vox--2020-09-10--Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist is an attempt to remind his base why they love him

President Trump released a list of 20 names on Wednesday , pledging that he will use these names — plus a longer list he ’ s already released — to select his next Supreme Court nominee if he has the opportunity to do so .
In 2016 , Trump released a list of 11 candidates for a seat on the Supreme Court as part of an attempt to shore up Republican voters who were unsure that Trump would appoint loyal conservatives to the federal bench .
Many Republicans , including some of the party ’ s top leaders , believe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 2019 address to the Federalist Society , an influential conservative group that plays a significant role in selecting Trump ’ s judicial nominees , Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ( R-KY ) claimed that “ the single biggest issue that brought nine out of 10 Republican voters home to Donald Trump ... was the Supreme Court.
” That ’ s almost certainly an exaggeration .
But the fact remains that top Republicans believe that Trump stumbled upon an effective political strategy in 2016 , so it ’ s smart politics for him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And , as a bonus , Trump released his new list on the same day that veteran journalist Bob Woodward released new audio showing that Trump intentionally deceived the American people about the dangers of Covid-19 .
The Supreme Court list could potentially distract from that damning news .
So this is primarily a political move intended to shore up Trump ’ s base .
That said , the Trump White House and his allies in the Senate have spent years preparing for the next Supreme Court vacancy .
The judicial selection process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competent operation in this administration .
Trump has filled the bench with fairly young , impressively credentialed ideologues who will reliably cast very conservative votes if appointed to the Supreme Court , and his Supreme Court shortlist reflects that work .
Half of the names that Trump just announced are people he previously appointed to a lower court , and several more are individuals he ’ s appointed to non-judicial roles .
And it doesn ’ t actually matter all that much which specific name Trump chooses from his list — or whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Though Trump has kept his promise to only name Supreme Court justices from a pre-released list , he frequently adds new names to it .
Neither of Trump ’ s Supreme Court appointees , Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh , was on the original list Trump first released in 2016 , but were added in subsequent iterations .
What all the names on the list have in common — both old and new — is that they were vetted by Trump ’ s team ( and often by the conservative Federalist Society ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That said , there is one important divide among the names on Trump ’ s list .
Some , such as former Solicitor General Paul Clement or Fourth Circuit Judge Allison Jones Rushing , are solid conservatives who aren ’ t known for over-the-top , Trumpy rhetoric .
Others , such as Sens .
Ted Cruz ( R-TX ) , Josh Hawley ( R-MO ) , and Tom Cotton ( R-AR ) are politicians who spent their time in Congress flaunting their conservative bona fides and enraging Democrats .
Still others , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Kyle Duncan , are sitting judges who take the same trolly approach as Cruz , Hawley , and Cotton , but do so from the bench .
The biggest mystery , in other words , is not what the next potential Trump nominee to the Supreme Court might believe , it ’ s whether Trump would pick someone with a professional demeanor — or choose a professional troll .
Who is on Trump ’ s list ?
The 20-name list Trump released on Wednesday augments an existing list of 25 names that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the names on both lists possess many of the elite credentials one would expect to find in a Supreme Court nominee .
Close to half of the individuals on the new list clerked on the Supreme Court shortly after graduating from law school .
And , though the lists include a few politicians like the three senators mentioned above and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron , both lists are dominated by sitting judges — including many Trump appointees .
Because so many Trump appointees make the list , many of these judges have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ records on the bench .
But several of the names on Trump ’ s new list will raise deep concerns among Democrats .
Judge James Ho , for example , has spent his not even three years on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit writing opinions that read like something published by Breitbart .
His very first judicial opinion was a sweeping attack on campaign finance laws — and it included an entirely gratuitous swipe at the Affordable Care Act .
Ho argued that “ if you don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then you should oppose big government in our lives , ” and he cited the Supreme Court ’ s decision largely upholding Obamacare to drive home his point .
Ho has also railed against the “ moral tragedy of abortion ” in an opinion where he accused a fellow federal judge of retaliating “ against people of faith for not only believing in the sanctity of life—but also for wanting to do something about it.
” Ho ’ s Fifth Circuit colleague Kyle Duncan , meanwhile , spent much of his pre-judicial career @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to vote .
As a judge , he ’ s best known for an opinion where he spent more than 10 pages explaining why he insists on referring to a transgender woman using masculine pronouns .
Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke is a particularly surprising addition to Trump ’ s list because VanDyke ’ s nomination to the federal bench was panned by the American Bar Association due to concerns that VanDyke is too lazy to do the job .
“ Mr .
VanDyke ’ s accomplishments are offset by the assessments of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lazy , an ideologue , and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules , ” the ABA explained in a scathing letter deeming him unqualified for the federal bench .
The ABA ’ s investigation found that VanDyke “ lacks humility , has an ‘ entitlement ’ temperament , does not have an open mind , and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful.
” It ’ s unclear why Trump loyalists would want to see someone appointed to the Supreme Court who may lack the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the job well .
That said , VanDyke is an outlier on Trump ’ s list .
For the most part , the nearly four dozen names Trump has suggested as possible Supreme Court nominees are diligent and highly talented lawyers .
They just also happen to be lawyers who are eager to move the law sharply to the right .
The White House ’ s judicial selection process is the most professional operation in the Trump administration .
The name “ Donald Trump ” is practically synonymous with goonish incompetence .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nothing like Donald Trump .
It is both efficient and highly effective in identifying reliable conservative ideologues with sterling legal resumes .
In less than four years as president , Trump has appointed 201 lawyers to lifetime appointments on the federal bench , including 53 to powerful seats on the United States Courts of Appeal .
By contrast , President Obama appointed only 55 appellate judges during his eight years as president .
One reason for this disparity is that Senate Republicans , led by McConnell , imposed a near-total blockade on appeals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two years in the White House .
That meant that Trump has effectively been able to fill all the appeals court vacancies that arose during his presidency plus nearly all the vacancies that should have been filled in Obama ’ s last two years in office .
Trump ’ s judges , moreover , are quite young .
“ The average age of circuit judges appointed by President Trump is less than 50 years old , ” the Trump White House bragged in November of 2019 , “ a full 10 years younger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s circuit nominees.
” And a large percentage of them have amassed impressive credentials such as Supreme Court clerkships and other government jobs of great influence .
All of this is a reason for liberals to be more afraid of Trump ’ s judges — and potential justices — than if Trump were picking undistinguished hacks to fill the bench .
Judges of great ability are far more likely to find innovative ways to reshape the law than incompetents and mediocrities .
Moreover , Trump is filling the bench with some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the very moment when the judiciary is gaining power relative to the other branches .
As I wrote several months ago in a piece laying out Trump ’ s impact on the bench : If Trump gets to replace a liberal justice , this practice of judicial policymaking will only accelerate .
Environmental regulations are likely to be dismantled en masse .
Voting rights will be hollowed out even more .
Obamacare could be struck down .
And , perhaps most significantly , purely partisan Republican arguments will gain even more purchase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ names to the Supreme Court , if Trump ’ s allowed to do so , is likely to push the law relentlessly to the right .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

On September 9 — just last week — President Trump unveiled his shortlist of candidates to tap for the Supreme Court should a vacancy open up under his presidency.
With Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death Friday night, he now has that opportunity.
The next Trump Supreme Court pick may well come from a list of 20 names he revealed last week, plus a longer list he had already released.
The Trump White House and his allies in the Senate have spent years preparing for the next Supreme Court vacancy.
Indeed, the judicial selection process may be the one professional and highly competent operation in this administration. Trump has filled the bench with fairly young, impressively credentialed ideologues who will reliably cast very conservative votes if appointed to the Supreme Court, and his Supreme Court shortlist reflects that work. Half of the names that Trump just announced are people he previously appointed to a lower court, and several more are individuals he’s appointed to non-judicial roles.
And it doesn’t actually matter all that much which specific name Trump chooses from his list — or whether he ultimately decides to go off-list. Though Trump has kept his promise to only name Supreme Court justices from a prereleased list, he frequently adds new names to it. Neither of Trump’s Supreme Court appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, was on the original list Trump first released in 2016, but were added in subsequent iterations.
What all the names on the list have in common — both old and new — is that they were vetted by Trump’s team (and often by the conservative Federalist Society) to ensure that they are reliable conservatives.
That said, there is one important divide among the names on Trump’s list.
Some, such as former Solicitor General Paul Clement or Fourth Circuit Judge Allison Jones Rushing, are solid conservatives who aren’t known for over-the-top, Trumpy rhetoric. Others, such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Tom Cotton (R-AR) are politicians who spent their time in Congress flaunting their conservative bona fides and enraging Democrats. Still others, such as Fifth Circuit Judges James Ho and Kyle Duncan, are sitting judges who take the same trolly approach as Cruz, Hawley, and Cotton, but do so from the bench.
The biggest mystery, in other words, is not what the next potential Trump nominee to the Supreme Court might believe, it’s whether Trump would pick someone with a professional demeanor — or choose a professional troll.
Who is on Trump’s list?
The 20-name list Trump released last week augments an existing list of 25 names that he has released gradually.
Most of the names on both lists possess many of the elite credentials one would expect to find in a Supreme Court nominee. Close to half of the individuals on the new list clerked on the Supreme Court shortly after graduating from law school. And, though the lists include a few politicians like the three senators mentioned above and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, both lists are dominated by sitting judges — including many Trump appointees.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, of the Seventh Circuit, is a prominent Trump appointee on both lists. She was favored by religious conservatives for Trump’s previous Court pick, perceived as potentially more likely to allow restrictions on abortions than Brett Kavanaugh.
Because so many Trump appointees make the list, many of these judges have not served long enough to develop substantial records on the bench. But several of the names on Trump’s new list will raise deep concerns among Democrats.
Judge James Ho has spent his not even three years on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit writing opinions that read like something published by Breitbart. His very first judicial opinion was a sweeping attack on campaign finance laws — and it included an entirely gratuitous swipe at the Affordable Care Act. Ho argued that “if you don’t like big money in politics, then you should oppose big government in our lives,” and he cited the Supreme Court’s decision largely upholding Obamacare to drive home his point.
Ho has also railed against the “moral tragedy of abortion” in an opinion where he accused a fellow federal judge of retaliating “against people of faith for not only believing in the sanctity of life—but also for wanting to do something about it.”
Ho’s Fifth Circuit colleague Kyle Duncan, meanwhile, spent much of his pre-judicial career litigating against LGBTQ rights and the right to vote. As a judge, he’s best known for an opinion where he spent more than 10 pages explaining why he insists on referring to a transgender woman using masculine pronouns.
Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke is a particularly surprising addition to Trump’s list because VanDyke’s nomination to the federal bench was panned by the American Bar Association due to concerns that VanDyke is too lazy to do the job.
“Mr. VanDyke’s accomplishments are offset by the assessments of interviewees that Mr. VanDyke is arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules,” the ABA explained in a scathing letter deeming him unqualified for the federal bench. The ABA’s investigation found that VanDyke “lacks humility, has an ‘entitlement’ temperament, does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful.”
It’s unclear why Trump loyalists would want to see someone appointed to the Supreme Court who may lack the temperament and the work ethic to do the job well.
That said, VanDyke is an outlier on Trump’s list. For the most part, the nearly four dozen names Trump has suggested as possible Supreme Court nominees are diligent and highly talented lawyers. They just also happen to be lawyers who are eager to move the law sharply to the right.
The White House’s judicial selection process is the most professional operation in the Trump administration
To his many critics, “Donald Trump” is a name practically synonymous with goonish incompetence. But Trump’s judicial selection operation is nothing like that. It is both efficient and highly effective in identifying reliable conservative ideologues with sterling legal resumes.
In less than four years as president, Trump has appointed 201 lawyers to lifetime appointments on the federal bench, including 53 to powerful seats on the United States Courts of Appeal. By contrast, President Obama appointed only 55 appellate judges during his eight years as president.
One reason for this disparity is that Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, imposed a near-total blockade on appeals court confirmations during Obama’s final two years in the White House. That meant that Trump has effectively been able to fill all the appeals court vacancies that arose during his presidency, plus nearly all the vacancies that should have been filled in Obama’s last two years in office.
Trump’s judges, moreover, are quite young. “The average age of circuit judges appointed by President Trump is less than 50 years old,” the Trump White House bragged in November of 2019, “a full 10 years younger than the average age of President Obama’s circuit nominees.” And a large percentage of them have amassed impressive credentials such as Supreme Court clerkships and other government jobs of great influence.
All of this is a reason for liberals to be more afraid of Trump’s judges — and potential justices — than if Trump were picking undistinguished hacks to fill the bench. Judges of great ability are far more likely to find innovative ways to reshape the law than incompetents and mediocrities.
Moreover, Trump is filling the bench with some of the Federalist Society’s brightest minds at the very moment when the judiciary is gaining power relative to the other branches. As I wrote several months ago in a piece laying out Trump’s impact on the bench:
If Trump gets to replace a liberal justice, this practice of judicial policymaking will only accelerate. Environmental regulations are likely to be dismantled en masse. Voting rights will be hollowed out even more. Obamacare could be struck down. And, perhaps most significantly, purely partisan Republican arguments will gain even more purchase in the Supreme Court.
Anyone Trump names to the Supreme Court, if Trump’s allowed to do so, is likely to push the law relentlessly to the right.


vox--2020-09-10--There might be a shortage of election poll workers. Corporate America wants to help.

On August 31 , Civic Alliance announced that more than 60 of its “ member companies ” — which include Starbucks , Old Navy , Target , and Microsoft — will work to encourage employees and consumers to serve as poll workers .
The organization set a recruitment goal of 350,000 poll workers , the projected number of staffers necessary to keep precincts up and running smoothly .
The 2020 election is less than two months away , and for months , voting rights organizations have sounded the alarm bells about the possibility of a poll worker shortage .
Poll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters at their local precinct , check their registration , and direct them to voting booths .
According to Pew ’ s Stateline , these staffers ’ presence could be “ the difference between a smooth election and long lines , mass confusion , and miscounted ballots.
” Anyone over 16 can sign up to work during Election Day and be compensated for their time .
However , a majority of these crucial workers are usually senior citizens , who are likely to refrain from working at the polls out of concern for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prior to the coronavirus , however , nearly 70 percent of states and jurisdictions have struggled to recruit a sufficient number of staff .
The responsibility of poll worker recruitment should theoretically fall on local and state policymakers , but currently , corporations are jumping in to fill this gap and partnering with bipartisan voter organizations , like Civic Alliance and Power to the Polls , to address the shortage .
Old Navy , a subsidiary of Gap , Inc. , announced on September 1 that its employees would receive a day ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up to work at the polls .
Target , Warby Parker , and DC-based coffee chain Compass Coffee will also give workers paid time off to serve as election workers .
On top of these efforts , high-profile companies like Starbucks , Twitter , PayPal , Walmart , and Uber have said they plan to give workers time off to vote .
Some are offering workers as little as three hours of paid leave while others are giving employees Election Day off .
Heather Marshall , a café manager at Compass , told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had voted via absentee ballot , and that the thought of serving as a poll worker hadn ’ t really crossed her mind when she was a college student .
“ Given the pandemic , I wasn ’ t sure what this year would look like in terms of in-person voting , ” she wrote via email .
“ So when [ Compass employees ] were approached with the idea [ to be poll workers ] , I knew it was something for which I needed to volunteer my time .
I want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ensure a free , fair , and Covid-19 safe election.
” This push from employers like Compass to staff up the polls is the latest move by corporate America to encourage civic participation , as companies take on a “ pro-democracy and pro-voter ” stance without fear of alienating the political views of any given customer or employee .
In 2018 , Bloomberg reported that a record 44 percent of US firms committed to giving workers paid time off to vote in the midterm elections ; this was an increase of 7 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to the Society for Human Resources Management .
For the 2018 midterms , the outdoor apparel company Patagonia launched a campaign called Time to Vote and enlisted 411 companies that represent over 2 million workers .
In addition to staffing up election sites this year , companies are also donating personal protective equipment , disseminating information about how to vote , and even offering up building space , the director of Civic Alliance told the Wall Street Journal .
American consumers and workers increasingly expect corporations to take stances , or at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social issues .
A 2019 case study by the Harvard Kennedy School found that consumers are more likely to buy from companies that have encouraged people to participate in the democratic process .
The companies analyzed in the study , which included Snapchat , Spotify , Patagonia , Target , and Gap , had a range of voter engagement programs — from internal efforts directed at employees to public campaigns that sought to reach millions of people .
“ What ’ s interesting is that more and more companies are making their voting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of knowledge away from the individual , ” said Philip Chen , an assistant professor of political science at Beloit College .
“ Before this , if you didn ’ t have the civic knowledge or engagement to figure out that you are legally allowed to have three unpaid or paid hours to go vote , you probably weren ’ t going to vote.
” Employee voting policies , though , fluctuate depending on the company : Patagonia will shut down all of its operations on Election Day ( as it did in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will grant its employees three hours off if the hours of their shift prevent them from voting .
In some cases , workers will have to give their supervisor a day ’ s notice about their need to leave to vote , since managers are creating “ voting plans ” to ensure that shifts remain staffed on Election Day .
“ What ’ s interesting is that more and more companies are making their voting policies public , which shifts the burden of knowledge away from the individual ” These corporate-driven voter initiatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ companies decades ago remained mum on the issue .
However , the growing involvement of employers — and the reliance on companies to staff polls and increase turnout — is emblematic of the US being “ an outlier in established democracies , ” Chen said .
The US ’ s voter turnout rate is behind that of other established democracies : In the 2016 presidential election , the Census Bureau reported that only 61 percent of the voting-age population cast a ballot .
That ’ s low compared to countries like Belgium ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 82 percent ) ; America ranks 26th out of 32 developed democracies when it comes to voter participation .
Voting is not compulsory in the United States , nor is voter registration automatic or simple .
Plus , there isn ’ t a federal holiday for citizens to take time off from work to vote .
( Thanks to a federal law passed by Congress in the 19th century , Election Day always falls on a Tuesday in November . )
This is unlike what other democracies have : Countries like Austria , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attendance at the polls , while others like France , Israel , and South Korea vote on weekends or have instituted federal holidays to encourage turnout .
In the US , however , each state has established its own voting laws .
“ The short answer is , these laws are entirely dependent on the state , ” Chen told Vox .
“ Some states require paid time off , while others have universal vote-by-mail .
Some have no requirements and simply encourage employers to allow their workers to vote .
Most states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle where workers have to meet a set of criteria to take off time to vote.
” In 13 states , Election Day is a paid holiday for state employees , although workers might only get a few hours of leave .
Meanwhile , in places like Oregon and Washington , residents have ballots mailed out to them , so voting is a task primarily completed at home .
With more companies actively encouraging their employees to vote and serve as poll workers , that could likely contribute to an improvement in turnout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predict how the coronavirus pandemic and the Postal Service slowdown will affect the 2020 election and voter participation .
During the primaries earlier this year , the Washington Post reported that some half a million mail-in ballots were rejected as a result of late delivery or voter error .
Plus , as Recode ’ s Adam Clark Estes reported , mail service has recently been disrupted nationwide due to Covid-19 and a series of cost-cutting policies instituted by its new postmaster general , Louis DeJoy .
Voting rights advocates and politicians are encouraging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early , and tech companies like Snapchat and Facebook are rolling out “ voter checklist ” features for users to easily register .
Companies are trying to reduce institutional barriers to voting , but political scientists aren ’ t exactly certain how having a federal voting holiday or automatic registration would increase turnout , Chen added .
“ These barriers absolutely have an effect , but it ’ s hard to figure out the exact effect.
” What these corporations are looking to do is “ trying to approximate the system we see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ They ’ re trying to replicate what we see with paid election holidays , which certainly helps with informing people , and it also looks good from a corporate standpoint.
” Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

On August 31, Civic Alliance announced that more than 60 of its “member companies” — which include Starbucks, Old Navy, Target, and Microsoft — will work to encourage employees and consumers to serve as poll workers. The organization set a recruitment goal of 350,000 poll workers, the projected number of staffers necessary to keep precincts up and running smoothly.
The 2020 election is less than two months away, and for months, voting rights organizations have sounded the alarm bells about the possibility of a poll worker shortage. Poll workers are the community members who greet voters at their local precinct, check their registration, and direct them to voting booths. According to Pew’s Stateline, these staffers’ presence could be “the difference between a smooth election and long lines, mass confusion, and miscounted ballots.” Anyone over 16 can sign up to work during Election Day and be compensated for their time. However, a majority of these crucial workers are usually senior citizens, who are likely to refrain from working at the polls out of concern for their health during a pandemic. Even prior to the coronavirus, however, nearly 70 percent of states and jurisdictions have struggled to recruit a sufficient number of staff.
The responsibility of poll worker recruitment should theoretically fall on local and state policymakers, but currently, corporations are jumping in to fill this gap and partnering with bipartisan voter organizations, like Civic Alliance and Power to the Polls, to address the shortage.
Old Navy, a subsidiary of Gap, Inc., announced on September 1 that its employees would receive a day’s worth of pay if they signed up to work at the polls. Target, Warby Parker, and DC-based coffee chain Compass Coffee will also give workers paid time off to serve as election workers. On top of these efforts, high-profile companies like Starbucks, Twitter, PayPal, Walmart, and Uber have said they plan to give workers time off to vote. Some are offering workers as little as three hours of paid leave while others are giving employees Election Day off.
Poll workers are needed now more than ever. We’re proud to offer paid time off to our team volunteering on Election Day, and we want YOU to join us. By volunteering you are making a real and meaningful difference in our democracy. Check out @PowerThePolls for more info! pic.twitter.com/HsJCtmnvow — Compass Coffee (@CompassCoffeeDC) September 1, 2020
Heather Marshall, a café manager at Compass, told Vox that in previous years, she had voted via absentee ballot, and that the thought of serving as a poll worker hadn’t really crossed her mind when she was a college student. “Given the pandemic, I wasn’t sure what this year would look like in terms of in-person voting,” she wrote via email. “So when [Compass employees] were approached with the idea [to be poll workers], I knew it was something for which I needed to volunteer my time. I want to be any part of the effort to ensure a free, fair, and Covid-19 safe election.”
This push from employers like Compass to staff up the polls is the latest move by corporate America to encourage civic participation, as companies take on a “pro-democracy and pro-voter” stance without fear of alienating the political views of any given customer or employee. In 2018, Bloomberg reported that a record 44 percent of US firms committed to giving workers paid time off to vote in the midterm elections; this was an increase of 7 percentage points from the 2016 election, according to the Society for Human Resources Management. For the 2018 midterms, the outdoor apparel company Patagonia launched a campaign called Time to Vote and enlisted 411 companies that represent over 2 million workers. In addition to staffing up election sites this year, companies are also donating personal protective equipment, disseminating information about how to vote, and even offering up building space, the director of Civic Alliance told the Wall Street Journal.
American consumers and workers increasingly expect corporations to take stances, or at the very least engage on political and social issues. A 2019 case study by the Harvard Kennedy School found that consumers are more likely to buy from companies that have encouraged people to participate in the democratic process. The companies analyzed in the study, which included Snapchat, Spotify, Patagonia, Target, and Gap, had a range of voter engagement programs — from internal efforts directed at employees to public campaigns that sought to reach millions of people.
“What’s interesting is that more and more companies are making their voting policies public, which shifts the burden of knowledge away from the individual,” said Philip Chen, an assistant professor of political science at Beloit College. “Before this, if you didn’t have the civic knowledge or engagement to figure out that you are legally allowed to have three unpaid or paid hours to go vote, you probably weren’t going to vote.”
Employee voting policies, though, fluctuate depending on the company: Patagonia will shut down all of its operations on Election Day (as it did in 2016 and 2018), while Walmart will grant its employees three hours off if the hours of their shift prevent them from voting. In some cases, workers will have to give their supervisor a day’s notice about their need to leave to vote, since managers are creating “voting plans” to ensure that shifts remain staffed on Election Day.
“What’s interesting is that more and more companies are making their voting policies public, which shifts the burden of knowledge away from the individual”
These corporate-driven voter initiatives are a positive development, considering how companies decades ago remained mum on the issue. However, the growing involvement of employers — and the reliance on companies to staff polls and increase turnout — is emblematic of the US being “an outlier in established democracies,” Chen said. The US’s voter turnout rate is behind that of other established democracies: In the 2016 presidential election, the Census Bureau reported that only 61 percent of the voting-age population cast a ballot. That’s low compared to countries like Belgium (87 percent turnout) and Sweden (82 percent); America ranks 26th out of 32 developed democracies when it comes to voter participation.
Voting is not compulsory in the United States, nor is voter registration automatic or simple. Plus, there isn’t a federal holiday for citizens to take time off from work to vote. (Thanks to a federal law passed by Congress in the 19th century, Election Day always falls on a Tuesday in November.) This is unlike what other democracies have: Countries like Austria, Australia, Luxembourg, and Singapore mandate attendance at the polls, while others like France, Israel, and South Korea vote on weekends or have instituted federal holidays to encourage turnout. In the US, however, each state has established its own voting laws.
“The short answer is, these laws are entirely dependent on the state,” Chen told Vox. “Some states require paid time off, while others have universal vote-by-mail. Some have no requirements and simply encourage employers to allow their workers to vote. Most states, though, have something in the middle where workers have to meet a set of criteria to take off time to vote.”
In 13 states, Election Day is a paid holiday for state employees, although workers might only get a few hours of leave. Meanwhile, in places like Oregon and Washington, residents have ballots mailed out to them, so voting is a task primarily completed at home. With more companies actively encouraging their employees to vote and serve as poll workers, that could likely contribute to an improvement in turnout.
Yet it’s difficult to predict how the coronavirus pandemic and the Postal Service slowdown will affect the 2020 election and voter participation. During the primaries earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that some half a million mail-in ballots were rejected as a result of late delivery or voter error. Plus, as Recode’s Adam Clark Estes reported, mail service has recently been disrupted nationwide due to Covid-19 and a series of cost-cutting policies instituted by its new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy. Voting rights advocates and politicians are encouraging citizens to make a plan and vote early, and tech companies like Snapchat and Facebook are rolling out “voter checklist” features for users to easily register.
Companies are trying to reduce institutional barriers to voting, but political scientists aren’t exactly certain how having a federal voting holiday or automatic registration would increase turnout, Chen added. “These barriers absolutely have an effect, but it’s hard to figure out the exact effect.” What these corporations are looking to do is “trying to approximate the system we see in other established democracies,” he said. “They’re trying to replicate what we see with paid election holidays, which certainly helps with informing people, and it also looks good from a corporate standpoint.”


vox--2020-09-10--A federal court blocked Trump from using the census to undermine immigrants’ political power

A federal court in New York struck down a presidential memorandum on Thursday that would have excluded unauthorized immigrants living in the US from census population counts for the purposes of redrawing congressional districts in 2021 — a transparent attack on their political power .
Most states currently draw congressional districts , determining the areas that each elected official represents based on total population , including unauthorized immigrants .
Current maps are due to be redrawn across the country in 2021 after the results of the 2020 census come in , and the stakes are high : Each redistricting has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to win elections , which communities will be represented in Congress , and , ultimately , what laws will be passed .
President Donald Trump ’ s attempt to exclude unauthorized immigrants would have reduced the counts in areas where foreign-born populations have traditionally settled — primarily Democrat-run cities — and therefore undermined their political power relative to more rural , Republican-run areas .
But it could have also impacted red states with large immigrant populations , including Texas .
A panel of three federal judges on Thursday , however , found that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s constitutional obligation to count every person , no matter their immigration status , in the census every 10 years .
The administration can appeal that ruling directly to the Supreme Court , which would likely be under pressure to issue an expedited decision before the Census Bureau ’ s December 31 deadline to send population counts to Congress .
( The current deadline to respond to the census is September 30 , though an ongoing lawsuit demands the Trump administration push back that deadline on account of the pandemic . )
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights and for immigrants ’ rights , ” Dale Ho , director of the ACLU ’ s Voting Rights Project and the lawyer who argued the case , said in a statement .
“ President Trump has tried and failed yet again to weaponize the census against immigrant communities .
The law is clear — every person counts in the census.
” The White House had argued that by law , the president has the final say over who must be counted in the census .
In a written statement issued after he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that allowing unauthorized immigrants to be counted would undermine American representative democracy and create “ perverse incentives ” for those seeking to come to the US .
“ There used to be a time when you could proudly declare , ‘ I am a citizen of the United States , ’ ” Trump said in the statement .
“ But now , the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country .
This is all part of a broader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans citizens , and I will not stand for it.
” Trump has tried to politicize the census before This wasn ’ t the first time that Trump has used the census to target immigrants .
In June 2019 , Trump lost his bid to put a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census at the Supreme Court .
Several states , including California and New York , said the question would depress response rates among immigrant communities and cost their governments critical federal funding .
Trump , on the other hand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aid the Department of Justice ’ s enforcement of the prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting .
But that rationale was just a pretext , introduced after the fact to justify the question and meant to obscure the administration ’ s actual reasoning , the justices found .
Had the administration decided to continue pursuing the citizenship question , it would have had to race to support its decision with more valid reasoning in order to print the census forms on time .
Trump ultimately decided against doing so , instead issuing an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US Census Bureau to estimate citizenship data using enhanced state administrative records .
Trump suggested at the time that the data could be used to draw electoral districts in 2021 based on where eligible voters live , as legislators in Texas , Arizona , Missouri , and Nebraska had already sought .
Trump has facilitated the creation of that data , though it ’ s not clear just how accurate it is .
The executive order authorized the Census Bureau to collect more data from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement , US @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Citizenship and Immigration Services in an attempt to identify the citizenship status of more people .
The bureau later started asking states to voluntarily turn over driver ’ s license records , which typically include citizenship data , to determine the citizenship status of the US population .
The White House memorandum represents the culmination of those efforts , which immigrant advocates saw as a blatant attempt to strip resources and political power from brown and Black communities .
Beyond its impact on apportionment and redistricting , they had feared the memorandum would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respond to the census from doing so .
It could have also hurt communities with large immigrant populations , as federal funding is usually determined by census counts .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to review its policy excluding unauthorized immigrants living in the US from census population counts for the purposes of redrawing congressional districts in 2021 — a transparent attack on their political power that was struck down by a New York federal court earlier this month.
Most states currently draw congressional districts, determining the areas that each elected official represents based on total population, including unauthorized immigrants. Current maps are due to be redrawn across the country in 2021 after the results of the 2020 census come in, and the stakes are high: Each redistricting has a lasting influence on who is likely to win elections, which communities will be represented in Congress, and, ultimately, what laws will be passed.
President Donald Trump’s attempt to exclude unauthorized immigrants would reduce the counts in areas where foreign-born populations have traditionally settled — primarily Democrat-run cities — and therefore undermine their political power relative to more rural, Republican-run areas. But it could also impact red states with large immigrant populations, including Texas.
The administration argued Tuesday that by law, the president has the final say over who must be counted in the census.
It also asked the justices to expedite the case such that they would hear oral arguments in December and issue a decision prior to December 31, the federal deadline for sending the population counts to Congress for purposes of redistricting. (The current deadline to respond to the census is September 30, though an ongoing lawsuit demands the Trump administration push back that deadline on account of the pandemic.)
Whoever Trump nominates to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could cast a deciding vote in the case. Trump has indicated that he will announce his nominee as early as Saturday, and they will likely have the votes to be confirmed by the Republican-led Senate by year’s end in spite of the upcoming election.
In a written statement issued after he signed the memorandum in July, Trump said that allowing unauthorized immigrants to be counted would undermine American representative democracy and create “perverse incentives” for those seeking to come to the US.
“There used to be a time when you could proudly declare, ‘I am a citizen of the United States,’” Trump said in the statement. “But now, the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country. This is all part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of Americans citizens, and I will not stand for it.”
But on September 10, a panel of three federal judges found that Trump’s memorandum skirted the federal government’s constitutional obligation to count every person, no matter their immigration status, in the census every 10 years.
Trump has tried to politicize the census before
This wasn’t the first time that Trump has used the census to target immigrants. In June 2019, Trump lost his bid to put a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census at the Supreme Court. Several states, including California and New York, said the question would depress response rates among immigrant communities and cost their governments critical federal funding.
Trump, on the other hand, had argued that citizenship data would aid the Department of Justice’s enforcement of the prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting. But that rationale was just a pretext, introduced after the fact to justify the question and meant to obscure the administration’s actual reasoning, the justices found.
Had the administration decided to continue pursuing the citizenship question, it would have had to race to support its decision with more valid reasoning in order to print the census forms on time.
Trump ultimately decided against doing so, instead issuing an executive order in July 2019 that instructed the US Census Bureau to estimate citizenship data using enhanced state administrative records. Trump suggested at the time that the data could be used to draw electoral districts in 2021 based on where eligible voters live, as legislators in Texas, Arizona, Missouri, and Nebraska had already sought.
Trump has facilitated the creation of that data, though it’s not clear just how accurate it is. The executive order authorized the Census Bureau to collect more data from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US Customs and Border Protection, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services in an attempt to identify the citizenship status of more people. The bureau later started asking states to voluntarily turn over driver’s license records, which typically include citizenship data, to determine the citizenship status of the US population.
The White House memorandum represents the culmination of those efforts, which immigrant advocates saw as a blatant attempt to strip resources and political power from brown and Black communities. Beyond its impact on apportionment and redistricting, they had feared the memorandum would indirectly discourage immigrants who had yet to respond to the census from doing so. It could have also hurt communities with large immigrant populations, as federal funding is usually determined by census counts.


vox--2020-09-10--California’s recurring wildfire problem, explained

The images and reports out of California this week are overwhelming : concurrent colossal wildfires laying waste to property and landscapes , freaky orange skies , massive smoke clouds , worsening air quality , more than 64,000 people forced to evacuate , and all of it compounding the risks of Covid-19 .
If this feels like déjà vu , here ’ s why : Wildfires are growing more common and more severe in California .
The most recent season of horror was 2018 , which had 10 large fires that each burned more than 500 acres .
Most infamous was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people dead in Paradise and caused more than $ 16.5 billion in losses , according to the German insurance company Munich RE .
This August was California ’ s warmest on record ( as it was for five other states as well ) , setting the stage for the extraordinary streak of extra-large fires burning now .
Five of the current fires are in the 20 largest wildfires in the state ’ s history : the August Complex ( the largest blaze in state history as of Thursday ) , the SCU Lightning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the North Complex , and the Bear Complex .
As their names hint , these are megafires that gained size and strength when smaller fires combined into unified blazes .
The heat wave that preceded this terrifying swarm was not a blip .
The weeks of arid , hot air that crisped out the forests and shrubs now aflame are part of a familiar pattern of extreme weather events : the climate crisis accelerating right in our faces .
As the climate heats up , many other states in the West , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , more devastating fires and more dangerous air quality from wildfire smoke .
But California is at particular risk , both because its increasingly volatile weather may bring more droughts than other states and because it has more people and more buildings .
Let ’ s walk through the details of how we got here .
To understand why California is experiencing so many devastating fires year after year , let ’ s look at two basic forces at play .
The first is climate change .
According to a 2019 paper in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ California ’ s annual burned area has increased more than fivefold since 1972 , which the authors attribute in part to a warming climate .
The total annual area burned during summer fires is rising fastest , they note , though the climate fingerprint is getting clearer in the increase in areas burned in the fall as well .
California ’ s forests and shrublands have been subjected to wildfire pretty much forever ; fire is a natural part of many of the state ’ s ecosystems .
What ’ s different now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the fires are on average getting bigger and more destructive .
“ Climate change is amplifying fire behavior and fire size , ” Alan Ager , a researcher at the US Forest Service who studies how to manage wildfire risk on federally managed forests and other lands , told Vox in 2019 .
“ Fire can travel larger distances ” than in the past because there ’ s more fuel .
The basic recipe for a monster 21st-century wildfire is this : Take hot air and no rain and moisture evaporating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After a series of these long , expansive , hot , dry spells , trees and shrubs will be transformed into ideal tinder to feed a fire .
The bigger the area affected , the more available fuel .
All you need then is a spark , which could come from a power line failure , a cigarette , or a firecracker .
Climate models show that as temperatures continue to rise , the atmosphere and land in some regions , like California ’ s forests , will grow more arid .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ droughts , followed by intense periods of rain — a form of weather whiplash .
This prompts the growth of thick underbrush , which then dries out in the subsequent droughts and becomes highly flammable kindling .
A newer phenomenon scientists are seeing in 2020 is wildfires that grow dramatically overnight because temperatures aren ’ t dropping like they used to .
“ One of the things we see with human-caused climate change is that the overnight lows are getting warmer , ” said Matthew Hurteau , associate professor of biology at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the past , the sun sets , the temperature drops , the relative humidity goes up , and fire behavior dies down , and that ’ s when a lot of progress gets made in terms of fire suppression , because the flame lengths are shorter.
” But this year , the Bear Fire , one of the three fires that became the North Complex Fire , expanded by 100,000 acres overnight , destroying almost every structure in the 525-person community of Berry Creek , according to the Sacramento Bee .
“ That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night , that ’ s a climate signal for sure , ” said Hurteau .
The second factor making the state more fire-prone is poor forest management .
In 2019 , journalist Mark Arax published an extraordinary feature story on the Paradise fire , California ’ s most destructive fire ever .
In it , he tells the tale of how , in the 1990s , the state ’ s timber industry came to be dominated by rampant clear-cutting .
Varied , diverse forests , with patches of scrub and trees alternating , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came to them periodically , as is natural and necessary for regeneration , but they did not spiral out of control .
After a clear cut , forests are replanted as monocrops .
There are no natural breaks , no variation , which makes them extraordinarily vulnerable to rapidly spreading fire .
And in the early 2000s , park rangers practiced a certain form of forestry management — prescribed burns , clearing brush , remediating clear cuts .
But it fell out of favor as an increasingly large , paramilitary fire brigade took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the ranks of better-paid firefighters , ” Arax writes , “ their numbers dwindled to maybe 250 , even as the number of firefighters inside the [ Department of Forestry and Fire Protection ] jumped to 7,000.
” Firefighters put out fires ; they don ’ t do prescribed burns .
But consistent fire suppression only increases the amount of dry , flammable material .
As this LA Times story reveals , California ’ s clear-cutting and forest mismanagement continue to this day .
More and more people are building ( and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also a housing crisis , born largely of the fact that wealthier urban residents refuse to allow more housing to be built in urban areas , near jobs .
Consequently , as more residents stream into the state , the price of existing urban housing stock rises and development sprawls outward .
More and more of that development is being pushed into the “ wildland-urban interface ” ( WUI ) , where wildfires are more frequent and more difficult to fight .
Some 11.3 million people — more than any other state with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in California .
That ’ s 30 percent of the state ’ s population living near a lot of potential wildfire fuel .
And more than 2.7 million Californians currently live in “ very high fire hazard severity zones , ” areas where the population is expected to keep growing .
( Cal Fire is currently updating its hazard zone maps and expects to roll out new ones by 2021 . )
Again , California is not alone .
A 2018 study in PNAS found that between 1990 and 2010 , the WUI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the conterminous United States.
” This is happening in lots of states .
But it ’ s particularly concentrated in California , where a million houses were built in the WUI during those same years .
In Mother Jones , Jeffrey Ball has a feature story on the state ’ s terrible land use policies , which encourage sprawl , and specifically building ( and rebuilding ) in fire-prone areas , in a dozen different ways , including subsidized insurance .
( See also this piece in MIT Technology Review by James @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ager and colleagues found that 1,812 communities in the western US could be significantly impacted by future wildfires .
Of the top 20 most exposed communities on the list , 14 were in California .
Add all this together — increasing heat from global warming , several years of unusually high winds and low humidity , poor logging practices with fewer preventive burns , more people living on forested ridges and hills in remote , fire-prone areas — and the result is disaster .
Why California can expect wildfire season to get worse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nevada can expect to see the most fire activity directly linked to human-caused climate change in the coming decades , according to the Earth ’ s Future paper .
But “ you can throw a dart anywhere around Los Angeles and San Diego and you will hit an area with significant fire potential , ” too , Chris Keithley , research manager for the Fire and Resource Assessment Program at Cal Fire , said .
And there ’ s a huge mismatch , Ager ’ s study found , between the increased wildfire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ development .
The state ’ s population is also growing , leading to a significant overlap between the areas of high fire risk and areas with a growing population density , as you can see in these maps from a 2014 study of population trends in California projecting out to 2050 : The study estimated that by 2050 , 645,000 new houses in California will be built in “ very high ” wildfire severity zones .
Just as it ’ s time to consider retreating from the coasts because of sea level rise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraging people to retreat from some of the riskiest fire-prone areas .
“ I think planned retreat should be part of a suite of options , ” said Paige Fischer , a social scientist who studies wildfires at the University of Michigan .
So far , though , the state has done little to discourage new construction in high-risk areas or encourage people to move out of harm ’ s way .
In response to the billions of dollars in losses from the California wildfires of 2017 and 2018 , insurance companies are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and homeowner liability insurance and hike rates for homeowners in fire-prone areas , the New York Times has reported .
But forcing people to move is an especially tough ask in California , given the housing crisis .
Many Paradise residents who lost their homes in the Camp Fire had moved there to escape the unaffordable rents and home prices of the Bay Area .
The federal and state governments have increased funding for fire suppression and managing fire fuel like the millions of dead trees on public and private lands , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing that gets missed in all of this is that fires are a natural part of many of these systems , ” said Matthew Hurteau , an associate professor at the University of New Mexico studying climate impacts on forests .
“ We have suppressed fires for decades actively .
That ’ s caused larger fires.
” More prescribed burning could help limit potential megafire fuels , but many communities oppose it because of the short-term smoke risk .
“ Fuel management efforts need to be substantially increased , ” Ager agreed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ state agencies like the Forest Service that manage public lands .
People who live in high-risk areas can also do more to manage the land and structures on their private property , for instance reducing flammable vegetation around homes and using fire-repelling building materials , Fischer said .
Climate change demands both immediate action to reduce emissions and immediate threats , and also long-term adaptation to a more hostile climate .
California is a leader on the former — it has committed to 100 percent clean energy by 2045 and total , economy-wide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Gavin Newsom has also been trying to rally support for new funding from the state legislature to take on the threat of fire in a warming world .
But he and other California leaders still have a long way to go in helping communities play better defense against , and prepare long-term for , wildfire .
“ We are overloaded with assessments and short on actions , ” said Ager .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today from as little as $ 3 .

The images and reports out of California this week are overwhelming: concurrent colossal wildfires laying waste to property and landscapes, freaky orange skies, massive smoke clouds, worsening air quality, more than 64,000 people forced to evacuate, and all of it compounding the risks of Covid-19.
The 2020 fire season has been record-breaking, in not only the total amount of acres burned at just over 3 million, but also 6 of the top 20 largest wildfires in California history have occurred this year. pic.twitter.com/CmmhH5wTVX — CAL FIRE (@CAL_FIRE) September 10, 2020
If this feels like déjà vu, here’s why: Wildfires are growing more common and more severe in California. The most recent season of horror was 2018, which had 10 large fires that each burned more than 500 acres. Most infamous was the Camp Fire, which left 86 people dead in Paradise and caused more than $16.5 billion in losses, according to the German insurance company Munich RE.
This August was California’s warmest on record (as it was for five other states as well), setting the stage for the extraordinary streak of extra-large fires burning now. Five of the current fires are in the 20 largest wildfires in the state’s history: the August Complex (the largest blaze in state history as of Thursday), the SCU Lightning Complex, the LNU Lightning Complex, the North Complex, and the Bear Complex. As their names hint, these are megafires that gained size and strength when smaller fires combined into unified blazes.
The heat wave that preceded this terrifying swarm was not a blip. The weeks of arid, hot air that crisped out the forests and shrubs now aflame are part of a familiar pattern of extreme weather events: the climate crisis accelerating right in our faces.
As the climate heats up, many other states in the West, including Oregon and Colorado, are seeing larger, more devastating fires and more dangerous air quality from wildfire smoke. But California is at particular risk, both because its increasingly volatile weather may bring more droughts than other states and because it has more people and more buildings. Let’s walk through the details of how we got here.
California’s forests have become tinderboxes
To understand why California is experiencing so many devastating fires year after year, let’s look at two basic forces at play.
The first is climate change. According to a 2019 paper in the journal Earth’s Future, California’s annual burned area has increased more than fivefold since 1972, which the authors attribute in part to a warming climate. The total annual area burned during summer fires is rising fastest, they note, though the climate fingerprint is getting clearer in the increase in areas burned in the fall as well.
California’s forests and shrublands have been subjected to wildfire pretty much forever; fire is a natural part of many of the state’s ecosystems and the Indigenous peoples of California set controlled burns to manage the landscape. What’s different now is that the season is getting longer, it’s gotten harder to manage the forest, and the fires are on average getting bigger and more destructive.
“Climate change is amplifying fire behavior and fire size,” Alan Ager, a researcher at the US Forest Service who studies how to manage wildfire risk on federally managed forests and other lands, told Vox in 2019. “Fire can travel larger distances” than in the past because there’s more fuel.
The basic recipe for a monster 21st century wildfire is this: Take hot air and no rain and moisture evaporating from trees, shrubs, and soil. After a series of these long, expansive, hot, dry spells, trees and shrubs will be transformed into ideal tinder to feed a fire. The bigger the area affected, the more available fuel. All you need then is a spark, which could come from a power line failure, a cigarette, or a firecracker.
Climate models show that as temperatures continue to rise, the atmosphere and land in some regions, like California’s forests, will grow more arid. There will be more frequent and intense droughts, followed by intense periods of rain — a form of weather whiplash. This prompts the growth of thick underbrush, which then dries out in the subsequent droughts and becomes highly flammable kindling.
A newer phenomenon scientists are seeing in 2020 is wildfires that grow dramatically overnight because temperatures aren’t dropping like they used to. “One of the things we see with human-caused climate change is that the overnight lows are getting warmer,” said Matthew Hurteau, associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico. “In the past, the sun sets, the temperature drops, the relative humidity goes up, and fire behavior dies down, and that’s when a lot of progress gets made in terms of fire suppression, because the flame lengths are shorter.”
But this year, the Bear Fire, one of the three fires that became the North Complex Fire, expanded by 100,000 acres overnight, destroying almost every structure in the 525-person community of Berry Creek, according to the Sacramento Bee. “That kind of fire growth, especially at night, that’s a climate signal for sure,” said Hurteau.
The second factor making the state more fire-prone is poor forest management.
In 2019, journalist Mark Arax published an extraordinary feature story on the Paradise fire, California’s most destructive fire ever. In it, he tells the tale of how, in the 1990s, the state’s timber industry came to be dominated by rampant clear-cutting. Varied, diverse forests, with patches of scrub and trees alternating, served as natural fire breaks. Wildfires came to them periodically, as is natural and necessary for regeneration, but they did not spiral out of control.
After a clear cut, forests are replanted as monocrops. There are no natural breaks, no variation, which makes them extraordinarily vulnerable to rapidly spreading fire.
And in the early 2000s, park rangers practiced a certain form of forestry management — prescribed burns, clearing brush, remediating clear cuts. But it fell out of favor as an increasingly large, paramilitary fire brigade took over. “As rangers joined up with the ranks of better-paid firefighters,” Arax writes, “their numbers dwindled to maybe 250, even as the number of firefighters inside the [Department of Forestry and Fire Protection] jumped to 7,000.”
Firefighters put out fires; they don’t do prescribed burns. But consistent fire suppression only increases the amount of dry, flammable material.
As this LA Times story reveals, California’s clear-cutting and forest mismanagement continue to this day.
More and more people are building (and rebuilding) in fire-prone areas
California also has a housing crisis, born largely of the fact that wealthier urban residents refuse to allow more housing to be built in urban areas, near jobs. Consequently, as more residents stream into the state, the price of existing urban housing stock rises and development sprawls outward. More and more of that development is being pushed into the “wildland-urban interface” (WUI), where wildfires are more frequent and more difficult to fight.
Related Two experts explain why solving the housing crisis helps the climate
Some 11.3 million people — more than any other state with regular wildfires — live in the WUI in California. That’s 30 percent of the state’s population living near a lot of potential wildfire fuel. And more than 2.7 million Californians currently live in “very high fire hazard severity zones,” areas where the population is expected to keep growing. (Cal Fire is currently updating its hazard zone maps and expects to roll out new ones by 2021.)
Again, California is not alone. A 2018 study in PNAS found that between 1990 and 2010, the WUI was “the fastest-growing land use type in the conterminous United States.” This is happening in lots of states.
But it’s particularly concentrated in California, where a million houses were built in the WUI during those same years. In Mother Jones, Jeffrey Ball has a feature story on the state’s terrible land use policies, which encourage sprawl, and specifically building (and rebuilding) in fire-prone areas, in a dozen different ways, including subsidized insurance. (See also this piece in MIT Technology Review by James Temple.)
A recent study by Ager and colleagues found that 1,812 communities in the western US could be significantly impacted by future wildfires. Of the top 20 most exposed communities on the list, 14 were in California.
Add all this together — increasing heat from global warming, several years of unusually high winds and low humidity, poor logging practices with fewer preventive burns, more people living on forested ridges and hills in remote, fire-prone areas — and the result is disaster.
Why California can expect wildfire season to get worse
Parts of Northern California and the Sierra Nevada can expect to see the most fire activity directly linked to human-caused climate change in the coming decades, according to the Earth’s Future paper.
But “you can throw a dart anywhere around Los Angeles and San Diego and you will hit an area with significant fire potential,” too, Chris Keithley, research manager for the Fire and Resource Assessment Program at Cal Fire, said.
And there’s a huge mismatch, Ager’s study found, between the increased wildfire threat and how cities are planning future development.
The state’s population is also growing, leading to a significant overlap between the areas of high fire risk and areas with a growing population density, as you can see in these maps from a 2014 study of population trends in California projecting out to 2050:
The study estimated that by 2050, 645,000 new houses in California will be built in “very high” wildfire severity zones.
Just as it’s time to consider retreating from the coasts because of sea level rise, it may be time to consider encouraging people to retreat from some of the riskiest fire-prone areas.
“I think planned retreat should be part of a suite of options,” said Paige Fischer, a social scientist who studies wildfires at the University of Michigan. So far, though, the state has done little to discourage new construction in high-risk areas or encourage people to move out of harm’s way.
In response to the billions of dollars in losses from the California wildfires of 2017 and 2018, insurance companies are now beginning to refuse to renew fire and homeowner liability insurance and hike rates for homeowners in fire-prone areas, the New York Times has reported.
But forcing people to move is an especially tough ask in California, given the housing crisis. Many Paradise residents who lost their homes in the Camp Fire had moved there to escape the unaffordable rents and home prices of the Bay Area.
The federal and state governments have increased funding for fire suppression and managing fire fuel like the millions of dead trees on public and private lands, but much more is needed.
“The thing that gets missed in all of this is that fires are a natural part of many of these systems,” said Matthew Hurteau, the University of New Mexico professor studying climate impacts on forests. “We have suppressed fires for decades actively. That’s caused larger fires.”
More prescribed burning could help limit potential megafire fuels, but many communities oppose it because of the short-term smoke risk. “Fuel management efforts need to be substantially increased,” Ager agreed.
That responsibility falls largely to federal and state agencies like the Forest Service that manage public lands. People who live in high-risk areas can also do more to manage the land and structures on their private property, for instance reducing flammable vegetation around homes and using fire-repelling building materials, Fischer said.
Climate change demands both immediate action to reduce emissions and immediate threats, and also long-term adaptation to a more hostile climate. California is a leader on the former — it has committed to 100 percent clean energy by 2045 and total, economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2045. And Gov. Gavin Newsom has also been trying to rally support for new funding from the state legislature to take on the threat of fire in a warming world.
But he and other California leaders still have a long way to go in helping communities play better defense against, and prepare long-term for, wildfire. “We are overloaded with assessments and short on actions,” said Ager.


vox--2020-09-10--How America can leave fossil fuels behind

All of recorded human history has happened during a period in which the average global temperature didn ’ t change by more than 1°C .
But the burning of fossil fuels has triggered a temperature rise projected to exceed 3°C by the end of the century .
It will be catastrophic .
But it can be avoided if we massively scale back the burning of fossil fuels .
The US isn ’ t the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world , but it has emitted more carbon dioxide in total than any other country .
So the US @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global decarbonization — the world basically can ’ t get there without the US ’ s full participation .
But the current US president doesn ’ t have any plans to do that .
His Democratic challenger in the 2020 election , Joe Biden , does .
Biden ’ s plan is ambitious , setting a goal to completely transition the US to clean energy by 2050 .
But his plan doesn ’ t get into the details of exactly how that will happen .
For that , we talked to physicist and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through his incredibly detailed roadmap for how the US could actually walk away from fossil fuels in the next 30 years .
Watch the video to see a detailed walkthrough of the US ’ s energy consumption and how it could decarbonize by 2050 .
This video is part of a series focusing on the stakes of the 2020 US election .
We ’ re looking at key issues and asking what about them might actually change in the election ’ s aftermath .
You can help shape our reporting by telling us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at http : //vox.com/ElectionVideos .
You can find this video and all of Vox ’ s videos on YouTube .
And if you ’ re interested in supporting our video journalism , you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
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All of recorded human history has happened during a period in which the average global temperature didn’t change by more than 1°C. But the burning of fossil fuels has triggered a temperature rise projected to exceed 3°C by the end of the century. It will be catastrophic. But it can be avoided if we massively scale back the burning of fossil fuels.
The US isn’t the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, but it has emitted more carbon dioxide in total than any other country. So the US has an important role to play in global decarbonization — the world basically can’t get there without the US’s full participation. But the current US president doesn’t have any plans to do that. His Democratic challenger in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, does.
Biden’s plan is ambitious, setting a goal to completely transition the US to clean energy by 2050. But his plan doesn’t get into the details of exactly how that will happen. For that, we talked to physicist and engineer Saul Griffith, who took us through his incredibly detailed roadmap for how the US could actually walk away from fossil fuels in the next 30 years.
Watch the video to see a detailed walkthrough of the US’s energy consumption and how it could decarbonize by 2050.
This video is part of a series focusing on the stakes of the 2020 US election. We’re looking at key issues and asking what about them might actually change in the election’s aftermath. You can help shape our reporting by telling us what issues are most important to you at http://vox.com/ElectionVideos.
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