The demands of the Iran war also caused President Donald Trump to delay by several weeks his highly anticipated trip to China, deepening worries that the U.S. is once again getting distracted at the cost of its strategic interests in Asia, where Beijing seeks to unseat the U.S. as the regional leader.

Those skeptical of the U.S. involvement in the Middle East say the war is preventing Trump from adequately preparing for his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month, when economic interests are on the line, and they warn that a failure to focus on Asia and maintain strong deterrence could lead to greater instability, if China should believe the time is ripe to seize the self-governed island of Taiwan.

“This is precisely the wrong time for the United States to turn away and be sucked into another intractable Middle East conflict,” said Danny Russel, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Rebalancing to Asia is highly relevant to America’s national interests, but it has been undercut by many bad decisions.”

Others defend the president’s approach, arguing that the forceful steps he is taking elsewhere, including in Venezuela and Iran, serve to counter China globally.

“Beijing is the chief sponsor for the adversaries that President Trump is dealing with sequentially, and it’s wise to do this sequentially,” Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said in a recent podcast.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also said conflicts may not be confined to a single theater, suggesting that China could call upon its “junior partners” elsewhere to divert U.S. attention if it should move against Taiwan.

“Most likely it will not be limited, something in the Indo-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific,” Rutte said, speaking Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington. “It will be a multi-theater issue.”

Repercussions in Asia of the Iran war

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently led a bipartisan group of senators to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, where they heard concerns about the impact of the war on energy costs and about the departure of U.S. military assets, including missile defense systems from South Korea and a rapid-response Marine unit from Japan.

She sought to reassure them of the U.S. commitment to deterring conflicts in Asia and shoring up regional stability.

“Failure is not an option,” Shaheen told The Associated Press after returning from Asia. “We know China has already said they intend to take Taiwan by force if they need to, and they’re on an expedited time schedule. And we also know that what happened in Europe, in the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East is affecting those calculations.”

Kurt Campbell, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, said he’s worried that the military capabilities that the U.S. had patiently accumulated in the Indo-Pacific region might not return in full even after the Iran war ends.

The longer the conflict goes on, the more it will pull resources and focus away from Asia, said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the U.S. strategy in Asia. He added that future arms sales to the region also will be negatively affected.

“The United States has expended substantial numbers of munitions in the Middle East and will have to keep an increased force presence there, some of which has been redirected from Asia,” Cooper said. “Meanwhile, Xi Jinping’s wisdom in preparing a ‘war time’ economy by stockpiling and adding alternate energy sources has shown itself to be beneficial.”

Shaheen said the U.S. defense industry will struggle to meet the demand to replenish the weapons stockpile. “We’re working on a number of strategies to improve that, but at this point, timelines for weapons delivery are slipping,” she said.

The senator from New Hampshire said she’s encouraged that Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are stepping up their own defense.

After 15 years and 3 presidents, pivot to Asia remains elusive

Obama’s strategic rebalance to Asia reflected his understanding that the U.S. must be a player in the Pacific to harness the region’s growth and ensure continued U.S. leadership in the face of China’s rising influence.

“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region,” Obama said in a speech to the Australian Parliament. “So make no mistake, the tide of war is receding, and America is looking ahead to the future that we must build.”

But the strategy was set back when a proposed trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership with key U.S. regional partners failed to get through the U.S. Senate. After Trump first took office in 2017, he withdrew the U.S. from the partnership and launched a tariff war with China.

His Democratic successor, Joe Biden, kept Trump’s tariffs on China and tightened export controls on advanced technology, while strengthening regional alliances to counter China.

Middle East again grabs US attention

By the time Trump rolled out his national security strategy in late 2025, the U.S. strategy in Asia had been narrowed to military deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and the First Island Chain, a string of U.S.-aligned islands off China’s coast that restrict its access to the Western Pacific.

The national security document says it’s in the economic interest of the U.S. to secure access to advanced chips, which are sourced primarily from Taiwan and are needed to power everything from computers to missiles, and to protect shipping lanes in the South China Sea.

“Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” the document says. “We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain.”

The Middle East, it says, should be getting less attention: “As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.”

Then came the Iran war.

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A U.S. official said there was continued engagement with Iran, and forward motion on trying ‌to get to an agreement. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said efforts were still under way to resolve the conflict.

But oil prices climbed back over $100 per barrel, with no sign of a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to ease the biggest ever disruption in supplies and broader concerns over the durability of a two-week ceasefire agreement reached last week.

Trump said Iran had been in touch on Monday and wanted to make a deal but that he would not sanction any agreement allowing Tehran to have a ​nuclear weapon.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world.”

Since the United States and Israel began the war on February ​28, Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels except its own, saying passage would be permitted only under Iranian control and subject to a fee.

Trump ⁠has said Washington would block Iranian vessels and any ships that paid such tolls and that any Iranian “fast-attack” ships that went near the blockade would be eliminated.

Brigadier General Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defence, warned ​that foreign military efforts to police the strait would escalate the crisis and instability in global energy security.

NATO allies including Britain and France said they would not be drawn into the conflict by taking part in the blockade, stressing instead ​the need to reopen the waterway, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes.

CEASEFIRE UNDER STRAIN

The ceasefire that halted six weeks of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes looked in jeopardy, with only a week left to run. Washington said Tehran rejected its demands at weekend talks in Islamabad, the highest-level discussions between the two nations since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the blockade would be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations” entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and Gulf of ​Oman.

“The blockade will not impede neutral transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian destinations,” Central Command said in a note to seafarers seen by Reuters on Monday.

Two Iranian-linked tankers, the Aurora and New Future, left the ​strait laden with oil products on Monday before the deadline, according to LSEG data.

An Iranian military spokesperson called any U.S. restrictions on international shipping “piracy,” warning that if Iranian ports were threatened, no port in the Gulf or Gulf of Oman would be ‌secure. Any military ⁠vessels approaching the strait would violate the ceasefire, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.

Trump said Iran’s navy had been “completely obliterated” during the war, adding that only a small number of “fast-attack ships” remained.

“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea. It is quick and brutal,” Trump, much of whose communications are on social media, wrote on his microblogging site.

He was apparently referring to the U.S. strikes carried out against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The strikes, which began in September, killed more than 160 people. The U.S. military has not provided ​evidence that the vessels were ferrying drugs.

LEBANON FACES ATTACKS

Trump ​has also lashed out at U.S.-born Pope Leo, who ⁠has spoken out against the war, denouncing him as “terrible” in a rare direct attack by a U.S. president on a pontiff.

With the war unpopular at home and rising energy prices causing political blowback, Trump paused the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign last week after threatening to destroy Iran’s “whole civilisation” unless it reopened the strait.

Israel has continued to bombard Lebanon and ​on Monday Israeli troops launched an attack it said was intended to seize a key south Lebanon town from Iran-backed Hezbollah. Israel and the U.S. have said the ​campaign against Hezbollah was not part ⁠of the ceasefire, while Iran has insisted it is.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday it was deeply concerned about attacks on medical workers in Lebanon after a deadly strike on a Red Cross center in the country.

Iran has brought new demands, including recognition of its control of the waterway, lifting of sanctions and the withdrawal of forces from U.S. military bases across the Middle East.

Trump has declared victory, despite failing to achieve the objectives he set out at ⁠the start of ​the war: to eliminate Iran’s ability to strike its neighbours, end its nuclear programme and make it easier for Iranians to topple their ​government.

Benchmark oil prices, which had eased last week after the ceasefire was announced, traded around 6% higher on Monday, off the day’s peaks but still above $100 a barrel.

Traders say the main benchmarks – used to set prices for trillions of dollars’ worth of commodities worldwide – actually understate the severity ​of a disruption with no precedent in modern times.

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However, they only cite a part of the amendment. It says, “In order to have a well-maintained militia…” When that amendment was added to the constitution, we did not have a militia capable of destroying every living soul on the globe. Now we do. The two words “gun control” seem to scare the daylights out of the NRA and its cohorts. Guns kill. Cars can kill.

That’s why we are required to take written and road tests before we’re let loose on the streets and highways. A motor vehicle with an unstable person behind the wheel can kill. Same for a gun. It is so easy for an unstable teenager (or adult) to obtain an AK-47, Luger or Rossi 38 caliber handgun. I constantly hear, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Wrong – “Guns in the hands of people kill people.” As Paul Harvey used to say on the radio, “Now you know the rest of the story.

Now, part two. Roe vs. Wade settled the abortion matter in 1973, a Supreme Court ruling that has been reaffirmed several times since. So here we go. It is wrong for a woman to control her own body, but any kid, not old enough to obtain a driver’s license can obtain a gun and kill your kid. There used to be a common expression, “Mother knows best.” Women are better equipped to control their bodies than a bunch of old fogies.

Every day the country seems to become more divided. No two issues have caused the chasm to continue to separate us. I believe we should control gun distribution on the streets of America and let women control their bodies.

Raymond Strait | Hemet

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But at its core, populism is concerned with the people and attending to the ordinary citizens of a nation, regardless of race and ethnicity, by giving them a voice in their respective societies. The authoritarian context has been married to the term through a series of foreign demagogues who have utilized the façade of populist policies to gain momentum for their own political gains. There is no shortage of names on the list of offenders, and there is no real purpose to go through them but to highlight that this concept has been hijacked by the global internationalist class as a window to achieve their own personal gain. Most ironically, the left has decided to label modern conservatism as a breeding ground for populist ideas; and I believe this to be a badge of honor that conservatives must take up with pride. Clearly, leftist elitists still believe that their globalist-centered policies have created positive change by trying to remake the world in their own image. Let us take a brief moment to review the fruits of the left’s endeavors.

From the time of the United States’ unipolar moment in the 1990s until the present, the idea of globalization and U.S. economic and militaristic dominance became synonymous and interchangeable terms. The elitists hoped to create supply chain diversity and free markets which, in turn, forced societies to live more harmoniously as they were all interconnected. We can see that the only real positive change had eventually benefited the corporate class who now had free reign in shaping the rules of the road and playing by their own rules. The common people were left behind, failing to adapt to the vertical integration of society that came with globalization. No longer were the Democrats concerned about projecting the idea that they were fighting on behalf of the working class. No longer were they concerned about First Amendment issues. In fact, the Democrats, who purported to be the party of anti-trust, had ultimately facilitated the growth of tech oligarchies into unimaginable monopolistic empires that censored First Amendment protected speech as a result of their incessant desires to obtain capital for their re-election campaigns. Again, the people were left out of these conversations entirely.

In parallel with a recent public awakening on America’s domestic policy pivots, we are seeing a seismic shift in public sentiment toward internationalist and globalist views of how America should act abroad. We constantly hear from the think-tank class that domestic policy is foreign policy, and vice versa. If that were true, then we would see an American foreign policy focused on American citizens’ interests.

We are constantly reminded that it is in America’s interest to be embroiled in Middle East conflicts and powerplays in Eurasia with a declining power that have no social and economic value for the average U.S. citizen. We know these are empty statements, and even outright lies, as global lenders and the military-industrial complex became the primary benefactors from these entanglements. So, what can be done? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the public cannot, and will not, be able to stay silent on their political beliefs much longer with the advent of new media outperforming legacy media. The public is starved for honest journalists, real domestic initiatives that empower and employ the population with growth potential, and a foreign policy that is focused on the citizenry’s interests. A logical solution to enacting positive change is to encourage the next generations to apply for government positions. The permanent bureaucracy of government is arguably the most influential power structure that dominates our way of life. The bureaucracy is charged with collecting your taxes, protecting you from crime, providing health benefits, and so on. Even more, these individuals are not elected by you. They are hired as you are within your respective lines of work. They are meant to be accountable to you as public servants. However, this bloated class of bureaucrats has become the most sclerotic, yet authoritative, entity that serves the outdated goals of the internationalists. We often elect new leaders who vow for change and then become excited at the prospect of a shift in policy with a new incoming administration. This age-old tale is retold, in different forms, every four years with no real shift in policies at the levels of government that matter. We can thank the unelected permanent bureaucracy for this continual inaction, as they are beholden to the ideologies that have gained them their respective power in the halls of their workplaces. If we are to change the way that government works for the people, we must encourage the future to invest in government service.

The U.S. government has a funny way of listening to outside advice: it does not. The bureaucracy is stuck in their assessments of the world within the context of their 1990s sense of idealism. Analytical frameworks surrounding foreign policy and national security priorities often do not account for the people’s benefit. If the think-tankers were correct about the synergy of foreign and domestic policy, then we would see a foreign policy that benefited working-class people of all colors and creeds. The GOP must break away from their reactionary inklings of clinging singularly onto cultural war issues and pursue a strategy of ensuring the American public that the party supports their best interests, economically and socially. On the flip side, the Democrats have completely abandoned the notion of even considering the working-class voter in policy implementation, which presents an even greater advantage for GOP strategists to show voters the state’s obvious neglect. What other choice do we have as a people but to make a change from inside the apparatus? Encouraging young individuals to embark on a life of government service may not be easy, as the pay does not attract the attention that a silicon-valley tech giant might offer. However, joining this system may yield the most consequential benefit for society: true representation within our government.

—-

M. Roberts is a government security official who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

M. Roberts | Contributed

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Apparently the Post Office in Hemet was asleep at the wheel when that message was delivered. They have it proudly posted on the Yale Branch door: Open from 10 am to 12 noon on Saturday’s for box owners only.

I have two boxes at the Yale Branch and I, along with number of disappointed and angry box holders are locked out just about every other Saturday. You can go at 10:30 a.m. and often find the door locked. Go back at 11:30a.m. and it is still locked.

This is ridiculous. We pay outlandish fees for those boxes. Many of us depend on our Saturday mail to determine what we may or may not have to do on Monday Morning.

Will somebody please set a fire-cracker under the Post Mistress’s chair and get her attention? Writing letters does not work. A number of us have tried to no avail. Maybe we should get a rebate from our annual fees? Huh?

Raymond Strait
Hemet, California

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After living on three continents for an extended period of time, I can tell you that one of the best things about being in the United States is the safety and security that such men and women provide to us, especially to ordinary citizens like me. Whenever we feel threatened or are in need of any help, we dial 9-1-1 and these soldiers drop everything and rush to our help. I can drive late at night through any city, go for a walk at any hour, or step into any place to shop or just to browse around, at any hour of the day, and feel protected because these real-life “superheroes” are only a shout away. Most of the countries in this world don’t have such luxury. We are that fortunate!

What made me tear up was the realization that January 6th was their 9-1-1 moment. They were the ones who needed help and there was none available to them. They were fighting a mob that was bent on doing extreme harm to our representatives, at the behest of those that were supposed to safeguard our nation and our institutions. Instead, our so-called leaders were inciting the misguided sheep to turn into hyenas and do their worst, just to benefit the scam artists posing as messiahs. Our President and some of his cronies—let’s not mince words—were inciting that mob to do something that goes against every fiber of our being as a nation, against every ideal that we stand for, and against the very fabric that holds us together as the superpower with moral high ground.

Officer Fanone spoke about duty, honor, and service. All of our law enforcement officers, and military personnel, live by such credo and take the oath to put their lives on the line—as these officers did on January 6th—to live by or to die for those values. That is not a small thing in itself. Most of us cannot and do not aspire to such high ideals. But, at the very least, we can respect those who do, and honor their valor. But, instead of honoring their sacrifices and cherishing their bravery in the face of such huge odds, some of the very people they protected are turning against them. Instead of recognizing their dedication, some of the people in this country, especially those who have the huge megaphone via different forms of media, are belittling them and downplaying what they achieved that day. Not only did they save countless tragedies from transpiring, as were planned by some people in power, but they themselves suffered tragedies of their own during their fight—literally—for their lives.

My tears were also for this nation that has forgotten what the word “honor” truly means. Once we taught our kids, that honor is everything and a man (or woman) is nothing without honor. Now, we have a huge swath of people, who openly, proudly, and without shame, do things that are dishonorable. Just think for a moment, we go crazy when a sportsman kneels when our national anthem is being played, because he is disrespecting our flag, but we can’t bring ourselves to condemn those that used our flags to beat these officers, just because our President did not want to concede the election. We have always followed the sportsmanship of accepting our loss, even if a referee makes the wrong call. But here we are, months and months later, still refusing to accept the loss, even after one thousand and one replays that showed that there was no wrong call.

Along with losing our honor, we have also lost our intelligence. I can’t believe that we have no ability these days to recognize a shyster when we see one. There are politicians who are using key phrases, and repeat them often, just to fleece us and enrich themselves. We have no reasoning abilities left to separate swindlers from genuine, caring people. We have no shame in elevating a con man to the level of an infallible holy man, for no reason, other than that he keeps repeating his lies that smart people like us should be able to easily see through. In other words, we have lost our minds.

America needs to wake up and see what truly is going on around us. There once was a time when we used to consider it disrespectful and unacceptable to even utter foul words in “polite company.” Now, we have absolutely no reaction when the very person we wish for him to be our leader—i.e. Donald Trump—uses the P-word to refer to these brave, selfless heroes. A man with no character is throwing stones at these men whose character is beyond reproach. There are politicians on both sides of the aisle, using fear-mongering and scare tactics, to openly deceive us and to take us for every penny that we have, to get us to do their dishonest, dishonorable, and disgusting bidding; to make fools out of us in ways that is beyond the pale. When, in God’s name, are we going to come to our senses and stop acting like pawns in their hands and hold these charlatans and fraudsters accountable for their sins against our nation. We can’t let them destroy us from within. Open your eyes America and see right through them. They are the real enemies who have weakened our nation so much.

Muhammad Naeem | Contributed

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As the world staggers through another summer of extreme weather, experts are noticing something different: 2021′s onslaught is hitting harder and in places that have been spared global warming’s wrath in the past.

Wealthy countries such as the United States, Canada, Germany and Belgium are joining poorer and more vulnerable nations on a growing list of extreme weather events that scientists say have some connection to human-caused climate change.

“It is not only a poor country problem, it’s now very obviously a rich country problem,” said Debby Guha-Sapir, founder of the international disaster database at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. “They (the rich) are getting whacked.”

Killer floods hit China, but hundreds of people also drowned in parts of Germany and Belgium not used to being inundated. Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. had what climate scientist Zeke Hausfather called “scary” heat that soared well past triple digits in Fahrenheit and into the high 40s in Celsius, shattering records and accompanied by unusual wildfires. Now southern Europe is seeing unprecedented heat and fire.

And peak Atlantic hurricane and U.S. wildfire seasons are only just starting.

When what would become Hurricane Elsa formed on July 1, it broke last year’s record for the earliest fifth named Atlantic storm. Colorado State University has already increased its forecast for the number of named Atlantic storms — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Wednesday said it was expecting one or two named storms more than it predicted in May.

For fire season, the U.S. West is the driest it has been since 1580, based on soil moisture readings and tree ring records, setting the stage for worsening fires if something ignites them, said UCLA climate and fire scientist Park Williams.

What happens with U.S. hurricane and fire seasons drives the end-of-year statistics for total damage costs of weather disasters, said Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geo scientist for insurance giant Munich Re. But so far this year, he said, wealthier regions have seen the biggest economic losses.

But when poorer countries are hit, they are less prepared and their people can’t use air conditioning or leave so there’s more harm, said Hausfather, climate director of the Breakthrough Institute. While hundreds of people died in the Pacific Northwest heat wave, he said the number would have been much higher in poor areas.

Madagascar, an island nation off East Africa, is in the middle of back-to-back droughts that the United Nations warns are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation.

Though it is too early to say the summer of 2021 will again break records for climate disasters, “We’re certainly starting to see climate change push extreme events into new territories where they haven’t been seen before,” Hausfather said.

The number of weather, water and climate disasters so far this year is only slightly higher than the average of recent years, said disaster researcher Guha-Sapir. Her group’s database, which she said still is missing quite a few events, shows 208 such disasters worldwide through July — about 11% more than the last decade’s average, but a bit less than last year.

Last year, the record-shattering heat that came out of nowhere was in Siberia, where few people live, but this year it struck Portland, Oregon, and British Columbia, which gets more Western media attention, Hausfather said.

What’s happening is “partly an increase in the statistics of these extreme events, but also just that the steady drumbeat, the pile on year-on-year … takes its cumulative toll on all of us who are reading these headlines,” said Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb.

“This pattern of recent Northern Hemisphere summers has been really quite stark,” said University of Exeter climate scientist Peter Stott.

While the overall temperature rise is “playing out exactly as we said 20 years ago, … what we are seeing in terms of the heat waves and the floods is more extreme than we predicted back then,” Stott said.

Climate scientists say there is little doubt climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving extreme events.

A new study using satellite images of global flooding since 2000, shows that flooding worldwide hits 10 times as many people as previously thought. Wednesday’s study in the journal Nature finds that from 2000 to 2018 between 255 and 290 million people were directly affected by floods — which lead author Beth Tellman of the University of Arizona says is based on 913 floods with thousands more not counted because of satellite image problems.

Previous estimates showed far fewer people hit by flooding because they were based on computer simulations, rather than observations. The new study finds that population within flooded areas grew 34% since 2000, nearly twice as fast as those outside flooded areas.

Tellman identified 25 nations that are “climate surprise” countries that will have to cope far more with the flooding problems than they do now. Those countries include the U.S, as well as Germany, Belgium and China, which were hit by flooding this summer.

Aside from dramatic floods and fires, heat waves are a major risk to prepare for in the future, Guha-Sapir said.

“It’s going to be a very big deal in the Western countries because the most susceptible to sudden peaks of heat are older people. And the demographic profile of the people in Europe is very old,” she said. “Heat waves are going to be a real issue in the next few years.”

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She bluntly told migrants not to travel to the United States. She spoke of the evils of government corruption that lead to dislocation. She urged nations to increase enforcement at their borders.

She completed the journey without securing any commitments to increase immigration enforcement or expand pathways to legal migration. But she also did so without a significant mistake.

It was her first international trip aboard Air Force Two, and a first step toward establishing herself on a core foreign policy issue — one that has bedeviled American presidents at least since Ronald Reagan.

But as much as the trip offered her a chance to step onto the international stage speaking for the Biden administration on a key issue, it also highlighted the ambiguous nature of the portfolio President Joe Biden has handed her — to address the root causes of the spike in migration at the U.S. border.

Harris came away from her meetings with the Guatemalan and Mexican presidents able to talk about commitments to work more closely with them on economic development and on combating trafficking, smuggling and corruption. But she also faced persistent questions about her decision not to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans have seized on the fact that neither Biden nor Harris has visited the border to argue that the administration is absent on the issue.

Harris was called out by the Democratic left, too, for using her platform in Guatemala to tell people thinking of fleeing to the U.S. that they should not. “Do not come,” she said, invoking the dangers of the trip as well as the Biden administration’s commitment to border security. “Do not come.”

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called those comments “disappointing” and noted that it is legal to seek asylum.

While White House aides have repeatedly tried to clarify that Harris’ assignment is narrowly focused on diplomatic solutions to the immigration situation, she was again forced to spend part of a trip meant to showcase her diplomatic chops explaining herself.

“It would be very easy to say, ‘We’ll travel to one place and therefore it’s solved,'” she said. “I don’t think anybody thinks that that would be the solution.”

Her foreign debut was a complex one as she attempted to engage in the deepest reasons people leave what they know to take on the perils of trekking to the U.S. border and trying to get across, whether illegally or through their right to ask for asylum.

Harris often speaks about her belief that “most people don’t want to leave home,” as she said during her meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei. She says her goal is to restore hope to the region so residents no longer feel compelled to flee their homes for better opportunities in the U.S.
The criticism from both Republicans and some Democrats underscored the politically fraught nature of the assignment and the difficulty Harris faces in finding success with an intractable challenge that’s only grown in recent months.

Illegal border crossings have increased steadily since April 2020, after President Donald Trump invoked pandemic-related powers to deny migrants the opportunity to seek asylum, but they further accelerated under Biden.

The new president quickly scrapped many of Trump’s hard-line border policies — most notably the program that made asylum-seekers wait in Mexico, often in dangerous conditions, for court dates in U.S. immigration court.

U.S. border authorities encountered nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children in March, the highest on record. Overall, more than 170,000 encounters were reported on the border in April, the highest level in more than 20 years. The numbers aren’t exactly comparable because getting stopped under pandemic-related authorities carries no legal consequences, prompting some people who are caught once to keep trying.

Still, analysts praised Harris’ first in-person foray into the region, noting that even as her political opponents attempt to distill the migration issue to the situation at the border, the vice president reflected a clear grasp of the nuances of the challenge.

“You’re completely unrealistic if you think there is some magic bullet to stop this stuff,” said Eric Olson, director of policy at the Seattle Foundation, a group focused on good governance in Latin America. “There’s very little you can do to stop migration quickly. Better to acknowledge it and set the groundwork to address the long-term issues.”

Olson praised Harris for pledging during her press conference with the Guatemalan president to fight corruption and for focusing her meetings in the region on civil society groups and small-business owners rather than the private sector.

And he said that getting Mexico to commit publicly to working with the U.S. on economic opportunity in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador was a significant step forward, because traditionally Mexico has treated Central America as “an annoying guest that just walks through your yard.”

“This is a first, maybe weak step, but it is something because they have not traditionally accepted that as their goal,” he said.

As the first female U.S. vice president, Harris spent much of her trip focused on elevating women in the region. She met female entrepreneurs in Guatemala and Mexico and announced a $40 million program in Guatemala focused on creating opportunities for young, primarily Indigenous women.

Harris, who is also the first Black and South Asian vice president, said her place in history was on her mind and informed her approach as she toured the region.

“I welcome showing anyone, whatever your race or gender, that you may be the first to do anything, but make sure you’re not the last,” she said. “And in that way, let’s pave a path where we create an opportunity for others to become the first in their family or their community to do those things that perhaps others didn’t think they were capable of, but God has given them that capacity to achieve, and with a little help, they will,” she said in Guatemala.

The trip was Harris’ busiest public foray yet. She held lengthy bilateral meetings with the Guatemalan and Mexican presidents, presided over roundtables with entrepreneurs and labor leaders, and took questions from the press multiple times a day.

She began the trip on Air Force Two with a brief visit with her traveling press, bringing cookies baked and decorated to look like her back to reporters to mark the start of her journey. She ended her time in Mexico with an extended press conference, in which she fielded questions on topics including immigration enforcement and voting rights.

She turns from one intractable problem to another back in Washington, where the White House has said she’ll spend the next week hosting events focused on voting rights as Democrats struggle to find enough support in Congress to write broad voting protections into law.

ALEXANDRA JAFFE | AP NEWS

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America’s new normal temperature is a degree hotter than it was just two decades ago.

Scientists have long talked about climate change — hotter temperatures, changes in rain and snowfall and more extreme weather — being the “new normal.” Data released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put hard figures on the cliche.

The new United States normal is not just hotter, but wetter in the eastern and central parts of the nation and considerably drier in the West than just a decade earlier.

Meteorologists calculate climate normals based on 30 years of data to limit the random swings of daily weather. It’s a standard set by the World Meteorological Organization. Every 10 years, NOAA updates normal for the country as a whole, states and cities — by year, month and season.

For the entire nation, the yearly normal temperature is now 53.3 degrees (11.8 degrees Celsius) based on weather station data from 1991 to 2020, nearly half a degree warmer than a decade ago. Twenty years ago, normal was 52.3 degrees (11.3 degrees Celsius) based on data from 1971 to 2000. The average U.S. temperature for the 20th century was 52 degrees (11.1 degrees Celsius).

The new normal annual U.S. temperature is 1.7 degrees (0.9 Celsius) hotter than the first normal calculated for 1901 to 1930.

“Almost every place in the U.S. has warmed from the 1981 to 2010 normal to the 1991 to 2020 normal,” said Michael Palecki, NOAA’s normals project manager.

Fargo, North Dakota, where the new normal is a tenth of a degree cooler than the old one, is an exception, but more than 90% of the U.S. has warmer normal temperatures now than 10 years ago, Palecki said.

In Chicago and Asheville, North Carolina, the new yearly normal temperature jumped 1.5 degrees in a decade. Seattle, Atlanta, Boston and Phoenix had their normal annual temperature rise by at least half a degree in the last decade.

Charlottesville, Virginia, saw the biggest jump in normal temperatures among 739 major weather stations. Other large changes were in California, Texas, Virginia, Indiana, Arizona, Oregon, Arkansas, Maryland, Florida, North Carolina and Alaska.

New normals are warmer because the burning of fossil fuels is making the last decade “a much hotter time period for much of the globe than the decades” before, said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald.

For Phoenix, the biggest change in normal came in precipitation. The normal annual rainfall for Phoenix dropped 10% down to 7.2 inches (18.2 centimeters). Rainfall in Los Angeles dropped 4.6%.

At the same time, Asheville saw a nearly 9% increase in rainfall, while New York City’s rainfall rose 6%. Seattle’s normal is 5% wetter than it used to be.

Climate scientists are split about how useful or misleading newly calculated normals are.

Mahowald and University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado said updating normal calculations helps city and regional planners to prepare for flooding and drought, farmers to decide what and when to plant, energy companies to meet changing demands and doctors to tackle public health issues arising from climate change.

But Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said he prefers a constant baseline such as 1951 to 1980, which is what NASA uses. Adjusting normal every 10 years “perverts the meaning of ‘normal’ and ‘normalizes’ away climate change,” he said in an email.

North Carolina’s state climatologist Kathie Dello said, “It seems odd to still call them normals because 1991-2020 was anything but normal climate-wise.”

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Representative Raul Ruiz has not held a question-and-answer meeting with his constituents in District 36 since his early years as a new Representative. During this time of the Covid 19 pandemic, it has become imperative that Representative Ruiz hear directly from citizens in District 36 about their healthcare needs. In our meeting with Congressman Raul Ruiz, we will discuss both the urgent need and the benefits of a Medicare for All healthcare program in the United States.

According to the Harvard Business Review, October 10, 2019 (https://hbr.org/2019/10/the-case-for-the-public-option-over-medicare-for-all), the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world, yet there are 28.3 million people (roughly 9%) without health insurance in America. Scaling down to the population size of CD 36 with around 755,000 people, that would mean that there are about 68,000 people without healthcare in the district. The United States ranks the lowest among the developed nations in avoiding preventable death. Based on this knowledge, the United States healthcare system is failing many millions of Americans.

By arranging for a legislative meeting, Representative Ruiz will not only keep his constituents informed on the issue of healthcare, but he will also become directly aware of the problems local communities are facing. In this way, Representative Ruiz and concerned citizens of the 36th Congressional District can participate in a clear dialogue about how to deal with these problems.

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Mitzi Carver and Chris Hofeditz CD 36 Medicare for All Advocacy

Chris Hofeditz • Vice-president of the Democrats of Hemet-San Jacinto

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