29 March 23
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The founder denied the coffee company has broken any labor laws
When asked by Sanders when Schultz planned to follow a National Labor Relations Board order for Schultz to read workers a message about their labor rights, Schultz said, “Starbucks coffee company did not break the law.”
But Sanders kept the pressure on Schultz during the tightly packed hearing.
“Over the past 18 months, Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country,” Sanders said. “That union-busting campaign has been led by Howard Schultz, the multibillionaire founder and director of Starbucks who is with us this morning only under the threat of subpoena.”
Sanders asked Schultz about his involvement in a long list of findings from the NLRB that Starbucks had violated labor law.
Schultz said he was not involved in decisions to discipline or fire union activists or close unionizing stores, though he said he had conversations that may have been interpreted as threatening to workers. Schultz told a pro-union barista during a meeting in Long Beach, Calif., last year, “If you hate the company, you can go work somewhere else.”
Schultz initially declined to testify at Wednesday’s hearing, but he relented after Sanders, the committee’s chairman, threatened to hold a vote earlier this month to subpoena him. Schultz stepped down from his role as Starbucks chief executive last week and passed the reins to Laxman Narasimhan.
Schultz’s testimony highlighted Starbucks’s record of being among the first major employers to begin providing industry-leading benefits, including stock options, health care, and 401(k) retirement benefits.
“We are a different kind of public company that balances profitability with social conscience,” Schultz said. “Aspiring to achieve that vision has been my life’s work.”
Schultz also talked about growing up living in poverty in public housing in New York City “without resources or adequate benefits.” When his father, a delivery driver, slipped on ice, he was fired, Schultz said.
“The image of my dad, lying on the sofa and immobilized in a body cast has been burned into my memory,” Schultz said. “I decided at an early age that if I ran a business, it would be a company based on respect and shared success, unlike the company that had fired my dad.”
Scores of Starbucks corporate employees and union baristas flew in from around the country to attend the hearing. The corporate employees donned shirts that said “We belong together,” while the baristas shirts’ said “We are the union.”
The push to unionize Starbucks is one of the most high-profile labor campaigns in decades. Starbucks workers since late 2021 have voted to unionize at almost 300 locations out of more than 9,000 corporate-owned stores in the United States.
But organizers of the Starbucks Workers United campaign accuse Starbucks of stalling contract negotiations and continuously retaliating against employees engaged in labor organizing.
The committee’s Republicans took a softer approach to Schultz, praising the company’s contributions to the U.S. economy. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said that while Schultz is not above the law and workers have the right to unionize, the NLRB “is operating in violating its own operation and procedure,” noting allegations that it had collaborated with Starbucks Workers United.
“I am not here to defend Starbucks,” Cassidy said. “But let’s not kid ourselves. These hearings are anything but a fair and impartial proceeding. It is not surprising that Mr. Schultz was reluctant to testify.”
The NLRB has issued 83 legal complaints against the company so far in response to 513 unfair labor practice charges filed with the board, according to agency spokeswoman Kayla Blado. Nearly 100 charges have been filed with the NLRB against Schultz himself over statements he made during meetings with union members around the country, Sanders’s press office said.
Starbucks “strongly denies any wrongdoing and has committed to exercising its right to defend itself” against claims that it violated labor law, company spokesman Andrew Trull said.
“In many of these proceedings, the NLRB is attempting to use cases against Starbucks to change existing labor law — not because Starbucks is failing to comply with the law as it exists today,” Trull said. In response to claims that the company is anti-union, Trull said that the company prefers “a direct relationship with our partners.”
Dozens of Starbucks union members from around the country are expected to attend the hearing on Capitol Hill, and two Starbucks union members will testify. One of the workers, a veteran and parent, was fired after leading a union drive at his store in Augusta, Ga., the union said.
Labor experts said Wednesday’s session could sway the public’s view of Starbucks, a company that has long prided itself on its robust benefits package and professed commitment to social issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights.
Sanders and Schultz both have working-class Brooklyn origins, but they hold clashing visions for labor relations in the United States.
Schultz, who considered seeking the Democratic presidential nomination before endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 election, characterizes Starbucks as an entity that cares deeply for its workers. But he sees unionization as an existential threat to the company that he built.
Meanwhile, Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist whose multiple bids for the Democratic nomination included a run against Biden in 2020, has spent decades fighting for unions and the labor movement. He has been an outspoken critic of Starbucks’s stance toward labor organizing.
Starbucks and the union have had roughly 85 bargaining sessions since October. The meetings have often stalled over a disagreement about whether to allow union members observe remotely by Zoom, which the company opposes.
NLRB prosecutors said this week that Starbucks violated the law by refusing to bargain if some workers observed over videoconferencing technology. A company spokesperson previously told The Washington Post said Starbucks has not attempted to delay bargaining and that the company has come to the table as legally obligated.
Sanders said that if Starbucks reaches a contract with employees, other companies around the country would be less inclined to fight unionization campaigns using illegal tactics.
“If on the other hand, Starbucks can get away with breaking the law and not negotiating a contract, other large companies will say ‘Hey, we can break the law, as well,’” he said.
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Amid tensions with Israel, President Biden told reporters that he was 'very concerned' about the events there. (photo: Al Drago/The New York Times)
In response to sharp criticism by President Biden, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would make its own decisions.
As weeks of quiet diplomatic pressure burst into a rare open dispute between the allies, Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel accused him of endangering the longstanding and critical relationship with the United States that could harm the country’s ability to face daunting security challenges, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“I have known President Biden for over 40 years, and I appreciate his longstanding commitment to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement posted in English on Twitter. But, he added, “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks, first issued by his office at the unusual time of about 1 a.m. in Israel, came after Mr. Biden told reporters that he was “very concerned” about the events in Israel. The president’s comments came after suggestions on Tuesday by the U.S. ambassador to Israel that Mr. Netanyahu would be welcome in Washington sometime soon.
But Mr. Biden made it clear that a much coveted invitation was not about to be issued. When asked whether Mr. Netanyahu would be invited to the White House, the president replied bluntly, in a very public snub: “No. Not in the near term.”
The hard-right coalition led by Mr. Netanyahu has sought to exert more political control over Israel’s Supreme Court, setting off the worst domestic crisis in decades.
“They cannot continue down this road — I’ve sort of made that clear,” Mr. Biden said. “Hopefully the prime minister will act in a way that he can try to work out some genuine compromise, but that remains to be seen.”
The extraordinary exchange came after Mr. Netanyahu on Monday delayed his effort to push the judicial plan through Parliament to allow for dialogue, and hours after negotiating teams for the government coalition and the opposition held a preliminary meeting hosted by Israel’s mostly ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog.
The judicial overhaul has divided the country between those who see it as a power grab by the ruling majority that will destroy Israeli democracy and those mainly on the right who have long viewed the Supreme Court as overactive and want to give more power to the elected legislature.
The plan set off weeks of mass protests and turmoil, culminating in a nationwide work stoppage that brought many services to a halt and snarled air traffic on Monday after Mr. Netanyahu summarily dismissed his defense minister, who had called for a delay in the legislation to allow for talks and compromise.
Mr. Netanyahu’s announcement of the delay largely calmed the stormy atmosphere in Israel.
But opponents of the judicial overhaul plan remain wary of Mr. Netanyahu’s motives, not least because the prime minister is standing trial on corruption charges. Critics say he could ultimately use the planned judicial changes to extricate himself from his legal troubles. Mr. Netanyahu insists that he has no such intention and denies wrongdoing.
Organizers of the main weekly anti-government protests have urged people not to give up and warned that the announcement of a delay was a tactic only meant to quell the civil unrest.
Experts say that the most contentious part of the bill — which gives the governing coalition more influence over the selection of Supreme Court judges and allows it to choose the next president of the top court — could be brought any time for a quick final approval in Parliament.
“We are one afternoon away” from the completion of “the most important part of the judicial overhaul,” said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group that opposes the coalition’s plan and is involved in the efforts to find a broader consensus and compromise.
The delay of the plan had also been expected to ease tensions with Washington. But Mr. Biden’s blunt remarks indicated that the United States remained guarded about Mr. Netanyahu’s plans and would wait to see the outcome of the negotiations in Israel in the coming weeks.
In a round of interviews with Israeli news media outlets on Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Thomas R. Nides, had seemed to signal the Biden administration’s approval of Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to delay the judicial legislation, telling Israeli television that it was “something that we welcome and we appreciate.”
Asked if Mr. Netanyahu would be invited to the White House, Mr. Nides said he believed such a visit would take place “soon,” or “relatively soon.”
In an accidental twist of timing, Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday participated virtually in the Summit for Democracy, which is co-hosted by the United States.
Describing Israel as “a beacon of liberty and shared prosperity in the heart of the Middle East,” he said: “You may have noticed Israel is undergoing, in its robust democracy, a very intensive public debate, and the debate is how do we ensure a proper democracy? Democracy means the will of the people as expressed by a majority, and it also means protection of civil rights, individual rights. It’s the balance between the two.”
He added that he thought “that balance can be achieved,” referring to the negotiations underway in Israel, and insisted that “Israel was, is, and will always remain a proud, strong and vibrant democracy.”
Mr. Biden’s criticism and Mr. Netanyahu’s response have set off a political uproar in Israel, even as Mr. Herzog, the president, continued meetings on Wednesday morning with representatives of some of the smaller opposition parties not directly involved in the negotiations.
Members of Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition denounced Mr. Biden’s remarks, asserting that the American president had been taken in by “fake news.”
Miki Zohar, the minister of culture and sport from Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party, wrote on Twitter, “It’s sad that President Biden has also fallen victim to the fake news that gets disseminated in Israel against our justified judicial reform.”
Mr. Zohar soon deleted that tweet and posted a new one, saying he had removed his earlier message “out of respect for our important relations with our greatest ally, the United States.” But he continued, “It is heartbreaking to see how much damage is caused to Israel by all the fake news that has been spread about our justified judicial reform.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security, told Israel’s Army Radio on Wednesday that Mr. Biden and his administration needed “to understand that Israel is an independent country. It is not just another star on the American flag.”
He added: “We are a democracy, and I expect the president of the United States to understand this point.”
Opposition leaders warned that Mr. Netanyahu had caused unparalleled damage to relations with the administration in the three months since he returned to power.
Benny Gantz, the centrist leader of the opposition National Unity party and a former minister of defense and military chief, excoriated Mr. Netanyahu for mishandling Israel’s relationship with the United States.
“President Biden sent an urgent wake-up call to the Israeli government tonight,” Mr. Gantz wrote on Twitter. “Damaging relations with the United States, our best friend and our most important ally, is a strategic attack. The prime minister must guide his negotiating teams regarding the judicial legislation, act quickly to repair the situation and preserve the Israeli democracy that is at the basis of these values.”
Mr. Gantz added that Mr. Netanyahu must display “political and security responsibility” and announce that the defense minister he fired, but whose dismissal has not yet taken effect, will remain in his post.
Critics of the prime minister also noted that Mr. Netanyahu had shown no qualms about blatantly wading into the American political arena in 2015 when, in a challenge to the Obama administration, he addressed a joint meeting of Congress and denounced negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, calling it a “bad deal.”
Efraim Halevy, a former chief of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, told Israeli public radio on Wednesday, “When the prime minister asks the president of the United States not to interfere in Israel’s internal issues, he may be forgetting that he had bluntly interfered” by appearing before Congress.
Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has long prided himself on being the country’s most experienced leader in handling security and diplomacy. Israeli political pundits had been noting in recent weeks the unusual delay in the Biden administration’s extension of an invitation to visit Washington.
After 18 months in the opposition, Mr. Netanyahu won an election in November and his coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history, was sworn in late last year.
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'My wife of 35 years woke me up recently because my breathing was so bad; she said I sounded like I had fluid in my lungs.' (photo: Gene J Puskar/AP)
My granddaughters got red blotches and their eyes burned. I’ve been having headaches and coughing fits
We went to try to figure out what had happened and it was like driving into a cloud – smoke was billowing overhead. A Norfolk Southern freight train had derailed. You could see the flames over the tops of nearby houses and feel the heat from several hundred feet away. Huge clouds of smoke were spreading from the crash site over our town.
We initially thought that a coal train had caught fire. We learned later that 38 cars of industrial supplies, including at least 11 cars of toxic chemicals, had derailed. Another 12 cars were damaged by fire. The train’s spilled cargo included vinyl chloride, a chemical that causes liver cancer.
People in the immediate area of the derailment were ordered to evacuate, in case of an explosion. The rest of us were told to shelter in place. By Saturday, the next morning, the air was full of smog. I was supposed to take my girls to a school basketball game; I told them to pull their hoodies up over their mouths.
On Sunday, the EPA officials said that they did not detect any contaminants in the air. But my granddaughters had developed blotches all over their bodies. They looked like burns, as if they’d spent too much time next to a sun lamp. My seven-year-old granddaughter’s leg was beet-red. They were coughing and their eyes were burning. I began to experience constant headaches and a nagging cough.
My wife’s cousin is a cancer researcher at Stanford. She called us and said, “Get the girls the hell out of there.” The railroad company had given us a voucher for two nights at a hotel, so we drove to an inn about 15 miles away.
On 6 February, officials decided to “burn off” the vinyl chloride rather than risk it exploding. The EPA said that there was a small uptick in toxins near the burn site and that it was to be expected. Dead fish started turning up in streams.
After a couple of days out of town my granddaughters’ rashes started to fade but we all continued coughing. I’ve been an athlete all my life. I don’t smoke or drink and was a pretty decent basketball player for many years. I’ve never had a persistent cough like this before.
On 8 February, authorities lifted the evacuation order. The EPA said its testing showed that the air and water were safe. We didn’t trust that assessment. Part of my family went to a relative’s house in West Virginia. Each time I’ve gone to East Palestine to check on my house my headaches start again.
It’s now been six weeks since the wreck. I dread night-time because when I lie down to sleep the constant coughing starts. My wife of 35 years woke me up recently because my breathing was so bad; she said I sounded like I had fluid in my lungs. Other people are having similar experiences. The ER doctors say it is chemical bronchitis.
I’ve lost 15 pounds due to stress and anxiety. In addition to all the unexpected expenses, I’m paying for a home that I don’t live in and I don’t know yet whether insurance will help. They’ve been saying that they don’t cover “chemical spills”. Other people are even less lucky – they can’t afford to leave. Our friend’s son keeps having nosebleeds.
Before the derailment I was a happy grandfather who got to see my granddaughters every day at my house. Now my family is split all over the place and living out of suitcases. Every day we struggle with online schooling. The girls are desperate for our life to get back to the way it used to be.
Each of us has moments when we break down. We just want to be back in our homes. I am a 61-year-old man and I’ve never cried this much in my life. My daughter Adyson is a very, very strong woman – she started working at a bank four and a half years ago, and within three years she was leading her own branch – and she’s calling me every other day crying.
I don’t believe the government or railway company’s claims that our town is safe. You hate to say that they’re lying, but they are. Some families don’t plan to come back at all. That breaks my heart. We have such a tight-knit community here.
At this point the best-case scenario is that they get this town really cleaned up to the point where independent scientists say it’s safe. If we have real assurance, and stop experiencing symptoms, perhaps the town can start to return to normal.
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The Rev. Kaji Dousa looks out along Park Avenue while standing on the steps of the Park Avenue Christian Church in New York City, Jan. 19, 2022. (photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept)
A U.S. official admitted his call for Mexico to apprehend the pastor was “literally creative writing” and “without any basis.”
In a 44-page decision last week, Judge Todd Robinson ruled that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, officials violated New York City pastor Kaji Dousa’s constitutional rights by adding her to a blacklist of border activists and calling on Mexican authorities to apprehend her — all despite lacking any evidence that she was involved in illegal activity.
For Dousa, whose experience The Intercept chronicled in an investigation last year, the victory marked the end of an exhausting ordeal that’s spanned more than four years.
“I had two real reasons for going into this — one, of course, to make sure that I’m safe to travel, but the other is that I just wanted it to help people, and from the responses that I’ve been getting, it seems like it will,” Dousa told The Intercept. “I feel like it’s a win for the helpers.”
Dousa filed suit against CBP and other elements of the Department of Homeland Security in July 2019 after a government whistleblower leaked internal documents showing that the pastor was added to a secret blacklist of journalists, lawyers, and advocates associated with migrant caravans in the San Diego-Tijuana area. A Homeland Security inspector general’s report later confirmed that she was one of at least 51 U.S. citizens who were targeted and tracked by their own government for their proximity to asylum-seekers as part of CBP’s Operation Secure Line. Nearly half of the so-called lookouts CBP placed “were on people for whom there was no evidence of direct involvement in illegal activity,” the inspector general found.
Through her litigation, Dousa’s lawyers discovered that she was also included on a list of 14 U.S. citizens whose personal information a CBP official shared with Mexican authorities, claiming that the pastor and the others were “caravan organizers/instigators” and requesting their apprehension. In his court testimony, the CBP official in question, Saro Oliveri, confirmed that he had no basis for making the highly unusual and potentially dangerous request for Dousa’s capture by foreign security forces.
“We view this as a really significant victory for religious liberty and for free speech generally, but I think this decision especially stands out,” Stanton Jones, Dousa’s lead attorney on the case, told The Intercept. Dousa’s experience may not have had the broad impact of other major cases on the border under Trump, such as family separation or the Muslim travel ban. “But on an individual basis,” he said, “I think this has to be one of the most egregious rights violations in recent memory.“
In a three-day bench trial in August, Robinson, a Trump-appointed federal judge who previously served as federal prosecutor working drug cases on the border and as a CIA operations officer, heard from Oliveri and several other San Diego-based officials responsible for Operation Secure Line. Oliveri told the judge that his request to Mexican authorities was “literally creative writing,” that he had never made such a request before, that he did so “without any basis” in fact or law, and that he could not recall who ordered him to send the message.
The email featured prominently in Robinson’s ruling, with the judge finding that Oliveri and his colleagues retaliated against Dousa for her ministry to migrants at the border — activity that was clearly protected under the First Amendment — and that the “email to the Mexican government would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in Dousa’s protected activities.”
“Not only does it appear that the decision to send such an email was unprecedented, but even Oliveri acknowledged that the email was ‘[l]iterally, creative writing … [w]ithout any basis,” the judge wrote. Robinson added that while Oliveri testified that he never intended to retaliate against the pastor, “the absence of any proper basis for writing and sending the email is incontrovertible evidence of Oliveri’s retaliatory motive.”
The judge additionally ruled that the sending of the email amounted to a violation of Dousa’s rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and ordered the U.S. authorities to contact the Mexican government and formally withdraw the request.
“CBP falsely told a foreign government to detain an American citizen who is a Christian pastor because CBP didn’t like the Christian ministry that she was providing to migrants,” said Jones, Dousa’s attorney. “I think that what it illustrates is really a pervasive culture and sense of lawlessness and lack of accountability within CBP.”
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The FDA approved the first over-the-counter version of Narcan, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses. (photo: Shutterstock)
FDA Approves Narcan for Over-the-Counter Sales
Berkeley Lovelace Jr., NBC News
Lovelace writes: "The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved an over-the-counter version of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone, a move that's expected to increase access to the lifesaving medication."
Drug overdoses are currently the leading cause of accidental deaths in the U.S., with a majority involving opioids.
Up until now, naloxone — sold by drugmaker Emergent BioSolutions under the brand name Narcan — has been available in the United States only as a prescription drug, though many states have created workarounds that allow people to get it directly from pharmacists. It can also often be found at community centers, local health departments and needle exchange programs.
Making the drug available over the counter could save more lives, said Dr. Scott Hadland, a pediatrician and an addiction specialist at MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston.
“Narcan can save a life in minutes, which is critical,” he said.
The over-the-counter Narcan, which will be sold as a single dose given as a nasal spray, most likely won’t be available until the late summer, according to the company. FDA officials have said that once approved, it could be sold in places such as convenience stores, grocery stores and even vending machines.
"Today’s approval of OTC naloxone nasal spray will help improve access to naloxone, increase the number of locations where it’s available and help reduce opioid overdose deaths throughout the country," FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement.
Wednesday's approval came a little over a month after an advisory committee to the FDA unanimously recommended that the agency allow Emergent’s drug to be sold over the counter.
Drug overdoses — the leading cause of accidental deaths in the U.S. — killed more than 107,000 people in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 80,000 of those deaths involved opioids.
Hadland said he’s seen an uptick in teenagers and young adults overdosing.
Most overdose deaths among young people occur at home, he said, usually when there is someone nearby who can respond.
“Yet most young people who overdose never receive Narcan and are pulseless by the time EMS arrives,” he said. “Making it available over the counter will provide a new avenue of access, especially for young people and families who haven’t been the targets of our widespread efforts to distribute Narcan across the country,”
The over-the-counter version of naloxone will be packaged in a larger box with images and detailed instructions to help people administer the drug more easily, according to the company.
Dr. Michael Barnett, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that while making naloxone available over the counter is a “huge step,” he worries about how much it will cost.
“My hope is that the cost is affordable,” he said.
Emergent declined to share details on how much the over-the-counter medication will cost, but the average price of a two-dose box of prescription-only Narcan is around $130, according to GoodRx, which tracks drug prices.
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Russian ‘hacktivists' are hitting Poland and Nordic and Baltic countries with an arsenal of cyberweapons, analysts say. (photo: Daily Telegraph)
Russian ‘hacktivists’ are hitting Poland and Nordic and Baltic countries with an arsenal of cyberweapons, analysts say.
French defence firm Thales said in a report on Wednesday that Russia was hitting Poland and Nordic and Baltic countries with an arsenal of cyberweapons aiming to sow divisions and promote anti-war messages.
“These groups of independent, civilian hacktivists have emerged as a new component in the conflict. They can be assimilated to a cybercriminal group with specific political objectives and interests, acting out of conviction, yet not directly sponsored by any government. Members of such groups have a broad array of origins, technical skills and backgrounds,” Thales said in a statement.
About 60 percent of all cyberattacks reported worldwide were conducted by Russian hackers, the report said.
Microsoft said in a threat assessment earlier this month that Russian actors had launched attacks in at least 17 European countries in the first six weeks of this year.
Russia’s assault on Ukraine began on February 24 last year, but it has not been able to score a decisive victory on the battlefield over its much smaller neighbour.
No ‘game-changing blow’
Thales and Microsoft said Russia’s invasion was accompanied by widespread cyberattacks in Ukraine, but they were repelled.
“Cyberwarfare didn’t deliver the game-changing blow that Russia hoped for,” said Thales’ technical director for cyber defence, Ivan Fontarensky, highlighting the resilience of Ukraine’s defences.
Both firms said Russia shifted focus to other European countries late last year.
“In the third quarter of 2022, Europe was dragged into a high-intensity hybrid cyberwar at a turning point in the conflict,” said Pierre-Yves Jolivet, Thales vice president for cyber solutions.
Jolivet said countries outside Ukraine were suffering a “massive wave” of DDoS attacks – when a server is flooded with requests that crash the network.
These attacks were increasingly carried out by groups aligned with the Kremlin rather than official groups, and they aimed to sow chaos rather than destroy infrastructure, Thales said.
Poland, Latvia and Sweden were among the most affected countries. Montenegro and Moldova – candidates for European integration – were also being targeted.
Microsoft said in its assessment that attacks this year in Europe were largely aimed at government entities for espionage purposes.
Highlighting the global reach of Russian actors, the firm said 21 percent of attacks outside Ukraine since the start of the war had hit the United States.
While attacks outside Ukraine were often low-level harassment, Microsoft said Russia may well choose more damaging cyber tools in the future.
“Should Russia suffer more setbacks on the battlefield, Russian actors may seek to expand their targeting of military and humanitarian supply chains by pursuing destructive attacks beyond Ukraine and Poland,” said Microsoft.
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A tornado in Moscow, Kan., on May 21, 2020. (photo: Victor Gensini/AP)
While the study finds a general increase in supercell counts, what it mostly finds are large shifts in where and when they hit — generally, more east of Interstate 35, which runs through east central Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, and fewer to the west.
The supercell storm that devastated Rolling Fork, Mississippi is a single event that can’t be connected to climate change. But it fits that projected and more dangerous pattern, including more nighttime strikes in a southern region with more people, poverty and vulnerable housing than where storms hit last century. And the season will start a month earlier than it used to.
The study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society predicts a nationwide 6.6% increase in supercells and a 25.8% jump in the area and time the strongest supercells twist and tear over land under a scenario of moderate levels of future warming by the end of the century. But in certain areas in the South the increase is much higher. That includes Rolling Fork, where study authors project an increase of one supercell a year by the year 2100.
Supercells are nature’s ultimate storms, so-called “Finger of God” whoppers that are “the dominant producers of significant tornadoes and hail,” said lead author Walker Ashley, a professor of meteorology and disaster geography at Northern Illinois University. Tall, anvil-shaped and sky-filling, supercells have a rotating powerful updraft of wind and can last for hours.
Supercells spawned the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma, tornado that killed 51 people, the 2011 Joplin, Missouri, tornado outbreak that killed 161 people and the 2011 super outbreak that killed more than 320 people in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, the Mid-South.
The study used computer simulations to predict what will happen by the end of the century with different levels of global carbon pollution levels. But Ashley said that stormier future seems like it’s already here.
“The data that I’ve seen has persuaded me that we are in this experiment and living it right now,” Ashley said in an interview three days before the EF-4 tornado killed more than 20 people in Mississippi on Friday. “What we’re seeing in the longer term is actually occurring right now.”
Ashley and others said although the Mississippi tornado fits the projected pattern, it was a single weather event, which is different than climate projections over many years and a large area.
Ashley and study co-author Victor Gensini, another meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University and a longtime tornado expert, said they are watching the potential for another supercell blow-up in the Mid-South on Friday.
Past studies have been unable to forecast supercells and tornadoes in future climate simulations because they are small-scale events, especially tornadoes, that global computer models can’t see. Ashley and Gensini used smaller regional computer models and compensated for their reduced computing power by spending two years running simulations and crunching data.
Three scientists not connected to the study said it makes sense. One of them, Pennsylvania State University tornado scientist Paul Markowski, called it a promising advance because it explicitly simulated storms, compared to past research that only looked at general environments favorable to supercells.
While the study finds a general increase in supercell counts, what it mostly finds are large shifts in where and when they hit — generally, more east of Interstate 35, which runs through east central Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, and fewer to the west.
In moderate warming — less warming than the world is headed for based on current emissions — parts of eastern Mississippi and eastern Oklahoma are projected to get three more supercells every two years, with eastern Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, western Tennessee and eastern Georgia getting one more supercell every other year.
With worst-case warming — more than the world is presently on track for — the study projects similar changes but with worsening supercells over eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri.
Cities that should see more supercells as warming worsens include Dallas-Fort Worth, Little Rock, Memphis, Jackson, Tupelo, Birmingham and Nashville, Ashley said.
The moderate warming simulation projects 61% more supercells in March and 46% more in April, while the more severe warming scenario has 119% more in March and 82% more in April. They see double-digit percentage point drops in June and July.
In the mid-South, including Rolling Fork, the study projects supercell activity peaking two hours later, from 6 to 9 p.m. instead of 4 to 7 p.m. That means more nighttime supercells.
“If you want a disaster, create a supercell at night where you can’t go outside and visually confirm the threat” so people don’t take it as seriously, Gensini said.
The eastward shift also puts more people at risk because those areas are more densely populated than the traditional tornado alley of Kansas and Oklahoma, Ashley and Gensini said. The population coming under more risk is also poorer and more frequently lives in mobile or manufactured homes, which are more dangerous places in a tornado.
What’s likely happening as the climate warms is the Southwest United States is getting hotter and drier, Ashley and Gensini said. Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico, which provides the crucial moisture for the storms, is getting hotter and the air coming from there is getting juicier and unstable.
The hot dry air from places like New Mexico puts a stronger “cap” on where storms would normally brew when air masses collide in spring time. That cap means storms can’t quite boil over as much in the Great Plains. The pressure builds as the weather front moves east, leading to supercells forming later and farther eastward, Gensini and Ashley said.
Because February and March are getting warmer than they used to be this will happen earlier in the year, but by July and August the cap of hot dry air is so strong that supercells have a hard time forming, Ashley and Gensini said.
It’s like playing with a pair of dice loaded against you, Ashley said. One of those dice is making the odds worse because of more people in the way and the other one is loaded with more supercells “increasing the odds of the perils too, tornadoes and hail.”
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