The Week Magazine January 27, 2023

By deepening droughts and drying up lakes and rivers, climate change is creating growing conflict over fresh water in many parts of the globe. The water wars have come to the sun-scorched American Southwest, which heavily depends on the dwindling Colorado River. As seven states and 40 million people face 30 percent cuts in river-water allocations this year, Scottsdale officials just turned off all municipal water to about 700 desert homes in an upscale neighborhood recently built in the Rio Verde Foothills of Arizona. (See The U.S. at a glance, p.7.) Shocked residents are paying a fortune to truck in water, and their various adaptations—including skipping showers and peeing outdoors to avoid flushing—are not sustainable. Homes bought for $2.5 million are virtually worthless. “It would be crazy to buy our…

What happened The White House went into damage-control mode this week after embarrassing revelations that about 16 classified documents had been found at President Biden’s private Washington, D.C., office and Wilmington, Del., home. Republicans pounced on the discovery, which may complicate a criminal investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into former President Trump’s seizure and refusal to turn over more than 11,000 documents, including 300 marked classified. CBS News reported that on Nov. 2 of last year Biden’s lawyers found about 10 classified documents in a locked closet at a think-tank office Biden kept after leaving the vice presidency in 2017. They turned them over to the National Archives, which alerted the Justice Department, triggering an investigation. But the White House didn’t acknowledge this until the CBS report, and then…

Katie and Annie Carrmax were walking on the beach with their two young daughters when they came across a bottle with a note inside, which included a name, Troy Heller, and an address in Louisville. A web search found Heller, now living in Mount Washington, Ky. Heller ignored a call from the unknown Florida number, but a text with an image of the bottle soon grabbed his attention. Heller was 10 years old when he tossed the Pepsi bottle into the ocean during a trip to Vero Beach, Fla., in 1985. “I thought I’d just throw it out in the ocean and just see where it went, you know?” he says. “It’s just amazing that it finally found its way back.” As the proprietors of a dog-walking business in Skagway,…

What happened The U.S. began Patriot missile training this week for Ukrainian forces, and the U.K. announced it was sending tanks, as deadly Russian missile attacks and a possible new offensive reignited the debate in the West about increasing military aid to Ukraine. Last weekend, a 2,000-pound Russian warhead designed for anti-ship attacks blasted through a nine-story apartment building in Dnipro, once a relative haven for thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. At least 45 people were killed. Days later, a Ukrainian helicopter crashed into a kindergarten outside Kyiv, killing at least 17 people, including three Ukrainian cabinet ministers who were on board; it was unclear what caused the crash. Russians forces also continued shelling civilian infrastructure in several cities. In Oklahoma, meanwhile, some 100 Ukrainian soldiers began training with…

What happened The first major showdown between the new GOP majority in the House and the Biden administration loomed this week, as the federal government reached its debt limit of $31.4 trillion and Republicans demanded concessions in exchange for raising it and preventing a federal default. The ceiling is the maximum the government can borrow to fund its operations; it’s been raised over 90 times since 1960. In December 2021, Congress raised the cap by $2.5 trillion, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy maintains he won’t agree to raise it again unless President Biden assents to cuts. Democrats, however, refuse to negotiate. “It’s not and should not be a political football,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “This should be done without conditions.” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she…

Republicans’ capacity for launching “new dumb culture wars” never ceases to amaze, said James Downie in MSNBC. Last week, Richard Trumka Jr. of the Consumer Product Safety Commission was asked in an interview about the safety of gas stoves. Gas stoves not only leak methane and contribute to climate change, their flames create a host of noxious gases, including nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide and fine particulates that can lodge in the lungs. A recent study found that gas stoves cause 13 percent of childhood asthma cases, totaling about 650,000 kids. Trumka offered the general observation that “products that can’t be made safe can be banned”—and that was all it took. Before the White House could clarify that there is no plan to confiscate the 40 million gas stoves…