U.S. News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/43715515

Officials ordered immediate evacuations in three south Seattle suburbs Monday after a levee failed following a week of heavy rains.

The evacuation order from King County in Washington state covered homes and businesses east of the Green River in parts of Kent, Auburn and Tukwila.

The National Weather Service, meanwhile, issued a flash flood warning covering nearly 47,000 people.

archive link

“Catastrophic” flooding is expected to hit parts of Skagit, Snohomish and King counties Thursday as rivers swell and the region is drenched in rain.

Authorities have ordered evacuation for parts of Orting in Pierce County, parts of Skagit County, including Mount Vernon, and Ebey Island east of Everett. An estimated 100,000 Washingtonians could face evacuation orders as floodwaters continue to rise, Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office said Wednesday afternoon.

Ferguson already declared a state of emergency, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said she’s working to get federal assistance for those impacted.

In Grays Harbor County, a nearly century old dam in Lake Sylvia State Park is showing signs of stress. Although it hasn’t failed yet, it could get worse if these weather conditions continue.

The Carbon River near Fairfax; Cedar River near Renton; Puyallup River near Orting; Elwha River near Port Angeles; Snohomish River at Snohomish; Stillaguamish River at Arlington; and the Skagit River at Concrete and Mount Vernon were all expected to either swell above their record height or come within inches of the record.

The Skagit is expected to rise aggressively until a peak around 4 a.m. Thursday in the Concrete area.

Archive link

More articles about the flooding:

• Mount Vernon braces for potentially historic flood - Seattle Times [archive link]
• Floods may force 100K to evacuate near Skagit, Snohomish, other WA rivers - Seattle Times [archive link]
• ‘Catastrophic’ flooding expected in King, Snohomish, Skagit counties - Seattle Times [archive link]
• Governor Ferguson declares statewide emergency responding to major flooding - The Office of the Governor of Washington State [archive link]
• ‘Historic’ flooding prompts WA governor to declare emergency [archive link]
• Pacific Northwest under flood alerts as atmospheric river brings heavy rain - NBC News [archive link]
• Tens of thousands in Washington could face evacuations as rain continues to pound the region - AP News [archive link]

Map:

From the "papers, please" dept.:

All tourists to the United States would have to reveal their social media activity from the last five years, under new Trump administration plans.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would also require any email addresses and telephone numbers visitors have used in the same period, and the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children.

The proposal was published on Tuesday in a Federal Register notice, the official publication of the US government, which is put out daily. This called the new disclosures “mandatory” for entry into the US. It would apply to people of all countries, regardless of whether they require visas or are currently permitted to complete an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) instead. That includes visitors from Britain, Australia, Germany and Japan, who are not required to get a tourist visa before visiting the US.

The notice gives members of the public two months to comment. DHS did not respond to media outlets’ requests for comment.

I can't help but think of the massive wasteful spending this will entail.

I first arrived in Shasta County just over a year ago, in September 2024, when summer’s fever was just about to break. The small city of Anderson is one of the last stops before you hit the Klamath Mountains when you’re driving up the mighty I-5, the interior artery of the Central Valley. I had come as a “local reporting fellow” assigned to Shasta Scout, a nonprofit news service, through a UC Berkeley program staffing newsrooms in “news deserts,” typically in remote or disenfranchised parts of the state.

One of my first assignments was covering the weekly council meeting in Anderson on September 17. On the agenda that night was a proposal to declare Anderson a parental “Right to Know City.” This was the small town’s resistance to recent legislation passed by the California State Assembly: the SAFETY Act. The legislation, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in July 2024, bars school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education from adopting “forced outing” policies toward LGBTQ+ students, granting discretion to educators in how much they disclose to parents about, for example, a child’s choice of pronouns in school. This came as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was galvanizing millions around the image of an omnipresent trans witch devouring the nation’s Hansels and Gretels.

In California, what might have seemed like an uncontroversial policy on much of the coast set off a firestorm in the state’s extremely conservative interior—including Anderson—where a group of vocal parents already believed that a left-wing public school curriculum was brainwashing children with “gender ideology.” According to them, the passage of the SAFETY Act gave teachers broad leeway to encourage students to transition in secret, thereby violating “parents’ rights.” Hence, Anderson’s appropriation of the term “sanctuary city,” employed by liberal municipalities during Trump’s first term to signify their status as a haven to the vulnerable and a bulwark against policies deemed cruel and excessive.

During their discussion of the SAFETY Act, one council member called the new state policy a form of “mental abuse” that would inevitably confuse children while deceiving parents. The mayor called it yet another unconstitutional consequence of the state legislature’s “progressive Marxist bent.” But the council member whose reflection I found most striking, Mike Gallagher, contextualized the bill as part of a larger power imbalance between this small rural town and the liberal behemoth that is Sacramento’s political machine. “It’s the same legislature that pushes this through […] that does housing, that does transportation, that does public health,” he began. “It’s the same group of people. […] There’s an agenda. They’re hitting us from all angles. They won’t ever talk about […] what gets a kid to get to this …” He grew quiet, considering his words. “This place,” he continued. “They think it’s natural. It just crushes me to think that they’re that evil.”

The vote was a unanimous five ayes. It was a symbolic gesture, as the city council lacks the authority to compel Anderson’s school districts to flout state law, which would bring the risk of being sued. In the coming months, my Shasta Scout editor and I struggled to find a single case of a student who “socially transitioned” in the classroom without their parents’ knowledge, as critics of the bill seemed to think would occur. Sixty miles south, in Butte County, however, there was a lawsuit making headlines: a mother of a fifth grader was suing her child’s school district for allegedly allowing her to transition secretly. The lawyer representing the family was Harmeet Dhillon, who would soon be appointed assistant attorney general for civil rights in Pam Bondi’s Justice Department.

In parts of Shasta, Modoc, Siskiyou, Tehama, Butte, and Glenn counties, it is not a given that you are in California. At the very least, many residents feel that there are de facto two Californias. Theirs is the resource-rich hinterland where an undomesticated sense of freedom is still possible, while the other California lies in the coastal cities, where power has been consolidated. It is the residents of the latter who benefit from statewide policies, which only serve their needs, their value system, their version of “inclusivity,” and their consumption habits, all too often at the direct expense of the other California, out of mind and out of sight. Aside from the Rancherias and Tribal Nations that actually do exist partly beyond California’s authority, somewhat hazily between federal control and actual sovereignty, there are citizen militias, intentional communities, preppers, and bands of feral wanderers, hoping to live as if the embalming effects of state bureaucracy had not yet reached them.

Here, too, one finds active state-building projects, such as the longstanding State of Jefferson, a secessionist movement to carve out a state in Northern California and Southern Oregon, with origins dating back to the 19th century. Born of an outrage over the respective state governments’ failure to maintain roads, the movement culminated in a brief armed—albeit bloodless—rebellion in 1941. Its younger cousin and adversary, New California State, would see a partitioning of California along rural and partisan lines, first proposed circa 2015. Less particular to far northern California, there is Calexit, whose aim is to leave the United States entirely, taking inspiration from Scottish independence referendums, or California assemblyman James Gallagher’s recent and curiously named “two-state solution,” an attempt at a diplomatic negotiation with Gavin Newsom over his controversial redistricting plan.

i am attaching a screenshot of a work email confirming that it is being implemented, despite the source i listed saying it has been paused.

New Haven, Connecticut, has broken ground on an ambitious geothermal energy network that will provide low-emission heating and cooling to the city’s bustling, historic Union Station and a new public housing complex across the street.

The project will play a crucial role in the city’s attempt to decarbonize all municipal buildings and transportation by the end of 2030. As one of Connecticut’s first geothermal energy networks, it will also serve as a case study of how well the technology can both lower energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the state considers promoting wider adoption of these systems.

“At the end of the day, you’re going to have the most efficient heating and cooling system available for our historic train station as well as roughly 1,000 units of housing,” said Steven Winter, New Haven’s executive director of climate and sustainability. ​“Anything we can help do to improve health outcomes and reduce climate change–causing emissions is really valuable.”

Hey, y'all, lets celebrate Trump's birthday by going to national parks he wants to destroy ... for free!

The US’s National Park Service (NPS) will offer free admission to US residents on Donald Trump’s birthday in 2026 – which also happens to be Flag Day – but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth.

The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.

In 2024, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and the emancipation celebration Juneteenth – which is 19 June – but not 14 June, Trump’s birthday.

The new free-admission policy takes effect on 1 January and was one of several changes announced by the park service late in November, including higher admission fees for international visitors.

The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (27 October) and the anniversary of the creation of the park service (25 August).

I get why Roosevelt is here, but I seriously never learned his birthday in school.

In what Arizona’s attorney general slammed as an “unacceptable and outrageous” act of “unchecked aggression,” a federal immigration officer fired pepper spray toward recently sworn-in Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva during a Friday raid on a Tucson restaurant.

Brown University senior Caitlyn Carpenter was working on a class discussion post the night of Oct. 1, when news broke that set off a firestorm of debate in academia. The Trump administration had just released a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” and invited nine prominent universities, including Brown, to sign on. Schools that did so would receive preferential federal treatment.

The compact included provisions to restrict student protests, eliminate gender-neutral restrooms and identity-based affinity spaces, and limit international student enrollment, among other regressive measures.

“I knew immediately we had to do something,” said Carpenter, who is a member of Sunrise Brown and an outreach organizer for the national Campus Climate Network, or CCN.

That night, Carpenter joined a Zoom call with other Brown students who spent two hours discussing what to do. They decided to launch a new organization, Brown Rise Up, specifically to counter the spread of authoritarianism on campus.

CCN is one of many organizations in the nationwide Students Rise Up coalition, which formed this fall to resist Trump’s agenda on college campuses. Defeating the compact became a major coalition priority.

However, student leaders are already looking beyond this one document, to a wider campus-based movement against authoritarianism in all its forms.

Nearly a decade into my writing career, as an Atlanta-based journalist, I’ve become accustomed to national media turning a blind eye to the South.

As one of the first journalists to report on Cop City and the Stop Cop City movement, mostly through Atlanta-based outlet Mainline, I spent many hours over the last four years reaching out to bigger outlets, mainstream news reporters, and writing pitch emails, which largely met with silence until the violent police killing of 26-year-old climate activist Tortuguita in January 2023.

It showed me what the country thinks of us in the South and “our” problems. In the words of W.E.B. DuBois said, “As the South goes, so goes the nation.” Like Cop City, each horrific headline in the news maps onto one that had already occurred in the South and was ignored.

Last month, President Donald Trump said American cities should be used to train the military — the same purpose reporters, researchers, and organizers identified in Cop City, which included a mock city for militarized police training. Over 80 similar facilities are now being planned across the U.S. after the first multi-million dollar one was built in Atlanta, sitting on hundreds of acres of destroyed forest land.

On October 15, the Justice Department brought its first federal terrorism case in the administration’s crackdown on antifascist protesters (colloquially called “antifa”) — a path significantly carved by the Georgia Attorney General’s sweeping racketeering and conspiracy indictment, which included domestic terrorism charges, against 61 protesters. (Prior to the indictment in August 2023, over 40 people were charged with domestic terrorism for their protest against Cop City.)

A detailed investigation released Thursday reveals that the e-commerce behemoth Amazon is using its market dominance and political influence to gain a foothold in local governments’ purchasing systems, locking school districts into contracts that let the corporation drive up prices for pens, sticky notes, and other basic supplies.ya

I was debating whether to write this article or not. I discovered the news of NREL’s name being changed from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to the National Laboratory of the Rockies from Michael Barnard’s article about it yesterday. That article is a much more professional look at the situation and the history of the laboratory. This one is going to be a full-scale venting of how idiotic the United States has become, and particularly the orange/yellow man running the show.

First, let’s just make this point: renewable energy is dominating now. Trying to diminish it or be a laggard in adopting and promoting renewable energy is completely, fully, ridiculously idiotic.

92.5% of new power capacity added worldwide in 2024 was from renewable energy power plants. Yes, 92.5%. The majority of that (77.3%) came from solar power. Donald Trump doesn’t think solar panels work. (We’ve got a stable genius there, eh?)

Renewable energy, especially solar, is now the cheapest option for new power capacity in most places. That’s why it dominates new power capacity. It is also much quicker to build and doesn’t cause cancer, asthma, heart disease, or premature death among people living near the power plants.

The University of Alabama’s decision to suspend two student magazines has sparked criticism and outrage on the campus.

Leftist Collective at UA, an organization who describes themselves on social media as “anti-capitalist, anti-racist and feminist,” organized a petition delivery in support of Alice, a magazine aimed at women, and Nineteen Fifty-Six, a magazine focused on Black lifestyle and culture, to Steven Hood, vice president of student life, and University of Alabama President Peter Mohler on Wednesday.

“The purpose of this is to let [Mohler] and just generally UA’s administration, know that this is not a popular move,” Omorose Emwanta, Leftist Collective at UA secretary, said in an interview Wednesday. “We do not think the basis for this suspension is sound and we want to reinstate it. I think they underestimated how valuable and popular these magazines are.”

On Monday, UA officials told members of Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six that their publications would be suspended to remain compliant with a memo released over the summer by Attorney General Pam Bondi. The memo made non-binding recommendations on compliance with anti-diversity, equity and inclusion policies supported by the Trump administration.

I'm not a fan of those dynamic e-ink shelf signs for pricing, but this seems like the perfect use of them.

Assuming, of course, that these companies aren't engaging in intentional fraud.

On a cloudy winter day, a state government inspector named Ryan Coffield walked into a Family Dollar store in Windsor, North Carolina, carrying a scanner gun and a laptop.

Inside the store, which sits along a three-lane road in a county of peanut growers and poultry workers, Coffield scanned 300 items and recorded their shelf prices. He carried the scanned bar codes to the cashier and watched as item after item rang up at a higher price.

Red Baron frozen pizzas, listed on the shelf at $5, rang up at $7.65. Bounty paper towels, shelf price $10.99, rang up at $15.50. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Stouffer’s frozen meatloaf, Sprite and Pepsi, ibuprofen, Klondike Minis – shoppers were overpaying for all of them. Pedigree puppy food, listed at $12.25, rang up at $14.75.

All told, 69 of the 300 items came up higher at the register: a 23% error rate that exceeded the state’s limit by more than tenfold. Some of the price tags were months out of date.

A liquor store employee in Virginia was startled on Saturday to discover smashed whisky bottles on the floor of the shop and, upon entering the bathroom, an apparently drunk, sleeping and spread-eagled raccoon.

“He fell through one of the ceiling tiles and went on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything,” Samantha Martin, an local animal control officer, told the Daily Mail.

The Hanover county animal protection and shelter confirmed the raccoon was drunk and said it had since become sober.

“After a few hours of sleep and zero signs of injury (other than maybe a hangover and poor life choices), he was safely released back to the wild, hopefully having learned that breaking and entering is not the answer,” the agency said.