James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

Their dissatisfaction is indicative of a broader splintering of a restive group of G.O.P. lawmakers who are perpetually unhappy with their leaders, but appear to be reaching a breaking point with the current man at the top.

“Rarely have things been completely harmonious in the conference, but it does seem like there is an unusually high level of discontent,” said Representative Kevin Kiley, a California Republican who has been at odds with Mr. Johnson over the redistricting battles that will likely put him out of a job next year.

He added: “The overriding issue is the House has not been at the forefront of driving policymaking, or the agenda in Washington. That is naturally going to be frustrating to members who ran for Congress to make an impact on issues they care about.”

The rifts have opened as Republicans preparing to face voters in next year’s elections are increasingly worried that they have squandered a year in which their party had total control of government.

Many G.O.P. lawmakers are unhappy with the passive role the speaker has played in the redistricting arms race that has spread across the country and upended districts they know how to win. Even more are angry at his decision to send the House home for nearly eight weeks before and during the government shutdown, limiting what they have been able to accomplish. Members in competitive districts are desperate for a vote on extending expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, which Mr. Johnson is resisting.

Ms. Stefanik told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that Mr. Johnson would not have the support to remain speaker if a vote were held tomorrow, adding that disaffection with him among Republicans was “that widespread.”

Ms. Stefanik declined to speak on the record for this article.

Mr. Johnson declined to comment, as well. But a senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of prolonging an intraparty feud, said that after Mr. Johnson had provided Ms. Stefanik with office space and a budget for what the aide described as “a fake job and a fake title,” he would have expected her to be more gracious.

(After President Trump asked Ms. Stefanik earlier this year to withdraw as his nominee to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Johnson created a new post for her called “chairwoman of House Republican Leadership,” although their relationship had collapsed.)

But Ms. Stefanik is not alone among Republican women in feeling aggrieved by Mr. Johnson. Some of them said privately that the speaker had failed to listen to them or engage in direct conversations on major political and policy issues, suggesting that doing so was a cultural challenge for Mr. Johnson — an evangelical Christian who has often voiced firm views about the distinct roles men and women should play in society.

In a recent podcast interview, for instance, he said that women were not able to compartmentalize their thoughts, and that the member whom he would trust most to cook him Thanksgiving dinner was Representative Lisa McClain of Michigan.

Ms. McClain, the No. 4 Republican, said that the notion of any gender divide in the conference was “an absurd suggestion” that reeked of Democratic bias. Mr. Johnson, she said, “has treated me with nothing less than respect. He values my opinion, not as a woman, but as a trusted colleague.”

But some House Republican women are privately predicting that Mr. Johnson’s speakership will end this term, either as a result of Republicans losing their slim majority before Election Day, or because Mr. Johnson is ousted by his own members, like his predecessor.

“I stand with Elise,” Ms. Mace, who is running for governor in South Carolina, said in a text message on Wednesday morning, a day after Ms. Stefanik’s enmity boiled over into a public feud with Mr. Johnson over a provision she wanted included in the annual defense policy bill.

Ms. Stefanik announced on social media on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had intervened, and that she had prevailed. After a three-way phone call, she said, Mr. Johnson had agreed to include the measure she was demanding that would require disclosure when the F.B.I. opens investigations into political candidates.

That was after she had written on social media that she was receiving “just more lies from the Speaker,” and that Mr. Johnson often falsely claimed to know nothing about an issue. She called it “his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda.”

Some Republicans said the flap was more a personal feud than an institutional problem with Mr. Johnson.

“I’m disappointed that Elise chose this path,” Representative Claudia Tenney, Republican of New York, said in an interview. Ms. Tenney, a close ally of Mr. Johnson’s, said that taking public shots at the speaker was “very unprofessional, and would not be tolerated in any other professional setting.” She suggested that Ms. Stefanik was still bitter over the handling of her cabinet nomination.

.

Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

It’s not normal for public health to be so partisan.

The current administration has slashed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs that protect Americans from cancer, heart disease, stroke, birth defects and workplace harms. It has derailed lifesaving programs created by President George W. Bush that protect children from malaria and prevent the spread of HIV, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. The scientist selected by this administration to lead the CDC was fired after less than a month. Most of CDC’s top leaders have been fired or resigned, as have more than one quarter of CDC staff. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., replaced the advisory group that issues vaccine guidance with people who know little about vaccines and have made recommendations that don’t reflect evidence. This partisanship is unhealthy, and it’s poisoning our societal immune system.

When public health succeeds, we don’t notice—water, air, and food don’t make us sick, and our kids don’t get hit by cars, start smoking or get preventable infections. But when public health fails, we suffer.

Fewer people are getting COVID shots and other lifesaving vaccines, government is slower to respond to outbreaks, and smokers have a harder time quitting because of cuts to the quit-smoking hotlines and antismoking campaigns. More dangerous damage will be less visible: ending systems that track risks to mothers and infants and other systems that track and stop health risks. When we can’t find threats as fast or respond as rapidly, the next health disaster is likely to be more deadly than it would otherwise be.

Scientists, health professionals, community leaders and all who care about facts and fairness must protect what keeps us safe, patch what’s broken and lay the groundwork for faster, more effective health and public health systems.

To do this, we must first stop the bleeding, starting with the disease of disinformation. Distrust drives avoidable illness and death; a real-time “health beacon” could counter today’s firehose of falsehoods. Artificial intelligence can detect emerging rumors and draft initial responses for specialist review; experts can curate evidence-based, nonpartisan, verifiable responses that pre-bunk predictable myths and debunk new viral claims. Fact-based messages—shared through short, engaging videos and trusted channels—can help truth move as fast as falsehood.

One particularly urgent area is vaccines. Misinformation profiteers spread the false claim that vaccines cause autism, sell unproven “detox” therapies and undermine trust. Secretary Kennedy’s team seeks to make autism compensable under vaccine-injury rules, turning diagnoses into groundless lawsuits while draining resources from real causes and care. Scientists, clinicians and informed citizens should challenge false claims publicly, support credible sources of evidence and press policy makers to base decisions on facts.

Only the national government can coordinate disease surveillance across borders, fund specialized laboratories, safeguard vaccine safety, manage stockpiles and emergency response, and support health departments nationwide. All of us should demand that Congress—and hope that the courts—halt staff and program cuts that Congress didn’t approve and restore essential protections that keep people safe. Congress must also require HHS to spend and account for the funds it has authorized.

But when the federal system falters, others must protect people from avoidable harm. States, cities and professional societies can’t replace national capacity, but they can keep essential protections from collapsing. The newly launched Northeast Health Collaborative, linking 10 states and cities, shares data, laboratory resources and outbreak expertise to preserve core functions and test practical innovations. Northwestern states are also organizing, and a nationwide 15-state network now coordinates responses to emerging threats.

Professional societies can also fill gaps. When official COVID-19 vaccine guidance weakened, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Family Physicians issued clear, evidence-based recommendations for children, pregnant women and adults. Other organizations must follow.

Universities and state governments must step up to preserve and gather data. CDC and other health datasets should be preserved; ongoing data collection should continue through states, universities and researchers. Without data, we can’t see risks and progress, fix failures and defend successes.

We must build a system that works faster and operates transparently. The 7-1-7 target—find disease outbreaks within seven days, report them within one and mount essential control measures within seven more—is one such system and shows what faster response can achieve. Developed by my organization and used in nearly 50 countries, the approach sets measurable goals that accelerate progress and strengthen accountability. In Uganda, during a recent cholera outbreak near a border area, disease detectives met 7-1-7 targets, showing that faster action can stop outbreaks. In the U.S., few jurisdictions measure response speed—and those that do often find they fall short but improve once they track results. When every outbreak becomes a way to improve, systems improve more quickly, and the openness of results builds confidence—both among the public and among those who decide how to fund health protection systems.

Results build trust. When air quality improves and asthma attacks drop, people notice. When contaminated water is cleaned, communities feel safer. When outbreaks are stopped early, confidence grows.We must stop partisanship from interfering with the basic systems that keep us safe. Every year we fail to strengthen our health defenses, lives are lost and costs rise. Every month we allow distrust to spread, the next outbreak gets harder to stop.

.

Monty Rakusen/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

President Donald Trump’s Venezuela regime change adventure is in danger of degenerating into a strategic, political and legal morass.

Trump gathered top national security officials and aides at an Oval Office meeting Monday evening, seeking to define next steps in a showdown now slipping out of his control, both inside the impoverished oil-rich nation and in Washington.

Before the talks, President Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator, defiantly danced before a huge crowd of supporters in Caracas in a Trump-style open-air rally, shattering previous rumors he’d bowed to US calls to leave the country. “We do not want peace of slaves, nor do we want peace of colonies,” Maduro said.

The thin domestic political underpinnings of Trump’s campaign are growing more fragile as the White House fails to quell a growing controversy over a follow-up US strike that reportedly killed surviving crew members of an alleged drugs trafficking boat in the Caribbean. Trump’s Democratic critics on Capitol Hill are warning of a potential war crime. And several powerful Republicans are shaken and are signaling a rare willingness to rigorously investigate the administration.

The US standoff with Venezuela is now beginning to consume Washington after more than four months of escalating political, economic, and military pressure, epitomized by the hulking presence of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald. R. Ford and an armada of US ships in the waters off Venezuela.

There is increasing scrutiny of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s role in the boat strikes. The former Fox News anchor was a controversial pick to run the Pentagon, and his lack of experience, abrasive manner, and rejection of some the military’s ethical and legal safeguards is threatening to make him a political burden for the president as Democrats demand his resignation.

But more broadly, Maduro’s defiance is presenting Trump, Hegseth, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other top officials expected at the Oval Office meeting with a deepening strategic dilemma.

Trump is talking a big game.

On Thursday, he threatened attacks on drug cartel targets on land in Venezuela would begin “very soon.” He declared on Saturday the country’s airspace should be considered closed. But Maduro went nowhere. The US president — who has been sensitive in the past to any suggestion he “chickens out” after making threats — must now consider whether his saber rattling is beginning to lack credibility without a demonstration of military force that would draw him into an overseas conflict.

Maduro defying US ‘options’ to leave

Washington hopes that its military build-up so rattles Maduro that he accepts exile overseas or that inner circle generals topple him. Trump confirmed Sunday he spoke to Maduro by phone recently — but the Venezuelan strongman stayed put. Venezuelan opposition politician David Smolansky told Jim Sciutto on “The Brief” on CNN International Monday that Maduro had previously been given “options” by the United States to leave the country.

But the failure of the regime to crack so far will test Trump’s willingness to live up to his threat to do things the “hard way” as Maduro characteristically drags out negotiations and crises to weaken the will of his adversaries.

Maduro’s obduracy also raises the question of whether any level of US pressure short of military action would begin to fray his regime. One possibility is that the administration underestimated the staying power of the Maduro power base — a regular failing for US governments over the years that hoped to see the collapse of totalitarian rivals in enemy nations. Maduro will be hoping that Trump loses patience, starts looking for culprits in his inner circle and seeks his own way out.

If the president does pick military action, the idea of a full-scale invasion of Venezuela still seems unthinkable. So, does he have options that would so rattle Maduro’s security that it could change the political equation in Caracas? Or would attacks on alleged drugs trafficking sites or military bases embolden Maduro, unify public opinion around him, and make him believe he can tough it out?

The choices facing Trump are especially stark because a largely peaceful ouster of Maduro that delivered freedom to millions of Venezuelans after two decades of dictatorial rule and a restored democracy would be a foreign policy triumph. It would also send a message of US power and intent to other US foes in the region, including Cuba, and show China and Russia, which try to create regional influence and disruption, that Trump rules his geopolitical backyard. A successful Venezuela strategy could confound establishment foreign policy critics just as Trump did by bombing Iran’s nuclear plants earlier this year, a gamble that was more successful and triggered fewer dangerous consequences than many experts had feared.

But if Maduro survives the US troop buildup and intense pressure, he’d deliver a devastating statement of his own to Trump. The president’s authority would ebb. Autocrats in Beijing and Moscow, who he loves to impress, would take note. Presidents who recall aircraft carrier battlegroups from Europe and station them off Latin America amid belligerent rhetoric tend to create such credibility tests for themselves.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.

But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.

Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him.

The officials clarified the sequence of events amid the political and legal uproar that has followed a report in The Washington Post last week. It said that Admiral Bradley ordered the second strike to fulfill a directive by Mr. Hegseth to kill everyone. The reaction has included questions about whether Mr. Hegseth specifically ordered an execution of shipwrecked sailors in violation of the laws of war.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday night, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Hegseth had denied ordering a second strike to kill two people who were wounded but still alive after the first one, saying, “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.”

Mr. Trump also sought to distance himself from the follow-up strike, saying he “wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike,” although he said the first one was “fine.” He defended his broader policy of having the military use lethal force against people suspected of smuggling drugs. Starting with the Sept. 2 attack, his administration has said it has carried out 21 such strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 83 people.

Mr. Hegseth called The Post’s reporting “fabricated” and “inflammatory.” “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’” he wrote on social media.

In another social media statement, on Monday, Mr. Hegseth said he stood by Admiral Bradley and what he called the admiral’s “combat decisions” in the strike. “Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support,” he wrote. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.”

Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Monday that he had spoken with Mr. Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the strikes and that his committee would conduct a congressional investigation into the matter.

The defense secretary also spoke with Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, according to a U.S. official.

In interviews on Monday, two U.S. officials — both of whom were supportive of the administration’s boat strikes — described a meeting before the attack at which Mr. Hegseth had briefed Special Operations Forces commanders on his execute order to engage the boat with lethal force.

That written order, they said, did not address what should happen if people survived the first strike.

.

The suggestion that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or his officials targeted shipwrecked survivors has been galvanizing because that would apparently be a war crime even if one accepts Trump officials’ broader argument for the strike campaign.Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

A long-quiet volcano in Ethiopia spewed ash nine miles into the sky on Sunday, marking the first known major eruption from this volcano for more than 12,000 years.

Under-studied and situated in Ethiopia’s arid, rural northeast, volcano Hayli Gubbi’s towering ash column may be a clue to other, undetected eruptions in that period, says Juliet Biggs, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol in England.

“I would be really surprised if [more than 12,000 years ago] really is the last eruption date,” Biggs says. While there have been no confirmed eruptions in that time span, satellite images hint that the volcano may have recently burped out lava, she says.

Either way, this eruption is highly unusual. Hayli Gubbi is a shield volcano, like Hawaii’s Mauna Loa. These volcanoes are known for oozing lava flows, not expelling giant columns of ash.

“To see a big eruption column, like a big umbrella cloud, is really rare in this area,” Biggs says.

Hayli Gubbi sits in the East African Rift Zone, a region where the African and Arabian plates are pulling apart at a rate of about 0.4 to 0.6 inches a year, says Arianna Soldati, a volcanologist at North Carolina State University. If the two plates keep moving apart, then eventually the Arabian Sea and rift valley will become a new ocean.

As the Earth’s crust pulls apart, it stretches and thins, and hot rocks rise up from the mantle, melting into magma toward the surface.

“So long as there are still the conditions for magma to form, a volcano can still have an eruption even if it hasn’t had one in 1,000 years, 10,000 years,” Soldati says.

Researchers had some idea an eruption at Hayli Gubbi was possible, Biggs says. In July, another active volcano nearby called Erta Ale erupted in a shower of ash. At the same time, satellite data revealed ground movement showing that an intrusion of magma from Erta Ale had pushed more than 18 miles below the surface, under Hayli Gubbi and beyond. Biggs and her collaborators had also recorded white puffy clouds at its summit, and the ground at the volcano had risen a few centimeters.

Sunday’s eruption, which poses little danger to people given its remote location, has kicked off a scientific scramble. Derek Keir, an earth scientist at the University of Southampton in England, happened to be in Ethiopia when the volcano blew; on Monday, he collected samples of the new ash. These will help reveal what kind of magma caused the eruption, Biggs says. Lava flows from the volcano could also reveal if Hayli Gubbi truly was quiet for 12,000 years.

“It really just shows how understudied this region is,” Biggs says.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________