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PHOTO: The Republican River near the Nebraska border in late January, by Allen Best.

This story by Allen Best appeared on Big Pivots on March 22, 2023.

The International Panel on Climate Change this week issued its latest report, warning of a dangerous temperature threshold that well breach during the next decade if we fail to dramatically reduce emissions. A Colorado legislative committee on the same day addressed water withdrawals in the Republican River Basin that must be curbed by decades end.

In both, problems largely created in the 20th century must now be addressed quickly to avoid the scowls of future generations.

The river basin, which lies east of Denver, sandwiched by Interstates 70 and 76, differs from nearly all others in Colorado in that it gets no annual snowmelt from the states mountain peaks. Even so, by tapping the Ogallala and other aquifers, farmers have made it one of the states most agriculturally productive areas. They grow potatoes and watermelons but especially corn and other plants fed to cattle and hogs. This is Colorado without mountains, an ocean of big skies and rolling sandhills.

Republican River farmers face two overlapping problems. One is of declining wells. Given current pumping rates, they will go dry. The only question is when. Some already have.

More immediate is how these wells have depleted flows of the Republican River and its tributaries into Nebraska and Kansas. Those states cried foul, citing a 1943 interstate compact. Colorado in 2016 agreed to pare 25,000 of its 450,000 to 500,000 irrigated acres within the basin.

Colorado has a December 2029 deadline. The Republican River Water Conservation District has been paying farmers to retire land from irrigation. Huge commodity prices discourage this, but district officials said they are confident they can achieve 10,000 acres before the end of 2024.

Last year, legislators sweetened the pot with an allocation of $30 million, and a like amount for retirement of irrigated land in the San Luis Valley, which has a similar problem. Since 2004, when it was created, the Republican River district self-encumbered $156 million in fee collections and debt for the transition.

The Republican River district has also tapped federal programs. Since 2004, when the district was created, self-imposed fees have delivered $120 million for the transition.

Its unclear that the district can achieve the 2030 goal. The bill unanimously approved by the Colorado House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee will, if it becomes law, task the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University with documenting the economic loss to the region and to Colorado altogether if irrigated Republican River Basin agriculture ceases altogether. The farmers may need more help as the deadline approaches.

This all-or-nothing proposition is not academic. Kevin Rein, the state water engineer, testified that he must shut down all basin wells if compact requirements are not met. The focus is on the Republicans South Fork, between Wray and Burlington.

Legislators were told that relying solely upon water that falls from the sky diminishes production 75 to 80 percent.

In seeking this study, the river district wants legislators to be aware of what is at stake.

Rod Lenz, who chairs the river district board, put it in human terms. His extended-familys 5,000-acre farm amid the sandhills can support 13 families, he told me. Returned to grasslands, that same farm could support only two families.

An evolution of accountability is how Lenz describes the big picture in the Republican River Basin. We all knew it was coming. But it was so far in the future. Well, the future is here now.

The district has 10 committees charged with investigating ways to sustain the basins economy and leave its small towns thriving. Can it attract Internet technology developers? Can the remaining water be used for higher-value purposes? Can new technology irrigate more efficiently?

We do know we must evolve, Lenz told me. The farmers began large-scale pumping with the arrival of center-pivot sprinklers, a technology invented in Colorado in 1940. Theyre remarkably efficient at extracting underground water. Now, they must figure out sustainable agriculture. Thats a very difficult conversation. Aquifers created over millions of years are being depleted in a century.

The Republican River shares similarities with the better-known and much larger Colorado River Basin. The mid-20th century was the time of applying human ingenuity to development of water resources. Now, along with past miscalculations, the warming climate is exacting a price, aridification of the Colorado River Basin.

Globally, the latest report from climate scientists paints an even greater challenge. To avoid really bad stuff, they say, we must halve our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. They insist upon need for new technologies, including ways to suck carbon out of the atmosphere, that have yet to be scaled.

We need that evolution of accountability described in Colorados Republican River Basin. We need a revolution of accountability on the global scale.

Allen Best

Allen Best publishes the e-journal Big Pivots, which chronicles the energy transition in Colorado and beyond.

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BIG PIVOTS: Water Challenges on the Republican River - Pagosa Daily Post

Mike Pence is making little secret of his presidential ambitions. Hes written his book; hes assembling his team; hes mastered the art of the coy nondenial when somebody asks (in between trips to Iowa) if hes running. In early Republican-primary polls, he hovers between 6 and 7 percentnot top-tier numbers, but respectable enough. He seems to think he has at least an outside shot at winning the Republican nomination.

And yet, ask a Republican voter about the former vice president, and youre likely to hear some of the most withering commentary youve ever encountered about a politician.

In recent weeks, I was invited to sit in on a series of focus groups conducted over Zoom. Organized by the political consultant Sarah Longwell, the groups consisted of Republican voters whod supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The participants were all over the countrysuburban Atlanta, rural Illinois, San Diegoand they varied in their current opinions of Trump. In some cases, Longwell filtered for voters who should be in Pences target demographic. One group consisted entirely of two-time Trump voters who didnt want him to run again; another was made up of conservative evangelicals, who might presumably appreciate Pences roots in the religious right.

Ive been covering Pences strange Trump-era arc since 2017, when I first profiled him for The Atlantic. By some accounts, hes wanted to be president since his college-fraternity days. Ive always been skeptical of his chances, but now that he finally seems ready to run, I wanted to understand the appeal of his prospective candidacy. My goal was to see if I could find at least one Pence supporter.

From the January/February 2018 issue: Gods plan for Mike Pence

Instead, these were some of the quotes I jotted down.

I dont care for him Hes just middle-of-the-road to me. If there was someone halfway better, I wouldnt vote for him.

He has alienated every Republican and Democrat Its over. Its retirement time.

Hes only gonna get the vote from his family, and Im not even sure if they like him.

He just needs to go away.

It went on and on like that across four different focus groups. Of the 34 Republicans who participated, I heard only four people say theyd consider Pence for presidentand two of them immediately started talking themselves out of it after indicating interest.

Some of the reasons for Pences lack of support were intuitive. Hard-core Trump fans said theyd been alienated by Pences refusal to block the certification of the 2020 electoral votes, as the president was demanding. This break with Trump famously prompted chants of Hang Mike Pence! to echo through the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Although the sentiment expressed in the focus groups wasnt quite so violent, the anger was still present. During one session, three peopleall of whom had reported very favorable views of Trumptook turns trashing Pence for what they saw as his weakness.

Im so mad at Pence that I would never vote for him, said one man named Matt. He would be a horrible president I just dont think he has the leadership qualities to be president. (I agreed to identify the participants only by their first name.)

Thats exactly it, a woman named Christine said, nodding eagerly. He didnt have the leadership qualities to do what everyone wanted him to do on January 6. He just doesnt have that spine.

A third participant, Nicholas, chimed in: He just chose to go along with all the other RINOs and Democrats, not to upset the applecart.

Meanwhile, less MAGA-inclined Republicans thought Pence was too Trumpy.

The only thing I liked about him was that he actually did stand up to Donald Trump, a woman named Barbara said. Hes too a part of Trump. I dont think Trump has a chance, and I dont think anybody in that inner circle has a chance either.

I think he put a stain on himself for any normal Republican when he joined the Trump administration, said another participant, Justin. And then he put a stain on himself with any Trump Republican on January 6. So I dont think he has a constituency anywhere. I dont know if anyone would vote for him.

Read: Republicans 2024 magical thinking

Longwell told me this is how Pence is talked about in every focus group she holds. What to make of that 6 to 7 percent he gets in the primary polls? I imagine theres a cohort of GOP voters who are not particularly engaged who dont want Trump again, and Pence is the only other name they really know, she speculated. That, or theyre all from Indiana, the state where Pence served as governor. A second Republican pollster, who requested anonymity to offer his candid view, told me, Seven percent is a weak showing for the immediate former VP.

Devin OMalley, an adviser to Pence, responded to a request for comment in an email: Mike Pence has spent the last two years traveling to more than 30 states, campaigning for dozens of candidates, and listening to potential voters. Those interactions have been incredibly positive and encouraging, and we place more value in those experiences than of a focus group conducted by disgruntled former Republicans like Sarah Longwell and paid for by some shadow organization that The Atlantic wont disclose. (Longwell told me the costs for the focus groups are split between The Bulwark and the Republican Accountability Project, two anti-Trump organizations with which she is affiliated.)

What I found most fascinating about the voters digs at Pence was that they were almost always preceded by passing praise of his personal character: He was a top-of-the-line guy, a nice man, a super kind, honest, decent person. Not only did these perceived qualities fail to make him an appealing candidate, but they were also often held against himtreated as evidence that he lacked a certain presidential mettle.

I dont like how Trump was just in your face with everything, but Pence is almost too far in the other direction, one participant named Judith said.

Perhaps these voters were identifying a simple lack of charisma. But their casual dismissal of Pences wholesome, God-fearing, family-man persona is emblematic of a sea change in conservative politicsand a massive miscalculation by Pence himself.

When Pence was added to the ticket in 2016, his chief function was to vouch for Trump with mainstream Republicans, especially conservative Christian voters. Pences reputation as a devout evangelical gave him a certain moral credibility when he defended Trump amid scandal and outrage. He performed this task exceptionally well. Those adoring eyes, those fawning tributes, that slightly weird fixation on the breadth of his bosss shouldersnobody was better at playing the loyalist. And for a certain kind of voter, Pences loyalty provided assurance that Trump was worthy of continued support.

Pence had his own motives, as I reported in my profile. All of this vouching for Trump was supposed to buy Pence goodwill with the base and set him up for a future presidential run. For many in Pences camp, the project took on a religious dimension. If youre Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you know God had a plan, Ralph Reed, an evangelical power broker, told me back then.

But in creating a permission structure for voters to excuse Trumps defective character and flouting of religious values, Pence was unwittingly making himself irrelevant. In effect, he spent four years convincing conservative Christian voters that the very thing he had to offer them didnt matter.

In 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life. By 2020, that number had risen to 68 percent.

Peter Wehner: The moral desolation of the GOP

Pence won the argument. Now hes reaping the whirlwind.

In one of the focus groups, a devout Christian named Angie was asked how much she factored in moral rectitude when assessing a presidential candidate. I try to use my faith to choose someone by character, but it hasnt always been possible, she said. Sometimes she had to vote for a candidate who shared her politics but didnt live her values.

Who comes to mind? the moderator asked.

I think Trump falls into that category, Angie conceded. But quite honestly, the vast majority of others do as well. She paused. I would say Pence actually doesnt fall into that category. I would say his character probably aligns with biblical values fairly well.

But Angie remained uninterested in seeing Pence in the Oval Office. If he had a record to run on, she wasnt aware of it.

Anything he did got overshadowed by all the drama of these last four years, she said, hastening to add, Seems like a perfectly nice man.

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The Brutal Things Republican Voters Say About Mike Pence - The Atlantic

Anti-abortion lawmakers have increasingly tried to normalize a practice in recent years that most medical professionals deem unethical and non-scientific.

The Kansas House Health and Human Services Committee approved a bill Monday that would require physicians to notify patients receiving medication abortions that the procedure can be reversed a claim that abortion rights advocates say is misleading.

Kansas House Bill 2439 claimsthat mifepristone, also known as RU-486, is not always effective in ending a pregnancy and if you change your mind and wish to try to continue the pregnancy, you can get immediate help by accessing available resources." It awaits a vote before the full state House of Representatives.

Iman Alsaden, Chief Medical Officer at Planned Parenthood in Great Plains,toldThe Kansas City Starthe concept of reversing the effects of abortion is not even science, its just junk.

I just find it so appalling that this is the way the government thinks people should be treated and isnt willing to trust the experts in the field of medicine, Alsaden told the news outlet.

This is yet another attempt by anti-abortion lawmakers to limit reproductive health care in the state. In 2019, the Legislature attempted to pass a similar bill, but Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed it.

Last year,Kansas citizens votedoverwhelmingly to preserve the right to abortion in the state, but Republicans have continued attempting to unravel reproductive health in the state.

Mifepristone is the first in a two-step medication series that is the most widely used pregnancy termination method in the country. Some anti-abortion lawmakers and physicians insist that abortions can be reversed if patients take a high dose of progesterone after mifepristone and before taking misoprostol, the second drug in the series.

According to theAmerican College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), abortion reversal treatments are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards.

ACOG goes on to say, Unfounded legislative mandates like this one represent dangerous political interference and compromise patient care and safety.

Much of the basis for the abortion reversal theory comes from a study done in 2012 by Dr. George Delgado on seven women who took mifepristone and were then given progesterone. Four of the patients continued with their pregnancies, two had abortions within three days and the result for one patient lacked data,Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health outlined in a 2020 brief.

The study was not scientifically sound, according to ACOG, because it was not supervised by an institutional review board (IRB) or an ethical review committee and was conducted without a control group.

A similar study was conducted in 2019 by researchers from the University of California, Davis. The researchers goal was to enroll 40 women, but only 12 signed up. They were all given mifepristone and then randomly given either a placebo or progesterone.NPR reportedthat the study ended when three of the 12 women were hospitalized after they began hemorrhaging.

Extrapolating a case review and then applying it to a whole population is like a wildfire of misinformation and possible morbidity and mortality,Alsaden said. You just cant make decisions for a whole population based on a handful of people.

Kansas stateRep. Ron Bryce, a Republican, testifiedto the House in early March that his support for the bill is based on his time as a medical resident in Fort Worth, Texas, working in a hospitals neonatal intensive care unit.

Bryce claimed that he found a crying infant whod survived an abortion a popular conservative conspiracy theory used to justify anti-abortion legislation. One such bill is theBorn-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives passed in January. The bill is now in the Senate, where it will likely fall short of the votes it needs to pass.

These so-called born alive bills are among a series of tactics by abortion opponents to create a medical issue where one doesnt exist. Doctors are legally and ethically required to provide health care as needed,per Planned Parenthood.Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco,explained toThe New York Timesthat less than 1% of abortions in the U.S. are performed after 24 weeks.

Dr. Christina Bourne is the medical director of the Trust Women Foundation, an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas.

This is just frankly something that doesnt happen, Bournetold the Kansas City Star. These bills, which are laughably nonsensical, over time they keep layering and continue to add to the stigma and confusion of what providing abortion care is.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Mifeprex (mifepristone) as safe to use in September 2000, and the medication accounts for 53% of abortions nationwide, according to theGuttmacher Institute.

But mifepristones availability in all U.S. states could be overturned. A federal judge in Texas, appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2019, is consideringa lawsuitto revoke or suspend government approval of the drug.

The Christian conservative group Alliance Defending Freedomfiled the lawsuit against the FDA in November, arguing that the agency overstepped its authority in approving the medication.

ConservativeJudge Matthew Kacsmarykwill make his ruling after hearing arguments from both sides on March 15.

The U.S. Department of Justicewould appealthe decision to outlaw the drugs. The FDA would also likely also seek an emergency injunction pending review of the case.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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Kansas Republican bill would require doctors to offer unproven ... - The American Independent

New Yorks Assembly Minority Conference urged an audit of the states legal cannabis program the same day that Gov. Kathy Hochuls office proposed a new bill targeting illicit stores.

Hochuls proposed legislation, announced yesterday, seeks to amend the tax law, the cannabis law, the penal law and the criminal procedure law to make technical corrections to adult-use cannabis taxes.

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It could lead to fines of $200,000 for illicit plants and $10,000 per day to illicit businesses, and give increased enforcement authority to the Office of Cannabis Management and the Department of Taxation and Finance (NY Cannabis Insider hasnt yet combed through the details of the 35-page bill).

The continued existence of illegal dispensaries is unacceptable, and we need additional enforcement tools to protect New Yorkers from dangerous products and support our equity initiatives, Gov. Hochul said in a press release on Wednesday.

Coincidentally, the Assembly letter also sent yesterday urged Gov. Hochuls administration and the Office of Cannabis Management to develop a comprehensive enforcement plan to stop the explosion of illegal operators.

They also took aim at the delayed and dysfunctional rollout, warning that before New York goes further down a road of inefficiency and potential fraud, the State Comptroller should conduct an audit to identify the inefficiencies that have contributed to the failures in the early stages.

The letter is signed by 46 members of the New York State Assembly.

Taking any action against the tidal wave of New Yorks illicit storefronts comes as welcome relief to leadership of the NY CAURD Coalition, which has more than 100 members with roughly a third representing different parts of the licensed statewide community dispensary owners, growers and processors.

Without gaining some level of control, its going to continue to smother us, said coalition CEO Britni Tantalo, who is also an applicant for a Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary license as well as the co-owner of Flower City Dispensary.

And these are the steps that need to be taken. I am in support of that: Im in support of taking down the grey market and allowing NYs cannabis market to stabilize and come together as it should, Tantalo said.

The coalitions executive director, Jeremy Rivera, emphasized the public safety threat posed by the growing number of grey market shops throughout the five boroughs. In addition to targeting minors, he said, theyre easy targets, and are being robbed on a near-daily basis in New York City, putting community members at risk.

This isnt against legacy, Rivera said. These grey market stores are not legacy.

They sell soda, they sell gum what if there was a kid in there whos buying a pack of gum and now theyre in the middle of a robbery?

Rivera and Tantalo, along with coalition VP of Operation Jayson Tantalo, said they hadnt read through the details of Hochuls proposed bill. However, theyre in support of anything that addresses the root causes of New Yorks industry volatility.

Speaking as a legacy operator for 20 years of my life, Jayson said, Ive never seen things this low.

We are in the deepest recession that cannabis has ever seen in history, and were not just talking about New York, were talking about the whole country.

The delivery guys in New York City, the growers in upstate were not making one dollar.

The NYS Assembly letter is the second public assault in the last week on the OCMs rollout since its formation in October of 2021.

It comes on the heels of a lawsuit led by the states medical operators and filed last week that laid out a laundry list of grievances and state missteps, including a lack of adopted regulations, violations of state law, inducing growers without providing necessary infrastructure, failing to publish a social equity plan and over-promising state-subsidized real estate and loans.

The Assembly letter led off with: The passage of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) in 2021 was met with celebration and lofty promises by those who supported the measure. More than two years later, few, if any, of those promises have been met.

It points out that fewer than 10 stores have opened (there are currently five), DASNY hasnt raised its $150 million for conditional dispensaries, and illegal cannabis shops have proliferated to more than 1,500 at last count in New York City. Assembly members call this development predictable and are asking state officials to respond.

Two full years after marijuanas legalization in New York, far too many problems exist with no remedy in sight.

For all stakeholders involved, the programs current path is completely unsustainable and demands a significant course correction, the letter said.

The CAURD Coalition board members all agreed with the Assemblys call for an audit of the statewide process, citing transparency as a key component of good government.

Every state agency should be audited, said Rivera. And if it takes for Republicans to push for an audit to release it, I think they should be transparent and open the books.

Listen, the IRS audits me every other year, he said.

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NY Governor and Republican Assembly address thriving illicit cannabis market - syracuse.com

ALBANY, N.Y. (WTEN) Public safety still on the minds of many New Yorkers with decisions still to be made about bail reform as we approach the budget deadline. But there is another public safety law some say has been overlooked: Raise the Age which some lawmakers say needs to change.Raise the Age took effect in 2018 and changed the age a child can be prosecuted as an adult from 16 to 18-years old in criminal cases. Republican lawmakers want to change the law for those who commit violent felonies.

Sponsor of the bill Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay said his conference is not against public safety reform, What we dont like is the way Bail Reform and Raise The Age were passed. They were rammed through the legislature in the budget, with no input from DAs, no input from law enforcement and frankly, I dont even know if they had input from public defenders.

According to the states flowchart, when a 16 or 17-year old commits a violent felony they will either be sent to family court or youth part.Im here to tell you that some things work, but a lot of it doesnt, said Saratoga County DA, Karen Heggen. She said the resources needed to redirect adolescent offenders are simply not there. Heggen pointed to the example of a minor who committed several offenses including breaking and entering, burglary, and holding someone at knife point. As a 17 year old, we attempted to make the case once it went to youth part- that there were, in fact, extraordinary circumstances and that that case should continue in the criminal justice system in the adult realm of things, she said. But that didnt happen. Heggen says three days after his 18th birthday, the same person committed a similar offense.

Lawmakers are proposing the following changes:

Our Capitol Correspondent, Amal Tlaige reached out to the Governor and leaders and both houses about the proposed changes, but has not heard back.

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Republicans propose Raise the Age reform - NEWS10 ABC