Plummeting balance in federal crime victims fund sparks alarm among states

Jennifer Shutt, 

States Newsroom
May 4, 2024 

Police Tape (AFP)

WASHINGTON — States and local organizations that aid victims of sexual assault and other crimes are raising the alarm about a multi-year plunge in funds, a major problem they say Congress must fix soon or programs will be forced to set up wait lists or turn victims away altogether.

Affected are rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, child advocacy centers and more that serve millions of Americans and can’t necessarily rely on scarce state or local dollars to keep the doors open if federal money runs short.

The problem has to do with a cap on withdrawals from the federal crime victims fund, put in place by Congress years ago in an earlier attempt at a solution.

Under the cap, how much money is available every year is determined by a complex three-year average of court fees, fines and penalties that have accumulated — a number that has plummeted by billions during the past six years. The fund does not receive any taxpayer dollars.


National Children’s Alliance CEO Teresa Huizar said in an interview with States Newsroom that child advocacy centers, which help connect children who have survived sexual or domestic abuse to essential services, have no fat left to trim in their budgets.

“What children’s advocacy centers are really looking at now are a set of extremely hard choices,” Huizar said. “Which kids to serve, which kids to turn away? CACs that have never had to triage cases previously, now will have to. CACs that have never had a waitlist for mental health services will now have long, lengthy waitlists to get kids in for therapy.”

“I mean, imagine being a kid who’s been sexually abused and being told you’re going to have to wait six months to see a counselor,” Huizar added. “It’s terrible.”

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, chairwoman of the spending panel that sets the cap every year based on the dwindling revenue, and Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, the subcommittee’s ranking member, both indicated during brief interviews with States Newsroom that a fix is in the works, but declined to provide details.

“There is an effort to address that and we’re in the process of doing that, but in the meantime there’s not as much money there,” Shaheen said.
Fund goes up and down by billions every year

Congress established the crime victims fund in 1984 when it approved the Victims of Crime Act. Its funding comes from fines, forfeited bonds and other financial penalties in certain federal cases.

The money flowing into the fund fluctuates each year, making it difficult for the organizations that apply for and receive grant funding to plan their budgets. Congress hoped to alleviate those boom-and-bust cycles by placing the annual cap on how much money can be drawn from the crime victims fund.

But that cap has sharply decreased recently, causing frustration for organizations that rely on it and leading to repeated calls for Congress to find a long-term solution.

The cap stayed below $1 billion annually until fiscal year 2015, when it spiked to $2.3 billion before reaching a high of $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2018.

The annual ceiling then dropped by more than $1 billion, starting the downward trend, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service and data from the Department of Justice.

The cap was set at $2 billion in fiscal year 2021 before rising to $2.6 billion in fiscal 2022 and then dropping to $1.9 billion in fiscal 2023.

Congress set the cap on withdrawals at $1.2 billion for fiscal 2024 when it approved the latest round of appropriations in March, and states and localities have reacted with concern at the prospect of such a dramatic cut. In Iowa, for example, where the state receives $5 million a year, the potential loss of funding posed a major question as legislators wrote their budget for judicial services.

Rep. Brian Lohse, R-Bondurant, said on the House floor before the end of session that lawmakers may have to step in with funding next year if the federal shortfall isn't fixed.

“It’s our intention that if the federal government doesn’t come through, that we will provide emergency funding as quickly as possible when we convene next January,” Lohse said. “So I hate to say it’s a ‘wait and see what happens,’ but that, at this point, is where we’re at. And we’re very hopeful the federal government will come through and replace the funding that they had promised.”

A better fix sought

Congress approved legislation in 2021 to increase the types of revenue from federal court cases moving into the crime victims fund, but advocates say a longer-term answer is needed.

Huizar said the National Children’s Alliance and prosecutors, as well as organizations that combat domestic and sexual violence, have been urging Congress to fix the funding stream or supplement it to provide stability and consistency.

“Now is the time for Congress to turn urgent attention to this issue if they do not want the safety net for kids and families and serious crime victims to just fall apart,” Huizar said.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers — Reps. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., Jim Costa, D-Calif., Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas and Ann Wagner, R-Mo. — have introduced legislation that would move unobligated funds collected from entities that defraud the federal government under the False Claims Act to the crime victims fund. The act is a main tool the federal government uses to fight fraud.

That bill is not a long-term solution, but a “temporary infusion of resources,” according to a summary released by lawmakers.

As for the Senate appropriators, Moran said he and others on the spending subcommittee “are waiting for the Judiciary Committee’s examination of the issue, so that we can take the authorizers’ suggestions and take them into account when we appropriate.”

Josh Sorbe, a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, wrote in a statement the “sustainability of the CVF is extremely important, as evidenced by Senator Durbin’s work on the VOCA Fix that passed in 2021, and we continue to work with our colleagues and survivor advocates and service providers to examine further ways to strengthen the CVF.”

Shaheen’s office did not provide details about what changes may be in the works, following multiple requests from States Newsroom.
Should taxpayer dollars be tapped?

National District Attorneys Association President Charles Smith said his organization supports the House bill, but noted one problem with the short-term fix is that the crime victims fund would be last in line to get the additional revenue.

“I believe that the government gets their money first, the whistleblower second and then we’re in kind of third place there,” Smith said.

One struggle over the fluctuating revenue and available funding, Smith said, is debate about whether taxpayer dollars should be used to offset low balances.

“We need to set a number that everybody’s happy with, so to speak, and fund it through these available sources,” Smith said. “But if there’s a deficit, there needs to be some mechanism in place for it to come out of the general fund.”

The crime victims fund is essential for witness coordinators and victims assistance coordinators in prosecutors’ offices as well as other services for people who survive crimes.

“They’re critical for the well-being of the victim and a lot of times they are critical for the witness even showing up and testifying,” said Smith, who also is the state’s attorney for Frederick County, Maryland.

The organizations that support crime victims, like child advocacy centers, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers, are crucial to prosecutors, Smith said.

“Not only are we directly impacted by a loss of staffing and loss of resources, but a lot of the partner agencies that we rely on collaborating with are going to be hurt as well,” Smith said of the reduction to the funding cap.
‘Real alarm’ in states

Karrie Delaney, director of federal affairs for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, said the slowdown of court cases during the COVID-19 pandemic and the last administration not prosecuting as many corporate cases has impacted the fund more than usual.

RAINN is the country’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization. It operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-HOPE) alongside local organizations and runs the Defense Department’s Safe Helpline. It “also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” according to its website.

“I think what’s important from RAINN’s perspective is the actual impact that those fluctuations have on the survivors that we support and organizations and service providers across the country,” Delaney said.

When the federal cap decreases, she said, organizations that support crime victims often turn to state and local governments to make up the gap. And a lot of the times there aren’t enough funds to do that.

“What we’ve seen across the states is real alarm that the cuts coming down are not just impacting the ability of these organizations to offer certain services, but to really keep their doors open,” Delaney said.

Child advocacy centers, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers, Delaney added, are the “real boots on the ground organizations that are helping people in times of very active crisis that are at risk of seeing their programs drastically cut to the point where service is placed in jeopardy.”

If you are a victim of crime, there are toll free, text and online hotlines available. A list from the Office for Victims of Crime is here. You can also find help in your state here.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.

Feds accuse Texas prison agency of discriminating against employee for wearing a headscarf

William Melhado, 

The Texas Tribune
May 4, 2024 1

Photo by Ye Jinghan on Unsplash

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Friday accusing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice of discriminating against one of its former employees based on her religious beliefs.

The federal lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Texas, alleges that the state agency denied Franches Spears religious accommodations by refusing to allow the non-uniformed employee to wear a head covering, according to court documents.

“Employers cannot require employees to forfeit their religious beliefs or improperly question the sincerity of those beliefs,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “This lawsuit is a reminder to all employers of their clear legal obligation to offer reasonable religious accommodations. In our country, employers cannot force an employee to choose between their faith and their job.”

The lawsuit alleges the Texas prison agency’s refusal to accommodate Spears’ religious practice violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“TDCJ does not comment on pending litigation, but the agency respects the religious rights of all employees and inmates,” Hannah Haney, the agency’s deputy director of communications, told The Texas Tribune in a statement.

In July 2019, Spears was hired to work as a clerk at the Pam Lychner State Jail, a TDCJ facility in Humble, northeast of Houston.

In line with her Ifa beliefs, Spears began wearing a headscarf to work in September 2019. Ifa, a West African religion, dictates that some of its practitioners cover their “head with a head dressing during periods of religious ceremony, mourning, or to protect her spiritual power,” the complaint read.

Shortly after Spears began wearing the covering, she met with Human Resources Specialist Elizabeth Fisk to explain the religious significance behind the head dressing. According to the complaint, Fisk responded to Spears’ by saying, “Basically you just pray to a rock.”

Fisk told Spears that she could either remove her headscarf and continue working or go home until the agency decided on her religious accommodation request. TDCJ placed Spears on unpaid leave, according to court filings.

“TDCJ further questioned the sincerity of Spears’s faith when Bailey mailed a letter demanding documentation or a statement from a religious institution pointing to the specific Ifa belief or doctrine that supported the necessity of Spears’s head covering,” the complaint read, referring to testimony from TDCJ’s Religious Accommodation Coordinator Terry Bailey.

While TDCJ was considering Spears’ request for religious accommodation she received a “salary warrant letter” from the agency in November 2019. She understood the letter as a termination notice demanding the return of TDCJ property, like identification cards and keys, in order to receive her final paycheck.

In February 2020, Spears filed a complaint against TDCJ with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The federal agency found reasonable cause that TDCJ discriminated against Spears and attempted to resolve the issue through mediation. When that failed, the EEOC referred the case to the DOJ.

The complaint asks TDCJ to compensate Spears for lost wages and other damages related to the incident. Additionally, the Justice Department wants the Texas agency to institute religious accommodation policies.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/03/justice-department-tdcj-discrimination-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Mass fish die-off in Vietnam as heatwave roasts Southeast Asia

Agence France-Presse
May 1, 2024 

This a fisherman collects dead fish from a reservoir in southern Vietnam after a mass die-off in the midst of a heatwave (STR)

Hundreds of thousands of fish have died in a reservoir in southern Vietnam's Dong Nai province, with locals and media reports suggesting a brutal heatwave and the lake's management are to blame.

Like much of Southeast Asia -- where schools have recently been forced to close early and electricity usage has surged -- southern and central Vietnam have been scorched by devastating heat.

"All the fish in the Song May reservoir died for lack of water," a local resident in Trang Bom district, who identified himself only as Nghia, told AFP.

"Our life has been turned upside down over the past 10 days because of the smell."

Pictures show residents wading and boating through the 300-hectare Song May reservoir, with the water barely visible under a blanket of dead marine life.

According to media reports, the area has seen no rain for weeks, and the water in the reservoir is too low for the creatures to survive.
A
Reservoir management had previously discharged water to try to save crops downstream, Nghia said.

"They then tried to renovate the reservoir, bringing in a pump to take the mud out so that the fish would have more space and water," he said.

However, the efforts did not work, and shortly afterwards many of the fish died, with local media reports suggesting as many as two hundred tonnes' worth may have perished.


Tuoi Tre newspaper reported that the firm in charge of managing the lake had begun dredging in early 2024, initially planning to release extra water into the reservoir for the fish.

"But owing to an unrelenting heatwave, the investor released the water into the downstream area, leading to the water level going down. As a result, fish died en masse," the newspaper reported.

The reservoir is the water source for crops in Trang Bom and Vinh Cuu districts of Dong Nai province.

Authorities are investigating the incident, while working to quickly remove the dead fish.

"We hope authorities will do their best to improve the situation," Nghia said.

- Southeast Asia bakes -

According to weather forecasters, temperatures in Dong Nai province, 100 kilometres west of Ho Chi Minh City, reached around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in April, breaking the record high temperature recorded in 1998.

The soaring temperatures are also impacting neighbouring Cambodia, where the high could reach 43 on the mercury.

On Wednesday Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered schools to consider closing to protect teachers and students from the heat, and put officials on stand-by in case of water shortages.

It follows the education minister on Tuesday ordering establishments to shorten morning classes and delay afternoon ones in an attempt to avoid the worst of the midday heat.

Hang Chuon Naron said the measures were "to prevent risks and to avoid illnesses that would harm the health" of students and teachers.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, electricity usage surged to new records on Tuesday as temperatures in northeastern province Udon Thani broke 44C.

Heatwave hammers Thailand’s stinky but lucrative durian farms


AFP
May 4, 2024

Among Thailand's most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent durian has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years - Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA
Watsamon Tri-Yasakda and Sarah Lai

Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian labourer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms some 15 metres (50 feet) below.

Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years.

But a vicious heatwave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiralling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry.

“This year is a crisis,” durian farmer Busaba Nakpipat told AFP bluntly.

The weather-beaten 54-year-old took over her parents’ farm in eastern Chanthaburi province — Thailand’s durian heartland — three decades ago.

“If the hot weather continues to rise in the future, it’ll be over,” she said. “Farmers wouldn’t be able to produce durian anymore.”

Durian season usually lasts from March until June, but the soaring temperatures — which in her province have hovered around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for weeks — and subsequent drought have shortened the harvest.

Busaba said the heat causes the durian, which is graduated by weight and size, to ripen faster so it does not grow to its fullest — and most valuable — size.

“The quality of the durian won’t meet the standard,” she said.

And not only is she getting less money for the crop, Busaba’s operational costs have risen.

Since March a drought has sucked water from the wells, so to keep her precious durian trees alive Busaba is forced to bring in thousands of litres by truck.

“We have to buy 10 water trucks for 120,000 litres of water for one-time watering the whole 10-rai (1.6 hectares) of our farm,” she said, repeating the process every other day, at a cost of thousands of dollars.

“We have prayed for rain,” she said. “But there was no rain.”


– This year, less –


Thailand’s durian exports are worth billions and are the kingdom’s third most valuable agricultural product — behind rice and rubber.

But in the nearby durian market, anxiety is running high among stall-holders, many of them with family businesses going back generations.

Siriwan Roopkaew, manning her mother’s stall, said the lack of water has impacted the size of the fruit, but for now prices remain high thanks to demand from China.

Around 95 percent of Thaliand’s durian exports are to China, which shipped nearly $4.6 billion worth of the love-it-or-hate-it fruit from the kingdom in 2023, according to data from Beijing’s commerce ministry.

But the weather is threatening Thailand’s dominance.

In May Chinese state media reported an almost 50 percent rise in durian imported from Vietnam, citing heat and drought in Thailand.

“Hot weather means there will be less durian. Even this year, there is less durian,” Siriwan, 26, said.

“Normally, my stall would be full of durian by now.”

While farmers worried about water, she said, sellers like her family were more concerned about the knock-on economics.

“Less durian means our earnings are less,” she said, “so it’d be hard for us to live the whole year.”

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Busaba sighed as she considered the months ahead.

“The future of durian, it’s over if there’s no water,” she said.

Nepal battles raging wildfires across the country

Agence France-Presse
May 2, 2024 

A wild fire burns near the village of Lubhu in Lalitpur district, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, overnight on May 1, 2024 

(PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP)

Firefighters and local residents battled a massive wildfire on the outskirts of Nepal's capital Thursday as the Himalayan republic endures a severe fire season authorities have blamed on a heatwave.

Nepal sees a spate of wildfires annually, usually beginning in March, but their number and intensity has worsened in recent years, with climate change leading to drier winters.

Emergency crews worked through the night to fight the blaze which engulfed a forested area in Lalitpur, on the southern periphery of the Kathmandu valley.

More than 4,500 wildfires have been reported this year across the country, nearly double compared to last year according to government data but less than the worst fire season on record in 2021.

"Wildfires have increased in an unimaginable ratio, and the season is expected to last for a month more," Sundar Prasad Sharma of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority told AFP.

"It is challenging to put out fires because of our difficult terrain," he added.

Environment ministry spokesman Badri Raj Dhungana said the increase in the number of wildfires this year was because of a lengthy drought and heatwave conditions in Nepal's southern plains.

"Generally, wildfires peak late April but this year they are still increasing because of rising temperatures," he said.

Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.

Large swathes of South and Southeast Asia have sweltered through a heatwave since last month, with the El Nino phenomenon also driving this year's exceptionally warm weather.

Temperatures have risen above 40 degrees Celsius in the Buddhist pilgrimage city of Lumbini and other parts of the south, with more hot weather forecast in the days ahead.

More than a hundred schools in the southern city of Butwal were closed on Thursday for two days out of fears the heatwave would impact the health of students.

Morocco's farming revolution: defying drought with science

Agence France-Presse
May 2, 2024 

The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) has sought to develop drought-resistant breeds of cereals to combat years of dryness in Morocco (FADEL SENNA/AFP)

In the heart of sun-soaked Morocco, scientists are cultivating a future where tough crops defy a relentless drought, now in its sixth year.

"Look at these beautiful ears of wheat," said Wuletaw Tadesse Degu, the head of wheat breeding at the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA).

"The difference in quality between our field and others is striking," he said, pointing towards a lush expanse in Marchouch, south of Rabat, that stood in stark contrast with the barren lands elsewhere.

By 2040, Morocco is poised to face "extremely high" water stress, a dire prediction from the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization.

Figures from the North African country's central bank paint a grim picture.

Cultivated areas across the kingdom are expected to shrink to 2.5 million hectares in 2024 compared with 3.7 million last year, with cereal yields more than halving to 25 million quintals (2.5 million tonnes) over the same period.

"It has become essential to use resilient seeds and to employ them as quickly as possible," said Tadesse, whose centre recently inaugurated a plant gene bank.

- Adapted genotypes -

Tadesse's mission is to develop genotypes that not only withstand drought and heat but also yield abundantly.

Last year, while the nation struggled, Marchouch achieved a yield of four tonnes per hectare with just 200 millimeters of rainfall.

Controlled irrigation and strategic sowing techniques are behind this agricultural revolution.

Looking to maximize production, farmers are experimenting with planting times and judicious irrigation.

Even a scant 10 millimeters of water, carefully applied, transformed barren soil into thriving fields.

Barley, too, has seen a resurgence, with yields jumping from 1.5 to two tonnes per hectare last year, thanks to climate-smart genotypes, said Miguel Sanchez Garcia, a barley specialist at ICARDA.

The centre, which operates in 17 countries in Africa and Asia, says it has developed 30 "elite lines" of grain.

Most of them are produced in Morocco by breeding genotypes of wild wheat with different ancestors, said ICARDA genetics researcher Ahmed Amri.

- 'Slow system' -

Moroccan agricultural authorities approved six new wheat and barley varieties last year, but bureaucratic hurdles loom large.

Approval processes drag on, impeding the timely dissemination of new varieties to farmers, researchers at the center said, resulting in a five-year journey from approval to market-ready seeds.

"The certification system takes too long and should be revised quickly," said Moha Ferrahi, head of genetic resources conservation and improvement at the National Institute of Agricultural Research.

Ferrahi also pointed to the lack of engagement from private companies and farmers who opt for "foreign seeds to have a quicker return on investment while these seeds are not adapted to the climate of Morocco".

Yet many see room for improvement, even in a drought-hit country where the average citizen consumes about 200 kilograms of wheat per year — significantly above the world's average, according to official figures.

"Unlike countries like Egypt or Ethiopia, Morocco has chosen to liberalize its market," said researcher Amri, meaning that authorities have no control over what varieties farmers select.

But Amri remains convinced that, coupled with the national agricultural program, the widespread adoption of resilient varieties will help offset mounting losses.

SPACE

Dark matter: our new experiment aims to turn the ghostly substance into actual light

The Conversation
May 2, 2024 

Galaxy cluster, left, with ring of dark matter visible, right. NASA

A ghost is haunting our universe. This has been known in astronomy and cosmology for decades. Observations suggest that about 85% of all the matter in the universe is mysterious and invisible. These two qualities are reflected in its name: dark matter.

Several experiments have aimed to unveil what it’s made of, but despite decades of searching, scientists have come up short. Now our new experiment, under construction at Yale University in the US, is offering a new tactic.

Dark matter has been around the universe since the beginning of time, pulling stars and galaxies together. Invisible and subtle, it doesn’t seem to interact with light or any other kind of matter. In fact, it has to be something completely new.

The standard model of particle physics is incomplete, and this is a problem. We have to look for new fundamental particles. Surprisingly, the same flaws of the standard model give precious hints on where they may hide.
The trouble with the neutron

Let’s take the neutron, for instance. It makes up the atomic nucleus along with the proton. Despite being neutral overall, the theory states that it it made up of three charged constituent particles called quarks. Because of this, we would expect some parts of the neutron to be charged positively and others negatively –this would mean it was having what physicist call an electric dipole moment.

Yet, many attempts to measure it have come with the same outcome: it is too small to be detected. Another ghost. And we are not talking about instrumental inadequacies, but a parameter that has to be smaller than one part in ten billion. It is so tiny that people wonder if it could be zero altogether.

In physics, however, the mathematical zero is always a strong statement. In the late 70s, particle physicistsnRoberto Peccei and Helen Quinn (and later, Frank Wilczek and Steven Weinberg) tried to accommodate theory and evidence.

They suggested that, maybe, the parameter is not zero. Rather it is a dynamical quantity that slowly lost its charge, evolving to zero, after the Big Bang. Theoretical calculations show that, if such an event happened, it must have left behind a multitude of light, sneaky particles.

These were dubbed “axions” after a detergent brand because they could “clear up” the neutron problem. And even more. If axions were created in the early universe, they have been hanging around since then. Most importantly, their properties check all the boxes expected for dark matter. For these reasons, axions have become one of the favourite candidate particles for dark matter.

Axions would only interact with other particles weakly. However, this means they would still interact a bit. The invisible axions could even transform into ordinary particles, including – ironically – photons, the very essence of light. This may happen in particular circumstances, like in the presence of a magnetic field. This is a godsend for experimental physicists.

Experimental design

Many experiments are trying to evoke the axion-ghost in the controlled environment of a lab. Some aim to convert light into axions, for instance, and then axions back into light on the other side of a wall.

At present, the most sensitive approach targets the halo of dark matter permeating the galaxy (and consequently, Earth) with a device called a haloscope. It is a conductive cavity immersed in a strong magnetic field; the former captures the dark matter surrounding us (assuming it is axions), while the latter induces the conversion into light. The result is an electromagnetic signal appearing inside the cavity, oscillating with a characteristic frequency depending on the axion mass.

The system works like a receiving radio. It needs to be properly adjusted to intercept the frequency we are interested in. Practically, the dimensions of the cavity are changed to accommodate different characteristic frequencies. If the frequencies of the axion and the cavity do not match, it is just like tuning a radio on the wrong channel.



The powerful magnet is moved to the lab at Yale.

Yale University, CC BY-SA

Unfortunately, the channel we are looking for cannot be predicted in advance. We have no choice but to scan all the potential frequencies. It is like picking a radio station in a sea of white noise – a needle in a haystack – with an old radio that needs to be bigger or smaller every time we turn the frequency knob.

Yet, those are not the only challenges. Cosmology points to tens of gigahertz as the latest, promising frontier for axion search. As higher frequencies require smaller cavities, exploring that region would require cavities too small to capture a meaningful amount of signal.

New experiments are trying to find alternative paths. Our Axion Longitudinal Plasma Haloscope (Alpha) experiment uses a new concept of cavity based on metamaterials.

Metamaterials are composite materials with global properties that differ from their constituents – they are more than the sum of their parts. A cavity filled with conductive rods gets a characteristic frequency as if it were one million times smaller, while barely changing its volume. That is exactly what we need. Plus, the rods provide a built-in, easy-adjustable tuning system.

We are currently building the setup, which will be ready to take data in a few years. The technology is promising. Its development is the result of the collaboration among solid-state physicists, electrical engineers, particle physicists and even mathematicians.

Despite being so elusive, axions are fuelling progress that no ghost will ever take away.

Andrea Gallo Rosso, Postdoctoral Fellow of Physics, Stockholm University


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘We’re in a new era’: the 21st-century space race takes off

As humans enter what has been termed the ‘third space age’, it’s private companies – not governments – leading the charge


Oliver Holmes

THE GUARDIAN
Fri 3 May 2024 

If the 20th-century space race was about political power, this century’s will be about money. But for those who dream of sending humans back to the moon and possibly Mars, it’s an exciting time to be alive whether it’s presidents or billionaires paying the fare.

Space flight is having a renaissance moment, bringing a fresh energy not seen since the days of the Apollo programme and, for the first time, with private companies rather than governments leading the charge.

A series of recent milestone missions, not least the increasingly successful test flights of the largest rocket ever made and the first privately built probe to land on the lunar surface, have embedded a growing idea that humans are entering what has been termed the “third space age”.

“To say we’re in a new era, that’s absolutely fair,” said Greg Sadlier, a space economist and the co-founder of the know.space consultancy. “We’re in the era of competition, or the commercial era. The barriers to entry are lower, the costs have fallen, which has opened the doors to a much larger pool of nations,” he said. “It’s the democratisation of space, if you like.”

Today, more than 70 countries have space programmes, but for a long time, the US and the Soviet Union were the only big players.

Humanity’s first space explorer, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, orbited around the globe in April 1961. A year later, US President John F Kennedy gave his famous “we choose to go to the moon” speech, promising to get an American man on the lunar surface by the end of the decade ahead of a “hostile flag of conquest”.

View image in fullscreen

A mural of Yuri Gagarin in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow. 

Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA


“To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money,” Kennedy acknowledged, but the cold war motivated him to spend the modern-day equivalent of hundreds of billions in US taxpayers’ money to win the space race.

The end of the cold war in 1989 brought a brief moment of global optimism, leading to the second, more collaborative space age. The International Space Station was assembled over 13 years and, since 2000, people of multiple nationalities have been living in space constantly, working together on experiments in the orbiting laboratory.

However, this second era also saw a dip in efforts to get humans farther out into space, symbolised by Nasa’s space shuttle programme that never sent people beyond Earth’s orbit and was eventually disbanded in 2011, in large part because the US government did not want to keep bankrolling its high costs. Afterwards, Washington had to rely on Moscow’s Soyuz rockets to get its astronauts into space.

View image in fullscreen

SpaceX’s Starship rocket stands at its Texas launch pad. 

Photograph: AP

Yet those high costs have now been driven down by private businesses entering the scene, often as government contractors. In the past few years, some of these businesses have started to make money, although not from headline-grabbing reasons such as space tourism but mostly for sending up communication satellites, especially broadband internet. Many estimates suggest the global space industry could generate revenues of more than $1tn within the next two decades.

In an article published last year by the influential strategy and management consultancy McKinsey & Company, global managing partner Bob Sternfels and his colleagues wrote to CEOs: “If space isn’t part of your strategy, it needs to be.”

They added: “Only recently have we seen significant acceleration down the cost curve: launch costs have fallen 95% (with another massive reduction expected in the coming years) thanks to reuse, improved engineering, and increased volumes.”


Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been at the forefront of this movement, launching 96 times last year with its reusable rockets. The company’s largest system, called Starship and still in development, has been marketed as an interplanetary explorer. Musk says he built the 120-metre rocket so that humans can colonise Mars. Before then, Nasa has contracted SpaceX to land astronauts, including the first woman, on the moon this decade.

As a business venture, it could make money well before then by serving as the equivalent of a flying cargo ship. Starship has a payload of up to 150 metric tonnes, five times the load the space shuttle could carry.

Global politics continues to play a role in space but with more players. China has overtaken Russia as the main national contender to the US, with its own space station in operation, probes on the moon and a rover on Mars. On Friday, Beijing is due to launch a robotic spacecraft to the moon’s far side.

The moon’s south pole, in particular, is seen as a “golden belt” for lunar exploration as it contains water ice, which could be used as drinking water and even broken down to make rocket fuel.

Scientists are nervous about both the politicisation and the commercialisation of space, especially with talk of future “mining” operations on the pristine, untouched moon. Advocates of space exploration, however, point to advancements made so far. The CT scan, a critical medical device that can identify tumours, traces its origins to pre-Apollo mission research; astronauts on the space station have been using the unique microgravity environment to better understand diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

For economists like Sadlier, the third space age creates an unprecedented situation – one that could upend the very foundations of the market system. “In economics, we assume that resources are limited; land is limited; natural resources are limited,” he said. “With space, it allows us to change that.”

The new ‘space race’: what are China’s ambitions and why is the US so concerned?

As China launches its Chang’e-6 mission to the far side of the moon, US officials have expressed alarm at the pace of its advancements

China to launch ambitious moon mission

View image in fullscreen

Long March-3B rocket carrying the Chang'e 4 lunar probe takes off. The US has expressed alarm at China’s ambitions in space. 

Photograph: China Stringer Network/Reuters

Helen Davidson 

in Taipei

Sun 5 May 2024

The worsening rivalry between the world’s two most powerful countries that has in recent years spread across the world, has now extended beyond the terrestrial, into the realms of the celestial.

As China has become deeply enmeshed in strategic competition with the US – while edging towards outright hostilities with other regional neighbours – Washington’s alarm at the pace of its advancement in space is growing ever-louder.


Beijing has made no secret over its ambitions and a spate of recent successful space missions has shown that the government’s rhetoric is backed by technological advances.


‘We’re in a space race’: Nasa sounds alarm at Chinese designs on moon

On Friday, China launched a robotic spacecraft on a round trip to the moon’s far side, in a technically demanding mission that will pave the way for an inaugural Chinese crewed landing and a base on the lunar south pole. The Chang’e-6 is aiming to bring back samples from the side of the moon that permanently faces away from Earth.

Earlier this week saw the launch of the Shenzhou-18, Beijing’s latest staffed spacecraft mission to the Tiangong space station, which was developed after China was excluded from the International Space Station.

Along with the three taikonauts, a live fish which has been dubbed “the fourth crew member”, was among the crew. The zebrafish is part of an experiment to test the viability of a large closed ecosystem, involving fish and algae, to help people live in space for long periods.

But the collection of moon samples and the viability of zebrafish are not the only focus for China’s space sector.

The pace of China’s ambitions has drawn concern from the government’s major rival, the US, over Beijing’s geopolitical intentions amid what the head of Nasa has called a new “space race”.

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The combination of the Chang’e-6 lunar probe and the Long March-5 Y8 carrier rocket prepares to launch in the Hainan province of China. 

Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images

Last week the head of Nasa, Bill Nelson, said the US and China were “in effect, in a race” to return to the moon, and he feared that China wanted to stake territorial claims.


“We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program,” he told US legislators.

There are concerns over China’s development of counter-space weapons, including missiles that can target satellites, and spacecraft that can pull satellites out of orbit.

“On a geopolitical level, China’s space ambitions raise questions about how it might leverage its space capabilities to further its regional and domestic political and military interests,” says Dr Svetla Ben-Itzhak, deputy director of Johns Hopkins University’s West Space Scholars Program.

Gen Stephen Whiting of the US Space Command, told reporters last week that China’s advances were “cause for concern”, noting it had tripled the number of spy satellites in orbit over the last six years.
‘It’s the wild, wild west’

The US and China are indeed in a race, says Prof Kazuto Suzuki, of the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, but it’s not to simply set feet on the moon like during the cold war. Rather, it’s to find and control resources, like water.

“It’s a race for who has better technical capabilities. China is quickly catching up. The pace of Chinese technological development is the threatening element [to the US],” he says.


Suzuki says international agreements don’t allow for national appropriation of resources on the moon, but in reality “it’s the wild, wild west”.

“Generally speaking China wants to be first so they have the right to dominate and monopolise the resources. If you have the resources in your hand then you have a huge advantage in the future of space exploration.”

The US and China are leading the development of separate space station programs for the moon. The US-led Artemis program includes plans for a “Lunar Gateway”, a station orbiting the moon as a communication and accommodation hub for astronauts, and a scientific laboratory.

The Americans however, “are not so interested in owning the moon because they’ve been there”, Suzuki says.

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Spectators gather to watch the launch of the Chang’e One lunar orbiter in 2007. Photograph: China Daily/Reuters

“They know it’s not really a habitable place, they are more interested in Mars. So for them the Lunar Gateway is sort of a gas station for the journey to Mars.” If the Artemis program can source water from the moon, it could be processed to create rocket fuel from the hydrogen and oxygen.

In contrast, China and Russia announced in 2021 joint plans to build a shared research station on the surface of the moon. The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) would be open to any interested international parties they said. However the US would unlikely be among them given its poor relations with both China and Russia.

Suzuki says the China-Russia station “is supposed to serve like the research station in Antarctica”, which is within the rules of international space treaties. “But if it turns out to be a station to base their territorial claims, then that is against the rules.”


The US is gathering allies to ensure China doesn’t win the space race. Earlier this month, not long after China announced its intentions to land a person on the moon, US leader Joe Biden and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida pledged to send a astronaut from Japan – China’s historical rival – to the moon on Nasa’s Artemis missions in 2028 and again in 2032.

But China is also gathering allies. It has partnerships or financial stakes in projects across the Middle East and Latin America, and around a dozen international members for its ILRS.

But Ben-Itzhak notes there are some overlapping memberships. Also “neither bloc has instituted exclusionary practices thus far, which is promising”.

Ben-Itzhak says the US and China are indeed engaged in a race, but the term doesn’t fully capture “the complex, nuanced dynamics currently unfolding in space, in terms of the diverse and increasing number of actors and initiatives, and no clear end goal in sight”.

“The real challenge in space is not just about reaching a specific milestone, like planting flags or collecting rocks; it is about establishing a sustainable, resilient presence in an incredibly challenging environment. This is a test against our own abilities.”

Additional research by Chi Hui Lin

Bird Flu Is Bad for Poultry and Dairy Cows. It’s Not a Dire Threat for Most of Us — Yet.

2024/05/03

Headlines are flying after the Department of Agriculture confirmed that the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected dairy cows around the country. Tests have detected the virus among cattle in nine states, mainly in Texas and New Mexico, and most recently in Colorado, said Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a May 1 event held by the Council on Foreign Relations.

A menagerie of other animals have been infected by H5N1, and at least one person in Texas. But what scientists fear most is if the virus were to spread efficiently from person to person. That hasn’t happened and might not. Shah said the CDC considers the H5N1 outbreak “a low risk to the general public at this time.”

Viruses evolve and outbreaks can shift quickly. “As with any major outbreak, this is moving at the speed of a bullet train,” Shah said. “What we’ll be talking about is a snapshot of that fast-moving train.” What he means is that what’s known about the H5N1 bird flu today will undoubtedly change.

With that in mind, KFF Health News explains what you need to know now.

Q: Who gets the bird flu?

Mainly birds. Over the past few years, however, the H5N1 bird flu virus has increasingly jumped from birds into mammals around the world. The growing list of more than 50 species includes seals, goats, skunks, cats, and wild bush dogs at a zoo in the United Kingdom. At least 24,000 sea lions died in outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu in South America last year.

What makes the current outbreak in cattle unusual is that it’s spreading rapidly from cow to cow, whereas the other cases — except for the sea lion infections — appear limited. Researchers know this because genetic sequences of the H5N1 viruses drawn from cattle this year were nearly identical to one another.

The cattle outbreak is also concerning because the country has been caught off guard. Researchers examining the virus’s genomes suggest it originally spilled over from birds into cows late last year in Texas, and has since spread among many more cows than have been tested. “Our analyses show this has been circulating in cows for four months or so, under our noses,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Q: Is this the start of the next pandemic?

Not yet. But it’s a thought worth considering because a bird flu pandemic would be a nightmare. More than half of people infected by older strains of H5N1 bird flu viruses from 2003 to 2016 died. Even if death rates turn out to be less severe for the H5N1 strain currently circulating in cattle, repercussions could involve loads of sick people and hospitals too overwhelmed to handle other medical emergencies.

Although at least one person has been infected with H5N1 this year, the virus can’t lead to a pandemic in its current state. To achieve that horrible status, a pathogen needs to sicken many people on multiple continents. And to do that, the H5N1 virus would need to infect a ton of people. That won’t happen through occasional spillovers of the virus from farm animals into people. Rather, the virus must acquire mutations for it to spread from person to person, like the seasonal flu, as a respiratory infection transmitted largely through the air as people cough, sneeze, and breathe. As we learned in the depths of covid-19, airborne viruses are hard to stop.

That hasn’t happened yet. However, H5N1 viruses now have plenty of chances to evolve as they replicate within thousands of cows. Like all viruses, they mutate as they replicate, and mutations that improve the virus’s survival are passed to the next generation. And because cows are mammals, the viruses could be getting better at thriving within cells that are closer to ours than birds’.

The evolution of a pandemic-ready bird flu virus could be aided by a sort of superpower possessed by many viruses. Namely, they sometimes swap their genes with other strains in a process called reassortment. In a study published in 2009, Worobey and other researchers traced the origin of the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic to events in which different viruses causing the swine flu, bird flu, and human flu mixed and matched their genes within pigs that they were simultaneously infecting. Pigs need not be involved this time around, Worobey warned.

Q: Will a pandemic start if a person drinks virus-contaminated milk?

Not yet. Cow’s milk, as well as powdered milk and infant formula, sold in stores is considered safe because the law requires all milk sold commercially to be pasteurized. That process of heating milk at high temperatures kills bacteria, viruses, and other teeny organisms. Tests have identified fragments of H5N1 viruses in milk from grocery stores but confirm that the virus bits are dead and, therefore, harmless.

Unpasteurized “raw” milk, however, has been shown to contain living H5N1 viruses, which is why the FDA and other health authorities strongly advise people not to drink it. Doing so could cause a person to become seriously ill or worse. But even then, a pandemic is unlikely to be sparked because the virus — in its current form — does not spread efficiently from person to person, as the seasonal flu does.

Q: What should be done?

A lot! Because of a lack of surveillance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies have allowed the H5N1 bird flu to spread under the radar in cattle. To get a handle on the situation, the USDA recently ordered all lactating dairy cattle to be tested before farmers move them to other states, and the outcomes of the tests to be reported.

But just as restricting covid tests to international travelers in early 2020 allowed the coronavirus to spread undetected, testing only cows that move across state lines would miss plenty of cases.

Such limited testing won’t reveal how the virus is spreading among cattle — information desperately needed so farmers can stop it. A leading hypothesis is that viruses are being transferred from one cow to the next through the machines used to milk them.

To boost testing, Fred Gingrich, executive director of a nonprofit organization for farm veterinarians, the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, said the government should offer funds to cattle farmers who report cases so that they have an incentive to test. Barring that, he said, reporting just adds reputational damage atop financial loss.

“These outbreaks have a significant economic impact,” Gingrich said. “Farmers lose about 20% of their milk production in an outbreak because animals quit eating, produce less milk, and some of that milk is abnormal and then can’t be sold.”

The government has made the H5N1 tests free for farmers, Gingrich added, but they haven’t budgeted money for veterinarians who must sample the cows, transport samples, and file paperwork. “Tests are the least expensive part,” he said.

If testing on farms remains elusive, evolutionary virologists can still learn a lot by analyzing genomic sequences from H5N1 viruses sampled from cattle. The differences between sequences tell a story about where and when the current outbreak began, the path it travels, and whether the viruses are acquiring mutations that pose a threat to people. Yet this vital research has been hampered by the USDA’s slow and incomplete posting of genetic data, Worobey said.

The government should also help poultry farmers prevent H5N1 outbreaks since those kill many birds and pose a constant threat of spillover, said Maurice Pitesky, an avian disease specialist at the University of California-Davis.

Waterfowl like ducks and geese are the usual sources of outbreaks on poultry farms, and researchers can detect their proximity using remote sensing and other technologies. By zeroing in on zones of potential spillover, farmers can target their attention. That can mean routine surveillance to detect early signs of infections in poultry, using water cannons to shoo away migrating flocks, relocating farm animals, or temporarily ushering them into barns. “We should be spending on prevention,” Pitesky said.

Q: OK it’s not a pandemic, but what could happen to people who get this year’s H5N1 bird flu?

No one really knows. Only one person in Texas has been diagnosed with the disease this year, in April. This person worked closely with dairy cows, and had a mild case with an eye infection. The CDC found out about them because of its surveillance process. Clinics are supposed to alert state health departments when they diagnose farmworkers with the flu, using tests that detect influenza viruses, broadly. State health departments then confirm the test, and if it’s positive, they send a person’s sample to a CDC laboratory, where it is checked for the H5N1 virus, specifically. “Thus far we have received 23,” Shah said. “All but one of those was negative.”

State health department officials are also monitoring around 150 people, he said, who have spent time around cattle. They’re checking in with these farmworkers via phone calls, text messages, or in-person visits to see if they develop symptoms. And if that happens, they’ll be tested.

Another way to assess farmworkers would be to check their blood for antibodies against the H5N1 bird flu virus; a positive result would indicate they might have been unknowingly infected. But Shah said health officials are not yet doing this work.

“The fact that we’re four months in and haven’t done this isn’t a good sign,” Worobey said. “I’m not super worried about a pandemic at the moment, but we should start acting like we don’t want it to happen.”

© Kaiser Health News

Noem in political freefall as book inaccuracies emerge following dog killing backlash

Seth Tupper, South Dakota Searchlight
May 4, 2024 

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks during the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center on May 27, 2022 in Houston, Texas.(Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem was in political freefall Friday as embarrassing revelations continued to emerge from the scrutiny of advance copies of her memoir, which doesn’t officially publish until Tuesday.

Noem was already reeling from near-universal backlash against her disclosure in the book that she shot and killed a dog named Cricket and a billy goat years ago — the dog for its failures on a hunting excursion and its attacks on a neighbor’s chickens, and the goat for chasing after Noem’s children and smelling bad.

Thursday and Friday, news emerged from outlets including Politico and The Dakota Scout of inaccuracies in Noem’s book, the title of which — “No Going Back” — is now ripe with irony. The most glaring inaccuracy is Noem’s recounting of a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during her time in Congress — a meeting that never happened.

“I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un,” Noem wrote. “I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”

The Dakota Scout published a story Thursday casting doubt on the meeting. Noem’s spokesman, Ian Fury, eventually said the anecdote was one of “two small errors” in the book that were the fault of others.

“This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor,” Fury said, according to the Scout. “Kim Jong Un was included in a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been.”

Yet there seems to be no way Noem could’ve been unaware of the errors. She’s been promoting the book for weeks, there is no other writer credited in the book besides her, and she’s already voiced an audio version of the book.

The Scout also questioned Noem’s anecdote in the book about canceling a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron over Noem’s dislike of his comments about the Israeli-Hamas war. The French president’s office released a statement that Macron had never extended a “direct invitation” to Noem for a meeting, the Scout reported, but the office left open the possibility that the two could have been scheduled to attend the same event.

Politico reported on a story Noem related in the book about a 2021 conversation with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Noem wrote that Haley, who would go on to unsuccessfully seek the Republican presidential nomination, “threatened” Noem politically. A spokesperson for Haley told Politico that Haley had called to encourage Noem, and “how she would twist that into a threat is just plain weird.”

Politico also reported that a Colorado county Republican group canceled a Saturday fundraiser Noem was scheduled to headline, after the group received death threats and information about a planned protest related to Noem’s treatment of animals.

Reacting to the cascade of negative news, political science professor Jon Schaff of Northern State University in Aberdeen said Noem’s short-term national ambitions “have been weakened, considerably.” Until recently, Noem had been widely considered to be a potential running mate for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

But Schaff said it’s too early to tell what it all means for Noem long-term. He said she is popular in South Dakota, and it would be naive to count her out in future races, such as a U.S. Senate race in the eventuality of a retirement by Sen. John Thune or Sen. Mike Rounds. Thune is 63 years old, Rounds is 69 and Noem is 52

“Rounds and Thune won’t be there forever,” Schaff said.

Meanwhile, Dan Ahlers, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, said the negative news is unlikely to end Noem’s career, given that past scandals have not seemed to hurt her. Those scandals have included published allegations of an affair with former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, accusations of misusing the state airplane, and allegedly intervening to help her daughter earn a real estate appraiser’s license.

“These things don’t end any of these Republican politicians’ careers anymore,” Ahlers said. “They end up raising more money and smelling like roses.”


Noem went on “Hannity” on Fox News on Wednesday and blamed “fake news” for the fallout from the dog and goat stories. This weekend, she’s scheduled to attend a Trump campaign donor retreat in Florida, according to Politico. Sunday, she’s scheduled to appear on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

“We’ll get into the controversies surrounding her upcoming memoir,” said a Friday tweet from the show.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and Twitter.

'Ugly' Noem’s dog killing was bad — but to really understand her, consider her billy goat

Seth Tupper, South Dakota Searchlight
May 3, 2024

(Goat image: USDA photo by Scott Bauer. Noem image: David Bordewyk/South Dakota NewsMedia Association)

Since Gov. Kristi Noem’s disclosure of her farmyard killing spree, everybody’s been focused on Cricket.

That’s understandable. Cricket was a 14-month-old dog. It’s easy to imagine her head jutting out of a pickup window, hair and tongue blowing in the wind. Like many dogs, Cricket probably had a personality and other human-like qualities that we so often attribute to canine companions.

Noem shot and killed Cricket on some undisclosed date years ago for being bad at pheasant hunting and good at chicken hunting. The moral, Noem wrote, is that leaders deal with problems immediately. That makes her a “doer,” she claimed, not an “avoider.”

That’s pure bunk, as millions of people have pointed out in an avalanche of criticism since The Guardian obtained an early copy and revealed some of the contents of Noem’s ironically named memoir, “No Going Back.” The relevant pages have since been shared with South Dakota Searchlight, which requested an advance copy but was ignored; the book’s official publication date is next Tuesday.

Again, the focus on Cricket makes sense, because we can all see that Noem could’ve taken the dog to a shelter and given it another chance at life.

But if you’ll hear me out, I want to tell you why Cricket’s fate is the wrong place to focus your attention.

If you really want to understand Kristi Noem, you need to consider the goat.
‘I spotted our billy goat’

After Noem made the death march to her farm’s gravel pit, where she shot Cricket, she was apparently still in an uncontrollable rage.

“Walking back up to the yard, I spotted our billy goat,” Noem wrote.

The nameless goat’s only sin in that moment was being in Noem’s field of view.

Noem blames ‘fake news’ for backlash against her killing a dog and goat

In the book, Noem tried to justify her snap decision to kill the goat by writing that it “loved to chase” her children and would “knock them down and butt them,” leaving them “terrified.” The animal also had a “wretched smell.”

But apparently none of that had been a big enough problem to do anything about it. Not until Noem got angry enough to kill a dog and decided she needed to kill again.

Noem says she “dragged” the goat to the gravel pit, “tied him to a post,” and shot at him. But the goat jumped when she shot.

“My shot was off and I needed one more shell to finish the job,” she wrote.

She studiously avoided saying she wounded the goat with the first shot, but that’s the implication.

“Not wanting him to suffer,” she added — apparently experiencing her first twinge of feeling, after saying that killing the dog was not “pleasant” — “I hustled back across the pasture to the pickup, grabbed another shell, hurried back to the gravel pit, and put him down.”

The goat story not only reflects a disturbing lack of self-control, but also raises a question of law.

The crime of animal cruelty

Noem has defended her shooting of the dog, citing legal justification for her actions. She’s likely referencing a state law that exempts from the definition of animal cruelty “any reasonable action taken by a person for the destruction or control of an animal known to be dangerous, a threat, or injurious to life, limb, or property.”

Cricket killed a neighbor’s chickens and “whipped around to bite” Noem when she intervened; therefore, by Noem’s logic, her killing of Cricket was legally defensible. She’s probably right, legally speaking.

What Noem’s shot heard around the world says about her approach to problems

But what about the goat?

Sure, it chased children, butted them, and smelled bad. “So, a goat,” Stephen Colbert deadpanned during his Monday monologue on “The Late Show,” speaking for everybody who’s ever been around goats. If those traits meet the legal definition of “dangerous, a threat, or injurious to life, limb, or property,” killing any goat would always be legally justified.

In reality, what Noem did to the goat — dragging it to a gravel pit, tying it to a post, shooting at it once, leaving to get another shell, and shooting it again — sounds an awful lot like the legal definition of animal cruelty. That definition in South Dakota law is “to intentionally, willfully, and maliciously inflict gross physical abuse on an animal that causes prolonged pain, that causes serious physical injury, or that results in the death of the animal.”

Alas, cruelty to animals is a Class 6 felony, and lower-class felonies like that carry a seven-year statute of limitations in South Dakota. We don’t know exactly what year it was when Noem shot her dog and goat. She gave a clue in the book when she wrote that her children came home on the school bus the day of the killings and one of them asked, “Where’s Cricket?” Noem didn’t say how she responded, and all of her children are now grown.

If that was more than seven years ago, the goat killing is probably not prosecutable. But no prosecution could do more damage to Noem’s reputation and career than she’s already done to herself by writing about her animal bloodthirst.

As Noem wrapped up her bloody tale in the book, she wrote that being a leader is often “messy” and “ugly.”

In her case, it certainly is.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and Twitter.


Kristi Noem just won’t stop talking about killing her dog

The South Dakota governor recounted the episode to show that she is tough enough to face “difficult, messy and ugly” tasks. But many in both parties are horrified.

Staff writer
May 3, 2024

First, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem wrote about killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in her soon-to-be-released book, “No Going Back.”

Then, over the course of three separate days, the Republican posted on social media about killing her dog — missives that ranged from book promotion to defensive explanation to, finally, blame-the-media spin.

And on Wednesday, Noem appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, where the two devoted five minutes to Noem’s late wirehair pointer, as a befuddled Hannity tried to give Noem — who wrote about dragging her dog out to a gravel pit and shooting her — the benefit of the doubt. “Is there a difference which way you put a dog down?” he asked. “I’m not really sure.”

In short, Noem just can’t stop talking about killing her dog — much to the collective confusion of horrified observers.

“As the saying goes, if you find yourself in a hole, stop murdering your puppy — and stop digging,” said Tommy Vietor, co-host of “Pod Save America” and a former Obama administration official.

The controversy started April 26, when the Guardian published details from her upcoming political memoir — the sort of obligatory hardcover intended to juice her chances of emerging as Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick. Ironically, it seems to have done the exact opposite

The Guardian recounted that, in the book, Noem describes her dog, still nearly a puppy, as “a trained assassin” with an “aggressive personality.” Unable to train Cricket, Noem recounts watching as the dog, on the way home from a pheasant hunt, attacks a local family’s chickens, grabbing “one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes of Cricket, who she says then tried to bite her. “At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.”

Noem also writes of how — perhaps feeling emboldened after killing Cricket — she then decided to kill a “nasty and mean” family goat, dragging it to the same gravel pit where Cricket met her demise. But the goat jumped as Noem shot it, forcing the Republican governor to return to her truck for another shell.

The scene of slaughter ends with Noem’s kids getting off the school bus, and her daughter asking, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

Noem seems to have recounted the episode as something of a parable, intended to show both that she is tough enough to face “difficult, messy and ugly” tasks and authentic enough to tell the truth about it.

But even before Noem’s recent controversy, people close to Trump privately said she was always a long shot to be his running mate, citing assorted “baggage” — and that was before canicide got added to her vetting files.

Yet Noem persisted, plowing ahead with her tale of the untrainable dog.

On the Friday that the Guardian story came out, Noem wrote a post on X that was part explanation and part book promotion.

“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she wrote, in a missive that included a link to preorder her book. “Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

Then on Sunday, when the intervening two days had made clear she had a political crisis on her hands, she weighed in again about killing Cricket — this time with an even lengthier social media post aimed squarely at damage control.

“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch,” wrote Noem, who went on to describe herself as an “authentic” leader who doesn’t “shy away from tough challenges.”

And finally, on Thursday, she returned to the topic again, this time squarely through a “fake news” lens.

“Don’t believe the #fakenews media’s twisted spin,” she wrote, linking to her Hannity interview. “I had a choice between the safety of my children and an animal who had a history of attacking people & killing livestock. I chose my kids.”

But the morbid fascination with the Noah’s ark worth of animals Noem has talked about putting down — three horses, a goat, a dog — transcends the so-called liberal media. On Thursday, for instance, a bipartisan group of lawmakers responded to the news by forming the Congressional Dog Lovers Caucus.

And even would-be allies have been left scratching their heads — not just that Noem killed her dog, but that she continues to talk about it, holding up the gravel pit executions as a character reference for her leadership chops.

“It’s hard to imagine a universe where bragging about shooting your 14-month-old puppy increases your brand value,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) wrote in a text. “I’ve known hunters who accidentally or impulsively shot their hunting dog, but I’ve never known anyone who bragged about it or considered it noble in any way.”

Sourth Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) testifies during a House Agriculture Committee hearing at the Longworth House Office Building on March 20. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Others, including fellow conservatives, were less generous.

“Why … would you write about this in a book and flex on it?” wondered radio personality Dana Loesch. “That doesn’t look tough. It looks stupid.”

“Not ideal,” Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said to laughter on his video podcast. “I read that and I’m like: ‘Who put that in the book?’ I was like, ‘Your ghost writer must really not like you if they’re going to include that one. That was rough.’”

Even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), whose past includes a more benign dog incident, weighed in.

“I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me,” Romney told HuffPost. (Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign was dogged by a story of Romney family lore — the 1983 vacation the clan took with Seamus, their Irish setter, strapped in his carrier to the roof of the station wagon for 12 hours).

In repeatedly returning to the tale, Noem also opened herself up to additional criticism, including charges that her story has changed to portray her in a more flattering light. A community note at the bottom of her Thursday X post, in which readers are allowed to add additional context, reads that “Noem’s description of why she shot Cricket has morphed.”

The note says that in her book, Noem writes that she killed Cricket because the dog was untrainable for pheasant hunting and killed the neighboring chickens. It adds that when criticized, “Noem altered her story” — going from claiming that Cricket snapped at her to claiming that Cricket actually bit her to claiming that Cricket had a biting history and was a “danger to children.”

A person close to Noem rejected the charge of revisionist history, pointing to the line in her book that reads, “Cricket was untrainable and, after trying to bite me, dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.” Cricket regularly came in contact with Noem’s young kids, this person said, arguing the sentence shows that Noem had always considered the safety of her children when she made the decision to kill Cricket.

Noem does have her defenders. She is slated to headline the annual Brevard County Republicans dinner in Florida this month, and Rick Lacey, the county party chair, said he has already had interest from 200 people and is worried about selling out the space, which can hold about 500.

“This happens all the time,” Lacey said, referring to putting down dogs known for biting people, “but I guess if you’re a Republican governor with national prospects, it becomes a bigger issue.”

Stu Loeser, a longtime Democratic staffer and strategist who specializes in crises, noted he shares “a house on the Hudson with a Havanese and we are both horrified.” But, from a crisis communications perspective, he argued that Noem is never going to be able to change her detractors’ minds — but that she may get some credit for continuing to largely stand by her original story.

For now, the controversy shows no signs of abating, in part because Noem is promoting her book, which comes out Tuesday.

As part of her publicity tour, the South Dakota governor is slated to appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

An X post by the “Face the Nation” account said that in addition to other issues, “we’ll get into the controversies surrounding her upcoming memoir.”

Marianne Levine contributed to this report.

By Ashley ParkerAshley Parker is Senior National Political Correspondent for The Washington Post. She has been part of two Post teams that won Pulitzer Prizes — in 2018 for National Reporting, and in 2022 for Public Service on the Jan. 6 attacks. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at the New York Times. She is also an on-air contributor to NBC News/MSNBC. Twitter

SITH LORD TRUMP

'Didn't watch the movie?' GOP accidentally casts Trump as villain in 'May the Fourth' post

David McAfee
May 4, 2024 

North Carolina Republican Party, X/Twitter

The North Carolina Republican Party on Saturday came under fire for a Star Wars-themed post meant to celebrate the "May the Fourth" internet holiday and promote Donald Trump.

The official account of the North Carolina Republican Party on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted an image showing Trump holding a lightsaber. The text says, "May the Fourth Be With You," which is a play on the Star Wars line, "May the force be with you."

The problem, as social media users were quick to point out, is that the ex-president was shown with a red lightsaber. According to Vox, "Sith usually use red-hued" lightsabers, such as the one Darth Vader wields.

National security attorney Bradley Moss wondered if the state GOP outpost was ignorant.

"You gave him... a red lightsaber? Do you know anything?" he asked Saturday.

Democrat Harry Sisson said, "You know the dudes who have the red lightsabers are the bad guys, right? Didn’t watch the movie I guess?"

@Venti__Poet chimed in in response to the post, "At least you know he is on the dark side."

@cj_bria said, "So, he’s a Sith Lord? Sounds about right!"


User Nick Anderson, @NickAnderson217, had a slightly different take from others.

"People are too hung up on the fact it's red... y'all why did they make his saber so small?" Anderson asked.

One user, @t3hrobzlqx, looked into things a bit.


"Something about this irked me, so I did some research. First of all, the fact that they gave him a Red Lightsaber for this while Red has traditionally been associated with the Sith and the Empire should tell you that either the person who created this meme doesn't know a thing about Star Wars, or that they know exactly what they're doing and somehow think that the Sith/Empire are the good guys," they wrote. "Second, I was curious about whose Saber they gave him because it didn't explicitly remind me of anyone's saber. I had to Reverse Image search it, but I found that this is a design from one of the many Lightsaber Storefronts online, that doesn't belong to any on-screen character from the series. The pictures they use even have the blade color as Blue, so they straight up changed it to Red. I know that 'Republicans are Red (as are Maga hats) and Democrats are Blue,' but they could have taken from literally an entire rainbow of colors to evoke 'Oh, it's a lightsaber,' but they insisted on making his lightsaber Red."

They concluded:

"As a Star Wars fan, I frankly find this cheap attempt to gain my vote more insulting than anything that Star Wars fans have ever taken issue with. This is probably the most embarrassing cash-in I've ever seen, and I've ACTUALLY WATCHED the Star Wars Holiday Special in its entirety, unironically, multiple times."

'Star Wars' legend Mark Hamill gives Biden The Force for elections

Agence France-Presse
May 4, 2024 

Mark Hamill played the powerful Jedi knight Luke Skywalker in 'Star Wars' and is a vocal supporter of President Joe Biden 

© ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP

Washington (AFP) – Joe Biden faces a tough reelection battle this November, but for one day at least The Force was with him.

Legendary "Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room on Friday after meeting the US president.

Hamill, 72, who played the powerful Jedi knight Luke Skywalker in the film series and is a vocal Biden supporter, took the podium wearing a pair of the president's trademark aviator sunglasses.

"I called him 'Mr President,' he said 'You can call me Joe.' And I said, 'Can I call you Joe-bi Wan Kenobi?' He liked that," quipped Hamill.

He was referring to "Star Wars" character Obi-Wan Kenobi, portrayed by Alec Guinness in the original 1977 film, who teaches Skywalker to discover his powers as he battles the dark side of The Force and the sinister Darth Vader.

Hamill described Democrat Biden, 81 -- who is set for an almost-as-epic battle with Republican predecessor Donald Trump in November's US election -- as "the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime."

The president had shown him photos during a meeting in the Oval Office, he added.

Taking a couple of questions from reporters -- although "no Star Wars questions please" -- the actor said he'd visited the White House under Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama but "this one was really extra special."

The visit came on the eve of the so-called "May the Fourth" day, when "Star Wars" fans celebrate in a riff on the movie's catchphrase "May the Force be with you."


The White House regularly brings guests into press briefings but they are usually in support of a cause or policy.

South Korean K-pop sensations BTS visited in 2022 to highlight the issue of anti-Asian racism, while US actor Matthew McConaughey took the podium later the same year to urge "gun responsibility" following a massacre at an elementary school in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Hamill was "someone who is... very much invested in the direction of this country."