This community lost 5 million gallons of clean, drinkable water a day — all because of an abandoned golf course
Laurelle Stelle – August 31, 2023
Jackson, Mississippi, experienced frequent water shortages and contamination for years, all while a leaking water main poured five million gallons per day into a nearby stream until finally being repaired.
What happened?
According to The New York Times, the leak was located under a golf course at the Colonial Country Club and had been there since 2016. It affected one of the two main pipes carrying water from the local treatment plant to the rest of the city, where the pressure was so strong that water from the leak shot into the air like a geyser and carved a swimming pool-sized pit in the ground.
Not only did the country club leak lose enough to supply 50,000 people with water every day, but it was only one of many large leaks affecting Jackson’s aging water system. The New York Times reports that the city’s two water plants were built in the 1910s and 1980s, meaning that many of the pipes the city relies on are over 100 years old and could break at any time.
Why does it matter?
Jackson residents have been experiencing problems with their water for years, according to the Times. They receive frequent “boil notices” — warnings that the tap water is unsafe and should be boiled before use — and at times receive no tap water at all. Many residents stockpile bottled water to prepare for the next crisis. Being without clean drinking water is bad enough, but experiencing these shortages while clean water is being poured out on the ground is especially alarming.
As temperatures rise across the globe, Jackson isn’t the only part of the U.S. experiencing water shortages. California and other western states have been facing a years-long drought, while pollution has affected the water supply in towns like Dimock, Pennsylvania. These shortages lead to increased water costs and may have long-term effects on agriculture that could drive up food prices.
What is being done to fix it?
Until recently, poor management has prevented any real improvement in Jackson, which is why the Justice Department ordered the city to bring in an outside manager for the water department in 2022, the Times reports. Repairs are finally underway, starting with the Colonial Country Club leak and aided by a recent infusion of federal funds.
Tropical Storm Idalia is nearing Florida. Residents are being urged to wrap up their preparations
Laura Bargfeld – August 28, 2023
Members of the Tampa, Fla., Parks and Recreation Dept., help residents with sandbags Monday, Aug. 28, 2023, in Tampa, Fla. Residents along Florida’s gulf coast are making preparations for the effects of Tropical Storm Idalia. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)Motorists wait in line during sandbag distribution, ahead of Tropical Storm Idalia’s arrival, at MacFarlane Park in Tampa, Fla., Mon., Aug. 28, 2023. (Ivy Ceballo/Tampa Bay Times via AP)Garry Sears, 78, collects fallen pecans from his pecan tree on Monday, Aug 28, 2023, near his collectible 1953 Ford sedan which he has elevated to keep out of storm surge. Sears, who said he had four inches of water in his Florida room during Tropical Storm Eta, in November 2020, is anticipating as much surge from Tropical Storm Idalia which intensified early Monday and is expected to become a major hurricane before it reaches Florida’s Gulf coast. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Florida residents loaded up on sandbags and evacuated from homes in low-lying areas along the Gulf Coast as Tropical Storm Idalia intensified Monday and forecasters predicted it would hit in days as a major hurricane with potentially life-threatening storm surges.
“You should be wrapping up your preparation for #TropicalStormIdalia tonight and Tues morning at the latest,” the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay said Monday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
As the state prepared, Idalia thrashed Cuba with heavy rain, especially in the westernmost part of the island, where the tobacco-producing province of Pinar del Rio is still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian almost a year ago.
Authorities in the province issued a state of alert, and residents were evacuated to friends’ and relatives’ homes as authorities monitored the Cuyaguateje river for possible flooding. As much as 10 centimeters (4 inches) of rain fell in Cuba on Sunday, meteorological stations reported.
Idalia is expected to start affecting Florida with hurricane-force winds as soon as late Tuesday and arrive on the coast by Wednesday. It is the first storm to hit Florida this hurricane season and a potentially big blow to the state, which is also dealing with lingering damage from last year’s Hurricane Ian.
“Just got to prepare for these things, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst and, you know, hunker down, as they say,” said Derek Hughes as he waited to load up his car with sandbags at a city park in Tampa.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 46 counties, a broad swath that stretches across the northern half of the state from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Coast. The state has mobilized 1,100 National Guard members, who have 2,400 high-water vehicles and 12 aircraft at their disposal for rescue and recovery efforts.
Tampa International Airport and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport said they would close on Tuesday, and the Sunrail commuter rail service in Orlando was being suspended.
DeSantis warned of a “major impact” to the state, noting the potential for Idalia to become a Category 3 hurricane.
“The property — we can rebuild someone’s home,” DeSantis said during a news conference Monday. “You can’t unring the bell, though, if somebody stays in harm’s way and does battle with Mother Nature.”
DeSantis said the Florida Department of Transportation would waive tolls on highways in the Tampa area and the Big Bend starting at 4 a.m. Tuesday to help ease any burden on people in the path of the storm.
Large parts of the western coast of Florida are at risk for storm surges and floods. Evacuation notices have been issued in 21 counties with mandatory orders for some people in eight of those counties. Many of the notices were for people in low-lying and coastal areas, for those living in structures such as mobile and manufactured homes, recreational vehicles and boats, and for people who would be vulnerable in a power outage.
Pasco and Levy counties, located north of Tampa, both ordered mandatory evacuations for some residents. In Levy County, officials said residents of Cedar Key must be off the island by Tuesday evening because storm surges would make bridges impassable.
“Once the storm surge comes in, help may not be available to reach you,” the county said in a public advisory.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami issued a hurricane warning Monday from Longboat Key in the Sarasota area to the Holocene River, up past Tampa Bay.
Many school districts along the Gulf Coast said they would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Several colleges and universities said they would close their campuses on Tuesday, including the University of Florida in Gainesville.
“They told us that our dorm building, especially, is prone to flooding,” said Erin Amiss, a student at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg.
MacDill Air Force Base, located on Tampa Bay, is preparing to evacuate several aircraft and began a mandatory evacuation Monday morning for personnel who live in local counties, the Air Force said in a statement.
Tampa resident Grace Cruz, who has lived in the state for more than 40 years, put away patio furniture, filled her car up with gas and loaded up on sandbags. She worried about the tens of thousands of new residents to Florida who had never before experienced a hurricane, and she had some advice for them.
“If you’re planning to get away, you start ahead of time because of the traffic,” Cruz said. “No kidding. It’s horrible.”
As Gulf Coast residents packed up their cars or hauled out generators in case of power outages, state officials warned about potential fuel contamination at dozens of gas stations.
President Joe Biden spoke to DeSantis on Monday morning, telling the Florida governor that he had approved an emergency declaration for the state, the White House said in a news release. DeSantis is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Southwest Florida is still recovering from Hurricane Ian, which was responsible last year for almost 150 deaths. The Category 5 hurricane damaged 52,000 structures, nearly 20,000 of which were destroyed or severely damaged.
At 11 p.m. EDT Monday, Tropical Storm Idalia was about 10 miles (16 kilometers) off the western tip of Cuba, with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph), the hurricane center said. Idalia was moving north at 8 mph (13 kph). On Tuesday, it was expected to turn northeast at a faster pace, reaching Florida’s western coast as a dangerous major hurricane on Wednesday.
After moving across Florida, Idalia is forecast to blow through Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
So far this year, the U.S. East Coast has been spared from cyclones. But in the West earlier this month, Tropical Storm Hilary caused widespread flooding, mudslides and road closures in Mexico, California, Nevada and points north.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently said the 2023 hurricane season would be far busier than initially forecast, partly because of extremely warm ocean temperatures. The season runs through Nov. 30, with August and September typically the peak.
Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland; Cristiana Mesquita in Havana; Mike Schneider in St. Louis, Missouri; and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.
Trump and His Co-Defendants in Georgia Are Already at Odds
Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim – August 27, 2023
Former President Donald Trump at the airport in Atlanta, after being booked at the Fulton County Jail where he and 18 allies were charged in Georgia election meddling, on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
Even as former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case turned themselves in one by one at an Atlanta jail this past week, their lawyers began working to change how the case will play out.
They are already at odds over when they will have their day in court, but also, crucially, where. Should enough of them succeed, the case could split into several smaller cases, perhaps overseen by different judges in different courtrooms, running on different timelines.
Five defendants have already sought to move the state case to federal court, citing their ties to the federal government. The first one to file — Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff during the 2020 election — will make the argument for removal Monday, in a hearing before a federal judge in Atlanta.
Federal officials charged with state crimes can move their cases to federal court if they can convince a judge that they are being charged for actions connected to their official duties, among other things.
In the Georgia case, the question of whether to change the venue — a legal maneuver known as removal — matters because it would affect the composition of a jury. If the case stays in Fulton County, the jury will come from a bastion of Democratic politics where Trump was trounced in 2020. If the case is removed to federal court, the jury will be drawn from a 10-county region of Georgia that is more suburban and rural — and somewhat more Trump-friendly. Because it takes only one not-guilty vote to hang a jury, this modest advantage could prove to be a very big deal.
The coming fights over the proper venue for the case are only one strand of a complicated tangle of efforts being launched by a gaggle of defense lawyers now representing Trump and the 18 others named in the 98-page racketeering indictment. This past week, the lawyers clogged both state and federal court dockets with motions that will also determine when the case begins.
Already, one defendant’s case is splitting off as a result. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who advised Trump after the 2020 election, has asked for a speedy trial, and the presiding state judge has agreed to it. His trial is now set to begin Oct. 23. Another defendant, Sidney Powell, filed a similar motion Friday, and a third, John Eastman, also plans to invoke his right to an early trial, according to one of his lawyers.
Soon after Chesebro set in motion the possibility of an October trial, Trump, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of going to court so soon, informed the court that he intended to sever his case from the rest of the defendants. Ordering separate trials for defendants in a large racketeering indictment can occur for any number of reasons, and the judge, Scott McAfee, has made clear the early trial date applied only to Chesebro.
Trump’s move came as no surprise. As the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he is in no hurry to see the Georgia matter, or the other three criminal cases against him, go to trial. In the separate federal election interference case Trump faces in Washington, D.C., his lawyers have asked that the trial start safely beyond the November 2024 general election — in April 2026.
In Georgia, the possibility that even a portion of the sprawling case may go to trial in October remains up in the air. The removal efforts have much to do with that.
There is a possibility that if one of the five defendants seeking removal is successful, then all 19 will be forced into federal court. Many legal scholars have noted that the question is unsettled.
“We are heading for uncharted territory at this point, and nobody knows for sure what is in this novel frontier,” Donald Samuel, a veteran Atlanta defense attorney who represents one of the defendants in the Trump case, Ray Smith III, wrote in an email. “Maybe a trip to the Supreme Court.”
The dizzying legal gamesmanship reflects the unique nature of a case that has swept up a former president, a number of relatively obscure Georgia Republican activists, a former publicist for Kanye West and lawyer-defendants of varying prominence. All bring their own agendas, financial concerns and opinions about their chances at trial.
And, of course, one of them seeks to regain the title of leader of the free world.
Some of the defendants seeking a speedy trial may believe that the case against them is weak. They may also hope to catch prosecutors unprepared, although in this case, Fani Willis, the district attorney, has been investigating for 2 1/2 years and has had plenty of time to get ready.
Another reason that some may desire a speedy trial is money.
Willis had originally sought to start a trial in March, but even that seemed ambitious given the complexity of the case. Harvey Silverglate, Eastman’s lawyer, said he could imagine a scenario in which a verdict might not come for three years.
“And Eastman is not a wealthy man,” he said.
Silverglate added that his client “doesn’t have the contributors” that Trump has. “We are going to seek a severance and a speedy trial. If we have a severance, the trial will take three weeks,” he predicted.
How long would a regular racketeering trial take? Brian Tevis, an Atlanta lawyer who negotiated the bond agreement for Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer, said that “the defense side would probably want potentially a year or so to catch up.”
“You have to realize that the state had a two-year head start,” he said. “They know what they have. No one else knows what they have. No discovery has been turned over. We haven’t even had arraignment yet.”
In addition to Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, is already seeking removal, as is David Shafer, former head of the Georgia Republican Party; Shawn Still, a Georgia state senator; and Cathy Latham, former chair of the Republican Party in Coffee County, Georgia. Trump is almost certain to follow, having already tried and failed to have a state criminal case against him in New York moved to federal court.
The indictment charges Meadows with racketeering and “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer” for his participation in the Jan. 2, 2021, call in which Trump told the Georgia secretary of state that he wanted to “find” enough votes to win Georgia. The indictment also describes other efforts by Meadows that prosecutors say were part of the illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
Meadows’ lawyers argue that all of the actions in question were what “one would expect” of a White House chief of staff — “arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the president’s behalf, visiting a state government building and setting up a phone call for the president” — and that removal is therefore justified.
Prosecutors contend that Meadows was, in fact, engaging in political activity that was not part of a chief of staff’s job.
The issue is likely to be at the heart of Trump’s removal effort as well: In calling the secretary of state and other Georgia officials after he lost the election, was he working on his own behalf, or in his capacity as president, to ensure that the election had run properly?
Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant law professor at Georgia State University, said the indictment may contain an Easter egg that could spoil Trump’s argument that he was intervening in the Georgia election as part of his duty as a federal official.
The indictment says that the election-reversal scheme lasted through September 2021, when Trump wrote a letter to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to take steps to decertify the election.
Trump, by that point, had been out of federal office for months.
“By showing the racketeering enterprise continued well beyond his time in office,” Kreis said in a text message, “it undercuts any argument that Trump was acting in a governmental capacity to ensure the election was free, fair and accurate.”
Two Justices Clash on Congress’ Power Over Supreme Court Ethics
Adam Liptak – August 27, 2023
The Supreme Court justices gather in Washington for a formal group portrait session on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — As a young lawyer in the Reagan White House, John Roberts was tartly dismissive of the Supreme Court’s long summer break, which stretches from the end of June to the first Monday in October.
“Only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren,” he wrote in 1983, “are expected to and do take the entire summer off.”
On the other hand, the young lawyer wrote, there is an upside to the break: “We know that the Constitution is safe for the summer.”
These days, members of the court find time to quarrel about the Constitution even in the warm months. The primary antagonists lately have been Justices Samuel Alito Jr. and Elena Kagan.
Last summer, they clashed over whether decisions like the one eliminating the constitutional right to abortion threatened the court’s legitimacy.
In recent months, the two justices have continued to spar, though on a different subject: whether Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate aspects of the court’s work.
The question is timely, of course, as news reports have raised ethical questions about, among other things, luxury travel provided to Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. Those reports have led to proposed legislation to impose new ethics rules on the court.
Alito, in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal last month, appeared to object, saying that “Congress did not create the Supreme Court.”
He added, “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
A few days later, at a judicial conference in Portland, Oregon, Kagan took the opposite view, though she cautioned that the Journal had not reproduced the question that had prompted Alito’s answer. She indicated, graciously, that he could not have meant what he seemed to say.
“Of course Congress can regulate various aspects of what the Supreme Court does,” she said, ticking off a list of ways in which lawmakers can act. Congress sets the court’s budget. It can increase or shrink the size of the court, and it has over the years done both. It can make changes to the court’s jurisdiction.
Indeed, the Constitution provides that the court has appellate jurisdiction “with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”
All of this is unsurprising, Kagan said.
“It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that somehow is not subject to any checks and balances from anybody else,” she said, adding, “I mean, we are not imperial.”
On the broader question of whether Congress may regulate some aspects of the court’s activities, Kagan seemed to have the better of the argument. She did not offer an opinion on the narrower question of whether Congress may impose a code of ethics on the justices, but she said the court remained free to act.
“Regardless of what Congress does, the court can do stuff,” Kagan said, adding, “We could decide to adopt a code of conduct of our own that either follows or decides in certain instances not to follow the standard codes of conduct.”
In remarks at an awards ceremony in May, Roberts said that work remained underway. But he added it was a job for the court, not Congress.
“I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,” he said. “We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment, and I am confident that there are ways to do that consistent with our status as an independent branch of government and the Constitution’s separation of powers.”
It was not clear, though, that consensus among the justices was on the horizon, Kagan said.
“It’s not a secret for me to say that we have been discussing this issue,” she said. “And it won’t be a surprise to know that the nine of us have a variety of views about this, as about most things. We’re nine freethinking individuals.”
Congress has enacted laws that apply to the justices, including ones on financial disclosures and recusal. In a way, the most telling ethics legislation came from the first Congress, in 1789, requiring all federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to take an oath promising “that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me.”
If Congress can take all of those actions, it would seem to be free to enact a code of ethical standards, Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, wrote in a 2013 law review article.
“The Supreme Court is not an isolated institution intended to operate entirely free from the political branches — to the contrary, it has always depended on the political branches to lay out the parameters governing its exercise of judicial power,” Frost wrote, adding, “Congress’s authority over judicial ethics is less surprising once one realizes that Congress has long assumed the power to regulate many important aspects of the court’s daily activities.”
China’s $10 trillion hidden debt mountain could be the ‘ticking time bomb’ that Joe Biden warned of
Joseph Wilkins – August 27, 2023
The Chinese national flag flies behind security cameras on Tiananmen Square on June 4, 2012 on the 23rd anniversary of China’s crackdown of democracy protests in Beijing.ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images
China has faced many economic problems this year, from deflation and record youth unemployment to a property crisis.
But now, an even more worrisome threat is emerging: the colossal hidden debt of China’s local governments.
Some estimates put the liabilities of China’s local financing vehicles close to $10 trillion.
For some time now, markets have been buffeted almost on a daily basis by gloomy economic news filtering out of China.
The world’s second-largest economy is grappling with a raft of economic troubles — ranging from deflation to record youth unemployment, and a deepening property crisis — and its much-anticipated post-pandemic rebound has failed to materialize.
China’s mounting economic woes prompted US President Joe Biden to call the Asian economy a “ticking time bomb”.
And now, a lesser-known, but no less ominous, economic threat is rearing its head: China’s colossal hidden-debt problem.
This mainly refers to a mountain of liabilities accumulated by the country’s local governments, mostly to fund regional infrastructure projects such as building roads and bridges. An analysis by the Chinese media outlet Caixin Global estimated the outstanding obligations of the so-called local government financing vehicles, or LGFVs, at close to a staggering $10 trillion.
The Chinese government deems such debt a form of off-the-books lending and as such, the market is opaque. Here, Insider demystifies the shadow sector and explains the significance of LGFVs to the wider Chinese economy.
What are China’s LGFVs?
These funding bodies were set up by China to facilitate financing for regional infrastructure projects. Originally established to support infrastructure projects such as highways, airports, and energy installations, the LGFVs were designed to provide funding outside of the official government constraints.
The notion of “hidden debt” was defined by China’s State Council in 2018 as any borrowing that does not form a part of on-budget government spending – in essence, off-the-books financing.
The LGFV sector has grown exponentially since the 2008 global financial crisis, when the Chinese government made efforts to ensure that the nation’s infrastructure and public services segments expand fast enough to sustain its remarkable economic growth, according to Bloomberg.
Figures from Bloomberg and the International Monetary Fund estimate the total value of LGFV debt as more than $9 trillion – not far from the Caixin assessment. The local governments’ bonds alone total at about $2 trillion, and any defaults would rock the Asian nation’s $60 trillion financial system, according to Bloomberg.
In 2023, the LGFVs’ hidden debt climbed above 50% of China’s GDP for the first time, IMF data show.
Why does this matter?
For months, China’s local administrations have struggled to turn their financing vehicles profitable – increasing pressure on the national government to prop up the ailing sector via costly interventions.
As risks tied to the sector mount, banks are unwilling to lend more, investors are turning their backs on bonds, and viable projects are harder to come by, according to several anonymous employees interviewed by Bloomberg.
As a result, the local governments have been struggling to generate enough income or raise funding to meet the costs of servicing their debt.
“The most important variable impacting China’s economic growth over the next two years will be the success or failure of local government debt restructuring,” Logan Wright, head of China markets research at Rhodium Group, told Bloomberg.
But Beijing has so far refrained from intervening in the sector, in a bid to encourage self-sufficiency.
Echoes of the property crisis
Although none of the LGFVs have actually defaulted on their debt yet, the mounting stress in the sector echoes the crisis in China’s real-estate industry, which began in 2021 and has reverberated around global markets ever since.
“A collapse in local government investment would be comparable to the economic impact of the crisis in the property market,” Wright told Bloomberg.
China’s enormous property sector accounts for about 30% of the country’s overall output. Headwinds faced by the sector include heavy debt burdens and sluggish demand for new properties. This was a contributing factor in stunting the nation’s second-quarter GDP growth, which came in at 6.3%, below forecasts of up to 7.1%.
Indeed, any turmoil originating from China’s mountainous hidden debt would send shockwaves across the global economy.
Experts are witnessing a strange new phenomenon in the demand for electric cars: ‘We call it the ‘Field of Dreams’ moment’
Leo Collis – August 27, 2023
Huge price reductions and copious availability could provide a boost to the electric vehicle market, which has already seen record sales in 2023.
Cox Automotive reported Kelley Blue Book’s findings that June’s average transaction price for a new electric vehicle ($53,438) is down 20% from a peak of $66,390 in June 2022.
Kelley Blue Book tweeted about Tesla discounts as examples of falling EV prices in June.
As noted by the Financial Times, many of the price changes trace back to Tesla’s decision to slash its prices by up to $13,000 in January. This sparked a price war among manufacturers.
With Ford making the next big move by cutting the purchase price of its Mustang Mach-E, Tesla responded by making its Model S and Model X models cheaper in March.
Ford has made further price reductions, offering savings of between $6,079 and $9,979 on seven of its F-150 Lightning models, The New York Times reported in July. NYT Business
General Motors is also among the electric vehicle manufacturers making models more affordable, with price cuts to the Bolt model announced in June.
According to Cox Automotive, nearly 300,000 new electric vehicles were sold in the United States during the second quarter of 2023. That marked a record for any quarter and a nearly 50% boost from the same time last year.
Cost reductions for the raw materials needed to make batteries for electric cars, such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt, have also allowed savings to be passed on to consumers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was among those to welcome the news, noting in a company earnings call that the lithium market had gone “absolutely insane there for a while.”
While there are positive signs in the electric vehicle market, supply is still far outstripping demand.
“The demand is not keeping up with production, which is the opposite story of a year ago,” Cox Automotive executive analyst Michelle Krebs told Grist. “We call it the ‘Field of Dreams’ moment. Automakers are building more, but not enough consumers have come to the field.”
But Krebs also observed that availability isn’t such a bad thing when compared to the wider market.
“A year ago, the average EV price was above the average luxury vehicle price. Today, as inventory and availability build, EV prices are moving closer to the industry average,” Krebs added.
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Viral video shows the shocking technique used to clear poison ivy from hiking trails: ‘[This is] really innovative’
Roberto Guerra – August 27, 2023
An Instagram Reel shows how goats are helping get rid of poison ivy along a popular forested trail.
The video was posted on the page Kut Austin (@kut_austin), which is “a community-supported public media newsroom sharing news and information on-air at 90.5 FM and online at KUT.org.”
“An army of goats is clearing poison ivy from the trails around Austin’s Lady Bird Lake,” the caption on the opening scene reads.https://www.instagram.com/p/CuupPjvpo95/embed/captioned?cr=1&v=12
The video shows an array of goats inside a forest, eating away at bushes and plants which are described in the captions as poison ivy and invasive plants.
This can apparently be an effective way of getting rid of poisonous and invasive plants, which can have adverse effects on ecosystems, like reducing biodiversity.
Herbicides are commonly used to deal with invasive and poisonous plant species, but these bring about their own problems and can be even worse for the environment than the invasive species.
There are also other natural, non-toxic ways to get rid of unwanted plants, either for your garden or for an entire forest. Among these methods are bringing in other plant species to combat the unwanted ones or simply pulling them out manually by the roots.
Bringing in animals to eat them is among the most efficient ways of taking care of the problem since they end up doing most of the work and benefit from it as well, resulting in a mutually beneficial relationship.
The Trail Conservancy, the nonprofit organization that maintains the forested trail, came up with the idea of bringing in animals to take care of the problem.
“It’s a really innovative and creative alternative to some of the other tactics we could use to eradicate poison ivy, like controlled burns, which affect air quality, or chemicals, which affect water quality in the lake,” The Trail Conservancy’s CEO Heidi Anderson said.
Viewers of the Reel also had plenty to say.
“Through careful rotational grazing with multiple animals, it’s amazing how well an area can be maintained,” one person wrote in the comments.
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An ‘obscene’ number of kids are losing Medicaid coverage
Tami Luhby – August 26, 2023
For months, Evangelina Hernandez watched helplessly as her autistic twin sons regressed – their screaming, biting and scratching worsening. The Wichita, Kansas, resident couldn’t afford the $3,000 monthly tab for their 10 prescriptions or their doctor visits without Medicaid.
The toddlers, along with three of their sisters, lost their health insurance in May, swept up in the state’s eligibility review of all its Medicaid enrollees. Hernandez said she only received the renewal packet a day before it was due and mailed it back right away. She also called KanCare, the state’s Medicaid program, and filled out another application over the phone, certain that the kids remained eligible.
Yet, every time she inquired about the children’s coverage, she was told the renewal was still being processed. And though her partner works for an airplane manufacturer, the family can’t afford the health insurance plan offered by his employer.
“My kids are suffering. You can see it,” said Hernandez, who along with her infant daughter, remained on Medicaid thanks to coverage provisions for low-income, postpartum mothers and babies. “The medication they’re on, I can’t afford it.”
Just over a week ago, Hernandez got the call she had been waiting for: The kids’ coverage was reinstated. However, the pharmacy told her it could not immediately fill her sons’ prescriptions because it had to get their new enrollee information – and even then, she could only pick up the medication for one son because there were errors in her other son’s file.
The delays have consequences. Once they start taking the medications again, it will take about a month before their behavior starts to improve, she said.
All across the US, hundreds of thousands of children are being kicked off of Medicaid, even though experts say the vast majority continue to qualify. They are among the more than 87 million people in Medicaid and several million more in the Children’s Health Insurance Program who are having their eligibility checked and are facing possible termination of coverage for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
States regained the ability to start winnowing their Medicaid rolls of residents whom they deem no longer qualify on April 1, when a pandemic relief program expired. Since then, at least 5.4 million people have lost their benefits, according to KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Not every state breaks down their terminations by age. But in the 15 states that do, at least 1.1 million youngsters have been dropped, according to KFF. That includes Texas, where nearly half a million non-disabled children lost coverage between April and the end of July, accounting for 81% of the total disenrolled. In Kansas, Idaho and Missouri, kids make up at least half of those losing benefits.
As many as 6.7 million children are at risk of having their benefits terminated during the so-called unwinding process, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. Roughly three-quarters of them are expected to remain eligible for Medicaid but will likely lose coverage because of administrative issues, such as their parents not submitting the necessary paperwork or errors made by state Medicaid agencies.
This could lead to a doubling of the uninsured rate among children, said Joan Alker, the center’s executive director, noting that Medicaid covers about half of kids in the US.
“Children have an incredible amount at stake here,” she said. “We continue to be extremely worried as we see what’s happening around the country.”
Overall, nearly three-quarters of adults and children who have lost coverage were dropped for so-called procedural reasons, according to KFF. This typically happens when enrollees do not complete the renewal form, often because it may have been sent to an old address, it was difficult to understand or it wasn’t returned by the deadline.
Some people, however, may not return their forms because they know they earn too much to qualify or they obtained coverage elsewhere, such as from an employer.
In Idaho, there were 211,000 youngsters in the state’s Medicaid and CHIP programs in February – accounting for about half of the state’s total enrollees.
But more than 55,000 children had their insurance terminated in the first four months of the unwinding.
“An obscene number of kids are losing their Medicaid,” said Hillarie Hagen, a health policy associate at Idaho Voices for Children.
Among those processed were 33,000 children in families whom the state believes are no longer eligible. Nearly 23,000 of them were dropped for procedural reasons, Hagen said.
Also of great concern is that enrollment in Idaho’s CHIP program has fallen by 16,000 kids during the same period. Hagen expected the number to rise since CHIP has a higher income threshold than Medicaid so some children should have shifted over automatically.
One main reason why so many children – and adults – are losing coverage is because Idaho is focusing initially on households that it knows earn too much or who haven’t responded to the state in the last few years, said Shane Leach, welfare administrator for the state’s Department of Health and Welfare. Idaho continued to check enrollees’ eligibility during the pandemic, though it did not drop those who no longer qualified until now.
The department issues two rounds of notices, sends text messages and posts information in an online portal to let families know they need to return their renewal forms. Even if they miss the deadline, they can regain their coverage, he said.
“If anybody feels that they’re eligible, then reach out and reapply,” Leach said.
Children have higher income limits
Many parents may not realize that even though they don’t qualify for Medicaid anymore, their children may still be eligible because the household income limit for kids to remain covered is higher, said Jennifer Tolbert, an associate director of KFF’s Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured. This is especially true in the 10 states – including Kansas, Florida and Texas – that have not approved the expansion of Medicaid benefits to low-income adults.
Advocates are urging parents to complete and submit the renewal documents even if they think they earn too much to qualify themselves.
In some other cases, children are possibly being dropped because their state is applying the wrong income threshold to them.
In Florida, for instance, parents in a family of four must earn less than $8,520 annually to qualify, but children ages 1 to 5 are eligible if their household income is no more than $43,500, and those ages 6 to 18 can keep their coverage if their family earns less than $41,400, said Lynn Hearn, a staff attorney with the Florida Health Justice Project, an advocacy group.
Children’s enrollment in Medicaid dropped by roughly 154,000 kids, or 5.7%, between May and July, according to a Georgetown analysis of state data. The state does not break down terminations by age.
Hearn and her colleagues have had success in restoring some children’s coverage by appealing to the state and pointing out that the family’s income is less than the eligibility threshold for kids.
Another concern is that youngsters are not being automatically referred to the state’s CHIP program, Florida KidCare, Hearn said.
“I have yet to see a case where the referral happened timely and accurately,” she said.
When asked about the advocates’ concerns, Florida’s Department of Children and Families referred CNN to a fact sheet listing the state’s outreach efforts and enrollee support, including that it has more than 2,700 employees processing cases and assisting participants.
Restoring benefits can be complicated
Once a family loses coverage, regaining it can be frustrating and time-consuming. Tanya Harris spent weeks calling Florida’s Department of Children and Families, waiting on hold for hours at a time, to restore her kids’ insurance.
The Jacksonville resident only learned in late June that they would be cut off after she called the insurer that contracts with Florida to provide her family’s Medicaid benefits. She needed to discuss her 17-year-old daughter’s upcoming spinal surgery. Harris quickly filled out the renewal paperwork on the state’s online portal but was stuck in processing limbo for well over a month.
Tanya Harris, left, spent hours on hold with Florida’s Medicaid agency to restore her children’s coverage. – Courtesy Tanya Harris
Harris, who is on long-term disability from her employer as she battles several health conditions, spoke to multiple supervisors and uploaded verifications of her and her husband’s income and address over and over again.
Though the family regained Medicaid coverage in early August, their headaches aren’t over. Some doctors won’t see the kids until they receive their new insurance information, which Harris hopes will be settled next week. And she’s still not able to get some of their medications.
Meanwhile, her 6-year-old son, who has a severe peanut allergy, cannot sit with his classmates at lunch at his new school until his doctor sends in a medicine authorization form for his EpiPen.
“It was just devastating,” Harris said of the coverage loss. “The kids didn’t get the care that they need.”
Engaging parents
Some advocates are trying to take advantage of the start of the school year to alert parents to the importance of submitting their renewal documents.
In Kansas, where nearly 46,000 youngsters have been disenrolled so far, multiple groups are setting up tables at back-to-school events, working with school nurses and doing outreach through early childhood organizations, said Heather Braum, a health policy adviser at Kansas Action for Children.
KanCare reaches out to enrollees at least four times before their renewal is due to encourage them to return the needed paperwork, said Matt Lara, communications director for the state’s Department of Health and Environment. The agency also paused procedural terminations in May and June to give folks more time to send in their packets, as well as hired extra staff to work in the call center and help process renewals.
However, more should be done to improve the system and make sure eligible children maintain their coverage, Braum said.
“Kids’ medical care in so many situations can be very time sensitive – where they’re getting therapies and treatments and prescriptions,” she said. “If it gets delayed, it can have a permanent impact on their lives. Outcomes can be very different. And that’s inexcusable to me.”
A New Hampshire local has a reputation for asking politicians tough questions. He’s also 15.
Ken Tran, USA TODAY – August 26, 2023
WALPOLE, N.H. — Quinn Mitchell held his phone in his hand as he looked up at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
It was his turn to ask a question at Desantis’ first town hall event in New Hampshire. The Granite State is known for its first-in-the-nation primary, and its voters cherish the state’s strong influence in deciding presidential nominees. Those voters have built a centrist reputation, posing tough questions to candidates no matter their party affiliation.
Mitchell is no different from those Granite Staters. At DeSantis’ town hall in Hollis, he stood up to ask him a question about DeSantis’ now-rival in the 2024 Republican primary, former President Donald Trump.
“Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?” Mitchell asked.
There is one thing that separates Mitchell from New Hampshire’s voters: he can’t vote.
“Are you in high school?” DeSantis asked, seemingly taken aback.
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport NH on Aug. 19, 2023 Mitchell has met a handful of politicians since he started attending campaign events in 2020 including Amy Klobuchar, Chris Christie and President Joe Biden.
Mitchell is indeed in high school. More specifically, he’s 15 years old and is going into his sophomore year. He’s too young to vote, but he’s been to dozens of candidate events in New Hampshire since the 2024 Republican presidential primary kicked off.
Over lunch in his hometown of Walpole, a small town near the border separating New Hampshire and Vermont, Mitchell told USA TODAY he felt it was his civic duty – especially when he can’t vote yet – to be involved in the Granite State’s unique democratic process.
“I feel like it’s in a way my civic responsibility to ask these questions that need to be asked. I’m here. I have the opportunity, and it’s happening in my backyard,” Mitchell said. “A lot of people are unfortunate to not have the platform to ask those questions.”
A product of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary
Mitchell describes himself as a history buff, reading books about presidential politics since he was just 8 years old. He also maintains a diverse news diet, listening to radio news regularly in his bedroom and reading newspapers across the political spectrum.
When he learned in 2019 that several candidates were gunning for the Democratic nomination he knew he “wanted to be a part of it.”
She “was a candidate I haven’t met, and I was so excited. It’s very weird because I was 11. My friends think it was the weirdest thing ever,” Mitchell said.
That moment was when he started to really involve himself in the state’s presidential primary. After he met Klobuchar, Mitchell attended one of her town halls where she encouraged him to ask a question, unbeknownst to his hobbies. The 11-year-old preteen asked her what she made of special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, which he remembered “shocked her.”
That moment was so memorable for Klobuchar, he became part of her stump speech on the campaign trail.
But perhaps his fondest memory of the 2020 Democratic primary was when he met President Joe Biden when he was still campaigning for the nomination. After a town hall, Biden motioned for Mitchell to come over and handed him a challenge coin bearing the seal of the vice president.
“He gave me a five minute lecture about what it was, what it’s supposed to mean and the importance of keeping promises,” Mitchell said. They agreed on a promise between just the two of them: the next time Mitchell sees Biden, if he brings the challenge coin, the former vice president owed him a drink.
Over the course of the next few months until the New Hampshire primary, Biden actually owed him multiple drinks. For an 11-year-old, the drink of choice was Coca-Cola.
Mitchell remembers one moment when Biden came prepared for the deal.
“He just pulled this Coca-Cola out of his pocket,” Mitchell said, laughing.
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport NH on August 19, 2023
Before every town hall, Mitchell said he “has to study a lot” to think about a question a candidate has not talked about yet, but is also relevant to current events.
“I usually have to watch long interviews and press conferences,” he said. For some candidates, he said he spends hours going through their public statements.
“I heard you say that one of the reasons you endorsed Trump is that you really did not want (Hillary) Clinton to be president in 2016. And now based on recent knowledge that Trump was arrested, Trump was prosecuted on criminal charges, do you think that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would have been the better bet in 2016?” Mitchell asked.
Despite Christie’s identity in the 2024 GOP race as Trump’s chief antagonist, Mitchell’s question made him go on the record. The former New Jersey governor said he would have supported Trump, regardless of his criticism.
When he asks those tough questions, Mitchell said he tries to avoid coming off as “attacking” or politically biased, explaining that he has been to so many town halls out of a pure passion for politics.
“I’ve never been about attacking somebody. I’m just gonna ask the question,” Mitchell said.
Student Quinn Mitchell, of Walpole, N.H. asks a question to Republican presidential candidate former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during a campaign event at V.F.W. Post 1631, Monday, July 24, 2023, in Concord, N.H.
‘Quinn, remember me when you are president’
Mitchell said he wishes more people his age were at least somewhat as invested in politics as he is. He’s tried to get his friends to come along in the past, but they demurred.
“A lot of the people I know, they are really disinterested in politics,” Mitchell said. “I wish there was more youth engagement. I’ve tried to bring some friends but again they tell me ‘No I’m not interested. I’m just gonna play Minecraft.’”
To be fair, Mitchell said he also plays a lot of Minecraft − a popular video game – a reminder to the people around him that he is still 15 years old.
When he’s not traveling to see a candidate or attending a political event, he helps his parents with farmwork. But his other hobbies are still close to his passion for politics. In his spare time, he reads books on history and watches documentaries and older presidential debates.
“I’ll just watch hours of debates. I rewatched the 2016 debate recently,” Mitchell said. It was not a form of studying for the 2024 race, but just out of fun.
“I love watching them,” he said. He’s also tried to get his friends to watch them with him, but unsurprisingly, they’ve turned down his gracious offers.
It’s easy to think Mitchell, with his love for politics and his dedication to meeting every candidate on the campaign trail, is looking to be a politician himself.
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport NH on Aug. 19, 2023. Mitchell takes great time and dedication preparing for campaign events, sometimes watching hours worth of interviews from politicians.
Biden, along with the challenge coin, signed a copy of his memoir for Mitchell in 2019, writing “Quinn, remember me when you are president.”
And when Christie saw Mitchell at one of his town halls in August, the former New Jersey governor introduced him to the crowd before taking his question.
Someday, Christie said, Mitchell’s political passion will put him in elected office.
“I can’t wait until I’m old enough that he does that, and I’m sitting somewhere in New Jersey watching TV and seeing Governor or Senator Quinn, and I will be completely unsurprised,” Christie said.
But if there’s anything the first-in-the-nation primary has taught Mitchell, he said, it’s that he wants nothing to do with running for office.
“It’s definitely a really good hobby. It’s not video games,” Mitchell joked. But from what he’s seen on the campaign trail, he has no interest in being a politician, saying “you can never make a mistake. It’s extremely stressful.”
Instead, Mitchell said he could see himself going into journalism, considering he has started to build a reputation as an unassuming high school student with a knack for putting prospective presidents on the spot.
He’s recently started a podcast, called “Into the Tussle” where he plans to provide his own unbiased perspective on the presidential nominating process and hopefully talk to people who can actually vote in his home state.
“You have to start somewhere,” Mitchell said. “And I just want to talk about politics.”
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at the DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport, NH on Aug. 19, 2023. At 15 years old, Quinn Mitchell feels it is his civic duty to show up and ask the tough questions.
Mystery land buyers around California Air Force base revealed
Tom Palmer – August 26, 2023
(NewsNation) – New reports shed light on nearly $1 billion in land purchases by a mysterious company near a California Air Force base that raised national security concerns.
Since 2018, a group called “Flannery Associates” invested more than $800 million on almost 54,000 acres of agriculture-zoned land surrounding the Travis Air Force base in Solano County, California, public records show.
Despite early speculation China was behind the purchases — amid concerns that companies with ties to China have been ramping up efforts to buy American farmland — legal representation for Flannery has maintained the group is controlled by U.S. citizens, with 97% of its capital coming from U.S.-based investors.
However, after eight months of investigation, federal officials were not able to confirm or deny this to be true, and were not able to determine exactly who was backing the company.
Now, reports from The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle reveal Flannery is comprised of a group of ultra-wealthy Silicon Valley investors acquiring vast parcels of land northeast of San Francisco with the mission to build a new California city “from scratch.”
According to the reports, the investors’ plan for the land involves creating a new urban center that could accommodate the growing demands of the tech industry and provide a fresh environment for innovation and economic growth.
The goal, according to the reports, is to establish a new city that caters to the needs of Silicon Valley tech companies and professionals, potentially alleviating some of the challenges posed by congestion, housing shortages and high costs of living in the Bay Area.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that these land acquisitions have been met with a mix of excitement and concern from local communities and government officials.
Democratic California Rep. John Garamendi called developments around Travis Air Force Base a critical national security issue.
“The fact they chose to buy all three sides of the Travis Air Force Base even raises immediate questions about national security,” Garamendi said.
To pull off the project, according to the Times, the company will have to use the state’s initiative system to get Solano County residents to vote on it.
Garamendi said utilizing an initiative means they’re going to override the local protections that are in place for Travis Air Force Base.
According to Garamendi, the area is “heavily impacted by some very severe restrictions that prevent development and other kinds of activities that would somehow degrade or harm Travis Air Force Base.”
The Air Force’s Foreign Investment Risk Review office is currently investigating Flannery Associates. Garamendi says there are valid concerns that Flannery’s land acquisitions could be tied to foreign enemies.
“Wherever the money is coming from,” he said, “the underlying problem of securing Travis Air Force Base remains.”
Garamendi also said the “organization has been just playing nasty,” referring to farmers in the area being targeted in a lawsuit from the group.
“Please understand that this group spent five years secretly and in my estimation, using strong-arm techniques that would best be associated with monsters to acquire the land,” he said.
Garamendi said he’s been in contact with the families of farmers who handed over their land to Flannery, saying they didn’t want to sell in the first place.
Since no California laws require them to sell, the land was bargained for by both parties at a much higher price. But now, Flannery is suing those families for $510 million, accusing them of conspiring together to inflate the value of the land.
“It’s a suit designed to force the farmers to lawyer up, spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyering and maybe at the end of the day, bankrupt themselves,” Garamendi said. “In fact, that has happened to at least one family that I know of and I’ve heard rumors that another family simply said, ‘We can’t afford the lawyers.’”
NewsNation correspondent Emily Finn contributed to this article.
