By ANNIKA HAMMERSCHLAG, Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — The first treaty to protect marine diversity in international waters will come into force early next year after Morocco became the 60th nation to ratify the agreement Friday.

The high seas treaty is the first legal framework aimed at protecting marine biodiversity in international waters, those that lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single country. International waters account for nearly two-thirds of the ocean and nearly half of Earth’s surface and are vulnerable to threats including overfishing, climate change and deep-sea mining.

“The high seas are the world’s largest crime scene — they’re unmanaged, unenforced, and a regulatory legal structure is absolutely necessary,” said Johan Bergenas, senior vice president of oceans at the World Wildlife Fund.

Still, the pact’s strength is uncertain as some of the world’s biggest players — the U.S., China, Russia and Japan — have yet to ratify. The U.S. and China have signed, signaling intent to align with the treaty’s objectives without creating legal obligations, while Japan and Russia have been active in preparatory talks.

Ratification triggers a 120-day countdown for the treaty to take effect. But much more work remains to flesh out how it will be implemented, financed and enforced.

“You need bigger boats, more fuel, more training and a different regulatory system,” Bergenas said. “The treaty is foundational — now begins the hard work.”

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How it works

The high seas are home to an array of marine life and are crucial in regulating Earth’s climate — they absorb heat and carbon dioxide and generate half the oxygen we breathe. The treaty is also essential to achieving what’s known as the “30×30” target — an international pledge to protect 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030.

The treaty creates a legal process for countries to establish marine protected areas in those waters, including rules for potentially destructive activities like deep-sea mining and geoengineering schemes. It also establishes a framework for technology-sharing, funding mechanisms and scientific collaboration among countries.

Crucially, decisions under the treaty will be made multilaterally through what are known as conferences of parties, rather than by individual countries acting alone.

Within one year of the treaty taking effect, countries will meet to make decisions about implementation, financing and oversight, and only countries that ratify before then will have voting rights.

Concerns over enforcement

Some experts warn the treaty’s impact could be blunted if the most powerful players on the high seas remain outside it.

“If major fishing nations like China, Russia and Japan don’t join, they could undermine the protected areas,” said Guillermo Crespo, a high seas expert with the International Union for Conservation of Nature commission. “It will be interesting to see how the implementation of the treaty will work without those who have historically made the most use of high seas resources.”

The treaty does not create a punitive enforcement body of its own. Instead, it largely relies on individual countries to regulate their own ships and companies. If a ship flying a German flag violates the rules, for example, it’s Germany’s responsibility to act, said Torsten Thiele, founder of the Global Ocean Trust and an adviser on ocean governance and blue finance. That makes universal ratification essential, he said: “If somebody hasn’t signed up, they’ll argue they’re not bound.”

Enric Sala, founder of National Geographic Pristine Seas marine reserve project, warned that some nations may now point to the treaty as a reason to delay or avoid conservation efforts within their own waters.

“There are countries that are using the process to justify inaction at home,” he said.

Without proper protections, marine ecosystems risk irreversible harm

Lisa Speer, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international oceans program, said failing to protect the high seas could mean damage for any individual nation’s waters.

“Marine life doesn’t respect political boundaries. So fish migrate across the ocean,” Speer said. “Same with turtles, with seabirds, and a whole host of other marine life. And so what happens in the high sea can really affect the health and resilience of the ocean within national jurisdiction, within our coastal waters.”

Ocean exploration pioneer Sylvia Earle welcomed the ratification, but urged leaders not to see it as a finish line.

“This is a way station — not the end point,” she said. “If we continue to take from the ocean at the scale we presently are, and use the ocean as a dump site as we presently are, yes we’re putting the fish and the whales and the krill in Antarctica and the high seas at risk, but mostly, we are putting ourselves at risk.”

For small island nations like Vanuatu, the treaty marks a major step toward inclusion in decisions that have long been beyond their reach.

“Everything that affects the ocean affects us,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change.

Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram @ahammergram

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

After a St. Paul school received a tip that students may have brought BB guns to school Friday, two were found during a search.

“No one was injured, and no threats were made,” Creative Arts Secondary School Principal Kristen Lynch wrote in a letter to parents. “… BB guns are not toys, and students who bring them to school face serious consequences.”

Officers responded about 8:40 a.m. to the public school on Kellogg Boulevard in downtown, which is for sixth- to 12-graders.

Police determined the 11- and 13-year-old boys each brought a BB gun to school to show friends, said Sgt. Toy Vixayvong, a St. Paul police spokesman. They did not arrest the boys and the school “will be handling the incident with the students and their parents,” he said.

Lynch asked parents to make sure any weapons at home are safely stored and not accessible to children.

“This also serves as a good reminder to check your child’s backpack daily to ensure that dangerous and non-educational items are left at home,” she wrote.

There were two previous instances of guns discovered at St. Paul Public Schools this school year.

On the first day of school this month, a 14-year-old was found with a handgun at Johnson Senior High School on Arcade Street and arrested. It was unloaded when police recovered it.

Last week, a report of a gun at Como Park Senior High led police to arrest a 16-year-old student off school grounds. The student ran from the Rose Avenue school and police said they found him about a mile away, and recovered a handgun and loaded magazine from a yard where the suspect had been seen.

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President Donald Trump is not as popular as he claims. But neither is he as unpopular as his opponents might like to think.

That’s the simple explanation. Dig under the hood, however, and things get complicated.

I’m constantly asked to assess Trump’s political standing; it’s among the more consistent questions posed to professional political analysts. And — in case you hadn’t noticed — there is a ton of polling out there. But these surveys, many of them credible and worth considering, often spit out different data, allowing interested readers to draw different, sometimes contradictory, conclusions.

Veteran polling analyst Nate Silver, writing Sunday with colleague Eli McKown-Dawson in his newsletter, Silver Bulletin, explained: “Inevitably, there’s a lot of disagreement from survey to survey, not just because of statistical variation but because pollsters have long had trouble pegging down Trump’s popularity — and often underestimated it.”

Even respected polling averages — which you should absolutely heed more than individual polls — aren’t saying quite the same thing. The Silver Bulletin’s most recent average clocks the president’s job approval rating at 44.2%; the RealClearPolitics average is 45.9% and the Cook Political Report’s average is 42.9%. Yes, the numbers are similar. But mentally, 46% and 43% can feel much different — after all, elections have been decided by slimmer margins.

Either way, Trump’s “topline” job approval rating — the overall share of voters who approve of how he’s doing — is short of 50%, a vital sign that suggests poor political health for the president personally. And yet, to extend the analogy further, Trump is not flat-lining. This November’s key off-year contests and the 2026 midterm elections may not go well for the Republican Party; historically, the president’s party loses ground in both. But it’s not necessarily a shellacking, or a thumping, in the making.

“I’d keep my eye on the toplines, which are bad enough that they might well cost the GOP the House, but not (yet) nuclear,” RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst Sean Trende told me via email.

To wit, Democratic candidates are favored in this fall’s gubernatorial campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia. And with Republicans defending a threadbare majority in the House of Representatives, Trump’s numbers don’t have to drop too far under 50% for Democrats to recapture the speaker’s gavel in 2026. (GOP mid-decade redistricting efforts underway in various red states could change that equation.) Total collapse is probably what would have to happen for Democrats to win control of the U.S. Senate, where Republicans aim to grow their three-seat advantage.

But as I wrote at the outset: Assessing Trump’s political standing via these polls is complicated.

Although the president’s topline numbers remain relatively stable, crucial independent voters seem to be abandoning the president, with a YouGov poll for The Economist showing the president’s approval among them at a miserable 33%. On the other hand, a Fox News poll showed Trump with a decent 48% rating among Hispanic voters and a positive 55% approval among men ages 45 and younger. On the other other hand, the president is underwater on his handling of the economy.

“His base is solid as a rock,” CNN polling expert Harry Enten told me. Among Republicans, Trump’s ratings are sky high, in the high 80s to low 90s. That support is helping to keep Trump’s overall numbers afloat. In fact, he’s more popular — or perhaps we should say “less unpopular” — than he was in his first term.

“There is zero doubt that Trump is in a better position now than he was at this point in his first presidency,” Enten said. That might have something to do with Trump’s second term unfolding more like a first term. But when Trump’s second “first term” is compared to his predecessors in their actual first terms, Enten finds, “Compared to every other elected presidency, he is in worse shape now than those other presidents were.”

However, Enten went on to explain that ultimately, it’s most accurate to compare Trump’s political standing so far in his second presidency to how his predecessors were performing in the polls at the same point in their second term. On that front, Trump is in better shape than those who came immediately before him. “Maybe the right baseline is comparing him to other second-term presidents,” he said. “In that way, he’s in a better position than George W. Bush and, arguably, Barack Obama.”

And if there’s any real improvement in Trump’s topline numbers, Enten said, he’d put his party in a decent position for the midterms.

Such an outcome might seem improbable, given historical trends and the political headwinds buffeting the White House. But it was no less improbable in 2022, when Democrats managed to increase their Senate majority and come close to hanging onto the House amid President Joe Biden’s lousy 40% job approval rating and voters’ dissatisfaction with skyrocketing inflation, rising crime and the disastrous pullout of United States military forces from Afghanistan.

It’s why what I fear most in politics is certainty.

David M. Drucker is columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of “In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP.”

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The authors of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution established and explained the complete order of presidential succession, as well as a series of contingency plans to fill any executive vacancies. It was written as a response to the weaknesses found in Article II after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and what was learned about the inadequacies related to presidential illnesses and hospitalizations.

It feels like the time is not only right but needed for another updated response.

On June 27, 2024, Americans joined the rest of the world in watching the infamous presidential debate between then President Joe Biden and then former President Donald Trump. Yet, despite watching with our own eyes a president of the United States unable to complete a coherent thought, Biden remained in the presidency for 207 days afterwards.

The attention immediately went to the presidential race, and very few focused on whether or not Biden could complete his term in office. So as America grapples with an aging political class, the question of reforming the 25th Amendment must become part of the country’s discourse.

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1967, was designed to address presidential succession and disability in an era of nuclear weapons and global superpower responsibilities. Yet nearly six decades later, this constitutional provision has proven inadequate for the realities of modern governance, revealing dangerous gaps that leave America vulnerable during presidential health crises.

Our most recent history reveals critical flaws with the current version that demand constitutional reform. The amendment’s ambiguous language, cumbersome procedures, and insufficient safeguards create dangerous vulnerabilities in our democratic system that must be addressed.

The amendment’s most glaring weakness lies in Section 4, which addresses presidential incapacity when the president cannot or will not acknowledge their disability.

The process requires the vice president and a majority of cabinet members to declare the president unable to perform their duties — a standard that is both too vague and too political. What constitutes “inability to discharge the powers and duties” remains undefined, leaving interpretation to officials who serve at the president’s pleasure and may face retaliation.

Cabinet members, appointed by and loyal to the president, are unlikely to vote against their benefactor except in the most extreme circumstances. The amendment essentially asks political appointees to commit political career suicide while navigating a constitutional crisis — a recipe for paralysis and politicization when decisive action is needed most.

A reformed 25th Amendment should establish clearer standards and more independent mechanisms for determining presidential incapacity.

The amendment should define specific criteria for incapacity, including mental illness, cognitive decline, substance abuse, or any condition that substantially impairs judgment or decision-making capacity. While some flexibility must remain for unforeseen circumstances, basic parameters would provide essential guidance.

The determination process of a president’s capacity should be removed from purely political actors. Instead of relying solely on cabinet members, a reformed amendment could replace the current system’s reliance on political intuition with medical expertise.

An update to the amendment must also account for technological and national security realities unknown to the 1960s drafters. The president’s role in nuclear command and control requires special consideration. The procedures for transferring such responsibilities cannot wait for lengthy political deliberations. The amendment should establish protocols for immediate temporary transfer of critical national security authorities while broader capacity questions are resolved.

The reformed amendment should also address transparency and attempt to restore public trust and confidence. While medical privacy deserves protection, the American people have a right to know about their president’s fitness for office. Balanced disclosure requirements could provide necessary public information without unnecessarily violating personal privacy.

Additionally, the amendment should address succession beyond the vice president more comprehensively. The current system assumes the vice president will be available and capable, but simultaneous incapacity of both officials remains possible. Clear protocols should extend further down the line of succession while maintaining constitutional principles.

With our current hyperpolarized society, changes are not likely to be enacted, especially because the amendment process is arduous and is intentionally difficult, requiring a broad consensus that reflects the gravity of changing our fundamental law.

Reform advocates should emphasize that a stronger 25th Amendment protects the presidency itself by ensuring smooth transitions and public confidence in executive leadership and that the proposed reforms serve the national interest rather than partisan advantage. A clear, fair, and efficient system for addressing presidential incapacity strengthens rather than weakens our constitutional order.

The 25th Amendment was a crucial step forward in 1967, but constitutional evolution must continue. By addressing its shortcomings now, we can ensure that future generations inherit a more perfect system for preserving democratic governance in times of crisis.

Lynn Schmidt is a columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She holds a master’s of science in political science as well as a bachelor’s of science in nursing.

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