Researchers discover another way tropical forests could suffer due to climate change
Julia Jacobo – August 23, 2023
Scientists have recently discovered a phenomenon occurring in tropical forests that could be of great concern if global warming continues unabated.
Climate change has caused the leaves on some plants in tropical forests to stop undergoing photosynthesis — the process in which plants and other organisms use sunlight to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water, according to a study published Wednesday in Nature.
“When leaves reach a certain temperature, their photosynthetic machinery breaks down,” Gregory Goldsmith, a professor of biology at Chapman University in Orange, California, told reporters.
PHOTO: The sun shines through the rainforest near Belem, Brazil, June 7, 2023. (Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
This study is really the first to establish the limits of these tropical forest canopies, Goldsmith said.
The analysis indicates that tropical forests may be approaching the maximum temperature threshold for photosynthesis to work, the researchers found.
Researchers used high-resolution measurements taken from an instrument on board the International Space Station between 2018 and 2020. They also placed sensors on top of tree canopies in places like Brazil, Puerto Rico and Australia to estimate peak tropical-forest canopy temperatures.
PHOTO: The National Forest in the Carajas mountain range, Para state, Brazil, May 17, 2023. (Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
They found many of the leaves are approaching a critical temperature threshold, according to Christopher Doughty, a professor in infomatics, computing and cyber systems and lead author of the study.
The data shows that canopy temperatures peaked at around 34 degrees Celsius — or 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit — on average, although a small proportion of those observed exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
Researchers are “just starting to see” these temperatures light up throughout forests, Joshua Fisher, a climate scientist with a focus on terrestrial ecosystems at Chapman University, told reporters at Monday’s news conference.
The percentage of leaves that began to fail was small — just an estimated .01% of all leaves in the forests studied, according to the study. But warming experiments predict this value will rise to 1.4% under future warming conditions.
PHOTO: Falls on Mother Cummings Rivulet in Meander Forest Reserve, Great Western Tiers, Tasmania, Australia. (Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty)
The critical temperature beyond which photosynthetic machinery in tropical trees begins to fail averages at about 46.7 degrees Celsius or about 116 degrees Fahrenheit.
Modeling suggests that tropical forests can withstand up to a 3.9 degree Celsius increase over current air temperatures before a potential tipping point is reached, which is within the worst-case scenario for climate predictions and possible, the researchers found.
“There’s a potential for a tipping point in these forest,” Doughty said.
PHOTO: A trail in the rain forest of El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico, Jan. 1, 2011. (Diego Cupolo/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Known as the the carbon sinks of the world, tropical forests serve as critical carbon storage due to their capture and pack away carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In addition, they hold most of the world species, which is why it is important to understand future temperatures and tropical forests, Doughty said.
“There’s all sorts of potential feedbacks once you start losing bits of forest,” he said.
Ambitious climate change mitigation goals and reduced deforestation are needed to help forests stay below thermally critical thresholds, the authors found.
Private jet crash in Russia kills 10. Wagner chief Prigozhin was on passenger list
Associated Press – August 23, 2023
FILE – Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin is shown prior to a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 4, 2017. A business jet en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed Wednesday Aug. 23, 2023, killing all ten people on board, Russian emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, officials said, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board. (Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
MOSCOW (AP) — A private jet crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board.
Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. The Kremlin said the founder of the Wagner private military company, which fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, would be exiled to Belarus.
But the mercenary chief has since reportedly popped up in Russia, leading to further questions about his future.
A plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass. It was not clear if Prigozhin was among those on board, though Russia’s civilian aviation regulator, Rosaviatsia, said he was on the manifest.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing emergency officials, that eight bodies were found at the site of the crash.
Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet registered to Wagner that Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later.
The signal was lost in a rural region with no nearby airfields where the jet could have landed safely.
In an image posted by a pro-Wagner social media account showing burning wreckage, a partial tail number matching a private jet belonging to the company could be seen. The color and placement of the number on the engine of the crashed plane matches prior photos of the Wagner jet examined by The AP.
Also this week, Russian media reported, citing anonymous sources, that a top Russian general linked to Prigozhin — Gen. Sergei Surovikin — was dismissed from his position of the commander of Russia’s air force. Surovikin, who at one point led Russia’s operation in Ukraine, hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.
As the news about the crash was breaking, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk, hailing the heroes of Russia’s “the special military operation” in Ukraine.
Heavy smog covers the skylines of the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York on June 7, 2023 (Ed JONES)
From Quebec to British Columbia to Hawaii, North America is facing an extraordinary wildfire season — and regions both near and far have found themselves increasingly blighted by smoke exposure.
Here’s what you should know about air pollution from these blazes.
– What we know –
One of the defining aspects of smoke from wildfires is “particulate matter” — toxins that, in their numbers, can make smoke visible.
Particulate matter of 2.5 micron diameter, PM2.5, is “particularly dangerous for human health and emitted in really large quantities,” Rebecca Hornbrook, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who flies in planes through smoke for her research, told AFP.
“Typically if you are downwind of a wildfire, that’s the thing that’s causing the majority of the darkening of the sky and the lack of visibility,” she said, such as the shrouded skies seen in New York as a result of fires hundreds of miles away in Quebec earlier this year.
PM2.5 penetrates deep inside the lungs and potentially even the bloodstream.
The average American had already been exposed to 450 micrograms of smoke per cubic meter by early July, worse that the entirety of the years from 2006-2022, economist Marshall Burke at Stanford posted on X recently, citing calculations made by the university’s Environmental Change and Human Outcomes Lab.
Also of concern are invisible substances known as volatile organic compounds such as butane and benzene. These cause eye and throat irritation, while some are known carcinogens.
When VOCs mix with nitrogen oxides — which are produced by wildfires but also are abundant in urban areas from burning fossil fuels — they help form ozone which can exacerbate coughing, asthma, sore throat and difficulty breathing.
– What we don’t know –
Automobile ownership exploded after World War II, and in the decades since scientists have gained insights on how it impacts humans — from the onset of asthma in childhood to increased risk of heart attacks and even dementia later on in life.
That breadth of knowledge is lacking for wildfire smoke, explained Christopher Carlsten, director of the Air Pollution Exposure Laboratory at the University of British Columbia.
Based on the two dozen studies published “there seems to be a greater proportion of respiratory versus cardiovascular effects of smoke as compared to traffic pollution,” he told AFP.
The reason might be that nitric oxides are more prominent in traffic pollution.
Carlsten’s lab has begun conducting human experiments with wood smoke to gain more clarity.
Medical interventions exist, said Carlsten, who is also a physician, including inhaled steroids, non-steroid inflammatories, and air filters — but research is urgently needed to know how best to use them.
– Will it spur action? –
The warming planet also impacts our psychological wellbeing in myriad ways, Joshua Wortzel, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s committee on climate change in mental health, told AFP.
One response is distress, “anger, grief, anxiety, in the face of the natural disasters they expect to come,” with these rates far higher in younger people than older.
Another is mental “acclimatization,” a byproduct of evolution that helps us cope with new stressors, but if we’re not careful can inure us to dangers, much like the proverbial frog in boiling water.
For Hornbrook, who is based in Colorado, what eastern North America experienced in 2023 is what the western side of the continent has already been dealing with for many years — and the global picture is only set to worsen given humanity’s appetite for burning fossil fuels.
While historic pollution regulations helped rein in emissions from cars and industry, climate action will be needed to tackle the wildfire scourge, she said.
“It gets frustrating knowing that we’ve been ringing the warning bell for years and years, and we’re now seeing what we’ve been warning about,” she said, but added there was still hope. “Maybe now people are actually starting to notice and we’ll see some change.”
Most fish oil supplements make unsupported heart health claims, finds new study. Here’s why experts say most people can skip them.
Korin Miller – August 23, 2023
A new study finds that many fish oil supplements make health claims that aren’t backed up by research. (Getty Images)
For years, fish oil supplements were promoted as an important way to boost health and particularly heart health. But recent research has shown mixed results on their impact, despite some supplement companies continuing to promote their products as having a big influence on health.
Still, nearly 10% of U.S. adults take fish oil supplements. Now, a new study finds that many fish oil companies make claims that are untested, and that a wide variety of amounts of omega-3 fatty acids — the core healthy fats in fish oil — are in their supplements.
What the study says
The study finds that the majority of fish oil supplements on the market make health claims that aren’t backed up by clinical trial data.
What are the key findings?
For the study, researchers analyzed the labels of more than 2,800 fish oil supplements and found that 2,082 (or nearly 74%) made at least one health claim. Of those, only 399 (19.2%) used a qualified health claim that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (A qualified health claim means that the statements are supported by scientific evidence.)
But nearly 81% of those supplements made claims about the structure or function of what the supplements could do, such as saying that they “promote heart health,” with cardiovascular claims being the most common.
The researchers also found “substantial variability” in the supplements’ daily dose of omega-3s EPA and DHA — two major compoundsin fish oil.
The researchers noted in the study’s conclusion that most fish oil supplement labels make health claims “that imply a health benefit across a variety of organ systems, despite a lack of trial data showing efficacy.” There is also “significant” diversity and quality in the daily dose of EPA and DHA in supplements, “leading to potential variability in safety and efficacy” between them.
Joanna Assadourian, lead study author and a fourth-year medical student at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, tells Yahoo Life that “based on what I’ve seen personally in the grocery store and pharmacy, I was not surprised to find such high rates of health claims on fish oil supplements. What was surprising, though, was just how broad the types of claims being made was — from heart and brain health to joint health, eye health and immune function.”
The study’s co-author, Dr. Ann Marie Navar, associate professor of medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, tells Yahoo Life that “as a preventive cardiologist, I see patients in clinic all the time taking fish oil with the belief it is helping their heart. They are often surprised when I tell them that randomized trials have shown no benefit for fish oil supplements on heart attacks or strokes.”
Navar adds: “And we’ve all been in the supplement aisles of the grocery store or pharmacy and seen the massive number of products all claiming different types of potential health benefits. We wanted to better characterize what types of claims are being made on fish oil supplement labels.”
What experts think
It’s worth noting that supplements are a largely unregulated industry in the U.S. Companies can put new supplements on the market without FDA approval — they’re just expected to adhere to FDA guidelines about safety and labeling. The agency also monitors reports of adverse events after products are up for sale.
“This is an important reminder that supplements are not FDA regulated, and you may not truly know what is in the bottle, despite what the label says,” Dr. Ali Haider, an interventional cardiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, tells Yahoo Life. “This also highlights that the ‘health benefits’ touted by many supplement manufacturers are often not based on real evidence and are misleading. Patients need to be aware and educated before spending money on unhelpful products.”
This is an issue with all supplements, Dr. Cheng-Han Chen, an interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Disease Program at MemorialCare Saddleback medical center in Laguna Hills, Calif., tells Yahoo Life. “I always tell patients to be cautious with supplements because any manufacturer can put anything they want in a pill and say whatever they want about it,” he says. “Fish oil is no different.”
Why do so many people continue to take fish oil supplements despite this? “Many people take fish oil because of longstanding beliefs about its potential health benefits, particularly for heart health,” registered dietitian Scott Keatley, co-owner of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy, tells Yahoo Life. “The supplement industry, anecdotal evidence and earlier studies have often promoted these benefits. Once a narrative becomes deeply embedded in popular culture, it can be difficult to change, even when new evidence emerges.”
When doctors use DHA and EPA in clinical practice, “it’s generally at doses of 2 to 4 grams a day to help lower triglyceride levels in patient with high triglycerides,” Haider says. (Triglycerides are levels of fat in the blood.) But, she adds, “studies have not shown that fish oil supplements reduce your risk of heart attack or stroke.”
Navar admits that the messaging around fish oil supplements is “confusing,” chalking it up to evolving science and slow administrative processes. “Epidemiologists first found that people who eat more fish and who have higher levels of EPA and DHA in their blood have less heart disease,” she explains. “This led people to think there could be a benefit to fish oil. In fact, this type of data is what led the FDA in 2003 to approve a qualified health claim for fish oil that it may lower the risk of coronary heart disease.”
But several large, high-quality, placebo-controlled randomized trials since then haven’t shown any benefit for the general population to take fish oil to prevent heart disease. “Despite these two trials showing no benefit, many people still believe fish oil has some benefit,” Navar says. “The landscape here is really confusing — even though large clinical trials show no benefit for prevention of heart disease, the 2003 FDA qualified health claim is still active.” As a result, manufacturers of fish oil supplements can legally make claims like “promotes heart health,” even though recent data doesn’t support that, she says.
Why it matters
There are two FDA-approved fish oil-based drugs, “but they’re for very specific indications, like people with high triglycerides,” Chen says. For everyone else, fish oils aren’t really recommended.
“There is potential harm in taking fish oil supplements,” Chen says. “They may have additives and fillers, and we don’t know what they are.” Fish oil can also raise the risk of bleeding and atrial fibrillation, he says.
“I tell my patients that large, placebo-controlled trials have failed to show any benefit for prevention of heart attacks and strokes, so if they are taking it to try to lower their risk of those, they can stop,” Navar says. “There are far more effective pills to lower the risk of heart attack and stroke — and fish oil supplements aren’t usually covered by insurance, so they can get expensive.”
Chen recommends speaking to your doctor before taking a fish oil supplement. “Initially, we thought that fish oil was better for treating heart disease than it turned out to be,” he says.
Assadourian agrees, saying: “Supplement labels can be confusing even for the most savvy of consumers. Patients should talk to their doctor about what supplements they are taking and why they are taking them — they may be surprised to learn that they are not getting the health benefits they think they are.”
More young women are getting breast cancer. They want answers.
Amanda Morris, Lindsey Bever and Sabrina Malhi – August 22, 2023
Kelsey Kaminky first noticed a small lump in her left breast in November. It felt like a misshapen marble. Given her young age, her doctor suspected it was a benign cyst and told her further testing wouldn’t be needed.
But Kaminky, 32, couldn’t shake a bad feeling. She insisted on getting a mammogram. “I advocated for myself because I knew, I just knew,” she said.
The lump was breast cancer.
It’s a rare diagnosis for women younger than 40, like Kaminky, who accounted for about 4 percent of invasive breast cancer diagnoses in the United States last year.
Overall, the incidence of breast cancer in women younger than 40 is low – about 25 cases per 100,000 women in 2019. By comparison, there were about 229 cases per 100,000 women in the 40-to 64-year-old age group and 462 per 100,000 in women 65 to 74.
But experiences such as Kaminky’s are becoming more common.
A study published last week in JAMA Network Open showed cancers are on the rise for younger Americans under 50, particularly among women. Between 2010 and 2019, diagnoses among people age 30 to 39 increased 19.4 percent. Among those age 20 to 29, the increase was 5.3 percent. Breast cancer accounted for the highest number of cancer cases in younger people.
The rate of late-stage breast cancer diagnoses in young women also has been climbing. In women under age 40, the rate has increased by about 3 percent each year from 2000 to 2019, according to data from the American Cancer Society.
And while breast cancer mortality rates for older women declined from 2010 to 2017, the rate among younger women did not decrease.
“We have to get out of the idea of, ‘Hell, you’re young, it can’t happen to you.’ It does happen to young women, and clearly, it’s affecting their survival,” said Debra Monticciolo, the section chief of breast imaging at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Despite these trends, there’s little advice for younger women regarding early detection of breast cancer. Screening mammograms are recommended only for women between age 40 and 74; studies show they aren’t effective for younger women. Most medical organizations don’t recommend routine breast self-exams or clinical exams because studies show they don’t make a difference in mortality.
In interviews, young women with breast cancer said they felt dismissed by their doctors when they first raised concerns about their breast health. Now, a growing group of patients and experts are calling for further research and conversations about breast cancer among young women.
“Age 40 should not be the first time you’re discussing breast cancer with your physician,” said Tari King, chief of the division of breast surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Kaminky, who lives in Thornton, Colo., has no family history of breast cancer. She caught hers early – at stage 1B – but a biopsy showed it was an aggressive type that is more likely to come back. On the advice of her doctors, she underwent a double mastectomy and months of chemotherapy while caring for her sons, age 3 and 6, as a single mother.
When she started losing her hair, she asked her young sons to help cut it off. On some days, she felt like she could barely get off the couch, yet she had to keep working her full-time human resources job at a tech company. She has emptied out her retirement savings and can’t afford to take more unpaid medical leave.
“It’s absolutely 1,000 percent going to affect the trajectory of my life and the kids’ lives. It’s so hard financially, which is going to hinder me and my kids, but emotionally, from now on, my life is changed,” she said.
She finished chemotherapy in July and is waiting for an upcoming scan to see if it worked.
Experts say younger women with breast cancer often experience higher emotional distress than older women. Getting a diagnosis at such a young age can lead to feelings of isolation as it may not align with societal expectations of advancing at work, getting married or having children.
Compared with older women, young women are also more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage and aggressive breast cancers. They also face an increased risk of the cancer coming back.
“Obviously, it’s catastrophic for anyone to have breast cancer. But to have an aggressive cancer in someone who is young is particularly devastating,” said William Dahut, chief scientific officer of the American Cancer Society.
Experts say there isn’t evidence of cost effectiveness or potential benefit to recommend universal breast cancer screenings for women younger than 40. Another concern is the potential harms of screening, which include the psychological toll of false positives and more lifetime exposure to small doses of radiation.
Monticciolo believes that at age 25, all women should get a risk assessment. Those who are found to be at higher risk should get screened regularly, and all women should be able to easily access mammography or other diagnostic tools if they have concerns about changes in their breasts, she said.
Experts say there are no clear explanations why more women are being diagnosed with breast cancer at younger ages, but there are several possible factors.
Genetics is a known risk factor for breast cancer, but that does not appear to be driving the trend, said Elizabeth Suh-Burgmann, chair for gynecologic oncology for Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California region. Most women who develop breast cancer at a young age don’t have a genetic risk, she said.
One possible contributing factor, Suh-Burgmann said, is that more women are delaying their first pregnancy. Getting pregnant for the first time at age 35 or later is a risk factor for breast cancer. One theory is that after the age of 35, breasts have had more time to accumulate abnormal cells. Changes in the breast that occur during pregnancy can accelerate the development of those abnormal cells into cancer, Suh-Burgmann said.
Having dense breasts is another risk factor. Early menstruation and late menopause are also factors, because breasts are exposed to estrogen longer. Lifestyle, diet, weight, alcohol consumption and environmental exposures can also all influence breast cancer risk.
Race can also be a factor: Black women are more likely than White women to be diagnosed with breast cancer at a younger age. They are also more likely to be diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer called triple-negative breast cancer. Experts don’t know why this is happening, but say socioeconomic factors and exposure to pollution could be playing a role.
After she started experiencing sharp, recurring pain in her chest, it took Charisma McDuffie, who is Black, seven months and visits to four separate doctors to finally get a diagnosis. In January 2020, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer. She was 28.
Like many other young women, McDuffie, a Brooklyn native, decided to freeze her eggs before starting treatment because cancer treatments can affect fertility. She found herself at the doctor’s office constantly, juggling fertility treatments with cancer-related tests and appointments. After freezing her eggs, McDuffie underwent chemotherapy, radiation, a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.
Now, at 32, she has been cancer-free for three years. The experience still takes a toll on her mentally and emotionally. Some days, she is fine; on others, she cries.
“I never had self-esteem issues. Now I have all these insecurities,” McDuffie said of her mastectomy scars.
Lindsey Madla, 33, of Minneapolis, feels like financial barriers limited her options for treatment. She was working two jobs – as a part-time behavioral assistant and a dance instructor – but took unpaid leave when she was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in April. Her cancer was considered grade 3, which may be faster-growing and more likely to spread.
Madla decided to get a lumpectomy to only remove a small portion of her breast. After the surgery, she found out the cancer spread to her lymph nodes. She has now started chemotherapy and needs a mastectomy. To help cover her medical costs, Madla set up a GoFundMe account. Kaminky’s friend also organized a fundraiser on GoFundMe to help cover her medical costs.
Breast cancer often takes a greater financial toll on younger patients, who are more likely to have lower incomes, less savings, and high-deductible health insurance plans or no health insurance at all.
“There’s a whole other side of this where young survivors have higher rates of bankruptcy and financial toxicity and all of these things because of where they are in their lives,” said Mary L. Gemignani, co-director for the Young Women with Breast Cancer program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Madla said she has been having nightmares since getting diagnosed.
“Being powerless is triggering. Anticipation and uncertainty is triggering. Not being in control of my body is triggering,” she said.
When she was 24 years old, Vanessa Chapoy spoke to a health-care provider about the lump she noticed in her breast. She was told breast cancer doesn’t happen to women her age and that it was benign. She wasn’t aware at the time that she had a family history of breast cancer.
“If I had listened to that doctor, I wouldn’t be here today,” she said.
Chapoy followed up with an OB/GYN and learned she had a golf ball-sized tumor in her breast; it was Stage 2 breast cancer. After a lumpectomy, 16 rounds of chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, she is cancer-free.
She is now 27 and living in Reston, Va., but is still recuperating. She gets hormone therapy and sometimes experiences hot flashes or pain throughout her body. She also hasn’t felt as successful in her sales job as she once did.
“It did slow down my career. The part that I’m the most insecure about is my chemo brain and the fact that it is affecting my memory,” she said, referring to a phenomenon in which cancer treatment may cause brain fog or concentration and memory issues. “I have to work even harder.”
At first, she felt alone in these feelings, but soon found online communities for young women also affected by breast cancer. Chapoy is among a growing group of people advocating for clearer answers.
More breast cancer studies are including younger patients, but Leticia Varella, a breast oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said there’s still a need for more research on screenings for young women.
“Young women should never be told they are too young to get breast cancer,” she said.
Flooding overtakes Palm Springs, California, during Hilary as local emergency declared
Hillary Andrews – August 21, 2023
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – A local emergency was declared in Palm Springs, California, Sunday afternoon as flash flooding from Hilary overwhelmed the city.
The desert resort city so far received more than a half-year’s worth of rain in less than a day. As of early evening, the NWS recorded 2.64 inches since early morning. The city only sees an average of 0.14 inches each August and 4.61 inches a year. No monthly average exceeds 1.15 inches.
“Due to unprecedented rainfall and flooding of local roadways and at least one swift water rescue, City Manager Scott Stiles has declared a local emergency due to the critically dangerous impacts,” announced the City of Palm Springs on X, the company formerly known as Twitter.
The city reported that 911 was down in the overnight hours.
Motorists deal with a flooded road and stuck vehicles during heavy rains from Tropical Storm Hilary in Palm Springs, California, on August 20, 2023. Heavy rain lashed California on August 20 as Tropical Storm Hilary approached from Mexico, bringing warnings of potentially life-threatening flooding in the typically arid southwestern United States.More
The Palm Springs Fire Department shared a video of the raging wash over major city roads. They closed at least five roads because they were underwater.
More cars in Palm Springs were trapped as well by floodwaters. Cars stalled, and drivers tossed off shoes and tried to help each other in the calf-deep water. This was the first-ever Tropical Storm Warning for Southern California.
Motorists deal with a flooded road and stuck in vehicles during heavy rains from Tropical Storm Hilary in Palm Springs, California, on August 20, 2023.
First responders coming to the aid of those stranded by the flooding had some issues themselves. This ambulance looked more like it was on a log flume instead of a city street.
PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 20: An ambulance drives through a flooded street as Tropical Storm Hilary approaches on August 20, 2023 in Palm Springs, California. Southern California is under a first-ever tropical storm warning as Hilary nears, with parts of California, Arizona and Nevada preparing for flooding and heavy rains. All California state beaches have been closed in San Diego and Orange counties in preparation for the impacts from the storm, which was downgraded from hurricane status.More
Roads became slick from the rain. A film of oil and the detergents in gasoline accumulates and coats the asphalt during the dry season. Before rain fell heavy enough to wash it away, the streets proved too slippery for this car.
First responders keep watch near a vehicle that flipped over during rainfall from approaching Tropical Storm Hilary on August 20, 2023 near Palm Springs, California.
Car parts floated down flooded streets in nearby Coachella.
Sunday already set a record for the wettest August day in history for Palm Springs. The previous record has been held since 1930. And more rain is on the way. The FOX Forecast Center calls for 3 to 5 inches total for the city before Hilary departs.
The highest rainfall amounts are on the highest elevation of the mountains cradling Palm Springs and the entire Coachella Valley.
California’s unique mountainous geography, which tourists and residents flock to enjoy, is working against the helpless desert valley.
“That rain is going to be forced up along some of those mountains, especially east of San Diego,” explained Meteorologist Michael Estime. “And that’s going to create what we call orographic lift. And as moisture is lifted up the mountains, it’s it is then going to condense, and it’s going to get squeezed out like a wet washcloth over these areas again, east of the mountains.”
The extreme wind gusts with Hilary, already up to 84 mph on Big Black Mountain, blow south-southwesterly and lift the moisture and heavy rain on normally dry west slopes, explained the FOX Weather Forecast Center.
Palm Springs sits at the foot of 10,000-foot Mount Jacinto, according to the Bureau of Tourism. Gravity will force the water downhill, where it will overwhelm already taxed spillways, washes and gullies.
Water exploded through a low-lying road so fast that this truck in Thousand Palms, part of the Coachella Valley, couldn’t escape. The driver was trapped.
While Palm Springs braces for a year of rain from this one storm, some arid cities will see several years worth of rain in just a day before Hilary departs.
Proud purple to angry red: These Florida residents feel unwelcome in ‘new’ Florida
Tom McLaughlin, USA TODAY NETWORK – August 21, 2023
When Alexander Vargas was a senior at Port Orange’s Spruce Creek High School in 2021, he spoke at a school board meeting to fight for recognition of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week. The school board voted against the idea, but the superintendent later decided the week should be acknowledged.
Jean Siebenaler moved to Florida following her retirement to bask in the warmth of the Sunshine State.
“I finally thought I’d be sitting on the water with an umbrella drink in my hand,” she said.
The Milton resident, a military veteran and retired physician, now says she wonders if Florida was where she needed to relocate after all. Having been politically active in her home state of Ohio, she finds beach time consumed by “steaming and stewing” over the state of the state and local politics.
“It’s very upsetting, the direction we see Florida heading,” she said. “Every day I wonder why I am living here.”
For many, Florida has changed. What was once a proudly purple state has turned an angry red, they say. Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the dedicated backing of a Republican supermajority in the state legislature, is waging war on what he calls “wokeism” — a term he has loosely defined as “a form of cultural Marxism.” But many — people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, non-Christians, teachers, union members, students — feel it is a war against themselves, as they face ridicule, discrimination, and, potentially, violence.
The NAACP, Equity Florida and the League of United Latin American Citizens each issued travel advisories for Florida. The NAACP advisory states, in part, “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ individuals.”
“Under the leadership of Gov. DeSantis, the state has become hostile to Black Americans and in direct conflict with the Democratic ideals that our union was founded upon,” the advisory states.
Democrats feel vilified because of affiliation
There exist widespread reports of people abandoning the state because they no longer feel welcome here. Following her family’s exodus to Pennsylvania in May, former Brevard County resident and Democratic Party activist Stacey Patel told FLORIDA TODAY, “It’s like breathing, you know? After holding your breath for a really long time.”
Nikki Fried, the state’s former commissioner of agriculture and current Florida Democratic Party chair, predicted 800,000 immigrants had left the state after DeSantis signed SB 1718 into law. It imposes strict restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers in the state.
Democrats also count themselves among the groups feeling persecuted. Patel’s family was vilified, she said, for its party affiliation.
Siebenaler, who has stepped into the position of legislative chair for the Democratic Women’s Club of Florida, attended an early June meeting of the Santa Rosa County Commission to call out Commissioner James Calkins for labeling the Democratic Party as evil.
“I took an oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she told the governing board. “And I must speak out against the hate speech that is emanating from the Santa Rosa County Commission dais.”
Calkins has been admonished on several occasions by the public and his peers for his incendiary rhetoric and disruptive behavior. But Siebenaler is not one to typically show up at county board meetings.
“It’s very, very upsetting. We’ve lost all sense of sanity, logic and civil discourse. It’s so difficult to sit in on meetings because it’s such a clown show,” Siebenaler said. “People are so dramatic, so theatrical. It makes me just so sad that we have gotten to the point where the average person doesn’t want to go to these meetings, where all people do is yell and scream.”
Teachers are heading for the exit
Similarly, according to Lisa Masserio, the president of the teacher’s union in Hernando County, a minority segment of that county’s school board attached to Moms For Liberty is creating chaos in that area.
The school district typically provides at its May 30 meeting an accounting of how many teachers will be leaving the school district that year. This year it was announced that of the 49 people not returning to Hernando County schools next year, 33 had voluntarily tendered their resignations.
Masserio estimated the number of resignations had approximately doubled those of the year before and would create “the highest number of vacancies we’ve had in a long time.”
“We’ve seen so many resignations of people who have made the decision ‘I don’t want to teach here,’ ” she said.
Eighty-three percent of the Hernando County teachers with three years or less experience were among those who resigned, said Dan Scott, a former World History teacher at Springstead High School.
Scott, who was in his third year of teaching, was one of “13 or 14” at Springstead alone who chose to pursue another occupation, in large part, “based on the overhead decisions in the government of Florida,” he said.
“There are a lot of limitations being placed on teachers in regards to how we can communicate with students and what kind of content we’re allowed to discuss within the curriculum,” he said. “Education has become a very hostile environment from top to bottom.”
Among the limitations, Scott said, were soon-to-be-imposed sanctions on what text he could use. Among the outrages, a school board member stalking school hallways searching for items that didn’t correlate with the curriculum. In other words, Pride flags, Scott said.
“Not everyone left for the same reasons I did. For me, I didn’t want to teach if I couldn’t teach the truth and if I couldn’t represent students the way I thought I should,” he said. “I let every student be exactly who they wanted to be, whatever religion, whatever they identify as. I tried to give everybody their space. Whenever I couldn’t do that any more I realized I didn’t need to be in this career.”
Scott has returned to school himself to embark on the study of technology and cybersecurity, and Siebenaler remains steadfast in her dedication to battle the state’s continuing rightward trek. “I’m hoping it’s a blip on the historical radar and that I live to see sanity come back,” she said.
Others around Florida are facing what they view as ostracization by their state government in different ways. These are their stories:
‘Fighting with one hand tied behind your back’
David Lucas, left, unwittingly became the poster child for urban renewal in the early 1960s when he was a small child. His father, Harold Lucas, at right, was shopping for fishing poles in Sears on Beach Street in Daytona Beach when a man asked if it was OK if he photographed his son. The elder Lucas said OK, not realizing the photographer was a government official involved in the urban renewal program that wound up leveling many homes and businesses in Midtown.More
David Lucas grew up listening to his 90-year-old father’s stories of how cruel the world was to Black people in decades past.
While the 60-year-old Lucas has been spared much of what his father’s generation endured, he’s been getting an unexpected reality check on how some things have yet to improve for minorities.
The flurry of bills passed in Tallahassee over the past two years that impact voting, immigration, education, guns and LGBTQ+ people has left his head spinning.
“I just don’t understand how they can make so many changes so fast,” Lucas said. “As a Black man it’s alarming because we have so many different fronts we have to fight.”
The new laws have already impacted Lucas and his wife, who works alongside him at their Jamaican food restaurant in Daytona Beach’s Midtown neighborhood.
She’s from Jamaica, and while she’s not a U.S. citizen yet, she’s in the United States legally and has a visa. Some of Lucas’ friends from Jamaica, other Caribbean islands, Russia and Poland also have visas, but others are undocumented.
Several of those friends cleared out of Florida and headed north more than a month ago after a new immigration law left them scared they could be sent back to the countries they chose to leave.
“They were people who had lives here,” Lucas said.
David Lucas and his wife Claudette are shown in front of their restaurant, A Golden Taste of Jamaican Food and Treats, on Mary McLeod Bethune Boulevard in Daytona Beach. Lucas is still trying to digest all the new laws passed in Florida the past two years that impact voting, education, immigration, guns and LGBTQ+ people.
The new law requires employers with 25 or more workers to use the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system to confirm employees’ eligibility to work in the United States beginning July 1. E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility.
The new Florida law imposes penalties for those employing undocumented immigrants, and enhances penalties for human smuggling.
The statute also prohibits local governments from issuing identification cards to undocumented immigrants, invalidates ID cards issued to undocumented immigrants in other states, and requires hospitals to collect and submit data on the costs of providing health care to undocumented immigrants.
Lucas is also bothered by a new law that will allow people to carry concealed weapons without securing a permit, taking a previously required class, or getting fingerprinted.
“You’ll have a lot of armed heroes,” Lucas predicted. “A lot of people don’t know how to use a handgun, but they’ll have their chest poked out waiting for a reason.”
Lucas said permitless carry has him personally worried.
“Now I don’t want to go anywhere there’ll be a lot of people,” he said.
A third of Black men in the United States have felony convictions, which prohibits them from purchasing or possessing a firearm. Lucas is afraid that’s going to mean many of them will be left vulnerable as more people than ever will be carrying concealed firearms without a permit.
Lucas is also bothered by recent changes in Florida laws that could make it more difficult for some people to vote.
“Voting is most important because that’s how things are changed,” he said. “That’s how jobs are created and taken away, laws are created and taken away. If you don’t have the strength of voting, then you’re basically fighting with one hand tied behind your back.”
New laws impacting what’s taught in Florida classrooms are also not sitting well with Lucas.
“I have children now that are in school not learning history the way it happened,” he said.
It appears to him to be an effort to erase pieces of history “like it doesn’t exist.”
Lucas said some people around his age aren’t pushing back on recent changes impacting minorities.
“They close their eyes and hope it’ll get better,” he said. “They say we’ll just have to live with it. Younger people aren’t going to have it. They have groups trying to fight it.”
‘Pretty damn depressed’
Erin Rothrock of Lakeland is a transgender man. He said the current political atmosphere in Florida makes him depressed and scared.
Until recently, Erin Rothrock felt relatively stable and content living in Florida.
Rothrock, a veterinarian and a married father of four (with another on the way), was considering buying into a clinic to become a business owner. His wife has a well-established law practice. Their children are enmeshed in their schools and have plenty of friends.
But Rothrock, a transgender man, no longer feels secure in Florida, his home since 2009.
“Emotionally, if I think about it, I get pretty damn depressed,” said Rothrock, 39, a Lakeland resident. “And I get scared.”
Rothrock said the climate of acceptance in Florida for LGBTQ+ people, and especially for transgender residents, has dramatically altered.
“It really feels like it’s really changed in the last six months,” he said. “Before that, it really felt like — OK, yeah, there are some conservative people around, but things aren’t bad. And now it’s just like — OK, now we have this environment where these conservative ideas and these conservative people are just making life miserable for people that are living here.”
He added: “I mean, it’s really uncomfortable. It’s off-putting. It’s unwelcoming, and it feels dangerous.”
Discussions with other transgender people have lately taken on a fraught quality, Rothrock said.
“So, conversations I’ve had with a lot of other trans people — besides just the usual, ‘Hey, how you doing? How’s life? How’s school? How’s work? How are the kids?’ — it’s ‘How are you doing? How are you feeling? Have you had any problems? Have you had any trouble getting your meds? Are you going to move? Where are you going? I’ve heard this place is safe,’ ” he said.
Rothrock and his family are considering a move out of Florida. He said he knows other transgender people who have already taken that step.
“I’ve got a friend in Canada that’s begging me to move up,” he said. “They’re offering to assist me. I’ve got a friend in New York begging me to move up. They’re offering to help me.”
Rothrock said that what’s happening in Florida seems to counter the prevailing overall trend in the country.
“I feel like nationally there’s a big push and pull because we know that the general consensus is that most people are OK with gay marriage, support gay marriage,” Rothrock said. “They support transgender people being able to transition and use the restroom that they fit into. But I feel like there’s this real pushback from that conservative base. At this point, I think they’ve outmaneuvered the progressive side.”
The push for new laws — in Florida and elsewhere — targeting medical care and other aspects of life for transgender residents seems a reaction against their increased visibility and acceptance, Rothrock said.
“I think it’s that backlash to the small gains in equality that we’ve made,” he said. “You know, we see it time and time again, historically, that whenever minorities get progress and make some advancements, there’s always a backlash. After the Civil War, there were these Jim Crow laws because Black people got too much power. Marriage equality (emerged), and now we have these new transgender restrictions and restrictions on what people can do.”
New guidelines on gender-affirming care are affecting adults and not only minors, Rothrock said. He recently had to scramble to find a new provider for his regular supply of hormone treatment and briefly ran out of medication.
“I don’t do well mentally, my mental state declines, when I’m not on my medication,” he said. “So I’ve got a therapist; I talk to her on a regular basis. I do everything I can to mitigate those things. But that’s extra mental baggage.”
‘Fear culture’ in the classroom
There is ‘no way’ retired educator Lillian De La Concepcion Martinez would step back into the classroom to do the work she once loved: teach Spanish and Art History to students in Manatee County.
Born to Cuban parents in Miami and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Martinez served as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Coast Guard in the mid-1970s, and worked as an educator at Manatee County schools from 1989 until she retired in 2020.
“I’m of a different generation,” Martinez said. “When I showed up to boot camp, my staff sergeant looked at me, because I was this pretty girl, tan, nice clothes and I had this designer luggage with me. Nobody told me I couldn’t bring any clothes and I was carrying my suitcase.”
“He gets all us girls together and says, ‘well you girls are going to learn to cuff like a man or grow hair on your chest.’ Can you imagine that now? It’s almost like people are too sensitive nowadays, they take everything personally,” she said.
Lillian De La Concepcion Martinez
But he is glad she never had to experience the fear her former coworkers say they experience as educators today.
“There is a fear culture in the classroom now,” Martinez said. “I’m glad that I retired when I did, because I don’t know that I would want to teach under these circumstances. They did call me a few months back because they wanted to know if I wanted to come back and teach. I said, not ‘no,’ but ‘hell no.’ There is no way.”
Martinez began her career teaching English to migrant students as a tutor in Manatee County, then as a parent social educator. She attended the University of South Florida at night, and when she graduated in 1999 she became a teacher. Her last teaching job was at Lakewood Ranch High Schoo from 2003 until she retired.
She loves to teach, and always enjoyed using music and poetry and other outside-the-box strategies to teach her students.
“I just have a love for the language, for the culture, so I like to get them enthused,” Martinez said. “I love teaching Spanish 1 because they are fresh, but I really love teaching (Spanish) 4 because I could do so much with them culturally, and with poetry.”
“I think the last couple years (the song) “La Gozadera” was very popular,” she said. “I played that one for my level one kids like their second day. I gave them a sheet and said ‘write down how many countries that they say in Spanish that you recognize,’ just to see what they could hear, and they would surprise themselves when they were able to pick out a lot of words.”
“My kids had to memorize José Martí poems,” she said. “I said ‘guys, it will help with your language’ because of the flow. You can’t come up here and just say, ‘Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma.’ You have to have emotion. That’s what they had to work on and it helped with their fluency.”
But today, under the watchful eye of parents and politicians, Martinez said she doesn’t know how others would perceive many of the books she kept in her classrooms, or the historically accurate lessons she imparted to her students.
“I had a lot of books in my classroom by Spanish authors,” she said. “Books that I had read, and they were open and free for kids that wanted to take a book and read it. I did have a lot of multicultural-type books. Biographies on Hispanic people, artists. Frida. Dalí. Celia Cruz. Roberto Clemente.”
“And I’m hearing that a lot of those books are being pulled now, because they reflect a culture that’s different,” she said. “What is it, that it could ‘stress them out’ for whatever reason. Like with Celia Cruz, you have to talk about communism. She fled Cuba, and she said as long as Castro was alive she would never set foot in Cuba again. That’s very political. I don’t know if I could teach that now. You know? Because that’s a political statement. And Celia Cruz is Afro-Cuban, she identified as that. Could we even say that?”
Martinez questions the future of art history classes, especially after an incident in March when Hope Carrasquilla, a former principal at the Tallahassee Classical School, was forced to resign after teaching sixth-grade students about Michelangelo’s “David” and showing photos of the masterpiece sculpture.
“Somebody complained that it was pornographic,” Martinez said. “I just rolled my eyes and told a former colleague of mine that is also retired, I said, ‘you wait and see.’ This is after they banned the AP African Studies program. I said ‘pretty soon, they are going to drop AP art history,’ because there is nudity in AP art history.”
She wonders about her lessons about the casta paintings, and how lessons about their historic significance would be perceived today.
The paintings were drawn in the 18th century as a way to establish hierarchical scale of races after Spanish colonization of the Americas led to anxiety over racial mixing between Spanish colonizers, indigenous people and African slaves.
“The casta paintings, it’s treated like a work of art but it’s really an anthropological piece, because of what they documented in that artwork,” Martinez said. “I talked about one, but there were others. It’s really about the mixing of the races, and that white European is No. 1 on the hierarchy.
“I don’t know if that would fly right now,” she said.
“I like history, so I used art to teach something about the stuff that was going on,” she said. “It was never like ‘oh my god, Spaniards were bad, or anything.’ No. Those are just facts, it’s just the way it was. We can’t change history, all we can do is just not repeat it.”
“Gut punch after gut punch’
Andy Crossfield was in an airport in Lyon, France, last year when a fellow tourist from North Carolina learned that he and his wife, Emily, hailed from Florida.
“Don’t you just love your governor?” the woman asked.
Crossfield replied, “Are you kidding?”
Crossfield, a Lakeland resident and a self-described liberal Democrat, said the episode in France offered a reminder of his status as an undisputed political minority in Florida.
A Georgia native, Crossfield moved to Florida in 1978, during the tenure of Gov. Reubin Askew, the state’s third-to-last Democratic leader. Crossfield said that he didn’t become politically engaged until after his retirement in 1997 from a career as a mutual fund wholesaler.
He has since served as president of the Lakeland Democratic Club and an officer with the League of Women Voters of Polk County.
Crossfield, 70, said Democrats and Republicans seem to perceive virtually all occurrences through different lenses. He compared the phenomenon to the 2015 internet fad involving a photo of a dress that some perceived as blue and black and others as white and gold.
“We see instances of an event, and right away we try to figure out, ‘Is that good for my side, or is that bad for me?’ ” he said. “And this is politics taken to the extreme.”
Crossfield said the political divide has become personal for him and fellow Democrats. He said his relationship with his brother, who is conservative, has become strained.
“Everybody’s lost friends and neighbors over this,” he said. “You can’t have anything in common when you wish a completely different future for the country.”
Has Crossfield maintained friendships with any conservative Republicans?
“I try,” he said. “They make it difficult. I mean, they’re intelligent people, but they want to believe the most ridiculous things. I had a woman tell me — that I had a pretty good relationship with, I guess — that COVID was a fake. All these people that were dying, (it) was just a lie. And that (former President Donald) Trump had intercepted the virus and had his people manipulate it into something benign.”
Andy Crossfield, a self-described liberal Democrat living in Lakeland, holds a spark-spitting, windup u0022Trumpzillau0022 toy in his office.
Crossfield said it is “humbling” to be a Democrat in Florida at this point. He is highly critical of the policies promoted by DeSantis and the Legislature.
“We seem to have Jim Crow 2.0 now, because the attack on voting rights is very frightening,” he said, “The restrictions that Florida has put on people who just want to register people to vote is outrageous.”
Crossfield said he now avoids watching the news because he finds Florida’s politics so irksome.
“I think the electorate, the populace, is responsible for this,” he said. “Life is so hard that they’ll take somebody who wants to stick it to somebody they don’t like, rather than make my life better. I hate to say that, but that’s what it looks like to me.”
Crossfield lives in Polk County, which has not elected a Democrat to any partisan office in well over a decade. In recent cycles, some Republican legislators and county commissioners have been reelected without opposition.
“We have a catch-22 that I don’t know how to solve,” he said. “You can’t get quality candidates unless you have support from the grassroots. And you can’t get grassroots support after gut punch after gut punch results from elections without a quality candidate. I don’t know what breaks first.”
Crossfield empathized with liberal friends who yearn to flee the state.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of people who say, ‘Well, I’m going to leave,’ ” he said. “Somebody on Facebook posted this thing, saying, ‘Don’t leave Florida. Fix it’. And I think I responded, ‘Florida is not an old car that would shine with a little TLC. In fact, every time we take it in for repairs, the mechanic is stealing parts off of it.’ That’s where we are.”
When asked if he has become depressed about Florida’s politics, Crossfield found optimism in the performance of Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz, an evangelical Christian and a Republican who has defied some expectations by supporting the removal of a Confederate statue from a downtown park and by not blocking the city’s issuance of LGBTQ Pride proclamations.
Crossfield said he now concentrates on small, concrete measures to improve the lives of his fellow citizens. For example, he and others in the local chapter of the League of Women Voters are promoting the distribution of gun locks.
“All we’re trying to do is just pick these areas that we can make some good, some change,” he said. “And yeah, that gives me hope.”
‘To hell and back because of who they are’
Transgender Stetson University student Alexander Vargas wants the same things other people his age do: To finish college, find a career he enjoys, and share his life with friends and family. Some new state laws are making his day-to-day life harder, including one measure that’s making it more difficult for him to find a bathroom he can legally use.More
Alexander Vargas is a 19-year-old college student. His biggest worries should revolve around getting good grades, figuring out what kind of a career he wants after college, and deciding what he wants to do for fun every weekend.
Instead the Stetson University psychology major is always reminding himself to steer clear of public men’s restrooms so he won’t get fined for using bathrooms that align with his gender identity, but not the gender he was assigned at birth. Stetson officials have set him up with a one-person restroom he can use on campus, but once he leaves school property, bathroom access becomes a problem again.
He’s also adjusting to new state government rules that have made it more complicated for him to get the testosterone his doctor prescribes so he can more fully live as a male.
The young transgender man is trying to figure out if he should move to another state where basic day-to-day living wouldn’t be such a struggle, and he could escape the worsening anti-LGBTQ+ climate in Florida.
“Moving out of Florida is a last resort if things get worse, like if I can’t receive my gender-affirming care,” Vargas said. “I could move to another state and switch schools. It would be the easiest way to do it.”
He has both a “Plan B” and a “Plan C,” but he hopes he never feels compelled to use either one. Vargas would prefer to stay right where he is.
Vargas has a very supportive family he still lives with in eastern Volusia County. His partner and job are in the area.
He would love to finish his last two years of college at Stetson as he progresses toward his goal of working with autistic children and using art therapy as a form of communication for the kids when they become nonverbal.
“My life is here, and the thought of uprooting it is terrifying,” he said.
Vargas has been called a freak and he’s had slurs hurled his way.
He’s seen others in Florida subjected to the same things.
“I have trans friends who’ve been to hell and back because of who they are,” Vargas said.
Two years ago, when he was a senior at Spruce Creek High School, he found the courage to speak out.
Vargas attended a school board meeting to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in the wake of a board vote that shot down recognition of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week. The school superintendent eventually decided the week should be acknowledged.
Vargas knows his family and friends have his back, and that empowers him to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. But if things ever do get bad enough for him in Florida, he’ll start a new chapter somewhere else.
“I’m just waiting for that last straw,” he said.
Fighting against misinformation and fear
Grace Resendez McCaffery, the publisher of the Pensacola-based La Costa Latina Newspaper, a Spanish-language newspaper that covers Northwest Florida and South Alabama, has lived in Florida for 30 years after moving from her hometown of El Paso, Texas.
She founded La Costa Latina Newspaper a year after Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004. She saw the need in the region for a Spanish-language publication, and her newspaper has become a hub of information for the Hispanic community in the Panhandle.
Since DeSantis signed SB 1718, which targets immigrants who lack a permanent legal status, Resendez McCaffery has worked to fight against misinformation about the new law as well as make the broader community aware of its impact on the Hispanic community.
She said it’s discouraging to see a law like SB 1718, but is more worried about the state’s actions being adopted at the national level.
“I don’t have plans to leave,” Resendez McCaffery said. “I have imagined what would happen if our governor became the president.”
“If these types of policies became national policies, I think that would be pretty unpleasant,” she said. “And I have toyed with the idea that I might have to somewhere (out of country).”
Grace Resendez McCaffery, right, and Jessica Rangel, 21, hug as they and other protestors in support of DACA gathered at the corner of Palafox and Garden Streets in Pensacola on Sept. 5, 2017. United States attorney general Jeff Sessions announced the end of the DACA program.
In the meantime, Resendez McCaffery sees her mission as getting accurate information out to her community.
“My concern is an individual’s need right now,” she said. “They’re hungry, or they need housing, or they need just some support to know that not everybody hates them. Sometimes that’s all they want to know. And so, I know that my purpose here is to kind of relay that.”
Heartbreak and anger
In March, Jason DeShazo spoke to a Florida Senate committee while dressed as Momma Ashley Rose, his drag character, in a demure yet colorfully checkered dress with a fluffy blond wig.
“Do I look like a stripper?” the Lakeland resident asked members of the House Judiciary Committee, as they considered a bill intended to curtail drag performances.
With the legislative session over and the law taking effect July 1, DeShazo said it is a bleak time for Florida’s drag performers and the LGBTQ+ population in general.
“It’s kind of a mix between heartbreaking and anger, right?” said DeShazo, 44. “You just want to kind of shout it from the rooftops, like, we’ve got more important things to worry about. We worry about a drag queen reading stories to children when children are having to learn how to do active-shooter training and how to get away from active shooters in schools. And you’re telling me that I’m the issue?”
DeShazo, a gay man, has been performing in drag for more than 20 years. He created Momma Rose Dynasty, a nonprofit that he says has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support LGBTQ-oriented charities.
DeShazo specializes in “family friendly” shows and readings, at which his matronly character serves up affirmation and acceptance for youngsters who are LGBTQ or unsure about their sexuality or gender.
Last December, about a dozen men wearing Nazi attire showed up to protest a Lakeland event DeShazo had organized. The demonstrators projected lights onto the venue’s exterior bearing such messages as “Warning: Child grooming in process” — a claim DeShazo vehemently rejects.
An Orlando high school canceled DeShazo’s appearance in March as Momma Ashley Rose at a long-planned “Drag and Donuts” after-school event, under pressure from the Florida Department of Education.
And then the Legislature passed and DeSantis signed the bill officially titled “Protection of Children.”
“It’s just something that we never thought we would have to go through again,” DeShazo said. “This is stuff that our community went through in the ‘50s, ’60s and ’70s. It’s just kind of a shocker that drag has become such a target — not only just drag, but the trans(gender) community, too, is a huge target with what’s happening politically right now.”
Jason DeShazo of Lakeland performs as the drag queen Momma Ashley Rose. He said he is shocked that drag performers have become such a political target in Florida.
Since the Nazi incident, DeShazo said he has been forced to spend hundreds of dollars at every event for extra security. He has also bolstered protections at his house in response to death threats.
In May, the group Fathers for Freedom urged supporters to “accost” parents who took children to a tea party brunch in Lakeland staged by DeShazo’s organization. He said he was relieved that no protesters actually showed up.
“So, it is a daily fear,” he said. “I mean, I can honestly tell you that there are times I’m walking through a grocery store and I’m having to look over my shoulder because you never know, right? Especially now that my face as a boy and in drag is out there.”
DeShazo said he sought legal help to review the new law, and he is confident that his performances do not violate it. His costumes do not feature prosthetic breasts, one of the elements identified in the law as potentially lewd when used in “adult live performances.”
DeShazo said he knows of two drag queens who have already fled Florida and another who is making plans to leave. But he is determined to stay.
“I have no judgment for anyone that wants to leave because I think everyone has their own reasons — and valid reasons,” he said. “But for me, of course I want to pack up and leave. I don’t want to have to sit here and worry about my life and worry about what laws are going to be passed next to dehumanize me. But who’s going to stay and fight if we all leave? If everyone who is different, that they’re trying to drive out of here, leaves, who’s going to be here to stay and fight for the ones that can’t leave?”
Does DeShazo feel that as a gay man and a drag queen he is no longer welcome in Florida?
“Politically, 100%,” he said. “It’s been known that we’re not welcome here. It’s been known that we’re not wanted here. But it definitely seems like the people don’t necessarily agree; the majority don’t agree.”
The publicity surrounding the taunts by neo-Nazis in December produced an outpouring of solidarity, DeShazo said.
“I think people are starting to see other people’s true colors, like, other people’s true discriminations and hate,” he said. “At the same time, we’ve had a huge influx of support, right? I would say 90% of the contacts we get are support, are love, are ‘We thank you for what you’re doing. Keep fighting; we stand with you.’ But that 5% to 10% is a lot to weigh you down because that could make a huge difference.”
Should Biden be getting more credit for his massive climate bill?
Mike Bebernes, Senior Editor – August 21, 2023
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
What’s happening
President Biden held a press conference last week to celebrate the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act — a bill he called the “the largest investment in clean energy and climate action ever” — becoming law.
The IRA passed through the Senate last August by the narrowest possible margin after months of negotiations among Democrats. Although the bill’s name targeted the soaring inflation of the time, the legislation was essentially a sprawling collection of programs designed to supercharge the country’s green energy transition through investments and tax incentives. It also included a handful of non-climate provisions, including rules to lower the cost of prescription drugs and billions in extra funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
While even the president concedes that the IRA shouldn’t be credited for falling inflation, the bill has already helped drive more than $100 billion into green energy production and created more than 170,000 clean energy jobs — many of them in Republican parts of the country. The White House argues that this is just a preview of the IRA’s full impact, which won’t be realized for several years. One estimate predicted that the bill could result in as much as $1.2 trillion in green energy spending over the next 10 years.
Yet despite these massive investments, voters aren’t giving Biden credit for leading the effort to make the bill a reality. More than half of Americans disapprove of his handling of climate change, and a strong majority say they know little or nothing about what the Inflation Reduction Act has done, according to a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
Why there’s debate
Many political analysts say that stuffing a bunch of individually popular initiatives into a single bill created a piece of legislation too complicated for voters to wrap their heads around. The slow process of launching major energy projects also means that many Americans haven’t yet seen the impact of the IRA in their communities.
But others say Biden’s real problem is that he’s taking the wrong approach to climate change in the first place. Republicans argue that the IRA is far too large and will end up wasting extraordinary amounts of taxpayer money by imposing the Democrats’ green agenda on the country. Many progressives, on the other hand, say climate-minded voters are disappointed that the bill isn’t nearly big enough and that Biden has undermined his own case by approving fossil fuel projects throughout his presidency.
What’s next
Biden’s effort to draw more attention to the IRA’s benefits is part of a larger effort to change voters’ minds about his stewardship of the economy, which have remained stubbornly low despite persistent growth and tumbling inflation. Convincing Americans that “Bidenomics” is working will likely be a core focus for the president throughout his reelection campaign.
Perspectives
Most Americans can’t make sense of such a massive and complex bill
“I think part of the issue is they have to cram so many things in these giant bills, to get everybody on board and something for everyone to get passed. So it’s really hard for the public to wrap their head around. … It’s very, very tricky when it’s hard to know what’s in it.” — Nova Safo, Marketplace
Americans aren’t seeing the effects in their everyday lives
“While the Inflation Reduction Act is bringing dramatic savings to Medicare recipients, and offers rebates and tax credits to consumers for energy-saving home improvements and electric vehicle purchases, nothing in it really addresses the day-to-day expenses most Americans incur, like groceries and gas.” — Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, to HuffPost
The IRA isn’t remotely enough to change our climate trajectory
“It left the U.S. with no realistic path toward meeting its stated goal of zeroing carbon emissions by 2050. At the rate we’re still pumping planet-heating carbon into the atmosphere, today’s heat waves could come to seem downright pleasant.” — Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg
The IRA is bad policy and voters know it
“Even if you give the bill the most charitable take possible, it’s just throwing money at failed programs and wasted resources.” — Alex Salter, economist at Texas Tech University, to Washington Times
The president has repeatedly undercut his own climate message
“Biden has also faced the ire of climate progressives for somewhat undercutting his landmark moment with an aggressive giveaway of oil and gas drilling leases on public land … and for incentivizing the use of technologies such as carbon capture that have been criticized as an unproven distraction at a time when the world is baking under record heatwaves.” — Oliver Milman, Guardian
Voters will begin to appreciate the IRA once the projects it’s funding get off the ground
“I think, over the long run, a lot of these Republican skeptics, they’re going to start to see jobs in their district, investments. And I think they’re going to come along with the clean energy technologies of the 21st century.” — Leah Stokes, UC Santa Barbara professor of environmental politics, to PBS NewsHour
The media has mostly ignored the actual impact of the IRA
“I’ve covered a lot of policy fights, and a huge problem in how policy coverage is done is there is all this attention to the fight to pass a bill — the Affordable Care Act, the Trump tax cuts, the Inflation Reduction Act. And then the bill passes. And if the fight stops, attention just drops off a cliff.” — Ezra Klein, New York Times.
Torrential rain from Hilary causes dangerous mudslides, rockslides in Southern California
Angeli Gabriel – August 20, 2023
Floodwater surges in Southern California ahead of Hilary
Video shows floodwater rushing through the Sheep Canyon Wash in Wrightwood, California on August 20, 2023. (Courtesy: @TransverseDream / Twitter)
PALMDALE, Calif. – Mud poured onto a roadway near Los Angeles, creating hazardous conditions for drivers hours before Tropical Storm Hilary brought potentially life-threatening floods to the area.
Mudslide in Palmdale in Southern California. August 20, 2023.
Down south in the town of Mountain Spring, a road was closed due to a rockslide, according to the National Weather Service. In nearby Calexico, another rockslide led boulders larger than a truck to fall onto the road.
California Department of Transportation crews addressing a rockslide on SR-98 near Calexico. August 20, 2023.
Rain from Tropical Storm Hilary also flooded some roads. In the video below, floodwaters rushed over EB Route 118 near the town of Llano in Southern California.
Floodwater from Hilary near Llano, California. August 20, 2023.
Tropical Storm Hilary has already pummeled the northern Baja California Peninsula of Mexico, where it dropped torrential rain and caused catastrophic flooding. The storm has already claimed at least one life in Mexico after a family of five was swept into the sea while crossing a stream in the Baja California Sur state, according to local officials.
Catastrophic flooding is also expected for parts of Southern California, which is experiencing its first-ever Tropical Storm Warning. In fact, some areas may receive up to 8 inches of rain through Tuesday evening.
These Voters Share Almost No Political Beliefs, but They Agree on One Thing: We’re Failing as a Nation
Ruth Igielnik – August 20, 2023
A Jackson, Miss., precinct worker cuts individual “I Voted in Hinds County” stickers from the roll, Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023. Each voter in Hinds County receives a sticker upon receipt of a paper ballot. Voters statewide are selecting their party’s nominees for a number of county and statewide offices in their respective Democratic or Republican primaries. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on. But one area where a significant share of each party finds common ground is a belief that the country is headed toward failure.
Overall, 37% of registered voters say the problems are so bad that we are in danger of failing as a nation, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.
Fifty-six percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said we are in danger of such failure. This kind of outlook is more common among voters whose party is out of power. But it’s also noteworthy that fatalists, as we might call them, span the political spectrum. Around 20% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they feel the same way.
Where they disagree is about what may have gotten us to this point.
Why Republicans say the U.S. is in danger of failing
Republican fatalists, much like Republican voters overall, overwhelmingly support former President Donald Trump. This group is largely older — two-thirds of Republicans older than 65 say the country is on the verge of failure — and less educated. They are also more likely than Republican voters overall to get their news from non-Fox conservative media sources like Newsmax or The Epoch Times.
Many of these gloomy Republicans see the Biden administration’s policies as pushing the country to the verge of collapse.
“Things are turning very communistic,” said Margo Creamer, 72, a Trump supporter from Southern California. “The first day Biden became president, he ripped up everything good that happened with Trump; he opened the border — let everyone and anyone in. It’s just insane.”
She added that there was only one way to reverse course: “In this next election if Trump doesn’t win, we’re going to fail as a nation.”
Many Republicans saw the pandemic, and the resulting economic impact, as playing a role in pushing the country toward failure.
“COVID gave everyone a wake-up call on what they can do to us as citizens,” said Dale Bowyer, a Republican in Fulton County, Indiana. “Keeping us in our houses, not being allowed to go to certain places, it was complete control over the United States of America. They think we’re idiots and we wouldn’t notice.”
Why Democrats say the U.S. is in danger of failing
While fewer Democrats see the country as nearing collapse, gender is the defining characteristic associated with this pessimistic outlook. Democratic and Republican women are more likely than their male counterparts to feel this way.
“I have never seen things as bleak or as precarious as they have been the last few years,” said Ann Rubio, a Democrat and funeral director in New York City. “Saying it’s a stolen election plus Jan. 6, it’s terrifying. Now we’re taking away a woman’s right to choose. I feel like I’m watching the wheels come off something.”
For many Democrats, specific issues — especially abortion — are driving their concern about the country’s direction.
Brandon Thompson, 37, a Democrat and veteran living in Tampa, Florida, expressed a litany of concerns about the state of the country: “The regressive laws being passed; women don’t have abortion access in half the country; gerrymandering and stripping people’s rights to vote — stuff like this is happening literally all over the country.
“If things continue to go this way, this young experiment, this young nation, is going to fall apart,” he said.
More than just on the wrong track
Pollsters have long asked a simple question to take the country’s temperature: Are things in the U.S. headed on the right track or are they off in the wrong direction?
Americans’ views on this question have become more polarized in recent years and are often closely tied to views of the party in power. So it is not surprising, for example, that currently 85% of Republicans said the country was on the wrong track, compared with 46% of Democrats. Those numbers are often the exact opposite when there’s a Republican in the White House.
Views on the country’s direction are also often closely linked to the economic environment. Currently, 65% of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. That’s relatively high historically, although down from last summer when inflation was peaking and 77% of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction. At the height of the recession in 2008, 81% of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction.
What seems surprising, however, is the large share of voters who say we’re on the verge of breaking down as a nation.
“We’ve moved so far away from what this country was founded on,” said William Dickerson, a Republican from Linwood, North Carolina. “Society as a whole has become so self-aware that we’re infringing on people’s freedoms and the foundation of what makes America great.”
He added: “We tell people what they can and can’t do with their own property and we tell people that you’re wrong because you feel a certain way.”
Voters contacted for the Times/Siena survey were asked the “failing” question only if they already said things were headed in the wrong direction. And while this is the first time a question like this has been asked, the pessimistic responses still seem striking: Two-thirds of Republicans who said the country was headed in the wrong direction said things weren’t just bad — they were so bad that America was in danger of becoming a failed nation.
“Republicans have Trump and others in their party who have undermined their faith in the electoral system,” said Alia Braley, a researcher at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab who studies attitudes toward democracy. “And if Republicans believe democracy is crumbling, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that they will stop behaving like citizens of a democracy.”
She added, “Democrats are often surprised to learn that Republicans are just as afraid as they are about the future of U.S. democracy, and maybe more so.”
