Caldor Fire: South Lake Tahoe now under evacuation warning as crews struggle to slow blaze
Terell Wilkins, Jorge L. Ortiz, Kristin Oh, USATNetwork –
After firefighters caught a break with favorable weather Saturday, fire officials ordered more evacuations around the Tahoe Basin Sunday evening as crews dealt with a two-week-old blaze they said was “more aggressive than anticipated,” and continued to edge toward the pristine waters of Lake Tahoe.
“Today’s been a rough day and there’s no bones about it,” said Jeff Marsoleis, forest supervisor for El Dorado National Forest. A few days ago, he thought crews could halt the Caldor Fire’s eastern progress, but “today it let loose.”
Flames churned through mountains just a few miles southwest of the Tahoe Basin, where thick smoke sent tourists packing at a time when summer vacations would usually be in full swing ahead of the Labor Day weekend.
“To put it in perspective, we’ve been seeing about a half-mile of movement on the fire’s perimeter each day for the last couple of weeks, and today, this has already moved at 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) on us, with no sign that it’s starting to slow down,” said Cal Fire Division Chief Eric Schwab.
Some areas of the Northern California terrain are so rugged that crews had to carry fire hoses by hand from Highway 50 as they sought to douse spot fires caused by erratic winds.
The forecast did not offer optimism: triple-digit temperatures were possible and the extreme heat was expected to last several days. A red flag warning for critical fire conditions was issued for Monday and Tuesday across the Northern Sierra.
The blaze that broke out August 14 was 19% contained after burning nearly 245 square miles (635 square kilometers) — an area larger than Chicago. More than 600 structures have been destroyed and at least 18,000 more were under threat.
The Caldor Fire has proved so difficult to fight that fire managers pushed back the projected date for full containment from early this week to Sept. 8. But even that estimate was tenuous.
Flames churned through mountains just a few miles southwest of the Tahoe Basin, where thick smoke sent tourists packing at a time when summer vacations would be in full swing ahead of the Labor Day weekend. Instead, souvenir shops and restaurants closed.
Smoke has choked the region’s skies ever since the fire started Aug. 14. On Thursday, evacuation warnings were issued for the nearby communities in Christmas Valley – the first such warnings in the Lake Tahoe Basin since 2007.
On Friday, a day after tourism officials asked people to avoid South Lake Tahoe – which abuts the Nevada border – any remaining tourists stayed inside and away from the smoke.
“Being closer to the state line, it’s all just pure tourism with everyone coming up here for casinos,” said Breeana Cody, an employee at McP’s Taphouse Grill. “But everything is pretty vacant right now.”
Cody said it’s been smoky for days on end. Ash has blanketed the area too.
“September until the end of the year is pretty good, but Labor Day weekend is really our big hurrah,” Cody said.
With fewer customers, deciding who should work and when with less revenue coming in has also been a delicate balance for businesses in the area.
McP’s Taphouse Grill employee Breeana Cody talks about how business has slowed down because of the Caldor Fire burning near the popular tourist destination of South Lake Tahoe on August 27, 2021. Concerts that would bring customers to McP’s have been cancelled.
Cody said employees quitting has left McP’s short-staffed.
“Obviously we don’t need it because of the volume right now,” she said. “We’re not busy.”
While surrounded by imposing lakefront mansions and massive cabins, South Lake Tahoe is home to thousands of service workers. Many of them are seeing their hours cut, business owners said.
Nahani Sandoval, assistant manager at Black Bear Trading Co., a souvenir shop, said she worries about employees who are losing work.
“It’s just not enough to make ends meet,” she said.
Nahani Sandoval, Black Bear Trading Co. Asst. Manager in South Lake Tahoe, talks about the effects of the Caldor Fire burning near the popular Stateline area on August 27, 2021.
Business owners near the commercial center of South Lake Tahoe said they were still optimistic the fire wouldn’t advance into main business district along Highway 50.
Andrés Delgadillo, co-owner of Los Mexicanos Mexican restaurant and Plaza Tapatia market, said he’s still holding out hope that firefighters will prevent the fire from marching into the Lake Tahoe Basin.
South Lake Tahoe business owner Andres Delgadillo expresses his thoughts on the Caldor Fire burning near South Lake Tahoe on August 27, 2021.
“But anything is possible,” Delgadillo said. “The wind could get really nasty and then all those sparks could fly and ignite.”
Delgadillo said that as a resident of South Lake Tahoe for over three decades, the smoke and fires are difficult to deal with but are a part of living in the area.
For him, the beauty of Lake Tahoe is well worth the strain of dealing with fires.
“Everything is a risk,” Delgadillo said. “You come to the East Coast where they worry about hurricanes and all that stuff. It’s just something we have to deal with anywhere we are, so we’ll live with it. I’ve been here for 35 years so I’m not going to go anywhere unless I have to.”
The smoke from the Caldor Fire burning nearby keeps tourist away at South Lake Tahoe on August 27, 2021.
Contributing: Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
“It’s Critical That The Rivers Continue to Flow.” Environmental Activist Nicole Horseherder on Reclaiming Water Rights for Native Americans
Eben Shapiro
Nicole Horseherder
Nicole Horseherder, executive director of Tó Nizhóní Áni Credit – Darcy Padilla.
Nicole Horseherder lives in Hard Rock, Ariz., population 53. Hard Rock sits on the Black Mesa, which takes its name from the numerous coal seams running through the plateau in western Arizona.
Horseherder’s home has no running water, as it is prohibitively expensive to drill down to the nearest aquifer that has potable water. Twice a week, she drives her 20-year-old, three-quarter-ton GMC pickup—towing a 500-gal. tank mounted on a flatbed trailer—to a community well 25 miles away.
Coal and water have dominated Horseherder’s life and work for the past decade.
Horseherder is executive director of Tó Nizhóní Ání, an advocacy group she helped form in 2000, which is dedicated to ending the “industrial use of precious water sources.” Tó Nizhóní Ání means “sacred water speaks” in Horseherder’s native Diné or Navajo. Horseherder and other activists won a tremendous victory with the 2019 decommissioning and subsequent January 2021 demolition of the Navajo Generating Station, one of the largest coal-burning plants in the West. In a related move, two coal mines, the Kayenta and Black Mesa mines, were also closed down in 2019.
Horseherder’s work has now shifted to ensuring that there are adequate funds to reclaim and restore the land. She recently testified at an oversight hearing before a U.S. House subcommittee on unfulfilled coal reclamation obligations and the need to ensure that reclamation efforts are enforced. While the amount has not been finalized, Arizona Public Service, the local power company, has proposed over $100 million to be spent on restoring land impacted by coal.
Horseherder, who grew up on the reservation, got involved in the work when she returned home after college and noticed that the watering holes where she had helped graze the family’s sheep as a young girl had dried up as the local water had been redirected to be used in coal production.
She is on the front lines of an increasingly urgent battle that will have to be played out repeatedly in coming years to ward off the most severe consequences of climate change, according to a recently released study by the U.N., which called for a “sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades.” There were more than 300 coal-fired power plants in the U.S. in 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Horseherder’s fight is a microcosm and a single example of the grueling effort that goes into closing a single coal mine. “It’s tremendously difficult to fight coal companies and power plants,” she says.
(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
Earlier this summer, the Bureau of Land Management for the first time declared a water shortage in the Colorado River. That is your neighborhood. What was your reaction?
We knew that this was going to happen. We knew this day was coming. Fifty years have gone by, and industry has had an enormous impact: irreversible in many instances, on both groundwater and surface water. That water in the upper-basin Colorado River belongs to the Navajo people. Whatever is left has to be carefully managed and carefully used. It’s critical that the rivers continue to flow. The Southwest has a “use it or lose it” law for the water of the Colorado River, and it is very destructive. It’s the perfect example of the colonial mindset in the Southwest. That’s what’s going to destroy the population until we have a mindset change. Now more than ever, an Indigenous mindset is needed.
Can you tell me a bit more about the role water plays in your culture?
One of the teachings of water is that it has the ability to give life, and it has the ability to take life. Human beings were born from and conceived in water and grow in a womb that is filled with water. Water nourishes our development and growth. When we are born, it’s the water that breaks, and so we’re actually born through the force of water. Life springs from water. In our teaching, water was given to us, and it has specific prayers and a specific name and water has a song. There are specific songs that are just water songs. There’s a way of speaking to water and greeting water and making a relationship with water, the same way you make a relationship with your mother. Everywhere you go, you always greet water as your mother. If there’s a flowing river, that’s your mother flowing, and her body is long, and her body can wind, and her body is pure, and it glistens in the sunlight. And so, you speak to her because she’s powerful. These are the principles that we try to pass down to our children.
That’s a different mindset.
In America, you know, we are kind of encouraged to make relationships with other things. We are encouraged to have relationships with corporate executives and boardrooms and money and big houses and fast cars. In our teachings, we have to maintain relationships to the earth and to the sky to the four-leggeds and the wings and the plant life and the water and the sunlight and the air. You have to continue to maintain your responsibility to be a life among life, to be considerate of all things, to not take more than you should and to give when you can. You share this earth with every living being.
How did you get started in this work?
I came home in 1998 and noticed that there was no water here and found out that it was due to the mining, and then organized a group and gave it a name and started advocacy to shut down the industrial use of the water by the coal company [Peabody Coal]. We did everything that we could to raise awareness and compel our local leadership to end the pumping for industrial use.
After a decade of work, how did you feel when the decision was made to close the plant and coal mines?
It was a big sense of relief. The land out here and the people have endured and absorbed so much, and they have lost so much. To lose your water source is no little thing.
You are now focused on reclamation and a transition to a sustainable economy. Over $100 million has been proposed by Arizona Public Service, the utility, for a “just energy transition” for the Navajo Nation. How will that be spent?
I hope that the money is used to help all impacted communities recover. It’s not been decided yet because the money hasn’t been given yet. APS has agreed to provide those kinds of transition funds to the Navajo Nation, but the final decision still rests with the Arizona Corporation Commission.
What does sustainable energy look like in Arizona?
We’re pushing for renewable energy to replace coal. The reason I’m pushing so hard for renewable energy—and it’s not a silver bullet, it doesn’t solve all the problems; there’s a lot of problems with solar as well—the material used to make solar panels, and such, but right now it’s the most viable replacement for coal. Anything that continues to be extractive and require combustion requires an enormous amount of water, and water is just something we don’t have in the Southwest. The Indigenous people, especially the Diné people, can’t afford to give up any more water. We cannot afford to negotiate another drop of water for industry.
Based on your experience, how hard will it be to transition off coal nationwide and shut down the hundreds of coal plants still operating in this country?
It’s tremendously difficult to fight coal plants and coal mining. They have good lawyers; they can afford all the best experts in the world, and they can have these experts write their reports for them any way they want. It’s taken a toll on my health, my family. If you’re Indigenous living in America and you’re doing this work, it is tough work, and you are fighting for the lives of every single person in this country because these issues will impact everybody. If not today, it will tomorrow.
A record-breaking 44 container ships are stuck off the coast of California
Hannah Towey, Grace Kay, Áine Cain
Freight ships sit off the coast of California this January. US ports have experienced some of the worst bottlenecks in more than a decade throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images
This tops the previous pandemic record of 40 ships stuck in February.
The ports account for about one-third of US imports, serving as a main source of trade with China.
Forty-four freight ships are stuck awaiting entry into California’s two largest ports, the highest number recorded since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Marine Exchange of Southern California reported Saturday.
The lengthy queue is a result of the labor shortage, COVID-19 related disruptions, and holiday buying surges. According to LA port data, the ships’ average wait time has increased to 7.6 days.
“The normal number of container ships at anchor is between zero and one,” Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, told Insider this July.
California ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach account for about one-third of US imports. These ports operate as a primary source of imports from China and have experienced heavy congestion throughout the pandemic.
“Part of the problem is the ships are double or triple the size of the ships we were seeing 10 or 15 years ago,” Louttit told Insider. “They take longer to unload. You need more trucks, more trains, more warehouses to put the cargo.”
While the container ships are forced to anchor and await berth space, companies importing and exporting goods to and from Asia expect additional shipping delays.
This comes during one of the busiest months for US-China trade relations, as retailers buy ahead in anticipation of US holidays and China’s Golden Week in October, Bloomberg reported.
“To give you a real-life example of the kinds of challenges we’re seeing, one of our dedicated charters was recently denied entry into China because a crew member tested positive for COVID, forcing the vessel to return to Indonesia and change the entire crew before continuing,” Dollar Tree’s CEO Michael Witynski said on its Thursday earnings call. “Overall, the voyage was delayed by two months.”
According to Witynski, a San Francisco-based freight forwarder said in a recent transportation webinar that “the transit times from Shanghai to Chicago had more than doubled to 73 days from 35 days.” Another carrier executive estimated “that voyages are now taking 30 days longer than in previous years due to port congestion, container handling delays, and other factors,” Insider’s Áine Cain reported.
“Industry experts expect the ocean shipping capacity will normalize no later than 2023, when many new ships come online,” Witynski said.
“Despite record levels of ships in port and at anchor and in drift areas, the Marine Transportation System in LA and LB remains safe, secure, reliable, and environmentally sound, while not being as efficient as it should be due to COVID protocols in these uncertain and unsettled times, and record levels of cargo,” the Marine Exchange of Southern California wrote in a statement.
The Taliban reportedly have control of US biometric devices – a lesson in life-and-death consequences of data privacy
Margaret Hu, Prof. of Law and of International Affairs, Penn State
A U.S. Army soldier scans the irises of an Afghan civilian in 2012 as part of an effort by the military to collect biometric information from much of the Afghan population. Jose Cabezas/AFP via Getty Images.
In the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul and the ouster of the Afghan national government, alarming reports indicate that the insurgents could potentially access biometric data collected by the U.S. to track Afghans, including people who worked for U.S. and coalition forces.
Afghans who once supported the U.S. have been attempting to hide or destroy physical and digital evidence of their identities. Many Afghans fear that the identity documents and databases storing personally identifiable data could be transformed into death warrants in the hands of the Taliban.
This potential data breach underscores that data protection in zones of conflict, especially biometric data and databases that connect online activity to physical locations, can be a matter of life and death. My research and the work of journalists and privacy advocates who study biometric cyber-surveillance anticipated these data privacy and security risks.
Biometric-driven warfare
Investigative journalist Annie Jacobson documented the birth of biometric-driven warfare in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in her book “First Platoon.” The Department of Defense quickly viewed biometric data and what it called “identity dominance” as the cornerstone of multiple counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies. Identity dominance means being able to keep track of people the military considers a potential threat regardless of aliases, and ultimately denying organizations the ability to use anonymity to hide their activities.
By 2004, thousands of U.S. military personnel had been trained to collect biometric data to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2007, U.S. forces were collecting biometric data primarily through mobile devices such as the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE). BAT includes a laptop, fingerprint reader, iris scanner and camera. HIIDE is a single small device that incorporates a fingerprint reader, iris scanner and camera. Users of these devices can collect iris and fingerprint scans and facial photos, and match them to entries in military databases and biometric watchlists.
In addition to biometric data, the system includes biographic and contextual data such as criminal and terrorist watchlist records, enabling users to determine if an individual is flagged in the system as a suspect. Intelligence analysts can also use the system to monitor people’s movements and activities by tracking biometric data recorded by troops in the field.
Over the years, to support these military objectives, the Department of Defense aimed to create a biometric database on 80% of the Afghan population, approximately 32 million people at today’s population level. It is unclear how close the military came to this goal.
More data equals more people at risk
In addition to the use of biometric data by the U.S. and Afghan military for security purposes, the Department of Defense and the Afghan government eventually adopted the technologies for a range of day-to-day governmental uses. These included evidence for criminal prosecution, clearing Afghan workers for employment and election security.
A computer screen shows an enlarged image of a pair of eyes as an arm holds a boxlike object in front of the eyes of a woman wearing a headscarf and facemask
It’s too soon after the Taliban’s return to power to know whether and to what extent the Taliban will be able to commandeer the biometric data once held by the U.S. military. One report suggested that the Taliban may not be able to access the biometric data collected through HIIDE because they lack the technical capacity to do so. However, it’s possible the Taliban could turn to longtime ally Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, for help getting at the data. Like many national intelligence services, ISI likely has the necessary technology.
Another report indicated that the Taliban have already started to deploy a “biometrics machine” to conduct “house-to-house inspections” to identify former Afghan officials and security forces. This is consistent with prior Afghan news reports that described the Taliban subjecting bus passengers to biometric screening and using biometric data to target Afghan security forces for kidnapping and assassination.
Concerns about collecting biometric data
For years following 9/11, researchers, activists and policymakers raised concerns that the mass collection, storage and analysis of sensitive biometric data posed dangers to privacy rights and human rights. Reports of the Taliban potentially accessing U.S. biometric data stored by the military show that those concerns were not unfounded. They reveal potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the U.S. military’s biometric systems. In particular, the situation raises questions about the security of the mobile biometric data collection devices used in Afghanistan.
The data privacy and cyber-security concerns surrounding Taliban access to U.S. and former Afghan government databases are a warning for the future. In building biometric-driven warfare technologies and protocols, it appears that the U.S. Department of Defense assumed the Afghan government would have the minimum level of stability needed to protect the data.
The U.S. military should assume that any sensitive data – biometric and biographical data, wiretap data and communications, geolocation data, government records – could potentially fall into enemy hands. In addition to building robust security to protect against unauthorized access, the Pentagon should use this as an opportunity to question whether it was necessary to collect the biometric data in the first instance.
Understanding the unintended consequences of the U.S. experiment in biometric-driven warfare and biometric cyber-intelligence is critically important for determining whether and how the military should collect biometric information. In the case of Afghanistan, the biometric data that the U.S. military and the Afghan government had been using to track the Taliban could one day soon – if it’s not already – be used by the Taliban to track Afghans who supported the U.S.
Margaret Hu is affiliated with the Future of Privacy Forum, a non-profit think tank that provides policy guidance on data privacy. Some of Hu’s research assistants receive funding from Microsoft Research. She received an honorarium for speaking at an event hosted by Microsoft Research.
Yet their elected leaders and mouthpieces, like Rep. Steve Scalise, are still treated as credible sources and normalized by being invited on news channels and by papers of record to criticize President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a cartoonishly hardcore Trump loyalist, and ridiculous pseudo-intellectual Ben Shapiro, whom The New York Times once referred to as “the cool kid’s philosopher” and whose Daily Wire is hugely influential in pushing vaccine misinformation on Facebook, still get coveted platforms in Politico.
Welcome to the Upside Down. Democracy might not survive, but the ratings will be great as the GOP base has become so unhinged and radicalized on a feed bag of disinformation to the point that Crenshaw, a slavish MAGA man, got heckled for refusing to say the election was stolen. Even Trump, their god-king, was booed by his adoring cult at a recent rally in Alabama. Did he praise Muslims? Hug an undocumented immigrant? Compliment Obama? Nope. He simply gently recommended that they take a life-saving vaccine, like he did, that will protect them from suffering a tragic, unnecessary death.
You can’t “win over” these folks anymore. They are too far over the bend to get brought back around by Hillbilly Elegies, FDA vaccine approvals, sympathetic profiles of voters in rust belt diners, or town halls with undecided voters. Facts, common sense, and good-naturedness will not sway their fragile, terrified hearts.
Enough coddling. It’s time to say enough is enough.
Thankfully, Democrats are flexing their slim congressional majorities—a result of Republican gerrymandering—and trying to push back. The 13-person House panel selected to investigate the Jan. 6 riot announced Wednesday that it’s requesting communications from within the Trump White House and other agencies to determine information about the planning and funding of the Jan. 6 insurrection that left five people dead. This includes asking telecommunication companies to preserve phone records of congressmen to ascertain what, if anything, they knew about the unfolding riots and when.
Republicans like GOP House “leader” Kevin McCarthy have already dismissed the investigation as a political witch hunt. I mean I also would be dismissive of an investigation that would potentially incriminate myself. After all, McCarthy has already admitted he was in touch with Trump from inside the Capitol on the day of the insurrection, and Rep. Jordan has also acknowledged he was in conversation with Trump. Even though a recent report said the FBI found “scant evidence” that the insurrection was a result of an “organized plot,” one of the main organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally, conservative activist Ali Alexander, has claimed he worked in tandem with three GOP lawmakers. “We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander confessed in a since-deleted video, pointing to Reps. Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar.
When he isn’t busy giving keynote speeches at white nationalist rallies and tweeting white supremacist talking points, Gosar is busy accusing Capitol police of “lying in wait’” to “execute” Ashli Babbitt, a radicalized insurrectionist who was transformed after her death into a “martyr” by Trump and the GOP. “I know that day I saved countless lives,” veteran officer Lt. Michael Byrd said in an interview with Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News finally revealing his identity after enduring months of racist hate and death threats. Thankfully, Officer Byrd was just internally cleared by his department for any wrongdoing, but that didn’t stop Tucker Carlson and Russian state TV from weaponizing his Blackness and attacking him and alleging that he “executed” Babbitt.
Meanwhile, Brooks had more to say in support of the failed terrorist and Trump voter who streamed his pathetic attempt to blow up the Library of Congress last week than he did about Officer Brian Sicknick, who died trying to protect the Capitol. Recently, Brooks confirmed he was wearing body armor during his Jan. 6 speech to the Trump supporters who would later overrun the nation’s Capitol.
“Should I wear a striped tie? Cuff links? Bow tie? Body armor?” is a totally normal, daily sartorial debate for elected officials. Meanwhile, his colleagues who didn’t get the memo and were barricaded, protected by Capitol Hill officers, fearing for their lives.
Those include Rep. Andrew Clyde, a hypocrite whose commitment to his extremist base and their attack on our democracy is so great that he tried to gaslight the world by claiming afterward that the riot was a “normal tourist visit.” In reality, new reports reveal that the Secret Service warned Capitol Police about violent threats a day before the insurrection, but due to intelligence lapses did not prepare for a large-scale assault.
Meanwhile, the same 21 GOP officials who’ve attacked the Squad for supporting “defund the police,” voted against awarding congressional medals to the Capitol Police officers who saved their lives. Along with Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, some of these congressmen are holding rallies in support of the individuals who were arrested for their part in the insurrection.
It’s not surprising any more to hear white supremacist conspiracy theories parroted by GOP elected officials and mainstreamed by Fox News hosts, or domestic terror threats like QAnon embraced by former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and tolerated by Kevin McCarthy.
But it is still shocking, and should be a big news story, to hear these pols embrace a lunatic conspiracy that just radicalized a young father who speared his two daughters to death because he was convinced his wife “possessed serpent DNA and had passed it onto his children.”
These radicalized Republicans fighting to maintain minority rule do so in no small part thanks to the aid and comfort provided by “moderate” Democrats like Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Even though the House just passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to strengthen federal oversight of state election laws, it has no chance of passing thanks to Senate Republicans who will filibuster it to death. And instead of voting to kill the filibuster, an archaic instrument of Jim Crow, these Democrats will instead maintain the fiction of “bipartisanship” with colleagues who are actively supporting a radicalized cult that supported a violent coup that could have killed them.
If there’s a silver lining to these dark clouds, perhaps it’s that death and economic pain are great motivators for the majority to wake up and say “enough” to the right wing’s multi-pronged culture war. With the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, government agencies and private entities are moving forward with vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, these enraged zombies for white supremacy are now assaulting and harassing doctors who are simply providing health guidelines at town halls, bullying our teachers and school boards, fighting mask mandates, resisting vaccine mandates and doing everything to combat the overwhelming majority—nearly 70 percent of us—who have decided to choose life.
Delta Air Lines said it will begin charging unvaccinated workers $200 per month, citing steep hospital bills for their unvaccinated employees who got COVID-19. Tyson is now requiring all of its U.S. employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 1, even as thousands are employed in Arkansas, which just ran out of ICU beds.
It’s too late to convince people determined to believe otherwise that the pandemic is real, deadly, and requires them to wear masks and take vaccines. It’s been nearly two years. We could have reopened safely by now, saved thousands of lives, and protected our front-line workers if we simply followed social distancing and masking.
Instead, a radicalized minority enabled by demagogic governors continues to choose death, which Republicans are trying, insanely, to rebrand as “freedom.”
To quote Batman Begins, “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.” That minority may have a right to choose death, but they certainly don’t have a right to infect us with their virus by coming to work, to sporting events and into our children’s schools.
Also, it’s encouraging to see U.S. Capitol Police officers fight back against Republicans who are trying to gaslight the Jan. 6 insurrection. Seven officers are now suing Trump and those who organized the Stop the Steal riot that killed five people and injured more than 140 officers.
We are the majority. We have the numbers. However, it’s not enough for the rest of us to be complacent and simply acknowledge the multiple threats to our democracy. It’s time to flex and fight back on all fronts to save lives and our democracy from a conservative hate machine willing to attack truth, science, safety, and democracy in its desperate, violent attempt to preserve white rule.
Raging Caldor Fire prompts mass evacuations as it barrels toward Lake Tahoe region
Erin Snodgrass
Residents are stuck in gridlock while attempting to evacuate as the Caldor fire approaches in South Lake Tahoe, California on August 30, 2021 Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
The Caldor Fire in Northern California prompted several evacuation orders and warnings on Sunday and Monday.
Fire conditions in the region are expected to worsen this week as the blaze continues to spread.
The dire conditions come as firefighters in California face several active wildfires amid an ongoing drought.
The raging Caldor Fire in Northern California prompted a series of evacuations orders and warnings in the region on Sunday night and Monday morning as the fire spreads rapidly toward the Lake Tahoe region.
The massive fire has already injured five people and destroyed more than 650 structures since it began on August 14, Cal Fire said in an update. Forty homes have also been damaged by Caldor’s conditions.
Evacuation orders have been issued for large parts of El Dorado and Alpine counties, while evacuation warnings stand in other parts of the counties. All of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate on Monday morning, leading to standstill traffic out of the city.
Cal Fire’s hourly updates on the fire’s trajectory and evacuation orders have warned there is a “potential threat to life and/or property.”
The fire’s rapid spread even prompted at least one hospital in the region to transfer all of its patients ahead of Caldor’s expected growth.
The Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe tweeted Sunday that all patients at the hospital would be transferred to regional partner facilities in light of the fire, and patient families would be notified.
The flurry of evacuation orders comes as fire officials expect the blaze’s dangerous conditions to worsen this week, Clive Savacool, fire chief for the city of South Lake Tahoe told KTVN.
“The Caldor Fire has made a pretty big jump in the last few hours, so that’s had a pretty big impact on the community and expansion of evacuations,” Savacool said. “It’s because these winds, the low humidity, the low moisture, all these conditions are making it very, very treacherous for this fire and so that’s why it’s been expanding so rapidly.”
Eerie video from the region shows the Caldor Fire casting an ominous orange haze in the area.
The dire conditions come as firefighters in California face several active wildfires amid an ongoing drought. The Dixie Fire, which is currently the largest active wildfire in the state, has grown to more than 765,000 acres since it began in mid-July, Cal Fire said.
Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks.
By David Rothkopf About the author: David Rothkopf is an author, a commentator, a former senior government official, and the host of the Deep State Radio podcast.
Evan Vucci / AP
America’s longest war has been by any measure a costly failure, and the errors in managing the conflict deserve scrutiny in the years to come. But Joe Biden doesn’t “own” the mayhem on the ground right now. What we’re seeing is the culmination of 20 years of bad decisions by U.S. political and military leaders. If anything, Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks. President Biden deserves credit, not blame.
Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement. Although Donald Trump made a plan to end the war, he set a departure date that fell after the end of his first term and created conditions that made the situation Biden inherited more precarious. And despite significant pressure and obstacles, Biden has overseen a military and government that have managed, since the announcement of America’s withdrawal, one of the most extraordinary logistical feats in their recent history. By the time the last American plane lifts off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 31, the total number of Americans and Afghan allies extricated from the country may exceed 120,000.
In the days following the fall of Kabul earlier this month—an event that triggered a period of chaos, fear, and grief—critics castigated the Biden administration for its failure to properly coordinate the departure of the last Americans and allies from the country. The White House was indeed surprised by how quickly the Taliban took control, and those early days could have been handled better. But the critics argued that more planning both would have been able to stop the Taliban victory and might have made America’s departure somehow tidier, more like a win or perhaps even a draw. The chaos, many said, was symptomatic of a bigger error. They argued that the United States should stay in Afghanistan, that the cost of remaining was worth the benefits a small force might bring.
Former military officers and intelligence operatives, as well as commentators who had long been advocates of extending America’s presence in Afghanistan, railed against Biden’s artificial deadline. Some critics were former Bush-administration officials or supporters who had gotten the U.S. into the mess in the first place, setting us on the impossible path toward nation building and, effectively, a mission without a clear exit or metric for success. Some were Obama-administration officials or supporters who had doubled down on the investment of personnel in the country and later, when the futility of the war was clear, lacked the political courage to withdraw. Some were Trump-administration officials or supporters who had negotiated with and helped strengthen the Taliban with their concessions in the peace deal and then had punted the ultimate exit from the country to the next administration.
They all conveniently forgot that they were responsible for some of America’s biggest errors in this war and instead were incandescently self-righteous in their invective against the Biden administration. Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan. Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced. Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us.
Never mind the facts. Never mind the losses. Never mind the lessons. Biden, they felt, was in the wrong.
Despite the criticism, Biden, who had argued unsuccessfully when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to seriously reduce America’s presence in Afghanistan, remained resolute. Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul.
The Biden administration nimbly adapted its plans, ramping up the airlift and sending additional troops into the country to aid crisis teams and to enhance security. Around-the-clock flights came into and went out of Afghanistan. Giant cargo planes departed, a number of them packed with as many as 600 occupants. Senior administration officials convened regular meetings with U.S. allies to find destinations for those planes to land and places for the refugees to stay. The State Department tracked down Americans in the country, as well as Afghans who had worked with the U.S., to arrange their passage to the airport. The Special Immigrant Visa program that the Trump administration had slowed down was kicked into high gear. Despite years of fighting, the administration and the military spoke with the Taliban many times to coordinate passage of those seeking to depart to the airport, to mitigate risks as best as possible, to discuss their shared interest in meeting the August 31 deadline.
The process was relentless and imperfect and, as we all have seen in the most horrific way, not without huge risks for those staying behind to help. On August 26, a suicide bomber associated with ISIS-K killed more than 150 Afghans and 13 American service members who were gathered outside the airport. However, even that heinous act didn’t deter the military. In a 24-hour period from Thursday to Friday, 12,500 people were airlifted out of the country and the president recommitted to meeting the August 31 deadline. And he did so even as his critics again sought to capitalize on tragedy for their own political gain: Republicans called for the impeachment of Biden and of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Within hours of the attack at the airport, America struck back, killing two terrorists and injuring another with a missile launched from a drone. A separate drone strike targeted a vehicle full of explosives on Sunday. In doing so, Biden countered the argument that America might lack the intelligence or military resources we would need to defend ourselves against violent extremists now that our troops are leaving.
The very last chapter of America’s benighted stay in Afghanistan should be seen as one of accomplishment on the part of the military and its civilian leadership. Once again the courage and unique capabilities of the U.S. armed services have been made clear. And, in a stark change from recent years, an American leader has done the hard thing, the right thing: set aside politics and put both America’s interests and values first.
Forest Service officials confirm all California national forests to temporarily close
Gregory Yee
Heavy smoke from the Caldor fire hangs over Highway 50 near South Lake Tahoe last week. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
All of California’s national forests will be closed beginning late Tuesday.
The closures will go into effect at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday and stay in place until the same time on Sept. 17, according to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region.
“We do not take this decision lightly, but this is the best choice for public safety,” said Regional Forester Jennifer Eberlien. “It is especially hard with the approaching Labor Day weekend, when so many people enjoy our national forests.”
The order doesn’t affect the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, which is not in the Pacific Southwest Region, officials said.
Officials said they hope to reduce the number of people visiting national forests to prevent anyone from being trapped during an emergency such as a wildfire.
Having fewer people on national forest lands also decreases the likelihood of new fires starting and will help keep firefighters and the community safer by limiting possible COVID-19 exposure, officials said.
While California has seen massive wildfires, forestry officials said they worry about the “record level” conditions for fires and dry fuels, fires behaving “beyond the norm” of experience, “significantly limited” resources to fight fires, and no predicted relief from weather conditions into the late fall, according to Monday’s announcement.
“More than 6,800 wildfires have burned 1.7 million acres across all jurisdictions in California, and the National Wildfire Preparedness Level … has been at PL5 since July 14, 2021, only the third time in the past 20 years that the nation has reached PL5 by mid-July — indicating the highest level of wildland fire activity,” officials said.
Monday’s announcement comes weeks after the Forest Service closed nine national forests in Northern California.
As US military leaves Kabul, many Americans, Afghans remain
Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the final five U.S. military transport aircraft lifted off out of Afghanistan Monday, they left behind up to 200 Americans and thousands of desperate Afghans who couldn’t get out and now must rely on the Taliban to allow their departure.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. will continue to try to get Americans and Afghans out of the country, and will work with Afghanistan’s neighbors to secure their departure either over land or by charter flight once the Kabul airport reopens.
“We have no illusion that any of this will be easy, or rapid,” said Blinken, adding that the total number of Americans who are in Afghanistan and still want to leave may be closer to 100.
Speaking shortly after the Pentagon announced the completion of the U.S. military pullout Monday, Blinken said the U.S. Embassy in Kabul will remain shuttered and vacant for the foreseeable future. American diplomats, he said, will be based in Doha, Qatar.
“We will continue our relentless efforts to help Americans, foreign nationals and Afghans leave Afghanistan if they choose,” Blinken said in an address from the State Department. “Our commitment to them holds no deadline.”
Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told reporters the U.S. military was able to get as many as 1,500 Afghans out in the final hours of the American evacuation mission. But now it will be up to the State Department working with the Taliban to get any more people out.
McKenzie said there were no citizens left stranded at the airport and none were on the final few military flights out. He said the U.S. military maintained the ability to get Americans out right up until just before the end, but “none of them made it to the airport.”
“There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure,” said McKenzie. “We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we’d stayed another 10 days we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out that we wanted to get out.”
McKenzie and other officials painted a vivid picture of the final hours U.S. troops were on the ground, and the preparations they took to ensure that the Taliban and Islamic State group militants did not get functioning U.S. military weapons systems and other equipment.
The terror threat remains a major problem in Afghanistan, with at least 2,000 “hard core” members of the Islamic State group who remain in the country, including many released from prisons as the Taliban swept to control.
Underscoring the ongoing security threats, the weapon systems used just hours earlier to counter IS rockets launched toward the airport were kept operational until “the very last minute” as the final U.S. military aircraft flew out, officials said. One of the last things U.S. troops did was to make the so-called C-RAMS (Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar System) inoperable.
McKenzie said they “demilitarized” the system so it can never be used again. Officials said troops did not blow up equipment in order to ensure they left the airport workable for future flights, once those begin again. In addition, McKenzie said the U.S. also disabled 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft so they can never be used again.
Throughout the day, as the final C-17 transport planes prepared to take off, McKenzie said the U.S. kept “overwhelming U.S. airpower overhead” to deal with potential IS threats.
Back at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, watched the final 90 minutes of the military departure in real time from an operations center in the basement.
According to a U.S. official, they sat in hushed silence as they watched troops make last-minute runway checks, make the key defense systems inoperable and climb aboard the C-17s. The official said you could hear a pin drop as the last aircraft lifted off, and leaders around the room breathed sighs of relief. Later, Austin phoned Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who was coordinating the evacuation. Donahue and acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson were the last to board the final plane that left Kabul.
Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of military operations.
“Simply because we have left, that doesn’t mean the opportunities for both Americans that are in Afghanistan that want to leave and Afghans who want to leave, they will not be denied that opportunity,” said McKenzie.
The military left some equipment for the Taliban in order to run the airport, including two fire trucks, some front-end loaders and aircraft staircases.
Blinken said the U.S. will work with Turkey and Qatar to help them get the Kabul airport up and running again.
“This would enable a small number of daily charter flights, which is a key for anyone who wants to depart from Afghanistan moving forward,” he said.
Miami-Dade rejects coastal walls. It’s back to drawing board for hurricane protection.
Alex Harris
A proposal to protect coastal Miami-Dade from hurricanes by running a tall concrete wall though Biscayne Bay and waterfront neighborhoods is — unsurprisingly — dead.
The county on Monday formally rejected the plan, part of an instantly controversial $4.6 billion proposal from the Army Corps of Engineers that also included elevating thousands of private homes, flood-proofing thousands of businesses, planting mangroves and installing flood gates at the mouths of rivers and canals. Instead, the county will work with the Corps to come up with a new plan over the next year or so.
While the public and political leaders liked many of the Corps’ original ideas to address the rising risks of storm surge, there was little support for the walls.
In a March meeting with the village of Miami Shores, where the latest proposal called for an eight-foot wall along the east side of Biscayne Boulevard, which would have left hundreds of homes unprotected, the entire council came out against the walls.
“I haven’t heard anything but panicked cries for help about this, not even the slightest bit of support,” said then-councilman Sean Brady. “People are more interested in natural solutions or things that allow us to live with the flooding.”
Members of Miami’s Downtown Development Agency worried the up-to-20-foot walls would destroy property values and drive away investment in the wealthy downtown and Brickell neighborhoods. The agency even commissioned renderings of the wall — complete with graffiti and trash floating in the murky brown water — to drive home their point.
Other advocates for climate action in the community called the plan “a $5 billion Band-Aid” because the wall is only designed to protect against storm surge, not sea level rise. Other parts of the plan, like elevating and flood-proofing properties, serve double duty.
In February, politicians in Miami-Dade and Miami offered the Corps another, more politically palatable vision for coastal protection: a mangrove-covered and oyster bed-ringed island surrounding the coast, paired with shorter concrete walls on the mainland.
The concept, conceived and paid for by major Miami developer Swire Properties, did not go into the same detail as the Corps’ three-year, $3 million study. It also didn’t offer estimates on how much the alternate would cost or how high the walls would be.
For the last six months, Miami and Miami-Dade officials have worked to convince the Army Corps that this alternate vision was viable and worth paying for completely, but they were unable to reach an agreement with the wording of the original plan.
In a statement, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Monday the county has “listened closely” to resident concerns throughout the process.
“Based on the feedback of residents and stakeholders, we are moving forward with our storm resilience efforts through a ‘Locally Preferred Plan’ to focus our readiness strategy on nature-based features and to continue working directly with impacted residents and cities,” she said.
As part of that, the county formally requested the Corps extend the study and add extra federal funding so Miami-Dade can work out a new plan.
Jim Murley, the county’s chief resiliency officer, said this extension will allow the county to get more input from the community and help find a solution that “strikes the right balance between protection from storm surge and that quality of life that we want in our community.”
“It’s a tough one to strike when there’s not much to look at for examples,” he said.
City of Miami Commissioner Ken Russell, who represents the majority of Miami’s bay front, said he supported the mayor’s decision to seek a locally preferred plan and pointed to the state of New Orleans’ levee system after Hurricane Ida a lesson for Miami.
While a concrete wall around our city is not a viable option, significant storm surge infrastructure in Miami is a must,” he said. “We cannot afford to simply reject the wall and send them away.”
Niklas Hallberg, project manager for the Back Bay study and Army Corps engineer, said his team will work with the county to figure out how much money and time they need to study a different solution. Once they submit it, he said, it usually takes about six to eight months for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works in Washington to approve the request and then however long the engineers need to come up with a new strategy.
The extension will kick off another round of public comment, official meetings and more chances to review drafts of the plan.
This delay will likely cause the county to miss the next federal appropriation bill in 2022 that would get the ball rolling on design and development. The next available bill for this kind of project will be in 2024, which Halberg called “a reasonable goal.”
Halberg said it’s up to the county to ask for what kind of solution it wants the Corps to model. It does have to meet some critical federal standards, like passing a cost-benefit analysis that shows a project will prevent more property damage and losses than it costs to build.
“As far as what the county can do, they can tell us to remove the structures or they can request a much smaller plan,” he said. “The trade-off could be that there’s a lot more residual risk with that.”
Halberg said he believes the final version of the plan will include some type of structural element, but that it’s too soon to know for sure.
Under Corps rules, the federal government picks up 65% of the tab for any project approved by both the Corps and the local sponsor, in this case, Miami-Dade. Anything the county asks for in addition to the agreed-upon plan (like landscaping along the walls, or park benches) would be considered a “betterment” and fall on Miami-Dade to pay for.
“The Corps looks forward to continuing the relationship with the county on a locally preferred plan and getting a solution that everyone can be pleased with and get the storm protection Miami needs,” Halberg said.
