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House Democrats are considering how firmly to dig in on farm bill issues they care about as they anticipate partisan fights over food stamps, climate change and other matters as lawmakers approach the expiration of the current law.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the House Agriculture and Nutrition Task Force that held its final forum July 13, said there are limits to how far the Democrats are willing to compromise as they seek to influence the bill that sets farm policy for about five years. The current law expires Sept. 30.

House Republicans were arguing not long ago that a deal on the debt ceiling could make it easier to pass a farm bill. Instead, many conservatives are angry over the debt agreement and demanding cuts to nutrition assistance and other programs that could delay the development of a new farm bill and even threaten its passage.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., affirmed in February that he intended to see a new farm bill passed before the end of the year with bipartisan support. But the conservatives’ outrage over the debt ceiling agreement, which is expected to increase, not reduce, the number of people getting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, and new demands for deep cuts in domestic spending will further test McCarthy’s command of the GOP conference heading into the farm bill debate.

The majority of Americans want even higher amounts of food aid for struggling families, according to a new poll from the Save the Children Action Network.

The survey, shared exclusively to The Hill, could be a warning sign for conservatives seeking to cut payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as part of the discussion on a new farm bill this year.

Food advocates and lawmakers are mobilizing to inform lower-income residents about new rules that could cut their access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. Under legislation brokered between Congress and the White House, starting this summer more middle-aged SNAP participants will have to find jobs to continue with the program.

Democrats are also hoping to stave off efforts from the right to further restrict access to the program as Congress tackles the farm bill, the massive legislative package that includes a wide range of food and agricultural priorities, from food security to trade protections to keep U.S. farmers internationally competitive.

Members of the U.S. Congress are facing down two enormous tasks, with little time to complete them. As of Sept. 30 of this year, the 2018 Farm Bill will expire. Simultaneously, the American government needs a new budget in place to open its doors Oct. 1.

It will take a mighty effort for either to get done. In the three months between July 1 and Oct. 1, the House of Representatives is scheduled to be in session just 24 days, while the Senate will sit for 30.

Despite Obama's remarks in 2016 and these two incidents, experts and officials contest the viability of the nuclear terrorism threat. Dr Beyza Unal, a research fellow in nuclear policy at think tank Chatham House, argued there is currently no evidence that terrorist groups could build a nuclear weapon. Similarly, a report by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2006 emphasized how building a nuclear bomb is a difficult task for states, let alone terrorists. This is because of the issues involved in accessing uranium and creating and maintaining it at the correct grade (enriched uranium).

While nuclear terrorism is a concern, the majority of terrorist attacks are conducted with conventional explosives. The 2017 Europol Terrorism Situation and Trend Report states that 40 percent of terrorist attacks used explosives. These explosives originate from a wide variety of countries across the world. According to a study by Conflict Armament Research, large quantities of explosive precursor chemicals used to make bombs as seen in the 7/7 attack in London in 2005 and the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, have been linked to supply chains in the United States, Europe, and Asia via Turkey. The threat from the spread of chemical precursors prompted the EU to begin looking at ways to tighten the regulations of these chemicals (PDF).

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirms that Democrats’ Inflation Act, which supercharges the IRS with 87,000 new agents, will lead to more audits and enforcement measures, and higher taxes for families making less than $400,000. The analysis comes in a response to House Budget Committee Republican Leader Jason Smith (MO-08) and House Ways and Means Committee Republican Leader Kevin Brady (TX-08). CBO’s analysis finds that revenues will be collected from American families with incomes of less than $400,000. CBO also confirmed that Secretary Yellen’s directive to IRS Commissioner Rettig fails to prohibit an increase on enforcement activities, including automated screening and document matching. Should audits return to “historical levels,” as per Secretary Yellen’s directive, lower- and middle-income earners could face an increase of 710,000 additional audits. CBO confirmed Democrats’ Inflation Act would increase the IRS budget beyond its previous historical high in 2010, when the agency was found to have targeted conservative groups.

Audits on Middle Class Families are Still Scheduled to Increase Under This “Plan” Secretary Yellen has misleadingly claimed audit rates won’t increase for middle class taxpayers “relative to historic levels” without explaining what that means – while Treasury and the IRS consistently refer to 2010 audit levels when talking about “historic levels” in other contexts, which is when audit rates were higher for taxpayers at every income level. Secretary Yellen previously confirmed to the Ways and Means Committee the total number of audits on families earning less than $400,000 will rise.

On Thursday, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) issued the following statement in response to the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) newly released “plan” that was supposed to inform Congress and the American people how the IRS will spend the $80 billion Democrats gave the agency in the Inflation Reduction Act (it doesn’t): “Americans are rightly concerned the IRS will use its $80 billion pay raise to go after the middle class, and today’s announcement does nothing to ease those concerns. The American people deserve to know how their hard-earned taxpayer dollars are being spent. More than eight months after Democrats enacted the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS’s latest document offers no specifics for the agency over the next decade. If this is a ‘plan,’ why does it omit how many employees the agency seeks to hire over ten years, fail to identify target audit rates for taxpayers, and lack specific details about how the money will be spent beyond the next two years? The $80 billion raise is just the start. The Biden Administration had the nerve to ask Congress to give the IRS another $43 billion in its annual budget request while withholding details on how it will spend the new money. This is a punt, not a ‘plan,’ and it raises more questions than answers about how Americans’ tax dollars will be spent to go after working families and small businesses.”

Before we review our approach in detail, it may be useful to explain why this type of analysis has not been pursued successfully in the past and what makes our effort different from other, broadly related projects. We are not the first to apply an IV framework (more specifically) or multi-equation models (more broadly) to the democratic peace. However, previous attempts suffer from two major problems. First, previous studies have typically used a dyad (country pair) as the unit of observation in analyzing conflict, which requires some summary measure(s) of democracy for a pair of countries rather than the state-level (monadic) democracy measure. 6 Use of a dyadic aggregate to represent regime type creates a discrepancy between the first stage regression (predicting democracy at the country level) and the outcome stage regression (predicting conflict at the dyad level). 7 We avoid this problem by using the directed dyad as the unit of observation in predicting conflict, distinguishing between the potential challenger and target in a dispute. This allows us to connect the first stage equations (predicting the challenger’s and target’s regime types) and the outcome stage equation seamlessly. Doing so has several benefits: the outcome stage model could directly include country-level covariates (such as challenger’s and target’s democracy) without having to convert them to a dyadic summary. This also allows us to estimate the system of equations jointly rather than relying on the “forbidden regression.” 8

Second, a more daunting challenge in applying an IV approach to democratic peace research is the difficulty of finding a plausible instrument for regime type — a variable that is strongly correlated with regime type but is unrelated to war. This is the challenge that has plagued empirical researchers in many fields. For example, a recent study of the effect of regime type on economic growth uses a diffusion-based measure of democracy (i.e., average value of democracies in a given region) as an instrument for democracy (Acemoglu et al. 2019). However, diffusion-based instruments such as this are unlikely to be a valid instrument, due to spatial spill-over, interdependence, and, most importantly, simultaneity (Betz, Cook, and Hollenbach 2018). Recognizing problems with spatial instruments, McDonald (2015) seeks to exploit the very discrepancy between country-level and dyad-level designs as the source of identification. His discussion, however, lacks a clear explanation as to why some determinants of regime type do not influence conflict. 9

We now turn to the results from the outcome stage, where militarized conflict initiation is regressed on democracy measures and other covariates. The univariate clog-log model 32 that ignores the endogeneity, shown in column (1) in Table 1, successfully replicates the standard, dyadic democratic peace finding that democracies are peaceful, though only toward other democracies. Note that, while individual democracy measures have either a positive or insignificant coefficient, joint democracy has a negative coefficient that overwhelms the positive coefficients of individual democracy measures in the univariate model. As a result, the univariate model produces a result that, while democracy may increase conflict against a non-democracy, it decreases conflict against a democracy.

To illustrate this, we calculate the average treatment effect of joint democracy for the challenger and for the target based on the univariate model. These effects are calculated by comparing the predicted probabilities of conflict initiation when changing the regime type of self (challenger or target) from non-democracy to democracy, holding constant the regime type of the other (target or challenger) as democracy. 33 Gray, hollow circles in Figure 4 show the treatment effects of challenger’s and target’s democracy. We can see that both effects are negative and statistically significant at the 95% confidence level.

The democratic peace—the observation that democracies are less likely to fight each other than are other pairings of states—is one of the most widely acknowledged empirical regularities in international relations. Prominent scholars have even characterized the relationship as an empirical law (Levy 1988; Gleditsch 1992). The discovery of a special peace in liberal dyads stimulated enormous scholarly debate and led to, or reinforced, a number of policy initiatives by various governments and international organizations. Although a broad consensus has emerged among researchers regarding the empirical correlation between joint democracy and peace, disagreement remains as to its logical foundations. Numerous theories have been proposed to account for how democracy produces peace, if only dyadically (e.g., Russett 1993; Rummel 1996; Doyle 1997; Schultz 2001).

At the same time, peace appears likely to foster or maintain democracy (Thompson 1996; James, Solberg, andWolfson 1999). A vast swath of research in political science and economics proposes explanations for the origins of liberal government involving variables such as economic development (Lipset 1959; Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1994; Przeworski et al. 2000; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Epstein et al. 2006) and inequality (Boix 2003), political interests (Downs 1957; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), power hierarchies (Moore 1966; Lake 2009), third party inducements (Pevehouse 2005) or impositions (Peceny 1995; Meernik 1996), geography (Gleditsch 2002b), and natural resource endowments (Ross 2001), to list just a few examples. Each of these putative causes of democracy is also associated with various explanations for international conflict. Indeed, some as yet poorly defined set of canonical factors may contribute both to democracy and to peace, making it look as if the two variables are directly related, even if possibly they are not.

Decades after they were supposedly banished from the West, the dark forces of world politics—illiberalism, autocracy, nationalism, protectionism, spheres of influence, territorial revisionism—have reasserted themselves. China and Russia have dashed all hopes that they would quickly transition to democracy and support the liberal world order. To the contrary, they have strengthened their authoritarian systems at home and flouted norms abroad. Even more stunning, with the United Kingdom having voted for Brexit and the United States having elected Donald Trump as president, the leading patrons of the liberal world order have chosen to undermine their own system. Across the world, a new nationalist mindset has emerged, one that views international institutions and globalization as threats to national sovereignty and identity rather than opportunities.

The recent rise of illiberal forces and leaders is certainly worrisome. Yet it is too soon to write the obituary of liberalism as a theory of international relations, liberal democracy as a system of government, or the liberal order as the overarching framework for global politics. The liberal vision of nation-states cooperating to achieve security and prosperity remains as vital today as at any time in the modern age. In the long course of history, liberal democracy has hit been hard times before, only to rebound and gain ground. It has done so thanks to the appeal of its basic values and its unique capacities to effectively grapple with the problems of modernity and globalization.

Yesterday’s assault on the United States Capitol by a right-wing extremist mob may have only modestly damaged the building, but it gravely injured the prestige of American democracy. The United States’ authoritarian adversaries are gloating. China’s Communist Youth League, echoing U.S. reactions to the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, called the storming of the Capitol a “beautiful sight.” And America’s democratic allies, who well understand the importance of U.S. democratic leadership to the global cause of freedom, have been badly shaken by the images of ruffians rampaging through the world’s most powerful democratic assembly on the day of its most important deliberative task: certifying the results of the presidential election. In the wake of this calamity, American political and civic leaders now face an urgent imperative to repair the fabric of U.S. democracy.

The siege of the Capitol was a tragedy, but it was also a wake-up call. At this juncture, there is no evidence to suggest a carefully laid plot by organized or well-trained militias. One shudders to imagine what might have transpired had that been the case. If a ragtag band of the radically aggrieved and conspiracy minded could force members of the United States Congress to break off pieces of House furniture to defend themselves, and to evacuate their chambers in distress, what could a serious insurrection have done? The first imperative of any democracy is to physically secure and protect itself—its people, its public officials, and its institutions. Rudely reminded of that fact, the country could be spared a far worse tragedy in the future.

The world watched with a mixture of apprehension, dismay and fear on Wednesday as the United States struggled to extricate itself from a divisive presidential election and appeared to face a protracted legal battle. President Trump’s premature claim of victory and false allegations of voter fraud drew expressions of shock over the state of U.S. democracy, along with disparagement from U.S. adversaries. Here are the latest developments: International election observers found the vote was “competitive and well-managed” but also “tarnished by legal uncertainty,” in an initial assessment released Wednesday. They condemned Trump’s claims of voter fraud, calling them “baseless allegations.” Europeans expressed fear the situation in the United States could deteriorate rapidly. Whatever the outcome, analysts say, Trump’s strong performance indicates Trumpism is here to stay. Asian markets rose Thursday, with Tokyo’s Nikkei index up more than 1 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gaining almost 3 percent. What the U.S. election means for countries around the globe Trump’s victory claims and fraud complaints draw concern European media outlets questioned whether the United States was on the brink of collapse. China ridiculed the U.S. election as that of a “developing nation’s.” Germany’s defense minister warned of an “explosive situation,” even a “constitutional crisis.” A leading Brazilian newspaper prophesied that “more rounds of attacks on the foundations of democracy are guaranteed.” The headlines abroad aren’t expected to quiet anytime soon. After Trump falsely declared victory before the votes were counted on election night, he spent much of Wednesday leveling allegations of electoral fraud without evidence. His campaign has since announced legal challenges to determine which votes will count. Days of court battles and political uncertainty lie ahead. Many fear violence. “It highlights this fissure in America, and it troubles the parts of the world that would like to see American democracy succeed,” said Thomas Carothers, a senior official at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The image of American democracy has taken a series of body blows in the last few years, and this election probably only increases them.” Despite the uncertainty, Asian markets rose Thursday, with Tokyo’s Nikkei up more than 1 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gaining almost 3 percent by early afternoon local time. That followed a good day on Wall Street. Some analysts said the gridlock on taxes and regulation in Washington that would come with a President Biden and a Republican Senate was actually buttressing stocks. “Equity markets have now decided they like the prospect of a ‘do nothing’ President,” Ray Attrill, head of FX Strategy at National Australia Bank, told Reuters. Countries that have long struggled with democracy have begun to see their own political woes reflected in the United States. “In Africa, that’s nothing new,” said Oliver Dickson, a radio broadcaster in Johannesburg. “Election rigging — essentially what Trump is doing — is a long-standing practice over here. When a democracy is being hijacked, only its institutions can rescue it.” The democratic process in the United States has never been flawless; it has long been marred by problems with campaign finance, gerrymandering and toxic polarization. But never has an incumbent president been perceived as so pointedly trying to undermine the process itself. In rhetoric and action, President Trump has sought to erode people’s faith in the integrity of the results. “It’s breaking apart the image of America,” said Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House in London. “It’s puncturing that vision.” The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe assailed Trump on Wednesday for his claims of electoral fraud and his calls to halt the vote in areas where it appeared to be turning against him. Challenging times for democratic values worldwide “Nobody — no politician, no elected official, nobody — should limit the people’s right to vote,” said Michael Georg Link, a senior official with the organization. “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.” The tumult in the United States is unfolding as democratic values around the globe are fraying. The Pew Research Center this year found mixed opinions about democratic ideals across 34 countries surveyed. Far fewer people in India and Israel said they believed freedom of speech was important than five years earlier. Freedom House reported in March that democracy has been in decline for 14 years in a row. Not only have authoritarian regimes in countries such as China and Russia become more entrenched, the Washington think tank found, but “establishment democracies” have backslid. The trend has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic as leaders have seized wartime powers and delayed elections. “If the foundations of our democracy are threatened, it will have a detrimental effect for struggling democracies in other parts of the world,” said Sarah Repucci, the author of the Freedom House report. “People who are fighting for democracy in their own countries look to what’s happening in the United States, and it influences their sense of what’s possible. What happens here has an enormous influence on the fate of democracy abroad.” In Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 presidential election after mimicking many of Trump’s campaign tactics, political analysts said the U.S. election will likely convince strongman leaders that nationalist populism has enduring appeal and democratic norms can be swept aside without political cost. Trump administration has record of criticizing foreign governments that declare victory in disputed votes A Biden win could still be a 'success for Trump’ “Irrespective of who wins this thing, these results suggest that leaders worldwide who take their cues from Trump, including Bolsonaro, are now emboldened,” said Matias Spektor, a political scientist at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. “That the U.S. electorate has not given Trump a major rebut suggest the market for everything he embodies is alive and kicking.” Gérard Araud, the former French ambassador to the United States, tweeted that Biden would probably prevail, “but paradoxically, I can’t help to consider this election as a success for Trump. After so many scandals and polemics, after the COVID disaster, after the George Floyd death and its aftermath, and with major media against him, it’s not so bad.” Stephen Bartholomeusz, a business columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote that Trump “is likely to remain a significant and destabilizing force in U.S. politics regardless of whether he continues to live in the White House, or is ejected.” In Europe, there was pervasive fear that the situation in the United States could deteriorate rapidly. “America looks into the abyss,” Spain’s El País said in a headline. Trump’s behavior was “common in authoritarian regimes,” France’s Le Monde editorialized.

Is it possible that something truly dangerous and unforeseen could happen to Earth’s climate during the 21st century? Yes it is possible, but natural climate variability (including geologic processes) may be a more likely source of possible undesirable change than [anthropogenic] manmade warming. In any event, attempting to avoid such a dangerous and unforeseen climate by reducing fossil fuel emissions will be futile if natural climate and geologic processes are dominant factors. Geologic processes are an important factor in the potential instability of the West Antarctic ice sheet that could contribute to substantial sea level rise in the 21st century.23

Under the Paris Agreement, individual countries have submitted to the UNFCCC their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the Obama Administration, the U.S. NDC had a goal of reducing emissions by 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. Apart from considerations of feasibility and cost, it has been estimated24 using the EPA MAGICC model that this commitment will prevent 0.03o [degrees] C in warming by 2100. When combined with current commitments from other nations, only a small fraction of the projected future warming will be ameliorated by these commitments. If climate models are indeed running too hot,25 then the amount of warming prevented would be even smaller. Even if emissions immediately went to zero and the projections of climate models are to be believed, the impact on the climate would not be noticeable until the 2nd half of the 21st century. Most of the expected benefits to the climate from the UNFCCC emissions reductions policy will be realized in the 22nd century and beyond.

The long-term prognosis for human civilization is grim, but hopeful. The crises we will face do not generally pose an existential threat to human civilization on Earth. But it is undeniable that the risks of climate change, which include a range of unpredictable nonlinear effects, could radically and quickly change the face of the Earth and our ability to sustain our current civilization. Modern humans survived many rapid climatological upheavals in the millennia immediately leading up to the beginning of the Holocene. The Younger Dryas, Meltwater Pulses 1A and 1B, and the desertification of the once-green Sahara all changed the face of the Earth in ways observable in a single human life. And yet, human life went on.

Major effects of climate change include reduced agricultural yields, sea level rises, water scarcity, increased tropical diseases, ocean acidification and the collapse of the Gulf Stream. While extremely important when assessing the overall risks of climate change, none of these threaten extinction or irrevocable collapse.

Crops are very sensitive to reductions in temperature (due to frosts), but less sensitive to increases. By all appearances we would still have food to support civilization.85 Even if sea levels rose hundreds of meters (over centuries), most of the Earth’s land area would remain. Similarly, while some areas might conceivably become uninhabitable due to water scarcity, other areas will have increased rainfall. More areas may become susceptible to tropical diseases, but we need only look to the tropics to see civilization flourish despite this. The main effect of a collapse of the system of Atlantic Ocean currents that includes the Gulf Stream is a 2°C cooling of Europe—something that poses no permanent threat to global civilization.

Gunn-Wright: Implementation is going to be huge and complex. We could end up with a clean-energy build-out that confers a lot of advantages to wealthier white people and then leaves people of color behind. When it comes to folks thinking about environmental justice and protecting frontline communities, those are often going to be groups that have multiple priorities and not a ton of staff pushing against lobbyists who can focus very narrowly on one or two provisions in the law. It’s going to be difficult for there to be enough presence and pressure everywhere to ensure that the rules governing programs bend in favor of everyday people. I also think the difficulty in implementation is that agencies are often, from no fault of their own, understaffed, and there is a gap where communities who might need these programs to work for them are not at the same table as the agency folks who are running these programs. One of the problems with the IRA’s focus on tax credits is that right now there’s very little oversight. Opportunity Zones are an example of something that ended up not being used to benefit communities, but instead helping to build parking garages and sports complexes, in large part because of the lack of oversight and accountability. That same thing can happen with clean-energy tax credits.

The U.S. came to last year’s United Nations climate conference in Sharm El-Sheik Egypt riding high. Finally, the country had passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a $369 billion dollar spending package designed to put the country on a path to eliminate its carbon emissions. But, a few short months later, administration officials and members of Congress faced a range of questions and complaints about the landmark law. Why doesn’t it include funding to help countries most vulnerable to climate change? Could a future Republican Party undo it? Perhaps the most biting question came from allies: why does the law throw some of the U.S.’s closest partners under the bus? One South Korean official called the law a “betrayal.” In the midst of the conference in Egypt, the EU dropped an extensive document complaining of “problematic” tax provisions that would harm the bloc’s industry. Japan said the law might stop its car companies from investing in the U.S. In December, Amitabh Kant, the Indian government official charged with leading this year’s G20 summit, joined the chorus, telling me the law represents “the most protectionist act ever drafted in the world.” He called on the U.S. to rethink provisions that favor U.S. manufacturing and “find a way out for its trusted partners,” including India.