Why Are So Many Government Positions Still Vacant? - The New York Times

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The problem is not unique to the Biden administration, said the head of a nonpartisan group that tracks vacancies.

One of the running criticisms of the Trump administration was how slowly it nominated and won confirmation for hundreds of high-level government officials, especially in critical agencies like the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

But things aren’t going much better with the Biden administration. And arguably, the situation is worse: In the middle of a pandemic, there is still no confirmed head of the Food and Drug Administration, and there is no confirmed ambassador to Afghanistan to help manage the crisis there.

To understand what’s going on, I turned to Max Stier, the head of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that tracks vacancies and advises the government on how to improve the nomination and confirmation process.

He made clear that while the Biden team was woefully behind, the problem was not unique to it — or to the Trump administration. Rather, he said, it’s typical of a broken system that has led to a long string of government failures.

“You can go back in time, if it was the response to Hurricane Katrina under the Bush administration, or the botched rollout of healthcare.gov under the Obama administration, or any number of issues in the Trump administration,” he said. “There is an execution gap of consequence. And one of the big reasons for that is that the leadership system is broken.”

A transcript of our interview, edited and condensed, follows.

Where does the Biden administration stand in terms of its nominations and confirmations?

There’s a set of 800 positions that we consider the most fundamental, and of those, they only have 127 that are confirmed, and they have 206 that are waiting in the queue. That still leaves a pretty substantial number that needs to be nominated.

It’s hard to believe, but we’re past the seven-month mark in this administration. You have a Senate that operates like a two-lane country highway, and you have a big traffic jam because you’ve got legislative priorities and budget issues and judicial nominations.

And why is this a problem? Don’t they have acting officials in place?

When no one’s there, you do have someone in the acting role, but they’re the substitute teachers. They might be amazing educators, but we all know that the substitute teacher doesn’t get respect from the class, and they don’t see their job as taking on the long-term problems because they don’t know if they’ll be around tomorrow. What I’m painting for you is a broader system failure in our government. You wind up with workarounds like acting leadership, or in the last administration, an effort to simply avoid a confirmed leadership in many instances.

Speaking of the last administration, how does President Biden’s record compare with Donald Trump’s?

The Biden team is ahead in their nominations of where Trump was at this point in time, but they’re actually neck and neck in the number of confirmed people.

It’s easy to see why the Senate could be a roadblock for confirmations, but what explains the lag in nominations?

There’s an interrelationship between the two. One of the challenges any administration faces is thinking about the likelihood of getting people confirmed. A difficult confirmation process impacts the nomination process. There’s a lot of risk aversion. And, frankly, their ability to recruit is hurt. Think about all the people who would throw in their hat knowing they’ll be a part of that cool-your-jet package. Everything you do gets scrutinized enormously, and you have to be thoughtful and careful about what you should be doing that might get you in trouble.

And to add a complication, a current nominee can’t also serve as the acting leader, according to a relatively recent Supreme Court decision. For example, if the Biden administration nominated Janet Woodcock to serve as the F.D.A. commissioner, she would have to step down from her present role as acting commissioner. Congress should fix this.

Which agencies worry you the most?

I think the State Department is plainly one of the most obvious places with significant gaps. Of the positions we track, the State Department has the most gaps of any agency. But the truth is, you only have 127 confirmed positions, so there are problems pretty much everywhere. The most noticeable ones are the places where there are current, obvious needs. So, there’s the international issues, whether it’s Afghanistan or China. You think about health care, where the lack of a confirmed F.D.A. commissioner is clearly a problem.

The Office of Management and Budget director is not as obvious, but I think it is a truly fundamental role. There is very little in the federal government that is focused on the enterprise as a whole, but the Office of Management and Budget is. It’s a tiny agency when you think about the entire government, but it’s the nerve center, and to not have a confirmed director is a problem.

Let’s take Afghanistan as a case study. How does the lack of confirmed positions hurt us there?

It’s impossible to show a causal relationship, but we don’t have an ambassador to Afghanistan, and while ambassadors aren’t everything, they are your key point of contact in any given country. And yes, there are plenty of people involved in Afghanistan, but you’d want every resource you could possibly have, and that’s one of them. I’m looking at the list of unconfirmed positions that might be needed over there: under secretary for public diplomacy, there’s no nominee. Assistant secretary for conflict and stabilization operations. There’s someone nominated and been reported out, but they’re waiting. Not good. The list goes on. There will be someone there, but they’re in acting capacities. That’s just not a recipe for the best we need for our agencies.

It’s not good for dealing with our allies, either.

Absolutely. And you do hear that fairly consistently. Our allies don’t feel they have the people they need to talk to. All these problems are better solved through multilateral exercises, so coordinating those relations with all those countries and international entities is fundamental to putting our best foot forward.

I keep coming back to this: The design of our system is broken. And we still have to work within the system until we fix it, and we’re not doing that well, either. But we could. For example, historically, right before the August recess, the past several presidents have gotten substantial packets of nominees through the confirmation process, on average about 60. The Biden team got 11. And that’s not good enough.

So what do you see as the solutions?

The easiest answer to having too many positions is to reduce them, substantially. This happened before, in 2011, when there was a reduction of about 160 positions. We need to see many multiples of that. You could cut in half the number of Senate-confirmed positions and not diminish the Senate’s important oversight responsibility. The Senate doesn’t lose if it has 600 rather than 1,200 confirmed positions, because it’s not actually getting the confirmation opportunity for those 1,200 positions.

Instead, some of them could be career positions. Some could be nonconfirmed political positions; some of them could be term positions. Depending on the nature of the job, you’d want to see different things. At the Department of Energy, Secretary Jennifer Granholm wants the cybersecurity position to be a career position, not a Senate-confirmed position, because she says there needs to be someone in that job longer than two years.

On the Senate side, you should improve the process. It doesn’t have to be so ugly. To go back to the two-lane highway proposition, it’s worse than that: It’s a two-lane highway that has a lot of potholes in it. They require people to submit their data multiple times, and there’s a huge amount of questions that get asked.

Out of that 2011 legislation, there was a commission created to talk about how to improve it, and there are a lot of recommendations that are out there. For example, right now, any Senate-confirmed position requires a full field investigation by the F.B.I. But doesn’t it depend on the nature of the job, whether you’re C.I.A. director versus the person in charge of public housing at Housing and Urban Development? They don’t distinguish, so the intensity of investment and intrusion is the same.

On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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As US Military Leaves Kabul, Many Americans, Afghans Remain - WTTW News

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Video: Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO and president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs joins “Chicago Tonight” to talk about the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. (Produced by Paris Schutz)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — As the final five U.S. military transport aircraft lifted off out of Afghanistan, they left behind up to 200 Americans and thousands of desperate Afghans who couldn't get out and now must rely on the Taliban to allow their departure.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. will continue to try to get Americans and Afghans out of the country, and will work with Afghanistan's neighbors to secure their departure either over land or by charter flight once the Kabul airport reopens.

"We have no illusion that any of this will be easy, or rapid," said Blinken, adding that the total number of Americans who are in Afghanistan and still want to leave may be closer to 100.

Speaking shortly after the Pentagon announced the completion of the U.S. military pullout Monday, Blinken said the U.S. Embassy in Kabul will remain shuttered and vacant for the foreseeable future. American diplomats, he said, will be based in Doha, Qatar.

"We will continue our relentless efforts to help Americans, foreign nationals and Afghans leave Afghanistan if they choose," Blinken said in an address from the State Department. "Our commitment to them holds no deadline."

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told reporters the U.S. military was able to get as many as 1,500 Afghans out in the final hours of the American evacuation mission. But now it will be up to the State Department working with the Taliban to get any more people out. 

McKenzie said there were no citizens left stranded at the airport and none were on the final few military flights out. He said the U.S. military maintained the ability to get Americans out right up until just before the end, but "none of them made it to the airport." 

"There's a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure," said McKenzie. "We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we'd stayed another 10 days we wouldn't have gotten everybody out that we wanted to get out."

McKenzie and other officials painted a vivid picture of the final hours U.S. troops were on the ground, and the preparations they took to ensure that the Taliban and Islamic State group militants did not get functioning U.S. military weapons systems and other equipment.

The terror threat remains a major problem in Afghanistan, with at least 2,000 "hard core" members of the Islamic State group who remain in the country, including many released from prisons as the Taliban swept to control.

Underscoring the ongoing security threats, the weapon systems used just hours earlier to counter IS rockets launched toward the airport were kept operational until "the very last minute" as the final U.S. military aircraft flew out, officials said. One of the last things U.S. troops did was to make the so-called C-RAMS (Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar System) inoperable. 

McKenzie said they "demilitarized" the system so it can never be used again. Officials said troops did not blow up equipment in order to ensure they left the airport workable for future flights, once those begin again. In addition, McKenzie said the U.S. also disabled 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft so they can never be used again. 

Throughout the day, as the final C-17 transport planes prepared to take off, McKenzie said the U.S. kept "overwhelming U.S. airpower overhead" to deal with potential IS threats. 

Back at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, watched the final 90 minutes of the military departure in real time from an operations center in the basement.

According to a U.S. official, they sat in hushed silence as they watched troops make last-minute runway checks, make the key defense systems inoperable and climb aboard the C-17s. The official said you could hear a pin drop as the last aircraft lifted off, and leaders around the room breathed sighs of relief. Later, Austin phoned Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who was coordinating the evacuation. Donahue and acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson were the last to board the final plane that left Kabul.

Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of military operations.

"Simply because we have left, that doesn't mean the opportunities for both Americans that are in Afghanistan that want to leave and Afghans who want to leave, they will not be denied that opportunity," said McKenzie.

The military left some equipment for the Taliban in order to run the airport, including two firetrucks, some front-end loaders and aircraft staircases. 

Blinken said the U.S. will work with Turkey and Qatar to help them get the Kabul airport up and running again.

"This would enable a small number of daily charter flights, which is a key for anyone who wants to depart from Afghanistan moving forward," he said.

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Moderna vaccine makes twice as many antibodies as Pfizer, study says - The Mercury News

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By Jason Gale and Robert Langreth | Bloomberg

Moderna Inc.’s Covid vaccine generated more than double the antibodies of a similar shot made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE in research that compared immune responses evoked by the two inoculations.

The study is one of the first to compare levels of antibodies produced by the two vaccines, which are thought to be one of the important components of the immune response. It didn’t examine whether the antibody differences led to a difference in efficacy over time between the two shots, which both were more than 90% effective in final-stage clinical trials.

The research looked at antibody levels against the coronavirus spike protein in about 1,600 workers at a major Belgium hospital system whose blood samples were analyzed 6 to 10 weeks after vaccination. The participants hadn’t been infected with the coronavirus before getting vaccinated. Levels among those who got two doses of the Moderna vaccine averaged 2,881 units per milliliter, compared with 1,108 units per milliliter among those who received two Pfizer doses.

The results, published Monday in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested the differences might be explained by the higher amount of active ingredient in the Moderna vaccine — 100 micrograms, versus 30 micrograms in Pfizer-BioNTech — or the slightly longer interval between doses of the Moderna vaccine — four weeks, versus three weeks for Pfizer-BioNTech.

Outside researchers said it was premature to conclude that the difference in antibody levels was medically important.

“I would urge caution in making the conclusion that because Moderna demonstrated a slightly higher peak on average that its efficacy will be slower to wane,” said David Benkeser, a biostatistician at Emory University, in an email. “Such a conclusion requires a host of assumptions that have not yet been evaluated.”

Both vaccines produce high levels of antibodies, he noted, and other studies have shown even relatively low levels of antibodies are protective.

Still, it’s possible that higher initial antibody levels might correlate with longer duration of protection against mild breakthrough infections, said Deborah Steensels, a microbiologist at Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg, a large hospital in Belgium, who was lead author on the study.  Also, if higher antibody levels are confirmed to be important, then the Moderna vaccine might be better for immunocompromised people who don’t respond well to vaccines, she said.

Pfizer said in a statement that its vaccine “continues to be highly efficacious” in preventing Covid-19, including against severe cases and hospitalization. A continuing analysis of its final-stage study has shown a decline of efficacy against symptomatic infection over time, the drugmaker said, but initial trial data also show that a third dose of the existing vaccine at least six months after the first two significantly raises neutralizing antibody levels.

Moderna’s vaccine was associated with a two-fold risk reduction against breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections compared to Pfizer’s in a review of people in the Mayo Clinic Health System in the U.S. from January to July. The results were reported in a separate study released ahead of publication and peer review on Aug. 9.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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Caldor Fire: Why Lake Tahoe’s forests face so much fire danger - The Mercury News

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ECHO LAKE, Calif. – Aug. 30: Jason Higgins monitors the march of the Caldor Fire as it burns down the face of Echo Summit into the Christmas Valley section of Meyers, Calif. Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

The Caldor Fire threatening communities and breathtakingly scenic landscapes around Lake Tahoe — a destination that Mark Twain once called “the fairest picture the whole earth affords” — is a dramatic, unfolding disaster.

But the conditions that led to the evacuation of more than 50,000 people around the famed alpine lake’s south and western shores — where embers rain down on rustic communities and soot chokes the normally pristine mountain air — didn’t spring up this week, this month or this year. They are the culmination of more than 150 years of decisions that people made to unwittingly set the stage for today’s catastrophe, experts say.

“We are in an emergency crisis throughout the Sierra,” said Susie Kocher, a forestry and natural resources adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension in South Lake Tahoe.

Kocher, her husband, dog and cat evacuated their home in nearby Meyers on Monday to stay with relatives near Sacramento. Before she moved to the Tahoe area 15 years ago, she lived in Greenville, a small town in Plumas County. Nearly all of Greenville burned to the ground last month when the Dixie Fire raged through the northern Sierra Nevada’s forests.

“I’ve been watching the Dixie Fire and thinking about how this town could burn down too,” said Kocher, a registered professional forester. “It’s pretty obvious these fires are beyond our control. If you are anywhere in the direction the wind is blowing, you should be packing up.”

The problem around Tahoe, as with much of the Sierra range, Kocher and other fire experts said, dates back to the 1850s.

For centuries, fires burned about every 10 to 15 years on average through the forests around Lake Tahoe, said Brandon Collins, a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service and adjunct professor of fire science at UC Berkeley.

Those fires, set by lightning strikes or by the native Washoe people, removed dead wood, accumulated needles and other fire hazards. When fires did burn, they typically remained close to the ground, and burned slowly. But everything began to change in 1859, when a huge deposit of silver was discovered 15 miles east of Lake Tahoe in Virginia City, Nevada.

Miners working on the Comstock Lode, which became the richest silver mine in the United States, clear cut large sections of Tahoe’s forests to obtain supports for the huge networks of underground tunnels. They removed large Jeffrey pines and other trees that were spaced apart by years of fires.

“There were big trees, lots of open spaces,” Collins said. “Now it’s kind of wall-to-wall trees.”

What grew back were dense numbers of white fir and other trees. Not only did the firs have thinner bark that made them more vulnerable to fire than the older pines, they have lower branches which makes it easier for fire spread.

John Muir, the conservation pioneer who founded the Sierra Club and helped save Yosemite Valley, wrote a letter in 1878 to the San Francisco Bulletin, sounding the alarm.

“In summer, the woods resound with the outlandish noise of loggers and choppers and screaming mills,” Muir wrote.

Muir tried to convince Congress to establish Lake Tahoe as a national park as he did with Yosemite. But in large part because of Tahoe’s damaged landscape and because of opposition from local landowners, lawmakers refused. Senators introduced bills in 1912, 1913, and 1918 without success.

Private development sprung up in the 1920s, including casinos, resorts and vacation homes. It expanded after World War II, bringing Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, the mob, speedboats, glitz and glamor. Neighborhoods of wooden homes with shake roofs were built in narrow streets under forests that once regularly burned. To protect those developments, fire crews began putting out fires.

With no fire to thin them, the forests grew thicker. In some places, where there were 20 to 40 trees per acre in 1850, there are 10 times as many today, Collins said.

Large sections of Tahoe’s forests have gone 100 years without a fire. So when fires do start, they burn much hotter and more violently. And Tahoe officials, because of the region’s popularity, have done more work to reduce fire risk than many other parts of the Sierra Nevada, he noted.

In 1997, as part of the growing effort to preserve the lake’s clear waters from pollution, former President Bill Clinton and Al Gore held a summit at Lake Tahoe. New federal, state and local conservation plans were drawn. Since then 65,000 acres have been thinned or treated with prescribed burns around the 200,000-acre Tahoe basin, most of which is owned by the U.S. Forest Service, according to the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, a partnership of government agencies.

That work has gone well, Kocher said. But it must be expanded dramatically, particularly as climate change continues to dry out forests with higher temperatures.

“We need to think about making peace with fire, not just making war on it,” she said. “We’re good at that, but we aren’t winning.”

Collins agreed. He said forest-thinning efforts across the Sierra should be increased five-to-tenfold in the coming years. Such projects can be challenging, he noted, with controversies over smoke from prescribed burns, a cost of about $2,000 an acre with millions of acres needing treatment, and a shortage of places to take the wood, leaving it often chipped onsite.

“A lot of the early work, for good reason, was done right around homes and roads,” Collins said. “But we need the work to be done on a much bigger scale.”

Kocher, who has helped her neighbors prepare for fire, noted that in some cases, fires burn so hot, like the Angora Fire near Meyers did in 2007, that Jeffrey pines and other native trees must be replanted to keep the area from being overrun later with shrubs. Working with fire before it explodes out of control is the only way to unwind 170 years of history and restore forests to a more natural condition, she said.

“The money flows when there is a disaster,” Kocher said. “But there’s often not enough for prevention.”

Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay is normally a world famous tourist destination. But the Caldor Fire, which prompted mass evacuations on Aug. 30, 2021 from south and west Lake Tahoe, has blanketed the area with smoke and burned forests and homes only a few miles away. (Getty Images) 

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Tropical Storm Ida’s latest headache: Danger from washed out rural Alabama roads - AL.com

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Flooding and tornadoes were not the only problems created by Tropical Storm Ida in Alabama.

Washed out rural roads, and worries about bridge safety, is also part of the storm’s aftermath.

A collapsed county highway in Mississippi – about 30 miles from the Alabama state line – led to tragedy early Tuesday, and has generated national media attention all day. But worries also exist in Baldwin and Mobile counties, where highway engineers are monitoring the safety of roads and bridges pelted with two days of persistent rains as Ida’s feeder bands whipped coastal Alabama.

In one area of Baldwin County, at least 25 residents are stranded and unable to access a public roadway from their properties.

River Road

The Baldwin County Highway Department is assessing damage to River Road north of Interstate 10 in the Elsanor community. A creek that flows into the nearby Styx River overtopped the road and washed it away.

County Engineer Joey Nunnally said repairs to the road “are at the top of our list” for repairs “as soon as the water recedes.”

That is expected to occur soon, according to Jenni Guerry, deputy director with the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency. The Styx River crested Tuesday afternoon at 15.24 feet, which placed it in “moderate flood stage,” Guerry said. She said it will soon decrease. The river, at 12 feet, is considered in a “minor” flood stage.

Guerry said that her EMA staff, during a tour of the area on Monday, learned about the residents who are unable to leave their homes until the water recedes.

“When we spoke with them, there was no one in crisis or danger,” Guerry said, who added that residents are in contact with a local volunteer fire department and the county’s 911 system “to make sure they can make accommodations if there is an emergency response.”

The washout occurred where River Road encounters Flat Creek, which flows directly into the Styx River. The same creek also caused flooding on Truck Trail 17, which is north of River Road.

Nunnally said that River Road has washed out before. He said it will only take “about a day or two” to repair the road, at a cost of around $50,000 to $75,000.

“We have tried to get some grant money in the past to relocate the road out of the floodplain, but was unsuccessful,” he said. “Historically, the residents have used some private roads to access Truck Trail 17 to travel to and from their residents when Styx River floods.”

The county is also monitoring river stages at Fish and Perdido rivers. Only Perdido reached “minor” flood stage during the tropical storm, but it has since receded.

“We have been and will continue to inspect roads (Tuesday) for safety issues and any compromised areas but we don’t know of any at that moment,” Nunnally said earlier on Tuesday. “The upgrades that we have done to our infrastructure after past storms have mitigated any damages that we may have had.”

Mobile County

In Mobile County, Roberts Road between Kidd Road and Old Citronelle Road in Chunchula remained closed because flood waters rose above the bridge. Barricades and signage were installed to warn people of driving over it.

“Road and bridge safety is always a priority,” said Mobile County Engineer Bryan Kegley. “Mobile County Public Works forces will be spending considerable effort to check roads and bridges this week, including full inspections as necessary to ensure safe travel.”

He said the county will pay close attention to the Escatawpa River watershed in the coming days “because it typically rises later than smaller watersheds.”

Mike Evans, deputy director with the Mobile County EMA, said he’s not heard in recent years “chatter, complaint or questions” about dangerous public roads. He said the complaints to his office are often from people who are worried about private roads, which the county is not responsible to maintain.

Evans said that from a county EMA perspective, the message during rain events that can cause flooding, is this: If there is water on the road, do not drive through it.

“You might look at it and say, ‘That’s just 1 foot of water on the road,’ and it might only be that much,” Evans said. “But more of it might be washed out. If you can go another way, you stop, turn around and go another way.”

The concerns about the roads comes after a tragic collapse of a two-lane highway near Lucedale, Mississippi, early Tuesday morning. Two people were killed and at least 10 others were injured when seven vehicles plunged into a deep hole along Mississippi Highway 26, west of Lucedale.

Heavy rainfall from Ida is believed to have caused the collapse. Ida dumped up to 13 inches of rain in Mississippi, according to The Associated Press quoting figures from The National Weather Service.

The NWS in Mobile reported 4 to 8 inches of rain accumulated in Mobile and Baldwin counties during the two-day tropical storm. The heaviest rains accumulated in west Mobile at Mobile Regional Airport, which recorded 7.25 inches of rain.

In this image made from video and provided by WLOX-TV, a vehicle is extracted from a hole on highway 26, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021, near Lucedale, Miss. Troopers have said that both the east and westbound lanes of Highway 26 in George County west of Lucedale collapsed. (WLOX-TV via AP)AP

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Manchester church's 95-foot bell tower in danger of collapse - The Union Leader

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Facing danger from on high, a Manchester Catholic church has temporarily shut its doors after experts warned that the church’s bell tower is in danger of collapse.

The St. Anthony of Padua Church — one of the centerpieces of Manchester’s Hallsville neighborhood — has moved offices and Masses to its nearby school building. Meanwhile, the Manchester Public Works Department has closed the sidewalk and a portion of Belmont Street in front of the church.

City officials have told the Diocese of Manchester it must remove the church tower as soon as possible.

Cracks and crumbling concrete have closed St. Anthony of Padua Church on Belmont Street in Manchester.

DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER

“I can’t say it’s not a danger. We are taking it seriously,” said Karl Franck, plans examiner for the city of Manchester, who has been part of discussions about the bell tower. He said the Diocese of Manchester brought the problem to the city’s attention on Aug. 16.

No date has been set for the tower to be torn down.

“The emotions are mixed, like anything else. Surprise is the right word,” said the church pastor, the Very Rev. Richard Dion, as he darted into the rectory to grab some materials. He cannot stay in the rectory, which is just feet from the tower.

Tom Flanagan walks Abby in front of St. Anthony of Padua on Belmont Street on their morning walk in Manchester on Monday. Cracks in the building's tower have forced the church to move its services.

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He said the problem should be kept in perspective — it can’t compare to Afghanistan or Hurricane Ida.

“By the grace of God we will repair what we can and move on,” Dion said.

The bell tower is 95 feet high, topped by a cross that rises an additional 10 feet.

It overlooks the Hallsville area of the city, a working-class neighborhood of single and multifamily homes just south of Elliot Hospital.

St. Anthony is the only church in Manchester where Mass is celebrated in French every week.

The parish’s favorite son is a cardinal, Quebec Archbishop Gerald Lacroix, who was born in 1957 and grew up in the neighborhood.

The tower is not a traditional steeple.

Cracks in the masonry of the tower have closed St. Anthony of Padua on Belmont Street in Manchester.

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Four pillars of butterscotch-colored brick, concrete cornerstones and verdigris highlights compose the vertical elements of the tower.

The pillars support the base of a steep, pointed metal roof topped by a brass-tinted cross. The pillars are not enclosed, so they are exposed year-round to the elements. Franck said no steel was used to construct the tower.

The church building opened in 1954.

“Not all brick is created equal, I guess,” Franck said. The tower has never had a bell; a loudspeaker was always used to imitate the sound of bells, Dion said

“It’s falling apart, and it’s not that old,” said Tom Lamy, a parishioner, as he took a morning walk. He won’t miss the tower when it’s gone. A tower doesn’t make a church, he said.

Eddy and Jessica Rosado live directly across the street. Earlier this month, inspectors used massive hoists to examine the tower, Eddy said.

Within days, fencing went up around the church, and barriers were placed on the street and sidewalk. He pointed out crumbling concrete and a vertical crack climbing one of the pillars.

“You think about it, we really don’t know which way it’s going to go,” Eddy Rosado said.

Franck said that forensic specialists hired by the diocese determined the tower would not fall like a tree. But he said anything’s possible.

Jessica Rosado grew up in the neighborhood and her parents were married at the church.

A temporary fence and caution tape were put up because of structural issues with the tower at St. Anthony of Padua in Manchester.

DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER

“It will be sad to see it go, honestly,” she said. “It’s been there for so many years.”

But she said the church will remain, which she likes because it separates the Hallsville neighborhood and the Wilson Street neighborhood to the west.

Dion said the church closure delayed the start of classes at the Cardinal Lacroix Academy, which is located in the St. Anthony School building. Daily Mass had been suspended but will resume next week at Blessed Sacrament Church on Elm Street, about a mile away.

Meanwhile, Dion is temporarily lodging at Blessed Sacrament rectory.

Cracks in the tower of St. Anthony of Padua have forced the church to move its services and events to other locations on the campus and to other parishes nearby.

DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER

In an email, diocesan spokeswoman Bevin Kennedy said a forensic study determined that the tower is not salvageable. The diocese closed the church out of an abundance of caution, Kennedy said.

No date has been set for the demolition.

Kennedy said the diocese wants to preserve the cross and the bell tower’s roof.

Franck said that once the diocese has hired a demolition crew, the city will facilitate a demolition permit, he said.

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Netflix's Clickbait plot explained: the show's many, many twists, broken down in detail. - Slate

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Deciding which of Netflix’s thousands of shows and movies to grant your all-important click can be a paralyzing task for many of us, so there was something brilliant, or cynical—or in all likelihood, both—about the streaming service coming out with a show called Clickbait. It’s announcing itself as potentially dishonest and exploitative and daring you to click anyway, and the gambit clearly worked: As of Tuesday, the limited series, which premiered on the streaming service last week, was topping Netflix’s most-watched list. Whether you don’t want to give Clickbait the satisfaction of your click or you’ve already clicked many times over, let’s talk about it—and there is a lot to talk about—spoilers and all.

OK, what’s this thing about?

In the first episode of the eight-episode series, a video surfaces online of Nick Brewer (Adrian Grenier), an improbably perfect husband and father, being held hostage and holding a series of signs: One says he abuses women. Another says that if the video gets to 5 million views, he will die. His sister, Pia (Zoe Kazan), his wife, Sophie (Betty Gabriel), and the rest of his family freak out, trying to find him before the video goes viral. As they look for the people who kidnapped Nick, they’re also forced to contemplate what Nick could have done, and to whom, to prompt this hostage situation.

Does the video get to 5 million hits?

Yes, it does, and as promised, Nick is a goner.

That’s not that many hits in 2021!

Regardless, he eats it by the end of the second episode.

How could this happen to a swell guy like Nick? Unless … is it possible that Nick’s life isn’t as perfect as it initially appeared?

Good guess. It looks like Nick wasn’t a faithful husband, first of all: He had profiles on dating sites and was involved with multiple women. But neither was his wife: She had an affair with a co-worker a few years ago. Plus, the night before he disappeared, Nick was fighting with his prickly sister. Also, at the school where Nick worked as an athletics department physical therapist, there’s a female student volleyball player who seems to know something.

Was it the wife then? Or her lover?

Nope. For a second, it seemed like the man Sophie cheated on Nick with, her co-worker Curtis, might have been involved, because he was caught on surveillance camera getting into a bar fight with Nick not long before his kidnapping, but it was just a red herring.

What about the sister?

No, though there are a few things about her that seem shady at first: In addition to the aforementioned prickliness (check the punky dyed-blond blunt-cut hair), she’s friends with a teenage hacker, and she also matched with the main detective on Nick’s case, Roshan Amiri, on a dating app.

It eventually comes out that she and Nick had been keeping a secret: When the two were kids, their father died by suicide, and they were the ones to discover him. This will matter later.

The detective on the case who the sister matched with—what’s his deal?

Amiri is angling to be reassigned to the homicide team, so it seems like that might give him impure motivations, plus he doesn’t always seem great at communicating with Nick’s family. Not to mention he’s married, so why was he on a dating app? But he’s separated, it turns out, and he’s basically a good guy. He’s also very handsome, shoutout to Phoenix Raei.

This is a show about the dark underbelly of the internet, so there’s got to be more shadowy figures from the web, right?

Yup. One of them is someone who goes by the handle “Al_2005,” a stranger who Nick’s oldest son, Ethan, is messaging with throughout the show. Ethan spills a lot to Al_2005, and it seems plausible that the kid is being preyed upon, or even conspiring with the stranger out of anger at his father. But eventually the two meet in person, and surprise, Al_2005 is a nice agoraphobic girl who exchanges shy smiles with Ethan and just wants to help him figure out what happened to his dad. Mmm hmm.

What about the college volleyball player, then? Was Nick a typical sleazy older man having an affair with a student?

A sleazy older man was having an affair with a student, but it wasn’t Nick; it was his colleague, Matt. However, Nick knew about it and pressured Matt to confess, which would give Matt motivation for wanting to get rid of Nick. Back to that in a bit.

But Nick wasn’t a saint or anything. He had those dating profiles.

True, he did, on a bunch of different sites under a bunch of different names, and we even meet one woman, Emma Beesly, who claimed to have been having an affair with Nick. We also find out about a woman named Sarah Burton who Nick was involved with—a reporter travels to another city to find her, only to discover that she recently died.

A dead woman—that definitely seems like a lead!

It is. It turns out that Sarah and Nick met on a dating app and were talking online—until she threatened to kill herself, and he seemingly encouraged her to do it. When her brother, Simon, devastated by his sister’s suicide (and whose mental state is not improved by a job as a content moderator, where he spends all day flagging abusive videos), figures out that she was talking to Nick, he wants revenge.

Finally! So Simon kidnapped Nick, made the video, and killed him, case closed?

Not exactly. Simon, along with a buddy of his, kidnapped Nick, and he shot and posted the video, but he also let him go at the last second, when Nick convinced him that it wasn’t him who was talking to Sarah online, but someone impersonating him.

And Simon believed him?

Enough to let him go. Nick was able to point out that the photos on the profile that was in communication with Sarah had been Photoshopped—a case of the ol’ mismatched horizon lines. Nick didn’t tell Sarah to kill herself; a catfish did.

This is where that secret Pia and Nick had comes into play: As Pia is trying to crack the case on her own, the thing that convinces her of her brother’s innocence is that she knows he would never encourage someone to hurt themselves, after what they went through growing up.

OK, but Nick was still a cheater! What about all those other women?

Only one of them, Emma Beesly, said she’d actually spoken to Nick. When Ethan’s son and his online buddy/love interest Al_2005 figure this out, they contact Emma and play her a tape of Nick’s real voice. They ask her if that’s how he sounded when they spoke, and the answer is no—meaning none of the women Nick supposedly was cheating with ever actually met him, meaning all of them could have been being catfished.

This is exhausting. Who was catfishing all these ladies? And did that person kill Nick?

For a minute, Clickbait has us convinced that it was Nick’s co-worker, Matt, but it turns out that it was someone else in Nick’s office who had access to their computer network (and Matt had an affair with one of the students on his team but, uh, is otherwise not a bad guy). This would be someone who was able to both plant a bunch of files on Matt’s computer and had access to all of Nick’s photos in the first place.

It was … Dawn, the kindly-seeming older lady admin who’d been present in the background all along. Married but childless, Dawn was sad and lonely, so when she found Nick’s dating profile—which he only started out of frustration after his wife’s affair—she decided to have some fun. And before she knew it, she’d gotten totally wrapped up in catfishing a bunch of ladies, so much so that she knew how to use deepfakes to convince them they were really talking to him. She must have been pretty good at technology, despite sucking at Photoshop? Maybe she learned as she went.

Phew. So Dawn did it.

Not quite! Her husband, Ed, did. Dawn was catfishing women, but she wasn’t actually out to hurt anyone. It was only when Ed discovered her secret and demanded that she stop that she got so upset that she didn’t talk Sarah Burton down from her suicide threats. After Simon let Nick go, Nick figured out that Dawn was responsible and went to confront her. Ed attacked Nick, and she helped him cover it up.

Damn, OK, would not and could not have guessed that one. One last question: So was Clickbait clickbait?

The definition of clickbait is something that grabs you with a tantalizing promise and then fails to deliver on it. By naming this show Clickbait, Netflix was kind of promising the opposite—that this series wouldn’t be clickbait but a sophisticated commentary on the clickbait-y world in which we live. In practice, it was a bunch of red herrings precisely engineered to get you to keep watching, whose final message was something along the lines of, er, Adrian Grenier actually was a great guy and lonely older women are dangerous. So, total clickbait.

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With Workers In Demand, Many Are Choosing To Become Apprentices - WGLT

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Christopher Basso spent 8 years as a cook, including at a country club in Springfield.

Earlier this year, the 24-year-old changed course. As he put it, he wanted to “do something” with his life.

“You get tired of that kind of lifestyle, working weird hours. So I just wanted to start an actual career and not just keep going to work,” Basso said.

Today, Basso is about three months into what'll likely be a four-year apprenticeship with the Carpenters union. He is one of many new apprentices who have joined the Carpenters in the last couple years. The trade has seen significant growth.

Those apprenticeships bring Basso and others to the Carpenters training facility in Pekin. During a recent WGLT visit, Basso and his classmates were learning to build a little rocking horse.

It's a toy with a serious lesson, notably how to use tools and follow instructions.

“They’re actually pretty structural. You can really put some weight on them. One of the bigger kids in my class just stood on it and it didn’t go anywhere. It’s pretty fun,” Basso said.

The pandemic has reshaped the American labor market in many ways. For some workers, it’s prompted soul-searching about the difference between a job and a career – and what's fair pay for either.

Basso and others are coming into the apprenticeship program looking for a fresh start.

"With baby boomers retiring, there’s a need to fill these spots. And they’re good-paying jobs with good benefits."

Matt Watchinski, Carpenters union business rep

Matt Watchinski is a business rep with a Carpenters local based in East Peoria, which also serves Bloomington-Normal. They've brought in over 100 new apprentices in the past 2 years.

He said the recent push for a $15-an-hour minimum wage played a role.

“It made people do a lot of reflecting. Not everybody’s cut out for college. I wasn’t. That’s why I’m here,” Watchinski said. “Unfortunately, a lot of schools did away with their shop programs in the 1990s, to make way for computer labs, because that was the latest greatest thing coming up and we had to get people trained in that. You can’t fault the school districts. But with baby boomers retiring, there’s a need to fill these spots. And they’re good-paying jobs with good benefits.”

Watchinski said the new recruits are coming from all corners of the economy.

“Today we had a 19-year-old kid with zero experience (come in). We had a woman come in with her infant child that was looking for a job with benefits so she could make it on her own. We had a guy with 15 years of welding experience who wanted to branch out, as he topped out at the factory he was in. We could use somebody like that Rivian welding stuff. We could use him on bridges,” Watchinski said. “They come in from all over the board.”

The average age of an apprentice was 26 as of a couple years ago. That’s a number the Carpenters want to see lower.

“Apprentices have told me (they’re joining) because of the benefits,” said Rob Swegle, the training director in Pekin. “Because that’s (the age) when they’re starting to have families, looking for medical insurance, and a pension, that kind of thing. They want job security too.”

Swegle gave WGLT a tour of his training complex on a recent Monday afternoon. There were scaled-down versions of all the things apprentices will encounter out on the job. A small roof that needed to be shingled. A small room that needed a doorframe. Their own welding booth.

Other things were full-sized, like the steam turbine they got from a Caterpillar plant. The Millwright apprentices learn to dismantle and rebuild those using bridge cranes. The training facility in Pekin also provides advanced-skills training to those who are already journeymen. One example is teaching them how to mount solar panels on the ground or roofs.

Out back in Pekin, there's a 130-foot wind turbine that powers the complex, plus a dorm where up to 22 apprentices can live if home is far enough away.

“It’s 640 hours of instruction over the course of four years. One week every 3 months. The whole motto of apprenticeship is, the more you learn, the more you earn,” Swegle said.

Evolving with industry demand

The apprentices aren't the only ones adapting to something new.

The training facility itself has added new courses as the industry demanded it. There's now a simulated hospital room where apprentices learn how to work in a dust and contaminant-free way. That makes them more employable for the contractors who ultimately hire them.

One of those contractors is Peoria-based Mid-Illinois Companies, where Bobby Taylor is an owner. He's also a former Carpenters apprentice himself.

Taylor is on the training facility's board, helping it stay current with what industry needs.

Right now, it needs people. Taylor said his company – an interior systems contractor – stayed busy, even during the heart of the pandemic.

“And then coming out of the pandemic, obviously everybody was ready to get out and they were letting loose some of their money. Up to this point, it’s been good. The markets we work in have been busy. That’s Springfield, Champaign, Decatur. Peoria’s been a bit of a slower market, but we see it coming out more toward the third or fourth quarter and into next year,” Taylor said.

Dennis Jakubovski has seen this demand too. He's a fourth-year apprenticeship with a local out of Springfield. He's done work all over, including in Bloomington-Normal.

“It’s really good. It’s the same in Champaign. Now I’m working on Central High School in Champaign, and we have a hard time getting guys out there because of so many other projects going on in central Illinois,” he said.

Jakubovski started four years ago. At the time he was attending community college and working construction. He had a young son.

Today, he is about to “journey out,” meaning he'll become a full-fledged journeyman in the Carpenters union.

“It had its hurdles and difficulties, but I stuck it out. It’s almost like a four-year degree, but I don’t have no tuition. And I got to work while I’m learning, so I was making money,” he said.

Now, Jakubovski exits the apprenticeship program into an economy that's clamoring to hire him.

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NW fire bosses' pre-Labor Day warning: Danger still high, despite cooler temps - KTVZ

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'Everyone needs to be extremely careful'

PORTLAND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- While there is some relief from this summer’s extreme heat, high fire danger will likely continue into September because of the ongoing drought. Northwest fire officials warned Monday.

Severe drought and record-breaking temperatures have contributed to extreme fire behavior and have made firefighting conditions very difficult. Fire officials say conditions remain dry and any spark could start a wildfire that could quickly spread.

“Right now everyone needs to be extremely careful,” says Oregon Department of Forestry Protection from Fire Division Chief Doug Grafe. “With the current conditions, just a spark, cigarette, or open flame could start the next wildfire. As we’ve already had a long fire season, we need your help preventing fires to help protect our firefighters and communities.” 

(Meanwhile, the fire danger in California is so great, the Forest Service announced Monday a temporary closure of all of the state's national forests, from 11:59 p.m. Tuesday through Sept. 17.)

Typically, the Pacific Northwest experiences widespread, sustained east and northeast winds beginning in late August and throughout the Fall. This wind can lower humidity and increase fire danger, as well as drive the spread of new fires and increase activity on existing wildfires. The main effects of this wind are in the Coast Range and on the west slopes of the Cascades.

There is not currently a significant east wind event in the forecast, like the one that caused massive devastation a year ago, but officials say it is good to be aware of this wind pattern and the effects it can have on wildfires.

While awareness of the conditions is important, officials also remind the public to adhere to fire restrictions that are in place to help prevent human-caused wildfires. Common day-to-day activities like mowing dry grass, off-road driving and campfires are not allowed in most areas. Campfire bans remain in place on state lands in Oregon east of Interstate 5 and many other federal lands, and there are a number of area closures in place. 

“Know before you go,” says Keep Oregon Green Association’s Kristin Babbs. “Either call ahead or log on to one of the many government agency, private land, or commercial recreation websites that provide this valuable information.” 

Homeowners and outdoor enthusiasts alike can contribute to the fire prevention effort by reducing fire-prone activities. Outdoor debris burning remains prohibited throughout much of the region and campfires are either prohibited entirely or only allowed in designated campgrounds. While logging activity is being curtailed under these extreme conditions, many large industrial landowners have also closed their gates to public access in efforts to reduce possible ignitions from off-road driving, target shooting, smoking and campfires; all of which are illegal or restricted during fire season. 

“Even with the cooler overnight weather Oregon has seen, the fire risk is still present,” State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said, urging Oregonians to be prepared in case an evacuation is necessary. “With the current fire risk, people should take a moment to make sure they have prepared themselves and their family for evacuation.” 

As of August 29, 3,027 fires have burned 1,276,795 acres in Oregon and Washington according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland. Over 2,000 fires have been human-caused. For additional information on fire prevention and restrictions in your area, please visit any of the websites below. 

Oregon Department of Forestry: www.oregon.gov/ODF/Fire/Pages/Restrictions.aspx
Keep Oregon Green: www.keeporegongreen.org 
Washington Department of Natural Resources: www.dnr.wa.gov/WildfirePrevention 
Oregon State Fire Marshal: www.oregon.gov/osp/sfm/ 
Bureau of Land Management: https://www.blm.gov/orwafire 
Northwest Interagency Coordination Center: https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/
                                                                                                                                                                                                                ###

The Pacific Northwest Wildfire Coordinating Group is established to provide a coordinated interagency approach to wildfire management in Oregon and Washington. PNWCG provides leadership in interface and wildland fire management for local, tribal, state and federal agencies and their constituents to enhance firefighter safety and protection of life, property, and natural resources. PNWCG is comprised of USDA-Forest Service; USDI-Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service; Oregon Department of Forestry; Washington Department of Natural Resources; Washington Association of Fire Chiefs; The Oregon Fire Chiefs Association; The Oregon State Fire Marshal and the Washington State Fire Marshal.  

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Opinion | Many Republicans Are Anti-Vax. Are They Also Pro-Covid? - The New York Times

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President Barack Obama promised unity. In his 2008 campaign, he said he would heal the nation’s political divides and end more than a decade of partisan rancor.

To keep this promise, Obama needed allies, or at least partners, in the Republican Party. But they said no. If they could block Obama — if they could withhold support on anything significant he planned to do — then they could make him break his promise. Republicans would obstruct and Obama would get the blame. Which, you might remember, is what happened. By the 2010 midterm elections, Obama was a divisive president.

Joe Biden, in his 2020 campaign for president, promised to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. With additional aid to working families and free distribution of multiple effective vaccines, he would lead the United States out of its ongoing public health crisis.

I think you can see where this is going.

Rather than work with him to vaccinate the country, Biden’s Republican opposition has, with only a few exceptions, done everything in its power to politicize the vaccine and make refusal to cooperate a test of partisan loyalty. The party is, for all practical purposes, pro-Covid. If it’s sincere, it is monstrous. And if it’s not, it is an unbelievably cynical and nihilistic strategy. Unfortunately for both Biden and the country, it appears to be working.

Naturally, some of the loudest vaccine-skeptical Republicans are in Congress. “Think about what those mechanisms could be used for,” Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina said of the Biden administration’s plan for door-to-door vaccine ambassadors. “They could then go door-to-door to take your guns. They could go door-to-door to take your Bibles.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has similarly criticized the president’s effort to reach the unvaccinated. “People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations,” she tweeted. “You can’t force people to be part of the human experiment.”

Cawthorn and Greene are obviously fringe figures. But these days, the fringe is not far from the center of the Republican Party (if it ever was to begin with). Their rhetoric is not too different, in other words, from that of their more mainstream colleagues in the Senate.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has attacked vaccine mandates — “There should be no mandates, zero, concerning Covid,” he said in a recent interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity — while Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has urged Americans to “resist” efforts to stop the spread of the virus. “It’s time for us to resist,” Paul said in a video posted to Twitter. “They can’t arrest all of us. They can’t keep all of your kids home from school. They can’t keep every government building closed, although I’ve got a long list of ones they might keep closed or ought to keep closed.”

Republican rhetoric in Washington, however, is a sideshow to the real fight over Covid, in states like Florida and Texas.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected vaccine passports and launched an aggressive campaign against mandatory mask-wearing in schools. “It is very important that we say, unequivocally, no to lockdowns, no to school closures, no to restrictions and no to mandates,” he told a gathering of conservative activists in Utah last month. DeSantis has suspended city and county emergency orders, put limits on future mitigation efforts, and signed a law that “shields nursing homes, hospitals and businesses from legal liability if employees and patrons contract the virus on their premises.”

All of this, even as the state has been ravaged by the Delta variant of the virus. Florida has been reporting more than 20,000 new infections a day and has averaged 262 Covid deaths — the most of any state, at least in absolute numbers. More than 16,000 people are hospitalized and thousands have been taken to intensive care units. Who does DeSantis blame for these outcomes? Biden.

“You know, he said he was going to end Covid. He hasn’t done that,” the Florida governor told the Fox News host Jesse Watters last week. “At the end of the day, he is trying to find a way to distract from the failures of his presidency.”

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has banned mask mandates, signed legislation that would deny state contracts or licenses to businesses that require proof of vaccination, and — after recovering from a breakthrough Covid infection himself — banned local governments from requiring the vaccine for any public agency or private institution. In a statement, Abbott said that this was to avoid a “patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas.” But in a message to the state legislature, the governor appeared to be asking lawmakers to consider an outright ban on vaccine mandates. On Aug. 25, the day Abbott sent his message, Texas reported more than 23,000 new cases of Covid, along with 14,000 hospitalizations and 245 deaths.

Abbott and DeSantis are not alone. Earlier this month, the Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, created two new grant programs that would give funds to families and school districts that rejected mask mandates. And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem once again cheered the Sturgis motorcycle rally, a year after it contributed to a Covid outbreak throughout the region and into the Midwest. This year, health officials have already linked the rally to cases in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The effect of all of this for the country is a pandemic that won’t die. The effect of it for the Republican Party is a substantial part of its base that won’t take the vaccine. According to data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Republicans lag most of the rest of the country in vaccine uptake; 54 percent said they had received at least one dose at the time of the survey, compared with 67 percent of all adults. And the effect of this for Biden is a sharp drop to his approval rating; a Reuters poll conducted mid-month found the president down 21 points among all Americans for his handling of the pandemic.

What amounts to a Republican effort to prolong the pandemic shows no sign of abating. It may even get worse, as powerful conservative media personalities spread vaccine skepticism and embrace dubious miracle cures like ivermectin, a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms in livestock, not viruses in humans.

If Biden does not want the kind of backlash that his Democratic predecessor faced, he needs to act aggressively to push the United States off its vaccination plateau. Republicans might be setting him up to break his promise to stop Covid, but the president should understand that he’s not actually at their mercy.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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