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479 lines
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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
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<title>27 September, 2022</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pakistan’s Biblical Floods and the Case for Climate Reparations</strong> - Isn’t it time for rich nations to pay the communities that they have helped to drown? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/pakistans-biblical-floods-and-the-case-for-climate-reparations">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Iran’s Ferocious Return to the Belligerent Policies of the Revolution’s Early Days</strong> - The country’s new President, Ebrahim Raisi, is cracking down on women, arming Russia, and playing hardball with the U.S. on nuclear diplomacy. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/irans-ferocious-return-to-the-belligerent-policies-of-the-revolutions-early-days">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Exiled Dissident Fuelling the Hijab Protests in Iran</strong> - Since 2014, Masih Alinejad has published videos of Iranian women removing their head scarves. When a twenty-two-year-old died last week in the morality police’s custody, the country exploded. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-exiled-dissident-fuelling-the-hijab-protests-in-iran">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Fine Economic Mess in the United Kingdom</strong> - With the pound hitting record lows, financial analysts are questioning the competence of Britain’s new government. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/a-fine-economic-mess-in-the-united-kingdom">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nicole Krauss Reads “Shelter”</strong> - The author reads her story from the October 3, 2022, issue of the magazine. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice/nicole-krauss-reads-shelter">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>Riotsville, U.S.A. is a window onto the bizarre beginnings of police militarization</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="Archival footage of men in riot gear." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6KRvQ_6Bx8X1vmZuIsRoknPcwg0=/0x0:1258x944/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71420541/RIOTSVILLE__USA_Still_1_Courtesy_Magnolia_Pictures.0.png"/>
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<figcaption>
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<em>Riotsville, U.S.A.</em> spotlights the surprising tactics that were used to help police forces militarize in the 1960s. | Magnolia Pictures
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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How the director of an astonishing new documentary used old government footage to shed light on the present.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CyTA0D">
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In fuzzy, grainy footage,<strong> </strong>a crowd of protesters on Main Street clamors, shouting, signs in their hands. Toward them moves a group of police officers, armed and ready to put down an uprising. Men dressed in 1960s-style shirtsleeves and slacks run in and out of buildings with law enforcement in hot pursuit. It looks stilted and unreal, like they’re rehearsing a scene. Like something from a movie.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="psULy9">
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While it’s not a movie set, it’s not real life, either — or, well, not exactly. These are scenes from <em>Riotsville, U.S.A.</em>, a new documentary made entirely from archival footage, much of it shot by the US government in the 1960s. It shows something extraordinary: As uprisings became more common across the country and the turbulent decade wore on, the government constructed “Riotsvilles” on two military bases. There, they staged protests and rebellions using soldiers from the US Army to play both protesters and police, then allowed police forces from across the country to learn from the military how to put them down.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="daNIFt">
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Riotsvilles became rehearsal stages for swatting down dissenters whom law enforcement deemed out of hand — striking, because the more than 150 riots across the country in the summer of 1967 mostly were in response to police brutality.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lKAox2">
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As the staged combat at Riotsville plays out, audiences of fellow law enforcement and military looked on from the stands, observing their efforts and comparing notes. In the footage are tactics and weapons usually reserved for warfare, used against ordinary citizens on the streets. <em>Riotsville, U.S.A. </em>shows the same methods used to quash unrest that occurred, for instance, in the Miami neighborhood of Liberty City during the 1968 Republican National Convention. The film shows the birth of the militarization of police in America.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="Soldiers in riot gear face off with demonstrators." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bQrlFFUxrKWLbLn3JF5PyLAeAHQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24055503/RIOTSVILLE__USA_Still_4_Courtesy_Magnolia_Pictures.jpeg"/> <cite>Magnolia Pictures</cite>
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<figcaption>
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Soldiers play both sides at the Riotsville training demonstrations.
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6uJZHd">
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The Riotsvilles were built at about the time that the Kerner Commission, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/1968-kerner-commission-got-it-right-nobody-listened-180968318/">released a 1968 report</a> that found that white racism, rather than Black anger or “outside protesters,” was behind instances of unrest in American cities. At 708 pages long, the commission’s report was a doorstopper, but that didn’t prevent it from becoming an instant bestseller. The report called for funneling money toward fostering equality between Black and white populations in cities. Yet LBJ backed away from the report, and its insights were ignored by the government — all except for one: increasing funding for police forces in major cities.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DgVoqv">
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All of this sounds like an exaggeration, but as <em>Riotsville, U.S.A. </em>works poetically but damningly through the footage and the story, it makes its case keenly. Yet if this was a matter of such interest 60 years ago, why do so many of us not even know it happened?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AnsjZA">
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I was eager to speak with director Sierra Pettengill about the film, making old footage alive to today’s viewer, our horrendous historical amnesia, and why she sees glimmers of hope in it all.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TUcWH9">
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<strong>It would be tempting to say you are “exposing” something, but you really aren’t. The existence of Riotsville was well known. The government filmed its own footage. It was on TV.</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q6OWOp">
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That’s the point, to me. This is under-known, but not because it was covert or classified. If you put “Riotsville” into any historic newspaper database, you get coverage as if it’s a lark of some sort. I think the [New York] Times headline was “Army Defeats Hippies.” It was covered; a lot of the footage in the film comes from ABC and BBC. I find that much more pernicious.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U3LNur">
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What the film documents to me is a historical amnesia that feels much more telling. That the Kerner Commission report was bestselling is wild. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, particularly during the Trump administration — what it means to watch a narrative be re-formed or hidden in real time. The film, I think, is a documentation in some ways of that process.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AQnvnX">
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<strong>So you got the footage of Riotsville, and you watched it, and it’s amazing. What’s the next step in turning it into a film that people in 2022 are going to watch?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZnHg5z">
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[The existence of Riotsville] was on public record, but there weren’t really any secondary sources covering it, contextualizing it. So [the research process] took a really long time. Stuart Schrader, who came on as an adviser for the film, wrote a really incredible book in 2019 called <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520295629/badges-without-borders"><em>Badges Without Borders</em></a>, which was just really gratifying. He had done a lot of the same research, and much more. But when I started, there was very little. So I worked with a researcher, Jonathan Rapoport, and we started by screen-grabbing some of the slates and trying to track down people based on their names, the people who shot the footage. We went to the National Archives and pulled text records. I did a lot of phone interviews with anyone we could track down. We figured out which military police battalion was pictured in the footage, found their reunion group. A lot of minutia of research and tracking things down, Googling any person we found mentioned in any article.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y9E5BP">
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And so that part of the research was figuring out the basics. Did this come out of the Kerner Commission? Where does this fit in to a historical context? I know very well that this is just one of an endless number of disturbing programs, covert or public, that the US government and military have carried out.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SkO9F8">
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When you have a piece of footage like this, it’s like getting access to some sort of fantasy imagination of the government or the state, which feels rare. They made a moving picture and a cinematic image. We had to take that in its larger metaphorical and emotional possibilities. It felt like a big opportunity.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9DjZTG">
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So the research really was two tracks, and hopefully what the film feels like: laying out a historical narrative and also trying to understand what this means in the larger sense, as citizens of a country. What to think of it, as the narrator asks a lot.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MgJY6Q">
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<strong>You steer away from footage of the “real” uprisings in the film, which seems extra significant since you were making it partly during a summer when those images were flooding our TV screens and social feeds.</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JVN80m">
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There is one uprising in the film at the very end, in Miami. Originally, I had thought for years I didn’t want to show them at all — for many reasons, one being that we are oversaturated with those images.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FCse13">
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One of my main goals in archival filmmaking is to show images that either feel new, or that are recontextualized, so you’re actually looking at them. When something feels familiar, you just store it in the part of your brain where the shorthand for that image lives. Images of rebellions have been used to justify police repression against Black communities, against protesters.
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</p>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="A group of men hold signs reading “We Want Action,” “Help Help,” and “What Are You Waitin’ For?” A tank looms over them." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7kEDETcs6TN1EIzX8MEZHOLMfD4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24055504/RIOTSVILLE__USA_Still_3_Courtesy_Magnolia_Pictures.png"/> <cite>Magnolia Pictures</cite>
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<figcaption>
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Invented riot posters held by “rioters” (played by soldiers) at one Riotsville.
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RMxQc3">
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We used the images in Miami for a lot of reasons. On the one hand, the story of [Miami’s] Liberty City protests and what happened around the 1968 Republican National Convention is a really under-known narrative, especially when compared with the Chicago DNC. There’s very little footage of Liberty City. I think the most famous chronicler of the ’68 RNC is Norman Mailer, and he writes, in <em>Miami and the Siege of Chicago,</em> just something like “Oh, whoops, there were some protests outside and I didn’t go.” So it’s a really under-told story.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZSpUVU">
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Then also, once we started looking at that footage — which had to be pulled from a very local archive — you can really see what has been developing in the Riotsville re-creations play out. It was much more literal than I would have assumed earlier in the process.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nP67DP">
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<strong>Like Riotsville was a dress rehearsal.</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7u2kmb">
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Yeah, a dress rehearsal.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jE4Tme">
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So we put Miami at the end. That reverses the typical [assumptions we have of] causality: that people are protesting in the streets, or at the airport, and the police and the military have to come in. That is utterly backwards. The Kerner Commission at the time even found that what they call “riots” are in response, usually, to police brutality. So by putting that footage at the end of the film, you see — I think in a correctly contextualized way — that what’s happening in Liberty City is a response to what you’ve seen develop over the course of the film up until that moment.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="44qFpa">
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We put a lot of time into figuring out how and when and what images of unrest to show. That section of the film, I think, took as long to cut as a prior hour.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rNLUS0">
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<strong>Did you find any hope in making the film?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CG5ONh">
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Where I find the hope in the film, counterintuitively, is that the crises we’re in are not a failure of imagination. We’re watching the same conversation. Police abolition is on the lips of everybody in this film, in different words, but you’re seeing the same tone of people are already weary of explaining this over and over again … So it’s a political failure. We’re continuing to choose the wrong thing. The solutions are there, and they are well documented and well established. And I find some faith in that.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NcI5jl">
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Riotsville, U.S.A. <em>is playing in select theaters. See </em><a href="http://www.magpictures.com/riotsvilleusa/screenings/"><em>the film’s website</em></a><em> for details.</em>
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</p>
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</p></li>
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<li><strong>The pandemic child care crisis is still here</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="A photo illustration shows a hand stacking blocks, which are made of dollar bills, against an orange and yellow background depicting a day care playroom." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jzSeWMBzCHqTxUt7ThiRif_fA0g=/265x0:2932x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71420388/childcare_final.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Amanda Northrop/Vox
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Families are now grappling with inflation and a shortage of day care staff.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C8Ml7P">
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On the Senate floor in early August, just two days before lawmakers voted <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/8/8/23296951/inflation-reduction-act-biden-democrats-climate-change">to pass the Inflation Reduction Act</a>, four senior Democrats came out to lament what they believed to be the bill’s biggest omission: child care.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8Glyn1">
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“We cannot simply vote on this package and call it a day,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said. “Our child care system isn’t just stretched thin; it is broken.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1wIske">
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Less than two months later, the extent of that brokenness is clearer than ever. Public schools are fully reopened, and most pandemic-era restrictions are relaxed. But working conditions for families<strong> </strong>with kids who need child care are not back to normal. For both workers and parents,<strong> </strong>already-grim trends in child care have only gotten worse since the pandemic<strong> </strong>began: program costs have increased, while waiting lists in several states number in the tens of thousands.
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</p>
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Despite the long wait lists, nearly <a href="https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/child-care-sector-jobs-bls-analysis/">90,000 fewer people</a> are working in the child care industry today compared to February 2020. Many child care centers say they are losing workers because it has become impossible to compete with the <a href="https://earlylearningnation.com/2022/08/i-cant-compete-child-care-providers-are-losing-staff-to-mcdonalds-and-target/">rising wages and benefits</a> offered by large corporations like Amazon, Target, Starbucks, and McDonald’s.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qOiY5S">
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The pandemic, replete with parents working over Zoom as their kids screamed in the background, fueled greater recognition of the child care crisis — and the need for the government <a href="https://www.ffyf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/M-14242-FFYF-Seven-State-memo.pdf">to do something about it</a>. Both women overall and strong Republican-leaning voters <a href="https://www.ffyf.org/september-2021-poll-full-results-deck/">say they’d be more likely</a> to vote for a candidate who supports investing in child care to make it more accessible and affordable. Child care remains one of the biggest expenses working families shoulder, with <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/21/average-cost-of-child-care-is-now-more-than-10000-dollars-per-year.html#:~:text=Save%20and%20Invest-,Child%20care%20now%20costs%20more%20than%20%2410%2C000%20per%20year%20on,here's%20why%20that's%20a%20problem&text=Child%20care%20is%20getting%20more,report%20from%20Child%20Care%20Aware.">average costs</a> exceeding $10,000 per year.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tTuJTt">
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Recent employment data suggests the lack of accessible child care is holding back the economic recovery. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer went so far <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5026990/user-clip-leader-schumer-ira-child-care-remarks">in August</a> as to say he believes “the number 1 or number 2 reason in the whole country we are short of labor is we don’t have adequate child care.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rgNJSu">
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Advocates are vowing to press on, and Democratic lawmakers say they will prioritize it next on the federal agenda <strong>—</strong> but they’ve promised that before.
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</p>
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<h3 id="ymPCtI">
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Child care faced a crisis during the pandemic — and it isn’t over
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IdiKbl">
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The child care industry was hanging on by a thread before Covid-19. In late 2018, the liberal think tank Center for American Progress determined <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/americas-child-care-deserts-2018/">that half of Americans</a> lived in “child care deserts” — areas where just one child care option exists for every three children in need of care. The number of already scarce centers and home-based child care providers <a href="https://www.childcareaware.org/demanding-change-repairing-our-child-care-system/">was declining</a>, and costs <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5909651/5-charts-that-show-child-care-in-the-us-is-broken">had grown twice as fast</a> as overall inflation since the 1990s. Child care workers also survived on very low wages and <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/higher-wages-for-child-care-and-home-health-care-workers/#:~:text=One%2Dthird%20of%20workers%20overall,eight%20home%20health%20care%20workers.">often no benefits</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="93lear">
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But during the pandemic, <a href="https://www.childcareaware.org/demanding-change-repairing-our-child-care-system/">several factors exacerbated these trends</a>, including staffing shortages, increased costs for health and safety supplies, and fewer children attending full-time. While staff turnover had been an issue in the years prior, the child care sector continued to lose workers during the pandemic — and they<strong> </strong>weren’t coming back after vaccines became available.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OPI46p">
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Between December 2019 and March 2021, at least 8,899 child care centers <a href="https://www.childcareaware.org/demanding-change-repairing-our-child-care-system/">closed across 37 states</a>, and 6,957 licensed home-based care centers shuttered. To try and stave off additional closures, Congress authorized $39 billion for child care relief as part of its <a href="https://www.naco.org/resources/featured/american-rescue-plan-act-funding-breakdown">$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan</a> in 2021. Nearly half of providers <a href="https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/user-98/naeyc_ece_field_survey_february2022.pdf">reported</a> using these funds to pay off debt they took on during the pandemic, and 92 percent said the grants helped them keep their programs open.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4px5vd">
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But finding workers to do the highly regulated work remained a challenge. “Young women in their late teens and 20s who are typically drawn to work at day-care centers are opting instead to take jobs as administrative assistants, retail clerks and bank tellers,” the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/09/19/childcare-workers-quit/">reported last summer</a>. Other veterans of the child care industry left entirely, with anecdotal reports from program owners saying staff were <a href="https://earlylearningnation.com/2022/08/i-cant-compete-child-care-providers-are-losing-staff-to-mcdonalds-and-target/">enticed</a> by the higher wages and benefits offered by retailers and fast-food chains. The median wage for child care workers in 2021 was <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/childcare-workers.htm">$13.22 per hour</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cA6jzj">
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A <a href="https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/child-care-sector-jobs-bls-analysis/">new analysis</a> from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley found child care employment remains 8.4 percent below what it was in February 2020.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P8xN91">
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Elena Montoya, a policy researcher at the UC Berkeley center, said that specific data tracking where child care workers go when they leave the industry is difficult to come by. “We do know that turnover is really high; the national Treasury had a <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-Economics-of-Childcare-Supply-09-14-final.pdf">report last year</a> on child care where they estimated there’s a 26-40 percent turnover rate,” she said. “And for assistant teachers it can be as high as 70 percent.”
|
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</p>
|
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<h3 id="5VQGVN">
|
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How the child care shortage is affecting families and the labor market
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ENpTEE">
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Almost <a href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/06/hawaii-has-a-child-care-crisis-employers-could-help-solve-it/">every week</a>, reporting from a <a href="https://collective.coloradotrust.org/stories/colorados-child-care-crisis-shows-no-sign-of-waning/">different</a> location <a href="https://www.axios.com/local/twin-cities/2022/03/22/minneapolis-st-paul-child-care-costs-availability-crisis">across the US</a> details how a crisis of child care is unfolding. An <a href="https://www.muckrock.com/childcare/">investigation published last month</a> found the lack of available child care in Michigan — at least 54,000 children on waiting lists — was far worse than state policymakers had publicly been claiming. In Massachusetts, leaders are grappling with <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/06/17/legislature-congress-child-care-massachusetts-policy-solutions">8,000 fewer child care slots</a> than the state had pre-pandemic. In a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c2e545d0dbda3cf1389658c/t/6272dffa8acf020b2ea34c3d/1651695610873/Staff_Crisis_Survey_RLS_041222.pdf">survey of almost 1,000 Pennsylvania child care providers</a>, respondents reported over 7,000 staff vacancies, contributing to over 32,400 Pennsylvania kids on waitlists.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HcmFlJ">
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The statistics are similar nationwide. In <a href="https://www.care.com/c/how-much-does-child-care-cost/">one recent survey</a> conducted by Care.com, more than 60 percent of parents said the cost of child care had gotten more expensive, and over half reported spending more than 20 percent of their household income on it. <br/><br/>The First Five Years Fund, a child care advocacy group, reported last year that child care costs had <a href="https://www.ffyf.org/latest-economic-data-underscores-the-need-for-significant-sustained-investment-in-child-care-and-early-learning/">increased faster</a> than other basic family expenses like housing and groceries over the last three decades, and a separate analysis from <a href="https://www.childcareaware.org/demanding-change-repairing-our-child-care-system/">Child Care Aware affirmed</a> that the growth in child care prices exceeded the annual rate of inflation in 2019 and 2020.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rhQJjJ">
|
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|
|
The price hikes are hardly benefiting the industry’s workers: their inflation-adjusted wages actually dropped <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/still-underpaid-and-unequal/">between 2012 and 2019</a>, despite <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003">rising generally</a> among other private-sector workers.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qrHAd0">
|
|||
|
|
To cope with the crisis, experts say parents are taking on second jobs and cobbling together more informal, and often lower-quality, child care arrangements.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lSdSFd">
|
|||
|
|
The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">data</a> released showed that women continue to return to the labor force, with August marking the <a href="https://nwlc.org/resource/152000-women-join-labor-force-in-august/">20th consecutive month</a> of job growth for women. However, women as a group are still down 98,000 jobs since February 2020, though men have recovered their pandemic-era job losses. And Black women, unlike other women, have been <a href="https://19thnews.org/2022/09/women-reentering-workforce-black-women-hurdles/">declining in their labor force participation</a> since May.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QiXF7L">
|
|||
|
|
Labor experts say it’s not clear what is driving the decline in employment for Black women, but cite the highly competitive landscape for child care as one possible factor. In 2021 Columbia University researchers found that Black, Asian, and Hispanic families were <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23780231211032028">more likely to be exposed</a> to child care closures than white families.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="Q9ZInG">
|
|||
|
|
What could be done to address the crisis
|
|||
|
|
</h3>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d7SFbP">
|
|||
|
|
To fix the crisis, most policy experts agree the government will need to increase its financial support of the child care industry. Society should <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/the_economics_of_early_childhood_investments.pdf">also benefit over the long term</a> from these investments, researchers say, as studies suggest long-term academic, economic, and emotional benefits of early childhood education.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="toUgx5">
|
|||
|
|
There are simply market limits to how much more a program can charge in order to attract and retain staff. “Trying to cover higher wages with price hikes just results in more people pulling their kids out of child care due to the cost,” said Matt Bruenig, founder of People’s Policy Project, a leftist think tank. “So the only real way to increase the size of the child care workforce is to increase pay without increasing child care rates, which requires public subsidy.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ukxMiG">
|
|||
|
|
Bruenig pointed to the Nordic nations, where government subsidies to the child care sector on average <a href="https://oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/b35a14e5-en.pdf?expires=1662732436&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=65892487AF6DB6FAC896828A774617C9%E2%80%A6">constitute about 87 percent</a> of the sector’s revenues. (Some small fees are required of higher-income child care users, making up the remaining 13 percent.) Montoya, the UC Berkeley child care researcher, said they’ve seen nearly double the rates of staff turnover in California programs that received no public funding, and that subsidized programs tend to have higher wages.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AQagWm">
|
|||
|
|
The federal pandemic child care relief expires in two years, and if governments can’t replace those dollars, experts say the supply crisis would get even worse, since many providers used the federal aid to offer pay raises or bonuses to recruit or retain teachers. In total, the 50 states and Washington, DC, <a href="https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/states-face-a-48-billion-child-care-funding-cliff/">will face a $48 billion fiscal cliff</a>, just two months before the next presidential election. The Center for American Progress <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/increasing-americas-child-care-supply/">estimates</a> the US could lose at least half of its licensed child care supply if the federal government doesn’t step in before that.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KSLc0j">
|
|||
|
|
“It comes down to getting more money in the system,” Sarah Rittling, the executive director of the First Five Years Fund, told Vox. “Right now you’re just reshuffling things, and it’s one reason why that [$48 billion] cliff is so prevalent in our minds.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s1buFD">
|
|||
|
|
Another way to address the labor supply, as journalist and commentator <a href="https://www.slowboring.com/p/immigrants-could-help-alleviate-the">Matt Yglesias recently argued</a>, would be to allow more immigration for child care workers — but there’s little support for that idea among child care advocates who hope to see wages go up, or from much of the Republican Party, which is as skeptical of immigration as it is of subsidies.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7NLU7b">
|
|||
|
|
In 2021, President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan <a href="https://www.vox.com/22744837/house-senate-democrats-build-back-better-child-care">included provisions to guarantee</a> affordable child care by increasing federal subsidies, and in November 2021 the House approved the bill, which included a $390 billion investment in the early childhood care system. Advocates <a href="https://www.ffyf.org/house-passes-build-back-better-act/">said</a> the investments would be enough to reach nine out of 10 working families with children 5 and younger.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4Tuwnr">
|
|||
|
|
But the Senate version of the bill, <a href="https://edlabor.house.gov/media/press-releases/scott-murray-reintroduce-child-care-for-working-families-act">introduced by Murray</a>, couldn’t gain traction as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) voiced concerns about the overall size of the bill. Even a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/08/senate-democrats-shop-new-reconciliation-child-care-proposal-00030899">dramatically scaled down version</a> of the child care bill Murray tried introducing this past spring with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) couldn’t move Manchin. (There were <a href="https://www.vox.com/22744837/house-senate-democrats-build-back-better-child-care">also structural concerns</a> with the Democrats’ proposal, as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/democratic-childcare-proposal-hurts-families/620749/">Bruenig noted</a> its subsidy design likely would have hiked prices for middle and upper-middle class families.)
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YZqMXZ">
|
|||
|
|
Now that the Inflation Reduction Act has passed without any child care provisions, leaders are thinking again about how to move forward on the issue.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2DmTcF">
|
|||
|
|
Rittling, of the First Five Years Fund, said advocates are eyeing appropriations and the end-of-the-year omnibus spending negotiations as opportunities to push for more spending on child care. “Those pieces are getting cooked out right now,” she said. “We have a lot momentum and reason, frankly, for Congress to stand up and address the issues.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gkg2gW">
|
|||
|
|
One likely possibility is increasing investments in the existing Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program aimed at reducing child care costs for low-income families. There’s already <a href="https://www.scott.senate.gov/media-center/press-releases/scott-burr-introduce-bill-to-expand-families-child-care-options-build-on-existing-bipartisan-program">bipartisan support</a> for increasing investments in the program, which has long been massively underfunded; only a tiny fraction of those families <a href="https://www.ffyf.org/2022-state-fact-sheets/">eligible actually receive assistance</a>.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zn0ho9">
|
|||
|
|
Still, increasing funding for the CCDBG would not be enough, since that ignores the crisis of cost and access for middle class families, and does virtually nothing to address the low wages for child care workers.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c23nFP">
|
|||
|
|
To really make a dent, leaders are going to have to tackle the supply of child care along with its costs.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mQejqM">
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>The Supreme Court case that’s likely to handcuff the Clean Water Act</strong> -
|
|||
|
|
<figure>
|
|||
|
|
<img alt="A photo with a tilted horizon shows several waves of water washing over a rock-covered shoreline of a river, with some dead trees forming a barrier along one side. The other shorebank is a dark line across the wide river, on an overcast day with little sun." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QjKq-vU__hbubZCNl2vM1i37TTA=/304x0:5168x3648/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71420316/1387320570.0.jpg"/>
|
|||
|
|
<figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
A wake from a passing tugboat buffets the shoreline of the Mississippi River on March 18, in New Orleans, Louisiana. | Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
|
|||
|
|
</figcaption>
|
|||
|
|
</figure>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
Sackett v. EPA may prove to be the most significant attack on America’s clean water laws since the 1970s.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OwcYJI">
|
|||
|
|
For decades, the Supreme Court struggled to define a key term at the heart of the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 legislation that forms the backbone of America’s efforts to “restore and maintain the <a href="https://casetext.com/statute/united-states-code/title-33-navigation-and-navigable-waters/chapter-26-water-pollution-prevention-and-control/subchapter-i-research-and-related-programs/section-1251-congressional-declaration-of-goals-and-policy">chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters</a>.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jGqGeo">
|
|||
|
|
It’s an admittedly difficult question, that is now in the hands of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/23180634/supreme-court-rule-of-law-abortion-voting-rights-guns-epa">most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s</a>. And the Court’s Republican-appointed supermajority seems poised to deal a severe blow to the clean water law, in a case that could do significant harm to America’s efforts to prevent floods and to ensure that everyone in the country has access to safe drinking water.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XSF4AH">
|
|||
|
|
The Clean Water Act prohibits “discharge of pollutants” into “navigable waters.” But it also defines the term “navigable waters” vaguely and counterintuitively, to include all “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/33/1362">waters of the United States</a>, including the territorial seas.” In <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1034.pdf"><em>Rapanos v. United States</em></a> (2006), the Supreme Court’s last attempt to define the key phrase “waters of the United States,” the justices split three ways, with no one approach winning majority approval from the Court.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<div class="c-float-right">
|
|||
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<div id="Vp2jev">
|
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<div>
|
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</div>
|
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</div>
|
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</div>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NXPhao">
|
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Now, <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sackett-v-environmental-protection-agency/"><em>Sackett v. EPA</em></a> brings this question to a Court that’s moved dramatically to the right after former President Donald Trump filled a third of its seats. Though the specific dispute in <em>Sackett</em> seems minor — it involves a couple that wants to fill in wetlands on their residential lot near an Idaho lake — the case still gives the Supreme Court everything it needs to hamstring much of the landmark anti-pollution legislation.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vryTw2">
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Even in the best-case scenario for environmentalists, the Court’s new majority is likely to embrace the narrow reading of the Clean Water Act proposed by the late Justice Antonin Scalia in his <em>Rapanos</em> opinion. That approach, according to an <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/228256/20220617104921002_21-454%20Brief.pdf">amicus brief</a> filed by professional associations representing water regulators and managers, “would also exclude 51% (if not more) of the Nation’s wetlands” from the Act’s protections, and could potentially exclude an even greater percentage of the nation’s streams.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9nW5ip">
|
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|
Meanwhile the plaintiffs in <em>Sackett</em>, no doubt feeling emboldened by the Supreme Court’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/6/30/23189610/supreme-court-epa-west-virginia-clean-power-plan-major-questions-john-roberts">recent hostility to environmental regulation</a>, have come up with a reading of the Clean Water Act that is more restrictive than any of the approaches proposed by any justice in <em>Rapanos</em>. According to their brief, the “waters of the United States” are “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/220716/20220411143433423_FINAL%20Sackett%20Opening%20Brief.pdf">limited to traditional navigable waters and intrastate navigable waters</a> that link with other modes of transport to form interstate channels of commerce.”
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F2sSm3">
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If that approach prevails, huge numbers of streams, drainage ditches, and other small tributaries that may flow into major bodies of water — but that are not themselves large enough to be navigated by ships and other watercraft — could abruptly lose the Clean Water Act’s protections.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S8aA1Z">
|
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The stakes in <em>Sackett</em> are high because America’s waterways are so interconnected. Wetlands, even wetlands that do not directly border rivers or lakes, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-12-07/pdf/2021-25601.pdf">act as filtration systems</a> that slow the seepage of pollutants into major waterways. And they also act as sponges that <a href="https://epa.ohio.gov/static/Portals/35/wqs/headwaters/HWH_import.pdf">help control floods</a>. Small streams, human-made drainage, and other narrow waterways typically empty into other bodies of water. So, if wetlands, streams, and the like are not protected from pollution, that pollution will inevitably poison major waterways.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s25uTB">
|
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But environmentalists have little reason to be optimistic about the Clean Water Act’s future after the law is interpreted by this Supreme Court.
|
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</p>
|
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<h3 id="TZCcoJ">
|
|||
|
|
The three approaches laid out in <em>Rapanos</em>, briefly explained
|
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</h3>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F9lfl2">
|
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Once upon a time, <em>Sackett</em> would have been a fairly easy case. When federal laws are ambiguous, the Supreme Court’s decision in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/467/837"><em>Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council</em></a><em> </em>(1984) typically instructs the courts to defer to an expert federal agency’s interpretation of that law. And the Biden administration is currently finalizing an interpretation of the phrase “waters of the United States” that merges both Scalia’s narrow definition and a more expansive definition offered by Justice Anthony Kennedy in <em>Rapanos</em>.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ybZq6N">
|
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Indeed, in an opinion joined by the 2006 Court’s liberal minority, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the Court should largely leave the question of which waters qualify as “waters of the United States” to executive branch agencies. The executive’s determination that certain wetlands are subject to Clean Water Act regulation, Stevens wrote in his <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1034.pdf"><em>Rapanos</em> dissent</a>, “is a quintessential example of the Executive’s reasonable interpretation of a statutory provision” which is entitled to deference under <em>Chevron</em>.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iLCJK6">
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But Stevens’s deferential approach only received four votes. Four other justices, including three members of the Court’s current Republican-appointed majority, joined Scalia’s opinion calling for much stricter limits on the Clean Water Act.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RV38hu">
|
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“The phrase ‘the waters of the United States,’” <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1034.pdf">Scalia claimed</a>, includes only “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water.” His definition does not include “channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.”
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iVw2a9">
|
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Scalia added that wetlands are only subject to the Act if they have a “continuous surface connection” with a “relatively permanent body of water” that makes it “difficult to determine where the ‘water’ ends and the ‘wetland’ begins.”
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CxTSL1">
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As mentioned above, an amicus brief filed by experts on water regulation and management argues that Scalia’s definition would “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/228256/20220617104921002_21-454%20Brief.pdf">exclude 51% (if not more) of the Nation’s wetlands</a>.” It would also exclude many wetlands (and potentially, many streams and other bodies of flowing water) for completely arbitrary reasons. Because Scalia’s test requires a “surface” connection, for example, a wetland that connects to a major river via an underground channel would be beyond the Act’s ban on pollution — even though pollutants can flow through an underground stream just as surely as they can flow through a surface channel.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nvWqrP">
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In any event, Scalia’s approach did not carry the day in <em>Rapanos</em>. The sole remaining justice, Kennedy, carved out a middle ground between Scalia and Stevens which called for less deference to federal agencies than Stevens advocated, but that also read the Clean Water Act more expansively than Scalia.
|
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</p>
|
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D8Ekgc">
|
|||
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|
Under Kennedy’s definition, wetlands (and, most likely, narrow waterways) are subject to the federal law if they “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1034.pdf">significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of other covered waters</a> more readily understood as ‘navigable.’” Thus, Kennedy’s rule looks at the nation’s water systems as a whole, and would prohibit pollution that meaningfully impacts important bodies of water — even if that pollution is discharged into a wetland that may be some distance from a major river or lake.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<h3 id="J3mvSZ">
|
|||
|
|
Why are wetlands so important?
|
|||
|
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</h3>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BHSzhq">
|
|||
|
|
The <em>Sackett</em> case is primarily a case about wetlands. In 2004, plaintiffs Chantell and Michael Sackett bought what a federal appeals court described as a “<a href="https://casetext.com/case/sackett-v-us-envtl-prot-agency-1">soggy residential lot</a>” near Priest Lake in Idaho. The Sacketts have spent the last 14 years in litigation over whether they may fill in wetlands on this lot with sand and gravel.
|
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</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f2juPi">
|
|||
|
|
(One reason why this case has gone on for so long is that it <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1062.pdf">already took one trip up to the Supreme Court</a>, in 2012, to determine whether the Sacketts filed their lawsuit prematurely. A unanimous Court determined that they did not.)
|
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</p>
|
|||
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s6NsJz">
|
|||
|
|
It’s reasonable to wonder why the government is fighting so hard to prevent the Sacketts from dumping sand and gravel — as opposed to, say, toxins — on their land. The answer is that even natural fillers like sand can destroy a wetland, and the government argues that wetlands play an essential role in maintaining a healthy national water system.
|
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</p>
|
|||
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|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xqXx9S">
|
|||
|
|
As the government explains in its brief, wetlands “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/227721/20220610173641467_21-454bsUnitedStates.pdf">provide flood control and trap and filter sediment and other pollutants</a> that would otherwise be carried into downstream waters.” Similarly, the water managers’ brief explains that wetlands are particularly important because they are “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/228256/20220617104921002_21-454%20Brief.pdf">more efficient at pollutant removal than other waters</a> thanks to the slow, sometimes infrequent, rate at which water moves through them.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5Z1DL1">
|
|||
|
|
Although maintaining wetlands does create costs — just ask the Sacketts, who were unable to develop their land for years — the water managers argue that preserving wetlands, headwaters, and other structures that efficiently filter the water supply “is less costly and more effective to prevent a loss in water quality than to treat contaminated water later on.”
|
|||
|
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</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CE9zyB">
|
|||
|
|
In the likely event that the Court adopts Scalia’s proposed rule in <em>Rapanos</em>, that could place most of the nation’s wetlands beyond the Clean Water Act’s anti-pollution safeguards. And the <em>Sackett</em> plaintiffs ask the Court to go <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/220716/20220411143433423_FINAL%20Sackett%20Opening%20Brief.pdf">much further than Scalia would have gone</a>, limiting the law’s protections to “navigable” waters. (The plaintiffs do concede that “non-navigable wetlands inseparably bound up with such waters” should also be protected.)
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="A9jTmg">
|
|||
|
|
There are a few reasons to doubt that the Court will take this maximalist approach. Among other things, none of the justices in <em>Rapanos</em>, including the three current justices who joined Scalia’s opinion, took such an extreme view in 2006. And the government notes <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/227721/20220610173641467_21-454bsUnitedStates.pdf">in its brief</a> that the plaintiffs <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-454/201577/20211130122836694_FINAL%20Sackett%20Reply%20Brief.pdf">previously told the Supreme Court</a> that they were “not disputing ‘the extent to which the Clean Water Act regulates tributaries of traditional navigable waters.’” So the Court may be reluctant to reward these plaintiffs for trying to expand the scope of the case midway through Supreme Court review.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SxteKb">
|
|||
|
|
Even if the Court does not accept the plaintiffs’ most expansive proposal, however, the stakes in this case remain quite high. Scalia’s rule would fundamentally alter America’s clean water regime, potentially removing the majority of wetlands from the Clean Water Act’s protections. And it would do so based on arbitrary distinctions such as whether the wetlands feed into larger bodies of water via a “continuous surface connection” or something more transient or subterranean.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KkKsbv">
|
|||
|
|
And, without protection for these wetlands, America’s water system could lose much of its ability to filter pollutants out of our drinking water.
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="udDnIg">
|
|||
|
|
</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Wall Street and The Awakening impress</strong> -</p></li>
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|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nehru girls hockey from today</strong> -</p></li>
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|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Knight In Hooves, Ashwa Magadheera, Last Wish and Ravishing Form excel</strong> -</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Tyson Fury rules out bout with Anthony Joshua after deadline expires</strong> - Tyson Fury set Anthony Joshua’s camp an ultimatum on September 24, insisting he would walk away from the long-anticipated boxing match if a deal could not be done by September 26</p></li>
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|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ind vs SA | India looks to address death bowling concerns in final tune-up ahead of T20 WC</strong> - India skipper Rohit Sharma, expectedly, singled out death bowling as an area that requires improvement following the series win over Australia.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Exhibits at rail museum in Mysuru illuminated</strong> -</p></li>
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|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Only request to PM Modi is to stop Rupee from scoring century: Congress</strong> - Congress Spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said for the first time in history, the rupee is racing fast towards 82 against the dollar</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Canoe capsize in Kannur: one more body recovered</strong> -</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>TS clarifies its stand against Sheela Bhide Committee recommendations on bifurcation of Schedule IX institutions</strong> -</p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SC reserves verdict on pleas challenging Centre's 10% EWS quota</strong> - Supreme Court heard as many as 40 petitions and most of the pleas, including the lead one filed by ‘Janhit Abhiyan’ in 2019, challenged the validity of the Constitution Amendment (103rd) Act 2019</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Italian elections: Meloni gets to work on picking right-wing government</strong> - The leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy has kept out of sight since winning the election.</p></li>
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|||
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|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nord Stream: Mystery leaks in Russia gas pipelines spark warnings</strong> - The Nord Stream undersea gas network to Europe has sustained “unprecedented” damage in recent days.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Final day of discredited voting in Russian-held Ukraine</strong> - The self-styled referendums in east and south Ukraine are dismissed as a sham by Kyiv and the West.</p></li>
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|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Japan says Russia ‘blindfolded and restrained’ its consul in Vladivostok</strong> - Tokyo demands an apology after one its diplomats is accused of spying in Russia’s Far East.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann: Chess champion accuses opponent of cheating</strong> - Magnus Carlsen claims Hans Niemann has “cheated more than he has publicly admitted”, but offers no evidence.</p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
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|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nreal’s $380 AR glasses want to be a virtual monitor for MacBooks</strong> - Air AR glasses add support for M1/M2 MacBooks, an iPhone adapter amid US launch. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884049">link</a></p></li>
|
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|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ian reaches major hurricane status, will be a historic storm for Florida</strong> - Surge, winds, rainfall—unfortunately, Hurricane Ian is going to pack quite a punch. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884738">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>DART goes silent after hitting an asteroid [Update]</strong> - Details of the impact aren’t yet here, but the probe’s last image indicates success. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884719">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Experts debate the ethics of LinkedIn’s algorithm experiments on 20M users</strong> - LinkedIn relied on its user agreement to gain consent to research millions of users. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884675">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>20-year-old Linux workaround is still slowing down AMD systems</strong> - A little fix for CPUs that didn’t properly sleep had decades-long consequences. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1884570">link</a></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
</ul>
|
|||
|
|
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
|||
|
|
<ul>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>What’s Icarus’ least favorite food?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
hot wings
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/AcrolloPeed"> /u/AcrolloPeed </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xp7itq/whats_icarus_least_favorite_food/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xp7itq/whats_icarus_least_favorite_food/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>What do you get if you mix human DNA and whale DNA?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
You get kicked out of sea world…
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
</div>
|
|||
|
|
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Prestigious_Bet6358"> /u/Prestigious_Bet6358 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xoyetb/what_do_you_get_if_you_mix_human_dna_and_whale_dna/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xoyetb/what_do_you_get_if_you_mix_human_dna_and_whale_dna/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
|||
|
|
<li><strong>My girlfriend asked me who my favorite vampire is.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
|||
|
|
<div class="md">
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
I replied, “The one from Sesame Street.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
|
|
She said, “He doesn’t count.”
|
|||
|
|
</p>
|
|||
|
|
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
|||
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“Oh I assure you, he does.”
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/KeckyOK"> /u/KeckyOK </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xolp0r/my_girlfriend_asked_me_who_my_favorite_vampire_is/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xolp0r/my_girlfriend_asked_me_who_my_favorite_vampire_is/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>I was once asked at a job interview whether or not I could perform under pressure…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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“No”, I said. “But I can do a cracking Bohemian Rhapsody”.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/jeralexer"> /u/jeralexer </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xp2b3q/i_was_once_asked_at_a_job_interview_whether_or/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xp2b3q/i_was_once_asked_at_a_job_interview_whether_or/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>Jesus is watching you</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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A burglar had just broken into a house and was stealing anything he could get his hand on. Then he heard a voice. It said, “Jesus is watching you.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Thinking it’s in his head he continues on his business. Then he hears it again, “Jesus is watching you.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The burglar not very religious but still scared says, "Who are you?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Then he flipped on the light not caring if he was caught by the house owners. All he sees is a parrot in the corner. The parrot then says, “Jesus is watching you.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The burglar asks if the parrot has a name. The parrot replied, “Satan.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The burglar laughs and says, “Who would name their parrot Satan?”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The parrot says, “Same person who would name their rottweiler Jesus.”
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/A_Rreddit_user"> /u/A_Rreddit_user </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xp3x02/jesus_is_watching_you/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/xp3x02/jesus_is_watching_you/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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</ul>
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