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'Focused on herself': Lauren Boebert's Dem opponent pounces on her missing crucial vote
June 06, 2023
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) won her reelection in 2022 by only around 600 votes -- and her Democratic opponent from last year is gearing up to make her pay for missing a key vote on the debt ceiling deal that passed last week.
The Daily Beast reports that Democrat Adam Frisch pounced on revelations that Boebert missed the big debt ceiling vote despite the fact that she was so publicly outspoken against the deal.
Even though the bill passed overwhelmingly and didn't hinge on Boebert's vote, Frisch argued to The Daily Beast that her actions nonetheless show that she simply doesn't take her job representing Colorado's 3rd Congressional District seriously.
“She’s not focused on the job,” Frisch said. “She’s focused on herself.”
READ MORE: Trump delivers all-caps Truth Social tirade as his lawyers plead with DOJ not to charge him
Frisch is also emphasizing to voters in the district that Boebert's missed vote wasn't just a one-off mistake but part of a pattern -- and The Daily Beast notes that he has data to back up his claim.
"In the session of Congress beginning in January, Boebert’s rate of missed votes has been among the highest of any member," the publication writes. "From January through March, she was in the 89th percentile of missed votes. From April through May, she was in the 96th percentile of missed votes."
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Texas lawmakers closed a background check loophole, but many gun measures failed to pass
June 06, 2023
June 6, 2023
"Texas lawmakers closed a background check loophole, but many gun measures failed to pass" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
The first legislative session since the worst school shooting in Texas history ended with several proposals that would have limited some access to guns failing to get traction, though one firearm safety bill became law.
Senate Bill 728, from Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, closes a loophole in state law that allowed people who had serious mental health issues as juveniles to legally purchase firearms. Despite a previous state law, courts were not reporting juvenile psychiatric hospitalizations to a federal gun background check system.
Under the new law, a judge’s orders that a minor receive inpatient mental health treatment will now be reported in the background check system that federally licensed dealers are required to check before they sell someone a firearm.
In an investigation last year, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found that local courts were not reporting juvenile records because of problems with the way the law was written, vague guidance from the state and conflicts with other Texas laws.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill Friday. It takes effect Sept. 1.
It was a rare instance of a bill that could limit some gun access making it through Texas’ Republican-led Legislature, which has steadily loosened firearm restrictions. Lawmakers supporting the measure argued that it didn’t change existing state or federal laws.
Notably, lawmakers did not pass a bill that would have raised the minimum age to purchase certain semi-automatic firearms from 18 to 21. The families of Uvalde school shooting victims passionately and vocally pushed for House Bill 2744, from Rep. Tracy King, D-Batesville.
A House committee unexpectedly advanced HB 2744, but the bill missed a key legislative deadline the following day. Lawmakers’ efforts to revive the provision through amendments subsequently failed, and neither chamber ever debated the idea or held a record vote on the proposal. The Uvalde gunman legally bought his firearms within days of turning 18 and soon after killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.
Lawmakers also passed a bill aimed at preventing credit card companies and banks in the state from tracking the purchases of guns, ammo and accessories. In an interview with Dana Loesch, bill author Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, said that gun control advocates — including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — have been pushing credit card companies to begin such data collection.
Other bills received some support but didn’t make it to Abbott’s desk. They included one that would have designated August as Firearm Safety Awareness Month, another that would have outlawed tiny devices used to modify handguns essentially into fully automatic firearms and another that would have restricted straw purchases, which is when a person buys a gun for another person who is not allowed to have one.
State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, carried SB 728, the gun bill closing the background check loophole. He represents Allen, where a gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle killed eight people and wounded at least seven others in May at an outlet mall.
“There are many individuals and many groups whose first response — and they tell us to do something, just do something — they want us to do something and I’ve always kind of resisted just doing something because I think that we should do the right thing,” Leach said in laying out SB 728 11 days after the Allen shooting. “We should be interested in being careful and safely guarding our Second Amendment rights but also doing the right things that can curb unnecessary and tragic gun violence.”
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Deep within the bedrock in western Finland, flashing lights from heavy machinery cast shadows in eerie tunnels that lead to a tomb that must remain unperturbed for millennia.
There is a reason the catacomb on the lush island of Olkiluoto was buried 400 meters (1,312 feet) below ground: It will house the world's first spent nuclear fuel disposal facility.
The project, which aims to solve the age-old quagmire of what to do with nuclear waste, is nearing completion in a region that is already home to Europe's largest nuclear reactor.
The Onkalo repository is designed to house a total of 6,500 tonnes of uranium, covering the spent fuel produced by Finland's five nuclear reactors during their lifetime.
Low-carbon nuclear power has been hailed as a climate-friendly energy source as the world struggles to combat global warming.
Environmentalists, however, worry about their safety and warn that disposing radioactive waste carries huge risks.
Around 400,000 tonnes of used fuel have been discharged from reactors worldwide so far, the World Nuclear Association estimates, most of which is stored in temporary storage facilities near power plants.
But the long-term storage problem has cast a shadow on nuclear projects.
Onkalo's operator Posiva has developed its solution together with the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB).
The plan is to encapsulate the used uranium in thick copper shells and bury the up to five-meter-long canisters in the bedrock, before sealing the tunnel with a massive, wedge-shaped and steel-reinforced concrete plug.
Construction began at Onkalo -- Finnish for "hollow" -- in 2004, and final trials will be conducted in early 2024.
"Once we have established that we are ready, we can then move on to the actual operational phase in the mid-2020s," geologist Johanna Hansen, Onkalo's research and development coordinator, told AFP.
- Final resting place -
The immense amount of time it takes for radiation to decrease to safe levels poses significant challenges.
It can take around 250,000 years for the high-level toxic waste to reach the radiation levels of a naturally occurring uranium deposit.
Put in context, 250,000 years ago Europe was in the midst of an Ice Age and was home to Neanderthals and mammoths, while Homo sapiens had only recently emerged in Africa.
In other words, before the waste no longer poses a threat to the environment or people, the landscape of Olkiluoto island may have changed dramatically.
Posiva insists their canisters are designed to withstand even major changes taking place on Earth.
But some experts have cast doubt on the Finnish-Swedish disposal method.
"It is not a solution, it's a reduction of risk," Jan Haverkamp, nuclear energy expert at Greenpeace, told AFP.
Haverkamp claimed that Posiva is giving "no real attention" to the discourse around corrosion of the copper canister in Sweden.
For example, researchers at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) have questioned the plan's safety by highlighting greater risks of copper corrosion than previously acknowledged, which could result in leakage.
"The case for not producing more waste is still standing as strong as it was standing 20 years ago," he added.
Posiva and SKB have refuted KTH's experimental studies, and the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority has concluded that the plans meet the requirements of nuclear and radiation safety.
- 'Leading the way' -
Allison Macfarlane, professor at the University of British Columbia, told AFP that while no plan is "100 percent safe," Onkalo is "certainly the solution that's received the most research."
The alternative, she added, would be "leaving the waste where it is above ground without a plan indefinitely."
If the nuclear waste is left above ground and our society falls apart "it will definitely get into the environment and affect humans," she explained.
She believes that in a reasonably selected location, the waste "will remain safe for thousands and tens of thousands of years."
"I think it is the internationally agreed-upon solution to the problem of nuclear waste," Macfarlane said.
Locations for potential nuclear waste repositories have been selected in Sweden, France and Switzerland, with Canada close to making a decision.
"Now that we are leading the way, others are following and doing the same," Posiva's Hansen said.
But many projects have faced resistance and locations have been difficult to agree on, such as France's Cigeo project in the country's northeast.
In April, Finland's next-generation Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor, the largest in Europe, went into regular production.
A poll published the same month by the trade association Finnish Energy showed record-high support for nuclear energy in Finland, with 68 percent of Finns in favor.
Macfarlane said "Sweden and Finland have shown us that the technical challenges can be surmounted."
"Other challenges that need to be addressed are the political ones."
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