A federal judge on Thursday ruled that voting maps created by Georgia Republicans violated the Voting Rights Act by racially discriminating against Black voters. In his 516-page ruling, US District Court Judge Steve Jones ordered lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative districts, as well as create an additional Black-majority congressional district by December 8. The new maps could have major implications for the 2024 elections. 

Since September, voting rights advocates have been engrossed in a legal battle with legislators, arguing that the 2021 passage of new voting maps diluted the power of Black voters. As my colleague Ari Berman wrote when the new maps were drawn:

The congressional lines adopted by Georgia Republicans entrench white power by diluting the votes of fast-growing communities of color—a defining feature of GOP gerrymandering across the South this year. Georgia gained 1 million new residents over the last decade—all from communities of color—and is now a majority-minority state, but the congressional map increases representation for white Republicans and decreases representation for voters of color in spite of these demographic changes.

Now, along with redrawing current maps, Jones ordered lawmakers to create a new Black-majority congressional district, two more state Senate districts, and five additional state House districts, CNN reports. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp responded to Thursday’s order by scheduling a special session for November 29. But he did not rule out the possibility of appealing the court’s decision, according to the Associated Press. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Georgia case is the most recent in a wave of decisions upholding the Voting Rights Act, including in Alabama and Florida, where judges ordered states to redraw maps found to be racially gerrymandered.

This week’s release of Police State was especially well-timed. The new pseudo-documentary film by conspiracy theorist and far-right influencer Dinesh D’Souza opened in theaters this week just as Jenna Ellis, one of Donald Trump’s election lawyers, pleaded guilty to a felony charge for her role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Georgia. She is the fourth of his lawyers in the case to do so, a trend that for a certain audience, is evidence that the police state D’Souza’s film warns of is already here.

With a screening planned at Trump’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago next month, Police State is an extended riff on the mantra Trump has adopted since being indicted for an extensive variety of crimes: If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.

Telling this horror story are right-wing luminaries such as former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, former Trump administration official Kash Patel, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who explain how ordinary people could, at any time, be just like the “nonviolent protesters” who sacked the US Capitol, and have jack-booted FBI thugs kick down their door, ransack their homes, scare their children, and haul them away to jail. Once there, they’ll be forced to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit simply for being conservatives exercising their free speech rights.

The work of far-right fringe characters who populate Rumble and Truth Social, Police State may nonetheless help shape the GOP narrative that will dominate the 2024 presidential election next year. “If politics is downstream from culture, what is more upstream from politics than going to AMC to see a movie?” says Danielle Tomson, paraphrasing the late conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart. A researcher working on a book about conservative influencers, Tomson sees the film as a preemptive strike on an inevitable Trump conviction ahead of his presidential campaign. “They think like Hollywood screenwriters,” she notes.

Unless you lurk inside a particular right-wing media bubble, you may have forgotten all about D’Souza, a wunderkind of the second Reagan administration whose star has fallen considerably since then. You certainly wouldn’t have heard about his newest movie in the mainstream press. Police State was publicized almost entirely through D’Souza’s extensive social media channels, where he has millions of followers. The film premiered in dozens of traditional AMC movie theaters across the country this week as if it were as mainstream as the Exorcist remake. But D’Souza paid to rent out the theaters, before moving his film to online streaming on October 27. I was curious to see how many conservatives would actually get off the couch to see a film by a B-list influencer with the delivery of a bank teller. So, on Monday night, I plodded across the Beltway to an AMC multiplex in Alexandria, Virginia, to catch the first showing.

Newly minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson thinks it’s too easy to get divorced, and he’d like to change that. 

“In my generation, all we’ve ever known is the no-fault scheme, and any deviation from that seems like a radical move,” Johnson said more than two decades ago. No-fault divorce, the “scheme” Johnson has long admonished, allows one party to unilaterally file to end a marriage—without having to prove things like adultery, imprisonment, or domestic abuse. These laws, mostly passed in the 1960s and 70s, were monumental in furthering women’s financial, social, and professional independence, as well as their safety. 

Johnson, though, believes that such laws are partly to blame for our “completely amoral society” that causes a young person to go “into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates.”

And Johnson isn’t alone in his ire. Lately there’s been a push by conservatives to end no-fault divorce—in podcast studios and in the halls of government. Right-wing activist and influencer Steven Crowder, Daily Wire and PragerU host Michael Knowles, and conservative podcaster Tim Pool, among others, have all decried the nationwide standard as being too lax, granting women divorces on a whim. The official GOP party platforms in Texas and Nebraska call for ending no-fault divorce. And in Louisiana, Johnson’s home state, the Republican party is considering the elimination of no-fault divorce.

Johnson’s opposition to no-fault divorce dates back decades. In 1997, Louisiana became the first state in the country to pass a “covenant marriage” law, offering newlyweds a religion-based contract that makes it significantly harder to get divorced. The law was backed by the Louisiana Family Forum, “a voice for traditional families,” where Johnson had been a volunteer. (The organization has received money from powerful groups like the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom; Johnson has been an attorney and spokesperson for the latter.) Two years later, Johnson and his new wife, Kelly, opted for a covenant marriage. They were some of the few who did. Between 2000 and 2010, about 1 percent of Louisiana couples opted for a covenant marriage.

As hundreds of thousands of Gazans have fled their homes in response to Israel’s warnings of a massive ground invasion, the United Nations is warning of an escalating humanitarian crisis.

Many are struggling to find shelter and food; Gaza has no electricity and is running out of clean drinking water. “It has become a matter of life and death,” said Phillippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency, the agency that provides support and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, in a statement Saturday. “It is a must: Fuel needs to be delivered now into Gaza to make water available for two million people.” 

On Saturday, Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on Palestinian human rights, warned, “In the name of self-defense, Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing.”

Nearly half of Gaza’s population has been displaced over the week following a massive attack on Israel by Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, last Saturday. The sequestered region has not received humanitarian aid since a complete blockade began on Friday. More than 1,300 Israelis and 1,900 Palestinians are estimated to have died in a war that erupted after the surprise attack a week ago. With the ground invasion set to begin soon, residents are fleeing but have few places to go. 

Meanwhile, a number of American lawmakers and other officials have attempted to demonstrate their support for Israel. Last week, President Joe Biden said, “So, in this moment, we must be crystal clear: We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”

On Friday, a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down an electoral map in Galveston, Texas, saying it violates the Voting Rights Act and amounts to “egregious” discrimination against Black and Latino voters.

“This is not a typical redistricting case,” wrote Judge Jeffrey Brown in a 157-page ruling. “What happened here was stark and jarring…the enacted plan denies Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect a candidate of their choice.”

The trial, which began in August, focused on how Galveston’s Republican commissioners redrew voting maps in 2021, breaking up the only precinct where Black and Latino voters made up the majority of the electorate. Their map would have effectively erased representation of people of color at the highest levels of local government in a county that is 45 percent non-white.

As my colleague Ari Berman wrote in 2021, the redistricting in Galveston “brought to mind the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the Jim Crow South,” with implications that extended beyond this single district. 

What’s happening in Galveston isn’t an aberration, but part of a troubling trend that is playing out throughout Texas—and across the South—in which Republicans at all levels of state government are going to increasingly extreme lengths to preserve white GOP power by diluting the votes of communities of color in new maps drawn for the US House, state legislative seats, and local offices like county commission and city council districts.

This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A little over three years ago, a menacing fog crept into the valley surrounding the small village of Satartia, Missisippi, causing a mass poisoning. Within minutes of breathing the air, residents choked and dropped to the ground. Nearly 50 people were hospitalized.

First responders didn’t know the calamity was caused by a carbon dioxide pipeline failing, but clues were there as they struggled to get to the scene. Gas-powered vehicles couldn’t move, and some people lay in the streets struggling to breathe. Jack Willingham, the emergency director for the town’s county, told NPR, “It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse.” And he told HuffPost that despite the disaster, the village was in fact lucky because if the wind had blown differently or the incident had happened when people were sleeping, there would have been deaths.

The havoc that day was caused by a rupture in a carbon dioxide pipeline that shot a massive white cloud of concentrated CO2 into the air in a dangerous rolling fog. Because CO2 displaces oxygen and oxygen is needed for gas-powered cars to work, vehicles wouldn’t run. Because CO2 is heavier than air, the thick fog didn’t dissipate but settled on the ground where its lethal potential was narrowly avoided.

A Texas high school that suspended a Black student for more than a month over the length of his dreadlocks is removing the student and transferring him to an alternative disciplinary program. Starting yesterday, Darryl George, an 18-year-old junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, east of Houston, will report to EPIC until November 29.

“Your child has engaged in chronic or repeated disciplinary infractions that violate the district’s previously communicated standards of student conduct,” school officials wrote to George’s family in a letter obtained by the New York Times.

Barbers Hill High School’s decision to send George to the alternative program extends a pattern of disciplinary actions taken against Black students over their hairstyles. As my colleague nia t. evans and I wrote in a piece just last week, George’s suspension on August 31 came just one day before Texas’s CROWN Act, a law that prohibits race-based hair discrimination, was slated to go into effect. In 2020, the school came under fire for similarly suspending another Black student, DeAndre Arnold, over his dreadlocks, ordering him to cut them to attend graduation. 

“The racism is being shown,” said Candice Matthews, a civil rights advocate and spokesperson to the George family, after Barber Hills High School told George he was being transferred. Following his suspension in August, George’s parents filed a lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for failure to enforce the CROWN Act. But the issue reflects a far wider and systemic racism:

The episodes at Barbers Hills High reflect a longstanding issue in the United States, particularly in schools where dress codes can discriminate against students. You saw it in the video of a New Jersey high school wrestler forced to cut his locs after a referee claimed that keeping them would forfeit the match. When a North Carolina charter school demanded that a young Indigenous boy cut his hair before returning to class after spring break. Such incidents, widely condemned as racist, have sparked laws similar to the CROWN Act around the country. Despite these protections, school administrators still enforce policies that target non-white students. 

The Justice Department on Thursday issued a new indictment against Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez and his wife, this time accusing the couple of acting as foreign agents for Egypt.

The court filing adds detail to the astonishing allegations already lodged against the senior New Jersey senator. Those include charges that he and his wife Nadine accepted gold bars, cash, a Mercedes, exercise machines, an air purifier, and other gifts worth hundred of thousands of dollars. In exchange, Menendez allegedly helped an Egyptian-American businessman maintain a monopoly on halal certification for US meat sent to Egypt; interfered with multiple criminal investigations; and used his post as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to make sure US arms sales to Egypt went through. The DOJ has also alleged that Menendez secretly provided the Egyptian government with sensitive details on American employees working at the US embassy in Cairo.

The new charge that Menendez conspired to act as foreign agent is not a surprise. Prosecutors said in their initial September 22 indictment of Menendez that he had used his power to advance Egyptian interests in exchange for bribes. But the new indictment adds pressure on Senate Democrats—and Republicans—as they grapple with how to deal with their embattled colleague. Menendez has so far refused to resign from the Senate and still sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, despite stepping down as its chairman. Charges that Menendez used his office and position on the panel to secretly act as an Egyptian agent make his continued service all the more embarrassing for Democrats, complicating their hopes to highlight the indictments and alleged corruption of former President Donald Trump in 2024.

A committee spokesperson declined to comment. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has not publicly urged Menendez to resign, did not respond to questions Thursday.

In the superseding indictment filed Thursday, prosecutors describe a May 21, 2019, dinner meeting at a Washington, DC, steakhouse involving the senator and his now-wife, the Egyptian-American businessman, and an unnamed Egyptian government official. During that meal, Nadine Menendez allegedly asked the men: “What else can the love of my life do for you?”

A former Deutsche Bank executive testified this week that the German financial behemoth only agreed to make massive loans to Donald Trump because of Trump’s vast personal fortune. The problem? The bank apparently thought, based at least partly on financial statements provided by Trump, that he was far wealthier than he really was.

The Deutsche Bank exec, Nicholas Haigh, was testifying in Manhattan as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against Trump. Going over internal documents in court with Haigh, James’ attorneys showed that the bankers didn’t really believe all of Trump’s claims about his wealth. They estimated that Trump was significantly less wealthy than he claimed, but they were still convinced that he had more money than he really did.

James contends that Trump didn’t have anywhere near enough wealth to qualify for the loans he received, and she alleges that the financial statements he gave to Deutsche and other institutions were fraudulent because he vastly over-valued his real estate properties. New York judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the case, has already ruled that he agrees—the ongoing trial involves a handful of lesser allegations over the paperwork and will also determine how much of a fine Trump should have to pay.

Trump and his legal team have largely declined to try to argue the facts of the case. The former president’s comments on the ongoing proceedings have mostly been limited to angry outbursts accusing James of pursuing a political or racist agenda. (James is Black.) Wednesday’s testimony highlighted just how hard it is for Trump to deny the allegations. As James’ attorneys repeatedly showed in court, not only did Trump sign his name to documents listing incorrect values for his properties, the banks largely believed what he told them and made their decisions based on his claims.

According to the documents and Haigh’s testimony, at least one of the transactions required that Trump maintain a net worth of at least $2.5 billion to avoid defaulting on the loan. At the time, Trump claimed his net worth was well over $4 billion. But James’ office contends that it was actually only about $1.6 billion.

Virginia Democrats are calling on the Justice Department to investigate the state’s elections department after the administration announced last week that it had mistakenly removed eligible voters from voter rolls after incorrectly listing them as convicted felons.

The announcement, which came with early voting already underway for a pivotal state election, said that it had identified at least 270 errors. But Democrats are warning that the total could be far more after Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-Va.) administration removed more than 10,000 voters last year in a purge effort.

We're just weeks away from an election and we're just now finding out that potentially thousands of eligible Virginia voters were purged from the voter rolls.

I'm urging the Justice Department to investigate these alarming reports. https://t.co/IZ6l7pDawE

— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) October 11, 2023

This story is the result of a partnership between The Investigative Reporting Workshop and The Center for Public Integrity.

Osama Mohamed let out a sigh of relief as he and his wife stood at the steps of the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the first day of September. Clutched tightly in his hands was the letter he’d been chasing for nearly a year and a half. “Congratulations!” its bolded words declared. “Your US Visa has been approved.” 

It had been 16 months since Mohamed, 28, had first applied to the United States Diversity Visa program. His petition became even more urgent in April, when political upheaval in his home country of Sudan prompted by an ongoing conflict that has resulted in thousands of casualties left Mohamed’s family home, near the capital in Khartoum, destroyed. 

The program has come to be known as the “green card lottery,” in which applicants submit to a laborious 10-step process of petitioning for entry into the United States. Once they arrive, they’re recognized as permanent residents, permitted to work, and enter the path of citizenship. It’s a longshot, by design, intended to open additional visas to would-be immigrants from countries that send relatively small numbers of people to the United States each year. 

The final step in the process is an in-person interview, often requiring applicants to traverse international borders to the nearest US Embassy. Mohamed and his wife traveled 700 miles to Addis Ababa for their interview, at which they were told in writing their visa had been approved. It was an “indescribable feeling,” Mohamed recalls, to hold a winning lottery ticket in hand. 

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Sewage collecting in crudely dug trenches. Failing septic tanks that send waste bubbling into backyards. These are some of the common sights across Alabama’s Black Belt, a strip of 24 continuous counties blessed with deep fertile soil but long plagued by inadequate wastewater infrastructure and the commensurate parasitic disease. 

It’s a problem, advocates say, that the state has the resources to address. 

The US Environmental Protection Agency opened a civil rights probe last week into the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and its implementation of a federal program designed to boost water infrastructure in communities across the country. The decision comes after advocates filed a complaint in March alleging that, for years, the state has hindered Black residents in rural areas from obtaining federal funds to update their wastewater systems. 

It’s a region where children play on sewage-laden soil and an overwhelming stench envelops some neighborhoods for weeks on end. “It’s really disgraceful and painful that people endure this, especially when we have the opportunity to fix it,” said Aaron Colangelo, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defence Council who has been working on the issue.

On Wednesday, a group of New York House Republicans announced that they will introduce a resolution to expel Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who was indicted yesterday on new charges that included campaign violations for a fake-donor scheme first reported by Mother Jones earlier this year. The resolution, which will be introduced by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), marks the first GOP-led effort to boot Santos from their ranks. It will require at least two-thirds of the House to pass.

Today, I’ll be introducing an expulsion resolution to rid the People’s House of fraudster, George Santos. The resolution will be co-sponsored by fellow #NewYork freshman @RepLaLota @RepMikeLawler @RepMolinaroNY19 @RepLangworthy @RepWilliams.

Our statement will follow.

— Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (@RepDesposito) October 11, 2023

House Democrats attempted to expel the disgraced Republican in May following Santos’ first indictment on 13 criminal counts related to fraud and money laundering crimes. Republicans quickly referred the motion to the House Ethics Committee, effectively killing the resolution.

On Saturday afternoon, after weeks of GOP squabbling in the House of Representatives, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) led his chamber in passing a bill to fund the government for 45 days. 

He did it, primarily, with the help of Democrats. The temporary spending bill passed 335–91; 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voted in favor.

In order to garner enough Democratic support for the bill, which needed two-thirds of the chamber’s backing, McCarthy relented on his pursuit of 30 percent spending cuts across most federal agencies and additional immigration restrictions at the southern border, winning the okay of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). To get enough Republicans on board, the bill did not include continuing aid to help Ukraine fight Russia. The bill, which would fund the government through mid-November, includes $16 billion for federal disaster relief.

Headed into Saturday, a solution was far from promised. Far-right House Republicans have sparred with McCarthy, whom they have threatened to oust as Speaker, and publicly opposed passing a short-term continuing resolution over a longer-term appropriations package. No Congressional action by Sunday would have risked national parks closing, women and infants losing food assistance, and millions of federal employees going unpaid.

For those problems to be avoided, the Senate still needs to pass the continuing resolution before Saturday ends. Democratic senators’ support for additional Ukraine funding may be a source of contention, though the largest impasse to averting a shutdown seems to have been resolved.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a tough decision to make: who he’ll appoint to temporarily replace the Senate vacancy created by the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who served in the upper chamber for more than three decades and wielded enormous influence over firearms policy, judicial selections, and more until her death Thursday.

Three Democratic members of Congress from the state have already announced their bids to replace Feinstein in 2024: Rep. Barbara Lee, a liberal who has served in Congress since 1998; Katie Porter, a rising star in the progressive coalition who was first elected in 2018; and Adam Schiff, who rose in prominence managing former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, and as a member of the committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

But Newsom is unlikely to pick any of the three for the interim. Earlier this month, the governor said he didn’t want to give anyone an advantage in next year’s primary should Feinstein be unable to finish her term. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off, he said on NBC’s Meet the Press as Feinstein publicly battled health issues. “That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.”

His decision is complicated by a 2021 promise to name a Black woman to replace Feinstein should she leave the Senate early. That promise came after he appointed Alex Padilla to fill the vacancy left by Vice President Kamala Harris, who was the only Black woman in the Senate.

Lee, who is Black, was incensed by Newsom’s comments. “I am troubled by the governor’s remarks,” Lee said in a statement. “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election.”

In the midst of hurricane and wildfire season, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is preparing to withhold billions in disaster funding until Congress passes a budget bill that refills its dwindling cash stock, according to a footnote in a FEMA document first reported by E&E News.

In November, FEMA had roughly $23 billion in its disaster relief fund. As of September, that funding was down to about $4 billion. 

As a faction of far-right House Republicans hold up the congressional appropriations process and stonewall efforts by more moderate Republicans and Democrats to at least pass a temporary budget package before most funding for federal agencies runs out on Saturday, FEMA has begun freezing funds dedicated to long-term recovery projects to preserve its ability to respond to future catastrophic events.

The $8 billion FEMA expects to freeze includes $376 million for recovery projects stemming from Hurricane Laura, which hit Louisiana in 2020, and Hurricane Ida, which hit multiple states in August 2021. FEMA also plans to freeze $265 million in funding for continued recovery from Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm that ravaged Southwest Florida last September.

Puerto Rico, beleaguered by earthquakes and hurricanes in recent years, will be particularly affected by the pause. According to the Biden administration, 188 projects on the Caribbean island will be delayed. E&E News reports that Puerto Rico could have “up to $2.6 billion withheld for projects such as rebuilding critical facilities like hospitals and the electrical grid.”

This story was originally published by the Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, who died on Thursday evening at the age of 90, leaves behind a long and complex legacy on climate and environmental issues. Feinstein represented California as a Democrat in the US Senate for more than 30 years, becoming the longest-serving woman in Senate history, and during that time she brokered a number of significant deals to protect and restore the natural landscapes of the West. In recent years, as politics shifted, she found herself on the receiving end of criticism over her approach to tackling the climate crisis.

After taking office in 1992 following a decade as the mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein established herself as a champion for conservation. She worked to pass legislation that would protect millions of acres of California wilderness from development and extractive industry, using her deft skills as a negotiator to bridge disputes between competing interests. She succeeded in that conservation effort where her predecessors had failed, spearheading a 1994 bill that created the Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks, which encompass millions of acres. She later passed bills to protect Lake Tahoe, the California redwoods, and the Mojave Desert.

Feinstein also supported action to reduce carbon emissions for much of her Senate career, and she was a key backer of a cap-and-trade bill that failed to pass the Senate during the first years of the Obama administration. She also authored successful legislation on automobile fuel economy standards, and pushed forward new regulatory standards for oil and gas pipelines following a 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people.

Even so, as a compromise-oriented legislator from California, she often had to weigh the competing interests of farmers, ranchers, and environmentalists, and at times she angered all of them. This tendency toward centrism was evident in her legislative work on water in the state’s Central Valley. She brokered a monumental restoration agreement on the valley’s overstressed San Joaquin River in 2009, but then helped override species protections for fish on that same river in 2016.

New York City is underwater. As heavy rainfall hits the northeast, making the city’s roads impassable and halting train and subway service, social media videos show flooding through holes in subway walls and water rushing into buses and cars—as well as sewage pushing up into homes. Twenty-three million people in the area are on flood watch, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy all issuing states of emergency and deploying rescue teams.

New York’s battle with rain and floods isn’t new. The city has a devastating history of flooding in disasters like 2021’s Hurricane Ida, which broke city records for amount and intensity of rainfall. Friday’s floods mark the wettest day in New York City since Ida—from 1958 to 2016, Climate Central reports, the northeast saw the country’s biggest increase in heavy precipitation events.

Rainfall and floods are only expected to worsen due to climate change, and the city’s wastewater and drainage infrastructure isn’t equipped for the pressure. A FEMA report from this summer concluded that most cities’ drainage systems “were not built to handle the amount of runoff from increasingly intense storms.”

Those infrastructure problems are set to worsen, compounding the impact. Erika Smull, a municipal bonds analyst at Breckinridge Capital Advisors, is a  water utilities expert and former environmental engineer. She explained to me earlier this year that US water infrastructure “is reaching or has reached the end of its usable life. It’s been there for longer than it should be. We are entering into a new era.”

Ida also led to scrutiny of New York’s illegal basement apartments: thirteen residents trapped in the unregulated dwellings were killed by its floods. “Ida will not be the last flash flood that puts the lives and homes of basement-dwellers at risk,” city Comptroller Brad Lander wrote in a 2022 report, highlighting the fact that such apartments are generally occupied by low-income people, people of color, and immigrants.  

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. Plus, David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has just been released in a new and expanded paperback edition. 

If you’re not familiar with term “stochastic terrorism,” now is a good time to bone up, for the leading Republican candidate is a stochastic terrorist.

Stochastic terrorism is defined by conflict and law enforcement experts as the demonization of a foe so that he, she, or they might become targets of violence. Scientific American recently put it this way:

Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims. At its core, stochastic terrorism exploits one of our strongest and most complicated emotions: disgust.

In addition to disgust, fear and hatred can work, the point being to depict a person or set of people as a loathsome other undeserving of respect or acceptance, and a dangerous threat. Establishing such a framework boosts the odds that a lone individual or group will violently assault the deprecated.

“As president of the Board of Supervisors, it’s my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed. The suspect is…Supervisor Dan White.” —Dianne Feinstein, Nov. 27, 1978

Unlike the murders that were the catalyst for her national political career, Dianne Feinstein’s death shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise. She was very old and very sick and for the last year the entire country had been on a death watch of sorts. Her passing is not a shock, and one of the reasons she stayed in office until the end—the possibility that Republicans could use her departure to strip Democrats of a key seat on the Judiciary Committee, enabling them to deny President Biden the ability to appoint judges and potentially even a Supreme Court justice—remains.

She had become a source of speculation and rage, a Weekend at Bernie’s punchline, and she could yet be another cautionary tale, a la Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of how aging leaders who refuse to step aside unspool their own legacy and accomplishments.

Even in this moment, when 10,000-word obits are being slapped up on front pages across America, it can be hard to remember just how historic, how symbolic, those accomplishments were. And how emblematic of the currents in San Francisco’s politics.

Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco because of assassination. Because of a workplace shooting. Because of an aggrieved white dude who saw himself as a “defender of the home, the family and religious life against homosexuals, pot smokers and cynics,” as the New York Times would put it, and who shot the first openly gay Californian to ever hold elected office and a progressive mayor determined to bring social services to San Francisco’s downtrodden. White and Milk had both been elected just a year earlier, when the city moved from at-large supervisors to a system where each supervisor was elected by their district alone. It was a revolution best remembered for Milk’s historic win, but it also ushered in the board’s first Chinese American (Gordon Lau), the first Black woman (Ella Hill Hutch)…and the first firefighter, Dan White. The board had previously been mostly rich and white and straight, and suddenly it was not.