday slammed the “insane” US education system and vowed to bring back “common sense” schooling as part of his “America First” campaign platform, touching on a hot-button issue that is expected to dominate next year’s election.
Speaking to potential voters in Iowa, he hit on what has increasingly become a cultural flashpoint in the United States, with Republicans taking every opportunity they get to assail Democrats over what they see as the encroachment of “wokeness” into teaching.
“We have to get back to common sense, and that is reading, writing, arithmetic,” Trump told the crowd in Davenport, in response to an audience question about schools becoming “indoctrination camps” that are “focused on sexualizing our children.”
“What they’re teaching in schools today is insane,” said the 76-year-old Republican, who is running for president again after failing to win a second term in 2020.
Trump had previewed his education policy blueprint in January, calling for federal funding cuts to programs teaching children “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content.”
On Monday night, he also promised to champion school choice, the right of parents to elect principals, and state — rather than federal — control over curriculums.
“School choice is where it’s at,” Trump said, referring to a movement that seeks to use tax credits and vouchers to allow parents to opt out of the public school system in favor of privately managed charter schools.
“As president I’ll fight to expand that right to every single state in America,” he said.
And he repeated a previous pledge to “keep men out of women’s sports” — a reference to Republican efforts to ban transgender women and girls from sports teams that match their gender identity.
– Shifting polls –
Iowa tends to be deluged by candidates in presidential election cycles as it hosts the first nominating contest for Republicans, and remains high in the Democratic calendar after being knocked from top spot.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — Trump’s chief potential rival for the Republican nod and a major critic of progressive messaging in classrooms — himself stopped by the Hawkeye State on Friday.
Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, the only high-profile Republican Trump rival to have officially declared her candidacy, also campaigned in the largely rural Midwestern state last week.
A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll out on Friday showed Trump still holding significant sway in Iowa, although his favorability rating among self-identified Republicans has fallen from 91 percent in September 2021 to 80 percent.
DeSantis was close behind, with 74 percent of self-identified Republicans having a favorable opinion of him.
And the share of Republicans who said they’d “definitely vote” for Trump if he were the party’s 2024 presidential nominee dropped from 69 percent in June 2021 to 47 percent now.
Democratic National Committee spokesman Rhyan Lake has previously accused Trump’s support for school choice as being an effort to gut public education while pushing to move billions of dollars towards private schools.
“Everyone will see right through Donald Trump’s desperate spin about his own record as the GOP field races to out-MAGA each other at the expense of America’s kids,” Lake said in a statement.
Las Vegas water agency seeks power to limit residential use
Gabe Stern – March 13, 2023
A home with a swimming pool abuts the desert on the edge of the Las Vegas valley July 20, 2022, in Henderson, Nev. Nevada lawmakers on Monday, March 13, 2023, will consider another shift in water use for one of the driest major metropolitan areas in the U.S. The water agency that manages the Colorado River supply for Vegas is seeking authority to limit what comes out of residents’ taps. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)Sprinklers water grass at a park on Friday, April 9, 2021, in the Summerlin neighborhood of Las Vegas. Nevada lawmakers on Monday, March 13, 2023, will consider another shift in water use for one of the driest major metropolitan areas in the U.S. The water agency that manages the Colorado River supply for Vegas is seeking authority to limit what comes out of residents’ taps. (AP Photo/Ken Ritter, File)Water from the Colorado River, diverted through the Central Arizona Project, fills an irrigation canal, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022, in Maricopa, Ariz. Nevada lawmakers on Monday, March 13, 2023, will consider another shift in water use for one of the driest major metropolitan areas in the U.S. The water agency that manages the Colorado River supply for Vegas is seeking authority to limit what comes out of residents’ taps. (AP Photo/Matt York,File)In this April 15, 2015 file photo, a man takes a picture of the fountains in front of the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. State lawmakers on Monday, March 13, 2023, are scheduled to discuss granting the power to limit what comes out of residents’ taps to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency managing the Colorado River supply to the city. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Ornamental lawns are banned in Las Vegas, the size of new swimming pools is capped and much of the water used in homes is sent down a wash to be recycled, but Nevada is looking at another significant step to ensure the water supply for one of the driest major metropolitan areas in the U.S.
State lawmakers on Monday are scheduled to discuss granting the power to limit what comes out of residents’ taps to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency managing the Colorado River supply to the city.
If lawmakers approve the bill, Nevada would be the first state to give a water agency permanent jurisdiction over the amount of residential use.
The sweeping omnibus bill is one of the most significant to go before lawmakers this year in Nevada, one of seven states that rely on the Colorado River. Deepening drought, climate change and demand have sunk key Colorado River reservoirs that depend on melting snow to their lowest levels on record.
“It’s a worst case scenario plan,” said the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Assemblyman Howard Watts of Las Vegas. “It makes sure that we prioritize the must-haves for a home. Your drinking water, your basic health and safety needs.”
The bill would give the water authority leeway to limit water usage in single-family homes to 160,000 gallons annually, incorporate homes with septic systems into the city’s sewer system and provide funding for the effort.
The average home uses about 130,000 gallons of water per year, meaning the largest water users would feel the pinch, according to the agency.
The authority hasn’t yet decided how it would implement or enforce the proposed limits, which would not automatically go into effect, spokesperson Bronson Mack said.
Water from the Colorado River largely is used for agriculture in other basin states: Arizona, California, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado.
Las Vegas relies on the Colorado River for 90% of its water supply. Already, Nevada has lost about 8% of that supply because of mandatory cuts implemented as the river dwindles further. Most residents haven’t felt the effects because Southern Nevada Water Authority recycles a majority of water used indoors and doesn’t use the full allocation.
Nevada lawmakers banned ornamental grass at office parks, in street medians and entrances to housing developments two years ago. This past summer, Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, capped the size of new swimming pools at single-family residential homes to about the size of a three-car garage.
A state edict carries greater weight than city ordinances and more force in messaging, said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, which monitors western water policy.
Watts said he is hopeful other municipalities that have been hesitant to clamp down on residential water use will follow suit as “good stewards of the river” with even deeper cuts to the Colorado River supply looming.
Snow that has inundated northern Nevada and parts of California serves as only a temporary reprieve from dry conditions. Some states in the Colorado River basin have gridlocked on how to cut water usage, with many of them looking toward agriculture to shoulder the burden.
Municipal water is a relatively small percentage of overall Colorado River use. As populations grow and climate change leaves future supplies uncertain, policymakers are paying close attention to all available options to manage water supplies.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, uses a tiered cost structure where rates rise sharply when residents reach 10,000 gallons during the summer months.
Scottsdale, Arizona, recently told residents in an community outside city limits that it no longer could provide a water source for them. Scottsdale argued action was required under a drought management plan to guarantee enough water for its own residents.
Elsewhere in metro Phoenix, water agencies aren’t currently discussing capping residential use, Sheri Trap of the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association said in an email. But cities like Phoenix, Glendale and Tempe have said they will cut down on usage overall.
AP writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed reporting from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms.
Confirmed: Global floods, droughts worsening with warming
Isabella O’Malley – March 13, 2023
People travel by boat in a flooded street in Trizidela do Vale, state of Maranhao, Brazil, May 9, 2009. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday, March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. (AP Photo/ Andre Penner, File)The remains of dead livestock and a donkey are scattered at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, Sept. 21, 2022. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday, March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)People wade through flood waters in the town of Moree, Northern New South Wales, Australia, Feb. 3, 2012. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday, March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. (AP Photo/Brad Hunter, Pool, File)A bridge’s columns are marked by the previous water line over the Atibainha reservoir, part of the Cantareira System that provides water to the Sao Paulo metropolitan area, in Nazare Paulista, Brazil, on Jan. 29, 2015. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday, March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)People walk by cracked earth in an area once under the water of Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Jan. 27, 2023, near Boulder City, Nev. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday, March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)A Philadelphia police officer rushes to help a stranded motorist during Tropical Storm Isaias, Aug. 4, 2020, in Philadelphia. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday, March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)People enjoy the sunny weather on dry river banks of Germany’s most important river Rhine in Cologne, Germany, after a long time of drought, April 27, 2020. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday, March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Water. These aren’t merely tough weather events, they are leading to extremes such as crop failure, infrastructure damage, even humanitarian crises and conflict.
The big picture on water comes from data from a pair of satellites known as GRACE, or Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, that were used to measure changes in Earth’s water storage — the sum of all the water on and in the land, including groundwater, surface water, ice, and snow.
“It’s incredible that we can now monitor the pulse of continental water from outer space,” said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles who was not involved with the study.
“I have a feeling when future generations look back and try to determine when humanity really began understanding the planet as a whole, this will be one of the studies highlighted,” he said.
The researchers say the data confirms that both frequency and intensity of rainfall and droughts are increasing due to burning fossil fuels and other human activity that releases greenhouse gases.
“I was surprised to see how well correlated the global intensity was with global mean temperatures,” said Matthew Rodell, study author and deputy director of Earth sciences for hydrosphere, biosphere, and geophysics at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
The strong link between these climate extremes and rising global average temperatures means continued global warming will mean more drought and rainstorms that are worse by many measures — more frequent, more severe, longer and larger.
Researchers looked at 1,056 events from 2002-2021 using a novel algorithm that identifies where the land is much wetter or drier than normal.
That showed the most extreme rains keep happening in sub-Saharan Africa, at least through December 2021, the end of the data. The rainfall extremes also took place in central and eastern North America from 2018-2021, and Australia during 2011-2012.
The most intense droughts were a record-breaking one in northeastern South America from 2015-2016; an event in the Cerrado region of Brazil that began in 2019 and continues; and the ongoing drought in the American Southwest that has caused dangerously low water levels in two of the biggest U.S. reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Those remain low despite heavy rains this year.
Drought events outnumbered heavy rain events by 10%. Their geographic extents and how long they lasted were similar.
A warmer atmosphere increases the rate at which water evaporates during dry periods. It also holds more water vapor, which fuels heavy rainfall events.
The study noted that infrastructure like airports and sewage treatment plants that were designed to withstand once-in-a-100-year events are becoming more challenged as these extremes happen more often and with more intensity.
“Looking forward into the future, in terms of managing water resources and flood control, we should be anticipating that the wetter extremes will be wetter and the dry extremes will get drier,” said Richard Seager, a climate scientist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who was not involved with the study.
Seager said it’s a mistake to assume that future wet and dry extremes can be managed the same as in the past because “everything’s going to get amplified on both ends of the dry-wet spectrum.”
According to the U.S. National Integrated Drought Information System, 20% of the annual economic losses from extreme weather events in the U.S. are from floods and droughts.
A drastic swing between extreme drought and unprecedented flooding, dubbed “weather whiplash,” is becoming common in some regions.
Water stress is expected to significantly affect poor, disenfranchised communities as well as ecosystems that have been underfunded and exploited.
For example, the United Nations has said that Somalia is experiencing its longest and most severe drought, an event that has caused the deaths of millions of livestock and widespread hunger. Venezuela, a country that has faced years of political and economic crises, resorted to nationwide power cuts during April 2016 as a result of the drought conditions affecting water levels of the Guri Dam.
As for solutions, using floodwaters to replenish depleted aquifers and improving the health of agricultural soil so it can absorb water better and store more carbon are just a few methods that could improve water resiliency in a warming world, the study says.
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