Extreme Water Shortages in the West, and Hegseth’s Pentagon Purge
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From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Tuesday, June 2nd. Here's what we're covering.
I've been covering drought in the West for more than 10 years, and this is probably the worst I've ever seen it. The winter basically just didn't happen in a lot of the Rocky Mountains. The snow never really came, and that has basically left the mountains that should be covered in snow right now bare. And that's really scary to see at the beginning of what is expected to be a really hot summer.
My colleague Jack Healy is reporting on how the western United States is bracing for the water to run out. June has barely started, but 70 percent of the West is already in drought. Cities are restricting water use, and Jack says some farmers are abandoning their fields.
Colorado, in particular, is famous for its peaches. Its peaches are maybe the best part of a Colorado summer. They're unbelievably sweet and juicy. But right now, some of the peach farmers don't have enough water for their own trees. So what they're doing is they're ripping up some of their own orchards so they can take what little water they have and focus it on keeping some of their most productive trees alive. I talked to corn and bean farmers who are basically letting half of their fields go unplanted this year because they don't have enough water. I talked to farmers who are selling off parts of their livestock herds because they don't have enough grass to actually keep those cows fed.
Jack says it's not just farms. The little town of Kearney, Arizona, for example, is on the brink of running out of water. It has drained its public pool, banned people from watering their lawns or washing their cars, and let the Little League fields go brown. The mayor is now asking people to make sure they've worn their clothes three times before washing them. Jack says that for other towns in the West, a lot of which depend on the strained Colorado River for water, Kearney is a preview.
Big picture, the West is getting hotter and the Colorado River that brings water to 40 million people and 5 million acres of farmland is shrinking. And I just think that this year we're at the kind of crisis point that the West has been dreading for decades. And without some pretty drastic action and deep cuts and, you know, hopefully, you know, some pretty torrential summer monsoon rains, the problem is only going to get worse.
Now, a few updates on the Trump administration, starting with the president's $1.8 billion fund. The Times has learned that, at least for now, Trump is backing off his plans for that pot of money, which would have likely distributed huge sums to his allies. The fund faced a pair of legal setbacks yesterday, but even before that, people familiar with the matter said Trump had spent days leaning towards scrapping the plan after it generated extraordinary bipartisan anger, including from some Republican senators. Still, Trump could change his mind, and some Republicans signaled yesterday that they were wary he might eventually push forward again with the controversial fund. Also, at the Pentagon, in a highly unusual decision, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers in a move that appears to be part of his campaign to purge the Pentagon of leaders he's called woke.
He pulled three women and two Black men off the planned promotion list, as well as four white men, leaving a slate that has no women and appears to only include two non-white officers. He made a similar move earlier this year, blocking the promotion of several army officers, two Black men and two women.
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