Roadkill rate for California cougars puts population at risk


 A remote camera photo of the Griffith Park mountain lion known as P-22

Thu, February 2, 2023 
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Mountain lions have been dying on California highways at the rate of at least one or two every week in recent years, a roadkill toll that may exceed healthy reproductive levels for the big cats, new wildlife mortality data showed on Thursday.

Maps documenting deadly highway crossings - clustered most heavily in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area and the western Sierra Nevada foothills - were released by the Road Ecology Center at the University of California (UC) at Davis.

The data adds to research showing mountain lions, also known as cougars or pumas, are under growing pressure from traffic and urban sprawl that have left their territories increasingly isolated from one another, shrinking their gene pools.

"Over time, extra mortality from cars, especially for small, isolated populations, adds significantly to the threats they already face, Fraser Shilling the Road Ecology Center director, said in releasing the latest maps.

A well-known case in point was the Los Angeles-area mountain lion dubbed P-22, a radio-collared puma that became a wildlife celebrity after managing to cross two busy freeways to take up residence in the Hollywood Hills around Griffith Park.

P-22's demise came after the cat, a male believed to be 12 years old, was struck by a car and injured. Wildlife officials captured the lion in December and euthanized him after a medical exam found P-22 badly weakened from various ailments.

"The tenacity of P-22 in life and the final tragedy of his death from a vehicle collision highlights the plight of mountain lions throughout California, constantly under threat from traffic while living their natural lives," Shilling said.

Another radio-tagged puma, P-81, was found dead from a possible vehicle strike last month in the western Santa Monica Mountains.

The study cataloged a total of 535 mountain lion deaths on some 15,000 miles (24,140 km)of state-managed highways over eight years, from 2015 through 2022. That tally amounts to nearly 70 a year, but researchers said the true toll would likely be higher if city and county roads were counted.

The mortality rate also was found to have declined by about 10% over the past seven years. But the trend suggests cougar populations gradually declining as the pace of highway deaths matches reproductive rates, researchers said.

Publicity surrounding P-22, famously photographed prowling past the landmark Hollywood sign, helped raise funds for the world's largest wildlife overpass, over U.S. Highway 101 near Los Angeles. The project broke ground last April. A public celebration of P-22 is planned for Saturday in Griffith Park.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Anti-abortion group to pay Planned Parenthood nearly $1m over protest at clinic

Maya Yang
Sun, February 5, 2023 

Photograph: Kathy Plonka/AP

An anti-abortion group has been ordered to pay almost $1m in fines to Planned Parenthood, over demonstrations outside a clinic in Spokane, Washington state.

According to its website, the group, Church at Planned Parenthood, was formed to stage “worship service at the gates of Hell”.

It also calls itself a “gathering of Christians for the worship of God and the corporate prayer for repentance for this nation, repentance for the apathetic church and repentance of our blood guiltiness in this abortion Holocaust”.

In September 2021, a judge permanently banned protesters from the group from loudly demonstrating outside the Spokane clinic.

The judge, Timothy Fennessy wrote: “Reasonable minds can only reach one conclusion, that Covenant Church [which founded the Church at Planned Parenthood group] intends to interfere with access to or safe and effective delivery of healthcare services” the Spokesman-Review reported.

Fennessy said the demonstrations created increased increased pain and other psychiatric symptoms for patients receiving care inside the clinic, KXLY, a Spokane TV station, reported.

Last month, a Spokane county judge ordered Church at Planned Parenthood to pay approximately $960,000 to Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, for violating state law by noisily demonstrating and interfering with patient care.

According to the Spokesman-Review newspaper, the group was required to pay $110,000 in civil damages and $850,000 in attorney fees.

In response, Paul Dillon, vice-president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, said: “This is a critical victory for Planned Parenthood at a time of historical attacks on abortion access.”

Referring to a Seattle-based women and LGBTQ+ rights organization, he added: “We are so thankful for the work of Legal Voice as well as the overwhelming support of the community. We are proud to provide a safe, welcoming environment for our employees and our patients, so they can get the high quality health care they need.”

On Saturday, the group’s pastor, Ken Peters, condemned the ruling, writing on Facebook: “Planned Parenthood sues our little church for peaceful assembly and it costs Christians $850,000 for mostly corrupt lawyer’s fees. The only difference … we have to do 7pm instead of 6pm and go across the street. $850k over one hour and across the street. Wow.”

He added: “That’s a lot of money they stole from the Kingdom over one hour. We are restarting again 14 March at 7pm. See you there Pacific NW. It ain’t over.”

• This article was amended on 6 February 2023. An earlier version misplaced Spokane in Idaho, and the TV station KXLY in Seattle.

Pot is making people sick. Congress is playing catch-up

Ben Leonard
Mon, February 6, 2023 

When Gallup asked about legalizing weed last year, two-thirds of Americans supported it — up from 12 percent when the pollster first asked in 1969.

Recognition of marijuana’s medical benefits, the harms of punitive drug policies, and the prospect of new tax revenue to fund popular services, have driven that change in attitudes and led 21 states to legalize recreational sales.

But the policymakers overseeing legalization were flying surprisingly blind about its effect on public health. Only recently has a steady flow of data emerged on health impacts, including emphysema in smokers and learning delays in adolescents. Lawmakers’ reaction to the bad news raises the prospect that the loosely regulated marijuana marketplace, worth $13.2 billion last year and growing 15 percent annually, could come under pressure.

Even some of those most supportive of legalization, such as the co-chairs of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), are calling for more regulation and better oversight.

“One of the reasons I have fought so hard to be able to legalize, regulate and tax is because I want to keep this out of the hands of young people. It has proven negative consequences for the developing mind,” said Blumenauer, Capitol Hill’s unofficial cannabis czar.

Last year, he and Joyce teamed on legislation, since enacted, to ease federal restrictions on researching cannabis for medical purposes and on growing marijuana for research.

That could significantly improve understanding of the drug.

They’re now talking about standards on dosing, mandates for childproof containers for edibles, and advertising restrictions aimed at protecting children. They’re also concerned about high potency cannabis and its effects.

Federal agencies are also taking action. The FDA recently rejected applications from companies making products out of cannabis who were seeking regulation under the loose standards governing dietary supplements.

The agency said that the use of cannabidiol, or CBD, an active ingredient of cannabis, poses safety risks and that Congress needs to bolster safeguards to mitigate risk.

“We have not found adequate evidence to determine how much CBD can be consumed, and for how long, before causing harm,” said Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock in a statement.

Despite its history, there hasn’t been much health research on pot until recently, said Giselle Revah, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa whose research last year in the journal Radiology linked marijuana smoking to the lung condition emphysema.


Before her study, Revah said, “what was in the literature was extremely limited” because “it’s very hard to study something that’s illegal.”

But recently, in addition to Revah’s work, new scientific studies have uncovered evidence of a rise in children accidentally ingesting edibles, a slight uptick in teenagers getting asthma in states legalizing marijuana, and growing rates of simultaneous use of alcohol and marijuana among young adults.
Sea change

With public opinion turning pro-legalization, 21 states have moved to permit its use for medical reasons or for recreation. A further 16 allow medical marijuana.

And marijuana use is becoming much more common.

On the current trajectory tracked by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more Americans will use marijuana in 2030 than use tobacco products. Nearly 50 million people used weed in 2020, according to SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an increase of nearly 75 percent since 2009.

Researchers are only beginning to examine the data on how this massive increase in use is affecting public health.

As states have opened up cannabis laws, pediatric edible poisonings in the U.S. have grown from 207 in 2017 to 3,054 in 2021, according to federal data, and states legalizing cannabis like Colorado have seen a bigger increase in hospitalizations and poison control visits than other states.

Pre-proof research from late December found that legalization of cannabis for recreational use could be contributing to an increase in asthma among teens.

The researchers found that from 2011 to 2019, teenagers in states that legalized recreational cannabis saw a “slight” uptick in asthma rates in kids ages 12 to 17 compared with states in which cannabis remained illegal. The team, from the City University of New York, Columbia University, the University of California San Diego and others, also found an increase in asthma among children in some racial and ethnic groups.

Renee Goodwin, an adjunct associate professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, said it could be a sign of the downstream effects of legalization. Parents could be smoking more in the home, exposing kids to second-hand smoke, she said.

“You've got these sweeping, very rapid changes in policy and there's no science to inform them,” Goodwin said. “Ideally, there would be at least accompanying clinical guidelines for clinicians to advise parents.”

The mental health impacts of using cannabis aren’t yet clear, though some studies have linked it to increased risk of depression and suicide.

“We really have to slow down,” said Leana Wen, George Washington University public health professor and former Baltimore health commissioner. “We're getting so far ahead of where the research is.”

In a Washington Post column last year, Wen detailed “abundant research” that she said demonstrated “how exposure to marijuana during childhood impacts later cognitive ability, including memory, attention, motivation and learning.”

Marijuana legalization also coincides with an increase in driving-while-high.

The percentage of driving deaths involving cannabis has more than doubled from 2000 to 2018, according to a 2021 study in the American Journal of Public Health.



The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is running an ad campaign to combat that increase.

Research published last month found that pediatric poisonings were much higher in Canadian provinces where edible sales are legal compared with a province that barred edibles.

Canada’s rise came in spite of child-resistant packaging and THC content restrictions, said Daniel Myran, lead author of the study and fellow at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

“It suggests that if you put cannabis into candy or chocolate, you're going to see an increase in these poisonings,” Myran said. “It’s a question for regulators — do you need this product form? Can adult consumers get the choice and the option to purchase a legal cannabis product that doesn't have to appeal this strongly to young kids?”
The policy response

Questions like that are raising the prospect of more regulation.

The FDA called on Congress last month to create a new regulatory pathway for CBD, including labeling, content limits and a minimum purchase age to help avoid harm to the liver, interactions with medications and damage to men's reproductive systems.

Blumenauer and Joyce both say they plan to push for childproof packaging and rules to standardize dosing.

“Consumers need to be able to know how much THC is in the products they are consuming, as opposed to the unregulated market we are currently facing which makes it nearly impossible to know,” Blumenauer said.

That’s something public health advocates support. But many in the public health world are frustrated that policymakers eager to get on with legalization missed the opportunity to mitigate the consequences in advance.

"We're in a massive natural experiment," said David Jernigan, professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University School of Public Health. “Are we learning the lessons from alcohol, tobacco and other drugs when we go to regulate cannabis?" Jernigan asked. “Absolutely not.”

Democrats’ Ilhan Omar defence weakened by party’s own attacks over Israel

Chris McGreal

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, February 5, 2023 

Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters

The resolution that set in motion the removal of the only African immigrant, Muslim and former resident of a refugee camp on the congressional committee overseeing US foreign policy paid scant attention to Ilhan Omar’s views on anything but a single issue: Israel.

“Omar has attempted to undermine the relationship between the United States and Israel,” said the author of the resolution, Republican congressman Max Miller. “She has disqualified herself from serving on the foreign affairs committee.”

The Democratic leadership accused Republicans of a vendetta. Omar said she was targeted as a Muslim immigrant who “needs to be silenced”, and that “when you push power, power pushes back”.

But Democratic attempts to defend the Minnesota congresswoman were undercut by the party’s own record of attacking Omar over her statements about Israel almost from the day she was sworn in four years ago, greasing the path for Republicans to vote her off the foreign affairs committee on Thursday.

Several Jewish American organisations came out in support of Omar, including Jewish Voice for Peace Action, a group lobbying for a change in US policy on Israel.

“These attacks on Representative Omar are about her identity as a Black Muslim progressive woman. But this cannot be removed from the fact that she wants to hold the Israeli government accountable and speak out for Palestinian human rights,” said its political director, Beth Miller.

Miller said that while she welcomed the support of the Democratic leadership for Omar in Thursday’s vote, it was hamstrung by its own criticisms of her.

“Since she got to office she has been vocally opposed to Israeli occupation and speaking out for Palestinian human rights. And time and time again members of her own party have attacked her for it,” she said.

“The actions of the Democratic leadership, and the failure to not just defend her, but sometimes jump on attacks against her, has helped foster an environment that allowed this to happen.”

Max Miller’s resolution to remove Omar repeatedly cited Democratic criticisms of her statements on Israel and allegations of antisemitism.

“Congresswoman Omar clearly cannot be an objective decision-maker on the foreign affairs committee given her biases against Israel and against the Jewish people,” he said when introducing the resolution.

Omar has apologised for the wording of some of her statements while sticking by her points, including criticism of the influence of groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and pro-Israel money on US politics.

Several liberal Jewish American groups, including J Street, Americans for Peace Now, and the New Israel Fund, said that none of Omar’s policies or statements merited her removal from the committee. They added that accusations against her by the Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, seem “especially exploitative in light of the rampant promotion of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories by him and his top deputies amid a surge in dangerous right-wing antisemitism”.

The groups noted that McCarthy himself had deleted a tweet accusing Jewish billionaires of trying to “buy” an election.

But while Republican leaders may not really care about antisemitism, they are serious about defending Israeli governments from criticism. Many Democrats support them in that.

Miller said the criticisms of Omar were less about the language she used than trying to silence her.

“These attempts to smear and attack her, to police her language, are all part of attempt to silence and threaten anyone who trying to speak out against the Israeli government,” she said.

As Omar’s record on the foreign affairs committee shows, she rarely drew public criticism from fellow Democrats even for strident criticisms of US foreign policy in other parts of the world, including accusations that it undermined democracy and helped to fuel terrorism.

At a hearing on the erosion of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020, the Democratic chair at the time, Karen Bass, spoke of the US as “the global champion for democracy”. Omar, on the other hand, asked about the US counter-terrorism training of security forces responsible for massacres in Cameroon and of coup leaders in Mali.

“This trend of supporting militarised brutality in the name of counterterrorism is widespread in the continent. I have mentioned Cameroon and Mali, but I could easily mention Somalia, Mozambique, Kenya, or a number of other countries in the continent,” Omar said.

At a hearing on US-Africa relations a year earlier, Omar agreed with a witness from the conservative Heritage Foundation that Saudi Arabian promotion of Wahhabism in Africa “has contributed to the rise of jihadist thinking and terrorist recruitment on the continent”.

Ilhan Omar with Bernie Sanders a day before Super Tuesday on 2 March three years ago. 

Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Then Omar asked: “Is it fair to say that our unwavering support for the Saudi government has been counterproductive to our security goals in Africa?”.

Omar also used the hearing to challenge claims by the US Africa Command, responsible for American military operations on the continent, that its escalating use of drone strikes in her homeland, Somalia, had not resulted in civilian casualties.

None of this brought the attention or orchestrated backlash prompted by her views on Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.

The Republican chair of the foreign affairs committee, Michael McCaul, made plain that his concern lay with Omar positions on this one issue.

“It’s just that her worldview of Israel is so diametrically opposed to the committee’s. I don’t mind having differences of opinion, but this goes beyond that,” he said.

Some of the most furious and, according to Omar’s supporters, unreasoned criticism came over a single tweet following a foreign affairs committee meeting in June 2021.

Omar asked the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, about Washington’s opposition to international criminal court (ICC) investigations in Israel and the occupied Palestine territories, and Afghanistan shortly before it fell to the Taliban.

The ICC reached a preliminary conclusion that both Israel and Palestinian armed groups have both committed war crimes that include the unjustified killing of civilians and Israel’s illegal construction of sprawling settlements in the occupied territories. In Afghanistan, the ICC is investigating actions by the Taliban, the former Afghan government’s forces, the US military and the CIA.

Omar made it clear in her questions to Blinken that she agreed with the expansive nature of the court’s investigation and that she was not singling out one side in either conflict.

“I would emphasise that in Israel and Palestine this includes crimes committed by the Israeli security forces and Hamas. In Afghanistan it includes crimes committed by the Afghan national government and the Taliban,” she told him.

“So in both of these cases, if domestic courts can’t or won’t pursue justice – and we oppose the ICC – where do we think the victims of these supposed crimes can go for justice? And what justice mechanisms do you support for them?”

The question was typical of the global perspective Omar brought to the foreign affairs committee, shaped by her early life amidst armed conflict in Somalia and in a United Nations refugee camp in Kenya. At its core was Omar’s persistent scrutiny of whether the US lives up to its self-assessment as a force for good in the world when, in this case, it shields itself and its friends from accountability.

Blinken made no objection to the framing of the question, and lamented the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. He said there was no need for ICC investigations because existing national courts in Israel and the US were sufficient to ensure accountability, a claim disputed by human rights organisations that have documented unprosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity by both countries.

The storm broke when Omar tweeted Blinken’s testimony with the comment: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked [Blinken] where people are supposed to go for justice.”

Republicans came out of the gate claiming that single tweet was evidence of everything that was wrong with Omar.

They said it exposed her hostility to Israel and America, and her antisemitism. They accused her of drawing “moral equivalence” between democratic governments and suicide bombers. Few cared that while Omar’s framing of her tweet may have been impolitic, it was not the congresswoman who linked Israel and Hamas, or the Taliban and the US military, but the ICC in its investigations.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton resorted to what is widely regarded as a classic racist taunt to Omar to go back to where she came from: “[She] was a refugee from Somalia and America welcomed her. If she really believes America is a hateful country on par with the Taliban and Hamas, she’s welcome to leave.”

It did not take long for Democrats to pile in as well. Fellow party members in Congress issued a statement claiming that Omar’s “false equivalencies give cover to terrorist groups”.

The Democrats urged Omar “to clarify her words”. The congresswoman responded by condemning the “constant harassment and silencing” from fellow Democrats.

A few Democrats did come to her defence, including Representative Cori Bush.

“I’m not surprised when Republicans attack Black women for standing up for human rights. But when it’s Democrats, it’s especially hurtful,” she said.

Omar was forced into a retreat after the then Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, joined the fray to condemn “false equivalencies”, saying they foment prejudice and undermine progress toward peace.

Omar issued a statement “clarifying” that she was not making moral comparisons and was “in no way equating terrorist organisations with democratic countries”.

But by then, the debate and news coverage had shifted from scrutiny of why the US was protecting Israel and itself, and by extension Hamas and the Taliban, from war crimes investigations to a debate about Omar’s motives.

And the Republicans had another arrow in their quiver when the time came to move against her.

As climate change and overuse shrink Lake Powell, the emergent landscape is coming back to life – and posing new challenges


Daniel Craig McCool, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Utah

THE CONVERSATION
Mon, February 6, 2023 

The white 'bathtub ring' around Lake Powell, which is roughly 110 feet high, shows the former high water mark. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

As Western states haggle over reducing water use because of declining flows in the Colorado River Basin, a more hopeful drama is playing out in Glen Canyon.

Lake Powell, the second-largest U.S. reservoir, extends from northern Arizona into southern Utah. A critical water source for seven Colorado River Basin states, it has shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years.

An ongoing 22-year megadrought has lowered the water level to just 22.6% of “full pool,” and that trend is expected to continue. Federal officials assert that there are no plans to drain Lake Powell, but overuse and climate change are draining it anyway.

As the water drops, Glen Canyon – one of the most scenic areas in the U.S. West – is reappearing.

This landscape, which includes the Colorado River’s main channel and about 100 side canyons, was flooded starting in the mid-1960s with the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. The area’s stunning beauty and unique features have led observers to call it “America’s lost national park.”

Lake Powell’s decline offers an unprecedented opportunity to recover the unique landscape at Glen Canyon. But managing this emergent landscape also presents serious political and environmental challenges. In my view, government agencies should start planning for them now.
A tarnished jewel

Glen Canyon Dam, which towers 710 feet high, was designed to create a water “bank account” for the Colorado River Basin. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation touted Lake Powell as the “Jewel of the Colorado” and promised that it would be a motorboater’s paradise and an endless source of water and hydropower.

Lake Powell was so big that it took 17 years to fill to capacity. At full pool, it contained 27 million acre-feet of water – enough to cover 27 million acres of land to a depth of one foot – and Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines could generate 1,300 megawatts of power when the reservoir was high.

Soon the reservoir was drawing millions of boaters and water skiers every year. But starting in the late 1980s, its volume declined sharply as states drew more water from the Colorado River while climate change-induced drought reduced the river’s flow. Today the reservoir’s average volume is less than 6 million acre-feet.

Nearly every boat ramp is closed, and many of them sit far from the retreating reservoir. Hydropower production may cease as early as 2024 if the lake falls to “minimum power pool,” the lowest point at which the turbines can draw water. And water supplies to 40 million people are gravely endangered under current management scenarios.

These water supply issues have created a serious crisis in the basin, but there is also an opportunity to recover an amazing landscape. Over 100,000 acres of formerly flooded land have emerged, including world-class scenery that rivals some of the crown jewels of the U.S. national park system.

Bargained away

Glen Canyon made a deep impression on explorer John Wesley Powell when he surveyed the Colorado River starting in 1867. When Powell’s expedition floated through Glen Canyon in 1869, he wrote:

“On the walls, and back many miles into the country, numbers of monument-shaped buttes are observed. So we have a curious ensemble of wonderful features – carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds, and monuments … past these towering monuments, past these oak-set glens, past these fern-decked alcoves, past these mural curves, we glide hour after hour.”

This side canyon emerged in recent years as Lake Powell shrank. 

The white ‘bathtub ring’ on the rock wall shows past water levels. 

Daniel Craig McCool, CC BY-ND

Glen Canyon remained relatively unknown until the late 1940s, when the Bureau of Reclamation proposed several large dams on the upper Colorado River for irrigation and hydropower. Environmentalists fiercely objected to one at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border, alarmed by the prospect of building a dam in a national monument. Their campaign to block it succeeded – but in return they accepted a dam in Glen Canyon, a decision that former Sierra Club President David Brower later called his greatest regret.
New challenges

The first goal of managing the emergent landscape in Glen Canyon should be the inclusion of tribes in a co-management role. The Colorado River and its tributaries are managed through a complex maze of laws, court cases and regulations known as the “Law of the River.” In an act of stupendous injustice, the Law of the River ignored the water rights of Native Americans until courts stepped in and required western water users to consider their rights.

Tribes received no water allocation in the 1922 Colorado River Compact and were ignored or trivialized in subsequent legislation. Even though modern concepts of water management emphasize including all major stakeholders, tribes were excluded from the policymaking process.

There are 30 tribes in the Colorado River Basin, at least 19 of which have an association with Glen Canyon. They have rights to a substantial portion of the river’s flow, and there are thousands of Indigenous cultural sites in the canyon.

Another management challenge is the massive amounts of sediment that have accumulated in the canyon. “Colorado” means “colored red” in Spanish, a recognition of the silt-laden water. This silt used to build beaches in the Grand Canyon, just downstream, and created the Colorado River delta in Mexico.

But for the past 63 years, it has been accumulating in Lake Powell, where it now clogs some sections of the main channel and will eventually accumulate below the dam. Some of it is laced with toxic materials from mining decades ago. As more of the canyon is exposed, it may become necessary to create an active sediment management plan, including possible mechanical removal of some materials to protect public health.

The creation of Lake Powell also resulted in biological invasives, including nonnative fish and quagga mussels. Some of these problems will abate as the reservoir declines and a free-flowing river replaces stagnant still water.

On a more positive note, native plants are recolonizing side canyons as they become exposed, creating verdant canyon bottoms. Restoring natural ecosystems in the canyon will require innovative biological management strategies as the habitat changes back to a more natural landscape.

Finally, as the emergent landscape expands and side canyons recover their natural scenery, Glen Canyon will become a unique tourist magnet. As the main channel reverts to a flowing river, users will no longer need an expensive boat; anyone with a kayak, canoe or raft will be able to enjoy the beauty of the canyons.

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which includes over 1.25 million acres around Lake Powell, was created to cater to people in motorized boats on a flat-water surface. Its staff will need to develop new capabilities and an active visitor management plan to protect the canyon and prevent the kind of crowding that is overrunning other popular national parks.

Other landscapes are likely to emerge across the West as climate change reshapes the region and numerous reservoirs decline. With proper planning, Glen Canyon can provide a lesson in how to manage them.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Daniel Craig McCool, University of Utah.

Read more:

What is dead pool? A water expert explains

Monsoons make deserts bloom in the US Southwest, but climate change is making these summer rainfalls more extreme and erratic

I know many of the people involved in the controversy regarding the future of Lake Powell and Glen Canyon.

STATE CAPITALI$M IS STILL JUST CAPITALI$M

China keeps insisting its real estate market is not in a crisis — even as just about every sign points to the opposite


Huileng Tan
Mon, February 6, 2023 

China's real-estate sector is mired in debt woes.Xu Jinbai/VCG/Getty Images

The IMF said in a report on China's economy that the country's property crisis remains "unresolved."

But China's hit back at that, saying its property market "has been operating smoothly in general, and is not in a 'crisis' situation."

China's real estate market has been mired in debt woes for the past few years.

China's property market woes may be well-documented — but Beijing insists there's no crisis.

And that's clashing with the International Monetary Fund's, or IMF's read of things. The IMF released its annual review of China's economy on Friday, in which it said that the real estate crisis "remains unresolved" and that the country's growth remains "under pressure."

But China's taking a contrarian view, saying in a January 12 response to the IMF, included in the Fund's report, that the country's property market "has been operating smoothly in general, and is not in a 'crisis' situation."

"The authorities are aware of the risks and are working to address them," said Zhengxin Zhang, China's representative to the IMF's executive board, and Xuefei Bai, a policy adviser at the IMF. "It is inappropriate to overstate the difficulties in the market and potential impacts to the financial sector."
The IMF says China's property crisis "intensified" in 2022

The IMF said in its Friday report China's property crisis "intensified" in 2022.

"Accumulating pressures from the unresolved property crisis could trigger a sharp retrenchment in aggregate demand, with adverse macro-financial feedback loops and potentially large external spillovers," the IMF said while calling for "further action" at the national level by increasing funding for the completion of stalled projects.

This might help lead the way to market-based restructuring, and contain financial risks, it added.

Despite China's efforts to reassure investors about the health of its property sector, more than half of 60 mainland China-listed developers are likely to post losses for 2022, per Bloomberg calculations which used public data. And on top of that, investment into China's property fell 10% in 2022 from a year ago, according to official data released on January 17.

The average net-debt-to-equity ratio at the country's top 80 real estate companies rose to 152% by the second quarter of 2022 — twice what it was in mid-2020 before debt restrictions on property developers were introduced, Reuters reported, citing analysts from the state-owned Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

China's Zhang and Bai acknowledged in their January 12 response China's real-estate market entered "a new environment" in 2022 due to various factors, such as shrinking demand, weaker market expectations, the pandemic, and liquidity issues at some developers. But the balance sheets of listed developers showed improved liabilities to assets ratio in the first half of 2022, they wrote.

Chinese authorities are also supporting "reasonable market financing," they said, adding: "the current development of the real estate market is a natural evolution of 'deleveraging and destocking' in the past few years."

"The related risks are local and only concern individual firms, and their impact on the rest of the world has been relatively small," they added.
Beijing started clamping down on excessive borrowing in 2020

The sharp exchange comes amid an ongoing debt crisis in China's property sector after Beijing started clamping down on excessive borrowing in 2020, which contributed to the debt troubles at major property developer Evergrande.

The cash crunch led to stalled construction, spurring worries that buyers may never see the apartment they have been paying for.

Banks also tightened lending to the entire property sector amid Evergrande's liquidity crunch, leading to concerns of a domino effect on China's financial sector — and the rest of the world.

The debt crisis also had a deep social impact. Chinese millennials, for instance, are grappling with an existential crisis over home ownership due to concerns over whether developers will be able to deliver apartments buyers have paid for, wrote Insider's Cheryl Teh in October 2021.

"The real problem is that many developers simply do not generate positive cash flow and that the funding model of unfettered pre-sale receipts is broken," Andrew Lawrence, TS Lombard's Asia property analyst, wrote in a January 12 note seen by Insider.

Bed Bath & Beyond Has Nothing But Itself to Blame for Impending Bankruptcy

Jeannette Neumann and Eliza Ronalds-Hannon
Mon, February 6, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., facing a crisis in late summer as sales plunged and suppliers revolted, insisted its white-collar workers return to the office four days a week.

Interim Chief Executive Officer Sue Gove told staff at company headquarters in Union, New Jersey, that face time would help quickly address mounting problems facing the retailer, according to six former managers and employees who attended the gathering.

To the employees, however, it felt like just another example of how executives were mired in minutiae as the chain barreled toward bankruptcy. Most staffers had already returned to the office three days a week. One employee spoke up and said an extra day wouldn’t turn around the struggling company. Many in the room nodded or applauded, according to the former managers and employees.

When other well-known stores spiraled into distress in recent years, the internet often took the blame. But the case of Bed Bath & Beyond is more complicated. While the chain was hurt by online rivals like Amazon.com Inc., its undoing is also a story of how deciding to rip it up and start again can leave a company in tatters.

Layoffs, management changes, boardroom shake-ups, stock buybacks and strategic overhauls are go-to maneuvers for modern business, and Bed Bath & Beyond tried them all. At nearly every recent turn, the company took steps that led it deeper into a financial quagmire.

Weeks after the return-to-office edict, Gove said the company would fire about a fifth of its corporate and supply-chain workforce and shut 150 of its nearly 770 Bed Bath & Beyond brand stores in the US. The retailer had secured new financing, Gove said, and was launching a turnaround plan to prepare for the holiday-shopping season.

The reprieve didn’t last. Bed Bath & Beyond has indicated it is preparing for a potential bankruptcy filing. It has missed payments to banks and bondholders, and former employees say they haven’t been paid severance. If the company restructures in bankruptcy by closing more stores, it could emerge as a smaller version of its former self. However, Bed Bath & Beyond’s financial situation is so dire it’s also possible the retailer sells its assets and ceases to operate, Bloomberg News has previously reported.

A Bed Bath & Beyond spokeswoman didn’t respond to requests for comment on this article.

At its peak in 2017, Bed Bath & Beyond had 1,560 stores with 65,000 employees, bringing in $12.3 billion in revenue. But in the nine months through November 2022, it posted sales of just $4.2 billion, and its headcount dwindled to fewer than 30,000.

Blind Spot

Warren Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein founded Bed Bath & Beyond in 1971. As it grew, the company shunned retail orthodoxy, giving managers wide discretion in stocking shelves, rather than relying on mandates from headquarters. It mostly eschewed warehouses, stacking can openers, coffee pots and bathmats nearly to the ceiling in its stores.

“Everything that we did was for the customer,” Arthur Stark, Bed Bath & Beyond’s longtime president, who left in 2018, said in an interview. “If it meant carrying too much inventory in the store, it was OK. If customers made the commitment to come to our store, we would have it in stock.”

Bed Bath & Beyond also pleased shareholders. Under longtime CEO Steve Temares, it poured billions into repurchasing stock, and acquired Christmas Tree Shops, Cost Plus World Market and Buybuy Baby, founded by Feinstein’s sons.

Still, the company's executives had a blind spot: the web. As Amazon.com and other online shopping sites appeared on the horizon, Bed Bath & Beyond’s executives prioritized their brick-and-mortar business. Eventually, that caught up with them.

Same-store sales, a closely watched retail metric that excludes new or recently closed stores, began to fall in 2017. Stark, who joined Bed Bath & Beyond in 1977, said that in hindsight, the company should have focused more on online retail.

“Surely we could have done better,” he said. “There’s no question.”

According to Stark, the company’s success made it reluctant to change. It had been profitable for years and seemed to go from strength to strength, expanding across the US and Canada.

“We were confronting the challenge of maintaining our stores, maintaining our profitability and investing in technology and digital,” he said in the interview. Stark, 67, now serves on the senior advisory boards for Jefferies Group and Vintage Investment Partners.

Bed Bath & Beyond should have considered going private, Stark said, to invest in e-commerce at the temporary expense of profits. Management had entertained suggestions to take the company private during his tenure, he said.

As executives struggled to invest for the long term amid short-term market pressures, one of the best-known discounts in US retail history was adding to the strain. Bed Bath & Beyond’s 20%-off coupons, sent to tens of millions of households for years, lured shoppers and boosted sales. But they eroded profits, too.

“Like any form of promotion, it becomes a drug,” Stark said. Over the years, attempts to pull back on the mailings or reduce the discount backfired. “Once you’re addicted to it and your customer is addicted to it, it’s a very difficult thing to wean them off of.”

Read more: Bed Bath & Beyond Traced an Erratic Path to Its Current Crisis

Activist Investors

By early 2019, activist investors began agitating for change. Ancora Advisors, Macellum Capital Management and Legion Partners Asset Management wanted Temares to leave. The trio urged asset sales, more investment in private-label brands and online commerce, and more buybacks.

In a 168-page document making their case, the investors noted that the first time Bed Bath & Beyond executives said the word “Amazon” on a conference call was Dec. 21, 2016, a sign they weren’t “embracing industry change.”

Within months, Temares was out.

“We always were well aware of our competitors, respected them, and studied what they did to learn what we could do better,” Temares wrote in a statement in response to questions from Bloomberg.

“I could not have been more proud of the associates I worked with, the quality people they are, and the dedication they exhibited,” he added. “That was then. Ultimately, as we see over and over again, arrogance and ineptitude are deadly.”

The board, with four new members selected as part of an accord with the activists, named former Target executive Mark Tritton CEO in October 2019. As Target’s chief merchandising officer, Tritton had overseen a private-label overhaul credited with helping speed up growth at the discount giant.

Tritton and his team, which included former senior executives from TrueValue, Walgreens and Macy’s, moved fast to tackle the falling profitability and revenue they inherited. They wanted a third of Bed Bath & Beyond products to be private-label, up from 10%, within three years.

Tritton also said he planned to get rid of poorly performing labels and double down on well-known brands such as KitchenAid and Oxo. But that effort faltered as major brands faced pandemic-supply chain problems and the company’s worsening cash crunch left it unable to pay for premium products, according to former managers.

Even before Bed Bath & Beyond’s finances took a nosedive, Tritton and his team showcased their new private-label goods in the redesigned stores and downplayed national brands, according to some of the former managers and employees.

In a presentation to investors a year after taking the reins, Tritton compared his revamp to remodeling a home. “Our house is beloved by so many, but a house reliant on positive memories from the past won’t weather any storm,” he said.

Share Buybacks

In the first five months of 2021, Tritton pushed to introduce six new private-label product lines — ambitious by retail standards. The degree of difficulty was increased by attempting to design, order and oversee manufacturing of thousands of new items as the pandemic snarled output and shipments from China. Once the private-label brands arrived in stores, most were new to shoppers and didn’t resonate with them.

Tritton also promised to use more cash buying back stock. In October 2020, he and his team pledged to repurchase $675 million in shares over three years. By November 2021, the amount had increased and the timeframe had accelerated: They would complete the repurchase of $1 billion shares within about one year. At the time, the retailer had around $600 million of cash on hand.

Some analysts thought that was aggressive. Executives appeared overly optimistic that strong spending by cooped-up consumers in 2020 and 2021 would endure. Dennis Cantalupo, CEO of Pulse Ratings, a credit-rating and consulting firm, said the company could have survived at least another six months if it hadn’t repurchased shares.

“Rather than take that money and put it in the bank and assume that the tailwinds to the industry are going to subside or normalize, they initiated the buyback campaign,” Cantalupo said.

The timing and magnitude of the buybacks stood out “given the simultaneous rapid decline in the company’s topline and cash flow and the need for the company to reinvest in its business quickly,” Fitch Ratings analysts David Silverman and Monica Aggarwal wrote in an email.

Tritton’s private-label push ended up outstripping the aims of some of the activist shareholders, according to people familiar with their thinking.

Some former Bed Bath & Beyond executives, though, say the pandemic and supply-chain problems made it nearly impossible for Tritton to transform the ailing company.

In March 2022, Tritton and his team welcomed employees back to the company’s renovated headquarters for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The theme was “Together, Happier,” a nod to a marketing campaign launched in 2021, called “Home, Happier.”

As part of the return, employees took part in activities including a scavenger hunt. One of the clues led to a new mural of Bed Bath & Beyond’s history entitled “Our Big Moments (So Far),” according to a photo viewed by Bloomberg News. The chronology included its founding, its 1992 public listing and its 2007 purchase of Buybuy Baby.

While the timeline mentioned Tritton’s appointment in 2019, it didn’t include the names of the founders or his predecessor. That felt fitting to several of the former managers and employees, who said it reflected a disregard for the company’s history and what had made it unique.

The retailer atrophied as the year went on. Tritton was ousted in June. Sales in the three months ended Aug. 27 fell 28% from the previous year. Inventories became increasingly sparse as many suppliers, worried about getting paid, halted or restricted shipments.

That’s meant many shoppers have left stores empty-handed, including the former Bed Bath & Beyond president, Stark.

About a year ago, he said, he went to a store in East Hanover, New Jersey, to shop for wedding registry gifts with his son and the son’s fiancée. The couple wanted Wamsutta bed sheets, once a staple at the retailer. They had no luck.

“They said, ‘Let’s go to Bloomingdale’s,’” Stark said.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Israeli judicial reform legislation won't be halted, justice minister says

ISRAEL EMBRACES NAZI JUDGE CARL SCHMITT

Weekly cabinet meeting at the Israeli Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem

Sun, February 5, 2023

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's justice minister said on Sunday he would not freeze "for even a minute" the legislative process for proposed judicial reforms that have drawn widespread condemnation both domestically and globally.

Israel's Justice Minister Yariv Levin's comments to Hebrew media's Channel 13 followed a statement earlier in the day from Israeli president Isaac Herzog, calling for the process to be temporarily halted.

"Stop the whole process for a moment, take a deep breath, allow for dialogue because there is a huge majority of the people who would like dialogue," Herzog said in the statement.

The plans to strengthen political control over appointments of judges, including the Supreme Court, while weakening that body's ability to overturn legislation or rule against the government, have brought tens of thousands of Israelis onto the streets in nationwide protests, widening already deep political divisions in Israeli society.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the reforms are needed to curb overreach by judges.

Critics say the proposed changes will politicize the judiciary and compromise its independence, foster corruption and harm Israel's legal protection abroad and its economy.

The Israeli president, who was appointed and not elected, has previously called for all sides of the debate to defuse the tension and try to reach a common understanding.

(Reporting by Emily Rose; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

Israeli Democracy Can Only Survive With Palestinian-Jewish Solidarity


Omri Boehm

TIME
Mon, February 6, 2023 

Crowd of protesters wave flags and placards during the

Crowd of protesters wave flags and placards during the demonstration. Thousands of protesters rally for Democracy in Tel Aviv for the Fifth Consecutive Week across Israel. Credit - Eyal Warshavsky-SOPA Images/LightRocket

Many on the Israeli left like to quote a statement by Ahmed Tibi, a longstanding Israeli lawmaker who is also among the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian: “The State of Israel is Jewish and democratic: democratic for Jews, and Jewish for Arabs.” I have often quoted it myself, never quite comfortably, because it’s not accurate. A Jewish state is not truly democratic: neither for Arabs nor for Jews. Democracy depends on the rule of law, and the rule of law depends on complete civil equality, as well as on subjecting everyone—including the sovereign government—to the same law. In democracies, where The People—not a king—is the sovereign, the rule of law thus depends on the principle that the state equally belongs to all its citizens: The People are the sovereign, and defined as the set of all citizens. In Israel, where ‘The People’ designates Jews rather than citizens as such, this principle is not just violated; there’s consensus, at least among Jewish citizens, that it is illegitimate.

Today many of those Jewish citizens are fighting to defend the courts, the rule of law and the separation of powers from assault by a new Israeli government. The battle makes headlines the world over as a fight to save democracy. But we tend to forget that Jewish Israelis have always opposed the rule of law in its genuine significance. The law in Israel never truly ruled over the People’s will. In the state of the Jewish People, the people rule, and use the law to ensure their will—to uphold Jewish sovereignty rather than the sovereignty of the country’s citizens and inhabitants.

Here lies the heart of the issue. When the sovereign can use the law as a tool, the rule of law becomes an empty shell, and the human and civil rights of everyone—Palestinians, Jews, minority, or majority—are in danger. So it is that the newly elected government actually seems to express the people’s will: they want to deepen their rule as more and more Jewish and less democratic, over a population that is partly Jewish and partly Palestinian. (The Palestinian part is about half, if you count, as we should, those in the West Bank, who are controlled by Jerusalem.) The laws and the principles that were originally intended to ensure Jewish-above-citizen’s sovereignty now allow the government to pursue this anti-democratic trend, such that, at this point, “even” the rights of Jews stand to be jeopardized. It has never been clearer that the human and civil rights of Jews and Palestinians are necessarily interdependent. A democratic alternative to the current coalition will only emerge if we form a Jewish-Palestinian solidarity that will be based on this insight, and promote full civil partnership in the state of all its citizens.

Read More: Israel’s New Government Sparks Fear

The deepest threat to this kind of partnership is not the current coalition’s “reform plan,” which in fact aims to release the government from the authority of the courts. It is Section 7a of “Basic Law: Knesset,” which prohibits the participation in elections of candidates who deny the “existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” On first look, the spirit behind this law is the principle of “militant democracy,” formulated in the aftermath of the Weimar Republic, stating that democracy’s enemies must be prevented from using elections to abolish the sovereignty of the citizens—as is well known, the Nazis came to power democratically. Israel at first seems to have adopted the same principle and only extended it to protect not just democracy but the state’s Jewish identity as well. On closer examination, however, the country has actually implemented the exact opposite lesson from the one that democracies learnt from Weimar: the Israeli version of the law is not intended to protect the sovereignty of citizens from the will of the people, but the will of the people from the sovereignty of the citizens. And as if we have not learnt anything from history, we are now surprised when the golem that is called “the will of the people” rises not only against the Palestinians, but also against its creator.

Facing this situation, Justice Esther Hayut, the President of Israel’s Supreme Court, went out of her way to courageously defend the courts. In an unprecedented speech, she warned that if this government’s “reforms” will be implemented, “the country’s democratic identity will be fatally damaged… anyone who claims that the majority chose its representatives and wrote them an ‘blank check’—bears the name of democracy in vain.” No doubt, Hayut speaks out of sincere anxiety for the future of our country, but she should be advised to examine herself, too, when speaking in the name of democracy. Just a few weeks ago, as Supreme Court President she used clause 7a to criticize the participation of a Palestinian-Israeli party ‘Balad’, in Israel’s elections. Whereas Hayut eventually did allow the party to run, she said—in fact, threatened—that the party’s participation in future elections is anything but ensured, since it has dared promoting a bill supporting Israel as a ‘state of all its citizens’. According to the Supreme Court, a party’s willingness to uphold a fundamental principle of the rule of law—not the opposition to this principle—constitutes “gravely serious evidence” against it, and may lead to its disqualification.

It is not surprising that a court that used the law to prevent the sovereignty of all citizens as such permitted, in the same breath, the running of ‘Jewish Power,’ a party that is safely labeled as fascist: it calls on its platform for a “total war” against the “enemies of Israel”—meaning the inhabitants and citizens of the country who do not belong to the Jewish People. In this Weimarean farce, the court has been cast as the tragic hero. After joining hands with the Knesset and using a principle such as 7a; after being willing to use the courts to defend the will of the people from the fact that a democracy must belong to all citizens regardless of religion or ethnicity, they woke up one day and discovered that the people has chosen to crush the courts entirely, as part of their war against their “enemies.”

And the opposition? When its leaders still headed the country, they took pride in the fact that they knew how to put political differences aside in order to uphold the rule of law. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett explained the rationale in a now-familiar New York Times article, calling it “A Good Will Government”—one that agreed to put the controversial Palestinian issue aside in order to defend Israeli democracy from the prospect of Netanyahu’s return. But it should have been clear from the start that the idea that Israeli democracy can be defended by simply ignoring the main offense against it—the fact that it relegates Palestinian citizens to second-class citizenship and holds three million Palestinians under occupation devoid of citizen and human rights—was not a government of good will but of bad faith. The credibility of their claim to defend the rule of law has to be evaluated by the law the blew the coalition apart.

For decades, Israel has applied its civil law, tax system, social security and universal health insurance to Jews (and Jews only) living in the West Bank, not through official annexation but through “emergency regulations” that automatically expire and require periodical renewal. It’s a legal trick, really, designed to de facto annex the West Bank without offering the Palestinians citizenship while resisting the official labeling of apartheid. When Israeli-Palestinian members of this coalition refused to provide the necessary votes to renew these regulations, the coalition chose to dissolve itself in order to ensure their continuity: once the government became interim only, all regulations were automatically kept rather than dissolved—until the election of the new government, which would have no difficulty renewing them.

In other words, the sovereignty of the Jewish People is the supreme principle. When the “good will” coalition had to choose between civil partnership with Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers who support a democratic rule of law and committing political suicide to ensure its absence, they chose, to no one’s surprise, the second option. Like the Supreme Court Justices, they forgot that citizen’s sovereignty and full equality are not a danger to democracy but in fact its fundamental principle. In its absence, the rights of none of us will be protected.

In order to oppose the coup instigated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, we will have to think and act exactly the opposite of the opposition leaders. The massive protests in Israel are welcome and important, but they will only bear fruit if they will lead to serious soul-searching: to a brave recognition that what has been cannot continue, that our fundamental political assumptions must change; that the constitutional crisis threatening the country does not contradict its Jewish and democratic identity but arises from it. The protests will only be successful if they give birth to a new party or movement, which will allow, at least to parts of the Israeli public, to choose the path of civil partnership between Jews and Palestinians, and fight to create a rule of law in a state that belongs to its citizens, not to protect the political system that leads to its destruction.

What is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and is it likely to pass

Joan E Greve

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, February 6, 2023 

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

As RowVaughn Wells addressed the hundreds of mourners gathered to grieve the loss of her son, Tyre Nichols, she delivered an impassioned plea to Congress: pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

“We need to get that bill passed,” Wells said at Nichols’s funeral on Wednesday. “Because if we don’t, the next child that dies – that blood is going to be on their hands.”

Related: Family says son’s death shows pattern of Memphis police brutality: ‘System hasn’t changed’

Civil rights leaders have echoed those demands in the weeks since the killing of Nichols, a 29-year-old Black father who died last month after being brutally beaten by Memphis police officers during a traffic stop. Five officers have been fired and charged with second-degree murder in connection to Nichols’s death, and a sixth officer was fired on Friday.

The tragedy has also reinvigorated calls to address policing reform at the federal level. Ben Crump, the Nichols family’s attorney, has said that Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas, plans to soon reintroduce the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in the House of Representatives. The newest version of the legislation will include a “Tyre Nichols Duty to Intervene” provision outlining officers’ responsibility to act when they witness misconduct. But even in the wake of Nichols’s death, the divided Congress appears unlikely to pass the bill.

Here’s everything you need to know about the bill:

What is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act?

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is a federal bill aimed at reforming US police departments by cracking down on controversial tactics like no-knock warrants and making it easier to prosecute officers accused of violence.

A local resident stands in front of a makeshift memorial honoring George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

The bill is named after George Floyd, the 46-year Black man who was murdered by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020. The legislation would ban federal law enforcement officers from using chokeholds like the one that ended Floyd’s life, and it would require state and local police departments that receive federal funding to adopt the same policy.

State and local police departments that receive federal funding would be required to enforce a number of other policies as well – including providing officers with body cameras, establishing anti-discrimination programs and mitigating the use of deadly force.

Has Congress tried to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act before?

Yes, the bill passed the House twice when the chamber was still controlled by Democrats, first in June 2020 and later in March 2021. The bill passed almost entirely along party lines both times, as most Republicans opposed the legislation, and stalled in the Senate.

After the House passed the bill again in 2021, two Democratic lawmakers – then congresswoman Karen Bass of California and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey – engaged in talks with Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, to try to craft a bipartisan compromise on the legislation.

Those negotiations broke down in September 2021, as the three lawmakers conceded that they could not reach agreement on a few crucial provisions.

Booker said at the time: “After months of exhausting every possible pathway to a bipartisan deal, it remains out of reach right now.”

Why did the bipartisan talks fall apart?

The conflict appeared to center on the issue of “qualified immunity”, a legal principle that shields police officers from civil liability for misconduct.

Democrats and civil rights activists have called for restricting the use of qualified immunity to ensure that police officers can be held accountable when they are accused of breaking the law. That policy was included in the version of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that passed the House.

The proposal has drawn sharp criticism from Republicans and law enforcement groups, who say that ending qualified immunity would have a detrimental effect on police departments’ recruitment efforts.

Will Congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act now, in response to the killing of Nichols?

Crump said at Nichols’s funeral that Lee plans to reintroduce the bill after Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

But the bill is unlikely to pass the House again, given that the chamber is now controlled by Republicans. Congressman Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, expressed skepticism that the bill would prove effective in preventing police violence.

Protesters hold slogans during a rally for Tyre Nichols in Boston, Massachusetts, on 2 February. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

“I don’t know that there’s any law that can stop that evil that we saw,” Jordan said in response to the video of Nichols’s beating at the hands of the Memphis police.

Democrats have fiercely rejected that argument, calling for a renewal of bipartisan negotiations over the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

“I think [Booker] and Senator Scott should sit down again quickly to see if we can revive that effort,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee.

Scott said he “never left the table” when negotiating policing reform and instead accused Democrats of failing to compromise.

“We should have simple legislation that we can agree upon, that has been agreed upon in the past,” Scott said last week. “But too often too many are too concerned with who gets the credit.”

If Congress does not act on policing reform, what can Biden do?

Biden has already signed one executive order to address policing reform, which incorporated some of the elements of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

The order required all federal law enforcement agencies to participate in a new database tracking allegations of misconduct and mandated new agency standards to limit the use of force. The agencies’ officers were also required to wear body cameras and were prohibited from using chokeholds on suspects.

But civil rights leaders say the order does not go far enough to address the issue of policing reform, particularly because the policy only applies to federal officers.

“The vast majority of the challenges we have with policing are local,” said Rashad Robinson, president of the racial justice organization Color of Change. “That’s why there has to be a deeper level of federal oversight and accountability that we get through legislation.”

The White House has echoed that sentiment. Hours before the video of the police beating of Nichols was released, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Biden did “everything that he could with the tools that he had” on policing reform.

As activists push for nationwide change, Robinson’s group is simultaneously taking action at the local level to seek justice for Nichols. Color of Change is circulating a petition calling on the Memphis city council to end the practice of pretextual stops and fund a civilian response unit.

Even if the city of Memphis adopts those policies, federal legislation to change policing across the entire US remains crucial, Robinson said.

“So much needs to be done at the local level,” he said. “The challenge here is that, if we don’t have change at the federal level, we don’t get to the true power of civil rights because we then still end up with a patchwork of changes that doesn’t make for an equal experience.”

The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino contributed reporting