You see them crowding checkout counters at grocery stores — a rainbow of bubble-gum pink, lime green and blueberry packets, slender and upright, like a multicolored chorus line of dancers tempting an impulse purchase. At the gym, they’re dissolved into enormous jugs of cherry-tinted water.

They’re especially prevalent on TikTok. Just search #watertok for a flood of #watergirlies, clutching Stanley tumblers at their #waterstations, which are crammed with neon-bright hydration powders and flavored syrups. #Wateroftheday? How about Strawberry Birthday Cake Water. Or Caramel Apple Sucker Water.

“If your water isn’t turning your mouth blue, you’re apparently hydrating wrong,” one skeptical dietitian observed on TikTok last year.

Hydration supplements in the form of powders, tablets and liquid additives have become a norm among consumers over the last decade, and are more popular than ever. The global electrolyte hydration drinks market was valued at $1.72 billion in 2023, according to Data Bridge Market Research. And it’s growing. The business of boosting one’s H2O is projected to reach $3.26 billion by 2031.

Why hydration is important

This bonanza of new hydration products plays to a basic but critical need: More than 50% of people around the globe, including in the U.S., are chronically underhydrated, according to the National Institutes of Health, which cites worldwide surveys. (“Underhydration” refers to people who don’t meet the recommended daily fluid intake, whereas “dehydration” refers to a more severe fluid deficit.)

Those statistics are concerning, considering hydration is the oil to our body’s engine. It aids in muscle repair, digestion, energy and focus. It’s necessary for lubricating joints, regulating body temperature and removing toxins from the body. It carries nutrients to cells and is crucial for hormonal balance, which can affect blood pressure and the menstrual cycle. Our level of hydration also contributes to our hair and skin health.

“Proper hydration keeps every system of the body running smoothly,” says dietitian-nutritionist Vanessa King, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

After years of striving to adhere to a 1945 U.S. Food and Nutrition Board recommendation of eight glasses of water a day, it tracks that we’d want to zhuzh up the ritual. (Some studies, however, suggest we need less water daily and that water requirements vary for individuals.) But is there any actual health value to these water additives? Do they aid with hangovers, enhance our workouts or energize us? Or are they simply there to make plain old water taste like a piña colada?

It depends on what product you’re peppering into your Hydro Flask.

“Hydration supplements can replenish you when your fluid status is down — so after workouts, for hangovers or when you’ve been sick,” says Dr. Vijaya Surampudi, an endocrinologist, nutrition specialist and professor at UCLA. “Depending on their composition, some get better absorbed and improve your hydration. Some are just for flavoring and they can have a lot of sugar or artificial coloring — it can be like drinking a soda.”

She notes that because these powders and tablets are categorized as supplements, they aren’t regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “So you just have to trust what’s on the label.” (To fill this gap in regulation, some sleuthing social media users have even carved out a niche content genre in which they analyze the ingredients listed on the labels of celebrity-backed supplements.)

What’s in hydration supplements?

More often than not, a hydration powder or tablet includes a mix of four main ingredients: electrolytes (such as sodium, potassium, magnesium and chloride), a carbohydrate (such as glucose), vitamins (typically B vitamins, sometimes C) and amino acids. Depending on their quantity, and how they interact with one another, those ingredients may help hydrate your body more efficiently.

How these ingredients chemically interact with one another directly affects hydration. Water follows sodium for absorption, for example, and sodium molecules travel best with glucose molecules across the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, Surampudi says, so carbohydrates like sugar are not a bad thing in your supplements — they’re actually preferred.

Even so, it’s a delicate balance. A supplement with too much sugar may work against your aim to be healthier.

“The body stores excess sugar for energy later, and that’s stored as fat,” Surampudi says. “And if you drink too much [sugary fluids], that can lead to health complications.”

While sugar and sodium help fuel hydration, those with diabetes or high blood pressure should be careful with hydration supplements, paying attention to their sugar or salt intake.

“Use it with caution and discuss with your healthcare provider,” Surampudi says.

Do we need them?

Hydration supplements aren’t unsafe for most people to take daily if the sugar content is moderate — but they’re often not necessary, says Dr. Christopher Duggan, editor of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and a Harvard Medical School professor.

Most adults and children don’t meet daily hydration recommendations, he says, which is currently 13 eight-ounce cups of fluid for healthy men and nine for healthy women, according to the National Academy of Medicine. (Note this recommendation includes all fluids, not just water. And we tend to get 20% of our water intake from food.)

“So if adding a light flavoring gets them to drink more water, that’s probably not a terrible thing,” Duggan said. “But if the expense is high, it’s ultimately not worthwhile. Because unless you’re participating in vigorous exercise or your GI tract doesn’t work normally, water alone is probably an adequate hydration.”

Some hydration supplements even contain ingredients that are not hydrating when consumed in large quantities, such as caffeine. Though caffeine is a diuretic, consuming up to 400 mg of it daily can actually help with hydration, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ King. Other flavored powders contain various B vitamins, which may cause problems in excess.

“B6, if you consume too much of it because you’re getting it elsewhere, there’s a risk for some people of neuropathy, which means damage to the peripheral nerves (which are outside of the brain and spinal cord), and which can cause numbness and tingling, among other things,” Surampudi said.

Surampudi recommends consuming hydration supplements only in moments when your body is especially challenged.

“If there’s a situation where you’re fluid down, or in a high altitude or in an extremely hot climate, that’s where these things can be helpful,” she said.

How 8 top hydration supplement brands perform

So take your hydration boosters with a healthy dose of skepticism. Here’s an analysis of eight hydration supplements — the good, the bad and the meh — according to L.A.-based dietitian Katie Chapmon.

Liquid I.V.’s Hydration Multiplier. “I would not have someone choose this to use every day because the added sugar is really too much — it’s the first and second listed ingredients. The other thing is: They boast, on their website, that the hydration multiplier has ‘3x the electrolytes of the leading sports drink.’ And that may be wonderful for someone who is doing very high-impact sports or who would require serious electrolytes replacement, but it’s not for the average person. Electrolytes balance out our cells, but if we have too much it throws off that balance and our cells can actually become oversaturated; it can make it harder for that cell to work and to get hydrated. This is why a more moderate amount of electrolytes may be a better option for athletes and heavy sweaters.”

Nuun Sport Hydration. “This one has a lower amount of added sugar. It might be for someone who wants to flavor their water — which, alone, would help increase fluid intake and therefore their hydration. It has electrolytes — your sodium, magnesium, potassium, chloride — but I would not have someone use this from a serious athletic standpoint because athletes need to not only replenish electrolytes lost but also sugars lost through expelling energy through exercise. Would it help hydrate cells? Sure, a little bit. But most people will end up drinking this because they like the flavors — and a lot of people like Nuun’s flavors.”

Cure Hydrating Electrolyte Drink Mix. “I like this one as a water flavoring — out of all of them, it was one of my favorites for that. But it’s not a true electrolyte blend. It includes sodium and Himalayan salt. But there’s no chloride and magnesium. This would not be a recommendation for gym-goers or athletes as it doesn’t contain any sugars, which are needed for adequate electrolyte and energy replenishment. It’s just a water flavoring because it contains lower amounts of sodium and potassium than other hydration alternatives. The ingredients are straightforward and clean — it has no added sugar, which is great — but it’s not in the same boat as an electrolyte product, even though it’s advertised as that.”

MIO Strawberry Watermelon Liquid Water Enhancer and MIO Sport Electrolytes + B Vitamins. “Out of all of these, MIO is probably one of my least favorites. The first is just a water flavoring, but all these additives — like sucrose acetate and Red 40 — they’re not good for you. Red 40 is a synthetic food dye. It’s considered safe, but a lot of people can have allergies causing headaches. It’s safe but not as good as Cure, which uses a natural additive like beet powder for color. Mio Sport uses Blue 1 for coloring, also a synthetic dye. It does contain B vitamins — B3, B6 and B12 — but not the complete B complex of eight B vitamins. It’s also not as strong of an electrolyte blend. Like Cure, it is missing your chloride and magnesium.”

Ultima Replenisher, Broad Spectrum Electrolyte Mix. “This one is OK from a standpoint that it’s going to flavor water and has the electrolytes that we’re looking for, like potassium, sodium, magnesium and chloride. But they’re relatively low amounts, containing one-sixth the amount of sodium in Nuun and Orgain; therefore, it is not for serious athletes.”

LMNT Zero-Sugar Electrolytes, Raw Unflavored. “This is a clean, straightforward brand and zero calories — just your electrolytes. It isn’t flavored, though, so would not be an adequate water flavoring product. It would be good for a smoothie boost or if someone is on an elimination diet. But you’d need to add in a carbohydrate source, like fruit, for this to be more hydrating. It would have to be a whole lemon squeezed in. Or, if doing a smoothie, add a quarter cup of frozen berries to help absorb the electrolytes and help hydration.”

Water Boy Hydration Electrolyte Drink Mix for Weekend Recovery. “I was nervous about the high sodium content here. Sodium is the first ingredient and it’s almost 50% of your daily value. Compared to the other electrolytes — potassium, magnesium and chloride — the sodium is very high and the others are low. It’s a really odd balance. But it has zero sugar and it has only 1 gram of carbohydrates, which, from the ingredient list, I’m assuming is coming from a natural flavor or potentially the vegetable juice. But it’s not enough carbohydrates to balance out the high sodium content. This product is marketed as a ‘hangover’ cure because alcohol dehydrates the body; dehydration is a major contributor to hangover symptoms. Rehydrating the body using alkaline salt neutralizes the acid from alcohol and dehydration; however, this product would benefit from a better balance of all electrolytes, not just high amounts of sodium.”

Orgain Hydro Boost, Rapid Hydration Drink Mix. “I like this one for athletes. Sugar is the first ingredient, but for athletes that would help absorb the electrolytes. And it would also replenish glucose storage in the muscles. And I like the balance of sodium and chloride here too. There’s also potassium. It’s missing magnesium, but because the sodium and chloride are so well balanced it outweighs that. There’s also no synthetic flavoring. It’s all things like organic lemon juice and organic monk fruit. It’s not for everyday use because of the high sugar content, but great for athletes for specific use like a long-intense bike training, high energy, intermittent workouts or an event, like a sports game.”

_______

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

In Kansas, where a prolonged drought has killed crops and eroded the soil, Gail Fuller’s farm is like an oasis. Sheep, cows and chickens graze freely on crops and vegetation in a paradisiacal mess.

But if Fuller’s farm were to be hit by a tornado or flood, or be seriously impacted by the drought, he would be alone in footing the bill. That’s because his farming practices aren’t protected by federal crop insurance, a nearly century-old safety net that hasn’t adapted to the climate change era.

Fuller is one of a growing number of farmers who are uninsured or under-insured because the industry doesn’t support switching from traditional to regenerative farming, an approach that has the potential to sequester enough carbon to halve agricultural emissions by 2030. That shift is becoming more urgent both to slow climate change and insulate farmers from its impacts, yet the insurance industry continues to stand in the way.

In the U.S., agriculture accounts for about 11% of all greenhouse gas emissions. A large portion of that is tied to tilling soil, which releases carbon dioxide, and applying excessive fertilizer, which emits nitrous oxide. The latter is a greenhouse gas that’s more than 270 times more potent than CO2. Regenerative farming reduces those emissions by soaking up carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, storing carbon in the soil and capturing nitrogen that would otherwise run off into nearby streams.

Extreme weather also is becoming more frequent, threatening crop yields and supply chains. Twenty-four states, including Kansas, are experiencing severe to exceptional droughts, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. That poses a problem, as does heavy rain that can waterlog crops and is falling with increasing intensity. Almost 20% of the $140 billion in crop insurance payouts from 1991 to 2017 were due to rising temperatures, according to researchers at Stanford University. They estimate that percentage will continue to rise with the increasing frequency of extreme weather due to climate change.

Despite these risks — and the benefit regenerative agriculture can play in addressing climate change — stronger incentives have locked in the status quo, according to Anne Schechinger, Midwest director at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG).

Crop insurance policies mainly cover conventional commodity crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat. Farmers growing them typically enroll in multi-peril insurance, which insures individual crops against poor harvests caused by disease, flooding, droughts and other extreme weather.

Like health, car or property insurance, appraisals for losses or damages rely on standards — known as Good Farming Practices — that ensure low yields aren’t caused by mismanagement. But these rules cannot include a practice that may lower a crop’s yield and therefore tend to follow established industrial, monoculture practices: A farmer caught growing different crops between rows or terminating their cover crops too late, for example, is at risk of having their insurance claims denied.

Regenerative agriculture often involves interspersing different crops in the same field and growing lower-yielding perennial plants that can create issues for insurers. But crop insurance payouts largely don’t depend on whether a farmer’s practices increase or mitigate climate risks, according to University of Iowa professor Silvia Secchi.

Fuller, a third-generation farmer, started experimenting with regenerative farming practices in the mid-1990s, believing he’d see better yields and more resilient crops in the long term. He had grown cover crops in the off-season, one of the more commonly employed regenerative farming practices that involves planting non-market crops that improve soil health. At the time, Fuller was still covered by crop insurance and, per insurance rules, killed his cover crops with herbicide before growing his market crop.

But when his insurance company appraised the land in August 2012, during a severe drought, it determined that the remnant cover crops were weeds. The company denied all of Fuller’s claims — which led to his lending institution dropping his operating line of credit.

Fuller sued his insurance company and won. Two years later, however, when he needed them to cover losses for two fields of soybeans, they denied his claims again. The financial turmoil across those two years forced him to downsize his farm to 400 acres from 1800, and he finally decided to quit crop insurance entirely.

“Once you go broke as a farmer, it’s pretty hard to claw your way back,” Fuller said. “I did not want to be a part of that system. We’ve got to find a better way to farm.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has introduced reforms and alternatives to the crop insurance program to accommodate climate risks over the past decade, including adding coverage for new crops and a $5-per-acre incentive to plant cover crops during the offseason.

The Risk Management Agency, which controls federal crop insurance, also has expanded its coverage of certain climate-smart practices, like lowering water use, cover cropping and injecting nitrogen into the soil, rather than layering it on the soil’s surface. Farmers must still follow specific rules, such as terminating their cover crops early enough, which some scientists think limits how much these practices can reduce emissions.

The crop insurance system is already under stress from climate change. The program has to evolve to incentivize practices appropriate to different regions and cover a variety of risks, a USDA spokesperson said, all while being actuarially sound — meaning the program must charge high enough premiums to cover expected losses.

“Even at a micro-scale, a bad storm may be damaging to one type of crop, while providing much-needed rain for another crop,” the USDA spokesperson told Bloomberg Green.

“Crop insurance is voluntary,” said RJ Layher, the director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation. Farmers practicing regenerative techniques not covered by the Good Farming Practices can look for other options, he added, including showing the Risk Management Agency that their practices are actuarially sound.

Collecting sufficient data to prove that climate-friendly practices like crop diversification won’t impact yield is a big ask for any one farmer, however.

The USDA also initiated the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection Program in 2014, which insures a farm’s entire revenue rather than individual crops, providing a safety net for farmers who plant companion crops or raise animals in their fields.

But the number of farmers participating in the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection Program is small, according to EWG’s Schechinger. About 1,800 policies were sold in 2023, according to the USDA, which accounts for less than 1% of crop insurance. The program involves significantly more paperwork and an insured revenue cap that doesn’t always cover the entire farm’s revenue, which can be prohibitive to insurance agents in selling and farmers in buying the policy, Layher said.

According to Layher, the Farm Bureau supports improvements to the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection Program that would make it more accessible to farmers and easier for insurance agents to sell — both reforms are proposed in the Farm Bill that is stalled in the House until at least September.

The regenerative farming movement is relatively small, but it’s gained steam in recent years thanks to federal support and agribusinesses eager to align their supply chains and sustainability goals. Companies like CoverCress Inc., which is majority-owned by Bayer AG, are trying to get farmers to plant cover crops that can be used for sustainable aviation fuel.

But for now, the push for changing insurance rules still relies largely on farmers like Fuller and Rick Clark, a third-generation farmer from west central Indiana who has been uninsured for six years because he practices regenerative farming.

When he’s not working his farm — which utilizes cover crops across all 7,000 acres — Clark teaches other farmers how to eliminate chemical fertilizers and use cover crops on their farms.

“We have to make sure the path towards change is an easy path,” Clark said. One of the biggest challenges uninsured farmers face is from their lending institution, which often requires them to have an insurance policy to continue receiving loans.

Clark testified in front of Congress in late 2022 on behalf of Regenerate America, a coalition that lobbies for agricultural reform, asking for the legislative reforms Schechinger said are necessary. The day after Clark testified, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law that includes a $19.5 billion investment into USDA conservation programs. He felt like he had a small part to play in that.

“At some point when you’re in there, you wonder if anybody’s even paying attention to what you’re saying,” Clark said. But then, “you feel like maybe your words don’t fall on deaf ears and maybe there are people who are truly paying attention.”

_____

(With assistance from Sophie Butcher.)

_____

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Researchers say the polymetallic nodules that mining companies hope to harvest from the deep-ocean seafloor may be a source of oxygen for the animals, plants and bacteria that live there.

This discovery of this “dark oxygen” has the potential to rock negotiations happening this month in Jamaica, where a world rule-making body — the International Seabed Authority — is meeting to decide the future of deep-sea mining.

The work was published recently in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“This study is a really good example of how limited our knowledge of the deep ocean currently is, and how much more we still stand to benefit with further scientific research,” said Diva Amon, a marine biologist from Trinidad and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Benioff Ocean Initiative.

The excitement is focused on the potato-sized rocks — or polymetallic nodules — found littered across areas of the ocean floor. These nodules contain minerals, such as cobalt and nickel, that green-energy batteries and technologies require.

For years, companies such as Canada’s The Metals Co. have been working to persuade the international governing authority to greenlight their plans to harvest these metallic nodules in the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion Clipper Zone — a stretch of sea that spans 4,500 miles between Hawaii and Mexico.

The company has argued that the metals are essential for building technologies that do not rely on fossil fuels. They say the impact mining will have on the ocean floor is not only minimal, but also doesn’t compare with the destruction of rainforests and human communities that terrestrial mining inflicts.

But environmentalists, oceanographers and others say that driving large harvesting machines across the pristine, little-known ocean floor — atop and along areas of sediment three and four miles below the surface — could have unforeseen and disastrous consequences. They are urging lawmakers to postpone or ban the industry from digging up one of the last “untouched” ecosystems on the planet.

This new research, which was funded by TMC, suggests the toll of mining the area could be greater than anyone had imagined.

That’s because a team of international scientists found that the prized nodules produce oxygen — and may be responsible for enriching this dark, remote ecosystem with one of life’s most important elements.

Jeffrey Marlow, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and one of the authors on the paper, said he and his team had received funding from TMC to conduct baseline environmental studies, which included sending something to the ocean floor called a benthic chamber.

These structures, which he described as being about 10 feet tall — “think of it as just like an overturned box or something that you jab into the seafloor,” Marlow said — are watertight and gas tight, and contain instruments designed to take measurements of the sediment’s chemistry and composition.

The sampling method is pretty standard, he said. Scientists measure the amount of oxygen that is lost, or declines, during a 48-hour period as the chamber sits in place on the ocean floor. The decline serves as a proxy for the amount of life down there — as animals respirate, they consume oxygen.

But when they sent the chambers down for this analysis, they noticed that oxygen levels went up, not down.

Marlow said they were certain the machinery was faulty. They tried again and noticed the same results.

“These benthic chamber experiments have been done around the world for decades,” he said. “So the technology and everything is pretty well established.”

He said they spent days, then weeks troubleshooting.

“We had a couple of redundant ways of measuring it, so we knew that not one of them was failing. Ultimately, we were forced to conclude” that oxygen was being produced.

What the researchers think is happening is that nodules — and the metals in them — are working like a battery, at a chemical level.

“These rocks are made up of minerals which have metals that are … distributed throughout the rock in heterogeneous ways,” he said. “Each of these metals and minerals is able to hold on to an electrical charge in a slightly different way. So essentially, just the natural variation means that there is charge separation … in the same way there is on a battery.”

That means there’s enough voltage to take water and “split it open in hydrogen and oxygen.”

But not everyone is convinced by — or happy with — the study’s conclusion.

TMC, which sponsored the research, sent the Los Angeles Times a critique of the paper, stating the research had been rejected by four scientific publications until finding a home at Nature, which the company described as “a journal that has taken a strong view against deep-sea mineral sourcing.”

A request for comment went unanswered by the journal’s communications team, but the periodical is generally regarded as one of the most prestigious and selective publications among scientists.

TMC also said the methodology was flawed, arguing that the team’s findings contradicted other work that had been conducted in the Clarion Clipper Zone, but which used a different method.

“This inability to reproduce the findings with both methods suggests that elevated oxygen levels are in fact an artifact in the data,” said the company in a statement. The company noted it was “currently preparing a peer-reviewed paper as rebuttal.”

Bo Barker Jorgensen, a microbiologist at Denmark’s Aarhus University — who was not involved with the research or on TMC’s payroll — said the work elicited more questions than it did answers.

He said he did not “think this discovery is important for our understanding of the ocean in general or for deep-sea mining” and described the research as a “novel and very puzzling process for which the mechanism is still not clear.”

The study’s authors pushed back on the critiques, stating they too had been puzzled by their findings — but they’d been rigorous in eliminating every other possible scenario.

“We were the worst critics of this paper for a long time,” said Andrew Sweetman, leader of the Seafloor Ecology and Biogeochemistry research group at the Scottish Assn. for Marine Science, and lead author on the paper. “For eight years I discarded the data showing oxygen production, thinking my sensors were faulty. Once we realised something may be going on, we tried to disprove it, but in the end we simply couldn’t.”

He said he welcomed more research on the topic and urged other scientists to investigate further.

“Following the publication of this paper, I have been approached by other researchers with similar data sets also showing evidence of dark oxygen production that they discarded thinking equipment was faulty,” he said.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — When it comes to the political history of gay rights in the United States, a lot of people think they have it figured out.

They assume “one party is wholly committed to LGBTQ rights, and the other is completely opposed. And it’s understandable why a lot of Americans think that way,” says historian Neil J. Young.

But it’s not that simple, Young says. In his recent book, “Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right,” he traces a more complex path from the 1950s to the present day.

Young joined “Equal Time” this month to discuss some of the conservatives who stayed true to their values while working toward same-sex marriage and the end of policies like “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The excerpt below has been condensed and edited. For more, listen to the full podcast.

Q: What did early gay rights activism look like before the Stonewall demonstrations in 1969?

A: I begin my book in the Cold War era, the Lavender Scare, which was when both political parties were really committed to rooting out homosexuals from the federal government and making life difficult for gay persons in this country.

I was surprised to discover that there was an activism among a handful of gay conservatives that’s really important to the advancement of a gay rights movement — or at the time, it was known as the homophile movement.

This story has been told mostly from the left, focusing on folks like Harry Hay, who was the leader of the Mattachine Society. But Dorr Legg and other right-of-center gay men, they were making arguments about limiting federal power, constraining the government, as the pathway to freedom for homosexuals.

Q: Who were some other key gay conservatives?

A: Someone I didn’t know that much about, but is a very important character in the book, is Leonard Matlovich. He was an Air Force sergeant, served three tours of duty in Vietnam, was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart and was seriously injured in combat. He came out of the closet in 1975, and he did this in order to challenge the military’s ban against gay servicepersons.

He teamed up with Frank Kameny, who was a very prominent gay rights activist who was challenging the ban. And Leonard Matlovich was in a lot of ways the perfect poster boy, because he was good-looking, he was really masculine, he was from the South and he had all those military honors.

Kameny thought it was important to show that this isn’t some hippie radical who’s trying to revolutionize American society and destroy the American military. This is a conservative Republican, and he is just fighting for the right to die for his country.

And of course, he doesn’t win his legal battle against the military. But he sets in motion a history that takes several decades to resolve and ultimately leads to the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Q: What were some of the conflicts over tactics and priorities back then?

A: The gay Republican organizations I was looking at, they were all absolutely committed to defeating the Briggs Initiative, or Proposition 6, that’s put on the ballot in 1978 and would have made it illegal for any gay person in the state of California to work in the public school system.

But then after that, what’s next? What are we existing for? One of the ongoing debates was this question of, “Am I a gay Republican, or a Republican gay?”

The group that said they were Republican gays, or Republicans who happened to be gay, were much more conservative in their politics, and they didn’t believe in the notion of gay rights. They said, “That’s not something the federal government can grant me. I just want to be left alone.”

And that’s a conservative principle, right? Stay out of my bedroom, stay out of my wallet, stay out of my business. So they opposed any laws on the books that actively discriminated and they wanted to work to eliminate those laws, but they didn’t want any sort of granting of rights, and they didn’t want any sort of identity-based politics tied to their sexual identity.

Q: Many look at the Ronald Reagan years, and the reaction to HIV/AIDS, as an inflection point.

A: A more tolerant attitude was actually beginning to develop in the nation around homosexuality in the early ’80s. That was almost completely wiped away because of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the way that folks like Pat Buchanan and Gary Bauer, these hard-right conservatives within the Reagan administration, really pumped up a homophobic politics based on fears about the disease, to push back against the gay rights movement more broadly.

And so gay Republicans were caught in the crosshairs of that. They had been huge defenders of Reagan, they were big admirers of him both in ’80 and ’84, but by the late ’80s and into the 1990s, a lot of them who were still living were incredibly disillusioned with the Republican Party.

Q: In the 2000s, the marriage equality movement went from divisive to generally accepted.

A: We saw public attitudes changing so quickly, in such a short period of time. One of the things I found fascinating was that gay conservatives, or the larger terrain of gay men on the right — [including] libertarians and classical liberals and other folks who don’t necessarily even identify with a conservative label — were really fundamental in developing the intellectual argument for same-sex marriage. I’m thinking about people like Andrew Sullivan and Bruce Bawer and Jonathan Rauch.

They were talking about the right to same-sex marriage far before any gay Democrat was. They helped move the needle among enough independents and enough Republicans to make this a consensus position in the nation, and this was their strategy all along.

Q: How is the gay conservative movement evolving now, when we see most Republicans adjusting in the image of Donald Trump?

A: When I was finishing the book to go to press, this was when the “Don’t Say Gay” stuff was happening in my home state of Florida and was spreading across the nation. And gay Republicans have been in a lot of ways big supporters of Ron DeSantis on this, because they believe that it’s very specific, targeted legislation that only has to do with underage children. So I [asked people], “OK, maybe that’s the case for this particular legislation, but are you at all worried about where this is headed? Do you think this is the opening wedge of a broader assault on LGBTQ rights, including same-sex marriage?”

And all of them said, “No, no, no. Marriage is completely safe and protected. It’s written in stone.”

We have to secure progress through ongoing action, not taking it for granted and assuming that it’s just written in stone and can never be overturned. I mean, the Dobbs [decision overturning abortion rights] is a great example of this, and hopefully there won’t be more to come.

___

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

This week, a coalition of election officials, businesses, and civic engagement, religious and veterans groups will make a national push to encourage hundreds of thousands of Americans to serve as poll workers in November’s presidential election.

Poll worker demand is high. With concerns over the harassment and threats election officials face, and with the traditional bench of poll workers growing older, hundreds of counties around the country are in desperate need of people who are willing to serve their communities.

On Aug. 1, there will be a social media blitz across Facebook, TikTok, X and other platforms that will encourage Americans to spend a few hours helping democracy. They’re being asked to wake up before sunrise, welcome voters to polling places, hand them a ballot, and make sure the voting process goes smoothly.

Many sites will see long lines and frustrated voters; they may face unexpected problems such as a power outage or a cantankerous voting machine. Nearly all will hand out scores of tiny “I Voted” stickers.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that works with election officials to improve the voting process, established the recruitment day in 2020. The commission offers a social media toolkit, full of suggested hashtags and cartoon video snippets, to help local election officials reach potential new workers. There are 100,000 or so polling places across the country, and the agency’s website shows potential workers how to sign up.

“Serving as a poll worker is the single most impactful, nonpartisan way that any individual person can engage in the elections this year,” said Marta Hanson, the national program manager for Power the Polls, one of the leading nonpartisan groups in the recruitment effort.

“Poll workers are the face of our democracy and the face of our elections,” she told Stateline.

Launched in the spring of 2020 during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, Power the Polls gathered nonprofits and businesses together to help election workers close the gap left after many poll workers, who tend to be older, decided to no longer serve due to health concerns. Nearly half of the poll workers who served in 2020 were older than 60.

The group’s effort recruited 700,000 prospective poll workers nationwide.

“It is our vision that every voter has someone who looks like them and speaks their language when they show up at the polling place, and that election administrators have the people that they need,” Hanson said.

Polling places still need poll workers. This year Power the Polls is tracking more than 1,835 jurisdictions, spanning all 50 states and the District of Columbia, that the group identified through outreach to election administrators, monitoring local news and working with on-the-ground partners.

Of those jurisdictions, Hanson said, 700 towns and counties have “really, really high needs.”

For example, Boston needs 500 new poll workers by its Sept. 3 primary, while Detroit needs 1,000 more people to sign up before November. In small towns in Connecticut and rural California, officials are desperate to find 20 people to help. Los Angeles County is looking for people who speak one of a dozen languages that are prevalent in the area.

In suburban Cobb County just outside of Atlanta, Director of Elections Tate Fall said recruiting poll workers has been difficult, but not at the level she’s heard about in other communities nationally. Her team has found success at farmers markets, Juneteenth festivals and senior services events.

Among her challenges, she said, is that many of the poll workers who have signed up this year are new and need more training and practice before November. She also worries about reliability.

“It’s just we have a lot of people sign up and then they never mark their availability, or they only want to work in their precinct,” Fall said. “We need people that are a bit more flexible. But overall, we’re doing good.”

Over the past four years, local election officials have been bombarded by misinformation, harassment and threats fueled by the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

To ease voters’ skepticism about ballot security, officials will often welcome them into the elections office and give them a tour.

In Nevada, Carson City Clerk-Recorder Scott Hoen goes a step further by inviting skeptical residents to see the election process firsthand as a poll worker.

“Lo and behold, once they go through the cycle, they understand and they can touch, feel it, see it, know it, understand it, that we run a really good, tight election here in Carson City,” Hoen said. “I think they have a better comfort with me now doing that, teaching them what’s going on.”

In Marion County, Florida, Supervisor of Elections Wesley Wilcox has been worried about people who believe the 2020 election was stolen working as poll workers and potentially disrupting the voting process. But the required training to become a poll worker has alleviated some of that concern.

“We’ve had them, and they actually become some of our advocates in this process,” he said.

Joseph Kirk, the election supervisor for Bartow County, Georgia, said that, beyond learning about the voting system, being a poll worker is just fun.

Kirk tells voters that it’s an opportunity to take a day off work, get paid, meet new people, see the characters of the community and enjoy a good meal, since some poll workers bring in homemade food to share.

And for the high school government students he recruits in their classes, it’s a way to participate in elections as early as 16.

“It’s a community,” he said. “And being part of it is really special.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

MEXICO CITY — Speaking in Guatemala City on her first foreign trip as vice president, Kamala Harris issued a stern message to Central Americans.

“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” she said. “Do not come. Do not come.”

Her 2021 remarks were widely scorned by rights advocates as arrogant and out of touch with the complex mix of poverty, violence and other factors that drives people to leave their countries. Later, as border crossings surged, Harris’ words would be mocked by Republicans as evidence that the Biden administration had no plan when it came to halting migration.

The episode underscored the political pitfalls of an issue expected to play a key role in this year’s presidential race — and the formidable nature of the foreign policy portfolio that Harris had taken on at President Joe Biden’s request: addressing the root causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

It was an unwinnable assignment that Harris never wanted and never fully embraced. And while she claimed some accomplishments — including coaxing private companies to pledge billions of dollars of investment in Central America — she was criticized for her tepid interest in the issue and for visiting Latin America just twice.

“It was promising at first, but then disappointing,” said a Mexican official who met with Harris in 2021 when she and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed an agreement to forge new development programs in Central America.

Harris grew distant after the summit and stopped attending meetings, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity: “She quit.”

Now that she is the leading Democratic presidential candidate, Harris is facing renewed scrutiny over her record in the White House and her views on immigration more broadly.

Harris was never in charge of immigration enforcement or border policy. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from painting her as a failed “border czar” who is to blame for a record surge in unauthorized migration under Biden.

“Let me remind you: Kamala had one job. One job. And that was to fix the border,” Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, said at the Republican National Convention this month. “Now imagine her in charge of the entire country.”

As for those on the left disappointed that Harris hasn’t been a stronger defender of migrants, some acknowledge that would be difficult in the current political climate, where concern over immigration has become a top issue for voters.

Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, has known Harris for decades and said her comments in Guatemala belied a track record of standing up for migrants earlier in her political career.

“Why have you been put up to say this?” Salas remembers thinking. “This is not who you are.”

Manfredo Marroquín, an anti-corruption activist in Guatemala who met Harris there in 2021, said she seemed sympathetic to migrants, but that it was clear “she was under pressure to show a hard line on immigration.”

Harris, he said, had been saddled with the hopeless task of quickly curtailing migration from a long-troubled region where leaving to work in the U.S. has long been one of the only escapes from poverty.

He termed her assignment in the region “mission impossible.”

______

When Harris became the district attorney of San Francisco in 2004, she quickly established herself as a supporter of immigrant rights. She prosecuted an unlicensed contractor in a wage theft case involving day laborers and criticized proposed federal legislation that would have made helping people without legal status a felony.

She continued that bent as state attorney general, most notably opposing a Republican bill in Congress that would have withheld federal funding from California police who complied with the state’s sanctuary law that limited how long they could hold immigrants for transfer to immigration custody.

“When local law enforcement officials are seen as de facto immigration agents, it erodes the trust between our peace officers and the communities we are sworn to serve,” she wrote in a 2015 letter to U.S. senators. She also issued guidelines to California law enforcement agencies outlining “their responsibilities and potential liability for complying” with immigration authorities’ hold requests.

In her first official speech as a U.S. senator in 2017, Harris railed against President Donald Trump’s executive actions targeting immigrants. “I know what a crime looks like, and I will tell you: An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal,” she said. “The truth is the vast majority of immigrants in this country are hardworking people who deserve a pathway to citizenship.”

In budget talks, she favored beefing up border security with various forms of technology but called expanding the border wall “ridiculous.”

She was the first Senate Democrat to announce she would withhold support from any deal that didn’t include a fix for DACA, the Obama-era program that protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, and which Trump had targeted. She introduced bills to increase oversight of immigrant detention centers and halt funds for new facilities, as well as to provide legal representation for immigrants in deportation proceedings.

As she campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination ahead of the 2020 election, she was firmly to the left of Biden and many of her rivals on immigration issues. She made headlines when she said that, as president, she would consider overhauling the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. At the time, some on the left were advocating that it be abolished.

By the time Harris and Biden entered the White House, a political crisis was brewing at the U.S.-Mexico border, with the number of migrants entering the country steadily rising.

Biden tapped Harris to lead a high-profile response that bet heavily on improving conditions in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, the so-called Northern Triangle. The White House wanted Harris to enlist governments and private companies to fund economic and social programs throughout the region.

Harris got to work, soliciting donations from various countries, including Ireland, Japan and South Korea. Her office announced initiatives by companies, including Nespresso, which pledged to expand its collaboration with small-scale coffee farmers in hopes that more economic opportunity would diminish the allure of heading north.

But Harris seemed wary. While Biden had enthusiastically taken the lead on diplomacy in Latin America when he served under President Barack Obama, traveling to the region 16 times during his eight years as vice president, Harris seemed to sense the political danger of being identified with such a divisive topic as immigration.

Amid Republican efforts to paint immigration as a threat, 55% of U.S. adults now believe that “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” are a critical threat to U.S. vital interests, according to a recent Gallup poll. The poll showed that immigration had surged to the top of the issues that voters cared most about — more than the economy or inflation.

_____

Harris’ fears were confirmed by the flak she received in Guatemala after warning migrants to stay home.

“For Guatemalans, ‘Do not come’ was similar to Trump constructing a wall,” said José Echeverría, the director of the Organización Movimiento Cívico Nacional, who was among the civic leaders who met with Harris on that trip. He said he was disappointed that White House officials never followed up with him and other community leaders.

After the visit, the vice president’s office announced an additional $170 million in U.S. aid for Guatemala, including funding for job-training, agricultural research, law enforcement reform and other initiatives.

But Marroquín, the anti-corruption activist, said aid and initiatives from private companies seldom reach the country’s needy as effectively as remittances sent from migrants abroad.

“This aid hardly impacts anyone in the communities — it’s not enough, it’s delayed, or it never arrives,” he said.

Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said even the best-intentioned programs struggle to address what drives migration.

“The root cause is the disparity in the labor markets between the U.S. and the Northern Triangle, and there’s no workable strategy that’s gonna close that gap,” Freeman said. “Do you think you’re gonna make $20-an-hour jobs common in Guatemala?”

Still, Freeman said Harris’ approach was a welcome shift from the Trump administration, which withheld aid from Central American countries in 2019 in retaliation for what he called their lack of help in stanching the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.

“The Trump administration basically treated these countries as, you know, the source of a problem,” Freeman said. “Their entire policy was punitive.”

He and others also applauded Harris’ efforts to fight corruption and promote democracy — which were not priorities for Trump.

Harris shunned Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who after leaving office was arrested, extradited to the U.S. and sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking. She did the same with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who defied the constitution to stay in power a second term and alarmed civil rights advocates with widespread arrests and detentions as part of a crackdown on gangs.

When Guatemalan anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo won his country’s presidential race last year, the White House fought efforts by his political enemies to bar him from taking office. But when he finally took office, many Guatemalans were disappointed that Harris skipped his inauguration.

The results of Harris’ work are difficult to measure, analysts say.

The three countries in Harris’ portfolio showed significant drops in annual migration, from more than 700,000 border arrests in the 2021 budget year to fewer than 500,000 in 2023.

But total apprehensions at the border during the Biden presidency hit record numbers, with 2.2 million in 2022.

The peak during the Trump administration was 850,000 in 2019, though experts say the Biden figures undoubtedly include more people who crossed the border multiple times, thanks to a pandemic-era policy that rapidly returned migrants to Mexico, from where they could try again.

The increase during the Biden years was fueled by people fleeing Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti, who together accounted for 583,000 border arrests in 2023.

Some say the administration miscalculated, choosing a narrow strategy that failed to anticipate the shifting nature of migration. “Migration was becoming this completely different thing,” Freeman said.

Amid growing criticism about the border from Republicans but also from Democratic leaders in blue states such as New York, where hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers arrived in recent years, Biden enacted an executive order June 4 limiting asylum access at the southern border.

Since then, overall arrests of migrants have decreased by more than half, reaching the lowest point since Biden took office.

Immigration agents arrested fewer than 84,000 people in June, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which was lower than the 95,000 arrests in June 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

“Border crossings are lower today than when the previous administration left office,” Biden said in an Oval Office address on Wednesday about his decision to drop his run for reelection.

_____

Since Harris became the leading Democratic candidate, she has avoided the topic of migration.

But Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat running for Senate, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that Harris will be able to push back effectively on the Republican criticisms of her record — and the Biden administration’s record — on immigration.

“She can articulate what she and the president are doing to secure the border, to beef up resources, about how in fact Donald Trump was the one who tried to kill any work that might have come out of Congress on the issue,” he said.

Harris, who like Schiff is a former prosecutor, has “a case to make” about how Republicans “have demonstrated they have no interest in solving the problems at the border,” Schiff said.

“They only have an interest in exploiting them,” he added.

It’s clear that Harris campaign messaging on immigration will be distinct from that of Trump. The Republican Party’s official platform says the next Trump administration will “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,” removing “millions of illegal migrants.”

But given the electorate’s concerns about illegal immigration, it remains to be seen how far Harris will go in the other direction.

Salas, the California activist, remembers Harris as a fearless leader who championed immigrant rights during the toughest moments of the Trump administration. “She told us we could depend on her,” Salas recalled.

She was disappointed when, as vice president, Harris’ voice on the issue suddenly became “muted.”

If Harris wins the presidency, Salas wants her to “be bold on executive action,” using her power to defend immigrants in the same way Trump used his power to target them. She also wants Harris to push for immigration reform to regularize the status of undocumented migrants, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for decades.

“I know her and I know how competent and knowledgeable she is on this issue,” Salas said. “I saw how much she fought for us when we truly needed somebody that would stand up for us.”

_____

(Los Angeles Times staffer writer Noah Bierman in Washington and special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico contributed to this report. Linthicum and McDonnell reported from Mexico City, Castillo from Washington and Rector from San Francisco.)

___

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

“Yes. I’ll probably end up debating,” Trump said in an interview with Laura Ingraham that aired Monday evening on Fox News. He added that “the debates should take place before the votes start being cast.”

Some states begin the voting process as early as September. Still, the Republican nominee said that he could “make a case for not doing it.”

“I want to do a debate but I can also say this. Everybody knows who I am and now people know who she is,” Trump said, casting Harris as a “radical left lunatic.”

Democrats are poised to nominate Harris in the coming days after President Joe Biden’s decision to stand down from the 2024 race and endorse her. Harris, who has seen the party coalesce behind her, said last week that she was “ready to debate” Trump and accused him of “backpedaling” from an agreement for a Sept. 10 forum to be hosted by ABC News.

But Trump’s campaign refused to commit, with a spokesman saying debate plans “cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee.”

The ABC News forum is one of two that Trump and Biden agreed to before the Democratic incumbent exited the presidential contest. Biden ended his reelection bid after pressure from Democrats worried that he would lose to Trump following a calamitous first debate hosted by CNN that cemented worries about the president’s health and acuity.

Trump on Monday criticized ABC, calling it a “terrible outfit” and adding that he did not “like that ABC is going to get rich.”

In the past, Trump has said he would prefer conservative-leaning Fox News to host a debate.

Earlier Monday, Trump also criticized Fox News in a post on his Truth Social platform, appearing to bristle at its coverage of Harris and ads from Trump opponents that aired on the network, writing “We have to WIN WITHOUT FOX!”

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Every clear night for the last three weeks, Bob Stephens has pointed his home telescope at the same two stars in hopes of witnessing one of the most violent events in the universe — a nova explosion a hundred thousand times brighter than the sun.

The eruption, which scientists say could happen any day now, has excited the interest of major observatories worldwide, and it promises to advance our understanding of turbulent binary star systems.

Yet for all the high-tech observational power that NASA and other scientific institutions can muster, astrophysicists are relying on countless amateur astronomers like Stephens to spot the explosion first.

The reason? It’s just too costly to keep their equipment focused on the same subject for months at a time.

“I think everyone will look at it while it happens, but sitting there just looking at it isn’t going to make it happen,” said Tom Meneghini, the director of telescope operations and executive director emeritus at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. “It’s like a watched pot,” he joked.

The star is so far away that it takes 3,000 years for its light to reach the Earth, meaning the explosion occurred before the last of the Egyptian pyramids were built. It will appear about as bright as the North Star for just a few days before fading into the darkness.

Once it’s spotted, some of the most advanced observatories on Earth and in space will join in watching, including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

“A lot of people are eagerly waiting to spot the new jewel in the crown,” said Mansi Kasliwal, the Caltech astronomy professor who is planning to use the Palomar Observatory in northeast San Diego County to observe the event. The nova will erupt in the Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown, constellation.

T Coronae Borealis, also called the Blaze Star, is actually two stars — a hot, dense white dwarf, and a cooler red giant.

The dwarf star, which ran out of fuel long ago and collapsed to roughly the size of Earth, has been siphoning hydrogen gas from its larger neighbor for about a human lifetime.

This stolen gas has accumulated in a disk around the dwarf like a hot, messy version of Saturn’s rings. Soon, the disk will grow so heavy that it will become violent and unwieldy, and inevitably, explode like a thermonuclear bomb.

Neither star is destroyed however, and the process repeats itself roughly every 80 years.

This time around, there’s an army of enthusiasts like Stephens ready to sound the alarm when the star goes nova.

Far from mere hobbyists, a number of these amateur observers have published their own scientific research. Stephens even built his own observatory as an addition to his house in Rancho Cucamonga.

“The city thinks it’s a sunroom,” Stephens said. After the inspector stopped by, he removed the screws securing the roof, allowing him to roll it off to reveal the clear sky to his telescope.

Every night, he turns on the telescope and spends more than an hour taking data, which he later posts to an online community of amateur astronomers who monitor the star almost nonstop.

Major observatories simply cannot keep such constant watch. Hundreds of scientists compete for time to look at a wide range of astronomical targets every night. For them, keeping these telescopes glued to the Blaze Star is a waste of valuable observation time.

Estimates on when the nova will occur vary, but most astrophysicists agree it will happen before the end of the year, and likely by the end of August.

Once it blows, there are a few alert systems set up to notify amateurs and professionals. Some observatories have even programmed their telescopes to autonomously ditch their current observation plan and look at the star when the notification comes in, Stephens said.

Major observatories also face another complication. Many of their telescopes are designed to look at the faintest and dimmest targets, but the Blaze Star nova will be anything but faint. Pointing these telescopes at the nova would overwhelm sensors, resulting in a washed-out, overexposed picture.

That’s why Palomar Observatory, Caltech’s research station in north San Diego County, isn’t using its iconic 16-foot-wide Hale telescope under its massive white dome. Instead, it’s using a much smaller telescope, called Gattini-IR, located in a small unsuspecting brick building about a quarter mile down the road.

Once the nova happens, Gattini-IR will go from observing the Blaze Star every couple nights to every couple hours.

Scientists say they still have a lot to learn about novas. For example, physicists are still unsure why some erupt every decade while others likely don’t for millennia.

Some researchers suspect that novas like the Blaze Star could be precursors to supernovas. These explosions — billions of times brighter than the sun — destroy the star, often leaving behind a black hole. Supernovas are also a useful tool for astronomers to measure distance.

Studying similar events has already led to discoveries, however.

Recently, scientists determined that novas tend to fling material into space at faster speeds than what would be predicted based on the intensity of the explosion.

“We want to understand the physics of novae, so having a nova that’s as close as T Coronae Borelias, which will hopefully be very well studied by all telescopes … we can get a very full picture,” said Caltech professor Kasliwal.

Some of that understanding will be due in part to amateur astronomers.

Thanks to the rapid development of telescopes, amateurs are working with technology that professionals didn’t have just 20 years ago, let alone 80, said Forrest Sims, an amateur astronomer from Apache Junction, Ariz., who is also observing the star every clear night.

And the amateurs can achieve better coverage than the big telescopes because “we typically have complete control over when and where we can point [our telescopes],” said Sims. “A professional may have to write a grant to get a half hour or two hours time on a big telescope.”

That allows them to collect a lot of data. And with hundreds in the community observing from around the world, they can achieve almost continuous coverage of the Blaze Star. Many, including Sims and Stephens, post their data to the American Assn. of Variable Star Observers website, allowing everyone to use the data.

Stephens remembers reading a journal article from a professional who managed to observe five asteroids over two years. “I thought, I could do that in a month,” Stephens said. He went on to publish a paper with 10 observations.

One professor was so shocked by the number Stephens was able to see that she reached out and agreed to fly to Puerto Rico for an asteroid conference just to meet him. They ended up working together — Stephens had the telescopes; she had the connections in the field.

Today, amateur astronomers’ work is getting so sophisticated, many in the field have a hard time calling them amateurs.

“We call ourselves ‘small telescope scientists,’ ” said Sims. “It sounds more fun, and in some respects, professionals — and not even grudgingly — will admit that the work we’re doing is often professional caliber.”

___

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

It turns out there might be a scientific reason behind women needing extra “beauty sleep.” Studies show, on average, women require about 11 minutes more sleep per night than men do. Although this difference might seem small, it can have significant implications for overall health and well-being.

Research is limited, but the reasoning points to hormones, according to the Sleep Foundation. Women experience a roller coaster of hormonal changes throughout their lives — from menstruation to pregnancy and menopause. Each of these stages can disrupt sleep patterns. Women are also 40% more likely than men to suffer from insomnia.

“When it comes to physiology, women’s hormones have a huge role to play in sleep,” Dr. Aileen Alexander, a women’s health and sleep expert, told Glamour magazine. “Overall, this means women are suggested to have a greater need for sleep and are more likely to indulge in daytime naps.”

Beyond biological factors, societal expectations and responsibilities also contribute to women’s sleep needs. Research has shown women often shoulder the majority of household and caregiving duties, leading to increased fatigue and stress, according to Glamour. “Women are typically the ones who get up through the night to support children or, in some cases, elderly parents,” Alexander said. These added pressures may require more sleep to recover and maintain optimal cognitive function.

However, individual sleep needs can vary from person to person, regardless of sex. Factors such as age, lifestyle and overall health all contribute to a person’s optimal sleep duration.

“While we need more research to understand the gender gap between men and women’s sleep requirements and cycles, the consequences of not getting enough sleep are well evidenced and can have a huge impact on both men and women,” Alexander said.

To get the proper rest you need, experts recommend adults sleep between seven and nine hours a night. If you still find yourself not getting enough rest, talk to your doctor.

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

ATLANTA — Black women have long been celebrated as the Democratic Party’s most loyal and steadfast voting bloc. Even so, their votes can’t be taken for granted, and if you want to understand the opportunities and challenges Kamala Harris faces in her run for the White House, consider two Black women: Robyn Donaldson and Shaquita Jones.

Donaldson embodies the energy and hope many Black women felt when President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection and endorsed Harris to lead the Democratic ticket. When she heard the news, she screamed and ran around her mom’s house in Chicago.

A stream of Black women — including California Rep. Maxine Waters and Beyoncé’s mom — rushed to endorse Harris. “Ahahahaha lets gooooo,” rapper Cardi B posted on X.

But some, like Jones, are less certain. “I don’t know much about her,” said Jones, a 35-year-old manager of a Krispy Kreme in Atlanta’s historically Black West End neighborhood. “I’ll have to do research.”

Donaldson, a grassroots organizer who has spent two decades mobilizing volunteers to get out the vote for Democrats, has no such qualms.

Though she had still planned to vote for Biden and had campaigned for him in 2020, the 40-something trauma-informed yoga teacher felt let down, she said, after he failed to deliver on voting rights. This year she decided she would vote early by mail and then not do “a darn thing.”

But when Biden endorsed Harris on July 21, she got to work, plotting with other Black women to mobilize a rush of new volunteers to donate, staff phone banks, knock on doors, serve as poll workers or precinct captains.

“I am all in for VP Harris,” she said. “The energy and excitement has gone from zero to 1,000!”

Jones also voted for Biden in 2020, but had decided she would not vote for him again.

The Biden administration, Jones said, had done little to improve her life. Her monthly rent had climbed from $875 to $1,600 over the last four years. Her pay — $20 an hour — hadn’t changed.

“Everybody’s struggling financially,” she said.

Jones said she hoped Harris might offer something different than Biden and Donald Trump and help Black Americans a bit more. But support Harris? She still wasn’t sure.

In 2020, more than 90% of Black women voters supported the Biden-Harris ticket. In the swing state of Georgia, Black women played a pivotal role in flipping the red state blue — registering college students to vote and campaigning, sometimes by waving signs on street corners.

But Biden’s victory here was slim — he won by just 11,779 votes — and recent polls showed him down 5.9 points against former President Trump.

While the prospect of Harris as president has inspired many Black professionals, activists and sorority sisters to volunteer, donate and share memes of the VP as Wonder Woman, the mood is more tepid among some blue-collar workers like Jones — women struggling with rising rents and grocery prices.

With school starting next month, the single mother of two said she had a more pressing question than who to vote for: “Am I going to pay my bills or am I gonna get my son some new uniforms?”

An analysis of interviews with women voters published this month by KFF found that 14% of Black women who voted for Biden in 2020 said they did not plan to vote in the 2024 presidential race — and 8% said they would vote for Trump.

Fewer than half of Black women voters aged 18 to 49 said they were “absolutely certain” they would vote.

About 53% of Black women voters in KFF’s surveys said inflation and the rising cost of household expenses was the most important issue. Only 12% of Black women voters identified abortion and 18% identified threats to democracy as key problems.

Even so, Harris certainly has enthused key members of the Democratic base.

The day Biden endorsed Harris, more than 44,000 Black women and allies from across the country logged into Zoom for an event organized by Win With Black Women, a collective of intergenerational Black women. Organizers said they raised more than $1.5 million in three hours.

Kerry L. Haynie, a professor of political science at Duke University, said the prospect of Harris’ candidacy had generated “buzz” the Democratic Party hadn’t felt since Barack Obama ran for president in 2008.

After Biden withdrew from the race, Haynie fielded a call from his 85-year-old mother: “Can you believe it’s going to be a Black woman nominee?”

Then, his 22-year-old daughter, who had not been enthusiastic about Biden, called: “Have you seen the news?” She thought it was a great move.

Harris’ rise appears to be enthusing even grassroots activists who came out in force in the last few weeks to defend Biden.

On July 13, LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, condemned “the hyperbolic, coordinated and well-funded dissent” led by white politicians, pundits and donors to push Biden out of the race. She said a Biden withdrawal would be a “risky and ill-prepared move that can further splinter the vote and add confusion to the process for voters.”

But on July 21, Brown was startled when one of her older cousins ran into the room at a family reunion in Norcross, Ga., to announce Biden had dropped out and endorsed Harris.

Some relatives cheered. “Oh God!” one shouted. “We can win!”

Over the next 24 hours, Brown’s phone lit up with calls and texts — not just from the usual grassroots organizers, but from friends who rarely or never volunteered.

After logging onto the Win With Black Women Zoom, Brown was too excited to sleep. Her phone kept beeping as she tried to lie down, so she wound up holding an impromptu meeting with activists, staying up past 3:30 a.m. to discuss the possibilities of Harris as president.

“This is just what we needed,” she said. “It feels a clear path to victory.”

Some Black women worry that their fellow Americans are not ready to elect a Black woman president to the nation’s highest office. Many expect Trump, who mocked and undermined Clinton in 2016 for playing “the woman’s card,” to lob sexist attacks against Harris.

But eight years after the race with Clinton, Brown argued, a misogynist playbook wouldn’t work so well. Women, she said, were activated after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

“My grandmother had this saying: ‘What the devil means for harm, God will use for your good,’” Brown said. “What Trump often does is he tries to berate women and demean their character…. Her gender, he may see as a burden, but I actually think it’s a blessing. If America ever needed a woman to helm the ship, it would be now.”

Still, some Black women resist appeals to support Harris just because she’s a Black woman.

Joi Jenkins, a food prep worker at an Atlanta juice bar, said she voted for Biden in 2020, hoping that, with Harris behind him, he would represent not just the common man, but the most needy. She said she wouldn’t make that same mistake again.

“Her being a Black woman doesn’t give her an allegiance to me as a person,” Jenkins said.

The Biden years had been rough for Jenkins: In 2021, she lost her home and her health consulting business and was forced to send her children to live with her ex-husband. After a long period of couch-surfing and sleeping outside in her truck, the 44-year-old had a job that paid $13 an hour, but she was struggling to pay $370 a week hopping from Airbnb to Airbnb.

Jenkins said she thought Harris had been used by Biden.

“I don’t know that if push came to shove, I would want her to be leading the country,” Jenkins said. “Honestly, I don’t think she’s capable.”

Instead, Jenkins said she was leaning toward voting for “that ridiculous orange human.”

Harris also has a challenge in bringing on board young left-wing voters who are disillusioned with the Biden-Harris administration’s staunch support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and are skeptical of her record as a tough-on-crime California prosecutor.

Brionte McCorkle, 32, the executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters, said she had long been wary of Harris because of her record as a prosecutor. In 2020, she supported Bernie Sanders over Harris.

“The criminal justice thing, locking Black people up for marijuana, that’s such a big part of the prison pipeline,” McCorkle said. “I really didn’t care for that kind of law-and-order candidate approach.”

But not voting was not an option. McCorkle learned her lesson in 2016 when she decided not to vote for Clinton — “I literally thought at the time, ‘How bad can it be?’” — and watched the country descend into “absolute chaos” as Trump dismantled government programs and rolled back environmental protection zones.

But that was then. Today, it didn’t feel so stressful — as if she were carrying water — to urge people to vote for Harris.

“Is she a perfect candidate?” McCorkle said. “No. Is she far better than Trump and Biden? Absolutely.”

___

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.