Citizen Cartwright

The fight over humanitarian aid agency USAID

Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified lawmakers on Monday that he'll work with Congress to reorganize the U.S. Agency for International Development, reports The Wall Street Journal, stepping back from the closure of the agency Elon Musk envisioned and said President Trump agreed to.

 

An email to USAID employees on Monday morning had said “Agency leadership” made the decision to close the headquarters of the independent agency. The message said that replies should be directed to an email address that appears to be associated with Gavin Kliger, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as a special adviser to the director of the Office of Personnel Management and who works for DOGE, according to the WSJ.

 

By the way, Wired says it’s identified "six young men — all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records — who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project.”

 

Kliger attended the University of California at Berkeley until 2020, Wired says.

 

Some Democratic lawmakers tried on Monday to enter the USAID headquarters. They were blocked by officers from even entering the lobby, and Rubio said he was the acting administrator of the agency despite it being an independent body for six decades.

 

The Democrats say court challenges are underway and that they'll block approval of Trump’s State Department nominations until the shutdown is reversed. 

 

The United States is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, and the moves have upended decades of U.S. policy that put humanitarian, development and security assistance in the center of efforts to build alliances and counter China and Russia, says The Associated Press. 

 

Trump, Musk and Republicans in Congress have made the U.S. foreign assistance program a special target, accusing it of waste and advancing liberal social programs, AP says.

 

A New York Times article says funding from USAID "has been essential in transporting lifesaving treatments worldwide.”

 

For example, medical supplies, including drugs to stop hemorrhages in pregnant women and rehydration salts that treat life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers, can't reach villages in Zambia because the trucking companies transporting them were paid through a suspended supply project of USAID.

 

And there’s nobody to take custody of millions of dollars’ worth of supplies for oxygen systems, purchased for programs funded by USAID that support health clinics in some of the world’s poorest countries, that are scheduled to reach ports in coming days.

 

I mentioned last week that Americans tend to overestimate the share of the federal budget that's spent on foreign aid, citing an article from Brookings. 

 

AP cites surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation that have have found that on average, Americans say spending on foreign aid makes up 31 percent of the federal budget rather than the actual 1 percent or less.

Good news on electric vehicles, research, education

Fix the News has completed its year-end roundup and started its break until mid-January.

 

Let’s save the roundup for January and focus on the other issue that’s waiting for us. Here are highlights:

 

— Norway is on the cusp of becoming the world's first all-electric vehicle car market, Bloomberg reports. 

 

— India was the third largest producer of research papers globally last year, but thousands of Indian students and researchers couldn't read many of them because their institutions couldn't afford subscriptions.

 

Now the Indian government has announced a deal with publishers that will provide an estimated 18 million students, faculty and researchers free access to nearly 13,000 journals through a single portal, says Science. 

 

— High school teacher Graeme Mitchell says in a TEDx talk that he spends half of class time focusing on stories of progress. He says, “The information we consume shapes the way we think and act. By curating the right inputs, we can transform fear into action, pessimism into progress, and build a future filled with possibility.”

Did prison labor help bring your McDonald's burger or Whole Foods dairy product?

Goods produced by prisoners wind up in the supply chains of products from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice, says The Associated Press after a two-year investigation.

 

These goods are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the United States, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. And some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the United States for using forced or prison labor, AP found.

 

Many of the companies that buy directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor, AP says. But it’s completely legal, dating back mainly to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s economy after the Civil War. The Constitution’s 13th Amendment bans slavery and involuntary servitude — except as punishment for a crime, says AP.

 

That clause is being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen states this year, according to AP.

 

In addition to tapping a cheap, reliable workforce, companies sometimes receive tax credits and other financial incentives, says AP. Incarcerated workers typically aren’t covered by basic protections, including workers’ compensation and federal safety standards. In many cases, they can't file official complaints about poor working conditions. 

 

While prison labor is part of the supply chains of some companies through third-party suppliers without them knowing, others buy direct, AP says. Big commodity traders that are essential to feeding the world like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge – which together post annual revenues of more than $400 billion – have in recent years gotten millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers, AP says.

Good news about global farmland regeneration, cancer in U.S.

"We spend a lot of time here criticizing journalists for their obsession with bad news, but it's also worth remembering that we, the audience, are just as much to blame,” says Future Crunch. Visual Capitalist analyzed the most-searched-for news stories of 2023, and "doomscrolling is very real," Future Crunch notes. The English-language internet is dominated by the United States, "which is why all of us are forced to endure hundreds more stories about school shootings than say, malaria vaccines or the Chinese diaspora in Thailand,” Future Crunch says.

 

Amid the good news this week:

 

— "One of the most underrated ecological phenomena of our time is the regeneration of abandoned farmlands, thanks to the more efficient land use of modern agriculture,” says Future Crunch, citing the French organization Legendes Cartographie. "Since the 1990s, the EU has reforested an area the size of Portugal and the United States uses 40 percent less cropland than in 1960."

 

— The American Cancer Society has released its 2024 annual report, showing that cancer mortality is down 33 percent in the past three decades, saving an estimated 4.1 million lives. As many as two-thirds of all cancers now can be treated as chronic conditions or cured outright.

AP’s protein problem series: Meat substitutes

For people who want to do their part to limit climate change but find going meatless unpalatable, there are plant-based and lab-grown meat options.

 

Plant-based meat

 

According to a University of Michigan study, if half of U.S. animal-based food was replaced with plant-based substitutes by 2030, the reduction in emissions for that year would be the equivalent of taking 47.5 million vehicles off the road.

"An explosion of new types of plant-based 'meat' — the burgers, nuggets, sausages and other cuts that closely resemble meat but are made from soybeans and other plants — is attracting customers all over the world," says The Associated Press. "Even in Germany, where cities like Hamburg and Frankfurt have given their names to iconic meat dishes, plant-based meat is becoming more popular."

But sales aren’t growing fast enough in enough places to reverse the global boom in meat consumption, AP says. To many people, it's still a novelty.

 

Lab-grown meat

 

More than 150 startups are working on meat that doesn’t require raising and killing animals, that's affordable and tastes and feels like the meat people are used to. 

Companies using cell biology to make so-called “cultivated,” or “cultured” meat, which also is popularly known as “lab-grown” meat, are trying to scale up quickly — partnering with traditional meat companies, drawing more and more investors and breaking ground on new production facilities in the United States and elsewhere, AP says.

But widespread adoption of meat from cells is nowhere near assured: The meat is expensive to make. There are scientific challenges, like learning how to mimic the complex structure of steak. Government regulation is another obstacle; only the United States and Singapore allow sales of cultivated meat.

AP’s protein problem series: ‘Raising better beef’

Worldwide, beef is the biggest agricultural source of greenhouse gases, and it has a bigger carbon footprint than any other type of protein, reports The Associated Press.

Climate scientists say the remedy is simple: Eat less beef and raise fewer cattle. 

 

But even with the wide availability of plant protein and the popularity of initiatives like Meatless Monday, most people around the world are eating more beef, not less, AP says. And as the population grows and more people move into the middle class, demand is expected to grow.

 

Researchers and an increasing number of ranchers agree that there are solutions that address climate change and satisfy demand, AP says.

 

They point to efforts to change the way cattle are raised to develop feed supplements that reduce gas releases, and to make genetic breakthroughs so animals digest their food without creating harmful gases.

 

For some ranchers, the solution is in the practice of regenerative ranching. In theory, it’s a holistic way to look at the earth, animals and water and the way they all interact. In practice, it’s an exhausting, never-ending process of moving cattle to different pastures in an effort to restore the soil, AP says.

The world’s ‘protein problem’

Before Thanksgiving, The Associated Press published a series of articles titled “The Protein Problem," on the global increase in animal food products and the environmental impacts.

 

It felt kinda churlish and out of sync to focus on the series in the run up to America’s Turkey Day but seems appropriate now, in the run up to the global climate talks starting Nov. 30.

 

In 1961, there were about 61.5 grams of protein available daily per person worldwide, and 32 percent came from animal sources, AP says. In 2020, 84.5 grams were available, with about 40 percent from animals.

 

"But livestock take up land, and the animals need to be fed," notes AP. "Some eat grains, which need cropland to grow. Others, like cattle and sheep, can eat grasses in pastures. That doesn’t require additional cropland, but the animals nevertheless emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. And in some places, forests are being cut down to create these pastures."

 

So AP says its series "shows you some of the possible solutions, including better ways to raise beef and farm fish – and even ways to create meat without animals."

 

Let's look at details of some of the articles as time permits over coming days.

White House conference on hunger, nutrition, health

The conference led by President Biden on Wednesday was the second ever. 

 

The first White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, in 1969, helped lead to the creation of school lunch programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, and changes to the way we label foods, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

This time around, the goal is "an America where no one wonders whether they will have enough money to put food on the table, where the healthy food choice is the easier choice, and where everyone has the same opportunity to be physically active" by 2030, according to the Biden administration’s strategy document.

 

The administration has gotten more than $8 billion in commitments, says a White House fact sheet. For example:

 

— The Food Industry Association says its members will donate 2 billion meals in 2023 to food banks and other anti-hunger organizations; make it easier to use SNAP and WIC benefits online and in retail settings; and promote consumer education on healthy foods – committing to reach a minimum of 100 million consumers annually from 2023 to 2030.

 

— The National Head Start Association says it will facilitate Head Start enrollment for about 100,000 children through the Department of Health and Human Service’s new SNAP eligibility pathway over the next three years.

 

— Pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk says it will invest $20 million over the next three years in at least six new locally led initiatives to improve access to healthy foods and safe spaces for physical activity in marginalized communities.

 

In conjunction with the conference, the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday proposed new rules to align the definition of "healthy" food more closely with current nutrition science.

'If you probe people’s stories, it’s harder to hate'

David Axelrod lives by the journalistic maxim that “if you probe people’s stories, it’s harder to hate,” he says in a New York Times interview.

 

The long-time reporter, Democratic political consultant and Obama administration official now is celebrating the 500th episode of his podcast, "The Axe Files,” interviews of “key figures in the political world,” according to its website.

 

"Sometimes you talk to people who you think you don’t admire, right?” he says. “And then, there are elements of them that you learn that you do.”

 

Often, he finds ways to connect across the political divide, as when he discovered that he and Karl Rove, a Republican political consultant and George W. Bush administration official, shared a common tragedy. They both had a parent who died by suicide.

 

"When people have struggles like that, I try to talk [with] them about it, in part because if people are listening who are having those struggles, or have lost someone, they understand that they’re not alone,” Axelrod says. "Karl has a very hard bark and a reputation for that. But I see him differently. Because of that, we actually have gone on and done things together on suicide prevention.”

 

Axelrod interviewed Kellyanne Conway, a Republican political consultant and Trump administration official, on “The Axe Files.”

 

“The father abandoned the family when she was three. Turns out he had another family, and he moved in with that other family and had a child just about the same age. So he leaves her and her mother and moves in with another woman and another kid who is a contemporary of hers and lives two towns down. She doesn’t see him again until she’s 12.

“She was resistant to delving too deeply into it. But finally, she said, ‘You know, I do remember coming home from school one day crying hysterically because I was one of only two kids in school who didn’t have a father.’ The other person’s father was lost in Vietnam.”

Eating to protect the planet

I’ve mentioned before that I appreciate the Nutrition Action newsletter published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

 

The April issue is titled “The Planet-Lover’s Plate.”

 

Food accounts for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, Nutrition Action says.

 

And one change can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half: replacing beef with chicken or pork (even better would be a plant-based burger).

 

“Cattle are ruminants, so they expel a lot of methane as burps as they digest food,” says Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. And more comes from their manure.

As a heat-trapping gas, methane is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and cattle live longer than other livestock.

“Chickens come to market in about six weeks, and pigs come to market in about six months,” Willett says.

“In contrast, cattle take about 1 to 1½ years to come to market if they’re grain fed and 2 to 2½ years if they’re grass fed,” he says. “And every day, they’re burping out methane and breathing out carbon dioxide.”

In addition, the fertilizers used to grow cattle feed release nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

 

It also takes large quantities of fossil fuels to process and transport that feed.