For eight years, Lai Yee Chen worked 24-hour shifts, up to five days a week, as a home care aide for bedridden seniors in New York City. She cooked, cleaned, changed diapers and turned her patients at least every two hours to prevent bedsores.

Ms. Chen, 69, has now retired, but she still wakes up at night, as if she is still on duty.

“The 24-hour working day is inhumane. It is violence against workers,” she said in Cantonese.

Ms. Chen has now joined an effort among home care workers in New York City to ban 24-hour shifts through a bill introduced in the City Council this week.

The number of older adults in New York is increasing. The number of home health aides caring for them has more than doubled over the past decade and will surpass half a million statewide by 2022, with most of the growth in New York City. And the expectation is that the field will continue to grow. Nationally, more new jobs are expected in home care than in any other profession over the next decade, says Kezia Scales, vice president of research and evaluation at PHI, a national research and advocacy organization for direct care workers.

Humanizing the job is critical to meeting the increased need: It will help attract people to the job and make it sustainable, workers and advocates say.

“We have a huge aging population, but we are reducing the number of people who want to care for them,” said Christopher Marte, a council member representing Lower Manhattan who is expected to introduce the bill Thursday to end the 24 -hour law. shifts. “This work is killing them.”

Home care aides are allowed to work 24 hours a day because of a long-standing interpretation of state law that requires them to be paid only for a maximum of 13 hours a day. Industry regulations are based on the idea that workers get three hours of food and eight hours of sleep, including five hours of uninterrupted rest.

But that is rarely, if ever, the case in practice because of the hour-long nature of the work, workers and union groups said.

“How can they sleep eight hours?” asked Vincent Cao, organizer of the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, which supports the ban on 24-hour shifts. “Are they going to leave the patient to die?”

Opponents of the bill say banning day shifts is misleading. The cost of providing 24-hour care to a patient would skyrocket under such a ban, said Al Cardillo, the president and CEO of the Home Care Association of New York State, which represents health care facilities and insurance companies. And it could force home health agencies, which are supported by state and federal funding, to spend more per patient, potentially creating gaps in coverage for the neediest residents.

Replacing 24-hour shifts with two 12-hour shifts — effectively doubling the total number of paid hours — could cost an additional $645 million a year in New York City, according to an analysis by 1199SEIU, a major union that represents health care workers.

But groups supporting the ban say the burden should not fall on low-wage workers, many of whom are also aging and could need similar care.

No other industry has added more jobs to New York City’s economy since the pandemic than home health care. It also remains one of the lowest-paying fields in the city, with an average salary of about $32,000, or nearly minimum wage, according to James Parrott, director of economic and fiscal policy at the New York Times Center for New York City Affairs. School.

Demographic shifts and a preference for home services are fueling the sector’s growth. While the total population of New York State is expected to grow by 3 percent between 2021 and 2040, the number of people aged 65 and older is expected to grow by 25 percent, and the population aged 85 and older is expected to grow by nearly 75 percent can increase. This is evident from a study by the City University of New York.

In New York City, nearly 90 percent of home care workers are women. They are often immigrants and tend to live longer, with more than half being over 45 years old, said Dr. Scales. Nearly 10 percent are 65 years or older.

While it is unclear how many home health aides work 24-hour shifts, there were 17,780 New York City residents receiving Medicaid-funded, live-in care in 2019, according to 1199SEIU.

After two years of failed lobbying, a group of health workers say they will go on a hunger strike in mid-March to pressure the city to abolish the practice.

“They don’t want others to live the life they lived,” Mr. Marte said.

A version of the City Council bill that sought to ban 24-hour shifts for home care aides and limit the number of hours they could work per week was introduced in 2022 but never came to a vote.

Rendy Desamours, a spokesman for the City Council, said the effort was misdirected because home care is funded primarily through Medicaid, which is administered at the state level.

“It has been counterproductive and harmful to lead people to believe this can be solved at the city level,” he said in a statement, adding that Council President Adrienne Adams planned to introduce a bill to repeal the legislative power of the state to improve the situation. employment conditions for home care workers.

A bill introduced in the state legislature late last year, the Home Care Savings & Reinvestment Act, also aims to help home care workers. It would eliminate private insurance companies that manage payment for Medicaid-funded services. That could save the state more than $1 billion a year, advocates say — money that could fund pay raises for workers. Critics say the savings are exaggerated.

Valeria Guerrero, 63, a former home care worker from Honduras who worked 24-hour shifts for more than two decades, said she averaged three to four hours of sleep a night. She blames her worsening diabetes on her poor sleep schedule.

At her last assignment in 2022, in a two-story home in the Bronx, she cared for an elderly woman with limited mobility who used an oxygen tank four days a week. When she wasn’t preparing meals, taking the patient to the bathroom or adjusting medical equipment, she slept on a couch, Ms. Guerrero said.

One morning, feeling sleepy, she fell down a flight of stairs and hurt her back and left ankle, she said. Unable to work after the injury and left with little savings, she now lives with her niece in the Bronx. She said she was paid $15 an hour for 12 hours a day, despite regularly working more hours.

Now she is seeking payment for thousands of unaccounted hours, according to NMASS, an employee organization helping her with her claim. Based on a complaint she filed with the state Department of Labor, she could be entitled to more than $177,000 in unpaid wages and damages.

Ms Guerrero hopes a ban on 24-hour shifts could help other home care workers.

“I spent most of my birthdays at work,” she said in Spanish. “You don’t get to live.”

Talmon Joseph Smith reporting contributed.

The political ideology known as “macronism” has always been about action, even agitation, at least in verbal form. Emmanuel Macron appeared on the scene in 2017 and promised a 'revolution'. Since then, for more than six years as president of France, he has embraced a “refoundation” and renamed his political party “Renaissance.” Now he calls for civilian 'rearmament'.

It may not be clear from this stimulating lexicon of a restless man that the 46-year-old Macron has in many ways moved in a conservative direction. The other word that starts with “R” and characterizes a president whose roots are in the Socialist Party is “right.”

Mr. Macron's primetime press conference this week was peppered with the words 'order' and 'respect' as the president called for 'La Marseillaise', the French national anthem, to be taught in primary school and for the experimental reintroduction of school uniforms.

He would, he said, work to ensure that “France remains France” by reintroducing citizenship classes, introducing a form of mandatory community service for teenagers, combating illegal immigration and reducing police presence on the streets to double down on drugs and 'incivility'. Mr. Macron had clearly liberated his inner self de Gaulle.

As he nodded and winked to the right, his actions were striking. “Macronism is dead, long live Sarko-macronism!” Franz-Olivier Giesbert wrote in the weekly Le Point, referring to former President Nicolas Sarkozy, a right-wing politician with an Energizer Bunny style.

This was perhaps a little unfair to Mr Macron, who delivered a 150-minute tour de force covering every issue from the war in Ukraine to the spread of infertility in French society. His performance was also a reminder Americans about what young people can achieve in politics.

Macron's aim was to set a course for his new government, led by Gabriel Attal, who at 34 years old is the youngest prime minister in modern French history.

The composition of Attal's government, with eight of the fifteen ministries in the hands of politicians from the center-right party Les Républicains, was already a clear indication that Macron was done with the ambiguity that earned him the nickname “the” at the same time president .

The decisive turn toward the youth and the right reflected several things, officials close to Macron said. Morale at the Élysée Palace was low and “lame-duck” murmurs increased as the president, who is term-limited and must leave office in 2027, faced growing unpopularity and turned for a sense of direction . According to polls, about two-thirds of the country is hostile to him.

Because the biggest challenge for Macron comes from the far right, in the form of the eternal presidential candidate Marine Le Penand because he depends on support in the National Assembly from the center-right Republican Party to pass legislation, the president has a strong incentive to act.

He does not have an absolute majority in Parliament, a dilemma that no amount of verbal acrobatics can remove.

At the press conference, Mr Macron called Ms Le Pen's National Rally “the party of collective impoverishment” and vowed to address “the sense of dispossession” felt by some French people – an apparent reference to the impact of immigration , especially from North Africa, which Mrs Le Pen has exploited with her xenophobic invective.

The most immediate political test of Macron's decisions will come during the European Parliament elections in June.

The president wants to force a far-right victory by countering the charismatic appeal of Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president of the National Rally. Mr Macron has now deployed Mr Attal, whose telegenic certainty and easy adaptability make him a natural protege of the president, against the youthful right-wing leader.

After the election, Macron will rely on Attal to undermine Ms Le Pen's popularity through tough measures on immigration and security. “France will never reconcile with decline,” Attal said in his acceptance speech earlier this month. He used the words 'strong' and 'power' six times.

The Olympic Games in Paris come this summer, and the president is banking on a triumphant moment of beauty and pageantry from the banks of the Seine to the northern suburbs to boost his presidency. He announced on Thursday that admission to all kinds of cultural performances would be free for two months during the summer to coincide with the Olympic Games.

The mystery of Mr Macron's unpopularity is that he has been a successful president on many levels – overcoming the wave of Yellow Vest protests, overcoming the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic and sharply reducing unemployment to just over 7 per cent. maintaining modest growth despite the consequences of the war in Ukraine and attracting high levels of foreign investment.

Indeed, France recently had a reason to gloat. The neighboring country Germanywhich entered a recession last year, has grown just 0.7 percent since 2019 and is facing widespread street protests sparked in part by a decision to phase out diesel fuel subsidies – the very issue that prompted 2018 the French Yellow Vest movement.

The current argument that the French economy is today stronger than the former German superpower seems convincing.

France, with its successful reliance on nuclear energy for about 60 to 70 percent of its electricity generation, enjoys making fun of Germany's lack of domestic energy sources. At the same time, the rapid rise in Germany of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD, reflects a crisis of confidence and malaise usually associated with France. The National Rally is an old phenomenon that has now entered the political mainstream; The strength of the AfD in Germany is shockingly new.

Can Mr Macron translate any of these achievements into greater popularity? The answer is unclear because much of the dislike for him lies more in feeling than in analysis – a sense that he is somehow strange, too self-centered, too enamored with his own voice, a man from 'Jupiter' who doesn't know how to be. stroke the back of a cow, an essential French political qualification.

One thing is clear: he has rolled the dice to keep Ms Le Pen out of the country's highest office, and the clock is now ticking. As for France remaining France, it will undoubtedly take care of itself.

The October 7 attack on Israel has prompted further soul-searching the Israeli left, undermining faith in a shared future with the Palestinians. It has created one crisis of confidence on the Israeli right, undermine support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It has brought ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are often ambivalent about their relationship with the Israeli state, closer to the mainstream.

Across religious and political divides, Israelis are coming to terms with what the Hamas-led terrorist attack meant for Israel as a state, for Israelis as a society and for its citizens as individuals. Just as Israel’s failures in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war ultimately upended its political and cultural life, the October 7 attack and its aftershocks are expected to reshape Israel for years to come.

The attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, has shattered Israelis’ sense of security and shaken their confidence in Israel’s leaders. It has shattered the idea that Israel’s blockade of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank could continue indefinitely without significant consequences for Israelis. And for Israel’s Jewish majority, it has broken the country’s central promise.

When Israel was founded in 1948, its main purpose was to provide refuge for Jews after 2,000 years of statelessness and persecution. On October 7, the same state proved unable to prevent the worst day of violence against Jews since the Holocaust.

“At that moment, our Israeli identity felt so crushed. It felt like 75 years of sovereignty, of being Israeli, had disappeared in an instant,” said Dorit Rabinyan, an Israeli novelist.

“We used to be Israelis,” she added. “Now we are Jewish.”

For now, the attack has also united Israeli society to a degree that felt unthinkable on October 6, when Israelis were deeply divided by Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to reduce the power of the courts; by a dispute over the role of religion in public life; and by Netanyahu’s own political future.

Throughout the year, Israeli leaders had warned of civil war. But in an instant on October 7, Israelis of all stripes found common cause in what they saw as an existential struggle for Israel’s future. Since then, they have collectively been plagued by international criticism of Israel’s retaliatory measures in Gaza.

And in parts of the ultra-Orthodox community, whose reluctance to serve in the Israeli army before the war had been a source of division, there were signs of an increased appreciation for – and in some cases involvement in – the armed forces.

Recent polling data paints a picture of a society in profound flux since the Hamas attack.

Nearly 30 percent of the ultra-Orthodox public now supports the idea of ​​military service, up 20 points from before the war, a December report shows poll by the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, a Jerusalem-based research group.

Perhaps surprisingly, 70 percent of Arab Israelis now say they feel part of the State of Israel, a November report shows poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group. That’s 22 points higher than in June and the highest percentage since the group started polling on the issue two decades ago.

According to every national poll since the attack, about a third of voters for Netanyahu’s right-wing party, Likud, have left the party since October 7.

“Something fundamental has changed here, and we don’t know what it is yet,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, author and fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research group in Jerusalem. “What we do know is that this is kind of the last chance for this country.”

Aryeh Tsaiger, a bus driver from Jerusalem, embodies some of these shifts.

In 2000, Mr. Tsaiger became one of a small minority of ultra-Orthodox Israelis to serve as military conscripts. At the time, he felt excluded from his community.

“Joining the military was something unacceptable,” Mr. Tsaiger said.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as haredim, are exempt from military service so they can study Jewish law and scripture at government-subsidized seminaries. For decades, they have fought to preserve the exemption, which has confused secular Israelis because it allows Haredim to benefit from public resources while doing little to protect the nation.

As he rushed to rejoin the army on Oct. 7, Mr. Tsaiger said he felt welcomed by Haredim. Friends congratulated him, a Haredi rabbi gave him a special blessing, and several Haredi synagogues asked if he could attend their Sabbath prayers with his gun. Fearing further terrorist attacks, the municipalities wanted his protection.

“That’s a big change,” said the 45-year-old Mr. Tsaiger. “They want me there.”

His experience reflects a small but meaningful change among parts of charedi society.

According to military statistics, Mr. Tsaiger was among more than 2,000 Haredim who sought to join the army in the 10 weeks since Oct. 7. That figure is less than one percent of the 360,000 reservists called up after Oct. 7, but is almost twice as high as the average, the military said in a statement.

Neri Horowitz, an expert on haredim, said the shift was too small to be significant, and that the rise in social solidarity would fade as quickly as after previous tipping points. An influential Haredi rabbi has already been filmed comparing soldiers to garbage collectors. Another video showed Haredi seminary students leading a soldier out of their facility, irritated by his recruitment efforts.

Mr. Tsaiger believes a more lasting change is underway.

“The same people who cut ties with me 20 years ago are now very proud of me,” he said.

For Israel’s Arab minority, this evolving dynamic has put them in a bewildering, contradictory position.

About a fifth of Israel’s more than nine million inhabitants are Arabs. Many of them identify as Palestinians despite holding Israeli citizenship, and many feel solidarity with Gaza residents killed in Israeli attacks – a sentiment that has grown stronger as the reported death toll in Gaza has risen to approximately 20,000.

Several Arab-Israeli leaders were arrested in November after trying to organize an unsanctioned anti-war protest. Others were investigated by police for social media posts seen as supportive of Hamas.

But some Arab Israelis are also feeling a competing emotion: a greater sense of connection to Israel.

Dozens of Arabs were killed or kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, giving their communities a greater sense of solidarity with Jewish Israelis.

“If I were given two options, Hamas or Israel, I would choose Israel without thinking twice,” said Bashir Ziyadna, an Arab-Israeli law student.

Several members of Mr. Ziyadna’s family were killed and kidnapped in the attack.

Mr Ziyadna later became a spokesman for the family as they lobbied the government to do more to save their relatives. In the process, Mr. Ziyadna, 26, began to become more involved in Jewish society, forming bonds with the families of other hostages and getting to know Israeli politicians and leaders.

Although he still feels Palestinian and has major problems with the government’s treatment of Palestinians, the horrors of October 7 and the feeling that he too could have died have made him feel more Israeli and aspire to a greater role play in the Israeli struggle. public life.

“I don’t want to help my community by criticizing the system,” he said. “Now I want to be part of the system to make it better.”

This growing social consensus has occurred despite Mr. Netanyahu.

Israelis have rallied together over a shared belief in the military campaign led by Mr. Netanyahu. But they have not sided with the Prime Minister.

Part of the right’s frustration with Netanyahu has its roots in the way his governments have fostered a sense of complacency over Gaza. Officials frequently and incorrectly talked about how Hamas was being deterred and that Israel’s biggest immediate threats lay in Iran and Lebanon.

The anger also stems from the fact that Mr. Netanyahu presided over the widening of deep rifts in Israeli society and a toxic public debate.

At a time of such unrest, some right-wing Israelis want a more measured public debate, says Netanel Elyashiv, a rabbi and publisher who lives in a West Bank settlement.

“You know, in those cartoons, when Roadrunner goes off the cliff and keeps running for a while and doesn’t notice that it’s unstoppable?” Mr. Elyashiv asked. “Netanyahu’s regime is in the same situation. I think this is the end of his term.”

Regardless of Netanyahu’s personal fate, his approach to Palestinians – including opposition to a Palestinian state and support for West Bank settlements – remains popular.

More than half of Jewish Israelis oppose resuming negotiations to create a Palestinian state poll conducted in late November by the Israel Democracy Institute.

Jewish settlers in the West Bank also feel that they have definitively won the debate over maintaining Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territory.

According to Mr. Elyashiv, the October 7 attack would not have happened if Israeli soldiers and settlers had remained in Gaza.

“The reason this hasn’t happened in Judea and Samaria is because of the settlements,” Mr. Elyashiv said, using a Biblical term for the West Bank. “As far as safety is concerned, this is where we need to be.”

“Wherever we go, it will be a nightmare,” he added.

Some Israelis still say the conflict can be resolved by establishing a functional Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

But for others, the scale of the October 7 atrocities has left them struggling to even empathize with Gazans, let alone maintain hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

In 2018, author Klein Halevi wrote a book addressed to an imaginary Palestinian, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor,” in which he attempted to lay out a vision for a shared future between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.

Since October 7, Mr. Halevi says, he has found it difficult to even think about what such a future looks like. As an observant Jew, he still prays for the Palestinians, but more out of duty than empathy, he said.

“I spent years explaining the Israeli story and absorbing the Palestinian story – trying to find a space where both could live together,” Mr. Klein Halevi said.

“I don’t have that language right now,” he said. “It’s not emotionally available to me.”

Reporting was contributed by Nathan Odenheimer in Jerusalem; Johnatan Reiss in Tel Aviv; And Jonathan Rosen in Rehovot, Israel.

A significant shift in donor contributions to nonprofits fighting climate change in recent years has left some of the nation’s largest environmental organizations facing critical shortcomings in programs addressing toxic chemicals, radioactive contamination and wildlife protection. animals.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is shuttering its nuclear mission and has fired its top attorney, Geoffrey Fettus. Mountain in Nevada.

The NRDC is not alone. The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Environmental Working Group, which have spearheaded efforts to clean up wastewater, regulate pesticides and adopt stricter standards for nuclear power plants, are facing similar financial challenges.

“Most environmental programs no longer have significant toxics programs,” said Ken Cook, founder and chairman of the Environmental Working Group, which still spends nearly half its budget fighting toxins in food, personal care items, cleaning products and water.

Meanwhile, global spending to combat climate change by environmental groups and other nonprofits reached $8 billion in 2021, most of it in the United States and Canada, according to a study published in September by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy of Indiana University.

Money has flowed to groups like the ClimateWorks Foundation, which had 2021 revenues of $366 million. In its own report, ClimateWorks said last week that international foundation funding for climate work had more than tripled since 2015, although it plateaued last year. year.

“Funders who had a nuclear program or a poison program have completely abandoned those fields and gone to climate change,” said Marylia Kelley, a senior adviser and former executive director of a citizen oversight group that has long challenged Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. on radioactivity emissions and national security issues.

Leaders of a number of existing environmental groups largely agree that climate change is a top priority given the wide range of increasing global impacts. But they warn that toxins in communities across the country remain an imminent threat to human health and animal habitats. There are also concerns about the growing acceptance of nuclear energy as a ‘clean’ source of electricity.

Mr. Fettus, who declined to discuss his recent resignation, was considered a unique force in the fight to clean up nuclear waste sites in Washington, New Mexico and South Carolina, among others.

“If there is no replacement, it will be a big day for the Department of Energy,” said Tom Carpenter, former executive director of Hanford Challenge, which oversees the highly contaminated Hanford weapons site in Washington state.

The NRDC has filed lawsuits against the department for decades to force it to conduct more extensive cleanups at Hanford and other nuclear sites, and to force it to do the work faster. The federal government is attempting to renegotiate and possibly roll back some of the previously reached legal agreements just as the NRDC is leaving the field.

The environmental group, which has also filed lawsuits against other government agencies over the years over issues such as water quality, wildlife protection and climate change, has cut nearly 40 positions from its 740 employees.

It has also halted work on California’s water resources and agricultural antibiotics, a spokesman said.

Similar financial problems this year affected Defenders of Wildlife, one of the nation’s largest organizations dedicated to the protection and recovery of endangered species in North America.

That organization, founded in 1947, eliminated 22 staff positions, according to Defenders United, a union that represents employees. A spokeswoman for the organization declined to comment, but union officials said on their website that managers cited an unsustainable budget deficit when they announced 14 layoffs in a “brief, last-minute meeting with staff.”

The shift in funding to climate has been exacerbated by several other forces, including a $9 million drop in contributions from small donors, part of a decline in overall donations following the “Trump bubble” when President Donald J. Trump was in power, said Phil Radford. , strategic head of the Sierra Club and former head of Greenpeace.

Government stimulus payments during the coronavirus pandemic had also prompted some people to increase their charitable contributions, an effect that has faded in the past two years, several environmental groups said.

And there is a growing tendency among younger donors, especially those rising to control large family foundations, to view climate change as more urgent than other environmental threats, the groups said.

The Sierra Club warned last spring of a $40 million shortfall if costs were not cut. The club declined to reveal how many layoffs took place this year.

The “budget crisis” forced the club to consolidate programs and eliminate duplication, but it did not eliminate any mission, Mr. Radford said.

Meanwhile, since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Sierra Club has expanded its work on climate change, surpassing some of the club’s other work. On climate, “More and more money is becoming available,” Mr Radford said.

Within the larger community that oversees public policy, there is growing concern that priorities have become skewed.

“It’s good that we have all consolidated around the climate change crisis – but at what cost?” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, which long monitored the country’s secretive nuclear weapons complex and the toxic pollution it created.

“Toxins are a foundation of the open government movement. It all started with communities wanting to know more about toxins in their environment,” she said.

The shift in priorities is also reflected in government policy, with climate change accounting for the lion’s share of some agencies’ budget increases. The EPA’s list of seven priorities in its five-year strategic plan starts with ‘addressing the climate crisis’.

The issue of climate change has drawn support from a number of billionaires with deep pockets, including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos. There is also a growing clean energy industry, including solar, wind, battery and manufacturing companies, all advocating for climate progress, said Kathryn Phillips, former director of the Sierra Club of California.

In contrast, she said, many environmental groups have been left to their own devices against powerful chemical companies and government agencies to enforce stricter regulations on toxic exposures and better cleanups.

NRDC President Manish Bapna said the organization was not retreating from its work on toxins but was “sharpening its portfolio,” with an eye toward investing in issues where it could demonstrate significant impact, including climate change .

These problems include lead in local drinking water, tailpipe emissions in trucks and pollution from trichlorethylene and polyfluorinated compounds that are now ubiquitous in humans and animals, Mr Bapna said.

Erik Olson, an attorney for the water and toxics group, said fundraising for toxic pollution issues was difficult even before growing alarm about climate change. “It has always been a challenge to use water and toxins. It has never been a well-funded area,” he says.

In its nuclear work, the NRDC helped fund and litigate many lawsuits brought by local groups, such as Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri Valley CAREs in California, which oversee the Energy Department’s two nuclear weapons design laboratories.

“It is clearly a tremendous loss to have NRDC leave the field,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “It was myopic. But young people are more interested in climate change. If you really want to see climate change, just wait and see what happens after a nuclear war.”

Ed Chen, the former federal communications director for the NRDC, said the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which provided large subsidies for electric vehicles and green energy, signaled that the federal government is dramatically stepping up its commitment to fighting climate change. was increasing. He sees the NRDC’s move as a “strategic pivot” to keep the organization in line with changing priorities.

The Biden administration has also proposed tough new regulations on vehicle and power plant emissions. But some see the big boost in federal funding as a retreat from more direct greenhouse gas regulatory systems.

“The Inflation Reduction Act is not the kind of environmental law we had in the past,” said Mr. Cook of the Environmental Working Group. “It’s just a big spending bill.”

Growing concern about climate change has sparked a slightly different debate in the environmental community: how to address the issue of nuclear power.

There is growing support among some environmental groups for commercial nuclear power plants as an alternative to fossil fuels – often accompanied by hefty donations from those concerned about climate change.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear energy safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has warned about the safety of nuclear power and the dangers of nuclear power, said environmental groups were “under tremendous pressure to adopt nuclear power without reservation.”

Mr. Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is now chairman and largest investor in the nuclear energy company TerraPower, which was founded to create what the company calls “safe, affordable and abundant carbon-free energy.”

TerraPower’s first 345-megawatt reactor — which uses uranium fuel enriched to levels about four times that of traditional commercial reactors — is under construction in Wyoming at a cost of about $4 billion, said Jeff Navin, director of external company affairs and a former chief of staff at the Department of Energy.

In the environmental community, Mr. Lyman said, Mr. Gates’ participation in the debate was “a game changer.”

And while Mr. Lyman’s organization does not explicitly oppose nuclear energy, he says it is not essential in the fight against climate change. “It’s more complicated,” he said.

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — The squad of soldiers had been out of their Ukrainian armored personnel carrier for only a few minutes when the treeline erupted in front of them in Russian gunfire. The twelve or so soldiers, sent to reinforce a trench, were pinned down for hours.

“I’ve never seen so much fire from so many positions,” one soldier said in a mission report obtained by The New York Times.

A soldier fighting for Ukraine was killed and nine wounded in the battle, which took place near the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut in March. Russian troops, the report said, showed a “high level of skill and equipment”.

The ambush was part of a patient, disciplined operation that contrasted with the disorderly Russian tactics that characterized much of the first year of the war, which began in February 2022. It was a deadly demonstration that the Russian military was learning from its mistakes and adapting. adapt to Ukrainian tactics, which had initially been grossly underestimated.

Russia gained ground early in the war with sheer firepower. Interviews with 17 Ukrainian soldiers, a Russian prisoner of war, officers, foreign fighters and Western officials, as well as a review of documents and videos, show that the Kremlin’s gains, especially in Bakhmut, in recent months are due in part to a series of adjustments.

For example, Russian armored columns no longer rush into areas where they can be quickly damaged or destroyed. Troops are more likely to use drones and sounding attacks – and sometimes just shouting – to find Ukrainian trenches before they strike. And the mercenary Wagner group has shown he can outrun Ukrainian defenders with a combination of improved tactics and available ranks.

As it begins its long-awaited counter-offensive, Ukraine is well armed, backed by improved communications technology and US and European weapons.

But Moscow’s troops have improved their defences, artillery coordination and air support, mounting a campaign that could look very different from the early days of the war. These improvements, Western officials say, will most likely make Russia a tougher opponent, especially as it fights defensively and uses its strengths on the battlefield. This defensive turn is a far cry from Russia’s original plan for a full-scale invasion and Ukrainian defeat.

To be sure, along a frontline of about 600 miles, Russia’s military capabilities remain uneven. Prisoners have become part of its operations and, despite their lack of training, have figured prominently in the battle for Bakhmut. The Kremlin’s increasing reliance on “kamikaze” drones, or air-dropped glide bombs, reflects both a shortage of ammunition and an innovative strategic shift.

“They are trying to find rear command posts of companies and brigades and destroy them from a great distance in order to disrupt communication between units as much as possible,” said Graf, a commander of a Ukrainian drone unit. Russia’s air force, largely castrated since the invasion, has adapted its tactics and munitions, including glide bombs, to attack Ukrainian troops without endangering their aircraft.

US officials acknowledge that Russian tactics have improved. But those officials believe, based on battlefield intelligence reports, that the success at Bakhmut was largely due to Wagner’s willingness to throw prisoners into battle, regardless of the cost in lives.

But the soldiers on the ground saw something else happen.

Soldiers fighting for Ukraine in Bakhmut described a battle that ended very differently from how it began. Prisoners were not so common. Instead, they said, Wagner’s professional fighters coordinated ground and artillery fire on Ukrainian positions, then quickly outflanked them using small teams.

For example, while Ukrainian territory shrank to a last few blocks, Russian troops flooded a Ukrainian-occupied building with artillery. Moments after they withdrew, Russian troops were inside.

“The Ukrainians just couldn’t keep up,” said a Foreign Legion soldier. To counter Russia’s strategy, Ukrainian forces wired buildings to detonate, detonating them as they retreated.

The March mission report shared with The Times alluded to this type of enemy: “Supposed to be the Wagner group,” the report read. “Evidence of being well-educated.”

“Used effective fire and maneuver,” it continued, describing “the best-equipped Russian soldiers.”

But proficiency in one area or on one mission has not yet been widely translated. And US officials say that while Russia has adjusted its tactics, its forces are generally not getting more sophisticated.

Most of the veteran Russian soldiers died early in the war. Those fighting today, including less trained recently mobilized forces, struggle to conduct offensive operations and coordinate the movements of major military units. And Russian tanks, which have suffered significant losses in 2022, are now often held back from the frontline to be used as a kind of artillery.

“They don’t have enough tanks right now,” Graf said. “They don’t have enough artillery to create a barrage of fire.”

The change in Russian tactics can be seen from both drone surveillance and from the depths of a Ukrainian trench.

Near the eastern Russian-occupied town of Svatove, Ruslan Zubariev, a Ukrainian soldier who goes by the nickname Predator, said the Russians used textbook tactics to break through his line of trenches in February.

“They’ve changed tactics over the past six months,” he said, describing an attack that relied on a degree of strategy on top of brute force.

For four days Russian shelling destroyed the foliage above their heads to reveal Ukrainian positions. Then, he said, they advanced in an armored personnel carrier flanked by about a dozen soldiers.

But as an indication of the limits of tactical improvements, Mr. Zubariev said, the Russians did not have enough information about the locations of the Ukrainian trenches. In the ensuing battle, he captured on video, Mr. Zubariev, 21, almost single-handedly managed to stop the Russian attack.

“They did everything perfectly,” he said. “But something wasn’t working for them. Not enough information, as always.”

Around the eastern city of Kreminna, where Russian troops dug in after being pushed back northeast in September, both sides are taking turns launching small offensive operations in a kind of dance.

“Both sides are trying to prove to the enemy that we will advance now,” Graf said. “And nobody knows for sure who will do it, or where it will be done.”

Around Bakhmut, Ukraine has gained ground in recent days to take significant heights. Russian troops bleed casualties as they try to defend the city that sits in a kind of bowl. Russian troops have turned to former prisoners, a tactic first used by Wagner to dig trenches, according to a recently captured Russian soldier who was a former prisoner.

Russian trenches are often better built than their Ukrainian counterparts, Ukrainian soldiers said. The March mission report said the bunkers were akin to “Vietnam-style spider holes” and “so deep they couldn’t be detected by drones.”

Such defensive positions will pose formidable challenges, a US official said, and it is too early to judge whether Ukraine can overcome them. The Russian defense is layered and despite months of setbacks and losses, has shown determination to keep fighting.

Russia’s air defense remains punitive, as does its ability to jam radios and shoot down drones. As Ukrainian forces advance, troops will be more exposed to Russian air support.

“What will happen next – who the hell knows,” said Mr. Zubariev. “Pay with how many losses – they don’t care.”