Lawsuit seeks to end new law signed by Greg Abbott banning water breaks after Texas heat wave deaths
Tatyana Tandanpolie – July 7, 2023
Greg AbbottBrandon Bell/Getty Images
Officials in Houston, Texas, filed a lawsuit on Monday looking to keep the state from enforcing an oppressive law critics have dubbed the “Death Star” bill.
House Bill 2127 is set to go into effect on Sept. 1 after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law on June 6, according to MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” blog. The new law restricts local governments by preventing them from passing certain ordinances if they contradict state laws in eight key areas: agriculture, finance, business and commerce, insurance, local government, labor, natural resources, property or occupations.
In the newly filed lawsuit, lawyers representing the city argue that, in broadly pre-empting local laws, the bill violates the state Constitution, and ultimately call the measure “hopelessly vague.” The city, thus, asks the court to make the law “void and unenforceable.”
“Because of HB 2127’s vagueness, Houston will not know with any certainty what laws it may enforce, and its residents and businesses will not know with certainty what laws they must obey,” the suit reads. “This high level of uncertainty and confusion concerning the validity of virtually all local laws in important regulatory areas and those concerning health and safety themselves constitutes a concrete injury.”
Arguing that the bill will incite confusion, the lawsuit cites the so-called Death Star law’s lack of a requirement for local legislation to actually conflict with state laws in order for it to be prevented from taking effect.
“Under HB 2127, if the State regulates anything in an unspecified ‘field,’ local regulation is arguably entirely precluded in the undefined area unless there is express legislative authorization,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also comes after a deadly heat wave wracked the state last month, resulting in a public health crisis, the deaths of 11 people between the ages of 60 and 80 in Webb County since the bill was signed, and a surge in emergency department visits related to the record-breaking, 100-degree temperatures.
In Texas prison facilities without air conditioning, at least nine incarcerated people, including two men in their 30s, died last month from heart attacks or unknown causes. Another harrowing incident saw a teen and his stepfather die after the 14-year-old lost consciousness during a hike in Big Bend National Park and the stepfather crashed his car while racing to find help. Plus, at least four workers have died in the state after collapsing in three-digit heat, the Texas Observer reports: a Dallas post office worker, an East Texas utility lineman and two Houston construction workers.
While the nature of the worker deaths is still under investigation, the Observer notes that hyperthermia is likely the cause. Considering climate scientists told the Tribune that heat waves will become increasingly severe and common due to climate change, the risk to public health will only rise.
Once HB 2127 goes into effect in September, local ordinances mandating water breaks for workers outdoors in cities across the state, which the Observer writes contributed to a “significant decrease in annual heat-related illnesses and heat deaths,” will be overturned and localities will be barred from passing new ones.
A spokesperson for Abbott said that “ensuring the safety of Texans is a top priority as our state experiences high summer heat,” in a statement, noting that overriding local laws won’t keep workers from taking breaks under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) standards.
But some workers fear that the lack of local protections will mean bosses hoping to increase production will eliminate breaks, the Observer said.
The city of Houston’s lawsuit also calls out the possibility of widespread, city deregulation sparked by individuals and businesses pursuing their own interests and justifying the acts under the law.
“Houston will have to defend against a likely barrage of lawsuits brought by trade associations or individuals essentially to deregulate their industries or businesses at the local level,” the suit claims, adding an accusation that Texa’ Republican legislators are creating “a public/private enforcement regime that will penalize and raise the risk of Houston’s exercising its clear and expansive constitutional authority.”
If successful, the suit will protect the water mandates and other measures like the Houston program providing 30,000 uninsured people with healthcare, Mayor Sylvester Turner noted.
“HB 2127 reverses over 100 years of Texas constitutional law without amending the Constitution,” Turner said in a public statement. “Because Texas has long had the means to preempt local laws that conflict with State law, HB 2127 is unnecessary, dismantling the ability to govern at the level closest to the people and therefore punishing all Texas residents. Houston will fight so its residents retain their constitutional rights and have immediate local recourse to government.”
DeSantis’ veto of electric cars bill cost taxpayers $277 million, critics say
Jeffrey Schweers, Orlando Sentinel – July 7, 2023
Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis was more concerned about Iowa corn farmers than Florida taxpayers when he vetoed a popular bill that could have saved the state $277 million by adding electric vehicles to state and local government fleets, a Democratic critic says.
More EVs would mean less of a demand for ethanol, which is processed from corn grown in states such as Iowa, the expected home to the first presidential caucus next year.
It’s another example of DeSantis putting his own political ambitions to be president over the needs of Floridians, said Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.
“The Iowa caucus voters who are all about ethanol don’t see electric vehicles as something that is economically in their favor,” Eskamani said. “DeSantis is catering to his Iowa voters, not passing policy for Floridians.”
The electric car bill, SB 284, sponsored by Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Lake Mary, would have required all state and local governments, colleges and universities to buy vehicles based on their lowest lifetime costs. Current law requires such purchases to be based on fuel efficiency.
It ordered the Department of Management Services to make recommendations by July 1, 2024, to state agencies, colleges, universities and local governments about buying electric vehicles and other vehicles powered by renewable fuels.
“It allows us to look at procuring electric vehicles,” Brodeur said. “It doesn’t mean you have to purchase any.”
The governor’s veto last week was perplexing, supporters said. Both the Florida Natural Gas Association and the Sierra Club supported the measure, along with the Advanced Energy United and Electrification Coalition, a group that supports increasing the use of alternative-fuel vehicles.
“It was a common sense, good governance bill. There is nothing in this bill that any person in America should be against,” said former Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Tampa Bay Republican who tried getting similar legislation through last year.
The law could have saved state and local governments $277 million over 15 years by adding more electric vehicles to their fleets, said Michael Weiss, the Florida state lead at Advanced Energy United, a trade association of clean energy companies.
Advanced Energy United and the Electrification Coalition calculated the bill would have saved governments an average of $18,000 per vehicle by switching to an all-electric vehicle fleet, Weiss said. Using the state’s vehicle data provided by the Department of Management Services, they conducted a total cost analysis of the state’s fleet.
“This veto is a baffling decision that will cost Florida taxpayers millions of dollars,” Weiss said. “The Florida Legislature saw the clear economic and taxpayer benefits of a modern and efficient state fleet, but Gov. DeSantis somehow didn’t get the memo.”
It was only a few years ago that DeSantis touted the benefits of electric cars at a news conference announcing the construction of EV charging stations at rest stops along Florida’s Turnpike.
“It’s amazing how much cheaper it is to just charge a vehicle than to fill up a gas tank,” DeSantis said at the time. “And so as technology evolves, we hope that that’ll be reflected in people’s pocketbooks. So we want to make sure we have the infrastructure in place to make that a reality.”
His staff didn’t respond to a request to explain the veto.
The bill passed both chambers of the Legislature with just a single no vote, by Rep. Yvonne Hinson of Gainesville. But it is not likely anyone would even suggest trying to override the veto because of the governor’s immense grip on Tallahassee.
“That’s not going to happen,” Eskamani said.
Eskamani said DeSantis also has put personal politics first with culture war laws such as sexual orientation in schools, banning gay-themed books and drag shows, and making it harder for unions to collect dues.
She and other Democrats have pointed out problems such as soaring insurance premiums and a spike in housing costs that go unsolved.
“Not a single part of his agenda that passed is helping Floridians,” she said. “His agenda is tailored to the needs of Republican [primary and caucus voters].”
‘Woke’ isn’t going to die in DeSantis’ Florida. It’s just taking its dollars elsewhere | Opinion
The Miami Herald Editorial Board – July 7, 2023
Katie Goodale/USA TODAY NETWORK
Think of a dystopian, polarized country, where Americans are not only divided based on political beliefs but also on where they live and shop, what beer they drink, what doctors they visit, whether they are vaccinated, where they go on vacation and attend professional conferences.
This is what politicians who want to inject extremism (from the right or the left) into governing seem to want to accomplish: to reshape their communities so that only like-minded people feel comfortable co-existing.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has made no secret that his approach to governing is “You’re either with me or get the heck out.” He has signed laws and used state power against: teachers; transgender people; African Americans; women’s bodies; teachers and unions; university professors and academic freedom; universities that want to diversify their student body; immigrants; LGBTQ people and drag queens.
Most recently, DeSantis defended a bizarre and homophobic video his campaign shared on Twitter, calling it “fair game” to attack Donald Trump for past statements in support of LGBTQ rights. Not surprising coming from the governor of the state “where woke goes to die.”
The governor probably doesn’t lose sleep over the few conferences that Florida has lost recently as professional organizations take their dollars and thousands of attendees to states with less extreme policies. That blue parts of the state, Broward and Orange counties, lost the opportunity to host those events fit right into the governor’s strategy. DeSantis’ motto is to “own the libs.”
Two organizations canceled events that were planned in the Orlando area in coming years. AnitaB.org, a group of women and nonbinary tech workers, canceled a 2027 event that normally draws about 16,000 visitors. The group told the Orlando Sentinel it will no longer hold events in the state after this year’s conference at the Orange County Convention Center. The reasons are Florida’s abortion ban, its easing of gun regulations and the state’s efforts “to erase the identities and dignities of people from historically marginalized and excluded groups, including Black, Brown, LGBTQIA+, and Indigenous people.”
Broward County has lost more than half-dozen conferences, thanks to Florida’s political climate, organizers told the county’s tourism agency Visit Lauderdale, as the Sun Sentinel reported Friday. Among them is the 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference, which would have needed more than 2,000 hotel rooms. The organization “decided to pull out of Florida due to concerns about what the Governor is doing in the education/schools and that he will likely run in 2024. They do not want to lose attendees due to this,” according to a list of cancellations Visit Lauderdale put together.
The governor’s office told the Sun Sentinel the cancellations are “nothing more than a media-driven stunt.” His administration recently released numbers that show the number of tourists visiting the state is up compared to last year. Florida also welcomed nearly 320,000 new residents from other states between 2021 and 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. DeSantis claims credit for those new residents but Florida benefits from a series of factors, such as the longstanding lack of state income taxes and the rise of remote work during the pandemic
Have DeSantis’ policies caused widespread financial ruin in Florida? No, though the hotels and conference centers that lost business might see it differently.
The bigger question is who DeSantis thinks Florida is for. Nonbinary tech workers are not his intended demographic. Neither are college professors, who have warned that the state’s crackdown on what they can teach regarding race is causing a brain drain. Nor are the undocumented workers who are leaving the state after DeSantis signed into law one of the most draconian immigration laws in the country (it requires, among other things, that immigrants disclose their citizenship status at hospitals).
Are these people leaving in big enough numbers to make a difference? We bet that’s the governor’s goal.
The Florida Blueprint he’s trying to sell to presidential primary voters doesn’t concern itself with having a diverse workforce, attracting the best and brightest or ensuring that Florida’s agriculture has enough people to work its fields. Its myopic focus is fighting the outsider — and there are more and more of those — and rewarding those who fall in line.
1 million Florida buildings will be overrun by sea-level rise by 2100, study shows
Jim Waymer, USA TODAY NETWORK – July 5, 2023
Storms that ride in on seas rising due to global warming will displace millions of Floridians in low-lying areas by century’s end, according to a new analysis by a flood-risk research group.
Well before then, a higher ocean will force many to elevate their homes, similar to stilted homes on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, or else endure deadly surging floodwaters and sky-high insurance costs.
The lure of living beachside has long been Florida’s biggest draw. But with sea levels expected to rise one foot by 2030 and another three feet by the end of the century, many dream homes could become nightmares.
“If nobody acts, if nothing changes, by the end of the century there are approximately 1 million buildings that will be inundated in Florida,” said Adrian Santiago Tate, CEO/cofounder of HighTide Intelligence, a flood-risk data company that spun out of a research group at Stanford University. About 90% of those buildings are single-family homes. “We wanted to make this abstract idea of flooding mean something to people.”
Don’t believe it? Search your address on HighTide Intelligence’s platform Arkly.com and see for yourself. The site’s a work in progress, so not every home is there but if your home is, and at low elevation, it likely will pop up as at “high-risk” of flooding and property damages.
Derrick Lockhart, owner of Airboat Rides at Midway on the St. Johns River just over the Brevard County line, says the flooding that followed Hurricane Ian last fall was the worst he had ever seen in the area.n(Credit: TIM SHORTT/ FLORIDA TODAY, TIM SHORTT/ FLORIDA TODAY)
Floridians already are feeling the pain. After last year’s hurricane season, Florida homeowners watched their premiums double or triple or got letters cancelling their policies. More than a dozen insurance companies either went belly up or just bailed on Florida altogether.
Satellite Beach and other coastal cities for years have been warning residents in the most vulnerable spots to start planning countermeasures now. To bring concrete data to those warnings, Satellite Beach hired HighTide Intelligence to do a $295,000, three-year study to assess flood risk from rising seas. The analysis was paid for in part by a $275,000 grant the city received from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to study ways to make the city more resilient to flooding and sea-level rise. The city chipped in $20,000.
Sparked in part by the Satellite Beach project, HighTide decided to make its statewide dataset of building-level flood risk available to the public in a new user-friendly website, Arkly.com.
Insurers and risk managers use the term “hundred-year storms” when assessing flooding risk. Such storms have about a 1% chance of striking in any given year based on historical data.
But don’t think such storms only roll around every 100 years. With global warming, such storms are striking with increasing frequency.
Statewide, HighTide found that within Florida’s 35 coastal counties, a once-in-a-century storm would:
Flood at least 1.28 million buildings, with potential for $261 billion in losses (2020 dollars).
By 2030, as the sea levels rise, it’s 1.3 million buildings and $270 billion.
By 2050, it’s 1.6 million buildings and $321 billion in losses.
Then by 2100, it’s 2.4 million buildings and whopping $624.5 billion in losses.
“Satellite Beach gets some credit for this,” Santiago Tate, CEO/cofounder of HighTide Intelligence, said of the city’s proactive stance on planning for sea-level rise. “They really wanted us to focus on the element of communicating risk.”
And for thousands in this small city of just 11,200 residents, that risk is mounting. Unless the city prepares, rising seas and powerful storms will put 2,200 households in Satellite Beach — half the city’s total — at risk and could inflict $142 million in flood damages to buildings by 2050, according to HighTide’s study.
During the run-up to Hurricane Ian in October 2022, many teenagers decided to have some fun in the flooding. Rising sea levels are expected to make flooding a more common problem in Florida even in the absence of hurricanes.n(Credit: MALCOLM DENEMARK/FLORIDA TODAY)
Local governments can get insurance discounts for residents from Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) by conducting floodplain management activities that qualify for points in what’s called the Community Rating System (CRS). Part of Satellite Beach’s effort is to improve the city’s rating.
Most of the vulnerable homes and infrastructure are on the city’s west side, along the low-lying banks of the Indian River Lagoon.
Lee Corbridge describes how this flooding near his family’s home on Lantern Drive, north of Titusville, in late September, early October 2022 was the worst he has ever seen. Rising sea levels are expected to make flooding a more common problem in Florida even in the absence of hurricanes.
On average, sea levels rose about 6 to 8 inches worldwide over the past century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the rate of rise has more than doubled since 2006.
Sea levels along the southeastern and Gulf Coasts already are rising faster than climate models predicted, the UCF researchers note, causing coastal erosion, high-tide flooding, saltwater contamination of freshwater aquifers and higher storm surges in Florida.
Hurricanes exacerbate the problem. Even a Category 1 storm could inundate more than 40% of Satellite Beach, according to a 2010 study for the city by Florida International University, and as sea level rises, it’s only going to get worse.
Governments usually opt for large-scale infrastructure projects to prevent flooding, such as levees, the Satellite Beach report notes. Those aren’t always best, though, because costs exceed benefits and can take decades for Congress to appropriate funds.
Meanwhile, property owners are left susceptible to storm flooding.
A truck makes its way down Milford Point Drive on Merritt Island after heavy rains pounded Brevard County in September 2022, flooding streets and yards. Rising sea levels are expected to make flooding a more common problem in Florida even in the absence of hurricanes.
HighTide’s study builds on two previous flood studies of Satellite Beach, including the one by Florida International University. At the time, the researchers in that study anticipated the tipping point toward “catastrophic inundation” — a 2-foot sea-level rise — in just 40 years for Satellite Beach. Now that’s less than 30 years away.
“I don’t really know how you get ahead on this,” said Randy Parkinson, the coastal geologist at Florida International University who coauthored the 2010 study.https://flo.uri.sh/story/1950403/embed
Complacency about flood risk jumped out at him during a recent drive down State Road A1A in south Brevard and into Indian River County, where the barrier island thins to just a few hundred feet wide.
“I couldn’t believe the number of new single-family homes still going in,” Parkinson said. “The real wakeup call is sadly when we get a Cat. 4 or Cat. 5 and it’s moving slow.”
Time will tell how many structures Satellite Beach and other Florida coastal cities will have to move to higher ground or elevate.
“It really depends on the timescale,” Santiago Tate said. “There’s only so much you can do to hold back Mother Nature.”
Contact Environment reporter Jim Waymer at jwaymer@floridatoday.com.
Food Industry Giants Must Fix Their Plastic Pollution
McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and other major brands are creating massive amounts of plastic waste. Their initiatives are not enough and they need to be held accountable for the plastics crisis.
By Ashka Nail – July 6, 2023
Plastic bottles for recycling are seen at a junkshop on April 11, 2023 in Manila, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
Plastic has allowed many food industry giants to become the massive entities they are today. For example, Coca-Cola generates 3 million tons of plastic packaging a year; PepsiCo has been found to use nearly 2.3 billion tons of plastic each year for its bottles and packaging; and McDonald’s has been called out for generating the weight of “100 Eiffel Towers” worth of packaging waste.
It hasn’t always been this way. Plastic became the packaging material of choice in the mid-20th century, when it took over human imagination with its malleability, seeming ease of production, and strength. Its production increased threefold during WWII alone.
The political power of plastic also became palpable rather quickly with the emergence of plastic industry lobbying more than 30 years ago. Its primary function has been to fight laws designed to safeguard people and the planet from plastic’s well-documented toxicity. Plastic industry lobbyists also amped up their work as widespread concern grew about plastic’s presensce in the ocean, in animals, in farming systems, and in the human body. And while the industry has always had grand plans of recycling its plastic waste, most plastic is not recycled today.
“Predictably, when we take a closer look at some of these initiatives, what we find is not much evidence of meaningful or sustained progress.”
This lobby’s political power was also present in the corridors of the United Nations recently, as the majority of the world’s countries negotiated a legally binding agreement on plastic pollution focused on production, design, use, and disposal. In this context, the industry has worked diligently to position itself as a solution to a crisis it has avariciously fueled.
The industry has also judiciously crafted narratives about its commitment to solving this global emergency by supporting entities like the Ocean Cleanup, Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas Alliance, and World Wildlife Fund’s ReSource.
Predictably, when we take a closer look at some of these initiatives, what we find is not much evidence of meaningful or sustained progress. In fact, recent investigations have found that many corporations like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been backing these initiatives while using more plastic than even before.
There is also a litany of corporate doublespeak on plastic in the media. Take the recent New York Timesarticle by Boyan Slat titled, “Reducing Plastic Pollution in Our Oceans Is Simpler Than You Think.”
Slat is the founder of Ocean Cleanup, “a nonprofit funded by donations and a range of philanthropic partners with the mission to rid the oceans of plastic.” In the article, Slat claims his program has salvaged “more than 0.2 percent of the plastic in the [garbage] patch so far,” and mentions the need for stopping “more plastic from flowing into the oceans,” but conspicuously shies away from calling on Coca-Cola and his other program partners to stop producing plastic.
Instead, he writes that “meaningful reductions in plastic use will be difficult to achieve.” Slat also blames the lagging waste management systems in middle- and lower-income countries for the majority of ocean plastic pollution without recognizing that much of the plastic waste from the Global North is in fact being dumped in middle- and lower-income countries—such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
He fails to recognize the fact that it is often “waste colonialism” that forces these nations to become what Slat calls “hot spots” of plastic pollution.
Corporations often tout the fact that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s (EMF) New Plastics Economy Global Commitment reports on their plastic use. But if you dig deeper, the information it shares doesn’t provide much actual transparency.
For instance, its audit of PepsiCo says there is “no third-party verification or assurance in place.” Coca-Cola’s reporting on this portal yielded no concrete third-party reviewed progress, but more of the same—self reporting and more corporate marketing speech than evidence of verifiable progress. In fact, an analysis done by Oceana of the data from the 2022 progress report found that Coca-Cola increased its plastic packaging use by nearly 9 percent between 2020 and 2021, and PepsiCo increased its use of virgin plastic by 4.5 percent in 2021 compared with the previous year.
Another disturbing example of promises unkept comes from the world’s largest distributor of plastic toys, McDonald’s. It has publicly committed to “drastically reduce plastics in Happy Meal toys [including the latest toy, a replica of The Little Mermaid, a symbol of the ocean] around the globe and transition to more sustainable materials by the end of 2025.”
However, when some of the largest food and beverage corporations were surveyed by a conservation organization last year, McDonald’s emerged as one of only two whose “plastic intensity” was actually increasing. And then at the company’s annual meeting in May, McDonald’s faced investor scrutiny (p.101) for its staunch opposition to proposed EU plastic waste reduction laws.
The company distributes nearly 1 billion toys a year, every year. To its credit, it claims that in Japan it has recovered toys to make trays that can be equivalent to approximately 0.75 percent of its annual global toy distribution. The number of recycled toys for other countries where it operates, and there are nearly 100 of them, are difficult to find; it’s not clear whether they even exist.
All these initiatives and commitments tell the true story of plastic. It is about time McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and other food and beverage companies own up to their role in fueling the plastics crisis, by eliminating the use of plastic from their entire supply chains immediately. For more than 80 years, Coca-Cola mainly used glass and aluminum, so it can be done! It’s time for these companies to devise business models that stop exploiting the planet, its ecosystems, and the public to benefit a handful of shareholders.
These corporations also need to be held accountable by legal systems and democratic institutions across the world for their inaction.
Yes, the power of plastic has proven potent in changing the course of our history, but lest the world forget, so has the power of the people to determine our collective future. It’s about time food and beverage companies stopped jeopardizing the viability of future generations of all species to have a livable planet to call home.
Ashka Naik is a director of research and policy at Corporate Accountability. Her work focuses on on strategic campaign development, corporate research, and equity-centered analysis of corporate power across issues that guide the vision and overall success of the campaigns. She also spearheads Corporate Accountability’s food program, which focuses on structural determinants and sociopolitical dimensions of food systems, nutrition, and public health, while uncovering industry’s influence in the policies and politics of global food security, sovereignty, and justice. Read more >
The Supreme Court is on a mission to ensure the US assumes the form that the Republican Party wants
Chauncey DeVega – July 5, 2023
Clarence Thomas; John RobertsPhoto illustration by Salon/Getty Images
Last week, the United States Supreme Court issued a series of decisions that ended race-based affirmative action programs at colleges and universities, voided President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, and made it legal for people to cite sincere “religious objections” as a reason for discriminating against the LGBTQ community (and presumably other marginalized individuals and groups as well) in ways that violate civil rights laws.
The Washington Post bizarrely described the Supreme Court’s last term as “restrained.” The reality is very much the opposite: it was a political and judicial bloodletting, a collective act of radical right-wing judicial activism that will have serious negative implications for the American people and the country as a whole for decades to come. These decisions by the “conservative” majority on the Supreme Court are part of a decades-long project to return American society to a time period before the civil rights movement(s) of the 1960s and 1970s and back to the Gilded Age (if not before) when white men and moneyed interests – a true tyranny of the minority —were able to exercise dominion over American society, largely uncontested.
In an attempt to make better sense of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions about race-based affirmative action and its broad implications for American democracy, the law, and society, I recently spoke with Khiara M. Bridges. She is a Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law whose scholarship examines race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three. Professor Bridges is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Critical Race Theory: A Primer.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How are you feeling given the Supreme Court’s decisions this week, in particular the decision to ban the consideration of race in university and college admissions?
I’m tired – even though none of this is surprising. All of this was perfectly predictable. We knew that decisions such as the one gutting affirmative action were almost inevitable after Kavanaugh and Barrett joined the court. The decisions this week are the realization of a long-term project by the Republican Party to use the federal judiciary to shape the nation into its vision of what the country ought to be.
It has been an exhausting week.
How do we connect the dots between the affirmative action decision and the decision to allow “religious objections” to be used as a justification for discriminating against gays and lesbians — and presumably other groups as well?
“I think that what we are seeing is just how hellbent the Supreme Court is on ensuring that the U.S. assumes the form that the Republican Party wants it to assume.”
Those two decisions represent a backlash against people of color and LGBTQ people. Both groups have realized substantial gains in terms of being conceptualized as equal and valuable members of the body politic. Many people want to reverse those gains. They want to return LGBTQ people and Black and brown people to second-class citizenship. The court is doing the bidding for those folks.
The Republicans, “conservatives” and other members of the larger white right are joyous and celebrating the end of affirmative action. Black and brown folks, white folks and others who believe in multiracial democracy and equality are hurting and lamenting this decision and what it symbolizes and means for our society and the harm it does to real people. How are you reconciling those divergent responses?
I understand these celebrations as consistent with a right-wing effort to erase America’s brutal history of racial subjugation and to deny the consequences that history has on society today. Conservatives are celebrating the myth that America is “post-racial” and the lie that events like chattel slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, “urban renewal,” etc. really have no effect on contemporary society. And most of all, they are celebrating the fact that there is a Supreme Court that is willing to affirm those fictions.
In the most basic sense, what are the competing visions of the law and its role in society that we are seeing play out with the Supreme Court this week, and of course the Age of Trump these last few years?
I think that what we are seeing is just how hellbent the Supreme Court is on ensuring that the U.S. assumes the form that the Republican Party wants it to assume. It is important to keep in mind that the Court creates its own docket; it selects the cases that it wants to hear. And it is no coincidence that the Court is deciding to hear cases that touch on all of these hot button issues: affirmative action, abortion, guns, religious freedom, LGBTQ rights. And of course, it is no coincidence that the Court is deciding these cases in ways that are consistent with the Republican Party’s platform.
It is also important to keep in mind that it is really hard to reconcile these decisions with one another in terms of an overarching theory of law. So, the government can force people to carry pregnancies to term, but the government cannot forbid people from carrying firearms outside of the home. Institutions cannot consider race when making college admissions decisions, but they can consider their customers’ sexual orientation and gender identity when deciding whether to sell products and services to them. Those decisions cannot be reconciled with one another very easily in terms of law. It’s all politics.
In simple terms, how do we explain what “affirmative action” is or isn’t and how it’s been distorted by the right wing and its propaganda machine for the general (white) public?
In order to understand what affirmative action is in the context of university admissions, one has to understand how decisions traditionally have been made about who is admitted to a school. This generally has consisted of evaluating a student’s GPA and performance on standardized tests. Affirmative action moves beyond just grades and standardized testing. It insists that those measures are not the totality of an individual. We actually know empirically that grades and standardized testing only imperfectly predict success in college. For example, a student that has had to raise their younger siblings while they’re in high school probably has the determination and grit to succeed in a four-year university. We might guess that a student who has managed to learn and succeed in an underfunded school lacking in resources will likely learn and succeed at a university or college that has lots of resources.
Race-based affirmative action specifically says that we ought to be conscious of a student’s race when making admissions decisions, because a student’s race might help us understand their grades and standardized test scores. Race contextualizes those numbers. Despite what conservatives say about it, affirmative action is not some type of “handout” like “welfare” for lazy and unqualified Black and brown people.
Of course, the right-wing members of the court did not mention legacy admissions or how the children of big money donors get preferential treatment — what is a de facto type of white privilege and white unearned advantage, an “affirmative action” program for unqualified white people. Likewise, the majority did not object to how at most universities a decision is made to admit more “unqualified” male students as a way of achieving gender parity in a given cohort.
There is a conservative argument about so-called “mismatch,” where students of color are imagined to be admitted through affirmative action into institutions where they supposedly do not have the skills and preparation to succeed. Clarence Thomas mentions this theory repeatedly. But the science is not there to justify mismatch theory. It has been debunked time and time again, which Justice Sotomayor mentions in her dissent. Interestingly, the right-wing justices who claim to be concerned about mismatch in terms of students of color going to competitive colleges and universities do not have the same level of concern about mismatch in terms of legacy admits.
“It is really hard to reconcile these decisions with one another in terms of an overarching theory of law.”
Your dad and granddad having graduated from college does not prove that you have the academic chops, or discipline, or determination to succeed in the school. Similarly, your family having donated millions of dollars to the university does not translate into academic ability and intelligence. Students who lack the highest SAT scores and GPAs, but who are admitted because they are athletes, would fall into that category as well. The court was not concerned about those students either.
For me, this reveals that the justices who signed on to these opinions are not really worried about whether Black and brown students are going to do well in elite institutions; it is just that they do not want Black and brown students to “take the seats” of white and Asian students who they believe actually deserve to be at these elite institutions.
In their decision to end affirmative action at the nation’s colleges and universities, the right-wing justices summoned up Brown v. Board of Education. This is part of a larger project by the “conservative” movement and white right to weaponize, distort, abuse, and misrepresent the victories of the long Black Freedom Struggle and civil rights movement as a way of undermining and ultimately reversing them. Please help me process their twisted readings of Brown v. Board and the Equal Protection Clause.
Brown v. Board looms over these debates about affirmative action. Those who oppose race-based affirmative action and those who support it both say that their position is faithful to Brown v. Board. In 1954, the court decided in Brown that racially separate schools were inherently unequal and that they were a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Brown is subject to many interpretations. One interpretation is that Brown mandated colorblindness; it forbade school districts from taking into consideration students’ races when assigning them to schools.
Another equally plausible interpretation of Brown is that the court was concerned with anti-subordination. In this view, segregated Black and white schools were unconstitutional because they functioned to subordinate Black people; they functioned to subjugate Black people vis-à-vis their white counterparts. So, which is the better understanding of Brown? Was Brown about colorblindness, or was it about antisubordination?
In my opinion, Brown was about antisubordination. And I get there because I think that we have to pay attention to the motivations behind the Equal Protection Clause, which was added to the Constitution after the Civil War. The 14th Amendment, which contains the Equal Protection Clause, was proposed and ratified in order to make formerly enslaved Black people equal citizens.
“The conservative majority on the court does not care; they are very comfortable with subjugating non-white people in America.”
The Equal Protection Clause was designed to undo slavery. And the problem of chattel slavery was not that white people weren’t being colorblind. The problem of chattel slavery was that white people thought that Black people were an inferior race of humans and treated them accordingly. The Equal Protection Clause was ratified not to make white people colorblind, but rather to ensure that Black people were no longer treated as subhuman. Race-based affirmative action programs are consistent with what the 14th Amendment requires because it is interested in real racial equality, not just colorblindness.
A Supreme Court justice made the intervention not too long ago that to get past racism one must take account of race.
That guy’s gone, right? It’s really just a numbers game with the Supreme Court today. Before Justice Kennedy retired, conservatives on the court just didn’t have the votes to instantiate this view that the Constitution mandates colorblindness. Now they do. It’s not that those arguments make more sense today than they did 10 years ago. It’s not that there is more evidence to support that right-wing view. It is most certainly not true that we as a country are closer to a multiracial democracy than we were ten years ago. Ultimately, the only thing that has changed is the composition of the court.
As a factual and historical matter, the United States Constitution is not “colorblind.” In reality, it is a document that represented the interests of the white slave-owning class and was one of the bedrock documents of a herrenvolk racial state. Serious historians and other scholars have repeatedly documented how as a group the framers and other white elites saw little if any contradiction between white on Black chattel slavery, white supremacy, and their vision of (white) democracy. Yet, the right-wing justices insist on the Constitution somehow being “colorblind” and then reasoning from that incorrect premise to whatever conclusion they want to reach. Taking them seriously, how is such a view of the Constitution structured?
I think they believe that if you keep saying it, somehow it becomes true. But reality does not work that way. The Constitution is very much aware of race. The document literally contemplates race. The 3/5th clause is an obvious example. The majority opinion in the court’s recent affirmative action decision repeats “colorblind” so many times that an uninformed person may actually think that if you read the Constitution, you would see the words “colorblind” or “colorblindness.” But it doesn’t say that. What it does say is that no person shall be denied “equal protection of the laws.” Conservatives insist that those words mean “colorblindness.”
What the conservative majority will say is that during those lamentable and tragic moments in our nation’s racial history, the court was not interpreting the Constitution to be colorblind. They would say that the problem was that the court was allowing people to think about race. However, in my view, the problem of separate but equal, for example, wasn’t that people were thinking about race. The problem was how people were thinking about race. And they were thinking about race in order to conserve the existing racial hierarchy and to protect white supremacy. The conservative majority pretends that it cannot see the difference between those divergent uses of race. These conservative justices—all of whom got the finest educations from competitive universities—supposedly cannot see the difference between thinking about race in order to subjugate somebody and thinking about race in order to attempt to undo that subordination. Of course, they can see the difference. They know better.
The distinction here is important. Do the right-wing justices, like Clarence Thomas for example, actually believe in the factually wrong version of history and the Constitution (and reality) that they are articulating in the decision to end affirmative action, and more generally in terms of their legal theories? Or are they just ideologues and operatives, zealots, who don’t really care about the substance of the law and the Constitution and are just using it to advance a larger political and societal project?
I don’t know. And I don’t think it matters. What I do know for sure is that they are very comfortable signing on to decisions and handing down interpretations of the Constitution that will hurt people of color. In the end that is all I need to know. They won’t lose any sleep at night thinking about how students of color are going to be even more underrepresented in the nation’s colleges and universities. They don’t care about the real world implications of striking down affirmative action; they don’t care that, quite literally, lives will be lost, as Justice Jackson so compellingly and brilliantly demonstrated in her dissent when she talked about the effect that doctor-patient racial concordance has on reducing Black infant mortality. The conservative majority on the court does not care; they are very comfortable with subjugating non-white people in America.
Major city announces ban on new homes due to concerning conditions: ‘We’re going to manage this situation’
Laurelle Stelle – July 5, 2023
Due to a lack of water, the state of Arizona has announced that it will not approve any more building permits for single-family homes that rely on wells in Maricopa County, CleanTechnica reported.
Like much of the western U.S., Arizona has been facing a huge drought for many years. A shortage of rainfall has led to residents relying on underground aquifers and the Colorado River for water.
As CleanTechnica explained, the state has been using far too much water. Homes, farms, businesses, and public programs have been drawing on water supplies at an increasing rate, totaling 2.2 billion gallons per day in Maricopa County alone.
Because of this overuse, the Colorado River and groundwater are both drying up. State officials that modeled Arizona’s future water use predict that in the next 100 years, the Phoenix area will need over 1.5 trillion more gallons than it has.
Much of this excess water use has been driven by the growth of towns and cities throughout Arizona, CleanTechnica reported. One of the worst offenders is Phoenix, the state capital, which is located in Maricopa County. The city is surrounded by ever-expanding suburbs that rely on well water.
That’s why Governor Katie Hobbs has put a stop to new building permits.
Unfortunately, the new ban won’t stop the 80,000 building permits for new homes that have already been approved. It also doesn’t cover building projects that rely on river water or source their water from nearby businesses and farms. According to Governor Hobbs, though, the situation is under control.
“We’re going to manage this situation,” Governor Hobbs said at a news conference on June 1, according to The Guardian. “We are not out of water and we will not be running out of water. It is also incredibly important to note that the model relates only to groundwater and does not concern surface water supplies which are a significant source of renewable water for our state. What the model ultimately shows is that our water future is secure.”
Tick safety: A guide to avoiding ticks, treatments for bites and info about Lyme disease
Krys’tal Griffin, Delaware News Journal – July 3, 2023
We’ve waited months for warm weather to grace us so we can spend more time outdoors, but with warm weather comes pesky ticks.
As more people hike through summer grasses, play in backyards and camp in forests, ticks are taking the opportunity to shimmy up pantlegs, crawl through sleeves or land in your hair to do what they do best: feed on your blood.
Reports show some states are seeing an increased presence of ticks this spring and summer, and with them, a surge in Lyme disease cases.
Here’s the rundown of everything we know about tick presence, Lyme disease cases and tick bites in Delaware, including prevention, symptoms and treatment.
Where are ticks found?
Trails, forests and other humid and moist environments are where ticks can be found.
Wooded areas, tall grass or brush — the edges where woods and lawn meet — are desirable spots for ticks, along with leaf litter, beneath ground-cover plants and around woodpiles or stone walls where small mammals live.
From there, ticks can latch onto the birds, mammals or reptiles they prey on and spread to other organisms.
Ticks are active year-round if temperatures are above freezing.
What types of ticks are in Delaware?
While there are hundreds of species of ticks found worldwide and dozens in the United States, only a handful are commonly spotted in the First State.
Lone Star tick
This photograph depicted a dorsal view of a female “lone star tick”(Amblyomma americanum).
The most common tick species in the area is the Lone Star tick, identifiable by a white dot on its back. Found all over the state, it is more common in Kent and Sussex counties.
“It’s described as being an aggressive biter,” said Ashley Kennedy, tick biologist at the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “The bite itself can be very painful, very itchy.”
A bite from a Lone Star tick could trigger flu-like illness or, in rare cases, alpha-gal syndrome, in which a person develops an allergy to red meat and other products made from mammals such as dairy.
Black-legged/deer tick
The black-legged tick, also called the deer tick or bear tick, is a carrier of Borrelia burgdorfi bacteria, which causes Lyme disease.
The black-legged/deer tick is not as common as other species but is more likely to infect you if it bites you.
One of the illnesses it can cause is Lyme disease, a bacterial infection that can spread to your joints, heart and nervous system if not treated early.
American dog tick
The American dog tick is one of the tick species present in Delaware.
The American dog tick is the least likely to make you sick, but a small percentage of them carry Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Kennedy said.
Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a bacterial disease that begins with symptoms such as fever, headache and rash. It can be deadly if it is not treated early on with the correct antibiotics.
Asian longhorned tick
Asian longhorned tick
The newest Delaware tick species, first spotted in 2019, is the Asian longhorned tick.
This invasive species has a female-only population that can lay eggs without needing a male and occasionally bites.
What is Lyme disease?
Like mosquitoes, ticks are feared for their capacity to spread debilitating illnesses like Lyme disease.
A major concern when it comes to ticks is Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S. but just one of 16 tickborne illnesses that can be passed to humans.
It is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected blacklegged tick and can lead to an infection of the joints, hearts and nervous system if left untreated. There is no evidence that the disease can be passed from person to person, according to the CDC.
Lyme disease accounts for approximately 30,000 of the reported tick-borne illnesses each year. The CDC suggests this number is actually closer to 476,000 due to underreporting when it comes to the disease.
Lyme disease in Delaware
Autumn colors at Bellevue State Park.
In accordance with the Delaware Division of Public Health’s section of Epidemiology, Health Data and Informatics, the entity cannot disclose the current number of Lyme disease cases in Delaware, said Laura Matusheski, media relations coordinator for DPH.
“Delaware sees cases of Lyme disease in all three counties year-round and continues to monitor disease trends. People who spend time outdoors in grassy or wooded environments are at risk for increased exposure,” the Division of Public Health stated.
The CDC defines Delaware as a high-incidence state for Lyme disease, ranking it among the top 10 states for cases in the United States.
DPH tracks yearly totals for the number of Lyme disease cases reported in Delaware, and the number of cases per 100,000 people per year over the last five years are as follows:
In 2018, there were 540 cases of Lyme disease statewide per 100,000 people. New Castle County contributed 302 cases, followed by Kent County at 87 and Sussex County at 131.
In 2019, there were 659 cases statewide. New Castle County contributed 437, followed by 86 in Kent County and 136 in Sussex County.
In 2020, 353 cases were reported statewide. New Castle County contributed 249, Kent County contributed 43 and Sussex County contributed 161.
In 2021, 354 cases were reported statewide. New Castle County reported 250, Kent County reported 40 and Sussex County reported 64.
In 2022, the most recent year with data, 385 statewide cases were reported. New Castle County documented 253, Kent County documented 64 and Sussex County documented 68.
As the data shows, New Castle County has reported the highest incidence rates of Lyme disease compared with Kent and Sussex counties, at time documenting cases that are four times greater than throughout the rest of the state.
What are the symptoms of Lyme disease?
Lyme disease bacterium can infect several parts of the body and cause different symptoms at different times. Some of these symptoms may be nonspecific and resemble other diseases, according to the Division of Public Health.
Early symptoms of Lyme disease include:
Headache.
Fatigue.
An expanding red rash, commonly referred to as a bulls-eye rash. It can appear anywhere on the body and be warm to the touch but is usually not itchy or painful. Not all affected individuals will develop a rash.
Fever and/or chills.
Muscle and joint aches.
If left untreated, the following symptoms can occur:
Heart palpitations and dizziness.
Severe joint pain and swelling, usually in large joints like the knees.
Severe headaches and neck stiffness due to meningitis.
Loss of muscle tone on one or both sides of the face, called “Bell’s palsy.”
Neurological problems like numbness or tingling in extremities and problems with concentration and short-term memory.
If you think you have Lyme disease, contact your health care provider. Most cases of Lyme disease can be cured with antibiotics taken over the course of a few weeks, but the severity of symptoms and subsequent treatment may vary this timeline.
Some patients experience chronic symptoms months and years after the infection has cleared.
How to keep ticks away from your home
Fall foliage, picture here at Killens Pond State Park in Felton, is the perfect spot for ticks to latch onto unsuspecting hikers.
When it comes to keeping ticks away from you and your home, there are several ways you can decrease the presence of ticks on your property.
Keeping your grass mowed and removing leaf litter, brush and tall weeds from the edges of your lawn are routine ways to keep ticks out.
Moving firewood, birdhouses and feeders away from your home. Wood should be stacked in a dry area.
Using plants that do not attract deer or exclude deer by using various types of fencing. Deer are the main food source for adult ticks.
Creating a 3-foot or wider wood chip, gravel or mulch barrier between your property and the woods.
Removing old furniture or trash, which ticks love to hide in, from your yard.
Keeping playground equipment, patios and decks away from yard edges and trees, instead placing them in sunny locations, if possible.
Tick bite prevention
Check yourself thoroughly after spending time in tick habitats.
Knowing where ticks usually dwell is the first step in preventing an encounter with them.
If you find yourself in a moist and humid environment that is near wooded or grassy areas, there are extra steps you can take to stay safe while in these places.
For those of you tasked with wading through fall leaves or tidying up the shrubs, wear light-colored clothing to allow you to see ticks crawling on you.
If you find yourself in an area ripe for ticks, be sure to wear long sleeves and pants. Tuck your pant legs into your socks and consider wearing a hair tie on your sleeves to prevent ticks from crawling into the openings of your clothes.
Other ways to prevent tick bites, according to DPH, include:
Applying tick repellent that contains DEET. This lasts only a few hours and needs to be reapplied as necessary. Adults should use a repellent containing less than 50% DEET. Children’s repellents should contain less than 30% DEET. Do not use repellents with DEET on infants under 2 months old.
Searching your body for ticks during and after an outing. Be thorough when checking under your arms, inside your belly button, in and around your ear, behind the knees, between the legs, around the waist and in and around all head and body hair.
Checking children and pets for ticks. Your beloved pet probably has no clue a tick just latched onto him for a free ride into the house after a round of fetch. Giving your kids another look after they check for ticks can’t hurt either.
Symptoms of a tick bite
An image of what a tick bite looks like
If you suspect you have been bitten by a tick, many tickborne illnesses share similar signs and symptoms.
See your health care provider if you develop the following symptoms within a few weeks of a tick bite:
Fever or chills: All tickborne diseases can cause fever.
Rash: Lyme disease, Southern tick-associated rash illness, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichiosis and tularemia can cause distinctive rashes.
Aches and pains: Tickborne diseases can cause headaches, fatigue and muscle aches.
Tick bite treatment
After spending the day outdoors, your tick check might alert you to some unwelcome hitchhikers on your body.
If you discover a tick on you or your pets, do not use home remedies like petroleum jelly or hot matches to remove the ticks. They do not work, the Division of Public Health said.
Instead, use these steps to help rid yourself of ticks:
Use fine-tipped tweezers or shield your fingers with a paper towel, rubber gloves or a tissue to remove ticks. Do not pick at them with bare hands.
Grasp the tick close to the skin surface and pull upward with steady, even pressure.
Do not squeeze, crush or puncture the body of the tick. Its fluids, such as saliva, body fluids and gut contents, may contain infectious germs.
After removing the tick, clean the removal spot with an antiseptic or soap water. Don’t forget to wash your hands afterward!
World registers hottest day ever recorded on July 3
Gloria Dickie – July 4, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Red alert for heatwave in Beijing
Monday, July 3, was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
The average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit), surpassing the August 2016 record of 16.92C (62.46F) as heatwaves sizzled around the world.
The southern U.S. has been suffering under an intense heat dome in recent weeks. In China, an enduring heatwave continued, with temperatures above 35C (95F). North Africa has seen temperatures near 50C (122F).
And even Antarctica, currently in its winter, registered anomalously high temperatures. Ukraine’s Vernadsky Research Base in the white continent’s Argentine Islands recently broke its July temperature record with 8.7C (47.6F).
“This is not a milestone we should be celebrating,” said climate scientist Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Britain’s Imperial College London.
“It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems.”
Scientists said climate change, combined with an emerging El Nino pattern, were to blame.
“Unfortunately, it promises to only be the first in a series of new records set this year as increasing emissions of [carbon dioxide] and greenhouse gases coupled with a growing El Nino event push temperatures to new highs,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, in a statement.
(Reporting by Gloria Dickie; Editing by Mark Potter)
Standing between them and the capital, however, was the ruins of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and its surrounding exclusion zone, a heavily restricted 1,000 square-mile area poisoned by radiation. Undeterred, the Russian forces moved in and captured the decommissioned plant on the very first day of the invasion. Five weeks later, even as the horrors of the war raged throughout Ukraine, Russian forces quit the plant.
Ever since the plant’s No. 4 reactor exploded in April 1986—to this day, the worst nuclear power accident the world has ever seen—the site has been meticulously managed by generations of workers to mitigate the ongoing threat the area poses to the public. Their critical work could not stop when the Russian tanks and troops arrived on Feb. 24, 2022.
A new film featuring the worker’s testimonies tells how, under incredible strain, they used their expertise and manipulation against Russian occupiers until the soldiers were finally forced to leave.
“Never before in history has a nuclear power plant been taken over by a hostile army. This is something that’s unprecedented,” Oleksiy Radynski, a Kyiv-based documentarian, told The Daily Beast. “And also, no one was prepared for this because people assumed that everyone is a little bit civilized and you don’t do this. You don’t do something that can really lead to a global disaster of like unspoken proportions. But the Russians did it.”
A still from the documentary “Chernobyl 22” about the Russian Army’s invasion of Chernobyl.Oleksiy Radynski
Radynski is part of The Reckoning Project, a team of journalists and researchers documenting Russian war crimes in Ukraine to build a body of evidence for eventual prosecutions. One such war crime was the occupation of Chernobyl, which Radynski explored through testimony of those who were forced to work and live alongside Russian forces as they moved in and shocked the world by turning the site into a military base. He also made a documentary film, Chernobyl 22, using footage from interviews conducted after the occupation of the plant ended on March 31, 2022.
Radynski’s connection to the area is personal, having been one of tens of thousands of children evacuated from Kyiv following the disaster at the plant 37 years ago when he was just two years old. The meltdown, created by human error, and its aftermath are among Radynski’s earliest childhood memories. It was unthinkable, he says, that the security of Chernobyl would be risked by a military operation of any kind, right up until the moment it happened.
“They had security protocols for literally any kind of disaster, like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack for example, but not for an invading army coming in with tanks and heavy artillery and so on,” Radynski said of the plant workers. “So they had to improvise. I think they did something really, really amazing. The resolve of these people is also just unimaginable.”
The plant’s capture immediately sparked international condemnation and concern. Those fears were exacerbated when monitoring stations at the plant recorded a huge spike in radiation levels on the day Russian forces arrived as military vehicles disturbed contaminated soil as they plowed across the exclusion zone. The risks were real. But the Ukrainian workers realized they could use the fear of those risks to their advantage, Radynski says, by exacerbating the fear of radiation among Russian commanders.
“What the Ukrainian personnel at the plant—I mean the senior personnel—did, was they said: ‘If you want to survive, this place is very dangerous,’” Radynski says. “‘If you think you have taken over the nuclear power plant you are wrong. This is not really a nuclear power plant, this is a decommissioned and post-disaster nuclear plant. It’s something completely different and if you want to survive here you have to follow Ukrainian laws on radiation safety.’”
“This was of course true, but this was also a bit of manipulation, because along with these basic radiation safety rules they also started to impose on the Russians,” Radynski says. In one incident, on March 9, the plant suffered a blackout due to power lines being damaged in fighting elsewhere. The workers at the plant convinced the Russians to give them fuel for diesel generators, arguing that a complete loss of power could lead to catastrophic consequences. The plant’s Supervising Electrician, Oleksiy Shelestiy, says in Radynski’s film that staff joked among themselves that, in their own way, they were helping Ukraine’s armed forces by diverting tons of fuel to Chernobyl and away from Russian tanks.
A still from the documentary “Chernobyl 22” about the Russian Army’s invasion of Chernobyl.Oleksiy Radynski
The daily reality for those who did have to remain working in the decommissioned plant throughout the occupation was nevertheless perilous and draining. “They didn’t have proper sleep,” Radynski says. “They didn’t have proper rest. They were completely exhausted—they could make a mistake of any kind at any moment. They could do something wrong at the plant. So this was also extremely dangerous. Some of them spent even more than 25 days of nonstop working there.”
When they could sleep, many had to do so in the same areas as the Russians. Of course, the danger of the situation in Chernobyl affected the invading troops too.
One particularly bizarre example of the recklessness shown by Russia throughout the occupation is where they chose to dig their fortifications. One of the sites was in the Red Forest—the wooded area near the plant named for the rubescent shade its pine trees turned after being exposed to large amounts of radiation during the 1986 disaster. As part of the clean-up operation, authorities decided to bulldoze the forest and bury its contaminated trees in trenches.
The roadblock and trenches made by Russian soldiers near the Red Forest within the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s Exclusion Zone on May 29, 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
“They dug fortifications in this area, which is actually not a forest, but the forest is below ground,” Radynski says. “The most contaminated materials are below ground. So you shouldn’t really walk there, but one thing you definitely should not do is dig there.”
In the course of his interviews, Radynski says he learned this extremely hazardous decision may not have simply been down to Russian commanders’ negligence of their own soldiers’ wellbeing. “The Russian generals who were taking over the plant, they were kind of boasting to the staff that they know their plant really well because in Russia they have an identical plant,” Radynski says.
That twin plant, Radynski says, is the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in western Russia—a Soviet plant built in the 1970s which is so structurally similar to Chernobyl that it’s been used as a stand-in for its Ukrainian double as a filming location.
“They were saying that they were planning and rehearsing this takeover in that nuclear power plant in Kursk,” Radynski said of the Russian commanders. “But of course there is one thing that they didn’t take into account probably—is that the power plant in Kursk is really identical in every way with one exception: it’s not contaminated.”
The extent of the damage to Russian soldiers exposed to potentially dangerous doses of radiation remains unclear. Reports claimed some required treatment for radiation sickness in Belarus, while one witness in the documentary claims workers saw Russian men “evacuated on buses full of people vomiting.” Another said Chernobyl’s cooks had to warn Russians who had shot and skinned a moose that eating the animal—where wild fauna graze on the contaminated fauna—might be a bad idea.
A still from the documentary “Chernobyl 22” about the Russian Army’s invasion of Chernobyl.Oleksiy Radynski
When the Russians withdrew, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry cited losses incurred at the hands of its armed forces and “radiation exposure” as key reasons for the departure, taking the opportunity to mock Russian “mutants” on their way out.
The occupation nevertheless had serious consequences for the ongoing safety of Chernobyl. As the Russians left, large amounts of property was either destroyed or stolen—one estimate suggested around $1 million of property was looted—including everything from technical equipment to teapots. “It’s just lucky that a lot of really vital equipment is just too large to be squeezed into a tank or a military bus,” Radynski says. The area has also been heavily mined, a small part of a national scourge which has reportedly seen an area the size of Florida in Ukraine infested with explosives.
Arguably the most troubling of all the consequences for the workers, Radynski says, is the now ever-present sense of insecurity that comes with the fear that the Russians could return. Once unimaginable, the cavalier attitude toward nuclear safety in Ukraine has remained constant since Chernobyl’s occupation. On Thursday, Ukrainian emergency workers even took part in drills to prepare for a possible radiation leak at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—Europe’s largest—amid alarming reports that Moscow is preparing such a plot at the site. Like Chernobyl, the southwestern Zaporizhzhia plant was captured by Russian forces early in the war—but the occupiers are still in control there to this day.
For Radynski, the fact that the Chernobyl plant is back under Ukrainian control is in itself a remarkable testament to the fortitude of those workers who stoically carried out their duties in the face of unparalleled danger. “There has been many stories of Russian military defeats during this war—I hope there will be more,” he says. “But most of the stories of Russian defeats that we know of, they come from the Ukrainian Army.”
In this case, however, it was Ukrainian workers who won out. The Russians in Chernobyl “were defeated by the power of Ukrainian kafkaesque bureaucracy,” Radynski says, as the staff found a way to “swallow them into this kind of swamp of radiation protocols.” Protocols, he notes, which they didn’t follow anyway.
In the documentary, a physical protection engineer at Chernobyl describes an exchange with a Russian energy official who kept tabs on the plant’s staff fearing they might intentionally trigger some kind of nuclear disaster. “‘I don’t care about your armed thugs,’” Vitaliy Popov says he told the official. “‘Our guys will take care of them. As for me, I actually came here to stop 1986 from happening again.’ I told him: ‘I will accomplish my task.’”
