Southwestern Water Supply on Brink of Collapse – The Wednesday AM Quickie 8/19/26

By Whitney Curry Wimbish — Aug 19, 2026

That’s it from me. Corey is back tomorrow. -Whitney

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THE BIG NEWS

Southwestern Water Supply on Brink of Collapse

The nation’s two largest water reservoirs are at their lowest levels in history, imperiling millions of people across Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, the AP, the NYT and the Washington Post reported. Lakes Mead and Powell are essential water sources for wildlife and more than 40 million people across those seven states; they provide not only drinking water, but the power to run hydroelectric dams. They also provide needed water for farms, the tourism industry’s marinas, and the region’s data centers, which the NYT says is a key industry for some of the affected states.

Both reservoirs are on the Colorado River. Lake Mead is the bigger of the two and on the border between Arizona and Nevada. Lake Powell is on the Utah-Arizona border and just 30 feet away “from the point at which turbines would stop producing hydroelectric power.” The last time the two were as dry as they are now was in 1957. “That was long before climate change brought three decades of drought, the worst dry spell for the Southwest in at least 1,200 years,” scientists told the NYT. Officials are now struggling to figure out what to do. According to the WaPo, lawmakers in the seven affected states “failed to reach a compromise on how to share the dwindling water last month, triggering the Bureau of Reclamation to announce new operating guidelines aimed at trying to protect the reservoirs from falling below these critical levels. A range of actions includes serious cuts to water use in Arizona, California and Nevada.” As my Prospect colleague Ryan Cooper wrote this morning, one solution is to drain Lake Powell, turn Lake Mead into one big reservoir, and install floating solar panels to provide shade and cut down on evaporation.

Europe has a water crisis of its own with major rivers drying up, including the Danube, Po and Rhine, according to the Guardian and the WSJ. In Hungary, the Danube river level has dropped to a record low, exposing a rock that people for centuries saw as a warning that “the river had fallen so low that floating mills could no longer operate, crops were probably failing, and hunger would almost certainly follow.” The Ínség-szikla, or Rock of Starvation, has “surfaced almost in its entirety, along with the sandy riverbed on which it rests, astonishing geologists and government scientists sent to examine it.”

MORE STORIES TO WATCH

Huge Win for Florida Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon

State Rep. Angie Nixon, a union organizer, DSA member, and opponent to Florida’s new gerrymandered maps, won bigtime last night in a race against former National Security Council aide Alex Vindeman, NBC News, the NYT and the Tampa Bay Times reported. Nixon was already ten points ahead of Vindeman shortly after polls closed last night; a half-hour later, with 87 percent of the vote in, the margin was even bigger, with Nixon taking 56 percent and Vindeman taking 44 percent. Nixon ran on a platform of universal healthcare, an hourly minimum wage of $25 and taxing the rich – popular policies that allowed her to overcome Vindeman’s spending, which surpassed hers 13-to-1. Nixon will face Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in the general election. Elsewhere in the state, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is white, benefitted from those redrawn maps, and won an area that has for more than three decades sent a Black Democrat to Congress, the AP reported. Trump-backed candidates had mixed results. His chosen candidate for governor, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, won the nomination and could become the state’s first Black governor. He’ll face David Jolly, the Republican who became an Independent, who became a Democrat. Other candidates Trump backed (or previously backed) failed: Catalina Lauf and incumbent Rep. Cory Mills.

In Alaska, which runs an open primary, former Democratic US Rep. Mary Pelota took the lead ahead of Republican US Sen. Dan S. Sullivan for a Senate seat, Anchorage Daily News reported. As of early Wednesday morning, Pelota had 48 percent of the vote and Sullivan had 42.8 percent. Thousands of ballots had not yet been counted.

ICE Will Pay for Police Officers’ Liability Insurance

According to a federal procurement document that the AP reported on, American taxpayers will foot the bill for personal liability insurance for police officers who make immigration arrests so that they don’t have to face the financial consequences of, say, murdering someone in broad daylight. It is a weird spend, in my opinion, because they already face minimal consequences. Anyway, the rogue death-squad agency will reimburse cops $250 a year, roughly the cost of that type of insurance, “which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments.” Per the AP:

One prominent critic of ICE’s immigration crackdown said the program would be yet another way for officers to avoid personal accountability for misconduct.

“The concern here is that ICE is going above and beyond to guarantee law enforcement does not have even the slightest risk of liability for violating Americans’ rights while helping ICE arrest people,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, who has called on Congress to make it easier to sue ICE agents for wrongdoing.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

Multi-Billion-Dollar Disney Sues FCC for Violating First Amendment The corporate juggernaut claims the agency is retaliating against them for criticizing Trump and attempting to force its ABC properties off the air; the lawsuit follows the comments of widely loathed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who on Friday defended his decision to target ABC. via the AP, the NYT and Politico.
House Ethics Committee Investigating Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) for Inappropriate Sexual Contact With Staffer “The inquiry into Mr. Gomez’s conduct comes months after the resignations of two lawmakers facing sexual misconduct accusations — Representatives Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, and Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas — forced the House to confront its handling of such complaints.” via the NYT.
Tech Oligarchs Will ‘Dramatically Increase’ Emissions With Proprietary Gas Plants Powering Data Centers Data center developers are planning 99 gas plants, which would belch out 318 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year; “There is immense, immense pressure on the whole sector to get power, and get it fast,” according to one utility watchdog. “They’re sort of agnostic if it is clean or dirty.” via Bloomberg.
US Airman Under Investigation After Publicly Protesting Trump’s Criminal Iran War in Uniform The military could dishonorably discharge Maj. Jason Watson, withhold his pay, and/or throw him in prison for months; he said he needed to publicly protest because “If I don’t put myself out there in a big way, it’s just noise.” He added, “We can change what is happening in our country if we’re just willing to pay a price for it.” via Common Dreams.

SOME NUMBER

366

That’s how many data sets the Trump regime has changed or deleted because they don’t support or match his priorities. They include banks of information about federal law enforcement officer misconduct records, air quality, and violence against children. “We’re at a very vulnerable point as a nation,” Denice Ross, Biden’s former US chief data scientist and a co-founder of dataindex.us, told the Guardian. “We’re facing a future where we are not going to have the information that we need to make decisions that will save lives and benefit American communities.”

ON THE SHOW TODAY

8/19: Emma will host solo tomorrow. Her guests are Karen Attiah, journalist and publisher of The Golden Hour newsletter, who will discuss her piece, “Jason Arday's Death and the Age of Digital Racial Terror”; and Rania Khalek journalist and host of Dispatches on BreakThrough News, who will discuss the GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee issuing a subpoena to BreakThrough News.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Democrat's Data Center Answer Could Cost Him Wisconsin

Nobody likes data centers unless they are making money off them.

Democrat Politely Humiliates The Most Biased Local News Interview Ever Caught On Tape

I am skeptical that talking TV heads have the capacity to feel humiliated.

PARTING WORDS

“You never know whenever is the last hug that you’re going to have from your parents. You don’t know, you’ll never know how stressful and hard life is without them.”

– 19-year-old Dulce Zepeda, who Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents left alone to raise her 13-year-old sister, Maria, when they deported their parents a year ago. The two teens live in Forth Worth, Texas, where Dulce is now working at McDonald’s, caring for Maria, and trying to save enough so Maria can go to Honduras to visit their mom. According to NBC News, their mother, Daysi Munoz, said she “repeatedly told ICE she wanted to take the girls with her to Honduras. But Munoz said ICE told her that wasn’t possible, unless she wanted to spend at least four or five additional months in a detention center. Munoz said she has high blood pressure and feared her health would deteriorate in extended detention.”

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