Here are some of tonight’s stories:
- President Biden tells FBI to release files on 9/11 investigation.
- Americans are already migrating because of climate change.
- Republican-controlled states plan to follow the Texas blueprint of controlling women.
- Sen Dick. Durbin accuses supreme court of abusing its “shadow docket”.
- School nurses are struggling with mask mandates and prohibitions.
- Florida deaths from COVID-19 hit record while Governor Ron DeSantis fights against local mask rules in court.
- The United Nations resumes air operations in Afghanistan through its Humanitarian Air Service.
- Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will not seek reelection.
- More Americans are taking jobs without employer benefits like health care or paid vacation.
- President Biden visits the New Orleans area hurt by Hurricane Ida.
Details and links to sources below the fold.
This is an open thread. Everyone is encouraged to share articles, stories, and tweets in your comments.
645,766 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S. 206.5 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S. HAVE RECEIVED A VACCINATION DOSE
The Guardian
Joe Biden tells FBI to release files on 9/11 investigation – and possible Saudi links
Joe Biden has announced the wholesale review and declassification of files from the investigation into the 9/11 attack, in response to intense pressure from Congress and victims’ families currently suing Saudi Arabia.
“As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the American people deserve to have a fuller picture of what their government knows about those attacks,” an executive order issued on Friday said.
It said the full record would be disclosed in tranches over the coming six months “except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise”.
The order said that while the “indiscriminate” release of information could jeopardise national security and the ability to prevent future attacks, a better balance had to be struck between transparency and accountability.
It said “information should not remain classified when the public interest in disclosure outweighs any damage to the national security”.
‘Climate crisis is here’ says Biden in week of storms, floods and wildfires
The widespread destruction caused by extreme weather coast to coast, with Hurricane Ida spreading devastation from Louisiana to New York while record wildfires scorch California, prompted Joe Biden to level with America this week, saying it was “yet another reminder that … the climate crisis is here”.
“We need to be much better prepared. We need to act,” Biden said in a speech on Thursday at the White House. […]
While the US president first laid out details of emergency relief efforts being deployed around the country, he ended his speech by talking about how the natural disasters will continue to happen, more often and with greater intensity, because of the climate crisis.
Gizmodo
‘Nowhere Is Perfectly Safe’: A Coastal Expert on What Comes After Ida
Hurricane Ida slammed into southeast Louisiana on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—and less than a year after two other hurricanes hit the region. The state is hardly alone.
Climate change is putting more places at risk of being inundated. Sea level rise is causing more chronic flooding and hotter oceans are amping up storms, leading to higher surge. That raises increasingly pressing questions about the future of people living along the coast. Will low-lying areas remain habitable in the coming decades? Can climate-safe housing buy us time—or even allow us to live with more water? And how can we help the increasing numbers of people who are already moving away from the coast to do so with dignity?
Phys.org
Floating Dutch cow farm aims to curb climate impact
Among the cranes and containers of the port of Rotterdam is a surreal sight: a herd of cows peacefully feeding on board what calls itself the world's first floating farm.
In the low-lying Netherlands where land is scarce and climate change is a daily threat, the three-storey glass and steel platform aims to show the "future of breeding".
The buoyant bovines live on the top floor, while their milk is turned into cheese, yoghurt and butter on the middle level, and the cheese is matured at the bottom.
"The world is under pressure," says Minke van Wingerden, 60, who runs the farm with her husband Peter.
The Atlantic
Climate Change Is Already Rejiggering Where Americans Live
[…] In Louisiana, climate migration started decades ago, as living on the state’s coastline became more dangerous: The destruction of the marshland ecosystem that protected bayou towns from storm surge has made flooding much more common and much more severe. In towns such as Pointe-aux-Chenes and Dulac, where until recently the federal government had not completed large storm-surge levees, these floods forced many residents to move to higher ground. Thousands of residents have moved north and inland, migrating from the small towns of the lower bayou up toward cities such as Houma and the New Orleans suburbs.
This pattern of movement, which reached a crescendo after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is so entrenched that the state more or less facilitates it. In 2016, when the Obama administration awarded Louisiana a $90 million climate-adaptation grant, the state spent almost half of it on a program called LA Safe, which allowed residents of various communities to design and fund their own climate-adaptation projects. In Lafourche Parish, residents chose to fund new affordable-housing units for climate movers heading to areas of the parish less prone to flooding. Meanwhile, in Plaquemines Parish, residents chose to fund a mental-health center that would help their neighbors cope with the gradual loss of their community.
What We Actually Know About Waning Immunity
Vaccines don’t last forever. This is by design: Like many of the microbes they mimic, the contents of the shots stick around only as long as it takes the body to eliminate them, a tenure on the order of days, perhaps a few weeks. […]
That prediction might sound incompatible with recent reports of the “declining” effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, and the “waning” of immunity. According to the White House, we’ll all need boosters very, very soon to fortify our crumbling defenses. The past few weeks of news have made it seem as though we’re doomed to chase SARS-CoV-2 with shot after shot after shot, as if vaccine protections were slipping through our fingers like so much sand.
The reality of the situation is much more complicated than that. Despite some shifting numbers, neither our vaccines nor our immune systems are failing us, or even coming close. Vaccine effectiveness isn’t a monolith, and neither is immunity. Staying safe from a virus depends on host and pathogen alike; a change in either can chip away at the barriers that separate the two without obliterating them, which is exactly what we’re seeing now.
Mongabay
Not just sea life: Migratory fish, birds and mammals also fall foul of plastic
Humans have created so much plastic that it now exists from the slopes of Mount Everest to the extreme depths of the oceans. When we consider the effects of plastic on wildlife, images of whales entangled in discarded fishing gear or marine turtles that fatefully mistook plastic bags for jellyfish tend to spring to mind. But it’s not just ocean dwellers that are at risk. Land and freshwater species are in just as much danger, with migratory species especially vulnerable, a new U.N. Environment Programme report concludes.
The report focuses on the Asia-Pacific region and identifies the impacts of plastic pollution on land and freshwater species protected under the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). The CMS is an environmental treaty of the United Nations established in 1979 to protect migratory animals and their habitats. The report draws on case studies from two of the region’s major rivers, the Mekong and the Ganges, which together contribute an estimated 200,000 tons of plastic pollution to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean every year.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The top election officials in Milwaukee and Brown counties refused Friday to turn over ballots, voting machines and other material to a Republican state lawmaker because subpoenas she issued last month have been deemed invalid by nonpartisan legislative attorneys.
"Milwaukee County’s elections are transparent and fair. We have proven this fact on numerous occasions," said a statement from George Christenson, a Democrat serving in his second term as Milwaukee County clerk.
Hours after Christenson issued his statement, an attorney for Brown County Clerk Patrick Moynihan released a letter saying he was taking the same stance. Moynihan is a Republican who was elected to his first term less than a year ago.
While officials from the two counties said they would not comply with Rep. Janel Brandtjen’s subpoenas, they could soon face new demands for documents — ones with far more legitimacy.
EuroNews
Train sets off on 20,000km trip across Europe to promote rail travel
The 'Connecting Europe Express' pulled out of Lisbon station today on a five week journey that will stop in more than 100 towns and cities. This special train is aimed at highlighting the challenges preventing rail from being a more popular travel choice for Europeans.
It will take in 26 countries and clock up a distance of 20,000 kilometres, finishing in Paris on October 7. […]
"Rail has shaped our rich, common history. But, rail is also Europe's future, our route to mitigating climate change and powering economic recovery from the pandemic, as we build a carbon-neutral transport sector, " says European Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean.
The Washington Post
Biden visits New Orleans area reeling from Hurricane Ida
President Biden surveyed the damage caused by Hurricane Ida in the New Orleans area on Friday, days after powerful winds and destructive rains from the Category 4 storm devastated the Gulf Coast.
At a briefing at the St. John the Baptist Parish Emergency Operations Center in LaPlace, La., Biden spoke to the potential impacts of the “significant investment” the infrastructure bills he is seeking to push through Congress in rebuilding the storm-ravaged areas like the ones he would tour.
“You know I get kind of beat up, criticized,” Biden said. “Things have changed so drastically in terms of the environment. You’ve already crossed a certain threshold. You can’t build back a road, a highway or a bridge to what it was before. You’ve got to build back to what it is now.”
Texas created a blueprint for abortion restrictions. Republican-controlled states may follow suit.
Republican officials in more than a half-dozen states across the country moved this week to replicate Texas’s restrictive abortion ban after the Supreme Court declined to step in and stop the law from taking effect.
GOP officials in at least seven states, including Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina and South Dakota, have suggested they may review or amend their states’ laws to mirror Texas’s legislation, which effectively bans abortions after six weeks. Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio and more are expected to follow, after a year abortion activists have deemed “the worst legislative year ever for U.S. abortion rights.”
“It’s something we’re already working on,” Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson told local news station WFLA-TV when asked about copying the Texas law, which empowers private citizens to report and sue providers who offer the procedure after six weeks.
UPI
Senate panel to probe Supreme Court 'shadow docket' in Texas abortion case
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin announced Friday that the chamber's judiciary committee will hold a hearing to review the Supreme Court's decision to allow Texas' restrictive abortion ban to stand.
Durbin, who is chairman of the committee, accused the high court of abusing its so-called "shadow docket," a term used to describe expedited decisions made outside the regular docket and without oral arguments.
The Supreme Court voted 5-4 late Wednesday against an emergency application for relief filed by abortion providers in Texas who sought to halt Texas' new law. […]
Durbin decried the decision, along with another shadow docket decision last week in which the court overturned the Biden administration's pandemic-related eviction moratorium. He said such rulings can leave lower courts in the dark about how to apply Supreme Court precedent going forward.
US Defense Department establishes supply chain resiliency working group
The U.S. Defense Department has established a supply chain resiliency working group to develop a framework for securing supply chains throughout the department, the Pentagon announced Friday.
The announcement is the latest in a series of steps to address threats and vulnerabilities to the supply chain, which have been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We are working to solve a problem that took 50 years to evolve," Gregory Kausner, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, said in a statement.
Al Jazeera
Why are there food shortages in the UK?
Empty shelves, food shortages and supply issues are not usual traits in the globalised, technologically interconnected 21st century.
Yet food shortages across the United Kingdom have dominated headlines in recent weeks. Supermarket shelves have been sparse and restaurant menus have been modified. […]
These shortages are in part due to demographic shifts catalysed by Brexit, Britain’s historic divorce from the European Union. […]
“We have a UK specific economic shock, Brexit, coming on top of a global one, COVID,” David Henig, head of the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy, told Al Jazeera.
Residents flee as Taliban intensifies battle to take Panjshir
Fighting between the Taliban fighters and resistance forces has intensified in the northern province of Panjshir, as the Afghan group battles to take control of the country’s last rebel stronghold.
Residents in nearby areas of neighbouring Parwan province say it has been four days that their lives have been disrupted by the intensified battles between the Taliban and forces being commanded by Ahmad Massoud, the son of slain commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud. […]
“The fighting has gotten worse and worse with each night,” Asadullah, 52, told Al Jazeera. He and other residents of Jab al-Seraj district of Parwan say the fighting is mainly relegated to the mountains, but that most residents have still fled the area.
Deutsche Welle
World wonders how to aid Afghans without recognizing Taliban
The United Nations has resumed air operations in Afghanistan through its Humanitarian Air Service in a bid to enable some 160 aid organizations to continue their activities in the war-ravaged country's provinces, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday. Aid supplies from the United Arab Emirates also arrived in Afghanistan on Friday.
The UN flights — operated by the World Food Program — connect the Pakistani capital of Islamabad with Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and Kandahar in the southeast.
Poland's 'state of emergency' worsens Afghan refugees' EU border plight
People look at the camera from afar, with heavily armed soldiers separating them and the photographer. Some of the people in the photos seem to be waving, but few are smiling. They don't look particularly serious, but they do seem desperate.
These are rare pictures of the 32 Afghans who have been waiting at the border between Poland and Belarus for over three weeks now. The black-and-white photos were taken by Anna Maria Biniecka from Testigo Documentary, a Polish collective of multimedia journalists that reports on political and social themes that receive little attention in the mainstream media.
Among other places, the pictures have been posted to the Facebook page of the Ocalenie (Rescue) Foundation, which supports migrants and refugees living in Poland. Its activists on the ground have criticized the Polish authorities' failure to act and help the refugees at the border.
Brussels Morning
Poland declares state of emergency on Belarus border
Polish President Andrzej Duda declared a state of emergency over the border with Belarus, amid rising tensions over illegal crossings.
This is the first time in Poland’s post-communist history that the country has declared a state of emergency, according to DW reporting on Thursday.
At the request of the government, Duda signed an order banning gatherings closer than three kilometres from the border with Belarus, which applies to two Polish regions that border the country.
Former Danish Minister goes on trial for separating migrant couples
Former Danish Minister of Immigration Inger Støjberg is standing in an impeachment trial for separating asylum-seeking couples in cases where the spouse was underage.
Støjberg faced an impeachment court on Thursday, only the third official in more than a century to face the 26-person special tribunal, after 139 of the country’s 179 lawmakers voted in favour of trying the former Immigration Minister.
The tribunal will examine whether Støjberg violated the European Convention on Human Rights, and whether she also lied or misled a number of parliamentary committees when she was informing the lawmakers of her decision.
AfricaNews
Top Ugandan academic arrested for "espionage"
Ugandan security forces arrested one of the country's most prominent academics on Thursday for "espionage," the military said.
Lawrence Muganga, vice-chancellor of the private Victoria University, was arrested in broad daylight in the main building of the institution located in one of the busiest streets of the capital Kampala.
An amateur video posted on social networks shows armed men in civilian clothes forcing a man identified as Lawrence Muganga into a van known in Uganda as a "drone", which is associated with the abduction of government opponents.
BBC News
Kim Jong-un calls for urgent action on climate change
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un called on his officials to deal with food supply issues and highlighted the danger of climate change. Typhoons last year badly impacted vital crops, while weeks of drought followed by heavy monsoon rains have damaged them this year as well.
He said measures to overcome "abnormal climate" were needed, and asked also officials to tackle drought and floods. His comments came in a speech to the ruling party's Politburo on Thursday.
Mr Kim had said that the "danger" of climate change had become "higher in recent years adding that "urgent action" needed to be taken.
Poor US jobs growth shows Covid Delta variant impact
The US economy added fewer jobs than expected in August as employment rose by 235,000. The figure was well down on the 1.05 million jobs created in July, adding to fears that the recovery from the pandemic may be running out of steam.
Despite the disappointing hiring levels, the unemployment rate fell to 5.2% in August from 5.4% in July. Economists say rising infections caused by the Delta variant have hit spending on travel, tourism and hospitality.
They also note that the Labor Department's data was collected in the second week of August, so does not reflect the impact of hurricanes Ida and Henri in the second half of the month.
Inside Climate News
As industrial agriculture, mining and logging have barreled across the Amazon rainforest in recent decades, fires and deforestation have dramatically reduced the habitat of tens of thousands of plant and animal species, damaging not just the rainforest’s ability to act as a climate stabilizer but its role as the world’s greatest reservoir of biodiversity.
In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a large collaboration of researchers from the United States and China found that up to 85 percent of species listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature have lost habitat because of fires and deforestation since 2001. Overall, fires have damaged the habitat of as many as two-thirds of the species in the Amazon basin.
“The Amazon ecosystem is not adapted to fires, but deforestation and fires have been and are still continuously impacting the Amazonia biodiversity,” said Xiao Feng, a geographer with Florida State University and one of the paper’s lead authors. “Literature suggests a tipping point that when the Amazon loses a certain portion of the forest, the whole ecosystem will transition to another type. If this happens, it will be a tragedy for the Amazon, and for the global ecosystem given the important role the Amazon plays.”
The Kansas City Star
Kansas will give nurses extra pay. But will hospitals with vaccine mandates qualify?
Gov. Laura Kelly and top lawmakers on Friday approved up to $50 million in extra pay for Kansas nurses working in hospitals, many of whom have been driven to exhaustion by the latest wave of severely ill COVID-19 patients.
But Republican legislators may attempt to limit the funds to hospitals that don’t require employees to be vaccinated — a restriction that, if implemented, could keep staff at a growing number of facilities from receiving the additional pay. […]
“If you were to get all the emails I get from across the state from nurses who are just absolutely fuming about the fact they’re going to have to take the vaccine or lose their job — if just a fraction of those come to be, I think we’re going to have even bigger problems here soon,” said House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican.
The Wichita Eagle
Wichita school nurses face breaking point as districts scramble to add mask mandates
Overloaded with the most COVID patients since January, Sedgwick County’s recent virus update painted a stark picture of a strained hospital system.
Now school nurses and parents are reporting a similar strain at Wichita schools and districts across the Wichita area are implementing mask mandates once again.
With added COVID testing at schools to keep ahead of potential outbreaks, some school nursing staff is reportedly overwhelmed, unable to keep up with everyday tasks like making sure students are getting their medicine.
NPR News
Caught Between Parents And Politicians, Nurses Fear Another School Year With COVID-19
Not long ago, Denver Public Schools nurse Rebecca Sposato was packing up her office at the end of a difficult school year. She remembers looking around at all her cleaning supplies and extra masks and thinking, "What am I going to do with all this stuff?"
It was May, when vaccine appointments were opening up for the majority of adults and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were loosening mask guidance.
"I honestly thought we were trending down in our COVID numbers, trending up in our vaccine numbers," she says. "And I thought the worst was over."
Now, four months later, the pandemic is already upending the new school year across the country, as the highly transmissible delta variant continues to cause a spike in cases.
Japan's Leader Will Step Down, Damaged By Criticism Of His COVID Response
Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga effectively announced his resignation, after his handling of the coronavirus pandemic cost him public support and dimmed his party's prospects ahead of general elections this fall.
Suga's exit after just under a year in power raises the specter of a return to a "revolving door" succession of Japanese leaders, who each serve one-year terms and leave a key U.S. ally politically adrift, just as Washington needs its cooperation on most aspects of Asia policy. […]
A fourth state of emergency over much of Japan has failed to get a fifth wave of coronavirus infections under control. The country's plodding vaccine rollout has been sharply criticized. And as of Aug. 25, some 118,000 COVID-19 patients were stuck at home, after Suga decreed that hospital beds should be reserved only for serious cases.
Toronto Star
In the beginning, it was called the “Hudson’s Bay Company.” By the mid-20th century its retail outlets were known simply as “The Bay.” Now, as of this August, Canada’s oldest company will be all of the above: Hudson’s Bay and The Bay, both owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), each their own separate entity.
The 351-year-old business has split its retail branch in two, separating its department stores from its website in a last-ditch effort to hop into the world of e-commerce.
The website will be called “The Bay,” where the bulk of the store’s products reside. Meanwhile, its brick-and-mortar outlets, called “Hudson’s Bay,” will become “discovery destinations” intended to drive shoppers to its wider selection of online products.
The decision to split the company in two, while it makes sense from a financial engineering perspective, has confused retail analysts and consumers. The question now is, will it save the iconic yet ailing department store, or will it hasten its decline?
Los Angeles Times
Biden vowed to close a border migrant camp, then a worse one emerged under his watch
When Joe Biden was running for president, he promised to close a squalid border tent camp in Mexico where thousands of migrants had been left to await the outcome of their immigration cases by the Trump administration.
Last spring, Biden emptied the camp, allowing most of the migrants to claim asylum and enter the U.S. even as his administration continued enforcing a Trump pandemic policy that effectively barred most other asylum seekers.
Soon after the Matamoros camp was bulldozed last March, a new camp formed about 55 miles west across from the border bridge to the more dangerous, Gulf crime cartel stronghold of Reynosa. Now that camp and another in Tijuana are home to thousands of asylum seekers, many with spouses and children in the U.S. They’re expected to grow after federal courts reinstated Trump’s so-called Remain in Mexico program last week, making it even harder for asylum seekers to enter the U.S. legally.
‘Cautious optimism’ as crews turn a corner on Caldor fire
Twenty days into the fight against the Caldor fire, crews on Friday were feeling “cautiously optimistic” as they turned a corner on the blaze burning near South Lake Tahoe, officials said.
After significant gains earlier in the week, the fire grew less than 3,000 acres overnight to 212,907 acres. It was 29% contained.
“That’s the fourth straight day of decline in rate of growth, and even more significantly, the last time it grew that small of an amount was 14 days ago,” said Dean Gould, agency supervisor for the Eldorado National Forest. “Things are clearly heading in the right direction for us.”
The Dallas Morning News
Texas elections bill faces two federal court challenges from voting rights advocates
Two separate coalitions of voting rights advocates, civil rights organizations and faith-based groups filed lawsuits Friday challenging the divisive GOP elections bill, days after Texas lawmakers greenlit the proposal and sent it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.
The groups argued that provisions in the bill, expected to be signed soon by Abbott, violate federal law and asked judges to block the governor and other state officials from enforcing it.
In their suit filed in federal court in San Antonio, the plaintiffs’ legal team argued the sweeping elections bill, which bans drive-through voting, empowers poll watchers and threatens election officials with new criminal penalties, “imposes burdens that will discourage, intimidate and deter eligible Texas voters, and will disproportionately impact voters of color and voters with disabilities.”
Nashville Tennessean
Rail museum preserves rare locomotive from Gallatin TVA plant
A rare Fairbanks-Morse locomotive from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Gallatin was recently donated to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga.
“This locomotive holds a unique place in history for TVA and the region, and we’re excited that it will be well-preserved in its new home,” TVA Supply Chain Vice President Laura Campbell said. […]
Built in 1958 and known as the “Baby” Train Master, the locomotive is one of the few surviving engines of its kind. It's one of only nine Fairbanks-Morse locomotives preserved today and one of only two of the exact model, officials said.
The Oregonian
Oregon State Police troopers, firefighters sue Gov. Kate Brown over COVID-19 vaccine mandate
Nine Oregon State Police troopers and more than two dozen state firefighters on Friday sued Gov. Kate Brown over her COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state workers. […]
The suit seeks to stop the enforcement of Brown’s mandate and comes two days after an Oregon State Police trooper based in Bend announced on social media that he would defy the order. […]
“This lawsuit has nothing to do with the efficacy of the vaccine at this point,” said Dan Thenell, the lawyer representing the troopers and firefighters. “It has to do with having their jobs held over their heads.”
The troopers and firefighters allege that Brown’s order, which applies to executive branch employees, including all employees working for all Oregon state agencies, violates state and federal Constitutional right to free expression.
Bloomberg
Florida Deaths at Record; Kids Hit by Delta Wave: Virus Update
Florida reported 2,345 additional Covid-19 deaths in its latest weekly report, the most ever in a similar period.
Kids were much more likely to be hospitalized as the delta variant became widespread, two studies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday found. But children did not appear to contract more serious illness, requiring intensive care, for example, than in previous viral surges. […]
The daily average rose 36% to 335, according to calculations based on data in the report. That would surpass the high for the entire pandemic in Johns Hopkins University data. The data is based on when the death was reported, not when it occurred.
‘QAnon Shaman’ Pleads Guilty to Obstructing Congress at Riot
Jacob Chansley, the Donald Trump supporter who wore a coyote-skin headdress into the Senate chamber and called himself the “QAnon Shaman,” pleaded guilty Friday to obstruction of an official proceeding in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Images of Chansley at the Senate dais and elsewhere around the Capitol were among the most widely circulated from the insurrection. In a hearing in federal court in Washington, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth accepted Chansley’s plea and set a sentencing hearing for Nov. 17.
Duluth News Tribune
Rep. Ilhan Omar brings 'The Squad' to protest Line 3; Rep. Pete Stauber fights back
With the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project roughly 90% complete, Minneapolis Democrat U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is making one final push to halt the completion and operation of the pipeline.
Standing before the mighty Mississippi River at a Friday, Sept. 3 news conference in Minneapolis, Omar rallied "The Squad" — her Congressional allies, U.S. Reps. Cori Bush, D-Missouri, Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — to pressure President Joe Biden to revoke Line 3’s permits. […]
Ardent supporters of the pipeline, including northern Minnesota’s Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, launched into a sparring match with Omar and her allies. Referring to his colleagues as “socialist Democrats,” Stauber at a Friday news conference accused the congresswomen of coming to Minnesota “potentially to bring unrest” and protest “our way of life.”
Vox
More Americans are taking jobs without employer benefits like health care or paid vacation
More people are turning to gig work than ever before, but since these jobs usually don’t come with employer benefits, their proliferation could worsen inequality for millions of Americans.
The number of people employed in nontraditional ways in the US rose to a record 51 million this year, an unprecedented 34 percent jump compared to 2020, according to new data from MBO Partners, a company that provides business solutions to the independent workforce and has conducted a long-running study of the group. These types of workers — which include contract workers, people who are self-employed, temporary and on-call workers, and those who get short-term jobs through online apps or marketplaces — are now equivalent to a third of US employment.
Gig work shifts the risk from employers to employees and can lead to financial volatility for those who do it, resulting in more economic and psychological stress than regular work.
One of the worst public health dangers of the past century has finally been eradicated
On Monday, the United Nations announced an environmental and public health milestone: the end of the use of leaded gasoline in automobiles and road vehicles worldwide.
The last holdout was Algeria, which had large stockpiles of leaded gasoline; in July, those stockpiles ran out, and Algeria has now made the transition to unleaded gasoline.
Lead poisoning causes immense societal harm: brain damage, chronic illness, lowered IQ, elevated mortality. Lead exposure in childhood has been linked with violent crime rates decades later. Extremely high lead levels can lead to seizures, coma, and death. Lower levels tend to cause less detectable harm, but there’s no safe level of lead exposure: Scientists’ current best guess is that any lead exposure at all causes harm.
Ars Technica
DeSantis still fights masks—despite COVID surge, court loss, expert advice, etc.
As Florida's stratospheric COVID-19 surge continues, Governor Ron DeSantis has appealed a judge's ruling last week that overturned the governor's ban on mask mandates in schools. The judge determined that DeSantis' ban didn't "meet constitutional muster."
In a notice of appeal filed Thursday, DeSanitis' lawyers claimed that the appeal should trigger an automatic stay, keeping the governor's mask mandate ban in place for now until the appeal is heard. However, as CNN reports, parents from six Florida counties have already filed an emergency notice to vacate the stay.
At least 13 school districts in Florida have already opted to institute school mask mandates, bucking the governor's legally imperiled ban.