The USGS is working with federal land management agencies to develop a series of structured science syntheses (SSS) to support National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses. This new synthesis is the third publication in the SSS series and provides science to support NEPA analyses for agency decisions regarding oil and gas leasing and permitting.

Emily shares her experience research on Henslow’s sparrow accounting for the future effects of climate change and to develop risk assessment tools to assist managers in the region with meeting their conservation objectives using prescribed fire.

At the Cascades Volcano Observatory, staff use technical skills and creativity to solve complex problems and innovate for the future. Erin personifies the cleverness, craftsmanship and creativity that makes volcano science meaningful and FUN! 

The Pathfinding Partnerships Award from CO-LABS recognizes impactful, collaborative research projects organized by four or more research entities, including federal labs, in Colorado. This year, the Wildfire Research (WiRē) team received this award for their support of evidence-based community wildfire education to help communities live with wildfire. 

Dr. Jill Baron, Director of the Powell Center, will present a webinar on how to develop a strong proposal for Working Group on November 19th, 2024, at 11am MT/1pm ET.

USGS Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC) biological science technician, Genevieve Kent, is the winner of this issue’s photo contest. 

This summer, USGS Western Fisheries Research Center and collaborating scientists were delighted to find that the abundance of wild born juvenile fall Chinook salmon migrating out of the Snake River has increased by almost 2 orders of magnitude within the last 30 years. 

Western Fisheries Research Center scientists are studying the impacts of increased artificial light at night (ALAN) on aquatic ecosystems.  Here's an overview with recent pictures from the field!

Geologic mapping has been one of the most fundamental mandates of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) since its establishment in 1879. Congress created the USGS to "classify the public lands and examine the geological structure, mineral resources, and products within and outside the national domain."

From humble beginnings, the CRC collections have grown into an expansive 80,000 square foot warehouse space, which provides ample storage for 64,000 cores and well cuttings. This enhancement not only maximizes storage capacity but also offers invaluable resources to researchers from academia, industry, and state and federal governments. 

At the Cascades Volcano Observatory, staff use technical skills and creativity to solve complex problems and innovate for the future. Maciej’s experiments are too large for the observatory, so he travels 3 hours southeast of CVO to the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in Blue River, Oregon to study debris flows. 

A new study from USGS describes a previously unknown process of marine mineral formation in the Arctic Ocean, driven by frictional heating along tectonic faults rather than by hydrothermal activity. 

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have reached a preliminary, bipartisan agreement on police reform after months of closely watched debate on the topic.

Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., announced the agreement on Thursday evening.

"After months of working in good faith, we have reached an agreement on a framework addressing the major issues for bipartisan police reform," the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

"There is still more work to be done on the final bill, and nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. Over the next few weeks we look forward to continuing our work toward getting a finalized proposal across the finish line."

The exact details of the plan were not immediately clear.

The issue of reforming qualified immunity, to make it easier to sue police officers over allegations of brutality, had been a sticking point in negotiations. The police use of chokeholds was another debated provision.

The effort to reform U.S. policing comes after several years of increasing pressure to better understand and regulate the way officers interact with the communities they patrol.

The high-profile deaths of several Black people — many unarmed — at the hands of police — who have in some notable instances been white — have been the catalyst for the police reform movement.

The Democratic-led House had approved the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — named after one of those Black people killed by police — in early March, and President Biden had hoped Congress would pass the reform effort by the first anniversary of Floyd's death in late May.

But Bass had said then that getting "a substantive piece of legislation" is "far more important than a specific date."

Floyd's murderer, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, is set to be sentenced to prison on Friday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday that Biden "is grateful to Rep. Bass, Sen. Booker, and Sen. Scott for all of their hard work on police reform, and he looks forward to collaborating with them on the path ahead."

The topic of police reform has divided the nation across party lines, with progressives accusing the right of seeking to maintain an antiquated and all-too-powerful law enforcement apparatus. Conservatives say the left has blamed the actions of some officers on the institution itself, turning the topic of police support and "blue lives" into more ammunition for the ongoing culture war.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

President Biden signed a memorial bill to recognize the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting and offered his condolences to people who are awaiting news on their loved ones in the wake of the deadly Surfside, Fla., partial condo collapse.

Biden — who was vice president when a 29-year-old man killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in the nightclub mass shooting — signed the bill to enshrine a monument to the dozens killed in the Latin Night massacre.

The shooting occurred at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in June 2016. The month of June is celebrated annually as LGBTQ Pride Month in the United States.

"May a president never have to sign another monument like this," Biden said.

Biden also offered his thoughts to the victims and loved ones of those affected by the catastrophic collapse this week of a Miami-Dade County condo. Authorities say four people have been declared dead and an additional 159 are considered missing in the rubble.

"I just want to say, I've spoken to Gov. [Ron] DeSantis, and we've provided all the help that they have, they need," Biden said. "We sent the best people from FEMA down there. We're going to stay with them."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91.; Credit: Charles Dharapak/AP

SEASIDE, Calif. — Mike Gravel, a former U.S. senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91.

Gravel, who represented Alaska as a Democrat in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, died Saturday, according to his daughter, Lynne Mosier. Gravel had been living in Seaside, California, and was in failing health, said Theodore W. Johnson, a former aide.

Gravel's two terms came during tumultuous years for Alaska when construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was authorized and when Congress was deciding how to settle Alaska Native land claims and whether to classify enormous amounts of federal land as parks, preserves and monuments.

He had the unenviable position of being an Alaska Democrat when some residents were burning President Jimmy Carter in effigy for his measures to place large sections of public lands in the state under protection from development.

Gravel feuded with Alaska's other senator, Republican Ted Stevens, on the land matter, preferring to fight Carter's actions and rejecting Stevens' advocacy for a compromise.

In the end, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, a compromise that set aside millions of acres for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protected areas. It was one of the last bills Carter signed before leaving office.

Gravel's Senate tenure also was notable for his anti-war activity. In 1971, he led a one-man filibuster to protest the Vietnam-era draft and he read into the Congressional Record 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page leaked document known as the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's history of the country's early involvement in Vietnam.

Gravel reentered national politics decades after his time in the Senate to twice run for president. Gravel, then 75, and his wife, Whitney, took public transportation in 2006 to announce he was running for president as a Democrat in the 2008 election ultimately won by Obama.

He launched his quest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination as a critic of the Iraq war.

"I believe America is doing harm every day our troops remain in Iraq — harm to ourselves and to the prospects for peace in the world," Gravel said in 2006. He hitched his campaign to an effort that would give all policy decisions to the people through a direct vote, including health care reform and declarations of war.

Gravel garnered attention for his fiery comments at Democratic forums.

In one 2007 debate, the issue of the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Iran came up, and Gravel confronted then-Sen. Obama. "Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?" Gravel said. Obama replied: "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike."

Gravel then ran as a Libertarian candidate after he was excluded from later Democratic debates.

In an email to supporters, he said the Democratic Party "no longer represents my vision for our great country." "It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism — all of which I find anathema to my views," he said.

He failed to get the Libertarian nomination.

Gravel briefly ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. He again criticized American wars and vowed to slash military spending. His last campaign was notable in that both his campaign manager and chief of staff were just 18 at the time of his short-lived candidacy.

"There was never any ... plan that he would do anything more than participate in the debates. He didn't plan to campaign, but he wanted to get his ideas before a larger audience," Johnson said.

Gravel failed to qualify for the debates. He endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the contest eventually won by now-President Joe Biden.

Gravel was born Maurice Robert Gravel in Springfield, Massachusetts, on May 13, 1930.

In Alaska, he served as a state representative, including a stint as House speaker, in the mid-1960s.

He won his first Senate term after defeating incumbent Sen. Ernest Gruening, a former territorial governor, in the 1968 Democratic primary.

Gravel served two terms until he was defeated in the 1980 Democratic primary by Gruening's grandson, Clark Gruening, who lost the election to Republican Frank Murkowski.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

President Biden plans to visit the Champlain Towers condo collapse later this week.; Credit: Lynne Sladky/AP

The White House says President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Florida Thursday to view first hand the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers condominium.

Asked by reporters if he planned to visit Surfside, Biden said, "Yes I hope so, as soon as we can. Maybe as early as Thursday." The White House issued a formal announcement of the trip shortly afterward.

The official death toll in the collapse has risen to 11, with some 150 people unaccounted for.

The Biden administration has responded to the disaster, dispatching FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell to the scene earlier this week.

"[The agency] has deployed an Incident Management Assistance Team, as well as building science experts, structural engineers and geotechnical experts to support search-and-rescue operations, and a mobile command center," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

Psaki said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is also providing technical assistance for debris removal. Two FEMA-supported search-and-rescue teams are also involved in the response to the collapse.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has praised FEMA and the Biden administration for "stepping up to the plate" in providing assistance in the search and recovery effort. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Biden's upcoming trip would be "an important reminder that our county, our state and our nation are giving everything we have to search for the victims of this tragedy and support the families in this incredibly devastating time."

Here's what we know about what led to the collapse. Follow more coverage on the aftermath here.

Florida Division of Emergency Management is urging people with information about loved ones who are either unaccounted for or known to be safe to call 305-614-1819.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

According to one new account of the Trump presidency, even telling the story of President Trump's Covid diagnosis was difficult due to the chaos in the white house. Here, Trump removes his protective mask after being discharged from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with Covid-19.; Credit: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

When the Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender wrote his book about Donald Trump's 2020 defeat, one section stuck out as particularly difficult: telling the story of what Bender dubbed "Hell Week-And-A-Half."​

"It was the ten days in 2020 that started with the super spreader event in the Rose Garden, included the Trump's disastrous debate with Joe Biden in Cleveland, and then Trump himself obviously testing positive for COVID a few days later," Bender said.

It's not just that it was a lot to fold together; it's that simply figuring out what happened was maddening.​

"How early he tested positive, how sick he was during that time — I mean, these are serious questions with national security implications that very few people knew or had firsthand knowledge of, and I had competing versions from senior officials, serious people who all were telling me different versions of that story," he said.

Bender's Frankly, We Did Win This Election is one of many books trying to pull order from Trump's chaos, and that struggle to discern the truth, he explains, is itself emblematic of the Trump administration.​

"The deception wasn't just with the public. It was literally from person to person inside the West Wing," he said. "And that's the story — not necessarily worrying about exactly what happened, which will have to come out at some later point, if it ever does."

Former officials are judging Trump's election lies and pandemic response poorly

Judging from the excerpts that have been released, this first wave of post-Trump-presidency books is filled with behind-closed-doors details — like, for example, how gravely ill Trump was with COVID-19, or former Attorney General William Barr's blunt assessment about Trump's claims of a rigged election: "​My suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. That it was all bulls***," as ABC's Jonathan Karl recounts.

But the challenge of recounting this chapter of American history is not just about recounting news-making moments — the racist statements, the allegations of sexual assault, the impeachments — but making sense of it.​

Yasmeen Abutaleb, who coauthored the forthcoming Nightmare Scenario with her Washington Post colleague Damian Paletta, agreed that it was hard to discern the truth from dozens of conflicting stories from within the White House.

But that made it all the more striking when they did find consensus on the Trump White House's coronavirus response. "Of the more than 180 people we spoke to, there wasn't a single one who defended the collective response," she said.

Writing this book, she added, allowed her and Paletta to come away with a clearer assessment of the Trump White House's pandemic response than they gleaned from their day-to-day coverage last year.

"Coronavirus was going to be a challenge no matter who was in charge," she said. "But when we looked at the number of opportunities there were to turn the response around, many of which we didn't know about at the time or couldn't learn it at the time, I think we were shocked at the number of opportunities there were and how they weren't taken."

In addition to the challenge of telling complete, ordered stories of a chaotic presidency, there is also the challenge of placing that presidency into historical context, says Princeton presidential historian Julian Zelizer. He's working with a team of historians to pull together a history of the Trump administration.

"Why did America's political system have room for so much chaos over a four year period? Which is this big puzzle I don't think everyone's totally grappled with," he said.

It's not just journalists and historians. Trump-administration insiders will try to explain their place in history. That's according to Keith Urbahn, a co-founder of Javelin, a literary agency that represented Bender, former UN ambassador John Bolton, and former FBI director James Comey, with more to come.​

"I think it does require for people who worked in the Trump presidency to wrestle with some of the moral compromises that they had to make by serving in that administration," he said.

Post-Trump chaos is rippling through the publishing world

Writing the history of a leaky, live-tweeted presidency has been unusual for a variety of additional reasons. There's book industry tumult — Simon and Schuster employees protested the publishing giant over printing former Vice President Mike Pence's book.

In addition, Trump could still run for president again, which may be why he has given at least 22 book interviews, Axios recently reported. (He has also said he is writing the "book of all books," though some major publishers are hesitant about publishing it, Politico has reported.)

The Trump era was also unusual for the book industry in another way.

"We can honestly say that the four years of the Trump administration were four of the strongest years cumulatively for political books since we've been tracking books, which started in 2001," said Kristen McLean, executive director and industry analyst at market research firm NPD.

Now, however, those sales moving back towards a pre-Trump normal — political book sales are down 60% from the second half of 2020, McLean said.

But that doesn't mean interest will disappear, according to Javelin co-founder Matt Latimer.​

"For example, next year there are a dozen or more books coming out about President Nixon," he said. "I mean, I think long after we're all gone, people are going to be trying to figure out what the hell this was all about."

It's been 47 years since Nixon resigned. By that same math, we'll be reading new Trump books into the late 2060s — and probably beyond.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Progressive activists are watching the end of the Supreme Court session for a possible retirement announcement from Stephen Breyer, the court's oldest current justice. Breyer will turn 83 in August.; Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP/Pool

For Erwin Chemerinsky, this is a familiar feeling: Seven years ago, the dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law publicly called for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire from the Supreme Court because he reasoned too much was at stake in the 2016 elections.

Ginsburg didn't listen then, but he's hoping Justice Stephen Breyer will listen now — but Breyer has given no indication whether he plans to stay or go.

"If he wants someone with his values and views to take his place, now is the time to step down," Chemerinsky told NPR.

Progressive activists are hoping that Breyer, who will turn 83 in August, will announce he is retiring Thursday, the same day the Supreme Court delivers its final two opinions of the term. But a justice can decide to retire at any time — though both Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor announced their respective retirements at the end of the court's session.

Chemerinsky is part of a growing rank of progressives who are breaking with the polite, political norms of the past when it comes to questioning service on the Supreme Court. Ginsburg's death last year and the subsequent appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to deliver a conservative supermajority on the court had a lot to do with that.

"I think a lot of people who thought that silence was the best approach in 2013 came to regret that in the aftermath of [Ginsburg's] untimely passing last year," said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice. "I think it would be foolish of us to repeat this same mistake and to greet the current situation passively and not do everything we can to signal to Justice Breyer, that now is the time for him to step down"

Since Democrats took control of the Senate in January, Demand Justice has organized public demonstrations, billboard and ad campaigns, and assembled a list of scholars and activists to join their public pressure campaign for Breyer to retire.

The risk, as Fallon sees it, is twofold. The first is the perils of a 50-50 Senate.

"The Democrats are one heartbeat away from having control switch in the Senate," he said. "There's a lot of octogenarian senators, many of whom have Republican governors that might get to appoint a successor to them if the worst happened."

The second is the 2022 midterms when control of the Senate will be in play.

"If [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell reassumes the Senate majority leader post, at worst, he might block any Biden pick, and at best, Biden is going to have to calibrate who he selects in order to get them through a Republican-held Senate."

Both Chemerinsky and Fallon concede the public campaign is not without some risk.

"I've certainly heard from some that this might make him less likely to retire, perhaps to dig in his heels," Chemerinsky said.

The campaign has also not caught fire on Capitol Hill, where only a small handful of progressive senators have — tactfully — suggested they'd like to see Breyer retire of his own accord.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told CNN this month he did not support any Senate-led pressure campaigns on the court, but he added: "My secret heart is that some members, particularly the 82-year-old Stephen Breyer, will maybe have that thought on his own, that he should not let his seat be subject to a potential theft."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also distanced himself from the public retirement push, telling NPR: "I'm not on that campaign to put pressure on Justice Breyer. He's done an exceptional job. He alone can make the decision about his future. And I trust him to make the right one."

Absent any change in the status quo, Democrats will control the Senate at least until 2023. If the court's session ends without a retirement announcement, Fallon said he expects the calls for Breyer's retirement will grow louder. It's all part of what he said is a new, more aggressive position on the Supreme Court from the left.

"In some way, we are trying to make a point that progressives for too long, have taken a hands-off approach to the court," he said. "And they've been sort of foolish for doing so because the other side doesn't operate that way."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Incoming President Biden and Vice President Harris stand with their respective spouses Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff after delivering remarks in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 7, the day the Democrats were declared the winners in the 2020 election.; Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

We know that President Biden won the 2020 election (regardless of what former President Donald Trump and his allies say). We just haven't had a great picture of how Biden won.

That is until Wednesday, when we got the clearest data yet on how different groups voted, and crucially, how those votes shifted from 2016. The Pew Research Center just released its validated voters' report, considered a more accurate measure of the electorate than exit polls, which have the potential for significant inaccuracies.

The new Pew data shows that shifts among suburban voters, white men and independents helped Biden win in November, even while white women and Hispanics swung toward Trump from 2016 to 2020.

To compile the data, Pew matches up survey respondents with state voter records. Those voter files do not say how a person voted, but they do allow researchers to be sure that a person voted, period. That helps with accuracy, eliminating the possibility of survey respondents overreporting their voting activity. In addition, the Pew study uses large samples of Americans — more than 11,000 people in 2020.

It's a numbers-packed report, but there are some big takeaways about what happened in 2020 (and what it might tell us about 2022 and beyond):

Suburban voters (especially white suburban voters) swung toward Biden

Suburban voters appear to have been a major factor helping Biden win. While Pew found Trump winning the suburbs by 2 points in 2016, Biden won them by 11 points in 2020, a 13-point overall swing. Considering that the suburbs accounted for just over half of all voters, it was a big demographic win for Biden.

That said, Trump gained in both rural and urban areas. He won 65% of rural voters, a 6-point jump from 2016. And while cities were still majority-Democratic, his support there jumped by 9 points, to 33%.

Men (especially white men) swung toward Biden

In 2020, men were nearly evenly split, with 48% choosing Biden to Trump's 50%. That gap shrank considerably from 2016, when Trump won men by 11 points. In addition, this group that swung away from Trump grew as a share of the electorate from 2016 — signaling that in a year with high turnout, men's turnout grew more.

White men were a big part of the swing toward Biden. In 2016, Trump won white men by 30 points. In 2020, he won them again, but by a substantially slimmer 17 points.

In addition, Biden made significant gains among married men and college-educated men. All of these groups overlap, but they help paint a more detailed portrait of the type of men who might have shifted or newly participated in 2020.

However, we can't know from this data what exactly was behind these shifts among men — for example, exactly what share of men might have sat on the sidelines in 2016, as opposed to 2020.

Women (especially white women) swung toward Trump

The idea that a majority of white women voted for Trump quickly became one of the 2016 election's most-cited statistics, as many Hillary Clinton supporters — particularly women — were outraged to see other women support Trump.

While that statistic was repeated over and over, Pew's data ultimately said this wasn't true — they found that in 2016, white women were split 47% to 45%, slightly in Trump's favor but not a majority.

This year, however, it appears that Trump did win a majority of white women. Pew found that 53% of white women chose Trump this year, up by 6 points from 2016.

This support contributed to an overall shift in women's numbers — while Clinton won women of all races by 15 points in 2016, Biden won them by 11 points in 2020. Combined with men's shifts described above, it shrank 2016's historic gender gap.

Notably, the swing in white women's margin (5 points altogether) was significantly smaller than white men's swing toward Biden (13 points altogether).

Hispanic voters swung toward Trump

Trump won 38% of Hispanic voters in 2020, according to Pew, up from 28% in 2016.

That 38% would put Trump near George W. Bush's 40% from 2004 — a recent high-water mark for Republicans with Hispanic voters. That share fell off substantially after 2004, leading some Republican pollsters and strategists to wonder how the party could regain that ground. Trump in 2016 intensified those fears, with his nativist rhetoric and hard-line immigration policies.

There are some important nuances to these Hispanic numbers. Perhaps most notably, there is a sizable education gap. Biden won college-educated Hispanic voters by 39 points, but the Democrat won those with some college education or less by 14 points.

That gap mirrors the education gap regularly seen in the broader voting population.

Unfortunately, Pew's sample sizes from 2016 weren't big enough to break down Hispanic voters by gender that year, so it's impossible to see if this group's gender gap widened.

Nonwhite voters leaned heavily toward Biden

Unlike white and Hispanic voters, Black voters didn't shift significantly from 2016. They remained Democratic stalwarts, with 92% choosing Biden — barely changed from four years earlier.

Nearly three-quarters of Asian voters also voted for Biden, along with 6 in 10 Hispanic voters and 56% of voters who chose "other" as their race. (Those groups' sample sizes also weren't big enough in 2016 to draw a comparison over time.)

2018 trends stuck around ... but diminished

In many of these cases where there were substantial shifts in how different groups voted, they weren't surprising, given how voters in the last midterms voted. For example, white men voted more for Democrats in 2018 than they did in 2016, as did suburban voters.

What it means for 2022

The data signals that Democrats' strength with Hispanic voters has eroded, but that the party succeeded in making further inroads in the suburbs, including among suburban whites.

It suggests that these groups, already major focuses for both parties, will continue to be so in 2022, with Republicans trying to cement their gains among Hispanics (and regain suburban voters), while Democrats do Hispanic outreach and try to hold onto the suburbs.

However, it's hard to project much into the future about what voters will do based on the past two elections because of their unique turnout numbers.

"It's hard to interpret here, because 2018 was such a high turnout midterm election, and then our last data point, 2014, was a historically low turnout midterm election," said Ruth Igielnik, senior researcher at Pew Research Center.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

"This is a petty, partisan power grab that is absolutely retaliation towards my office," Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs says of the new law.; Credit: Ross D. Franklin/AP

Arizona Republicans have stripped the secretary of state's office — currently held by a Democrat — of the right to defend the state's election laws in court, or choose not to, a change enacted as part of Arizona's newly signed budget.

The spending blueprint that Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law Wednesday declares that the attorney general — currently a position occupied by Republican Mark Brnovich — has sole authority over election-related litigation.

If the secretary of state and attorney general were to disagree over a legal strategy when Arizona election laws are challenged, the new law states that "the authority of the attorney general to defend the law is paramount."

Republicans also adopted language stating it's their intent for the law to apply through Jan. 2, 2023, coinciding with the end of Democrat Katie Hobbs' term as secretary of state.

Hobbs, the top election official in Arizona who's now running for governor, says her lawyers are looking at whether this change violates the Arizona Constitution.

"This is a petty, partisan power grab that is absolutely retaliation towards my office," Hobbs said. "It's clear by the fact that it ends when my term ends. ... It is at best legally questionable, but at worst, likely unconstitutional."

Republicans have generally cast the law as a cost-saving measure, citing Hobbs and Brnovich's frequent disagreements over how to defend state election laws that have been challenged in court. In 2020, Hobbs filed complaints with the state bar against Brnovich and other lawyers in his office.

Other election provisions in the budget

The budget includes a number of other election provisions, and it comes weeks after Republicans enacted new restrictions on early voting in the state, and as a controversial review of 2020 election results in Maricopa County continues.

Here are some of the other election-related measures in the budget:

• New laws could soon require watermarks, QR codes and other security measures to be printed on ballots.
• There's a new mandate to inspect state and county voter registration databases and create a report on voters who cast federal-only ballots — an option available to Arizonans who don't show proof of citizenship to register to vote in the state, but are still allowed to register under federal law.
• And a new task force would investigate alleged social media bias as an unreported in-kind political contribution.

The ballot security measures, though not mandated by law in the budget, have the potential to be the most cumbersome and costly requirement for county election officials to implement.

The budget amendment provides a list of 10 "ballot fraud countermeasures" for counties to choose from — features like holographic foil, background designs similar to those found on banknotes and ultraviolet or infrared ink. If mandated, counties would have to implement any combination of at least three features from the list on their ballots. The budget provides $12 million to pay for those features, to be split among Arizona's 15 counties.

"By everyone's admission, there is only one company that can do any of this," said Jennifer Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties. "And so now, we can't have a competitive bid process or a traditional procurement process at the county or state level to use these countermeasures because we're locked into one company."

That company is Authentix, a Texas-based firm that provided Republican Rep. Mark Finchem with a sample ballot that included watermarks, QR codes and other security measures. Finchem had the sample ballot on display at the Capitol in March. According to the Yellow Sheet Report, it could be five times more expensive to print ballots with those security measures as it is to print paper ballots currently in use.

Marson said Finchem has acknowledged the security levels required of companies in the budget amendment could only be met by Authentix, and has vowed to mandate the ballot security measures in the "very near future."

Finchem defended the company in a brief email. He wrote that Authentix "offers these countermeasures to governments around the world for document and tax stamp security."

As the budget was being considered, Democrats like Sen. Tony Navarrete said the amendment is part of a broad effort to solidify conspiracy theories of election fraud.

"It's important for us to make sure we vote down conspiracy-laced amendments that are going to hurt the integrity of our election system in the state of Arizona and encourage other states to have these bad copycat laws spread like wildfire," he said.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A waitress wears a face mask while serving at Langer's Delicatessen-Restaurant in Los Angeles on June 15.; Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Normal is not easily defined.

The past 15 months, though, have certainly been anything but.

Americans are starting to believe a "sense of normal" is approaching fairly soon, however, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey. The poll also found that with the coronavirus receding in this country, mask-wearing is declining and Americans are going out more. But they remain cautious about being in large crowds.

As the country continues to open up, more focus turns to the economy, which cratered during the beginning of the pandemic last year. And Americans are split by race, gender and politics on whether President Biden's ambitious policies are helping or not.

Race, gender, party divides on Biden and the economy

Three months ago, in a similar survey, 49% of adults said the president's policies were strengthening the economy, while 44% said they were weakening it.

Now, that's declined a net of 6 points, as 44% of respondents in the new poll say Biden's policies have strengthened the economy and 45% say the opposite. The percentage who were unsure also jumped 4 points. It's all a little bit of a warning sign for Biden, as he pushes for two large — and expensive — spending packages.

There are significant splits by race and gender:

• Just 39% of whites said Biden's policies have strengthened the economy, but 52% of people of color say they have.
• 54% of independent men say his policies have weakened the economy, while 56% of independent women say they've strengthened it. 
• 45% of white male college grads say Biden has strengthened the economy, but a significantly higher 64% of white women with college degrees said so.

Inflation vs. wages by party

A quarter of Americans rank inflation as the U.S. economy's top concern. That's followed by wages, unemployment, housing costs, labor shortages, gas prices and interest rates.

But there's a sharp political divide on the question. Republicans and independents rank inflation as their top concern, while for Democrats, it was wages. Just 4% of Republicans said wages were their top concern.

Return to "normal"

Americans are growing increasingly optimistic about when life will return to a "sense of normal," as the survey labels it.

In April, three-quarters of Americans said they believe it will take six months or more. Now, it's just half. About a quarter (27%) say it will be less than six months, up from 15% two months ago.

People are also growing more comfortable doing certain things, saying they're:

• dining out at restaurants (78%) and 
• visiting unvaccinated friends and family (75%).

But they are not as comfortable doing others:

• almost 7-in-10 are not going out to bars; 
• about two-thirds are not attending live concerts or sporting events (65%);
• and a majority have also not resumed going to in-person religious services (54%).

COVID-19 vaccines and going back to work

While half say they are concerned about another coronavirus surge, almost 9-in-10 U.S. adults with jobs say they are at least somewhat comfortable returning to work.

Notably, a majority (57%) of those with jobs do not believe employers should require COVID-19 vaccines as a condition to return to in-person work.

More than a quarter of Americans say they will not get vaccinated. The most resistant to getting vaccinated continue to be supporters of former President Donald Trump. Half of them say they won't get the shot, the highest of any group surveyed. Trump has touted the vaccine and got it himself.

Since Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines came out, noting that Americans who have been vaccinated can largely set masks aside, there's been a double-digit decline in those saying they wear a mask even when it's not required.

There's also been a double-digit increase in those saying they generally do not wear a mask. In May, 49% said they wore masks even when it was not required. Now, that's just 36%.

One-in-five said they generally do not wear masks. Two months ago, it was less than one-in-10.

Affordability, not coronavirus, limiting vacations

Speaking of getting back to normal, a majority of Americans say they plan to take a vacation this summer.

But of the significant minority (45%) who say they aren't taking one, almost three times as many cited affordability (35%) as the main reason for not going, as opposed to concerns about COVID-19 (12%).

Methodology: The poll of 1,115 U.S. adults was conducted using live telephone interviewers from June 22 through June 29. Survey questions were available in English or Spanish. The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, with larger margins of error for smaller group subsets.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

President Biden listens as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks about the collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Florida.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

President Biden landed in Florida on Thursday to visit privately with families whose loved ones were in the 12-story Champlain Towers South condo when it collapsed.

Biden also met with first responders to thank them for their rescue work. Search and rescue efforts paused on Thursday because of structural concerns. So far, 145 people are still unaccounted for while 18 people have been confirmed dead.

During a briefing with local and state officials, Biden said the federal government would pick up 100% of the costs associated with the response to the building collapse. I think I have the power and will know shortly to be able to pick up 100% of the costs of the county and the state. I'm quite sure I can do that," Biden said.

Biden sat beside Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who thanked the president for his support, saying "we've had no bureaucracy" from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"You recognize in each individual unit, there's an amazing story, and lives have been shattered irrevocably, as a result of this," DeSantis said. "We have families with kids missing. And we even have young newlyweds who hadn't even been married a year who were in the tower when it collapsed," he said.

"What we just need now is we need a little bit of luck. We need a little bit of prayers. And you know, we would like to be able to, you know, to see some miracles happen," DeSantis said.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's longtime chief financial officer, watches as then-U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses a 2016 news conference at Trump Tower in New York City.; Credit: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Former President Donald Trump's family business and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, have been charged by the Manhattan district attorney's office in a case involving alleged tax-related crimes.

Before the indictment was released Thursday, Weisselberg's personal attorneys, Mary Mulligan and Bryan Skarlatos, said in a statement that the CFO "intends to plead not guilty and he will fight these charges in court."

Trump has long denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, the former president said:

"The political Witch Hunt by the Radical Left Democrats, with New York now taking over the assignment, continues. It is dividing our Country like never before!"

The investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. began in 2018 around the time Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges related to payments of hush money. These were made in the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign, as Cohen put it in court, "in coordination with, and at the direction of, a candidate for federal office." The goal was to block two women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump — former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film star Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels — from telling their stories publicly.

New York state Attorney General Letitia James' office launched its own probe in 2019 after Cohen testified in a congressional hearing that Trump manipulated property values to lower his tax obligations and to obtain bank loans. James' investigation was initially focused on potential civil charges, but it recently expanded to include a criminal probe in partnership with Vance.

This year, the investigators have homed in on noncash payments made to top officials in Trump's companies, including Weisselberg.

The U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for the charges, declining in February to block a subpoena from Vance's office seeking Trump's financial records. Vance first requested tax filings and other financial records from Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, in 2019.

In a statement released in May, Trump said the New York-based investigations were part of a "Witch Hunt," adding, with a reference to how his presidential campaign started in 2015: "It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it's never stopped."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a pause on federal executions Thursday while the Justice Department reviews policies and procedures on capital punishment.; Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Attorney General Merrick Garland has imposed a moratorium on scheduling federal executions, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday. The department will review its policies and procedures on capital punishment, following a wave of federal executions carried out under the Trump administration.

In a memo to the Justice Department, Garland justified his decision to halt the deeply controversial practice, citing factors including its capricious application and outsized impact on people of color.

"The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely. That obligation has special force in capital cases," Garland said in the memo.

"Serious concerns have been raised about the continued use of the death penalty across the country, including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases," he added. "Those weighty concerns deserve careful study and evaluation by lawmakers."

Under former President Donald Trump, the federal government carried out its first executions in a generation last year, with 13 inmates put to death in Trump's final year in office. That included an unprecedented number of federal killings carried out in the last days of his single-term presidency, bucking a nearly century-and-a-half practice of pausing capital punishments during the presidential exchange of power.

Then-Attorney General William Barr said the executions were being carried out in cases of "staggeringly brutal murders." Civil rights activists had rallied to spare the lives of those on death row. Concerns of how humanely the sentences could be carried out, as well as the recent exonerations of a number of death row inmates, were major factors in the demonstrations to cease state-sanctioned killings.

"The Department must take care to scrupulously maintain our commitment to fairness and humane treatment in the administration of existing federal laws governing capital sentences," Garland said in his memo on Thursday.

President Biden, who nominated Garland to the top law enforcement post, opposes capital punishment. During his campaign, Biden pledged to pass legislation to end the federal death penalty.

Some congressional Democrats have been working on such legislation, but no action has been taken. Some progressives and activists opposed to capital punishment had been expressing frustration that they have not seen more movement on the issue from Biden.

"A moratorium on federal executions is one step in the right direction, but it is not enough," said Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project. "We know the federal death penalty system is marred by racial bias, arbitrariness, over-reaching, and grievous mistakes by defense lawyers and prosecutors that make it broken beyond repair."

Friedman said Biden should commute all federal death sentences, warning that a pause alone "will just leave these intractable issues unremedied and pave the way for another unconscionable bloodbath like we saw last year."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A voter marks his ballot at a polling place on Nov. 3, 2020, in Richland, Iowa. A new poll finds ensuring access to voting is more important than tamping down voter fraud for most Americans.; Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

A majority of Americans believes ensuring access to voting is more important than rooting out fraud, the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey finds.

At the same time, there was broad agreement that people should have to show identification when they go to the polls.

Two-thirds of Americans also believe democracy is "under threat," but likely for very different reasons.

"For Democrats, Jan. 6 undoubtedly looms large," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, referring to the violence and insurrection at the Capitol, "while, for Republicans, it's more likely about Trump and his claims of a rigged election."

Voting access vs. fraud

By a 56%-41% margin, survey respondents said making sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so is a bigger concern than making sure that no one who is ineligible votes.

But there were wide differences by political party and by race.

Among Democrats, almost 9 in 10 said access was more important, but almost three-quarters of Republicans said it was making sure no one votes who isn't eligible.

By race, a slim majority of whites said ensuring everyone who wants to vote can was most important, but almost two-thirds of nonwhites said so.

Photo ID is popular

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans said they believe voters should be required to show government-issued photo identification whenever they vote.

Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, whites and nonwhites all said so. Democrats were far lower, though, with 57% believing photo ID should be required.

Biden holding steady

President Biden gets a 50% job approval rating, largely unchanged from last month. There is a sharp partisan divide with 9 in 10 Democrats approving, and more than 8 in 10 Republicans disapproving.

Biden continues to get his highest ratings when it comes to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and his economic approval is holding steady. But Americans have less confidence in his handling of foreign policy, especially immigration. His approval on immigration ticked up slightly from March when it was last measured in the poll.

By a 50%-43% margin, respondents said Biden had strengthened America's role on the world stage.

Americans are split about whether the country is headed in the right direction or not — 49% said it wasn't, 47% said it was. It's an improvement, however, from right after the Jan. 6 insurrection when three-quarters said the country was on the wrong track.

The tone has gotten worse in Washington since Biden was elected, 41% said, but that's better than the two-thirds who said so consistently during the Trump years.

Methodology: The poll of 1,115 U.S. adults was conducted using live telephone interviewers from June 22-29. Survey questions were available in English or Spanish. The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points with larger margins of error for smaller group subsets.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Still from the film "Dream Horse" starring Toni Collette.

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Angie Han, Wade Major and Peter Rainer review this weekend’s new movie releases.

• "Dream Horse," in wide release & VOD (including Google Play & iTunes June 11)

• "The Dry," in select theaters (check your local listings) & VOD (including Apple TV & VUDU)

• "Milkwater," on VOD platforms (including VUDU & FandangoNow)

• "Blast Beat," in select theaters (check local listings) & VOD (including iTunes, Google Play)

• "Into The Darkness," Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema; VOD (including FandangoNow, iTunes, Google Play) 

• "New Order," in select theaters (check your local listings)

• "The New Deal For Artists," at virtual cinemas, Laemmle's Virtual Cinema June 18

• "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit," at Laemmle theaters (Town Center 5, Royal, Playhouse 7); Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema

• "Two Lottery Tickets," at Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema 

• "Final Account," Laemmle Theaters (Claremont 5, Playhouse 7, Town Center 5, Newhall), Century Stadium 25 and XD (Orange); in select theaters

• "The Last Days (Remastered)," on Netflix

• "Spring Blossom," at Laemmle's Virtual Cinema and Royal

• "Tomorrow’s Hope," at Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema

• "The Penny Black," at Laemmle's Virtual Cinema

• "Seance," in select theaters (check your local listings); VOD (including FandangoNow, Vudu, iTunes, Google Play)

DURING COVID: Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

Guests:

Angie Han, film critic for KPCC and deputy entertainment editor at Mashable; she tweets @ajhan

Wade Major, film critic for KPCC and CineGods.com

Peter Rainer, film critic for KPCC and the Christian Science Monitor

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Comedian Paul Mooney takes part in a discussion panel after the world premiere screening of "That's What I'm Talking About" at The Museum of Television & Radio January 30, 2006 in New York City.; Credit: Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve lost several industry icons, including Paul Mooney, Charles Grodin and Norman Lloyd. 

Actor and comedian Paul Mooney was a boundary-pushing comedian who was Richard Pryor’s longtime writing partner and whose bold, incisive musings on racism and American life made him a revered figure in stand-up. He was 79. Charles Grodin was an offbeat actor and writer who scored as a caddish newlywed in “The Heartbreak Kid” and later had roles ranging from Robert De Niro’s counterpart in the comic thriller “Midnight Run” to the bedeviled father in the “Beethoven” comedies. He was 86. Norman Lloyd’s role as kindly Dr. Daniel Auschlander on TV’s “St. Elsewhere” was a single chapter in a distinguished stage and screen career that put him in the company of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin and other greats. He was 106. Lloyd’s son, Michael Lloyd, said his father died at his home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Today on FilmWeek, our critics reflect on their work. Plus they share a couple of their favorite films of the 2021 so far. 

With files from the Associated Press

Guests:

Angie Han, film critic for KPCC and deputy entertainment editor at Mashable; she tweets @ajhan

Wade Major, film critic for KPCC and CineGods.com

Peter Rainer, film critic for KPCC and the Christian Science Monitor

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Actor Dwayne Johnson (L) and Simone Alexandra Johnson attend the People's Choice Awards 2017 at Microsoft Theater on January 18, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. ; Credit: Christopher Polk

When Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson debuted his Hollywood persona in World Wrestling Entertainment in 2003, he was two years removed from his first successful protagonist role in "The Scorpion King" and on the heels of more film success with roles in "The Rundown" and "Walking Tall." 

Little did anyone foresee that "Hollywood" Rock would buoy the overall representation for Asian and Pacific Islanders in popular film for the next 20 years.

Last week, the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative released a report documenting the prevalence of Asian and Pacific Islanders both on-and off-screen across the top-grossing films each year from 2007 to 2019.  Of the 1,300 films examined, only 44 featured API actors playing lead roles, nearly a third of which were played by Johnson. 

The report offers more staggering statistics:

• In 2019, over a quarter of API characters in the top-grossing films died. Most died by drowning, explosions, stabbing or suicides

• Of the over 51,000 speaking characters in the 1,300 films examined, only 6% were Asian, Asian American or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders

• Only 50 of the 1,447 directors in the 1,300 films examined were of API heritage.

• In 2019, 67% of API characters played stereotyped roles

The release of this report comes at a time of rising anti-Asian hate crimes nationally, and the authors of the report believe the portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders in mass media contributes to that. Today on FilmWeek, we delve into the study's findings and discuss the history of API filmmakers and actors in Hollywood.

Guests: 

Nancy Wang Yuen, professor of sociology at Biola University in La Mirada; she is co-author of “The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders Across 1,300 Popular Films”; she tweets @nancywyeun

Justin Chang, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s Fresh Air; he tweets @JustinCChang

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Still of Emily Blunt and Noah Jupe in the film “A Quiet Place Part II.”; Credit: Paramount Pictures

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Lael Loewenstein, Christy Lemire and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and on demand platforms.

• "A Quiet Place Part II," in wide release

• "Cruella," in wide release & Disney+

• "Dog Gone Trouble," on Netflix

• "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal The Movie," on Netflix June 3

• "Moby Doc," In Select Theaters (check your local listings); VOD (including FandangoNow, iTunes, Vudu); Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema June 4

• "Changing The Game," on Hulu June 1

• "Port Authority," Cinelounge Sunset Hollywood; Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema; Digital/VOD (including Vudu, Google Play, FandangoNow) June 1

• "Plan B," on Hulu

• "Borat Supplemental Reportings," on Amazon Prime Video

• "Dead Pigs," on Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema

Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

Guests:

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the ‘Breakfast All Day’ podcast; she tweets @christylemire

Lael Loewenstein, film critic for KPCC and film columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press; she tweets @LAELLO

Charles Solomon, film critic for KPCC, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Gabriel Luna (L) and Robert Rodriguez attend the "Terminator: Dark Fate" Screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Slaughter Lane on October 29, 2019 in Austin, Texas. ; Credit: Gary Miller/Getty Images

Movie theaters are starting to reopen, and moviegoers are starting to return. All eight of the Laemmle’s theaters are now reopened, its Glendale location the last to do so a couple weeks ago. Tickets are now on sale for the first time in a year at American Cinematheque's Aero theater. 

Last weekend, “A Quiet Place: Part II” opened with very strong box office grosses. And one of the locations that sold a lot of tickets for the sequel was the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Los Angeles. The Texas-based boutique chain filed for bankruptcy reorganization in early March. Unlike the Arclight and Pacfic theaters, Alamo was able to come back quickly with many of its theaters reopening in May.

KPCC’s John Horn called up Tim League, Alamo’s founder and executive chairman, to talk about his circuit’s return, the future of moviegoing in a streaming era, and whether or not Alamo might be a buyer of the closed Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. 

Correction: The original broadcast said that American Cinematheque announced screenings at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena, which was a mistake. 

With contributions from John Horn 

Guest: 

Tim League, founder and executive chairman of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Shot from the film "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It"; Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Amy Nicholson, Wade Major and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and on demand platforms.

• "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It," in wide release & HBO Max

• "Spirit Untamed," in wide release

• "Edge Of The World," on VOD (including Google Play & FandangoNow)

• "All Light, Everywhere," at The Landmark Theater; Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 (Pasadena) on June 11

• "City of Ali," Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema; Laemmle’s NoHo 7 on June 17

• "Gully," In Select Theaters including Cinemark 18 and XD (Los Angeles), Cinemark 22 and IMAX (Lancaster); VOD (Youtube & Vudu) June 8

• "On The Trail Of Bigfoot: The Journey," VOD (including iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu & FandangoNOW) June 8

• "Undine," Laemmle Theaters (Playhouse 7, Newhall, Town Center 5, Royal, Claremont 5); VOD (including iTunes, Vudu, Google Play)

• "Grace And Grit," in select theaters & VOD (including FandangoNow, iTunes, Spectrum on Demand)

• "Super Frenchie," In select theaters & VOD (including Google Play, iTunes & FandangoNow)

• "Bad Tales," In select theaters; Laemmle Virtual Cinema & Monica Film Center; VOD

• "Flashback," VOD (including Vudu, FandangoNow & Spectrum on Demand)

Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

Guests:

Amy Nicholson, film critic for KPCC, film writer for The New York Times and host of the podcast ‘Unspooled’ and the podcast miniseries “Zoom”; she tweets @TheAmyNicholson

Wade Major, film critic for KPCC and CineGods.com

Charles Solomon, film critic for KPCC, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

ANTHONY RAMOS as Usnavi in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “IN THE HEIGHTS.”; Credit: Macall Polay/Warner Bros. Pictures’

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Angie Han, Andy Klein, Tim Cogshell and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and on demand platforms.

• "In the Heights," on wide release & HBO Max

• "Holler," at Laemmle’s Monica Film Center (Santa Monica), Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 (Pasadena); VOD (including FandangoNow, Google Play & VUDU)

• "A Perfect Enemy," in select theaters (check your local listings)

• "Wish Dragon," on Netflix

• "Sublet," at Laemmle theaters (Playhouse 7, Town Center 5, Royal); Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema on June 18; VOD on July 9

• "The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard," on wide release June 16 (they also have select earlier showtimes June 11 & 12)

• "Censor," Laemmle’s Glendale, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (DTLA) and Landmark Westwood; VOD (including iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube) on June 18

• "La Dosis (The Dose)," on VOD/Digital (including iTunes & FandangoNow)

• "Revolution Rent," on HBO Max on June 15

• "The Misfits," In select theaters (including Universal Cinema AMC and Cinemark 18 & XD); VOD/Digital (including Vudu, Google Play) on June 15 

• "Take Me Somewhere Nice," at Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema 

• "Queen Bees," at Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema, Laemmle’s Theaters (including Glendale, Playhouse 7, Monica Film Center, Newhall & Town Center 5); VOD (including Vudu, Amazon Prime Video & Apple TV)

Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

Guests:

Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC, Alt-Film Guide and CineGods.com; he tweets @CinemaInMind

Andy Klein, KPCC film critic

Angie Han, film critic for KPCC and deputy entertainment editor at Mashable; she tweets @ajhan

Charles Solomon, film critic for KPCC, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Circus of Books storefront.; Credit: Netflix/Circus Of Books (2020)

The documentary “Circus of Books”  tells the story of two book stores, one in West Hollywood and the other in Silver Lake, operated by Karen and Barry Mason, who became accidental book sellers. They also became real pillars of the LGBTQ communties. Rachel Mason is the daughter of the masons and she’s also the filmmaker. Larry talked with Rachel about “Circus of Books” when it was first released on Netflix. Today on FilmWeek, we excerpt a portion of that conversation. 

This conversation aired during FilmWeek’s Saturday broadcast. 

Guest: 

Rachel Mason, director of the Netflix documentary ‘Circus of Books’ and daughter of Circus of Books owners Karen and Barry Mason; she tweets @RachelMasonArt

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rita Moreno, as seen in the documentary “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.”

Guest host John Horn and KPCC film critics Claudia Puig, Peter Rainer, Lael Loewenstein and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and on demand platforms.

• "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It," at Laemmle’s theaters (Newhall, Town Center 5, NoHo 7, Claremont 5, Playhouse 7) and other select theaters 

• "Les Nôtres," at Laemmle’s Royal and Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema 

• "Rise Again: Tulsa And The Red Summer," premieres on National Geographic June 18 at 6pm PT & on Hulu June 19

• "Luca," at the El Capitan Theater (Hollywood) & Disney+

• "The Sparks Brothers," in wide release 

• "Sisters on Track," on Netflix June 24

• "Fatherhood," on Netflix

• "Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation," at Landmark’s Nuart Theater & Virtual cinemas 

• "Sweet Thing," Laemmle’s Royal and Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema

• "Summer of 85," at Laemmle’s theaters (Playhouse 7, Royal and Town Center 5) 

• "12 Mighty Orphans" in wide release

Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

With guest host John Horn 

Guests:

Claudia Puig, film critic for KPCC and president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA); she tweets @ClaudiaPuig

Lael Loewenstein, film critic for KPCC and film columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press; she tweets @LAELLO

Peter Rainer, film critic for KPCC and the Christian Science Monitor

Charles Solomon, film critic for KPCC, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Michelle Rodriguez (L) and Vin Diesel (R) in "F9: The Fast Saga"; Credit: Universal Pictures

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Amy Nicholson and Christy Lemire review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and on-demand platforms.

• "F9: The Fast Saga," in wide release

• "Summer of Soul, "at El Capitan Theatre June 25-July 6; Hulu on July 2

• "Zola," in wide release

• "Sweat," at Laemmle’s NoHo 7

• "LFG," on HBO Max  

• "Rebel Hearts," Laemmle’s Glendale; on Discovery+ on June 27

• "I Carry You with Me," AMC Sunset 5 (West Hollywood), The Landmark (West LA); Laemmle Playhouse 7 & Town Center 5 on July 2 (additional Laemmle theaters on July 9)

• "Fathom," on Apple TV+, Laemmle’s Monica Film Center

• "Wolfgang," on Disney+

Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

Guests:

Amy Nicholson, film critic for KPCC, film writer for The New York Times and host of the podcast ‘Unspooled’ and the podcast miniseries “Zoom”; she tweets @TheAmyNicholson

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the ‘Breakfast All Day’ podcast; she tweets @christylemire

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Questlove attends Questlove's "Summer Of Soul" screening & live concert at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem on June 19, 2021 in New York City.; Credit: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

The 1960s was a decade that held a lot of historical markers for American history. For the Black community, social inequality and systemic racism lead to political action in many different forms.

The end of the decade saw the death of many integral leaders to the civil rights movement, which led to more civil unrest and mourning. One way this community was able to get through this moment in history was through the power of music. The 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival was a special moment in musical and Black history that was all a product of the other 8 years prior to it.

It’s a historical marker for Harlem that Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s film “Summer of Soul” depicts in-depth, bringing this story to life using archival footage and interviews. The Harlem Cultural Festival took place for 6 weeks, having some of the greatest Black musical acts the world has ever seen. Through this communal experience, attendees found themselves at ease with artists like Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and the 5th Dimension bringing this community of Harlem residents together. 

Today on FilmWeek, Larry Mantle speaks with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson about his feature directorial debut, “Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” and its chronicling of a major point in African American history.

Guest:

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, director of the documentary “Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” drummer for The Roots and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon; he tweets @questlove

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Screenshot of the event "FilmWeek & Chill: ‘Airplane!’" broadcasted on June 3, 2021.

The iconic 1980 film “Airplane!” from the ZAZ directing team, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker parodies the plot and characters from the 1957 disaster flick “Zero Hour!” It broke out as a leading example of comedy done right and one of the funniest films of the 80s. It was the ZAZ team’s feature directorial debut. I talked with the directors during our virtual film series, FilmWeek and Chill, along with the film’s stars Robert Hays and Lorna Patterson Lembeck, casting director Joel Thurm and KPCC’s own Tim Cogshell and Christy Lemire. Today on FilmWeek, we bring you a portion of the conversation.

You can watch the entire FilmWeek and Chill event here.

Guests:

Jim Abrahams, co-director of “Airplane!” and member of the directing team Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ)

Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC, Alt-Film Guide and CineGods.com; he tweets @CinemaInMind

Robert Hays, actor who played Ted Striker in "Airplane!"

Lorna Lembeck, actress who played Randy the singing stewardess in “Airplane!”

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com, and co-host of the “Breakfast All Day” podcast; she tweets @christylemire

Joel Thurm, casting director for "Airplane!"

David Zucker, co-director of “Airplane!” and member of the directing team Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ)

Jerry Zucker, co-director of “Airplane!” and member of the directing team Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ)

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Shot from the film “The Boss Baby: Family Business”; Credit: Dreamworks

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Lael Loewenstein, Wade Major and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases on streaming and on demand platforms.

• "The Forever Purge," in wide release

• "The Boss Baby: Family Business," in wide release & on Peacock

• "Long Story Short," at Laemmle’s Glendale; & on VOD/Digital (including Vudu, FandangoNow & Google Play)

• "The Tomorrow War," on Amazon Prime Video

• "The One And Only Dick Gregory," premieres on Showtime July 4 at 9 pm PT, available on demand on Showtime following that

• "No Sudden Move," on HBO Max

• "The Ladykillers (Originally released in 1955)," at Laemmle Theaters (Royal, Town Center 5, Playhouse 7)

• "America: The Motion Picture," on Netflix

Our FilmWeek critics have been curating personal lists of their favorite TV shows and movies to binge-watch during self-quarantine. You can see recommendations from each of the critics and where you can watch them here.

Guests:

Lael Loewenstein, film critic for KPCC; she tweets @LAELLO

Wade Major, film critic for KPCC and CineGods.com

Charles Solomon, film critic for KPCC, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

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Earth's magnetic field seems steady and true -- reliable enough to navigate by. Yet, largely hidden from daily life, the field drifts, waxes and wanes. The magnetic North Pole is currently shifting toward Siberia, forcing the Global Positioning System that underlies modern navigation to update its software sooner than expected. Every several hundred thousand years, the magnetic field dramatically shifts and reverses its polarity. Magnetic north flips to the geographic South Pole and, eventually, back again. This reversal has happened countless times over Earth's history, but scientists' understanding of why and how the field reverses is limited. The researchers find that the most recent field reversal 770,000 years ago took at least 22,000 years to complete, several times longer than previously thought. The results call into question controversial findings that some reversals could occur within a human lifetime.

Image credit: Brad Singer

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National Science Foundation-funded engineers have developed a mathematical framework that can turn any sheet of material into any prescribed shape, inspired by the paper craft kirigami (from the Japanese, kiri, meaning to cut and kami, meaning paper). Unlike its better-known cousin origami, which uses folds to shape paper, kirigami relies on a pattern of cuts in a flat paper sheet to change its flexibility and allow it to morph into 3D shapes. Artists have long used this artform to create everything from pop-up cards to castles and dragons. This research follows previous work by the researchers that characterized how origami-based patterns could be used as building blocks to create almost any three-dimensional curved shape. Next the researchers aim to explore how to combine cuts and folds to achieve any shape with a given set of properties, thus linking origami and kirigami.

Image credit: Harvard SEAS

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A National Science Foundation-funded research has discovered the root cause of why lithium metal batteries fail -- bits of lithium metal deposits break off from the surface of the anode during discharging and are trapped as "dead" or inactive lithium that the battery can no longer access. The discovery challenges the conventional belief that lithium metal batteries fail because of the growth of a layer, called the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI), between the lithium anode and the electrolyte. The researchers made their discovery by developing a technique to measure the amounts of inactive lithium species on the anode -- a first in the field of battery research -- and studying their micro- and nanostructures. The findings could pave the way for bringing rechargeable lithium metal batteries from the lab to the market.

Image credit: University of California - San Diego

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A National Science Foundation-funded study found that Charles Darwin's famous finches defy what has long been considered a key to evolutionary success: genetic diversity. The research on finches of the Galapagos Islands could change the way conservation biologists think about a species' potential for extinction in naturally fragmented populations. Researchers examined 212 tissue samples from museum specimens and living birds. Some of the museum specimens in the study were collected by Darwin himself in 1835. Only one of the extinct populations, a species called the vegetarian finch, had lower genetic diversity compared to modern survivors. Specifically, researchers believe a biological phenomenon called sink-source dynamics is at play in which larger populations of birds from other islands act as a "source" of immigrants to the island population that is naturally shrinking, the "sink." Without these immigrant individuals, the natural population on the island likely would continue to dwindle to local extinction. The immigrants have diverse genetics because they are coming from a variety of healthier islands, giving this struggling "sink" population inflated genetic diversity.

Image credit: Jose Barreiro

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Machine learning algorithms can sometimes do a great job with a little help from human expertise, at least in the field of materials science. In many specialized areas of science, engineering and medicine, researchers are turning to machine learning algorithms to analyze data sets that have grown too large for humans to understand. In materials science, success with this effort could accelerate the design of next-generation advanced functional materials, where development now usually depends on old-fashioned trial and error. By themselves, however, data analytics techniques borrowed from other research areas often fail to provide the insights needed to help materials scientists and engineers choose which of many variables to adjust -- and the techniques can't account for dramatic changes such as the introduction of a new chemical compound into the process. In a new study, researchers explain a technique known as dimensional stacking, which shows that human experience still has a role to play in the age of machine intelligence. The machines gain an edge at solving a challenge when the data to be analyzed are intelligently organized based on human knowledge of what factors are likely to be important and related. "When your machine accepts strings of data, it really does matter how you are putting those strings together," said Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb, the paper's corresponding author and a scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "We must be mindful that the organization of data before it goes to the algorithm makes a difference. If you don't plug the information in correctly, you will get a result that isn't necessarily correlated with the reality of the physics and chemistry that govern the materials."

Image credit: Rob Felt/Georgia Tech

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A new study shows that the West Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing some of the most rapid climate change on Earth, featuring dramatic increases in temperatures, retreats in glaciers and declines in sea ice. The Southern Ocean absorbs nearly half of the carbon dioxide -- the key greenhouse gas linked to climate change -- that is absorbed by all the world's oceans. The study tapped an unprecedented 25 years of oceanographic measurements in the Southern Ocean and highlights the need for more monitoring in the region. The research revealed that carbon dioxide absorption by surface waters off the West Antarctic Peninsula is linked to the stability of the upper ocean, along with the amount and type of algae present. A stable upper ocean provides algae with ideal growing conditions. During photosynthesis, algae remove carbon dioxide from the surface ocean, which in turn draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. From 1993 to 2017, changes in sea ice dynamics off the West Antarctic Peninsula stabilized the upper ocean, resulting in greater algal concentrations and a shift in the mix of algal species. That's led to a nearly five-fold increase in carbon dioxide absorption during the summertime. The research also found a strong north-south difference in the trend of carbon dioxide absorption. The southern portion of the peninsula, which to date has been less impacted by climate change, experienced the most dramatic increase in carbon dioxide absorption, demonstrating the poleward progression of climate change in the region.

Image credit: Drew Spacht/The Ohio State University

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On August 17, 2017, scientists made history with the first direct observation of a merger between two neutron stars. It was the first cosmic event detected in both gravitational waves and the entire spectrum of light, from gamma rays to radio emissions. The impact also created a kilonova -- a turbocharged explosion that instantly forged several hundred planets’ worth of gold and platinum. The observations provided the first compelling evidence that kilonovae produce large quantities of heavy metals, a finding long predicted by theory. Astronomers suspect that all of the gold and platinum on Earth formed as a result of ancient kilonovae created during neutron star collisions. Based on data from the 2017 event, first spotted by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), astronomers began to adjust their assumptions of how a kilonova should appear to Earth-bound observers. A team of scientists reexamined data from a gamma-ray burst spotted in August 2016 and found new evidence for a kilonova that went unnoticed during the initial observations.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/E. Troja

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National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers from North Carolina State and Elon universities have developed a technique that allows them to remotely control the movement of soft robots, lock them into position for as long as needed and later reconfigure the robots into new shapes. The technique relies on light and magnetic fields. "By engineering the properties of the material, we can control the soft robot's movement remotely; we can get it to hold a given shape; we can then return the robot to its original shape or further modify its movement; and we can do this repeatedly. All of those things are valuable, in terms of this technology's utility in biomedical or aerospace applications," says Joe Tracy, a professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper on the work. In experimental testing, the researchers demonstrated that the soft robots could be used to form "grabbers" for lifting and transporting objects. The soft robots could also be used as cantilevers or folded into "flowers" with petals that bend in different directions. "We are not limited to binary configurations, such as a grabber being either open or closed," says Jessica Liu, first author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "We can control the light to ensure that a robot will hold its shape at any point."

Image credit: Jessica A.C. Liu

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Bridges make travel faster and more convenient, but, in an earthquake, these structures are subject to forces that can cause extensive damage and make them unsafe. Now civil and environmental engineer Petros Sideris of Texas A&M University is leading a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research project to investigate the performance of hybrid sliding-rocking (HSR) columns. HSR columns provide the same support as conventional bridge infrastructure columns but are more earthquake-resistant. HSR columns are a series of individual concrete segments held together by steel cables that allow for controlled sliding and rocking. This allows the columns to shift without damage, while post-tensioning strands ensure that at the end of an earthquake the columns are pushed back to their original position. Conventional bridges are cast-in-place monolithic concrete elements that are strong but inflexible. Structural damage in these bridge columns, typically caused by a natural disaster, often forces a bridge to close until repairs are completed. But bridges with HSR columns can withstand large earthquakes with minimal damage and require minor repairs, likely without bridge closures. Such infrastructure helps with post-disaster response and recovery and can save thousands in taxpayer dollars. In an earthquake, HSR columns provide "multiple advantages to the public," Sideris said. "By preventing bridge damage, we can maintain access to affected areas immediately after an event for response teams to be easily deployed, and help affected communities recover faster. In mitigating losses related to post-event bridge repairs and bridge closures, more funds can be potentially directed to supporting the recovery of the affected communities." According to Joy Pauschke, NSF program director for natural hazards engineering, "NSF invests in fundamental engineering research so that, in the future, the nation's infrastructure can be more resilient to earthquakes, hurricanes, and other forces of nature."

Image credit: Texas A&M University