Winter depression is real and there are many ways to fight back

The groups promoting ballot measures to add amendments to the constitutions in nine states that would enshrine a right to abortion have raised more than $160 million.

That’s nearly six times what their opponents have brought in, The Associated Press found in an analysis of campaign finance data compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets and state governments.

The campaign spending reports are a snapshot in time, especially this late in the campaigns, when contributions are rolling in for many.

The cash advantage is showing up in ad spending, where data from the media tracking firm AdImpact shows campaigns have spent more than three times as much as opponents in ads on TV, streaming services, radio and websites.

Abortion-rights supporters have prevailed on all seven ballot measures that have gone before voters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, which ended a nationwide right to abortion and opened the door for the bans and restrictions that are now being enforced in most Republican-controlled states.

Most of the money is going to Florida

Florida is the behemoth in this year’s abortion ballot-measure campaigns.

Proponents of the measure have raised more than $75 million and opponents $10 million. Combined, that’s nearly half the national total.

The state Republican Party is using additional funds, including from corporations across the country, to urge voters to reject the measure. Including that, supporters still lead in ad-buying: $60 million to $27 million.

The total spent as of Tuesday is about the same amount spent on the state’s U.S. Senate race.

The amendment would overturn a ban on most abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy — when women often don’t know they’re pregnant — that was signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and took effect in May. DeSantis’ administration has taken steps to thwart the campaign for the amendment.

Florida’s ballot measure rules give opponents a boost: Passage requires approval from 60% of voters instead of a simple majority.

An influx of funding arrives in South Dakota

South Dakota is an outlier, with a significant funding advantage for anti-abortion groups.

According to an Associated Press analysis of state campaign disclosures, they’ve raised about $2 million compared with abortion-rights supporters’ $1 million.

There was a big change last week when the abortion-rights group Dakotans for Health reported that it had received $540,000 from Think Big America, a fund launched by Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker, a Democrat. The fund’s director, Mike Ollen, said that’s helping ads get seen more widely in what could be a close race.

Before that, national abortion-rights groups, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, had mostly ignored South Dakota because, they said, the ballot measure doesn’t go far enough. It would allow regulations of abortions after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy if they relate to the health of the woman.

“We find ourselves being caught between being way too extreme on the right end of the spectrum and not extreme enough on the left end of the spectrum,” said Rick Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health. “We think we’re right in the middle.”

The anti-abortion campaign in South Dakota, like those elsewhere, is focused largely on portraying the amendment as too extreme. The Think Big money provided a new chance to do that.

“South Dakotans don’t want extreme Chicago, San Francisco, and New York views tainting our great state,” Life Defense Fund spokesperson Caroline Woods said in a statement.

One anti-abortion group reported a $25,000 contribution last week from South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem’s political action committee.

Funding is close to even in a state with competing ballot measures

Nebraska has competing ballot measures.

One would allow abortion until viability, considered to be somewhere after 20 weeks. The other would bar abortion in most cases after the first 12 weeks — echoing current state law, but also allowing for a stricter one.

The side pushing to keep restrictions is leading the fundraising race, with at least $9.8 million. One prominent family has supplied more than half of that. Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts has contributed more than $1 million, and his mother, Marlene Ricketts, has chipped in $4 million.

The campaign for more access has raised at least $6.4 million.

In some states, the opposition has been quiet

In most places, abortion-rights supporters have a big fundraising lead.

In Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana and Nevada, the opponents had each reported raising less than $2 million before Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the groups promoting the questions in those states have all collected at least $5 million.

The ballot questions have different circumstances.

Missouri’s amendment would open the door to blocking the state’s current ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Proponents of the measure have raised more than $30 million to opponents’ $1.5 million.

In Arizona, passing the abortion amendment would roll back a ban after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy and instead allow it until fetal viability, and later in some cases. The state’s Supreme Court ruled this year that an 1864 ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy could be enforced, but the Legislature promptly repealed it.

Colorado is one of the few states that already has no gestational limits on when during pregnancy abortion can be obtained. Montana allows abortion until viability.

Opponents of Nevada’s measure have not reported any spending. To take effect, the amendment needs to pass this year and again in 2026.

Fundraising has been low on both sides in Maryland, though Pritzker’s fund says it’s sending money there, and New York, where a ballot measure doesn’t mention abortion specifically but would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”

Big contributions from national groups are one-sided

Liberal groups, including those that aren’t required to report who their donors are, are far more active in the campaigns than their anti-abortion counterparts.

The Fairness Project, which promotes progressive ballot measures, has pledged $30 million for this year’s abortion amendments. So far, $10 million in its contributions have shown up in campaign finance reports.

Several other abortion-rights groups have contributed $5 million or more. No single entity on the anti-abortion side has reported giving that much.

Groups that funded the majority of last year’s campaign against an Ohio abortion-rights amendment that voters approved are absent from this year’s list of big contributors.

The Concord Fund, part of a network of political groups centered around conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, didn’t show up in campaign finance reports until Wednesday, when a Missouri filing showed the group gave $1 million the day before to a group opposing the ballot measure there. Leo was a driving force in securing nominations of Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has not been active on abortion ballot measures this year, but it is pumping money into the presidential race in support of Republican Donald Trump.

“This is the most consequential fight for life before us,” SBA spokesperson Kelsey Pritchard said in a statement, noting that the group is aiming to spend $92 million in eight states in the presidential race.

The most Canadian animal? It’s not the beaver that marks the nickel, the moose that pervades souvenir shops across the country, the loon that gave the one-dollar coin its nickname, or even the much-maligned Canada goose.

In fact, the spiny softshell turtle is Canada’s most distinct animal in evolutionary terms, researchers from Simon Fraser University show in a first-of-its-kind study.

Arne Mooers, a biodiversity professor who led the research,says it means the threatened freshwater turtle found in southern Ontario and Quebec has spent the longest stretch of time evolving independently from other species in Canada.

The researchers started by building a “tree of life” using Canada’s official list of species, which includes 222 mammals, 674 birds, 48 amphibians and 49 reptiles.

They identified the top 20 most isolated species for each group and found the spiny softshell turtle topped the rankings, representing nearly 180 million years of independent evolutionary history, while Canada’s lone marsupial, the Virginia opossum, was the top-ranked mammal at nearly 160 million years.

The softshell turtle is followed by the mudpuppy, the only completely aquatic amphibian in Canada, and a species that Mooers describes as “really cute.”

“It can grow as long as a small cat, and it can live for 30 years,” he says.

The ranking not only highlights species that are often “weird and wonderful,” like the mudpuppy, he says, but also offers a kind of “triage” tool for conservation efforts.

A species that has close relatives in other countries may be isolated and threatened in Canada, and a high ranking for evolutionary distinctiveness could help conservationists determine which species to focus on, he says.

“If we have limited resources, then this could be one way to help us decide what to do, and say, ‘Well this one really is very different from everything else, and we’ve got a measurement of that so maybe we should make sure we don’t lose this species.'”

It’s one of many ways to assess species, but it is a “new way,” adds Mooers, a member of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

He says the study published this month in the Canadian Field-Naturalist, a peer-reviewed journal, is the first to create scores for the evolutionary distinctiveness of species in a particular country, going deeper than the species’ global ranking.

“If you do global conservation, you want the global list, but if you’re interested in your country, maybe you want a country-specific list, and they might not be the same.”

Overall, the researchers found most of the species with high evolutionary distinctiveness rankings in Canada were amphibians and reptiles.

The tree of life for mammals in Canada is “very weird,” Mooers notes, because it includes the country’s only marsupial, the Virginia opossum.

The opossum pushes the mammal family tree back to 158.8 million years, but the rest of the top-ranked mammals are more closely related to each other.

They range from about 24 million years of independent evolution for the pallid bat to close to 64 million for the North American porcupine, the study says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 30, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Union has finalized its sharply higher customs duties on electric vehicles imported from China. EVs are the latest flash point in a broader trade dispute over Chinese government subsidies and Beijing’s burgeoning exports of green technology to the 27-nation bloc.

The duties took effect provisionally in July and were finalized after talks between the EU and China failed to resolve their differences. Negotiations are expected to continue, and the EU could lift the duties if an agreement is reached.

Here are some basic facts about the EU’s customs duties:

What did the European Union do?

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, conducted an eight-month investigation and concluded that companies making electric cars in China benefit from massive government help that enables them to undercut rivals in the EU on price, take a large market share and threaten European jobs.

The duties differ depending on the maker: 17% for BYD, 18.8% for Geely and 35.3% for state-owned SAIC. Other EV manufacturers in China, including Volkswagen and BMW, would be subject to a 20.7% duty. The commission has an individually calculated rate for Tesla of 7.8%.

“By adopting these proportionate and targeted measures after a rigorous investigation, we’re standing up for fair market practices and for the European industrial base,” European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said.

The duties will stay in force for five years unless an amicable solution is found.

Why did the commission take action?

Chinese-built electric cars jumped from 3.9% of the EV market in 2020 to 25% by September 2023, the commission has said.

The commission says companies in China accomplished that with the help of subsidies all along the chain of production, from cheap land for factories from local governments to below-market supplies of lithium and batteries from state-owned enterprises to tax breaks and below-interest financing from state-controlled banks.

The rapid growth in market share has sparked fears that Chinese cars will eventually threaten the EU’s ability to produce its own green technology needed to combat climate change, as well as the jobs of 2.5 million workers at risk in the auto industry and 10.3 million more people whose jobs depend indirectly on EV production.

Subsidized solar panels from China have wiped out European producers — an experience that European governments don’t want to see repeated with their auto industry.

Unusually, the commission acted on its own, without a complaint from the European auto industry. Industry leaders and Germany, home to BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, have opposed the tariffs. That’s because many of the cars that will be hit with tariffs are made by European companies, and China could retaliate against the auto industry or in other areas.

How is China reacting?

Beijing has been sharply critical of the investigation and the higher duties as protectionist and unfair.

The Commerce Ministry has also launched anti-dumping investigations into European exports of brandy and pork and an investigation of dairy product subsidies. Earlier this month, it announced provisional tariffs of 30.6% to 39% on French and other European brandies, after EU member countries voted in favor of finalizing the tariffs on EVs.

Officials have also said that they are weighing whether to raise tariffs on imports of gasoline-powered vehicles with large engines.

Talks between the two sides focused in recent weeks on so-called “price commitments” as a possible resolution. In such a scenario, carmakers would agree to a minimum selling price for their EVs in Europe.

Some Chinese automakers are looking at making cars in Europe to avoid any tariffs and be closer to the market. BYD is building a plant in Hungary, while Chery has a joint venture to build cars in Spain’s Catalonia region.

How do the EU tariffs compare to ones announced by the U.S.?

The Biden administration is raising tariffs on Chinese EVs to 100% from the current 25%. At that level, the U.S. tariffs block virtually all Chinese EV imports.

That’s not what Europe is trying to do.

EU officials want affordable electric cars from abroad to achieve their goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 — but without the subsidies EU leaders see as unfair competition

The planned tariffs are aimed at leveling the playing field by approximating the size of the excess or unfair subsidies available to Chinese carmakers.

European countries subsidize electric cars, too. The question in trade disputes is whether subsidies are fair and available to all carmakers or distort the market in favor of one side.

What does this mean for European drivers and carmakers?

It’s not clear what impact the duties will have on car prices. Chinese carmakers are able to make cars so cheaply that they could absorb the duties in the form of lower profits instead of raising prices.

Currently, Chinese carmakers often sell their vehicles overseas at much higher prices than in China, meaning they are favoring profits over market share, even given their recent market gains. Five of BYD’s six models would still earn a profit in Europe even with a 30% tariff, according to Rhodium Group calculations.

BYD’s Seal U Comfort model sells for the equivalent of 21,769 euros ($23,370) in China but 41,990 euros ($45,078) in Europe, according to Rhodium. The base model of BYD’s compact Seagull, due to arrive in Europe next year, sells for around $10,000 in China.

While consumers might benefit from cheaper Chinese cars in the short term, allowing unfair practices could eventually mean less competition and higher prices in the long term, the commission argues.

___

Moritsugu reported from Beijing.