The world’s advice for U.S. voters—and the next White House.

I have a confession to make. I feel a sense of paralysis in these weeks leading up to the U.S. presidential election. Whether it’s the fate of Ukraine, peace in the Middle East, competition with China, or the broader question of America’s role in the world, too much is riding on who will be the next occupant of the White House. A Donald Trump presidency would be very different from a Kamala Harris one, and polls continue to show Americans are bitterly divided on how to choose between them. Key players in global crises, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seem as if they are waiting to see who wins before they make their next big move. Perhaps that’s why it’s so difficult to cast beyond Nov. 5 and imagine how a range of conflicts and issues may play out.

Four years ago, our Fall 2020 print issue tried to examine what we called “The Most Important Election. Ever.” Little did we know we’d find ourselves at a similar crossroads in 2024. Yes, Harris has replaced U.S. President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, but many of the issues at stake—for the United States and the world—remain the same. Columnist Michael Hirsh wrote a cover essay for us about 2020; we asked him this time around to contrast the visions presented by Harris and Trump.

But back to that paralysis: What happens after Nov. 5? For starters, there’s little guarantee the U.S. public will respect the results of the election. Even if you imagine a point in the future where Americans agree on who will lead them for the next four years, the question is how the next president should unite a polarized electorate and what issues they should prioritize.

That’s a dilemma we wanted to address in our cover package, “Dear America.” Nine distinguished thinkers with lifetimes of experience in global policymaking have written nonpartisan letters of advice to the next White House—and to Americans. With the United States no longer the world’s sole hegemon, each of them considers how Washington should approach the critical challenges our planet faces.

The political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr., who popularized the term “soft power” in this magazine more than three decades ago, explores how the next president can restore U.S. standing in the world. “Political values attract only if a country lives up to them,” he writes. “Preaching democracy abroad will be judged by how well it is practiced at home.” Arancha González, a former Spanish foreign minister, builds on that with a call for “investing in a shield that would protect and preserve democracy for future generations.” Such a task, she argues, will require strengthening election systems, regulating social media, and bolstering cybersecurity.

The Nobel-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz makes the case for following the rules. “[W]e have an international trade order that enforces rules against the poor and weak … but in which the United States can do as it will,” he writes, referring to how Washington has strong-armed the World Trade Organization to serve U.S. interests. Mark Malloch-Brown, a former U.N. deputy secretary-general now based in London, argues that “what’s good for the United States is more than ever not always good for the rest of the world. … There is a dangerous divergence.” The solution, Malloch-Brown says, is for Washington to reverse its current multilateral posture and become more of a team player. It’s a sentiment echoed thousands of miles away in Singapore, from where the scholar Danny Quah calls the United States out for its “obsession with being No. 1” at the cost of global stability. “We want America in our world—just as we want China in it, too,” Quah says.

Our letter writers don’t always agree with each other. But we felt they all had one thing in common from their many years in public policy: a deep love for America and a desire to see it become more of a force for good. Other contributors include Nirupama Rao, a former Indian foreign secretary; Catherine Ashton, a former EU foreign-policy chief; Martin Kimani, a former Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations; and Jason Bordoff, a former energy policymaker in the Obama administration. The next White House—and American voters—would do well to heed their advice in mulling the difficult choices ahead.

There’s lots more in this issue, including a unique ranking of the world’s best international relations programs. No one can predict the state of the world in 2025, but here at Foreign Policy, we can at least help the next generation of policymakers figure out where to go to school.

Source

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The European Commission will examine whether the big tech companies are preventing developers from steering customers away from controlled app stores, which could be anti-competitive.

The investigation comes under powers introduced in the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which was a landmark piece of legislation aimed at curbing the power of big tech and the commission is accusing companies of non-compliance with the act and a failure to provide a fairer and more open digital space for European citizens and businesses.

Should the investigation conclude that there is lack of full compliance with the DMA, gatekeeper companies could face heavy fines.

Designated as ‘gatekeepers’ by the DMA, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok owner ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft have special responsibilities because of their dominance of key mobile technologies.

These companies are accused of steering developers away from competitor platforms and imposing various restrictions and limitations on their use.

The big tech companies are facing a growing legal backlash and last month Apple was fined over its iOS ecosystem and business practices by the EU.

Whether this case succeeds of not, it’s interesting to note the growing willingness of the authorities to take these tech giants to court.

About time, according to some critics.

Source: New Electronic

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The U.S. and British governments on Monday announced sanctions against a company and two people linked to the Chinese government over a string of malicious cyberactivity targeting the U.K.’s election watchdog and lawmakers in both countries.

Officials said those sanctioned are responsible for a hack that may have gained access to information on tens of millions of U.K. voters held by the Electoral Commission, as well as for cyberespionage targeting lawmakers who have been outspoken about the China threat.

The Foreign Office said the hack of the election registers “has not had an impact on electoral processes, has not affected the rights or access to the democratic process of any individual, nor has it affected electoral registration.”

The Electoral Commission said in August that it identified a breach of its system in October 2022, though it added that “hostile actors” had first been able to access its servers since 2021.

At the time, the watchdog said the data included the names and addresses of registered voters. But it said that much of the information was already in the public domain.

In Washington, the Treasury Department said it sanctioned Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Ltd., which it calls a Chinese Ministry of State Security front company that has “served as cover for multiple malicious cyberoperations.”

It named two Chinese nationals, Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, affiliated with the Wuhan company, for cyberoperations that targeted U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, “directly endangering U.S. national security.”

Zhao, Ni and five other Chinese nationals were hit with federal charges Monday. An indictment brought by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn alleges that the seven men were Chinese intelligence officers who engaged in a yearslong campaign targeting top White House officials, U.S. senators and the spouses of high-ranking members of the Justice Department, among others. 

The suspects are accused of sending tracking emails purported to be from prominent U.S. journalists, which contained legitimate news articles from publications like CNN and VOX. The emails also contained embedded hyperlinks that, when opened, would transmit information about the recipients to a server controlled by the suspects, the indictment says.

One of the group’s alleged campaigns took place from June to September 2018 when they sent more than 10,000 messages to a wide range of targets including Democratic and Republican senators from more than 10 states and the spouses of various government administrators including a high-ranking Department of Justice official, high-ranking White House officials and multiple United States senators.

“These allegations pull back the curtain on China’s vast illegal hacking operation that targeted sensitive data from U.S. elected and government officials, journalists and academics; valuable information from American companies; and political dissidents in America and abroad,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said her government “firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with law.”

“Without valid evidence, the U.S. jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and made groundless accusations against China,” Liu added. “It is extremely irresponsible and is a complete distortion of facts.”

Separately, British cybersecurity officials said that Chinese government-affiliated hackers “conducted reconnaissance activity” against British parliamentarians who are critical of Beijing in 2021. They said no parliamentary accounts were successfully compromised.

Three lawmakers, including former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, told reporters Monday they have been “subjected to harassment, impersonation and attempted hacking from China for some time.” Duncan Smith said in one example, hackers impersonating him used fake email addresses to write to his contacts.

The politicians are members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international pressure group focused on countering Beijing’s growing influence and calling out alleged rights abuses by the Chinese government.

Ahead of that announcement, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated that China is “behaving in an increasingly assertive way abroad” and is “the greatest state-based threat to our economic security.”

“It’s right that we take measures to protect ourselves, which is what we are doing,” he said, without providing details.

China critics including Duncan Smith have long called for Sunak to take a tougher stance on China and label the country a threat — rather than a “challenge” — to the U.K., but the government has refrained from using such critical language.

Responding to the reports, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said countries should base their claims on evidence rather than “smear” others without factual basis.

“Cybersecurity issues should not be politicized,” ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said. “We hope all parties will stop spreading false information, take a responsible attitude, and work together to maintain peace and security in cyberspace.”

Source: NBC News

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In an interview with news channel CNN, Woz was asked about Apple’s so-called “walled garden” approach to protecting users, and in response he said he was glad for the protection that he gets, and that Apple does a better job in this respect than other companies.

“And tracking you – tracking you is questionable. But my gosh, look at what we’re accusing TikTok of, and then go look at Facebook and Google and that’s how they make their businesses,” he added. “I mean, Facebook was a great idea. But then they make all their money just by tracking you and advertising, and Apple doesn’t really do that so much.”

Earlier this month, the US Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which aims to force TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to either sell off its US-based biz or face being banned from operating in the country.

“I don’t understand it, I don’t see why,” commented Woz. “What are we saying? We’re saying ‘Oh, you might be tracked by the Chinese.’ Well, they learned it from us.”

Similar points are made in an article in Nikkei Asia, which states that US social media apps have formed a key part of Washington’s global influence operations for many years, and have provided “unparalleled intelligence collection opportunities” and “helped to project certain American political and cultural values into foreign societies.”

Woz continued by saying that “If you have a principle [that] a person should not be tracked without them knowing it, you apply it the same to every company, or every country. You don’t say, ‘Here’s one case where we’re going to outlaw an app, but we’re not gonna do it in these other cases.’ So I don’t like the hypocrisy, and that’s obviously coming from a political realm.”

The engineering brains behind Apple’s early products such as the Apple I and II personal computers, Woz also became an early member of digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

He revealed in the interview that he largely avoids “the social web,” but gets a lot of fun out of watching TikTok “even if it’s just for rescuing dog videos and stuff.”

The Apple co-founder was also reported to have been hospitalized in Mexico City last November with a suspected stroke following a speech at the World Business Forum, but has apparently made a full recovery.

Source: The Register

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The case was jointly filed by the Justice Department, 16 States, and the District of Columbia, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

This isn’t something out of the blue, as we have previously reported, the U.S. Department of Justice has been preparing an antitrust case against the Electronics giant over the past few months. It had held discussions with the company before finalizing the lawsuit.

Apple ran into legal trouble at the end of 2023, when the U.S. International Trade Commission banned the company from importing and selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 in the U.S. The Commission found Apple guilty of violating patents related to the SpO2 sensor (pulse oximeter), which belonged to Masimo. The ban however was short-lived, as Apple was allowed to sell the wearables once again, with a catch, it had to disable the SpO2 sensor’s functionality, so you couldn’t use it to measure blood oxygen levels, even though the hardware for the feature existed.

The tech mogul’s troubles were just beginning, as it had to open up the iOS ecosystem to third-party app marketplaces in the European Union region. However, the company’s compliance with the Digital Markets Act has come under scrutiny due to several limitations that it has imposed for app developers, and third-party app stores.

US Justice Department sues Apple in antitrust case

Now, the US Govt has claimed that Apple has selectively imposed restrictions that prevent users from switching from its devices. It also says that there are limitations for the functionality of third-party apps, which gives Apple’s own apps an unfair advantage over the competition. The complaint alleges that Apple has undermined messaging across operating systems by excluding its own apps from rival platforms, and that this makes it less secure and less innovative for users.

This is seen as one of the reasons that the company has made it hard for users to leave iPhone, as many iOS apps are not available on Android. The lawsuit alleges that Apple is in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and users its monopoly power to extract high prices from consumers, developers, etc.

The antitrust case also points out that Apple blocks cloud-streaming apps that allow users to stream apps and games. To be fair to Apple, it did open up the market recently to allow cloud-gaming platforms, so services like Xbox’s Game Pass Ultimate and Nvidia’s GeForce Now can be used on iPhone and iPad.

Apple’s failure to provide tap-to-pay (Apple Pay) functionality for third-party digital wallets is also being scrutinized. The lawsuit points out that Apple’s restrictions also affect web browsers, video communication, location services, advertising and other services.

Another argument made by the Justice department targets Apple’s restrictions for third-party smartwatches. Apple does not allow other OEMs to access the APIs required for a watch to read/write fitness data like the Apple Watch can, third-parties have limited access to the data. This is an unfair restriction that stifles the competition.

The company has reportedly claimed that it tried to make the Apple Watch compatible with Android phones, but failed to find a way to do so. I don’t buy this argument. Apple has an Android app for Apple Music, which as you know is a subscription-based service. It shows that the company can, and will provide an app for Android devices, if there is an incentive for it. So, why didn’t Apple create Android apps for Apple Watch and Health? Well, you could argue that if it had done so, Android users would buy the wearable, but they won’t buy an iPhone. By keeping the Watch exclusively compatible with iPhones, it has created an artificial market for the wearable and the iPhone, which is a monopoly.

Source: ghacks

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By Venetia Lai – Among Latinos and Asians living in California, immigrants are less likely than citizens to own a firearm and more likely to report being afraid of becoming a victim of gun violence, according to a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

While gun ownership among both groups of noncitizens was in the single digits, more than half of Latino immigrants and nearly three-quarters of Asian immigrants surveyed said they were worried about becoming a gun-violence victim.

“This study shows that the immigrant population’s concern about gun violence is significant,” said Ninez Ponce, director of the Center for Health Policy Research and principal investigator for the California Health Interview Survey, or CHIS.

Firearm ownership

Prior research showed 17.6% of all California adults own a firearm. However the number is just 6.0% among immigrants, according to 2021 CHIS data in the new study. The authors included naturalized adult citizens in the “citizens” category, as firearm access among naturalized citizens more closely mimics that of citizens than immigrants.

The study, which builds on the earlier research, examines firearm ownership, fears of being a victim of gun violence and firearm storage practices among adults in the two largest immigrant populations in California — Latino and Asian — and compares these with Latino and Asian citizens’ practices.

“The United States has the highest gun ownership rate per capita in the world, yet we know very little about ownership rates across different populations of interests, including immigrants,” said Clarissa Iliff, a doctoral student at UC Irvine and co-author of the study. “We need to analyze how citizenship, fear of victimization and firearm ownership among immigrant populations change over time.”

Study findings show Asian immigrants are more likely than Latino immigrants to own at least one firearm. The rate of gun ownership among Latino citizens was more than four times that of Latino immigrants, at 18.1% versus 4.1%, while ownership rates among Asians were more consistent at 12.6% for citizens and 7.2% for noncitizens.

Fears of gun violence

Yet, 74.9% of Asian immigrants and 53.2% of Latino immigrants said they are “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about being a victim of gun violence. Latino immigrants in that category own more firearms on average compared with Latino immigrants who report being “not too worried” or “not at all worried.”

Among Latino citizens, however, the opposite is true: Those least worried about being a victim of gun violence own more firearms on average than those who are most worried.

Firearm storage practices

Overall, immigrants in California are more likely than citizens to store guns locked and unloaded, at 76.5% versus 45%. Among citizens, 6.1% reported storing at least one gun unlocked and loaded; comparable data for immigrants were unavailable.

The finding that immigrants seemingly take safe firearm storage seriously deserves more attention, the authors said.

“Storing a firearm safely decreases the likelihood of its being used in an accidental shooting in the home, as well as of having the gun stolen and used in a subsequent crime,” said George Tita, professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine and co-author of the study. “Understanding why the safe storage message resonates more strongly with immigrant groups might help us craft more effective messaging to the broad population of gun owners.”

The authors recommend that future research be undertaken to understand the difference in gun ownership rates across all racial, ethnic and citizenship groups. “We need to continue collecting data on gun violence attitudes and issues to help develop policies that benefit all Californians, whether immigrants or citizens,” Ponce said.

Source : Sierra Sun Times

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Deanne Millison, Elizabeth “Liz” Kosobucki and Alec Rogers are joining Ford’s public policy and government affairs team. 

Millison joins as a senior director and was most recently chief economic adviser to Vice President Harris. She previously served as deputy chief of staff and legislative director to then-Sen. Harris and as director for the city of Chicago under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Kosobucki, the former director for Europe in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office of Europe and the Middle East, will be the director for trade policy strategy. Rogers, who served as the legislative director for former Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) and as Republican counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, joins Ford as director of government affairs, tax and finance policy.

Alice Lugo, the former assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will join the government relations practice at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck as senior counsel. Before her time at DHS, Lugo worked on Capitol Hill as chief counsel and senior immigration adviser to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and as counsel to former Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.)

Invariant added Melanie Harris as a senior director, where she will focus on artificial intelligence and technology policy. Harris was the United Kingdom digital policy lead for Amazon Web Services in London. She also worked on military modernization as a professional staff member for the House Armed Services Committee and served as a special assistant to the secretary of Defense and in the National Security Division of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Andrew Mueller is now vice president of government relations at Crowley. Mueller was most recently the senior director of policy and international development for General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy for more than two decades.

John Jacobs joins the Alliance for Automotive Innovation as vice president of industry engagement and partnerships. He was most recently the nonprofit and association industry leader at Hartman Executive Advisors, and he was vice president of marketing, membership and business development at the Telecommunications Industry Association.

Source : The Hill

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The Colorado Republican, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, has attracted controversy. She has alienated fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill and back home. And her reelection prospects are dimming.

President Joe Biden is targeting Boebert. He’ll travel to her district Wednesday to highlight CS Wind, a renewable energy manufacturing company in Pueblo.

Still, Boebert says she’s making a concerted effort to advance policy important to her district.

“Obviously, a lot of people see me as a fighter — I had to fight to get here,” she said in an interview. “But I do believe I have arrived to a position where I am taken seriously in this country as an effective legislator. And I’m very proud of that.”

Such talk might raise eyebrows, especially from someone whose brand has mostly revolved around media appearances, strong fealty to former President Donald Trump and calling those engaged in Covid-19 vaccination outreach “Needle Nazis.”

Infamously, she and a date were kicked out of a Denver theater in September for vaping and groping. Boebert has since apologized.

Boebert campaigned on water issues in her 2020 bid for the House and moved to act on her promises, but her early flirtation with QAnon conspiracy theorists — which she has since disavowed — and actions like calling Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) part of a “Jihad Squad” repeatedly overshadowed her work.

Now some fellow lawmakers and advocates are giving her at least some credit for digging in on policy.

“She’s a serious legislator,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who sits with her on the House Natural Resources Committee.

Even some Democrats are offering grudging respect and have noticed a shift, though with caveats.

“I’m not ready to pronounce her a serious legislator,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said. “But I will say that I appreciate the fact that there’s been a noticeable reduction in the performative antics.”

A review of Boebert’s policy efforts shows she’s getting traction on several fronts.

She has secured amendments to freeze a Biden administration overhaul of oil and gas regulations on federal lands and remove endangered species protections for gray wolves.

Boebert has also secured funding for important district projects like water treatment facilities and irrigation projects. Those would-be successes have yet to be enshrined into federal law.

Some Democrats have noticed her willingness to work with them on certain issues.

“We might disagree on some things,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), who is working with Boebert on a bill — H.R. 8601 and S. 636 — to extend conservation protections in her district.

“But she hasn’t been obnoxious to work with in any way. … Obviously, she’s got a different take on energy than I do. But that’s whether you got spots or stripes,” he added.

The 36-year-old grandmother and former oil pipeline inspector faces a brutal reelection bid, after winning last cycle by just 546 votes.

Democrat Adam Frisch, her 2022 opponent, wasted little time announcing he would seek a rematch.

Before taking on the Democrats, Boebert has to vanquish a competitor from within her own party, Grand Junction-based attorney Jeff Hurd.

Even though he agrees with some of Boebert’s policy positions — on addressing gray wolves, and permitting and regulatory reforms — he said the district deserves a “serious and credible and hardworking” candidate.

Boebert has waved off concerns about her tight race to represent Colorado’s 3rd District, even if she noted the busy congressional calendar has kept her in Washington longer than she’d prefer.

“I like to think I spoiled my constituents being in the district so much last Congress,” she said. “I certainly go home on the weekends and try to visit them as much as possible, but you know … the appearances aren’t going to be as frequent as they were in the first Congress just ’cause there is so much to do on the East Coast.”

Her campaign put a finer point on it.

“Congresswoman Boebert has passed more pieces of legislation out of House committees this year than anyone in Colorado’s House delegation,” campaign manager Drew Sexton said in an email.

“When this election takes place, Colorado’s 3rd District voters will clearly understand she has led the way to securing tens of millions of dollars for water, infrastructure and economic development projects for their communities.”

‘Trying to moderate myself’

Boebert showed up to Congress flaunting her gun and running her mouth, but some Democrats now say she’s figuring out how to holster both those weapons.

Huffman acknowledged that he’s “locked horns” with Boebert on Natural Resources, notably over her gun advocacy and wanting to be armed on Capitol Hill. During an interview this summer, Huffman said he has noticed a change in attitude.

“Hey Lauren!” Huffman yelled over to her. “I just got asked if you have reached out to any Democrats about any bipartisan legislation. Is there anything you would like me to work with you on?”

Boebert had a ready-made list.

“I would like you to help me with my ‘CONVEY Act’ and my Dolores River bill,” she told him, referring to measures that would transfer 31 acres of Bureau of Land Management land to a local county for economic development and the bipartisan conservation effort, respectively.

“These are all natural resources, and I’m currently working on revamping my forestry legislation. And I’m trying to moderate myself with that a little bit so we can get some agreement on it.”

She also has a water bill that would protect the sucker fish.

“It’s Endangered Species Act, you love that,” she told him. “Those are all my top priorities, and I would love to work with you on those.”

As she walked away, Huffman said, “So yeah, you can certainly notice the effort.”

Still, he said, she continues to introduce bills that are “wildly controversial and just terrible policy, and probably terrible politics, too.”

He pointed to her “Trust the Science Act,” H.R. 764, which would require the Interior Department to remove protected status for the gray wolf.

“We had a recent election of both her and the wolf in Colorado,” he said, referring to the state’s 2020 vote on Proposition 114 to reintroduce the gray wolf, which passed by a margin of just 57,000 votes out of more than 3.1 million cast statewide. “The wolf’s more popular. So I question some of the battles she picks.”

‘A serious legislator’

In the recent debate over the fiscal 2024 Interior-Environment spending bill, Boebert succeeded in adding eight amendments to the bill.

Her wins focused on a host of issues popular in her rural district.

Among those was a proposal to shift $5 million from EPA to hazardous fuels reduction in national forest lands, as well as language to halt the BLM’s proposed Fluid Mineral Leases and Leasing Process rule.

Boebert also had some red meat for her conservative base. She floated a proposal to slash the salary of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Liz Klein to $1, calling her a “radical, partisan extremist.” It failed overwhelmingly.

“She’s doing what’s right for her constituents,” said fellow Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, who co-sponsored the gray wolf legislation with Boebert. “She’s doing what’s right for the environment. She’s doing what’s right for wildlife management. She’s principled.”

Another Republican who sits with Boebert on Natural Resources offered high praise.

“I think she’s actually very smart,” said Luna, the Florida Republican. “And she’s been very effective. Oil and gas is a major component of her district so she’s advocating [for her constituents].”

Luna pointed to Boebert scoring six amendments in the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs spending bill.

“That was incredible. She’s a serious legislator. I know the media tries to paint her as not, but she is,” Luna said.

‘Not just all throwing grenades’

Within her district, Boebert has also won praise for her active support of the “Dolores River National Conservation Area and Special Management Area Act,” H.R. 1534.

The bipartisan effort, backed by both of the state’s Democratic senators, would include 52,000 acres of BLM lands and 15,000 acres of Forest Service lands across three counties in the southwest corner of the state.

Those lands would be managed “to conserve, protect, and enhance the native fish, whitewater boating, recreational, scenic, cultural, archaeological, natural, geological, historical, ecological, watershed, wildlife, educational, and scientific resources.”

The proposal is the result of more than two decades of negotiations among local residents and stakeholders to protect the region while avoiding a more restrictive Wild and Scenic River designation.

“The counties have been working on that for a lot of years, so by the time she got elected it was a little late to be a driving force, but she’s definitely been a contributing force,” said Shak Powers, who works for the nonprofit Region 9 Economic Development District of Southwest Colorado, which serves local communities and the Southern Ute and the Ute Mountain Ute Indian tribes.

Powers, who previously worked as Montezuma County’s administrator, which is not an elected position, praised Boebert’s attention to the district, both in terms of constituent services and her legislative efforts.

“She has been very attentive,” Powers said, pointing to Boebert’s work on the Dolores River as well as on drought mitigation projects.

Boebert has been an advocate for both state and federal funds — supporting local grant applications and pursuing a U.S. Forest Service pilot program — for removing invasive species like Russian olives and tamarisk, or salt cedars.

He also credits Boebert for her attention to increasing broadband access in the region, pointing to ongoing efforts by her office to pursue unallocated Federal Communications Commission funds designated for that purpose.

“I think she’s got a lot of political opposition that would just as soon highlight her being far-right and not give her credit for any of the things she does well,” Powers said.

He added: “It’s not just all throwing grenades across the aisle in Congress; she’s doing what she can for the 3rd District.”

Earlier this year, Boebert also began embracing earmarks — funding for specific projects in a district, which was revived by Congress in 2021.

She submitted 10 requestsfor more than $34 million in funds for her sprawling district. She did not request any funding in fiscal 2023.

The projects would bolster reservoirs, address drinking water quality, and build new roads and a bridge. The congressional stalemate on spending, however, could endanger those efforts.

A matter of style?

A sprinkle of bipartisanship may not be enough to secure Boebert’s return for the 119th Congress.

Despite her seat’s Republican advantage — the Cook Political Report gives the GOP a 7-point edge in the district, which spans the entire Western Slope and most of the state’s southern border — observers also see the seat as one of the most competitive of the 2024 cycle. Cook rates the race a toss-up.

That’s in part due to Boebert’s narrow victory in 2022 to Frisch. The former Aspen City Council member has been talking up his prospects in 2024, telling the Guardian last month that people are “sick and tired” of the “circus.” His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

As for the primary challenge, Hurd in October rolled out a major endorsement from former Gov. Bill Owens, the last Republican to lead the state, as well as nabbing the backing of key officials from Delta and Mesa counties.

In an interview, Hurd acknowledged that Boebert has targeted some important issues for the district — including delisting the gray wolf to allow ranchers to protect their livestock — but asserted that she has failed to pursue economic policies that would benefit the rural district.

“We’ve been suffering because of our incumbent’s inability to advance that kind of legislation in a meaningful, bipartisan way,” Hurd said. “I think it’s critical that we have somebody that is principled, but also pragmatic and who recognizes the need to work across the aisle to advance economic issues.”

Hurd noted that even on issues that should be a win for the district, Boebert’s bid for attention stands to derail progress.

He pointed to Boebert’s name for the gray wolf legislation, the “Trust the Science Act,” suggesting that the title could be off-putting to would-be co-sponsors.

“I agree with the policy goal, I think it’s critical that we delist the gray wolf,” Hurd said. “But we need to make sure that if we actually want to get this passed into law, that we can do it in a way that will encourage getting as much support as we can, including from folks on the other side of the political aisle.”

Hurd, who has represented electric cooperatives in his work with the law firm Ireland Stapleton Pryor & Pascoe, added: “I think I would stylistically approach this in a different way.”

Boebert herself expressed little concern that her theatrics could undermine her efforts, even after she introduced articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden, claiming he failed to uphold immigration laws. The effort fizzled on the House floor and angered many Republicans.

Her campaign was unfazed by political attacks of any kind.

“As expected, Congresswoman Boebert’s opponents are flat-out misrepresenting her strong legislative accomplishments,” Sexton said.

Moreover, Boebert said that gender may play a role in how she’s perceived. “I think women do have to prove themselves a little more to be taken seriously,” she said.

Ultimately, she said she’s unconcerned about the year ahead and will continue to fight.

“Democrats are going to try everything they can to buy this seat,” she said. “I am not worried about that.”

Source : E&E News

The post Boebert Leans Into Environment Policy in Bid to Win Over Critics appeared first on Policy Print.

Climate change influences the frequency and intensity of wildfires in many areas of the United States. Trees remove carbon from the atmosphere, so tree planting can mitigate climate change. However, managing forests to prevent large destructive fires can involve thinning and prescribed burning, which releases a portion of forest carbon. To complicate matters further, large fires themselves can release significant carbon.

John W. Coulston and colleagues analyzed data from more than 130,000 national forest inventory plots to project how recent legislation to increase fire management and tree planting in the United States could affect the country’s forest carbon sequestration 30 years into the future, given various fuel management, climate, economic, and energy use scenarios. The research is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

Fuel reduction activities could remove 194–288 million metric tons of carbon from western forests over the next 10 years. However, fuel management can also increase annual net carbon sequestration rates over the long term, both because trees in thinned stands can grow larger faster and because avoided fires reduce overall emissions.

By 2050, fuel management could actually increase annual carbon sequestration over business as usual. This increase is modest, however, and the projected cumulative 2022–2050 carbon sequestered under fuel management scenarios is 200–310 million metric tons less than business as usual.

All wood removed during fuel management was assumed to be an emission for the purposes of the analysis, but the authors note that wood product innovation could change that picture by allowing carbon removed from forests to be stored in durable wood products.

Source : Phys

The post Analyzing Policy-Driven Changes to US Forest Carbon Sequestration appeared first on Policy Print.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to finish the job Ronald Reagan started more than half a century ago as he seeks to transform California’s mental health system — even if it means forcing some people into treatment.

In the last few months, the state established a court intervention program for people with severe mental illness and passed a law making it easier for relatives and first responders to send people to mandatory treatment.

But the biggest potential development will be up to voters: In March, they’ll decide on a $6.4 billion bond proposal Newsom has pitched as part of his plan to build nearly 25,000 psychiatric and addiction beds statewide.

Taken together, Newsom is billing the changes as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally set up the services and systems promised during the Reagan era to replace the giant mental hospitals of the bad old days, when thousands of people were thrown into institutions against their will. The ambitious Democrat is embracing the unlikely goal of building on a bedrock legacy of the conservative icon.

But woven through the overhaul are new ways to compel people into care — and new facilities to house them. Civil rights and mental health advocates fear these changes, advanced amid mounting political pressure to curb homelessness, open drug use and untreated mental illness, will turn back the clock.

“Are we risking institutionalizing people because we have nowhere else to put them?” said Rachel Bhagwat, a legislative advocate for the ACLU California Action, which has lobbied California lawmakers against expanding compelled care.

A similar shift is playing out in Democratic strongholds throughout the country, from Seattle to New York City to Portland, Oregon, as leaders respond to a dramatic rise in homelessness that has made the lack of mental health services highly visible in recent years. But California — which has become the face of those problems with over 100,000 people living on the streets — is the first state where a Democratic governor has pushed such sweeping changes. Home to 12 percent of the country’s population, California accounts for half of the people living on the streets nationwide.

Newsom’s plan reflects a striking tack to the center for California Democrats, who have taken harder lines on homeless encampments. Cities like San Diego have adopted policies including ticketing or arresting those who refuse to leave — a step that anyone on the left would have been loath to deploy just a few years ago.

Hammering the left on homelessness, mental health and addiction is a perennial strategy of the state’s detractors on the right. Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, is constantly asked to answer for images of addiction and disease on the streets of the city’s downtown, and those questions will only get louder if — as widely anticipated — he runs for president in 2028.

Newsom has framed his approach as a course correction decades after the country — starting when Reagan was governor in the 1960s and peaking in the 1980s during his presidency — emptied psychiatric facilities without ensuring the patients received the care or housing they needed.

California alone warehoused 22,000 patients in the 1960s.

“There was a righteousness in the ‘60s, with Democrats and Republicans saying, ‘We have to move away from these locked institutions,’” Newsom said this year before he signed a pair of mental health bills. “We were supposed to replicate that with community-based care and there was no accountability, there was no obligation either way.”

The governor stresses that the bulk of the new services will be voluntary — and will provide shelter to thousands of people ailing on the streets. His bond proposal, combined with three other programs he’s rolled out recently, is expected to fund almost 46,000 outpatient treatment slots.

Today, California has only a vague idea of how many people it can treat in outpatient settings — just that it’s not enough. That number could include slots in group therapy, detox, counseling or a host of other methods that don’t require a license and are hard to count. That’s part of the need for changes, officials say, to finally get a census of where the state is on treatment.

It’s going to require a massive workforce to provide all the treatment the state is promising. Newsom’s proposal includes around $7 billion to beef up the workforce, which will rely on new medical education slots to supply practitioners, as well as people who have been trained as counselors after receiving substance abuse treatment themselves.

“I know critics will say you don’t have the workforce so you can’t change the laws,” said state Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), who wrote one of the laws that will appear on the March ballot. “For mental health care, we seem to think everything has to be existing in its perfect environment before we can make any kind of changes.”

The fact that California is building new treatment facilities and training more staff on this scale is a feat unlike what other states are doing, California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said in an interview. The idea is to strengthen the entire spectrum of care, including with prevention and early interventions.

“But it doesn’t obviate the need for some folks whose conditions become so severe, potentially so violent, so difficult to manage, that they do need some level of involuntary care,” Ghaly said. “The California vision for this is, is that [involuntary treatment] is only used when absolutely necessary.”

Still, the bond measure allows some of the money for residential treatment to be used to build secure psychiatric facilities. California has also made it easier to put people into conservatorships, an arrangement that allows judges to appoint someone to make legal and health decisions for people they deem “gravely disabled” and unable to care for their health and safety. Compelled care, for some, will mean involuntary holds in a psychiatric facility ranging from 24 hours to evaluate a person to 180 days in extreme cases to treat them. Court-ordered treatment plans may include medication, therapy or a housing placement.

Some mental health advocates fear Newsom is overcorrecting.

“We’re looking at all of this, and it’s going in the wrong direction,” said Clare Cortright, policy director for Cal Voices, a coalition of groups that represents community mental health organizations. These groups and others have organized into Californians Against Proposition 1, to oppose the changes on the March ballot. With no professional organization or high-dollar backers, the opposition’s main asset is outrage from people in the mental health system who fear they’ll be funneled into involuntary treatment.

The idea of forcing people into treatment had long been politically untenable for progressive Democrats, who saw it as a civil rights infringement. Until recently, few state lawmakers were willing to call for more conservatorships or court-mandated services outside the justice system — and California’s recent laws reflect a painstaking attempt at balancing such measures with civil rights concerns.

But Democratic mayors of cities in the grips of housing and addiction problems have started loosening or changing laws around civil commitments, in which people living on the street who are unable to care for themselves are given court-ordered treatment plans. Some argue governments need a way to reach people who can’t or won’t seek help on their own.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law this year doubling the length of time people can be held in hospitals against their wills. In Seattle, City Councilmember Sara Nelson is considering expanding the city’s involuntary commitment laws for people with untreated mental health or substance abuse disorders. And San Francisco Mayor London Breed has pitched a proposal to tie local welfare grants to treatment.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, the architect of the nearly 20-year-old mental health law Newsom wants to change, has emerged as a prominent champion of the changes Newsom has proposed — often speaking on behalf of other big-city mayors on the frontlines of California’s homelessness crisis.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has also been a vocal proponent, particularly for California’s new statewide civil court for people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, a Newsom initiative that has begun to operate in a number of counties and will soon launch in Los Angeles. That program, called CARE Courts, may include compelled treatment. Civil rights groups have sued to block the program and the case is ongoing.

“It is profoundly inhumane to allow people to suffer mental illness and die on our streets,” Bass said early this year, shortly after taking office.

Over 80 percent of homeless people in the state report they’ve experienced a serious mental health condition, and two-thirds have struggled with alcohol or drugs. The fentanyl epidemic has created a spike in overdose deaths, with nearly 6,000 dying from fentanyl overdoses alone in California in 2021.

Newsom often invokes the year 1967, when Reagan, then governor, started emptying the state’s large mental institutions in favor of less restrictive care. Most of the money saved by closing hospitals was supposed to go to community treatment. But creating a new treatment system didn’t prove as politically popular as dismantling the old one.

“There was a guy named Ronald Reagan in 1967 — the year of my birth — with good intention and a bipartisan piece of legislation,” Newsom said when he announced his most recent proposal.

“But here we have the opportunity to reimagine and to advance that original vision.”

Source : Politico

The post Gavin Newsom Has Defended California’s Homelessness Crisis. Now He’s Embracing Controversial Policy Changes appeared first on Policy Print.