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‘I had no choice’: For many homeless people, O’Hare has become a nighttime refuge

Chicago Tribune

‘I had no choice’: For many homeless people, O’Hare has become a nighttime refuge

Adriana Pérez, Chicago Tribune – January 22, 2023

Norbert Pikula, 77, had been sleeping on a friend’s sofa every night for the last six months. But when his friend was admitted to the hospital a few weeks ago, Pikula’s fragile world turned upside down and he had nowhere to sleep.

So now he uses his senior citizen CTA pass to ride to O’Hare International Airport and spend the night there. His situation mirrors that of countless other homeless people who sleep at the airport to stay warm and safe during the winter.

“I had no choice,” Pikula told the Tribune on Thursday. He was on his way to open a bank account after eating his usual weekday lunch at Providence Soup Kitchen in St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church.

According to a report from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, an estimated 65,611 people experienced homelessness in Chicago in 2020, an estimate different from that offered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because it takes into account people living doubled up or temporarily staying with others.

And while sheltering at the airport isn’t new, said Jessica Dubuar, director of health and specialty services of Haymarket Center, which has conducted outreach operations out of O’Hare to address homelessness in public transportation since 1990, the steadily increasing number of people doing it is.

“We saw over 600 unique individuals that we engaged with. We also had almost 14,000 encounters with them throughout the calendar year,” she said. Compared with previous years, that number illustrates an uptick: In 2021, there were 11,196 recorded encounters. In 2020 — the beginning of the pandemic — saw 12,270 encounters. In 2019, they recorded 9,975 encounters. In 2018, it was 8,132.

“This is not a new situation at the airport. It’s one that many organizations and city departments have been aware of and have been devoting resources to for 30 plus years,” Dubuar said. “As the years have gone on, we definitely see a pattern of the number of folks who are coming to the airport — I would even just call it a spike in the numbers of folks that we’re seeing at the airport when the weather turns cold.”

Advocates offer a couple of reasons for why more people are seeking shelter at O’Hare. Sarah Boone of the Chicago Housing Initiative who created a GoFundMe to help Pikula raise money, said there are three realities facing the homeless population right now: the number of beds in homeless shelters was decreased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and never restored, migrants who have recently arrived in Chicago are increasingly using homeless shelters as well, and homeless shelters across the city are overwhelmed.

And on the ground at O’Hare, workers offer another possible explanation. Jessy Pearl, a Transportation Security Administration agent who works at the airport, said she has noticed an uptick in the homeless population sheltering there since Delta Air Lines moved out of Terminal 2 and into Terminal 5.

“There’s more homeless people — more activity is concentrated at Terminal 2, since there’s less passenger traffic,” especially in the early afternoon, Pearl told the Tribune. “I’ve worked at the airport long enough to know that more homeless people have been around the CTA and arrivals area ever since the pandemic started. More so lately, since Delta moved to Terminal 5.”

According to a statement by the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA), which manages O’Hare, the department is “aware of the increasing population of unsheltered individuals at O’Hare International Airport. It’s a common occurrence at this airport and airports nationwide when temperatures drop in the winter months. Airport leadership and staff on the ground continue collaboration with the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) and their delegate agencies to provide 24/7 outreach to unsheltered residents at O’Hare.

“Outreach professionals engage with individuals experiencing homelessness at O’Hare and conduct needs assessments. If the individual chooses to accept assistance, outreach professionals connect them with appropriate services and shelters, including necessary referrals and transportation. The CDA is committed to working with fellow city departments and community partners to support those in need and connect them with all available resources in Chicago.”

Pikula has been sleeping at the airport for the last two weeks or so, said Boone. And he’s been carrying around his belongings all day as he moves around the city. “I think it’s wearing on him,” she added.

Boone said she met Pikula at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Ukrainian Village where free food is offered on Saturdays. Her organization shows up to soup kitchens and places where there’s free food to connect homeless people with necessary services in the city and tend to their needs.

“I tried to get him to go to the hospital across the street, because you can go to the ER to call the shelters. And he didn’t want to do that because the wait is so long,” Boone said. “So we tried calling 311. And he kind of just said he’d prefer to be at the airport than at the shelters. So then I went home and I just thought about it. And I was like, we should do a GoFundMe. I’ve never done this before. But what if it works?”

With approximately 100 donations, the campaign had raised over $4,900 as of Friday afternoon out of a $9,800 goal.

Pikula said he is looking for a more permanent housing situation than couch surfing or spending nights at O’Hare. He’s hoping to find a studio or one-bedroom apartment in Wicker Park, Logan Square, Avondale or Garfield Park. That’s where his friends from the soup kitchens he visits live, so he wants to be close by.

A Polish American who grew up in Chicago, Pikula previously worked as a baker and security guard. He is on the waiting list for senior Chicago Housing Authority housing and subsidized Catholic Charities senior apartments. So far, he has had no luck finding a place to live.

During the pandemic, many homeless people turned to the CTA for shelter, and service providers set up at the Forest Park Blue Line station. But as the effects of the pandemic continue to limit housing, needs at the other end of the line also became evident.

Off the Blue Line O’Hare stop, to the left, a sign for the Haymarket Center O’Hare Outreach sticks out of the wall. A man was waiting to go in Thursday morning as he charged his cellphone.

The program assists homeless clients and passengers seeking shelter at the airport. It also approaches issues regarding alcohol and substance abuse, housing and income. Dubuar described what a client may find in the 24/7 office at O’Hare.

“We have a number of resources available on site from, food and coffee, water, hand sanitizer, masks … those things. We also have clothing available, hygiene products and a few other things,” she said. “What we’ll also do is invite people to come in and sit down and talk to us. And we do a small assessment with them, exploring all sorts of things from health care, mental health care, substance use, benefits and IDs and all of those things.”

The O’Hare Outreach program is funded by the Chicago Department of Aviation and carried out in cooperation with the Department of Family Support Services and a host of other community partners, such as shelter providers, substance use treatment providers and — importantly — housing programs.

“The complexity of the (needs of) folks we’re seeing has increased and, (in) the number of encounters, that’s really where you see that reflected,” Dubuar said. “This isn’t just a ‘somebody needs a sandwich today’ and that’s it, that’s all they needed. Because I think that we have folks, their needs are complex and navigating through these systems is hard and they need as much support as they can possibly get.”

While Dubuar couldn’t confirm whether there is a more concentrated homeless population in specific airport terminals, she said it’s possible that changes in the airport complex layout influence where homeless people spend their time.

“Individuals who come to the airport for shelter do learn the system and do see when there are construction projects or changes to how the space is being monitored with our partners from CPD and the Department of Aviation,” she said. “And so it is it is highly possible that there are going to be some folks who are visible because certain areas are under construction or maybe not being monitored as much as possible.”

On Friday morning, as the sun rose, a few scattered people in O’Hare’s Terminal 2 rustled in their sleep. They were slowly waking up. Some of them might have had canceled or delayed flights. Others, though, were homeless and had sought a warm place to spend the night.

A police officer approached a person who was lying by the windows in the arrivals area of Terminal 2. He asked if they were OK. “Just try not to fall sleep,” he said. “Stay awake.”

Pikula and other homeless people will likely keep searching for a more stable situation than sleeping at the airport every night. Even as they seek support services, though, continuing to sleep at the airport seems, in Pikula’s words, the only option in terms of surviving cold winter nights.

“I’ll be honest with you, my life has not been rosy,” Pikula said. “It’s been a fighting life.”

It’s hard to say how long it takes, on average, for a homeless person in Chicago to find stable housing, Dubuar said.

“As with most social services, benefits and resources, it’s about eligibility and availability,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a matter of the stars aligning.”

Chicago Tribune’s Rosemary Sobol contributed.

Military probing whether cancers linked to nuclear silo work

Associated Press

Military probing whether cancers linked to nuclear silo work

Tara Copp – January 22, 2023

FILE – An inert Minuteman III missile is seen in a training launch tube at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., June 25, 2014. Nine military officers who had worked decades ago at a nuclear missile base in Montana, home to a vast field of 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos, have been diagnosed with blood cancer and there are “indications” the disease may be linked to their service, according to military briefing slides obtained by The Associated Press. One of the officers has died. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nine military officers who had worked decades ago at a nuclear missile base in Montana have been diagnosed with blood cancer and there are “indications” the disease may be linked to their service, according to military briefing slides obtained by The Associated Press. One of the officers has died.

All of the officers, known as missileers, were assigned as many as 25 years ago to Malmstrom Air Force Base, home to a vast field of 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos. The nine officers were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to a January briefing by U.S. Space Force Lt. Col. Daniel Sebeck.

Missileers ride caged elevators deep underground into a small operations bunker encased in a thick wall of concrete and steel. They remain there sometimes for days, ready to turn the launch keys if ordered to by the president.

“There are indications of a possible association between cancer and missile combat crew service at Malmstrom AFB,” Sebeck said in slides presented to his Space Force unit this month. The “disproportionate number of missileers presenting with cancer, specifically lymphoma” was concerning, he said.

Sebeck declined to comment when contacted by email by the AP on Saturday, saying the slides were “predecisional.” In the slides, he said the issue was important to the Space Force because as many as 455 former missileers are now serving as Space Force officers, including at least four of the nine identified in the slides.

In a statement to the AP, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said that “senior leaders are aware of the concerns raised about the possible association of cancer related to missile combat crew members at Malmstrom AFB.”

Stefanek added: “The information in this briefing has been shared with the Department of the Air Force surgeon general and our medical professionals are working to gather data and understand more.”

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which according to the American Cancer Society affects an estimated 19 out of every 100,000 people in the U.S. annually, is a blood cancer that uses the body’s infection-fighting lymph system to spread.

For comparison, only about 3,300 troops are based at Malmstrom at a time, and only about 400 of those are assigned either as missileers or as support for those operators. It is one of three bases in the U.S. that operate a total of 400 siloed Minutemen III ICBMs, including fields at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

The median age for adult non-Hodgkin lymphoma is 67, according to the National Institutes of Health. The former missileers affected are far younger. Officers are often in their 20s when they are assigned duty watch; the officer who died, who was not identified, was a Space Force officer assigned to Schreiver Space Force Base in Colorado with the rank of major, a rank typically achieved in a service member’s 30s. Two of the others are in the same Space Force unit with the rank of lieutenant colonel, which is typically reached in a service member’s early 40s.

It’s not the first time the military has been alerted to multiple cancer cases at Malmstrom. In 2001 the Air Force Institute for Operational Health investigated the base after 14 cancers of various types were reported among missileers who had served there, including two cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

But the review found the base was environmentally safe and that “sometimes illnesses tend to occur by chance alone.” The report lamented that the list of those diagnosed had been collected because it “perpetuates the level of concern.”

The discovery of new cases comes as the U.S. government has shown more openness to acknowledging the environmental hazards, or toxic exposures, troops may face while serving.

In her statement to the AP, Air Force spokeswoman Stefanek said, “We are heartbroken for all who have lost loved ones or are currently facing cancer of any kind.”

It was not clear whether some of the nine officers identified in the January briefing slides, whose diagnoses occurred between 1997 and 2007, overlap some of the cases identified in the Air Force’s 2001 investigation. It’s also not known if there were similar reports of cancers at other nuclear silo bases or whether that is being investigated by the Air Force.

“Missileers have always been concerned about known hazards, such as exposure to chemicals, asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, lead and other hazardous material in the work environment,” Sebeck said in the January slides. “All missileers should be screened and tracked for the rest of their lives.”

Last year President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act, which greatly expanded the the types of illnesses and toxic exposures that would be considered presumptive — meaning a service member or veterans would not face an uphill battle to convince the government that the injury was tied to their military service in order to received covered care.

Doctors Say This One Habit Can Help You Sleep Better And Boost Your Energy

She Finds

Doctors Say This One Habit Can Help You Sleep Better And Boost Your Energy

Faith Geiger – January 22, 2023

woman waking up and stretching feeling energized

Proper rest is so important for your overall health. From brain performance to mood and even gut health, sleep plays a role in so many vital components of wellness—which is why it’s so essential to ensure you’re getting the best, most restful sleep possible each night. And as it turns out, there may be one missing piece you’re overlooking if you’re struggling to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling energized. Believe it or not, it has to do with your morning routine.

That’s right: we spoke Dan Ford, sleep psychologist from The Better Sleep Clinic, to learn more about the best habits to improve sleep and energy throughout the day, and he told us that waking up at the same time each morning is crucial. Your wake-up time plays a key role in regulating your circadian rhythm and releasing important hormones for sleep. Learn more below!

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Wake up at the same time every day

When you think about good sleep habits, you may think primarily about what you do before you go to bed–i.e. shutting down electronics, unwinding, drinking a relaxing tea, etc. And while all of these things are definitely great habits to promote better sleep, Dr. Ford says that a good wakeup routine can also be a gamechanger. “While every second internet article recommends having a go to sleep routine, the irony is that the most important habit in all of sleep medicine is to get up at the same time every day and try not to vary this by more than 1 hour,” he says. Who knew?!

Dr. Ford tells us that waking up at the same time every day is beneficial for two reasons. “First, when you get up at the same time this helps to anchor your circadian rhythm or body clock,” he explains. This is the “master clock” in your brain that takes cues from the amount of light your body gets in order to regulate the clocks in your body. From there, your body uses these “clocks” to know when to release hormones, as well as when to carry out a number of other important processes. And it’s extremely important to your sleep cycle that you keep these clocks on track. “When you shift your wake-up time, you change the light dark cycle signals to your body clock, throw it out of sync, and the result is similar to jet lag–symptoms of fatigue, nausea, lack of energy etc,” Dr. Ford says. That means that, believe it or not, sleeping in and waking up at a later time than your body is used to could actually cause you to have less energy throughout the day.

But it isn’t just your energy levels that a consistent wake-up time can improve. It can also help you get a better sleep at night. “The reason for this is that the length of time you are awake determines the build-up of the chemical adenosine in your body,” Dr. Ford goes on. “Adenosine build up influences how sleepy you feel and how deep you sleep at night.” And the longer you’re awake, the more adenosine you’re able to build up–and the easier it will be to fall asleep and stay asleep. Alternatively, if you sleep in to try to “catch up on sleep,” your day will be shorter than usual, and you’ll likely have trouble falling asleep–which means you’ll also have less energy in the morning. “Most adults will need around 16-17 hours of wakeful activity before they have sufficient adenosine build up to sleep for a solid 7 hours (the healthiest amount of sleep for an adult),” Dr. Ford notes.

So, as it turns out, a restful, energizing sleep is about more than going to bed at a decent time and having a good relaxation routine. Your morning can make a big difference, too. So be sure to set that alarm clock–and don’t hit the snooze button too many times!

Western Kansas farmers are pushing to save the Ogallala Aquifer before it’s too late

The Wichita Eagle

Western Kansas farmers are pushing to save the Ogallala Aquifer before it’s too late

David Condos – January 22, 2023

Travis Leonard had seen all the signs.

Plummeting water levels. Clogged sprayer nozzles. Then as drought parched southwest Kansas this fall, the well next to his farmhouse in Haskell County began pumping up a muck of sand instead of clear water.

After more than six decades of irrigating the family’s grain field, he shut the well down for the last time.

“I just took a deep breath,” Leonard said, “knowing this is the last crop that I’m going to have here that has water on it.”

Leonard remembers when the underground water supply seemed endless. When he took over the farm 16 years ago, it had more than a dozen irrigation wells pumping. Today, it’s down to three.

A decade or two from now, he figures, his area won’t have any irrigation wells left.

“We didn’t have any idea when it was going to end, but that day is coming,” Leonard said. “It will happen to everybody eventually.”

Fly over these dry plains and you won’t see many rushing rivers or glimmering lakes. You’ll see circles. Mile after mile of green geometric crop fields spun into the near-desert landscape by wells that tap water hidden beneath the surface and the center pivot irrigation sprayers splayed around them.

But across western Kansas, more and more wells sit abandoned as underground water levels drop and drop some more. Vast swaths of the region have seen more than half of their water disappear since the dawn of irrigation. Wallace County on the Colorado state line has lost roughly 80%.

The subterranean reservoirs of the sprawling Ogallala Aquifer make life possible here — from powering the multibillion-dollar agricultural economy to filling up cups at the kitchen sink.

But after decades of large-scale crop irrigation, that water is running out. And now farmers and state leaders struggle to agree on how to save the future of life in western Kansas without choking the livelihoods of the people who live here.

The good news? There’s still time. After all, an aquifer that’s half-empty is also half-full.

Even with all the depletion, billions and billions of gallons remain stored away in the Ogallala’s craggy layers of saturated rock. And a new effort in west-central Kansas aims to save more of what’s left.

Katie Durham, who leads that groundwater management district, said it’s not too late to preserve the aquifer — and the western Kansas farms, businesses and communities that depend on it — for future generations.

But only if big changes start now.

“This is do or die,” Durham said. “Water is everything out here. … We would not be here without it.”

Now or never

In a wood-paneled room at the Scott County fairgrounds, dozens of farmers gather for the first public hearing to discuss this latest effort in west-central Kansas. It’s called a local enhanced management area, or LEMA, and it’s been nearly a decade in the making.

The plan is to get farmers to cut irrigation by an average of 10% over the next five years in four western Kansas counties — Wallace, Greeley, Scott and Lane. Those counties have been some of the hardest hit by aquifer declines, losing nearly two-thirds of their water since irrigation began.

And the flow of moisture that’s trickling back down to refill the aquifer is a drop in the bucket. Across the four counties, the amount of water pumped up is nearly 10 times the amount that seeps back underground from rain and snow.

Any change is hard, Durham said, and discussions about using less water in a place with so little precipitation are bound to be prickly. But she said the alternative — a depleted aquifer that can’t support any irrigation — would essentially end life in western Kansas as we know it.

Residents and businesses leaving town. Empty storefronts on Main Street.

“It would be devastating,” Durham said. “You would see the exact thing that we’re trying to prevent.”

The LEMA plan would customize each farmer’s water limits on a case-by-case basis. Those who have been pumping the most would need to cut irrigation by up to 25%. Others who have been voluntarily conserving the most water already might not need to make any changes.

Data from the Kansas Geological Survey shows that the four counties would need to reduce pumping by one-third to stop the aquifer’s depletion over the next decade. In drought conditions like we’re seeing now, they would need to cut pumping by half.

So trimming irrigation by 10% isn’t going to solve the problem permanently. But, Durham said, it’s a start. If this plan can double the aquifer’s lifespan, that could mean it’s still around for the grandchildren of the people who make those changes today.

“This is a huge and significant step,” Durham said, “toward changing what this part of western Kansas could look like in 50 years.”

If the state approves the plan after its second public hearing in early February, it would likely go into effect from the beginning of this year through 2027. Farmers would be able to use their five-year water allotment as they wish, meaning they could pump extra during a dry year as long as they irrigate less in a subsequent year to even things out.

The key to this LEMA program is putting water conservation decisions in the hands of a local board, rather than the state. But that doesn’t mean it’s all kumbaya.

Water has long been a point of contention in dry western Kansas. That’s because water means money. Even as wells run out, pumping the aquifer continues to prop up the regional economy — from corn and wheat growers to irrigation equipment dealers to cattle feedlots.

The groundwater district proposing the new LEMA is the smallest in western Kansas, but it still covers more than one million acres and nearly 2,000 wells. With that many voices in the discussion, it can be a challenge to get everyone on board.

Many irrigators remain wary of any program that might force them to use less water.

Lane County farmer Camron Shay came to the hearing with his own concerns about how the limits could be fair for everyone across a region that has so much diversity in how much water has been used, how much water is needed to nurture a crop and how much water is left.

“It can’t just be done by a bunch of activists,” Shay said, “who come in and don’t know what they’re talking about and strong arm it and do radical things.”

But the locally driven approach of the LEMA may help ease those fears. That was the point of the public hearing and the series of community meetings that came before. After getting some of his questions answered, Shay said, he walked away feeling better about the plan.

“We all know that we have a groundwater problem,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s a good solution for it, but these guys look like they’re at least trying.”

Proof of concept

Fortunately, farmers in the four counties don’t have to look far to find examples of how these irrigation limits work in the real world.

The state’s first LEMA began in a small portion of northwest Kansas a decade ago. The plan was to reduce irrigation by 20%. When the results came in, farmers ended up cutting pumping by nearly one-third. And some of those farmers actually saw profits go up as they spent less to pump water and buy seed and fertilizer.

That initial LEMA was deemed so successful that a similar plan to cover parts of 10 northwest Kansas counties went into effect five years ago — although that expansion faced a lawsuit from dozens of irrigators who said it infringed on their water rights — and was recently renewed for another five years.

And right next to where the new limits are proposed, Wichita County started its own LEMA two years ago to cut irrigation by 25%.

That’s where Brian Bauck sat in a combine harvesting his last cornfield of the year.

Most of his fields are now non-irrigated, or dryland, and the sections that see a center pivot get less water than they did decades ago. So the past year of drought has left its mark.

As he makes one last pass with his combine, its wide green header has to skim the ground to reach the rows of short corn plants out the front window. It scoops up its fair share of dry tumbleweeds that have blown in with the punishing winds, too.

But thanks to new drought-tolerant seed varieties and farming practices that conserve soil and moisture, he had crops to harvest on just about every acre this season.

“It feels great,” Bauck said. “Anytime you can get something, even though it may not be what you wanted, tells you that you’re probably doing a few things right.”

So far, Wichita County’s irrigation restrictions appear to be making a dent in depletion. Countywide aquifer declines averaged 0.54 feet per year from 2010 to 2017, according to Kansas Geological Survey data. But from 2018 to 2021, the county lost an average of 0.09 feet per year. As the programs produce more real-world data, it might reassure crop growers in neighboring areas that irrigation reductions are worth a shot.

Farmers are naturally independent thinkers, Bauck said, so it’s always a challenge when somebody comes in and tries to tell them how to do their jobs. He used to be skeptical about irrigation cuts too.

And changing farmers’ mindsets about water use isn’t a simple task because their livelihoods are at stake. In a dry year like this, turning the sprayer on could make the difference between growing some crops or none at all.

But, he said, the golden kernels filling his grain tank prove that farming with less irrigation can work in western Kansas, even in a historically dry season.

It shows that a future with less water may not be painless, but it is possible. And in western Kansas, he said, it’s a matter of survival.

“Regardless of whether somebody likes it or not,” Bauck said, “we’ve got to do something in order to extend the life of this aquifer, or it’s not gonna be there.”

Gallons and dollars

Another reason for urgency? Climate change. As the H2O buffet dwindles down, Kansas heats up.

With dry western weather shifting eastward, more of the state will likely face a future with worse droughts and less precipitation — a process called aridification.

Vaishali Sharda, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University, studies how a drier, hotter future threatens the state’s farms. Aridification paired with a declining aquifer, she said, sets up a potential time bomb for western Kansas agriculture.

“There is no guessing,” Sharda said. “If we continue irrigating at the pace at which we have done in the past, the Ogallala won’t be able to sustain it.”

Even if irrigators could save a relatively small percentage of the water they’ve been using, the impact could be enormous — simply because of how many gallons we’re talking about.

In the four counties with the proposed LEMA, for instance, 94% of all water used goes to irrigate crops.

Statewide, roughly three-fourths of all water used in Kansas comes from the High Plains aquifer, and nearly all of that goes to irrigation. Over the course of a year, that averages out to 2.5 billion gallons of groundwater used to water crops each day.

But finding consensus on new rules to curb aquifer use is an uphill climb when using that water is the foundation that virtually everything else in western Kansas is built on.

Take southwest Kansas. It has — and uses — the biggest chunk of the state’s aquifer. And its agriculture relies more on irrigation than anywhere else in Kansas. Cattle feedlots, meatpacking plants and dairy farms all depend on the corn feed that’s grown here.

But when some farmers proposed a LEMA for parts of Kearny County and Finney County a few years ago, the region’s groundwater management district shot it down.

District director Mark Rude expects conversations about irrigation limits — maybe even a new LEMA — to start back up in his district over the next few years. And the district recently began sending its irrigators detailed reports about their water use and comparing it to their neighbors in an attempt to get farmers to change their mindsets.

But even with more information about depletion and conservation than ever, he still believes his members aren’t ready for widespread irrigation cuts. Strict rules to save the aquifer don’t make sense, he said, if they come at the expense of the economy.

“To get growth,” Rude said, “you’ve got to have water.”

He’s exploring a plan to bring in water from the Missouri River — potentially flowing across the state in an aqueduct hundreds of miles long — to replace what’s lost in the Ogallala.

While the district hasn’t figured out how to make that plan’s $18 billion price tag financially feasible, he said, it might be the only way to keep the region’s industries — from corn to cattle to ethanol — booming for future decades.

Converting western Kansas to dryland farming may be sustainable, he said, but it would mean a smaller economy with fewer jobs and fewer people in a region where most counties already struggle with population decline.

The real question, he said, is what kind of economic future does western Kansas want to sustain?

“It’s important that we not forget that what we’re trying to preserve here is not only the community as a whole,” Rude said, “but the business strategy, the overall viability of that community.”

But whether or not a groundwater district or state entity decides to impose irrigation limits, farmers across western Kansas are already adjusting to the realities of a life with less water — because they have to.

Many have adopted smarter irrigation technology, such as soil moisture sensors and systems that customize irrigation rates across a field. Some have switched to crops that require less water than corn, such as cotton.

Others have stopped irrigating entirely on a majority of their acres. That’s the case for Leonard, the farmer with the dry well whose land lies within the southwest Kansas groundwater district.

The thought of leaving irrigation behind, he said, doesn’t have to be scary. In a way, it’s coming full circle.

When his great-grandfather started the Leonard farm, there wasn’t an irrigation well or center pivot in sight. And by the time he retires, Leonard expects his entire farm will return to its dryland roots.

“Life will go on,” Leonard said. “We’re still running a farm here. And it looks a little bit different than it used to but we’re still doing what we love.”

David Condos covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.

Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline

The Guardian

Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline

Adam Gabbatt – January 22, 2023

<span>Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images</span> — Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The situation means some hard decisions for pastors, who have to decide when a dwindling congregation is no longer sustainable. But it has also created a boom market for those wanting to buy churches, with former houses of worship now finding new life.

About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.

“The closures, even for a temporary period of time, impacted a lot of churches. People breaking that habit of attending church means a lot of churches had to work hard to get people back to attending again,” said Scott McConnell, executive director at Lifeway Research.

“In the last three years, all signs are pointing to a continued pace of closures probably similar to 2019 or possibly higher, as there’s been a really rapid rise in American individuals who say they’re not religious.”

Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, McConnell said, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75% before the pandemic.

But while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017 Lifeway surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly, for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly.

The younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted
Scott McConnell, Lifeway Research

Some of the reasons were “logistical”, McConnell said, as people moved away for college or started jobs which made it difficult to attend church.

“But some of the other answers are not so much logistics. One of the top answers was church members seem to be judgmental or hypocritical,” McConnell said.

“And so the younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted by those at church.”

About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on political and social issues, McConnell said.

A study by Pew Research found that the number of Americans who identified as Christian was 64% in 2020, with 30% of the US population being classed as “religiously unaffiliated”. About 6% of Americans identified with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

“Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of US adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’,” Pew wrote.

“This accelerating trend is reshaping the US religious landscape.”

In 1972 92% of Americans said they were Christian, Pew reported, but by 2070 that number will drop to below 50% – and the number of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans – or ‘nones’ will probably outnumber those adhering to Christianity.

Stephen Bullivant, author of Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America and professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, said in the Christian world it had been a generational change.

While grandparents might have been regular churchgoers, their children would say they believe in God, but not go to church regularly. By the time millennials came round, they had little experience or relationship with churchgoing or religion.

In the Catholic church, in particular, the sexual abuse scandal may have driven away people who had only a tenuous connection to the faith.

“The other thing is the pandemic,” Bullivant said.

“A lot of people who were weakly attached, to suddenly have months of not going, they’re then thinking: ‘Well we don’t really need to go,’ or ‘We’ve found something else to do,’ or thinking: ‘It was hard enough dragging the kids along then, we really ought to start going again … next week.’”

Bullivant said most other countries saw a move away from religion earlier than the US, but the US had particular circumstances that slowed things down.

“Canada, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the nones rise much earlier, the wake of the 1960s the baby boom generation, this kind of big, growing separation of kind of traditional Christian moral morality,” Bullivant said.

“What happens in America that I think dampens down the rise of the nones is the cold war. Because in America, unlike in Britain, there’s a very explicit kind of ‘Christian America’ versus godless communism framing, and to be non-religious is to be un-American.

“I think that dampens it down until you get the millennial generation for whom the cold war is just a vague memory from their early childhood.”

When people leave, congregations dwindle. And when that gets to a critical point, churches close. That has led to a flood of churches available for sale, and a range of opportunities for the once holy buildings.

Brian Dolehide, managing director of AD Advisors, a real estate company that specializes in church sales, said the last 10 years had seen a spike in sales. Frequently churches become housing or care homes, while some of the churches are bought by other churches wanting to expand.

But selling a church isn’t like selling a house or a business. Frequently the sellers want a buyer who plans to use the church for a good cause: Dolehide said he had recently sold a church in El Paso which is now used as housing for recent immigrants, and a convent in Pittsburgh which will be used as affordable housing.

“The faith-based transaction is so different in so many ways from the for-profit transaction. We’re not looking to profit from our transactions, we’re looking for the best use that reflects the last 50 years or 100 years use if possible.”

The closures aren’t spread evenly through the country.

In Texas, John Muzyka said there were fewer churches for sale than at any point in the last 15 years. He believes that is partly down to Texas’s response to the pandemic, where the governor allowed churches to open in May 2020, even when the number of new Covid cases was extremely high.

“I would say if a church stayed closed for more than a year, it was really hard to get those people to come back. When you were closed for three months, you were able to get over it,” Muzyka said.

That aside, closures are often due to a failure of churches to adapt.

“A church will go through a life cycle. At some point, maybe the congregation ages out, maybe they stop reaching young families.

“If the church ages and doesn’t reach young people, or the demographics change and they don’t figure out how to reach the new demographic, that church ends up closing.

“Yes, there’s financial pressures that will close a church, but oftentimes, it’s more that they didn’t figure out how to change when the community changed, or they didn’t have enough young people to continue the congregation for the next generation.”

Russia official warns West of destruction for arming Ukraine

Associated Press

Russia official warns West of destruction for arming Ukraine

Andrew Meldrum – January 22, 2023

A student of navy military school visits an exhibition of tanks and APCs of Ukrainian armed forces damaged and captured during the fighting at an exhibition at the museum "Breakthrough of the Siege of Leningrad" in Kirovsk, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky) — A student of navy military school visits an exhibition of tanks and APCs of Ukrainian armed forces damaged and captured during the fighting at an exhibition at the museum “Breakthrough of the Siege of Leningrad” in Kirovsk, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament warned Sunday that countries supplying Ukraine with more powerful weapons risked their own destruction, a message that followed new pledges of armored vehicles, air defense systems and other equipment but not the battle tanks Kyiv requested.

Ukraine’s supporters pledged billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine during a meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, though the new commitments were overshadowed by a failure to agree on Ukraine’s urgent request for German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks.

State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said that governments giving more powerful weapons to Ukraine could cause a “global tragedy that would destroy their countries.”

“Supplies of offensive weapons to the Kyiv regime would lead to a global catastrophe,” he said. “If Washington and NATO supply weapons that would be used for striking peaceful cities and making attempts to seize our territory as they threaten to do, it would trigger a retaliation with more powerful weapons.”

Germany is one of the main donors of weapons to Ukraine, and it ordered a review of its Leopard 2 stocks in preparation for a possible green light. Nonetheless, the government in Berlin has shown caution at each step of increasing its commitments to Ukraine, a hesitancy seen as rooted in its history and political culture.

French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, said Sunday that he does not rule out sending Leclerc battle tanks to Ukraine and had asked his defense minister to “work on” the idea.

Macron spoke during a during a news conference in Paris with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as their countries commemorating the 60th anniversary of their post-World War II friendship treaty. In a joint declaration, France and Germany committed to their “unwavering support” for Ukraine.

France will make its tank decision based on three criteria, Macron said: that sharing the equipment does not lead to an escalation of the conflict, that it would provide efficient and workable help when training time is taken into account, and that it wouldn’t weaken France’s own military.

Scholz did not respond when asked about the Leopard 2 tanks Sunday, but stressed that his country already has made sizable military contributions to Ukraine.

“The U.S. is doing a lot, Germany is doing a lot, too,” he said. “We have constantly expanded our deliveries with very effective weapons that are already available today. And we have always coordinated all these decisions closely with our important allies and friends.”

Germany’s tentativeness has drawn criticism, particularly from Poland and the Baltic states, countries on NATO’s eastern flank that feel especially threatened by Russia’s renewed aggression.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that if Germany does not consent to transferring Leopard tanks to Ukraine, his country was prepared to build a “smaller coalition” of countries that would send theirs anyway.

“Almost a year had passed since the outbreak of war,” Morawiecki said in an interview with Polish state news agency PAP published Sunday. “Evidence of the Russian army’s war crimes can be seen on television and on YouTube. What more does Germany need to open its eyes and start to act in line with the potential of the German state?”

In Washington, two leading lawmakers urged the U.S. on Sunday to send some of its Abrams tanks to Ukraine in the interests of overcoming Germany’

“If we announced we were giving an Abrams tank, just one, that would unleash” the flow of tanks from Germany, Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC’s “This Week on Sunday.” “What I hear is that Germany’s waiting on us to take the lead.”

Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also spoke up for the U.S. sending Abrams.

“If it requires our sending some Abrams tanks in order to unlock getting the Leopard tanks from Germany, from Poland, from other allies, I would support that,” Coons said.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council, said the U.S.-led meeting at the air base in Germany “left no doubt that our enemies will try to exhaust or better destroy us,” adding that “they have enough weapons” to achieve the purpose.

Medvedev, a former Russian president, warned on his messaging app channel that “in case of a protracted conflict,” Russia could seek to form a military alliance with “the nations that are fed up with the Americans and a pack of their castrated dogs.”

Ukraine is asking for more weapons as it anticipates Russia’s forces launching a new offensive in the spring.

Oleksii Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, warned that Russia may try to intensify its attacks in the south and in the east and to cut supply channels of Western weapons, while conquering Kyiv “remains the main dream” in President Vladimir Putin’s “fantasies,” he said.

In a column published by online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda. he described the Kremlin’s goal in the conflict as a “total and absolute genocide, a total war of destruction”

Among those calling for more arms for Ukraine was the former British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who made a surprise trip to Ukraine on Sunday. Johnson, who was pictured in the Kyiv region town of Borodyanka, said he traveled to Ukraine at the invitation of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“This is the moment to double down and to give the Ukrainians all the tools they need to finish the job. The sooner Putin fails, the better for Ukraine and for the whole world,” Johnson said in a statement.

The last week was especially tragic for Ukraine even by the standards of a brutal war that has gone on for nearly a year, killing tens of thousands of people, uprooting millions more and creating vast destruction of Ukrainian cities.

A barrage of Russian missiles struck an apartment complex in the southeastern city of Dnipro on Jan. 14, killing at least 45 civilians. On Wednesday, a government helicopter crashed into a building housing a kindergarten in a suburb of Kyiv. Ukraine’s interior minister, other officials and a child on the ground were among the 14 people killed.

Zelenskyy vowed Sunday that Ukraine would ultimately prevail in the war.

“We are united because we are strong. We are strong because we are united,” the Ukrainian leader said in a video address as he marked Ukraine Unity Day, which commemorates when east and west Ukraine were united in 1919.

Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed.

Sen. Coons says one key thing separates Biden, Trump docs cases — but acknowledges political ‘fallout’

ABC News

Sen. Coons says one key thing separates Biden, Trump docs cases — but acknowledges political ‘fallout’

Isabella Murray – January 22, 2023

Sen. Chris Coons, a close ally of Joe Biden, on Sunday insisted there was a key difference between the current president and former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents while out of office.

“I have some confidence that, because he is fully cooperating, we will get to the bottom of this,” Coons told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz of Biden, in “sharp contrast” with Biden’s predecessor, whom the government suspects was less forthcoming in returning classified records.

On Saturday, Biden’s personal attorney said the Department of Justice had searched his Wilmington, Delaware, home the day before and found six items consisting of documents with classification markings, some from his time in the Senate in addition to his tenure as vice president.

The search was voluntary, according to federal authorities, and Biden’s attorney stressed his cooperation.

“There is one important document that distinguishes former President Trump from President Biden: That’s a warrant,” Coons, D-Del., said on “This Week.”

He was pressed by Raddatz over the latest developments and potential political consequences surrounding the discovery of multiple batches of documents with classified markings at an old office Biden used in Washington D.C. and at his Wilmington residence. This all unfolding just months after the Department of Justice separately recovered — via a court-authorized FBI search — a trove of classified materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Coons contended that the controversy wasn’t “keeping Americans up at night,” but Raddatz pointed to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll showing 64% of people say Biden acted inappropriately in his handling of classified materials.

“You don’t think there will be any political fallout from this? You don’t think Americans look at this and say, ‘Look, they both had classified documents?'” Raddatz asked.

PHOTO: Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on “This Week.” (ABC News)

“I think the fallout is right now,” Coons said. “We’re talking about this, instead of President Biden’s leadership on confronting Russian aggression in Ukraine or talking about something I do think is on people’s minds — the potential of a debt ceiling fight and a default.”

“At a time when our president has done such a strong job, where we’ve got the wind at our back because of the big pieces of legislation that he just signed into law in the last few months, the fact that this will take up time and be a distraction — yes, that has a political impact,” Coons said.

But, he said, he didn’t think the controversy would become crucial for voters: “I do not think, in the end, Martha, that when we get to the next election, this will be the deciding issue.”

A first set of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president was discovered at his old office by his personal attorneys just ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, though the discovery wasn’t revealed to the public until news reports in early January.

Biden’s attorneys have since said that more documents were found at his Wilmington residence in December and in January. On Jan. 12, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he was naming a special counsel to handle the investigation.

On “This Week,” Raddatz repeatedly asked Coons on if he thought Biden had made a “mistake” in not publicly disclosing the matter before reporters did.

“I think we’ll let the public decide that and I think once we get to the end of the special counsel’s investigation, the American people will have a chance to make a judgment on that question,” Coons replied.

PHOTO: ABC News' Martha Raddatz interviews Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on “This Week.” (ABC News) — PHOTO: ABC News’ Martha Raddatz interviews Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on “This Week.” (ABC News)

While it remains unclear how the documents ended up at Biden’s office or his home in the years while he was out of office, Coons said Biden “had no idea. … I do think this was inadvertent. The whole point of having special counsel is to insure that and to give the American people confidence.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, took another view in his own “This Week” appearance. He said there were “a lot of unanswered questions” and criticized what he called a lack of transparency: “This broke a week before the midterm elections and they swept [it] under the rug.”

McCaul said the FBI search was “significant” and called both Biden and Trump “guilty of the same sin” in improperly retaining classified materials.

“Why are they taking these documents home? I don’t understand. I’ve lived in a classified world for a long time,” he said.

Coons, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee member who led the American congressional delegation in Davos, Switzerland, last week during the World Economic Forum, was also asked by Raddatz about the future of U.S. military aid for Ukraine to defend against Russia’s invasion. In Davos, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reportedly told Coons and others that Germany would only send its advanced Leopard 2 battle tanks along with the U.S. sending M1 Abrams vehicles.

“I am concerned that Russia is re-arming and preparing for a spring offensive. If it requires our sending some Abrams tanks in order to unlock getting the Leopard tanks from Germany, from Poland, from other allies, I would support that,” Coons said on “This Week.”

Russia’s Wagner chief writes to White House over new U.S. sanctions

Reuters

Russia’s Wagner chief writes to White House over new U.S. sanctions

January 21, 2023

FILE PHOTO: Wagner private military group centre opens in St Petersburg

(Reuters) – The head of the Russian private military contractor Wagner published on Saturday a short letter to the White House asking what crime his company was accused of, after Washington announced new sanctions on the group.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday that Wagner, which has been supporting Russian forces in their invasion of Ukraine and claiming credit for battlefield advances, would be designated a significant Transnational Criminal Organization.

A letter in English addressed to Kirby and posted on the Telegram channel of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s press service read: “Dear Mr Kirby, Could you please clarify what crime was committed by PMC Wagner?”

Kirby called Wagner “a criminal organization that is committing widespread atrocities and human rights abuses”.

Last month, the White House said Wagner had taken delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry called the report groundless and Prigozhin at the time denied taking such a delivery, calling the report “gossip and speculation”.

Washington had already imposed curbs on trade with Wagner in 2017 and again in December in an attempt to restrict its access to weaponry.

The European Union imposed its own sanctions in December 2021 on Wagner, which has been active in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mozambique and Mali, as well as Ukraine.

Prigozhin has described Wagner as a fully independent force with its own aircraft, tanks, rockets and artillery.

He is wanted in the United States for interference in U.S. elections, something that he said in November he had done and would continue to do.

(Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Helen Popper)

New Brett Kavanaugh Sexual Assault Allegations Revealed in Secret Sundance Doc

Daily Beast

New Brett Kavanaugh Sexual Assault Allegations Revealed in Secret Sundance Doc

Nick Schager – January 21, 2023

Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation to the Supreme Court was embroiled in controversy when multiple women accused him of sexual assault. One of them, Christine Blasey Ford, testified before Congress about the alleged attempted rape she suffered at his hands in high school. Justice is a horrifying and infuriating inquiry into those claims, told in large part by friends of Ford, lawyers and medical experts, and another of Kavanaugh’s alleged victims: Deborah Ramirez, a classmate of his at Yale.

Most damning of all, it features a never-heard-before audio recording made by one of Kavanaugh’s Yale colleagues—Partnership for Public Service president and CEO Max Stier—that not only corroborates Ramirez’s charges, but suggests that Kavanaugh violated another unnamed woman as well.

A last-minute addition to this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Justice is the first feature documentary helmed by Doug Liman, a director best known for Hollywood hits like Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, and Edge of Tomorrow. His latest is far removed from those fictional mainstream efforts, caustically censuring Kavanaugh and the political process that elevated him to the nation’s highest judicial bench, and casting a sympathetic eye on Ford, Ramirez ,and their fellow accusers.

Liman’s film may not deliver many new bombshells, but he and writer/producer Amy Herdy makes up for a relative dearth of explosive revelations by lucidly recounting this ugly chapter in recent American history, as well as by giving voice to women whose allegations were picked apart, mocked and, ultimately, ignored.

<div class="inline-image__credit">Win McNamee/Getty</div> — Win McNamee/Getty

The biggest eye-opener in Justice comes more than midway through its compact and efficient 85-minute runtime, when Liman receives a tip that leads him to an anonymous individual who provides a tape made by Stier shortly after the FBI—compelled by Ford’s courageous and heartrending testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—briefly reopened its investigation into embattled then-nominee Kavanaugh.

In it, Stier relays that he lived in the same Yale dorm as Kavanaugh and, one evening, wound up in a room where he saw a severely inebriated Kavanaugh with his pants down, at which point a group of rowdy soccer players forced a drunk female freshman to hold Kavanaugh’s penis. Stier states that he knows this tale “first-hand,” and that the young woman in question did not subsequently remember the incident, nor did she want to come forward after she’d seen the vile treatment that Ford and Ramirez were subjected to by the public, the media, and the government. The Daily Beast has reached out to Justice Kavanaugh for comment about the fresh allegations.

Stier goes on to explain that, though he didn’t know Ramirez, he had heard from classmates about her separate, eerily similar encounter with Kavanaugh, which she personally describes in Justice. According to Ramirez, an intoxicated Kavanaugh exposed himself right in front of her face in college, and that she suppressed memories of certain aspects of this trauma until she was contacted by The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow.

Christine Blasey Ford’s Grace Exposes Her Questioners’ Cruelty

As Ramirez narrates in a trembling tone that seems on the perpetual verge of cracking, she suffered this indignity quietly, convinced that she was to blame for it (because she too was under the influence) and humiliated by the guffaws of the other men in the room. Her account is convincing in its specificity, and moving in its anguish.

Ramirez confesses that some of Farrow’s questions made her worried that she still wasn’t recalling everything about that fateful night, and it’s Stier’s recording that appears to fill in a crucial blank. Stier says he was told that, after Kavanaugh stuck his naked member in Ramirez’s face, he went to the bathroom and was egged on by classmates to make himself erect; once he’d succeeded in that task, he returned to harass Ramirez some more.

It’s an additional bit of nastiness in a story drowning in grotesqueness, and Liman lays it all out with the sort of no-nonsense clarity that only amplifies one’s shock, revulsion and dismay—emotions that go hand-in-hand with outrage, which is stoked by the numerous clips of Kavanaugh refuting these accusations with unconvincing fury and falsehoods.

<div class="inline-image__credit">Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty</div> — Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty

Through juxtapositions of Kavanaugh’s on-the-record statements and various pieces of evidence, Justice reveals the many lies advanced by the judge in order to both sway public opinion and to give Republicans enough reasonable-doubt cover to vote in favor of his confirmation.

Moreover, in a lengthy segment about text conversations between Kavanaugh’s college buddies and Ramirez’s Yale classmate Kerry Berchem, the film persuasively suggests that Kavanaugh and his team were aware of Ford and Ramirez’s charges before they became public, and sought to preemptively counter them by planting alternate-narrative seeds with friends and acquaintances.

While Liman relies a bit too heavily on graphical text to convey some of this, the idea that Kavanaugh (or those closest to him) conspired to keep his apparent crimes secret—along with his general reputation as a boozing party-hard menace—nonetheless comes through loud and clear.

Surprisingly, although Ford is seen speaking to Liman just off-camera at the beginning of Justice, she otherwise doesn’t appear except in archival footage. Still, her presence is ubiquitous throughout the documentary, which generates further anger by noting that the FBI ignored Stier’s tip, along with the majority of the 4,500 others they received regarding Kavanaugh. The Bureau instead chose to send along any “relevant” reports to the very Trump-administration White House that was committed to getting their nominee approved.

The Brett Kavanaugh Probe Should Be About One Thing: Sexual Assault

The effect is to paint the entire affair as a charade and a rigged game in which accusatory women were unfairly and maliciously put on the defensive, and powerful men were allowed to skate by on suspect evasions and flimsy denials.

Justice is more of a stinging, straightforward recap than a formally daring non-fiction work, but its direct approach allows its speakers to make their case with precision and passion. Of that group, Ramirez proves the memorable standout, her commentary as thorough and consistent as it is distressed.

In her remarks about Kavanaugh’s laughter as he perpetrated his misconduct—chortling that Ford also mentions to Congress—she provides an unforgettable detail that encapsulates the arrogant, entitled cruelty of her abuser, as well as the unjust system that saw fit to place him on the nation’s highest legal pedestal.

30 feet of snow? That much has fallen in some places in California as snow blankets huge swaths of state.

USA Today

30 feet of snow? That much has fallen in some places in California as snow blankets huge swaths of state.

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY – January 21, 2023

The atmospheric rivers that battered California with heavy flooding in January also left behind staggering snow accumulations.

NASA satellite images show far more snow on the state’s mountains this winter compared to last.

And in an environment where every drops of water matters, that unusually deep snowpack is a rare bit of good news, especially for farmers. While every snowstorm is different, there’s about an 1 inch of water contained in a foot of snow.

Water users all across west are carefully watching snowfall-measuring sites so they can plan for the coming summer. Here’s what to know:

How much snow has California gotten?

Many snow-measuring sites in the Sierra Nevada on the California-Nevada border are showing double the amount of snow they usually have — and some are two or three times higher.

At Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, workers are still digging out of the 17 feet of snow that fell on the base area in the first 16 days of this year, said spokeswoman Lauren Burke. The ski area near Mammoth Lakes, Calif., has received more than 31 feet of snow already this winter at its summit.

“The skiing and riding has just been next-level. But it’s safe to say we are excited to see some blue-sky days in the next week or so,” Burke said.

Around Lake Tahoe, some measuring sites have recorded 300 or even 400% of the median amount, compared to data going back to 1991. And January and February are typically the snowiest months there, so more will likely pile up. Last year, Mammoth Mountain only got 21 feet of snow for the entire season — 10 feet less than it’s already gotten this winter.
In the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Utah, snow fall is up to 200% above average along the Continental Divide in Colorado.

The Sierra snowpack, which supplies 30% of California’s water, stands at 245% of its average for this date and at 126% of the traditional April 1 peak. All three sections of the Sierra – north, central and south – are registering above 200% of normal for the date, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

But even with all the snow and rain, most of California remains in some level of drought, according to federal scientists who say multiple years of wet conditions would be needed to reverse the ongoing drying trend.

Why does it matter?

Unlike the East Coast and midwest, where rain falls more consistently, California and the West depend heavily on snow to provide irrigation water for crops, and to provide drinking water for growing cities like Las Vegas. About half of the West’s water comes from snowfall.

Large reservoir systems divert water from melting snow hundreds of miles from mountain areas to farmland or cities, particularly the Colorado River. Water users all across the West are carefully watching snowfall-measuring sites so they can plan for the coming summer.

Knowing just how much snow will melt and feed the water supply helps growers adjust.

“Being able to do that has been able to keep our water district more flush, pardon the pun, and weather the drought a lot better,” said almond grower Christine Gemperle, 51, who runs Gemperle Orchards in Turlock, Calif., with her brother.

How is climate change affecting snowfall?

More snow falling as rain: Rain is harder to capture in reservoirs because it comes all at once, instead of melting slowly like snow.
Less snow on the ground means the air stays warmer: This creates a feedback loop where the warmer air causes precipitation to fall as rain, instead of snow.
Climate change alters how and where snow falls: This means historical records are no longer as accurate when it comes to predicting water flows later in the summer.

How is snowfall measured? NASA is helping.

Mountainous snowfall covers vast, sparsely populated regions. So how do authorities know exactly just how much snow has fallen?

For generations, most snow measurements were made by jamming an aluminum pole into the snow and pulling out a core sample. A quick calculation of the weight allowed scientists to know how much “snow water equivalent” was inside the snowpack in a certain area. Scientists returned to the same snow course survey areas month after month, year after year, building up a picture of snowfall in those areas.

Starting in the 1980s, scientists developed remote snow-measuring systems that could automatically weigh and report snowfall, broadening our understanding of snowfall across remote areas. There are now more than 900 remote sites across the western United States.

NASA helped develop a more accurate snow measuring system using a small airplane fitted with LiDAR, which provides a much more comprehensive picture of the entire snowpack, not just a few hundred areas.