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Trump’s career-defining sales pitch: They’re targeting you, not me
Now Tucker Carlson is putting the idea to his own use
Former president Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up during the pro-amateur event before the LIV Golf Invitational at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster on July 28 in Bedminster, N.J. (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
A cartoon shared by Donald Trump on his homemade social media network over the weekend captures the idea, however crudely. It depicts a smiling, resigned Trump holding a large shield against which a number of arrows are landing. The arrows, fletched in blue, are labeled “DOJ,” “FBI,” “IRS,” “MS MEDIA” and, in an arrow with red feathers, “RINOS.” In his left hand, Trump holds a flag reading “We the People.”
But then, behind him, there’s a sign: “You are here,” an arrow pointing to the area behind the former president. You are there, behind him, shielded by him. The arrows are striking his shield — but they’re being aimed at you.
It’s long been the case that Trump has tried to present himself not as the political right’s leader but as its sword and its armor. His rhetoric was always heavy with “we” language; the fight in which he was engaged was a collective fight. However incongruous it might have seemed for a Fifth Avenue tycoon to private-jet his way to defending Wisconsin factory workers, his background probably helped his cause. In the 2016 election, he claimed to understand how the corrupt system worked as a former participant in it — so he had the tools to dismantle it. He was an elite who’d grown sick of the elites, a defector willing to collapse the regime from the inside.
Speaking to his supporters, their sense that Trump was an intermediary on their behalf was very real. Tactile. Trump marketed this sense that he was fighting on behalf of this particular subset of Americans and it was persuasive, particularly when he won in 2016. Here was a champion battling the loathed elites and their heroes like Hillary Clinton — and winning! Trump came to the presidency with a Fox News-level understanding of how government worked. When he then targeted those elements, it landed with a splash among other Fox News viewers.
But, of course, the gilded facade was just that. There were and are real questions about the legality of Trump’s actions, his business and his approach to the presidency. Multiple members of his campaign team were linked to Russia even as that country tried to aid his victory, a reality that prompted a lengthy investigation. Trump’s sales pitch evolved with ease: The FBI was targeting him because he was fighting for real Americans against the “deep state” elites. From a political standpoint, it was genius. If you depict the establishment as both all-powerful and riddled with bias, even the most obviously justified investigation becomes an unacceptable effort to attack Trump unfairly. And, by extension, normal Americans.
One person who recognizes the utility of Trump’s framing is Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. The show host had the misfortune of being on vacation last week, and so missed the first round of anger at the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
He made up for lost time.
“If you expressed any support for him or any interest in retaining, I don’t know, the rights of free speech and due process, you’re a criminal, too,” Carlson said Monday night. “In fact, you are the threat. You’re the threat. And just mentioning you disagree with what is happening is an attack on our government.”
That thing about “free speech and due process” is a summary of the 20 minutes that preceded Carlson’s distillation of the point. If you’ve never watched Carlson’s monologues, it’s hard to convey the rapid unspooling of misinformation they entail, the college-debate-team efforts to cast his enemies as unrepentantly devious and his allies as unfairly attacked.
On Monday night, for example, Carlson:
Accused a TV host of murder
Described the riot at the U.S. Capitol as “election justice protests”
Repeated false claims about the IRS adding 87,000 armed agents
Insisted that Trump’s allies were being targeted by federal authorities for no other reason than being allies of Trump’s
He’s been at that for a while, giving people like former Trump attorney John Eastman sympathetic airtime after authorities seized his phone as part of an investigation into — as you may recall — Eastman’s role in the effort to prevent the democratic transition of power. But he does so with either indifferent sloppiness or willful dishonesty.
A subpoena for Trump attorney Eric Herschmann, Carlson said, is a function of “going after him … because he gave legal advice to his client, Donald Trump.” Here, Fox News’s refusal to cover the Jan. 6 congressional hearings may be imposing a cost; any viewer of those hearings would know that Herschmann cannot credibly be cast as a loyal Trump ally. Then there was Carlson’s declaration that the Justice Department is “now” going after Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani — after the announcement that Giuliani is a target of criminal investigation in Georgia, not federally. Everyone who has any contact with law enforcement in any way is simply swept up into this theoretical effort to dismantle Trumpworld.
But not because of Trump. Because they’re out to get you.
Carlson’s been beating this drum since President Biden took office. It’s why he downplays the events of Jan. 6: the arrest of hundreds of Trump supporters for breaking into the Capitol simply becomes the arrest of hundreds of Trump supporters if you wave away the actual criminal conduct. He scoffs at the repeated warnings from law enforcement about domestic violence being committed by white supremacists, suggesting — in part for self-serving reasons — that everybody on the right gets called a white supremacist.
Part of this is simply Carlson hoping to build his audience off Trump’s base. But part of it extends beyond that, to stoking a sense of fury and fear.
Consider his comments as he concluded his monologue.
“We are at this point on the edge of something unprecedented and something awful,” Carlson warned. “You could feel it. Even Donald Trump feels it, maybe for the first time in his life. Donald Trump seems sincerely interested in lowering the temperature not just for his own sake, but for the country.”
This was a reference to an interview Trump gave in which he claimed to have offered assistance to the Justice Department.
“He said that. He’s never said anything like that,” Carlson continued. “Maybe he doesn’t mean it, but when has he ever said that? Let’s all calm down a little, he said the other day. This isn’t good. Yeah, he’s right. It’s not good. And not just for him. For all of us. This could get very bad, very fast.”
But, he added, the “Biden people don’t care” because “they’re facing a repudiation from voters and they’re desperate and they’ll do anything. But at what cost? Pray they pull back before it’s too late.”
They’re out to get you, America. So vote Trump. So watch Fox. | 2022-08-16T16:02:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s career-defining sales pitch: They’re targeting you, not me - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trump-fbi-search-tucker-carlson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trump-fbi-search-tucker-carlson/ |
In this image provided by the Military True News Information Team, United Nations special envoy Noeleen Heyzer, center, arrives at the Yangon International Airport, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, in Yangon, Myanmar. Heyzer arrived in Myanmar Tuesday on her first mission to the country since her appointment last year, making her visit in the wake of a recent call by the world body’s Security Council for an immediate end to all forms of violence there and unimpeded humanitarian access to aid those affected by the strife. (Myanmar True News information Team via AP) (Uncredited/Military True News Information Team) | 2022-08-16T16:03:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UN special envoy to Myanmar arrives on inaugural visit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/un-special-envoy-to-myanmar-arrives-on-inaugural-visit/2022/08/16/0784ae8e-1d7b-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/un-special-envoy-to-myanmar-arrives-on-inaugural-visit/2022/08/16/0784ae8e-1d7b-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Snow Canyon Little League players took part in Monday’s parade of teams in Williamsport. (Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press)
A 12-year-old baseball player who had just arrived with his Utah team for its first appearance in the Little League World Series underwent surgery Monday for a severe head injury sustained in a fall from the top bunk of a bed in a dormitory in Williamsport, Pa., site of the annual tournament.
Easton Oliverson, who pitches and plays outfield for the Snow Canyon team from Santa Clara, Utah, “went through pretty traumatic surgery to get to where he’s at, but the doctors are all really positive,” his uncle, Spencer Beck, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “All of the steps moving forward have been good so far.”
The family first learned of the accident early Monday morning and Easton was flown to a Pennsylvania hospital about 40 miles from Williamsport for emergency surgery. Kyle Hafen, the team’s coach, told Utah’s Fox affiliate that doctors were waiting for swelling in Oliverson’s brain to subside before evaluating him further.
“Just a really simple thing — something that we’ve all probably done is fall off the bed,” Beck told the Tribune, “but he hit his [head] pretty hard, it sounds like.”
The team arrived in Williamsport over the weekend, and sources from the team and Little League International told the St. George News that he fell about six feet from the top bunk onto a hardwood floor. A teammate alerted others and Oliverson was taken by helicopter to Geisinger Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Danville, Pa., with skull and cheekbone fractures as well as bleeding between his skull and the outer covering of his brain, according to the St. George News. It cited a message sent Monday to Snow Canyon parents that said he was in intensive care after successful surgery.
“Had that other player not been wakened by him falling, he may not have made it,” Beck said.
Easton’s father, Jace, is an assistant coach with Snow Canyon, the Mountain Region champions. Parents do not stay with children in the dorms, but exceptions are made if a parent is also a coach. Other members of Easton’s family were en route to Williamsport Monday.
“We have been told from his family that his current condition is critical but we are optimistic with some of the early signs he has recently shown,” the team said in a statement Monday afternoon. “We join the family in asking for prayers on his behalf.”
The team’s first game is at 1 p.m. Friday against the winner of Wednesday’s game between Tennessee and Massachusetts. Snow Canyon participated, as scheduled, in Monday’s parade of teams in Williamsport.
“As a team preparing for the Little League World Series, Coach O [Oliverson] expressed his desire for Team Utah to finish what we started and compete and enjoy this amazing experience.” the team’s statement said. “While our hearts are heavy, we are committed as a team to have an opportunity to take part in something that is only dreamt about by others.
In a statement to the St. George News, Little League International said it “encourages all to join us in keeping the Snow Canyon Little League player and his family in our thoughts and prayers, as we wish for a full and complete recovery. Little League International will continue to use all available resources to support the player, his family, and his coaches and teammates, as we navigate this unfortunate situation. In the interest of privacy, it would be inappropriate to comment further, and additional updates will be issued as they are available.” | 2022-08-16T17:20:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Little League World Series player has surgery after fall from bunk bed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/little-league-player-falls-out-of-bed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/little-league-player-falls-out-of-bed/ |
In this photo provided by the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Bibi, a 23-year-old hippopotamus, stands by her new baby, born Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. The staff at the zoo discovered the calf’s mother was pregnant around April Fool’s Day. It came as a surprise because she was on birth control. (Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden via AP) (Uncredited/Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden) | 2022-08-16T17:33:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cincinnati Zoo names new baby hippo Fritz, brother to Fiona - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/cincinnati-zoo-names-new-baby-hippo-fritz-brother-to-fiona/2022/08/16/8954fe2a-1d7e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/cincinnati-zoo-names-new-baby-hippo-fritz-brother-to-fiona/2022/08/16/8954fe2a-1d7e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump, storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (John Minchillo/AP)
The Department of Homeland Security’s chief watchdog has rejected calls from leading Democratic legislators to recuse himself from the investigation into the erasure of text messages that Secret Service agents exchanged during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, drawing fresh rebukes from lawmakers on Tuesday.
Cuffari said forcing him to step aside “has no legal basis” and “would upend the very independence that Congress has established for Inspectors General,” according to the letter he sent to House oversight committees on Aug. 8.
“Your obstruction of the Committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your justifications for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as an Inspector General,” Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Bennie G. Thompson, chair of the Jan. 6 committee and the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote to Cuffari Tuesday.
Ahead of the Jan. 6 committee's next hearing, members asked the Secret Service agency to turn over reportedly deleted text messages from the Capitol attack. (Video: The Washington Post)
The lawmakers said in a letter that Cuffari’s refusal is part of a pattern of resistance to their efforts to delve into complaints about his office. They said they have written to him three times since May to request documents about allegations that his office “censored findings of domestic abuse and sexual harassment” by DHS workers, his failure to promptly notify Congress about the Secret Service missing texts, and new reports that documented his “repeated failures” to recover the messages.
In his Aug. 8 letter to the committees, Cuffari said he has been conducting Jan. 6 investigations in coordination with inspectors general at the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Interior, as well as executive and legislative branch agencies. He noted that he has complained to Congress about difficulties obtaining information from DHS since last year, and blamed “DHS’ resistance” for delays.
He said he has published one review of the Jan. 6 attack and is working on two others. “When those two ongoing reviews are complete, we will be happy to provide briefings about them,” he wrote.
“To my knowledge, I am the only Inspector General, to date, who has publicly reported access issues and delays about January 6 to Congress,” he wrote.
Watchdog launches criminal probe over missing Secret Service messages
“Sharing information about ongoing criminal investigations could impact potential witnesses or others who may be involved in the investigative process,” Cuffari wrote. “To protect the integrity of our work and preserve our independence, we do not share information about ongoing matters, like the information you requested in your letters.
“Similarly, we do not authorize our staff to sit for transcribed interviews with your committee about these ongoing matters,” he wrote. “Once these matters are complete, we will consider a renewed request for documents, briefings, or transcribed interviews.”
But the committees disputed Cuffari’s contention that he is unable to share records with lawmakers and said they are concerned that his office is engaging in delay tactics to prevent the committee from drilling into the reasons for the delays.
“We are concerned that you are now improperly using a criminal investigation that you only recently announced to hide evidence from Congress of your misconduct and mismanagement,” they wrote.
They said Cuffari failed for more than a year to alert them about the Secret Service’s text messages, and in some cases “left the impression that access issues had been resolved.”
When Cuffari briefed the Homeland Security Committee on July 15, about the missing Secret Service text messages, they wrote, “that was 14 months after you reportedly learned the text messages were unavailable.”
They said Cuffari also failed to reveal that his office told DHS in July 2021 that it “no longer needed the text messages” and that Trump’s former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf’s and acting deputy Ken Cuccinelli’s text messages were also unavailable. | 2022-08-16T17:33:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Homeland Security watchdog faces rebukes from lawmakers in missing texts case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/missing-secret-service-texts-cuffari/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/missing-secret-service-texts-cuffari/ |
FILE - This Feb. 19, 2021, photo provided by Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Richard Glossip. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is granting death row inmate Richard Glossip a 60-day stay of execution while a state appeals court considers his claim of innocence. Stitt signed an executive order on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, delaying Glossip’s execution that was scheduled for Sept. 22. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP, file) (Uncredited/Oklahoma Department of Corrections) | 2022-08-16T17:33:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oklahoma governor grants 60-day reprieve to Richard Glossip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/oklahoma-governor-grants-60-day-reprieve-to-richard-glossip/2022/08/16/3c98ee30-1d87-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/oklahoma-governor-grants-60-day-reprieve-to-richard-glossip/2022/08/16/3c98ee30-1d87-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
A less-deadly virus now doesn’t validate skepticism from 2020
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis puts on his mask as he leaves a news conference at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Monday, July 13, 2020, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
At this point, the most common version of the coronavirus circulating in the United States is omicron subvariant BA.5. It replaced subvariant BA.2 a few weeks ago, which itself replaced the original omicron variant, BA.1. That replaced the delta variant as the most common, and delta replaced the original coronavirus that arrived in the United States in early 2020.
The pandemic has changed. The virus has changed. But, for many people who have scoffed at the danger posed by the virus since it first appeared here 2½ years ago, their rhetoric hasn’t changed. And now that the omicron BA.5 subvariant appears to be less deadly, they’re pretending they were right in dismissing the risk or the need for preventive measures all along.
There’s been a good deal of analysis of the omicron variant since it appeared less than a year ago. The BA.5 subvariant is even newer, and research about its effects is limited, though not nonexistent.
So let’s look at an easily digestible metric: reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths for each phase of the pandemic. Since BA.5 took over as the most common subvariant only recently, we’ll group it together with the BA.2 subvariant.
You can see below that the relative number of hospitalizations and deaths during the period when the BA.2/BA.5 subvariants were most prevalent in the United States are lower than for earlier iterations of the virus. Yes, hospitalizations per reported case are up under BA.2/BA.5 — but that’s in large part because people are reporting fewer cases. A milder version of the virus means more people who don’t go to clinics for official tests, which means fewer reported cases. If we look at the deaths-versus-hospitalizations metric — comparing two quantifiable things — we see that the ratio of deaths to hospitalizations in this new phase is the lowest yet.
This isn’t definitive, but it reinforces what experts understand: BA.5 seems to be less deadly than past variants and subvariants.
Of course, there are lots of complicating factors. Vaccination continues to prove to be an important factor in reducing worse outcomes from the virus. In New York City, for example, it has consistently been the case that the rate of hospitalization for the unvaccinated is about seven times as high as that for the vaccinated. The omicron subvariants appear to be better at evading the protection from infection offered by vaccines and masks, but there’s no indication that high-quality masks and vaccines offer no protection.
What we’ve seen over the past 30 months or so is evolution at work. A virus that is better at avoiding vaccine protection is one that is better able to spread. A virus that is less likely to kill you is, too: more chance to spread to others. The virus has changed; the fittest version survived.
But the pandemic in the United States is hopelessly intertwined with politics. This is in part because of a conscious decision made by Donald Trump at its outset. Eager to win reelection, he sought to reduce the economic disruption posed by the virus. So he dismissed the obvious danger, suggesting that the virus would simply go away. He rejected mask-wearing in large part because it conveyed that the risk wasn’t minimal. It was a visible reminder that things were still unsettled.
Trump was so good at instilling skepticism about the virus that what he hoped would be a political triumph — the rapid emergence of vaccines that could reduce the risk of infection or death — was disproportionately rejected by his base as left-wing alarmism. The result was that deaths in the second year of the pandemic were heavily in places that Trump won in 2020.
All the more reason, then, for Trump’s allies to pretend they were right all along, as many are. At an event in Florida on Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) suggested not only that his laissez-faire (laissez-tousser?) approach to the pandemic was appropriate but that those advocating for preventive measures were somehow insincere.
“People would put in their Twitter profile a mask and a syringe and that was, like, their identity. And it was ridiculous,” he said. “They lied to us about the MRNA shots. They said, if you take it, you will not get covid. That is false. That is not true.” He went on to claim that people who had multiple booster shots were “deathly at risk of getting it.”
DeSantis does three things here. Working backward:
He conflates boosted people getting infections with boosted people being at particular risk from infection. This simply isn’t true; all available evidence continues to suggest that up-to-date vaccinations significantly reduce the risk of serious illness.
The governor claims that “they” lied about MRNA vaccines being perfect at blocking infection. This is a common bit of rhetoric, but it’s not clear where it originated. The vaccines can prevent infection, certainly. That’s one of their intended purposes, and clinical trials have shown that they do. But claims that it would prevent infection, universally? What scientist or official in the Trump or Biden administrations said that?
DeSantis may believe it was ridiculous for people to demonstrate their support for preventive measures. It’s consistent with his rejection of the idea that the community should be encouraged to take steps to counteract the virus, certainly. But it also reflects his long-standing insistence that “masks didn’t reduce spread,” which is simply not true. You need a better mask to block a more contagious variant, but, again, that’s simply a change in scale, not effect.
DeSantis is running for reelection this year (and, if not officially, for president in 2024) as they guy who rejected the coronavirus consensus. This is rhetoric, a ham-handed effort to cast his opponents as disconnected from the realities of the pandemic. But when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has loosened its guidance, it’s generally (but not entirely!) been because the nature of the virus has changed. DeSantis rejected the recommendations that helped save lives under delta (where Florida was hit particularly hard) and hasn’t moderated his arguments at all since.
Imagine walking up to a cave man 50,000 years ago and telling him he should just let a wolf live in his house. Wolves aren’t dangerous, you insist to him, and trying to keep the wolf out is impossible anyway. Just go about your life as if the wolves aren’t there! Most people who get bitten won’t die, after all. And someday soon, when it gets warmer maybe, they’ll just wander off.
Fifty-thousand years pass. We now, in fact, share our homes with evolved, less-dangerous wolves: dogs. There is a low risk from having a dog, and very, very few people are killed by dogs. The situation has changed. That doesn’t mean your argument from the cave man days was good.
“Time and time again,” DeSantis said Tuesday, “I think you’ve seen ideology placed over data and evidence.”
Absolutely true. Unfortunately, that tendency likely contributed to the disproportionate death toll from covid-19 in Trump-voting areas. | 2022-08-16T17:34:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A less-deadly virus now doesn’t validate skepticism from 2020 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/coronavirus-desantis-vaccine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/coronavirus-desantis-vaccine/ |
Trump’s ploy about lowering the temperature
Then-President-elect Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., in December 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When a guy who has spent his entire political career lodging vast conspiracy theories and strategically toying with the prospect of violence by his supporters offers to help dial back the tensions in this country, skepticism is warranted. And plenty applied such skepticism when news broke in recent days that former president Donald Trump was at least facially making such an offer in the aftermath of the search at Mar-a-Lago and amid threats against federal law enforcement.
What has transpired since then should erase any doubt about how sincere Trump’s entreaty was — and how seriously Trump’s top supporters have taken it.
The New York Times reported Saturday that a close Trump ally reached out to Attorney General Merrick Garland to ask what Trump could do to “reduce the heat.” The offer was treated with the requisite skepticism by the Times, which noted in the very next paragraph that Trump soon re-upped his completely baseless and inflammatory claim that the FBI might have planted evidence during the search.
Seeking a more credulous audience, Trump soon went to Fox News. His first interview since the search registered the kind of headline Trump would hope for: “Trump ‘will do whatever’ he can to ‘help the country’ after FBI raid: ‘Temperature has to be brought down.’” (Later, he and his allies complained that the Justice Department did not respond to this offer.)
Fox News host Tucker Carlson professed to be impressed.
“Maybe for the first time in his life, Donald Trump seems sincerely interested in lowering the temperature — not just for his own sake, but for the country’s,” Carlson said Monday night. “He said that. He’s never said anything like that.”
Just as quickly, though, Carlson allowed: “Maybe he doesn’t mean it. But when has he ever said that?”
If there’s one person who knows the utility of riling people up, it’s undoubtedly Carlson. And in the same show, he demonstrated the utility of Trump’s ploy. Rather than pitch the temperature as having been raised by Trump and his baseless conspiracy theories about planted evidence and the like — the kind of rhetoric that has now led to documented and very real threats against FBI personnel — Carlson blamed the Biden administration for having “explicitly declared war on his own population.” It bears emphasizing: Carlson said this and then, just minutes later, praised Trump for at least professing to want to lower the temperature.
But it’s not just Carlson speaking in these terms.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) took to Rumble to offer his own war comparison: “Is the IRS gearing up for war in our country? … Is there an effort by the national security state to stoke violence and a civil war here at home? We certainly hope not.” (For more on what this rhetoric about the IRS is about, see here.)
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared on Newsmax and agreed that Trump should be concerned about the “deepest of the deep state” assassinating him. This followed a week after another Trump ally who held office in New York City, Bernard Kerik, tweeted much the same thing:
Numerous other Trump allies are also still on the baseless planted-evidence train, including Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.).
Donald Trump Jr. is still comparing the FBI to the “Gestapo” and speaking in terms of “overthrowing” the government.
Donald Trump Jr: "If this was going on in a banana republic, you know, the warmongers in big government would have been overthrowing these governments by now. But it's happening now. It's happening with our FBI" pic.twitter.com/mLzfVwYzNF
And Trump himself is still casting recent events in some of the most inflammatory terms possible, including that the FBI “stole” his passports (despite evidence they were seized and returned).
In his social media post about the passport, Trump went on to decry the search as “an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country.”
These are not the words of a political entity who feels truly concerned about how inflamed the country’s emotions are.
The benefit of Trump professing to want to turn down the temperature is self-evident. It earns coverage on Fox, where many of his supporters will swallow it whole. Those people largely believe the government is conspiring against Trump, so Trump’s rhetoric won’t seem as overheated to them in the first place. And from there, Trump’s claim that Garland’s office didn’t take him up on his offer to help out will make it look to plenty of people as if Garland is the one uninterested in de-escalation. (This works because Garland isn’t in a position to publicly comment on the matter in detail.)
But there is, of course, no real reason that Trump needs Garland’s guidance on this issue. Lowering the temperature might begin, for example, with looking at the death threats against the FBI and deciding not to baselessly suggest that it planted evidence. It might also begin with suggesting that his allies should stop comparing the situation to Nazi Germany, invoking numerous war metaphors and floating the idea that Trump might be assassinated by his own government. At a bare minimum, it would seem to involve dealing with the facts as we know them rather than offering them a series of bogus but politically expedient conspiracy theories like the ones that led to Jan. 6.
You can believe that searching a former president is a fraught exercise — and one worthy of scrutiny when the details come out — without going to these extremes.
The reason Trump’s most high-profile supporters are still saying these things, though, is because they know precisely how unserious Trump’s offer was. They’ve seen how he’s kept up the same kind of rhetoric that raised the temperature in the first place.
And Carlson isn’t the only one who seems to know better. After his show aired Monday night, Fox News host Laura Ingraham pressed Trump lawyer Christina Bobb on precisely what Trump could do to lower the temperature. Ingraham even seemed to allow that Trump’s comment — that “terrible things are going to happen” if the situation isn’t de-escalated — might have been an implied threat, rather than an expression of earnest concern.
“What did the president mean by terrible things are going to happen?” Ingraham asked.
She pressed later for details: “What specifically was President Trump suggesting? I mean, everyone wants to bring the temperature down. I think that’s a noble desire, of course. But what specifically does he propose that he can do at this point?”
But Bobb offered no specifics. She merely talked about how people don’t trust the federal government and assured that Trump was offering a “genuine olive branch.”
“He had a big platform, he had a big following,” she said. “And so, I think it was a genuine olive branch to say, I’m trying to help this country. They don’t trust you, but they trust me. What can we do? And they ignored it.”
One would think if this was a real initiative Trump was so interested in, she might’ve had some ideas, and Trump might’ve offered some kind of a different message on his “big platform.” Apparently they’re still waiting for Garland to tell them what to do. | 2022-08-16T17:34:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s ploy about lowering the temperature - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trump-lower-temperature/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trump-lower-temperature/ |
FILE - Darius Campbell Danesh appears at the after party for the opening night of the “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” musical in the Savoy Hotel in London on April 2, 2014. Campbell Danesh, who shot to fame in 2001 on the British reality-talent show “Pop Idol” and topped British music charts the following year with his single “Colourblind,” has died at age 41. His family said Tuesday that he was found unresponsive in his apartment in Rochester, Minnesota on Aug. 11 and pronounced dead by the local medical examiners’ office. The family says the cause of death hasn’t been determined yet. (Jon Furniss/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-08-16T17:35:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Pop Idol' and stage star Darius Campbell Danesh dies at 41 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pop-idol-and-stage-star-darius-campbell-danesh-dies-at-41/2022/08/16/98d30226-1d82-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pop-idol-and-stage-star-darius-campbell-danesh-dies-at-41/2022/08/16/98d30226-1d82-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
If you’re interested in making Korean food at home, take a spin through chef Peter Serpico’s new cookbook, “Learning Korean.”
Serpico was born in Seoul, adopted as a toddler and grew up in suburban Maryland. He worked at various restaurants, attended culinary school and then built a starry career, including being a chef/partner at David Chang’s Momofuku Ko, which in 2009 won a James Beard award for Best New Restaurant.
But it wasn’t until he was an adult and met his wife, Julie, whose family is from Korea, that Serpico began making Korean food. The cookbook reflects what he discovered as he got to know his in-laws and dug into his heritage through food.
“Whenever we see her grandparents,” he said of their daughter, Charlie, “they just feed her Korean food because that’s all they eat. They don’t call it Korean food, they just call it food.”
“It was really hard,” he said, adding that he was also working full time on several take-out and side businesses he had going during the pandemic. “I really wanted my daughter to understand and remember. Now, she has that as a memory. We turned something really bad into something good. We had that time together.”
For the home cooks who pick up Serpico’s book, his goal is to demystify Korean food.
“I really, really wanted to make it a cooking book and not a cookbook,” he said. By that he means that he encourages people to use it with pen in hand, making notes about how they might change a recipe to suit their taste. For example, he toned down his countertop kimchi to suit Charlie’s taste, but people can add more ginger and chile paste, as they see fit.
“I would take zero offense to that,” he said. “I want people to use it as a baseline.”
“Then, whenever you have the spark, it’s there for you,” he said, adding that most of the fresh ingredients featured are available at any supermarket.
His aim is to provide recipes, most of them on the more healthful side, and instructions for Korean food that are accessible to cooks with just about any level of experience. When necessary, he provides step-by-step photos for stuffing dumplings, for example, but most of the recipes — there are 100 in the book — have few steps and few ingredients.
Take his Ground Beef Bulgogi.
Quick-cooking brisket bulgogi brings rich Korean flavors to the table
Bulgogi is traditionally made with tenderloin or sirloin, but when my colleague Becky Krystal wrote about New York chef Hooni Kim’s bulgogi, she noted that he makes it with brisket, a less expensive cut of meat. Kim’s delicious version is included in his cookbook, “My Korea.”
Serpico goes a step further making this popular Korean staple with ground beef.
“This recipe delivers all that flavor on a hamburger budget,” Serpico writes in his cookbook.
If you have time, Serpico recommends mixing the beef with the seasonings and then letting it marinate up to overnight in the refrigerator for even more flavor. But my colleague Olga Massov, a busy working mom, made it for her family one night without marinating and recommended I give it a whirl that way. I did and agreed with her that even without the overnight wait, the dish is quite flavorful. And, it comes together in about 20 minutes.
I asked Serpico if he objected to the change, and he emphatically replied no. That’s exactly how he wants people to use his cookbook.
“All it’s supposed to do is make you happy,” he said. “That’s it.”
6 recipes that showcase kimchi’s savory, funky power
The salty, sweet, garlicky mixture can be wrapped in lettuce or cabbage leaves, served with rice, noodles and kimchi, or rolled in seaweed with rice and vegetables to make kimbap. It also would make a fine filling for dumplings. (If you’re making a pot of rice to go with it, put the rice on before you begin cooking the beef and it should all be ready at the same time.)
1 pound lean ground beef (90 percent lean or higher) or 12 ounces to 1 pound plant-based meat, such as Beyond Meat brand
Per serving (3/4 cup bulgogi)
Calories: 308; Total Fat: 22 g; Saturated Fat: 8 g; Cholesterol: 75 mg; Sodium: 506 mg; Carbohydrates: 7 g; Dietary Fiber: 1 g; Sugar: 4 g; Protein: 22 g
Adapted from “Learning Korean” by Peter Serpico (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022). | 2022-08-16T18:16:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This ground beef bulgogi recipe makes a pantry-friendly, weeknight meal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/08/16/ground-beef-bulgogi-recipe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/08/16/ground-beef-bulgogi-recipe/ |
A timeline of Vanessa Bryant’s lawsuit against Los Angeles County
Vanessa Bryant, the widow of Kobe Bryant, leaves a federal courthouse in Los Angeles at the start of her lawsuit against county officials over photos taken at her husband's crash scene. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
Vanessa Bryant has sued Los Angeles County over photos of the 2020 helicopter crash that claimed the lives of her husband, NBA legend Kobe Bryant, and their 13-year-old daughter. The trial began last week.
Here’s a timeline of the lawsuit.
Retired NBA star Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven other people die when the helicopter they are flying in crashes into a hillside in Calabasas, Calif. The National Transportation Safety Board eventually rules that the pilot of the helicopter likely became disoriented after flying into thick clouds, losing control of the aircraft and causing it to smash into the hillside.
Vanessa Bryant files a wrongful-death lawsuit against the helicopter company that was hired to transport her husband’s group and the estate of the pilot, Ara Zobayan. Bryant and the families of the other six crash victims settle the lawsuit in June 2021, reaching a confidential agreement.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva announces that at least eight deputies took or shared graphic photos of the crash scene but also says he ordered them deleted. Villanueva adds that the deputies would be facing an investigation and possible disciplinary action, though he did not specify what that would entail.
Days after the crash, a bartender in Norwalk, Calif., filed a complaint with the sheriff’s department after overhearing a Los Angeles County sheriff’s trainee “bragging about how he had been at the crash site,” as he allegedly tried to use the crash photos to impress a woman at the bar.
Citing emotional distress, Vanessa Bryant and another family involved in the crash file a lawsuit against Villanueva, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles County over the photos taken by deputies.
The lawsuit states that Villanueva “did not conduct a standard investigation or collect, inspect or search the offending deputies’ cellphones to determine how many existed, whether and how they had been transmitted or whether they were stored” on the internet.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signs a bill that makes sharing a photo of a body from a crime scene or an autopsy “for any purpose other than an official law enforcement purpose” illegal and punishable by a $1,000 fine. Previously, California first responders were not legally prohibited from sharing such photos.
Attorneys for Los Angeles County ask a judge to compel Vanessa Bryant and the other family members involved in the lawsuit to take psychiatric exams before the case goes to trial. The county argues that the exams are necessary to determine whether the emotional distress suffered by Bryant and the others were caused by the leak of the photos or the helicopter crash itself. It also argues that the plaintiffs “cannot be suffering distress from accident site photos that they have never seen and that were never publicly disseminated.”
A magistrate judge rejects the county’s request on Nov. 1, saying it was made after the Oct. 4 deadline for expert reports that was set by the trial judge.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors votes to approve a $2.5 million settlement for two families who separately sued the county over the crash-scene photos. The county says it already had paid considerable legal fees to fight the two lawsuits: $1.29 million, which would be taken out of the sheriff and fire department budgets.
Lawyers for Los Angeles County petition a judge to have Vanessa Bryant’s lawsuit dismissed, arguing that the crash-scene photos never have been made public, that the public will never see them and that Bryant’s emotional-distress lawsuit involves only “hypothetical harm.”
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter denies the county’s petition to have the lawsuit dismissed, ruling that “there are genuine issues of material facts for trial.”
In his opening statement, Bryant attorney Luis Li says the cellphone photos shot at the crash scene by a deputy and a fire captain were “visual gossip” viewed “for a laugh,” with no official purpose.
In security-camera video presented by Li, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy who was drinking at a bar shows the photos to the bartender, who shakes his head in dismay. The lawyer then showed an image of the men laughing together later. Li described firefighters looking at the phone photos two weeks later at an awards banquet, and showed the jury an animated chart documenting their spread to nearly 30 people.
County lawyer J. Mira Hashmall counters that the photos never have appeared publicly, that the Sheriff’s Department acted quickly and decisively to prevent their further dissemination and that the photos were part of necessary accident site photography.
Capt. Emily Tauscher, the head of investigations at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, gives graphic testimony about the post-crash condition of each victim’s body so that jurors would have a mental image of what the photos would show. She also says her office took about 1,250 photos of the crash site, about 300 of which were of human remains, and that her office never requested that either the sheriff’s department or fire department take photos of the remains.
In earlier testimony, the leader of a sheriff department search and rescue team said that Deputy Doug Johnson had alone taken hundreds of crash-scene photos with his cellphone.
Adam Bercovici, a retired lieutenant for the Los Angeles Police Department who now works as a consultant, testifies that police officers and sheriff’s deputies in Southern California often pass around “ghoul books” with graphic photos of dead celebrities and other high-profile victims. Bercovici testifies that he was shown a Polaroid of Nicole Brown Simpson’s nearly decapitated corpse while on the job in the 1990s.
In 2020 Los Angeles Times interview that was played for jurors in the Bryant case, Villanueva said that “every police department struggles with the same thing where people take photos, and they’re not evidence.”
Brian Jordan, a former Los Angeles County fire captain who took photos at the crash site, walks off the witness stand three times during questioning from Bryant’s lawyer, saying he’s still traumatized by the crash.
Jordan, now retired, also testifies that he didn’t remember even being at the crash scene, which contradicts testimony he gave at an earlier deposition at which he said he remembered walking amid the crash scene.
A colleague of Jordan’s, Tony Imbrenda, earlier had testified that Jordan had sent him photos of the crash scene and that he had showed those photos to other firefighters at a gala event. Jordan testified that the photos he had sent to Imbrenda “were not pictures of people” and that any graphic photos of the crash site Imbrenda received were “not from me.”
Jordan testifies that he had surrendered his work phone, iPad and laptop to county investigators who looked into the sharing of the crash photos, but said he had “no clue” why the laptop’s hard drive had gone missing.
Later, a sheriff deputy trainee who received the photos and showed them to a bartender friend admits that there was no reason he ever should have even received the photos and that he “took it too far” when he showed them to the bartender.
“He’s a close friend that I vent to,” Deputy Joey Cruz said. “I took it too far, something I shouldn’t have done.” | 2022-08-16T18:21:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vanessa Bryant’s lawsuit against Los Angeles Count, explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/kobe-bryant-crash-photos-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/kobe-bryant-crash-photos-lawsuit/ |
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives for a dinner at Elysee Palace in Paris on July 28. (Lewis Joly/AP)
Saudi authorities detained Ms. Shehab in January 2021 and subsequently sentenced her to six years in prison for using social media to “disturb public order and destabilize the security and stability of the state.” On Twitter, she had demanded freedom for Loujain al-Hathloul, who campaigned for women’s right to drive and was incarcerated and tortured for it. In her appeal, Ms. Shehab noted that she used her real name on social media, had a peaceful background, posted photos of her children and had relatively few (2,000) followers, so how could she be capable of posing a security risk? She complained of being held in solitary confinement for 285 days. In response, prosecutors argued that she should be charged simultaneously under the kingdom’s counter-terrorism laws and under its cybercrime statute. On Aug. 8, the court delivered an especially draconian sentence: 34 years in prison and then 34 years of travel restriction. According to the Freedom Initiative, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, this is the longest known sentence for a women’s rights activist in Saudi Arabia.
The case offers yet another glimpse at the brutal underside of the Saudi dictatorship under its crown prince and de facto head of state, Mohammed bin Salman, whose hit team assassinated Post Opinions contributor Jamal Khashoggi nearly five years ago. The crown prince, known as MBS, has been eager to portray himself as a modernizer, lavishing Saudi wealth on an international golf tour and promoting a utopian city to be built in the desert. In February 2021, Ms. Hathloul was released after nearly three years in prison but is still under travel restrictions, one of the Saudi ruler’s many pernicious punishments. | 2022-08-16T18:47:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Saudi Arabia’s cruel treatment of Salma al-Shehab must be renounced - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/salma-al-shehab-prison-sentence-saudi-arabia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/salma-al-shehab-prison-sentence-saudi-arabia/ |
Congestion Pricing, the Route More Cities Are Taking
Traffic is a headache, and not just for drivers. Jammed roads have become a growing economic, health and environmental menace to societies, contributing every year to millions of premature deaths and costing vast sums in lost productivity (an estimated $87 billion in the US alone). To policy makers, that’s raised the allure of an option that not only can de-clog the streets and improve the air but also fill government coffers. Might congestion pricing become the norm for cities?
1. What is congestion pricing?
Charging drivers to enter busy areas. It’s already used in Singapore, London, Milan and Stockholm. New York is the latest city to join the movement with plans to charge some motorists as much as $23 to enter Manhattan’s central business district. Paying to drive into urban centers during rush hour, or in London’s case from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., is a turnoff for many commuters that pushes them to seek more sustainable alternatives such as mass transit, car pooling or cycling. London charges 15 pounds ($18) a day. The upsides for cities can include quicker bus journeys, a friendlier environment for bicycles and pedestrians, fewer road accidents and less pollution.
2. Does it tackle the jams?
Congestion fell 30% and pollution dropped by almost a quarter the year after London started charging to enter an area of 8 square miles (21 square kilometers). Stockholm’s system, launched four years after London’s in 2007, cut traffic to and from a 13-square-mile zone by 20% and reduced traffic delays by as much as 50%. Congestion pricing appears to discourage some individuals from driving downtown but has less effect on businesses that can afford the charges. Congestion in London has returned to pre-charge levels, partly a result of commercial vehicles fulfilling online shopping orders and a rise in demand for ride-hailing services such as Uber Technologies Inc.
In London, clusters of cameras read the registration plates on vehicles entering the charging zone and the system checks if their owners have paid the charge. Drivers can automate payments, allowing the system to record the number of days they’ve travelled within the zone and automatically debit their bank account. In Stockholm, drivers were given electronic tags to be installed in their cars, which triggered automatic payments when they passed the city’s control points. Some urban authorities are finding ways to fine-tune prices based on levels of congestion or air pollution.
4. Where does the money go?
The revenue can be used to offset the anticipated loss of billions of dollars in fuel taxes as electric vehicles become more commonplace. London’s congestion charge is forecast to raise 154 million pounds ($200 million) in 2020, to be reinvested in transport in the capital. The charges in Singapore and Stockholm have each brought in more than $100 million a year. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency that runs the city’s subways, buses and commuter rails, plans to upgrade public transportation infrastructure by issuing bonds against the new revenue stream.
5. Who’s against it?
Motorist lobbies such as the American Automobile Association and some commuters argue that middle-income earners in outlying areas without access to public transport bear the brunt. Skeptics point out that London still has some of the world’s worst traffic and that location-tracking exposes consumers to privacy and data risks. Critics also note that it’s an inequitable solution, since the price is the same for everyone regardless of means. Some motorists object to congestion pricing or any road charges on the grounds that driving symbolizes personal freedom.
6. Is there another approach?
There’s the Paris model, whereby restrictions keep out the most polluting vehicles, a bar that’s steadily raised. The French capital banned cars built to pre-1997 emissions standards in 2016, then three years later extended the ban to those from before 2006. Restrictions on cars built before 2009 kicked in from 2021. The two models are not exclusive (London has started banning heavy polluting vehicles) but they reflect different political cultures, one more tolerant of state-enforced bans and the other more open to control via fees.
7. Who profits from congestion pricing?
People who live in cities stand to profit the most. Pollution incurs all sorts of costs and any policy that reduces it is going to provide some economic benefits, from reduced sick days to better quality of life. Companies that supply congestion pricing technologies include Austria’s Kapsch TrafficCom AG, Dutch company TomTom, Germany’s Siemens AG and Norway’s Q-Free ASA. The US government’s Global Positioning System and the European Union’s Galileo navigation project run satellite-positioning constellations. HERE Global BV, a mapping company whose owners include Audi, BMW AG and Daimler, expects congestion pricing could become the new normal.
8. What’s the future of congestion pricing?
Systems analysts at the World Bank observed that humans have since Neolithic times tended to budget about an hour a day for travel. While technologies such as automobiles and airplanes have extended the speed and range of travel, people still like to cap their commutes. That’s key for proponents of congestion pricing who want to make it a part of so-called multimodal transport systems that blend rail, road and air travel into seamless networks. And with the U.S. Census Bureau calculating that workers in the world’s biggest economy are close to breaking the one-hour threshold, the demand for ways to ease congestion is unlikely to abate. | 2022-08-16T19:04:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Congestion Pricing, the Route More Cities Are Taking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/congestion-pricing-the-route-more-cities-are-taking/2022/08/16/09376d08-1d8e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/congestion-pricing-the-route-more-cities-are-taking/2022/08/16/09376d08-1d8e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
U.S. demands more water cuts as Colorado River hits dire lows
The new shortage announced Tuesday comes as states negotiate how to make major reductions in water use
A section of Lake Powell that used to be underwater, seen in June 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
On Tuesday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared that the Lower Colorado River Basin has reached what’s called a “Tier 2” shortage, requiring cuts in water use that will diminish what Arizona gets by 21 percent, Nevada by 8 percent and the country of Mexico by 7 percent.
“The system is approaching a tipping point, and without action we cannot protect the system,” M. Camille Calimlim Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said during a news conference Tuesday. “Protecting the system means protecting the people of the American West.”
The urgency of this moment comes as little surprise for Western water managers who divvy up the river’s dwindling supplies, but policymakers in the region remain torn on what to do. The Biden administration told these states in June that they need to find a way to reduce water use by 2 to 4 million acre-feet — up to a third of the river’s annual average flow — or the federal government will make cuts for them. The deadline for that deal passed Monday, as negotiators continue to scramble to reach a voluntary agreement.
The root of the problem is an ongoing, 23-year drought, the worst stretch for the region in more than a millennium. Snowpack in the mountains that feed the 1,450-mile river have been steadily diminishing as the climate warms. Ever-drier soils absorb runoff before it can reach reservoirs, and more frequent extreme heat hastens evaporation.
In searching for a solution, state officials say they are seeking to balance both short-term needs to save Lakes Mead and Powell from dropping to levels where water can no longer generate power or flow through its dams, and also set themselves up for a longer-term agreement where everyone will have to find ways to use less water because climate change has made the West hotter and drier.
But balancing the demands of so many states, cities, tribes and farmers is no easy task. The Colorado River was divided up among seven states a century ago. There are designated supplies for Upper Basin states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) and Lower Basin states (California, Nevada and Arizona) as well as Mexico, where the river ends in the Sea of Cortez. Within those broad outlines there is a tangled web of junior and senior water rights, outdated allocations and inequities that originally left Native Americans out of the equation.
In the West's fastest growing metro area, a rising fear the water may run out
River experts say the current ultimatum from the federal government, issued in June to cut 2 million to 4 million acre-feet, is the start of what will be a period of unprecedented drama along the river.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s announcement Tuesday means that water releases from Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams, on Lakes Powell and Mead, will be further reduced next year. This is the second consecutive year that authorities have declared such shortages.
While details of the negotiations have not been made public, statements by those involved have underscored the divisions between the upper and lower basins, pointing to the difficulty of any compromise, said Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.
Wade said that some 690,000 acres are expected to be left fallow in California this year, leaving crops such as tomatoes, melons, rice and alfalfa in shorter supply, and more is expected with future Colorado River cuts. Paul Orme, a lawyer who represents farmers in Pinal County, Ariz., said that of the 250,000 acres of irrigable land in the county, up to 100,000 will have to be left unplanted, a situation that’s “bad in every direction.”
“'Fallowing' is the F-word around here — nobody likes it,” said Robert Schettler, a spokesman with the Imperial Irrigation District in California, a supplier of irrigation water from the Colorado River. “It has an impact on the local economy. And agriculture is our backbone. Productive land is taken out of production. There’s less work for farmworkers, seed salesmen, hay balers and everything that goes with it.” | 2022-08-16T19:04:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bureau of Reclamation demands water cuts as Colorado River hits dire lows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/16/colorado-river-bureau-of-reclamation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/16/colorado-river-bureau-of-reclamation/ |
Rivers have been reduced to a trickle in the most severely affected areas, and farmers are facing consequences of a summer without rain
A sign announces a water ban in Scituate, Mass. (Michael Dwyer/AP)
Persistently dry conditions in the Northeast have plunged the United States’ most populous region into the middle of an intense drought — and it’s not yet clear whether any relief is on the horizon.
A coastal storm is likely to track off the Northeast coast later this week, but models have wavered regarding how much rainfall will strike the region, to the chagrin of farmers and forest managers alike.
Photos of the drought in the Northeast look as if they’ve been taken in the Desert Southwest. Major rivers in the region have dropped to their lowest levels in local memory, with certain tributaries of the Boston area’s Charles River drying up entirely as locals find themselves able to walk across normally swift-moving rivers.
Southwest drought is the most extreme in 1,200 years, study finds
“We are walking on the river. We could walk across it with the right boots,” Boston-area photographer Fran Gardino told CBS News. “If you come here normally the river is flowing rapidly down here. It’s so strong you couldn’t stand in here.”
Extreme drought is plaguing much of eastern Massachusetts, including Boston, as well as parts of southern and eastern Rhode Island. Under the Federal U.S. Drought Monitor’s drought classification system, there’s just one level worse.
Not a single part of Massachusetts or Rhode Island is free of drought. Extreme drought, which the Drought Monitor warns can cause an extreme reduction of flow in rivers as well as widespread crop loss, has overtaken 24.5 percent of Massachusetts and 33.63 percent of Rhode Island.
Last month was Boston fourth-driest July on record, yielding just 0.62 inches of rain recorded compared with its average July rainfall total of 3.27 inches.
In Providence, R.I., just 0.46 inches of rain were tallied in July, well below the normal of 2.91 inches. On Aug. 9, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee (D) issued a statewide drought advisory recommending that local residents prepare for an extended period of dry weather.
“As a precaution, I encourage residents and businesses to consider taking water conservation measures,” McKee said in a news release.
Numerous municipalities in Massachusetts have instituted mandatory water restrictions, limiting the number of days each week on which watering is allowed.
The drought is not localized to Massachusetts and Rhode Island — it’s regionwide. Parts of New Jersey, New York City and areas all the way up through coastal Maine are experiencing at least moderate drought. Drought conditions also extend farther into the interior Northeast, into all of New Hampshire, nearly all of Vermont and as far west as areas along Lake Ontario in New York.
The last few runs of the American (GFS) model have trended back toward a rainier solution, with up to 2.5 inches of rain forecast across rain-needy parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It also has some much-needed precipitation reaching as far inland as New Hampshire and Vermont.
“I think we’re probably going to be in this for a while, and it’s going to take a lot,” Ted Diers, an assistant director of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services water division, told the Associated Press. “What we really are hoping for is a wet fall followed by a very snowy winter to really recharge the aquifers and the groundwater.”
Vermont farmer Brian Kemp told the AP that drought conditions have made it harder for his large herd of cattle to find enough grazing.
Dairy farms in Vermont are a $2 billion per year industry, and drought in the region has meant this year’s yield and quality of hay are both low, making life difficult for farmers who need hay to feed their livestock.
Rhode Island farmer Milan Adams told the AP that many of his fields are covered in a layer of dry powdery soil, which makes for tough hay farming. | 2022-08-16T19:04:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Northeast struggling through persistent drought conditions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/16/northeast-drought-dry-rivers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/16/northeast-drought-dry-rivers/ |
On Jan. 6, he ‘trusted’ a fellow cop ‘based on lies.’ Now both are felons.
On Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors said, Thomas Robertson, right, and Jacob Fracker, his colleague at the time with the Rocky Mount Police Department, stormed the Capitol and posed for a photo in front of a statue of John Stark. (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia)
On Jan. 6, 2021, Jacob Fracker went with his commanding sergeant in the Rocky Mount, Va., police department to Washington, where they forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and photographed themselves celebrating.
Fifteen months later, Fracker testified against the man he called “Dad,” saying he and Thomas Robertson had sought to stop President Biden from taking office. At Robertson’s April trial, Fracker also testified that when they learned they would be arrested, the sergeant destroyed their phones to hide incriminating photos and videos.
In D.C. federal court Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper sentenced Fracker, 30, to a year of probation, with 59 days of home confinement and 120 hours of community service.
The case is “unique,” the judge noted — Fracker is the first rioter to be sentenced on a conspiracy charge after cooperating against a co-conspirator. Prosecutors had recommended an eight-year sentence for Robertson for his six convictions, including interfering with police and obstruction of justice, and Cooper imposed nearly that much time at a hearing Friday. But the government suggested a probationary sentence for Fracker.
He was “recruited” by Robertson to join the mob, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi said in court, and helped convict his mentor “at a pretty significant personal cost.” She emphasized that he is continuing to help with an investigation into Robertson’s assembly of an arsenal of weapons after the Jan. 6 attack.
Cooper said he would have sent Fracker to a halfway house if one was close enough to accommodate the defendant’s child-care responsibilities. The judge asked Aloi why the government wasn’t recommending that Fracker be punished for giving his phone to Robertson for disposal after the riot.
The prosecutor said Fracker was the one who revealed that the pair destroyed their phones, and since the government was “wholly unaware of the obstruction” until Fracker’s confession, “we agreed not to use it against him.”
In his own letter to the court, Robertson claimed for the first time that Fracker was the one who destroyed their phones, contradicting trial testimony and text messages.
On Tuesday, Cooper pressed Fracker not only on his own mentality that day but also that of the thousands around him who joined an antidemocratic, violent attempt to control Congress.
“What led you and so many others to breach the Capitol that day?” Cooper asked. And why do so many see politics “as a civil war”? Had it occurred to him and other veterans that they were “targeted or taken advantage of” with “appeals to their patriotism”?
Fracker said he could only speak for himself. At the time, he “wanted to know what the future held” for his daughter and thought that “if anybody was going to have any insight, it would be the people speaking that day.”
After the riot, Fracker testified at the April trial, he was exultant: “I had felt like I took a step in making a difference in the election results.” By the time he was on the stand, he said, he felt “weird” and “ashamed.”
“At the time it was all fun and games,” he said. “Here lately I’ve had it actually presented to me and shown to me for what it is. … I know for a fact my mom would slap me in the face if she had saw what I was doing that day.”
In court Tuesday, he said he was also motivated to protect Robertson, who was “no spring chicken.” Robertson, 49, asked Fracker to come to D.C. and organized the trip, including providing gas masks and ready-to-eat meals.
Both men were military veterans; Fracker served in the Marines and the Army National Guard and was injured in Afghanistan. But prosecutors found that Robertson exaggerated his own Army experience to impress the younger man — including claiming after Jan. 6 that he was upholding principles he learned as an Army Ranger, when he had never been one.
“I loved him,” Fracker told the judge. “I trusted him based on lies. But he didn’t tell me how to act that day; I acted on my own.”
At trial, Fracker testified that he tried to protect one officer who had lost his helmet but otherwise ignored the assaults on police all around them.
“I think, as a cop, I felt like they should have been on our side,” he recalled at the trial. “Maybe it was just like a one-track mind kind of thing. Well, I’m a cop, so all cops need to think like this.”
At sentencing, his defense attorney Bernard Crane said Fracker understood better as soon as he saw video of the riot.
“Mr. Robertson blew up Mr. Fracker’s life,” Crane said. He compared the two co-defendants to a fake dollar bill and a legitimate one, and side by side it was clear “which is the real deal.” | 2022-08-16T19:05:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jacob Fracker, who testified at Jan. 6 trial of fellow cop, sentenced - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/fracker-robertson-capitol-cop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/fracker-robertson-capitol-cop/ |
The move will grant full, automatic federal student loan forgiveness to 208,000 people
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks during a roundtable discussion with Vice President Harris and college presidents in Washington on Aug. 8. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
The Biden administration said Tuesday it will grant full, automatic forgiveness of $3.9 billion in education debt held by former students of the defunct for-profit chain ITT Technical Institute.
The action covers 208,000 people who were enrolled at ITT Tech from Jan. 1, 2005, to its closure in September 2016. Former students are not required to submit an application and will receive a letter from the Education Department informing them of the pending discharge.
Biden administration delivers debt relief to some former ITT Tech students
“Many ITT Tech students were misled, coerced or victimized by other illegal misconduct,” said Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D), who helped secure a $330 million settlement against ITT Tech over private student loans. “We are pleased that the Department of Education heeded our recommendation to forgive the federal loans owed by defrauded students.”
Before closing in 2016, ITT Tech was being investigated by more than a dozen state attorneys general and two federal agencies for alleged fraud, deceptive marketing or steering students into predatory loans.
Berkhalter enrolled at ITT Tech in 2006 after leaving the Army to pursue a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Before she graduated, she had used all of her G.I. Bill education funds and needed to borrow nearly $100,000 in federal student loans. Employers, she said, deemed the degree worthless, making it almost impossible to find work to repay what she owed.
It also arrived with a series of other actions the administration is taking to hold colleges accountable and ease the burden of debt on students.
The department said it has formally notified DeVry University that it is liable for nearly $24 million in federal loans the department has discharged through the debt-relief program known as borrower defense to repayment. In February, the department identified about 1,800 DeVry students who were eligible for $71.7 million in debt relief.
Those students were identified by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in 2016 after an investigation found the now-defunct school had inflated job-placement rates and used aggressive sales tactics to get people to enroll in its medical billing and medical assistant programs. The allegations were the center of a 2015 investigation by the attorney general that resulted in a $1.3 million settlement with Kaplan Higher Education, the parent company, which denied the charges. | 2022-08-16T19:05:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden administration cancels $3.9 billion in loan debt of former ITT Tech students - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/16/itt-tech-student-loan-forgiveness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/16/itt-tech-student-loan-forgiveness/ |
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court judge’s ruling upholding the state’s execution process. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker in 2020 ruled that the state's use of midazolam in injections is constitutional and dismissed claims that less painful methods of execution are available. | 2022-08-16T19:05:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Court upholds Arkansas' use of sedative in executions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/court-upholds-arkansas-use-of-sedative-in-executions/2022/08/16/565f29e2-1d8c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/court-upholds-arkansas-use-of-sedative-in-executions/2022/08/16/565f29e2-1d8c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Meet Becca Balint, the first woman Vermont could send to Congress — ever
If elected, she would also be the state’s first out queer person in Congress
For the last few weeks on the campaign trail, first-time U.S. congressional candidate Becca Balint has been driving around Vermont in her bright yellow Honda Fit, singing Alicia Keys at the top of her lungs. She has gravitated toward the song “Underdog,” in particular.
The Keys ballad is both an anthem and a rallying cry, urging the forgotten and downtrodden to chase their dreams. In the song, Balint sees the story of her historic campaign.
“When we started, we were the underdog by far. People just felt like there was no way I was going to be able to overcome the name recognition gap,” Balint said.
Last week, Balint, a Vermont state senator who also serves as the state’s Senate president pro tempore, handily defeated Lt. Gov. Molly Gray in the Democratic primary. The victory brought Balint one step closer to making history: If elected, she will be the first woman to represent the state in Congress, as well as the first out queer person to do so.
She’s a long shot for Congress — but is trying to make history, anyway
According to the Victory Fund, which advocates for and supports LGBTQ political candidates, there has been a notable increase in LGBTQ women running for office in the past five years: In 2022 alone, there are 304 LGBTQ female candidates, according to the organization.
Some of those candidates have been galvanized by recent political developments, such as the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned the right to an abortion nationwide, said Victory Fund President Annise Parker. Also concerning to many candidates was Justice Clarence Thomas’s statement that landmark cases supporting LGBTQ rights ought to be reviewed. Thomas’s remarks came as state bills and attacks targeting LGBTQ communities have escalated around the country.
“That’s something that motivates people to stand up and run. And we hope that it will motivate people to show up in November,” Parker said.
But what Balint believes sets her apart are the relationships she has built with communities in her state, where she said she has prioritized working on mental health issues, housing and the wealth gap, as well as her commitment to running an “openhearted” and joyful campaign. The latter seems to have resonated with voters, she said, but it’s also a deeply personal choice.
“If I don’t intentionally set myself up to think more positively, I can easily get pulled into the darkness,” Balint said. Hence Alicia Keys and that bright yellow car. “Every day, it makes me smile just to get in,” she said.
We spoke to Balint after her historic victory about Vermont, her candidacy and what this moment means to her.
Q: You have this historic campaign at a moment when reproductive rights are being rolled back and anti-LGBTQ attacks are surging. What does your candidacy mean to you at a time like this?
A: It is a scary moment for so many people right now. It’s a scary moment for women, young women in particular, for members of the LGBTQ community, for anyone who is part of a marginalized community.
I want to bring you back to when I was in high school: I won a citizenship award. A reporter came to talk to me and she said, “Well, what do you think you’re going to do with your life?” I was 17 years old, and I said, “I want to teach. I want to write. I hope to someday run for office.” And I said, “Whatever I do, I want to be someone who tries to alleviate suffering, that is trying to make life better for people.”
Whether it be because of racial hatred, income inequality, the incredibly dangerous rhetoric coming out against LGBTQ youth in particular and their families — I feel like I am still the same person I always was. And now people are seeing that, on some level, we all need to be focused on truly, truly helping those who are being targeted right now.
Q: I know you’ve also talked a bit about your grandfather, who died in the Holocaust. And I’m curious, this focus on suffering and how to relieve it — where did that start for you?
A: So I certainly grew up in a family that talked a lot about the mob mentality, right? That things can turn quickly when people are feeling angry, unsure of their own place. There are parts of all of us as humans that look for easy answers, and oftentimes it’s about scapegoating people to try to find an easy answer.
When I think about what happened to my grandfather in the Holocaust — the way that he was killed; was he was on a forced march from the concentration camp. The Nazis were trying to outrun the Allies. And he stayed behind when they were marching because somebody else fell behind and was not able to make it. So he tried to help this person along, and they both were shot to death.
I always have asked myself as an adult: Would I have had the strength to do that? Would I have had the fortitude in the midst of all that depravity and all of that dehumanization? Would I have had the courage to do that thing?
And over time, I realized it’s actually the wrong question for me to be asking myself, and for my neighbors and constituents to be asking of themselves. The real question is: Do I have the courage day in and day out on a regular basis to talk to people who are different from us? ... That’s really what it means for me to alleviate suffering as part of a life well-lived.
So there’s the work of being a leader and a senator trying to solve problems through policy, which is incredibly important and something I take very seriously. But as an addendum to that, I face each day with that sense of, “What can I do with moments of interaction that will also alleviate suffering?”
Q: How much pain or suffering are you encountering as you go across communities and as you’re meeting individuals across the state? What are you seeing?
A: What I’m seeing is deep anxiety and concern about the future that’s sort of overlaying everything. Whether we will be able to survive this moment when our democracy is clearly imperiled. Every community that I’m in across the state is confronting mental health struggles and the opioid epidemic.
We’re also in the middle of an acute housing crisis in Vermont. So there are a lot of people who are very concerned about their place in the state. In the future, will their kids and grandkids be able to stay here?
It’s an indication of this much broader crisis that’s been building for decades, which is this incredible wealth gap in the nation. And when I look at how wages have been flat for so long, and when I look at how much money people are paying for child care to be able to get back to work — it’s a lot of anxiety. There’s a lot of anxiety out there.
There is, I think, an incredible fear about elections going forward. Will people just say if they don’t win, “Oh, well, it was rigged. It was unfair”? If this is the cycle that we’re going to be in, the only way to address it within our communities is to continue to engage with people, even when we disagree, so that we can go back to being Americans, we can go back to being Vermonters.
Q: There’s this stereotype about Vermont that people are much nicer than some other places, and that seems to apply to its politics, too. How true is that?
A: I always have to laugh when people are like, “Are you ready to, like, face the onslaught of negativity in Congress?” When I first moved to Vermont, within a few weeks, somebody had scratched “dyke” into the side of my car in huge letters, and I had to have my car repainted. I was embarrassed that that was my experience.
So both things are true. Yes, there is this desire for things to stay positive and for there to be more stability. But I have to say that’s not true for those of us who are part of a marginalized group.
They may not play out in the TV ads that are run, but they certainly play out on social media and in the calls and emails that I get or people call you at a town meeting and say, you know, call you a baby killer because you support reproductive rights. And there has been a shift after Trump’s election. There’s no denying it.
I want to be somebody in politics who can acknowledge that, yes, we should always be striving to live up to the story Vermonters tell about ourselves, which is that we’re kinder and gentler and loving, while also acknowledging that is not true for everyone. That is really important work to me.
Take a look: Justice Jackson is photographed by Annie Leibovitz | 2022-08-16T19:05:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Becca Balint could make Vermont history as first woman in Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/becca-balint-vermont-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/becca-balint-vermont-history/ |
Tiger Woods, according to reports, was scheduled to meet with top PGA Tour players Tuesday at Wilmington Country Club to address the growing threat of LIV Golf. (Alastair Grant/AP)
WILMINGTON, Del. — Patrick Cantlay arrived at the BMW Championship a newcomer at Wilmington Country Club but buoyed by his status as the event’s reigning champion after a riveting triumph in 2021 that required six playoff holes.
The runner-up at last year’s tournament, however, is not in the field at this week’s event, and Bryson DeChambeau’s conspicuous absence is unrelated to his performance on the golf course.
DeChambeau departed the PGA Tour earlier in the summer to join the upstart LIV Golf Invitational Series for a reported nine-figure deal, among the highest profile flash points in the contentious saga between competing circuits that has dominated this golf season. The ongoing tension reportedly brought Tiger Woods to Delaware on Tuesday to rally support for the PGA Tour, despite his absence from the tournament field, an apparent indication of the importance of this moment.
A glance at last year’s BMW leader board, when the tournament was contested at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Md., underscores the nature of the feud between the two circuits. Past major champions Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia, for instance, finished in a two-way tie for sixth last year, but aren’t playing this week, having lost their PGA Tour eligibility. Also absent is Abraham Ancer, who tied for ninth at the BMW in 2021.
All three defected to LIV, the Saudi Arabia-backed series with ties to Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s crown prince who, according to U.S. intelligence officials, approved the operation that led to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
And so, even though virtually all of the top 70 players in the PGA Tour’s points race will be in Delaware this week, several of the sport’s best known stars will not.
“One of the great things about the PGA Tour is the depth of the field,” said Jon Rahm, the fifth-ranked player in the world who tied for ninth at the BMW Championship last year. “So there’s always a hungrier future star that’s willing to put in the work and make themselves known. Lack of talent on the PGA Tour and the world of golf is not an issue.
“Again you might have lost some names, but you’re gaining some great golfers. … I don’t think we are essentially losing that much because, like I said, you’re just getting to know some great players that were there that you haven’t heard of before.”
Rahm’s comments came before a scheduled meeting between Woods and an undisclosed number of the PGA Tour’s top players, according to several published reports. A previously scheduled Players Advisory Council meeting was, according to the Associated Press, pushed back approximately an hour to accommodate Woods, who has been outspoken about his loyalty to the PGA Tour in the midst of LIV’s escalating threat.
“Yeah, there is a player meeting, but that’s all I can tell you about that,” Rahm said. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have Tiger’s phone number, so I can’t tell you if he’s coming or not.”
Rahm, 27, has been candid as well about his allegiance to the PGA Tour, with the 2021 U.S. Open winner indicating the potential to earn hundreds of millions with LIV would not be life-changing. His stance has been in stark contrast to that of another of the game’s youthful major champions, Cameron Smith.
The 28-year-old Australian, who won last month’s British Open at the iconic Old Course at St. Andrews, has been coy when asked about his commitment to the PGA Tour amid a report in the Telegraph that Smith, the world’s No. 2 ranked player, intends to defect to LIV for a contract worth $100 million.
The tour announced Monday that Smith had withdrawn from the BMW because of “hip discomfort,” according to an accompanying statement from his agent. Smith’s withdrawal came two days after he incurred a two-stroke penalty at the St. Jude Championship, the first of the FedEx Cup’s three playoff legs.
Smith is third in the FedEx Cup standings heading into the second round of the playoffs, comprising 68 players. This event’s field typically includes 70, after the top 125 in the standings qualify for the opening event, but in addition to Smith withdrawing, Tommy Fleetwood is not participating in the playoffs to spend more time with family, the Englishman posted on Twitter.
There are no alternates in the FedEx Cup playoffs, which culminate with the top 30 in the standings competing at next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. The winner of the FedEx Cup receives $18 million, an increase of $3 million from what Cantlay pocketed as last year’s champion.
“It’s still an incredibly fantastic field,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, ranked 11th in the world and 12th in the FedEx Cup standings following a tie for fifth at the St. Jude. “The field this week is [68] of the best players in the world. Yeah, I think that only three of them that aren’t here, it’s not a massive loss in my opinion.” | 2022-08-16T19:06:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tiger Woods to meet with PGA Tour players about LIV Golf, according to reports - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/tiger-woods-pga-tour-liv-golf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/tiger-woods-pga-tour-liv-golf/ |
Man charged with murder in killing of Md. ride-share driver
Prince George’s County police said the motive of the fatal shooting was an attempted robbery
A 21-year-old man was arrested in the slaying of a ride-share driver who police say was fatally shot Wednesday during an attempted robbery in the Temple Hills area.
Kiayon Strowbridge, of Temple Hills, is charged with first- and second-degree murder and related counts in the killing of Nesredin Esleiman, 55, of Silver Spring, police said. He is being held without bond at the county jail.
Officers found Esleiman with a gunshot wound in a vehicle in the 5400 block of Chesterfield Drive after responding to a call for a welfare check Wednesday morning, police said. Esleiman was pronounced dead at the scene.
As of Monday, Prince George’s County police have investigated 62 homicides this year.
It was not immediately clear whether Strowbridge has an attorney. | 2022-08-16T20:22:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man charged with murder in killing of Md. ride-share driver - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/man-charged-murder-rideshare-driver/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/man-charged-murder-rideshare-driver/ |
A judge said the proposed prison terms for Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana, were too lenient, given the potential damage to national security.
Booking photos of Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana Toebbe. (West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority via AP) (AP)
A federal judge Tuesday rejected plea bargains for a Navy engineer and his wife who allegedly tried to sell national security secrets, saying the prison terms proposed by the deals were too lenient for a couple accused of offering U.S. nuclear submarine data to a foreign government.
Jonathan Toebbe, 43, a Navy engineer, and Diana Toebbe, 46, a private schoolteacher, lived in Annapolis, Md., before they were arrested in October in a case involving a year-long FBI sting and cloak-and-dagger elements that seemed straight from a spy novel, including the attempted transfer of confidential defense data hidden in a peanut butter sandwich and a pack of gum, authorities said.
In plea bargains with federal prosecutors, signed early this year, the couple admitted to violating the Atomic Energy Act. The deals called for Jonathan Toebbe to be sentenced to 12½ to 17½ in prison while his wife would get a three-year term. But the couple withdrew their guilty pleas Tuesday after U.S. District Judge Gina M. Groh, in Martinsburg, W.VA., upended the agreements.
“Make no mistake, these defendants have been charged with very serious crimes,” Groh said from the bench. Although she has questioned the appropriateness of plea deals in the past, she said, “In the end, I generally honor plea agreements negotiated by the parties, even when they have binding [sentencing] ranges” that she does not entirely agree with.
In the cases against the Toebbes, however, “I find the sentencing options available to me to be strikingly deficient,” Groh said.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys, who appeared in Groh’s courtroom for sentencing hearings Tuesday and seemed taken aback by her ruling, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
After the couple withdrew their guilty pleas, the judge set a joint trial date for January. It is possible that before then, the two sides will negotiate new plea deals with sentences more palatable to the judge.
Who are the Maryland husband and wife that admitted trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets?
Jonathan Toebbe, a nuclear engineer with top-secret security clearance, worked in the Navy’s multibillion-dollar effort to build submarines that can stay submerged and undetected for the longest time possible. His wife, a teacher at the private Key School in Annapolis, was known as a meticulous humanities instructor who shared her liberal politics with students. Both come from families with considerable military ties.
Authorities said the Toebbes, who have two children, schemed together to offer to sell government secrets about nuclear propulsion systems on U.S. submarines to an unidentified foreign country. According to court papers, investigators learned of the plot after the country forwarded the couple’s sales pitch to U.S. counterintelligence officials.
FBI agents posing as representatives of the foreign country quickly launched a sting operation. Agents said they recorded Toebbe and his wife leaving data cards for their supposed handlers at “dead drop” sites within driving distance of their home. The information was hidden inside a peanut butter sandwich, an adhesive-bandage wrapper and a package of Dentyne gum, authorities said.
In fact, Jonathan Toebbe’s foreign handler was an undercover FBI agent. Emails cited in court papers show that Toebbe came to trust the undercover agent in part because of the money he was paid and because the FBI arranged to “signal” Toebbe from the foreign country’s embassy in Washington over Memorial Day weekend last year. The papers do not describe how the FBI was able to arrange such a signal.
In correspondence with his handler, Jonathan Toebbe claimed to have spent years formulating his “spy for hire” plan. In total, officials said, Toebbe provided thousands of pages of documents, and his espionage ambitions had been building for years. | 2022-08-16T20:22:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge upends plea deals of pair accused of trying to sell U.S. secrets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/navy-spying-plea-deal-rejected/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/navy-spying-plea-deal-rejected/ |
A man pushes his grandchildren in Beijing in July. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
China’s National Health Commission announced Tuesday that it would take steps to reduce the number of abortions in the country — Beijing’s attempt to tackle low birthrates and stagnant population growth.
According to new guidelines published on the state-run commission’s website, officials plan to offer incentives to encourage family growth, including expanding access to child-care services, reducing the cost of attending nursery school and working with employers to make offices more “family friendly.”
The government has also vowed to make infertility treatment more widely available to married women, by including reproductive technology in the country’s national medical system. In China, single women are not allowed to freeze their eggs and undergo in vitro fertilization, and are routinely denied care and services available to married women.
The Tuesday notice comes as China continues to grapple with a demographic downturn — a hangover from the country’s “one-child policy,” which from 1979 to 2015 was used to slash birthrates while the country was experiencing a population boom. Abortion, which is legal in China, played a role in adherence to the policy.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, China has among the highest rates of abortion globally. From 2015 to 2019, the country recorded 40,200,000 pregnancies annually — 23.2 million of which were unintended and 17.7 million that ended in abortion. The data shows that about 78 percent of unintended pregnancies in China end in abortion. The global average of unintended pregnancies that end in abortion is 61 percent.
The importance of passing down the family name and preference for sons has also contributed to the rate of abortions in China, skewing the country’s population by sex. A 2021 population census showed that the country has 35 million more men than women.
In 2016, the Chinese government altered its policy to allow married couples to have two children. In 2021, the number increased to three. But despite those changes, recent birth data published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics show a “swan dive” in births since 2016 — indicating a paradox in the country at a time when the government was giving families more flexibility.
Low birthrates in China have led to the inevitable: a growing elderly portion of the population. Demographic data collected by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs shows that the country is expected to shrink in 2025.
The Tuesday proposal would enhance and provide women with a “positive childbearing support system” and improve services to promote a “long-term” and “balanced” growth in the country’s population.
This is not the first time China has introduced incentives for couples to have children. Authorities have proposed tax reductions, longer maternity leave, better medical insurance and financial support for families with three kids, Reuters reported. Tuesday’s announcement echoes a 2021 proposal to restrict abortions under the guise of promoting gender equality.
Last year, the Chinese government issued a policy memo to improve women’s rights over the next decade, which included provisions to grant women more access to education and employment. Under a section on reproductive health, officials wrote that women will receive guidance on navigating the health-care system, including accessing contraception. Although abortion wasn’t explicitly outlined in the briefing, the memo highlighted the need to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. | 2022-08-16T20:35:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China set to discourage abortion, due to concern over birth rates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/china-abortion-birth-rates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/china-abortion-birth-rates/ |
WASHINGTON, DC ‐ August 5, 2022: A view of the North entrance of the White House on Friday August 5, 2022. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The decision by the National Academy of Sciences marks a rare rebuke of Lubchenco, a marine ecologist who serves as deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The NAS said Lubchenco violated its code of conduct before joining the Biden administration last year.
While serving as an editor for the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, Lubchenco accepted an article for publication that was later retracted because it relied on outdated data, and because she has a personal relationship with one of the authors, who is her brother-in-law.
A spokeswoman for the White House science office declined to comment further, while the NAS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Axios first reported the move on Tuesday.
Congressional Republicans had previously voiced concern about the incident, saying Lubchenco’s actions appeared to violate the administration’s scientific integrity principles.
“As an editor at PNAS, Dr. Lubchenco demonstrated a clear disregard for rules meant to prevent conflicts of interest in publishing peer-reviewed studies,” Republican members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee wrote in a February letter to President Biden. “Now, Dr. Lubchenco is playing a leading role in developing and overseeing this Administration’s best practices for scientific integrity.”
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Established in 1976, the Office of Science and Technology Policy is responsible for overseeing the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates climate research across 13 federal agencies. Every four years, this program produces the federal government’s most definitive and comprehensive report on climate science, known as the National Climate Assessment. The fifth such report is expected next year.
Lubchenco, who ran the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during President Barack Obama’s first term, presided in February over a first-of-its-kind roundtable with some of the nation’s leading climate scientists. The discussion centered on the urgent need to combat global warming and to counter arguments for delaying climate action.
“Clearly, we see tangible evidence of climate change all around us with sea-level rise, increases in extreme heat, increases in drought, wildfires, ocean acidification [and] floods,” Lubchenco told The Washington Post at the time.
“What we’re seeing now is a result of past inaction,” she said. “That past inaction is haunting us. And so the question is, how do we accelerate effective action?”
The White House science office was rocked by scandal earlier this year when Eric Lander, Biden’s top science adviser, resigned as director after an internal review found that he bullied and demeaned staffers. Lander apologized for mistreating subordinates in a note to staff. Biden in June announced his intent to nominate Arati Prabhakar to lead that office.
If confirmed by the Senate, Prabhakar would be the first woman, immigrant or person of color to head the office. | 2022-08-16T20:36:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House climate official Jane Lubchenco sanctioned by science body - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/16/white-house-climate-jane-lubchenco/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/16/white-house-climate-jane-lubchenco/ |
Life in a safe house: Why I sympathize with Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie at an interview in London in April 2008. (Dylan Martinez/Reuters)
Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, author and women’s rights campaigner. A member of the Human Rights Foundation’s International Council, she hosts “Tablet,” a talk show on Voice of America’s Persian service.
My heart goes out to Salman Rushdie. I’m deeply appalled by the attempt on his life and extremely relieved that he survived.
The attack on Rushdie was an act of terrorism. That’s what President Biden and other Western leaders should call it. The media in Iran have been celebrating it, regretting only that the assailant didn’t manage to kill Rushdie. The brutal regime in Tehran has a history of encouraging acts of violence to undermine our freedoms. Why aren’t we taking a stronger stand?
The attack on Rushdie struck especially close to home for me. I, too, have been repeatedly targeted by the vicious regime in Tehran for my criticisms of its hateful policies against women. Two weeks ago, I got a lucky break: Police arrested a man with a loaded AK-47-style rifle in his car after he made a failed attempt to enter my house in Brooklyn. The incident recalls another plot foiled by the FBI in 2021, when federal prosecutors charged four alleged Iranian agents with conspiring to kidnap me and take me back to Iran. At the time, I had to go into hiding for a while; now the FBI has put me under its protection again.
Now I find myself living in a safe house with featureless white walls adorned with replica modern paintings; this is where I was when I learned about the attack on Rushdie. It might be safe, but it’s not my home. Until two weeks ago, I lived in a beautiful house in Brooklyn surrounded by loving neighbors who, since my unwilling departure, have been watering my flower beds in solidarity with my plight. Since the attack on Rushdie, the official Telegram channel of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and others in Iran on social media have been praising the would-be killer. They’ve also been saying that I should be next.
Rushdie himself knows only too well what this situation is like. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for the author to be killed over his book “The Satanic Verses” (which Khomeini deemed offensive to Muslims), Rushdie ended up living in a safe house for most of the next 10 years. That lifestyle took its toll. By around 2001, he was sick of the living in the shadows and began making public appearances again. He even wrote a memoir about his experience. Everything seemed fine.
After years on the run, Rushdie might have concluded that he had regained his freedom. Now that assumption is over. In fact, Khomeini’s threat against him was never lifted; Iran’s current supreme leader affirmed the original fatwa on Twitter as recently as 2019, and the bounty for killing Rushdie now stands at more than $3 million. Apologists claiming there is no link with Iran should consider the headline with which the main state newspaper in Tehran celebrated Mr. Rushdie’s wound: “Satan’s eye has been blinded.”
I have often thought of Rushdie and his plight over the past two years when my own journey in and out of safe houses first began. I often wondered how Rushdie coped with the physical and mental hardships of enforced imprisonment. To be in a safe house is like being back in quarantine — except that there seems to be no vaccine against the fanaticism of the Iranian regime.
Matt Bai: The attack on Salman Rushdie is a warning about where we're headed
The fact that a religious fundamentalist regime issues fatwas against those who criticize them is not surprising. What is shocking is the lack of action from democratic governments around the world, which should be categorically denouncing these actions. In the sleepy town of Chautauqua, N.Y., Rushdie was about to lead a discussion about the role of the United States as a haven for exiled writers and other artists under threat of persecution. The irony is not lost on me.
I have no intention of disappearing from public view. The activist in me wonders how many more times someone on U.S. soil will be a target of the Iranian regime and its supporters before concrete action is taken. The other part of me wonders whether I will be able to do banal, normal things such as walking to the local bakery or sitting outside on a winter day and drinking hot chocolate.
What has driven so much of the intensity of my activism is a sense of obligation and camaraderie with the many women, journalists and human rights activists who have stood up for liberal values inside Iran and paid a steep price. I owe it to them to use the freedoms I have enjoyed in Western democracies to give them a voice. I do not want to die and will have to take precautions, but I intend to live a life free from fear, with a garden and loving neighbors, no matter what it takes. I hope Rushdie recovers quickly. One day I’d like to thank him — and maybe even show him our flower beds. | 2022-08-16T20:36:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Life in a safe house: Why I sympathize with Salman Rushdie - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/masih-alinejad-sympathy-salman-rushdie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/masih-alinejad-sympathy-salman-rushdie/ |
Cleveland Guardians teammates Xzavion Curry (second row, right) and Will Benson (third row, left) played for the Sandtown Red Sox outside Atlanta from ages 7 to 12. Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields (second row, third from left) was a member of the team for a few seasons. Coach Tony Douglas is in the middle of the back row. (Courtesy of Tony Douglas)
For six summers from ages 7 to 12, Will Benson and Xzavion Curry played together on the Sandtown Red Sox youth baseball team southwest of Atlanta. Now 24, the longtime friends are teammates again — after making their major league debuts for the Cleveland Guardians exactly two weeks apart.
“It’s amazing,” Curry, a right-handed pitcher, said Monday after allowing three earned runs over five innings and earning a no-decision in a loss to the Detroit Tigers. “That’s honestly another blessing that I don’t even know how to describe.”
“We’ve been talking about this day forever,” Benson, who started in center field Monday, told the Athletic.
Back in Atlanta, Tony Douglas watched Curry’s debut with great pride, just as he had Benson’s first big league game two weeks earlier. In his nearly 30 years coaching baseball for the Sandtown Youth Sports Association, Douglas, 56, had never seen one of his former players reach the majors. Now, he’d seen two — former Sandtown Red Sox teammates, no less — in the span of 14 days.
“I was sitting there watching the game last night in amazement,” Douglas said Tuesday in a phone interview. “I can’t even put it into words.”
This is amazing congratulations @_thekidbilly_ https://t.co/2Yg00QvXD7
— Tony Douglas (@BamaJam101) August 1, 2022
The words Douglas used to describe the 7-and-under team that first brought Benson and Curry together were “the kids that nobody wanted.” The group of castoffs became a tightknit powerhouse; while the Red Sox were a rec league team that primarily played against other teams in Sandtown, they enjoyed a good deal of success on the travel-ball circuit over the next six years. For a few of those summers, the Red Sox’s infield featured a defensive wizard named Justin Fields.
“His range at second base — you have to see it to believe it,” Douglas said of Fields, the former Ohio State football standout and current Chicago Bears quarterback.
Douglas said Curry, who was armed with a wicked fastball, led the Red Sox to a win over Sandtown’s top 8-year-old team as a 7-year-old in his first start. Douglas recalled a game at the American Amateur Baseball Congress World Series the following year when Benson made his pitching debut and went 4 for 4 with three home runs and a double at the plate. Curry, who played shortstop when he wasn’t on the mound, came on to close out the win.
“Will and Zay always pushed each other,” Douglas, who retired from coaching two years ago, said. “The kids from those teams, they all still talk. They have a big group chat.”
Benson’s parents wanted him to play basketball, as Benson’s father, Ted, had at Purdue, but Douglas helped convince him to stick with baseball. Douglas laughed about an early turning point in their relationship as player and coach.
“Will loved to play around, so I put him on the bench for one game when he was 8,” Douglas said. “I was happy, because it bothered him to the point where he woke up. He came back to the next practice focused and then he never looked back. That one time was all it took.”
Cleveland selected Benson with the 14th overall pick in the 2016 MLB draft after a standout high school career. Curry played three seasons at Georgia Tech before the Guardians selected him in the seventh round of the 2019 draft. The two were teammates at Class AAA Columbus this season before Benson was called up and, with his family in the stands, scored the winning run in his major league debut Aug. 1.
After graduating from Sandtown’s rec league, Benson and Curry remained involved with the Red Sox, helping mold Douglas’s next generation of players when they were able. Douglas credited Benson’s work with one of his former players, Tyson Roberson, for the first baseman earning a baseball scholarship to Southern. Benson told the Athletic he dreams of building a youth baseball complex in Fulton County that would make the sport more accessible to kids in the area.
Douglas, who spoke to Curry a day before his major league debut and texted him after Monday’s start, is planning a trip to a Guardians game in Cleveland with a few other former Sandtown coaches before the season is over.
“At Sandtown Park, we all played a part in so many kids that have gone on to be successful, whether it be in sports or something else,” Douglas said. “Will and Zay, they’ll always be kids. I don’t think they even realize they’re in the pros. They think they’re playing Little League baseball.” | 2022-08-16T20:37:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Xzavion Curry, Will Benson reunite in MLB with Guardians - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/xzavion-curry-will-benson-guardians/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/xzavion-curry-will-benson-guardians/ |
Transcript: The Path Forward: Health Care with Kate Ryder, Maven Clinic Founder and CEO
MS. SELLERS: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Frances Stead Sellers, a senior writer here at The Washington Post. From fertility care to pediatric support and mental health counselor counseling, Maven Clinic is a telehealth platform that aims to provide families and their offspring with a wide range of services. I’m joined now by the founder and CEO, Kate Ryder.
Kate, a very warm welcome to Washington Post Live.
MR. RYDER: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
MS. SELLERS: We're very pleased and looking forward to a conversation. And before we start, a word to our audience. We would love to have you join the conversation by tweeting questions for Kate to @PostLive. That's the Twitter hashtag @PostLive. Thanks for joining in.
So, Kate, let's start with going back a decade or so to the beginning of Maven Clinic. What prompted you to support and begin this particular platform?
MS. RYDER: So, I started Maven eight years ago, and eight years ago, we were still in the very early days of talking about all of the kind of issues that we're finally talking about today. So, whether it was postpartum depression or miscarriage or struggling with infertility, a lot of these conversations were still heavily stigmatized. And so I was starting my family journey about around that time and saw myself and a lot of my friends going through major gaps in care and how we were experiencing these family building journeys both with ourselves, our partners, and then ultimately as we became chief medical officers of our homes, with our--with managing our kids’ health as well.
And so I thought there was a lot of new and interesting technology at the time--telehealth included--and how amazing would it be to reinvent the care model, bring more holistic equitable care to women and families. And since then, we've expanded not just to women's health, but to LGBTQ health, family health, children's health and more broad-based reproductive health.
MS. SELLERS: Yeah, I was struck by that. You refer to partners, of course. You refer to LGBTQ. I think something like 40 percent of your membership is--identify as male. What kind of specific services do you provide for that group?
MS. RYDER: Well, you know, I think it's always been our belief that it's both partners. A woman may be pregnant, but particularly, you know, her partner should be included in that care journey. And then for same-sex couples, we support infertility journeys, egg freezing, surrogacy, adoption. And then in pediatrics, we actually see a lot of our male members using sleep coaches and pediatricians to really help manage the family's household around their health.
MS. SELLERS: I'd love to ask about health equity, which has become such an issue--or it always has been an issue, but it's certainly come to the forefront in recent years. As a telehealth platform, you're potentially more accessible across the spectrum. And I have an audience question that's come in from Nidhi in California. I will read it to you. Nidhi asks, "How do you address care to underserved and minority women?" Great question.
MS. RYDER: Sure. So, this is one of the things that we're quite proud of and I think one of the absolute examples of the power of telehealth. So we have over 30 types of providers in our platform. Forty percent identify as BIPOC. Ten percent represent as LGBTQ. And so we're able to match care based on someone's lived experiences and how they prefer to be seen and heard and so they're able to build that trust with a with a virtual care provider. So that's one big area.
You know, only about 75 percent of White members say that they can meet with a doctor in person. Only 20 percent of Black and Hispanic patients are actually meeting with providers who share their ethnicity or their race, and that leads to worse outcomes. There's a lot of studies that have shown that when Black patients see Black providers, they get better outcomes, particularly in maternal health, where the outcomes are that Black women die at three times the rate of White women in childbirth. It's a really important issue. And so bringing this culturally competent care via telehealth is one of the ways in which we can begin to solve this. You know, we do it both at Maven, but as a broader healthcare system.
And I think the other the other area that's really important, too, is Medicaid and working in Medicaid. You know, that's where a lot of the, you know, minorities and underserved populations in maternal health. There's a lot of very adverse outcomes there. And so we've just also made our first foray and launched our first populations in Medicaid this past year.
MS. SELLERS: Just to follow up a little bit on that, take me through the steps of you know, I come into your system, how do you do this matching of people who come in with doctors or providers who meet some of the--who have cultural characteristics that meet their own?
MS. RYDER: Sure. So, we have almost 2,000 providers in our network, and the telehealth is kind of overlaid with a care navigator or care advocate. And so once a patient comes into Maven, they meet with their care advocate. They can also meet with a care advocate of a specific race or that speaks a specific language. And then through their kind of questions they answer in onboarding as well as their conversation with their care advocate, they're able to craft a care team that works for them. And so, you know, whether it's race, it’s gender, it’s language, you know, patients are able to pick and choose.
And then I think what's also pretty unique is 30 different types of providers just in women's and family health is quite a lot. And so there's also so many different holistic providers that can bring into these care teams, like pregnancy coaches or doulas or midwives, genetic counselors, adoption coaches. And so, you know, they're really able to craft a care team that works for them.
MS. SELLERS: So, the declaration of a public health emergency really transformed telehealth for many people. You're already in the business. What unique approach did you take at Maven to take advantage of the public health emergency and also to take advantage of the skills you already had from being in this area for such a long time?
MS. RYDER: Sure. So, I think we all remember those kind of crazy few months right when the pandemic hit in March 2020. You know, and being the largest telehealth provider in women's and family health, we felt like we had a big--you know, we had a big service to do, and not only kind of for company growth, but we did do some emergency launches in those first few months. And what was--what was kind of amazing as I think back is we at Maven, as well as a small company, had just transitioned to remote work, and everybody was working around the clock. Sometimes--you know, I had two kids at that point, with kids kind of running around screaming in the background, as we're all trying to manage this.
But we stood up some emergency contracts, one with the--with the state of Massachusetts and others--to really bring fertility, maternity, and pediatric telehealth to a lot of--a lot of patients who all of a sudden started to--you know, didn't have access to care. If you remember at the time, there was a lot of fertility clinics shut down, and then for pregnant family or for pregnant women and their families, there was only one person often allowed in the hospital room, and there was just so much anxiety during that time.
But then what we saw, you know, as the pandemic wore on, is that telehealth became a mainstream kind of understanding among consumers. And so I think it was one of the things that we had always struggled with starting back in 2014-2015 as a lot of people didn't even know what the word meant or what it did. And so we saw a massive uptick not only in kind of new customers, but within the customers that we had. Whether it was employees of, you know, big companies or members of health plans, they were--started to sign up for Maven in droves.
And so we saw, you know, not just kind of new sales go up as people recognized the importance of women's and family health in the broader healthcare ecosystem, but they all--we also saw just a greater understanding and literacy from the consumer on what the possibilities of telehealth and virtual care were and how it could really help them.
MS. SELLERS: So, you became a unicorn company, I think, right in the middle of the--of the pandemic, maybe last August. What message do you have to investors in women's health? What do you see the future holds?
MS. RYDER: Well, I think that when the show was starting, I was--I was seeing one of the original the initial stats that women make 80 percent of healthcare decisions. And I think that fundamentally, you know, women's and family health has been so underserved for so long that as we look to transform and change the healthcare system for the better, this is one of the core constituencies and populations that have been left out, and so there's just such an incredible impact that you can have systemically if you invest in family building, you invest in women's health, you invest in this kind of, you know, beginning of somebody's health care journey, and then really continue to serve them--you know, man or woman or child, you know, across a whole family care platform.
I think also what--we're really in the very early innings. Today, we actually announced that we've recently launched a menopause product. That's yet another area of women's health that has been really underserved. I think what we've seen with Roe v. Wade being overturned, you know, access has been further restricted with a lot of LGBTQ rights as well. And some of what we're seeing in the state legislatures access is, you know, being restricted and mental health and a lot of discriminatory practices are going up, which is--which really affects--you know, continues to affect one of the most important consumers of healthcare. So, I think we're in the early innings, and I think hopefully what our valuation proved, as well as many other companies in our market and how much growth they're experiencing, that this is--this is just a critical part of mainstream healthcare.
MS. SELLERS: We'll get to menopause and the post-Dobbs atmosphere in a minute. But I want to ask you specifically about being a woman-led company. I think venture capitalists put only 2 percent of their investment into female-led companies. What advice do you have for other female founders, and why do you think this gap continues to exist?
MS. RYDER: Well, no pressure. But listen, I think that one of the big problems that we certainly saw early on is that venture capital rooms were full of mostly male partners. And so when you're bringing unique issues that they may not understand as much about, then, you know, they may--they may be overlooked, like women's health as an example, or children's health.
And so one of the things that has helped us through the years, and I think continues to help diversify the capital and where it's going, is there's more female partners in venture capital. You know, our series A was led by a woman. Our series B was led by—co-led by two women. Our series D was co-led by a woman. And so we have--we actually have more women on our board than men. And that has helped us a ton.
I actually don't know if Maven would be where we are today, if we didn't have a lot of those female venture capital partners. And hopefully, you know, I think one of the great theses as well, if you look at a lot of women venture investors who are also trying to drive returns for their venture capital firm is that there's a lot of underserved and a lot of, you know, parts of the female population, whether it's retail companies or other products, because they have been overlooked by venture capital.
And so there's a massive business opportunity. I think, when you also look in--there's a lot of organizations now. Like Lean In, you know, published stats on company performance if they have more diverse teams. And so, you know, hopefully, there's people taking notice. It's still an uphill battle sometimes, but at least there's more females around the table who are advocating for some of these products.
MS. SELLERS: So, let's now get to reproductive health and the fallout from the Dobbs decision. You referred to it earlier on. What was your reaction as a company leader, and what did you begin to hear from patients?
MS. RYDER: Well, with the Roe decision, we knew--I mean, a lot of the people in the women's health community knew it was coming right when SBA was passed in Texas last fall. And then obviously, there was the leak from the Supreme Court. What we did is we worked across a few of our product lines to really ramp up what companies and health plans could offer members to bring better access to care. So, one of the products, Maven Wallet supports travel reimbursement across states. Another product, which is our pregnancy options counseling product, which is part of our core maternity track, helps, you know, women understand when they get pregnant what their options are, whether they want to give a child up for adoption, whether it makes sense to terminate a pregnancy, and in compliance now, of course, with the state laws that they live in, or whether they want to continue with the pregnancy.
And so this is all, you know, core prenatal care, and I think there's a lot of nuance and complexity in a lot of decisions. Our chief medical officer, you know, speaks a lot about the complexity of obstetric decisions when it comes to choosing the best options for patients. And you know--and so I think with Maven, you know, a lot of the telehealth and the care advocacy, that's a lot of instant access to care and instant access to second opinions and understanding about what people's options are. I mean, it's a time of a lot of confusion. But from patients, not even who are pregnant right now, but, you know, taking a larger step back and thinking about their family building journey, if they live in these more restrictive states, there's a lot more anxiety around what they should do, you know, should their options be restricted.
MS. SELLERS: So, a number of these state laws complicate fertility care, the potential for multiple fetuses or other issues like that. Did you see this in terms of a business as something that would cramp your offerings to people or as an opportunity?
MS. RYDER: You know, we didn't know, quite frankly, because I think that in the beginning we didn't--you didn't see a lot of people stepping up to talk about it right after SBA was passed. Only our Texas clients or some companies in Texas, which were more vocal. You know--and I think a lot of people were trying to figure out what to do. There's still a lot going on in the world, that a lot of benefits teams are dealing with and trying to understand and guide their teams on. And so there was a lot of wait and see. And we didn't know, given how politicized this issue is, whether and how diverse a lot of the companies are that we serve. You know, a lot of companies don't want to wade into politics. But I think that when the decision was passed down--it was a Friday--what we saw was all of a sudden, a tremendous influx of companies of health plans of all sizes, from all different states trying to figure out how to better support their employees in the aftermath of Roe, how to open up access, because at the end of the day, I mean, you know, this is a healthcare issue.
It's also an equity issue, and a lot of companies struggle to have inequitable benefits across states for something that is so core to an employee's life, which is building their family, whether it's, you know, through IVF and what that means for you know, the embryos in some of the states where personhood laws are now in the state legislatures or whether, you know, those are the states with heavily restricted access to abortion care. So anyways, so we continue to see a ton of companies, you know, whether they're doing something immediately, within 30 days, whether they're--you know, over the next six months, they're planning to, now every company is that--you know, almost every company is really looking at doing something. And again, it's not just the right thing to do, but 80 percent of employees are saying that they only want to work for companies with equitable benefits that support DEI. So, it is--it is also a major talent issue if you--if you don't have these inclusive benefits.
MS. SELLERS: So because you’re a telehealth company working across state lines, are you seeing women reach out for potential abortion counseling and even for abortifacient drugs at this point?
MS. RYDER: Yeah, of course. I mean, I think it's--again, it's almost one out of four women get an abortion before they’re 45. So, it is a core part of women's healthcare. And so now I think what is--what we're seeing is, is people just don't know what they should be doing, and what's legal, what's not. You know, and so Maven of course, you know, is in compliance with all of the laws. We're also helping keep patients up to date, on the latest things that they're able to do. You know, what we also see, we do work with a lot of providers, too. And I think what also is concerning is what this is also doing to the providers.
And so a lot of providers in states with restrictive access, even when a woman's having a miscarriage--and about one out of five women get miscarriages--could be as high as one out of four--but they don't know what to do and what the laws are saying around helping support women during that moment. And so in a lot of these states where we're already seeing in the U.S. 50 percent of U.S. counties do not have an OB/GYN, which lead to these maternity care deserts, a lot of them are in states with the restricted access. And so if these providers are thinking about leaving the states, that's going to lead to even greater shortages of care and providers in women's health for so many women who need the care. So, it's both sides, both the patients as well as the providers.
MS. SELLERS: This is fascinating, Kate. Have you seen a spike of investments following the Dobbs decision?
MS. RYDER: Well, it's coming at a time when the macro economy is challenged, and the markets themselves are crunched. And so I think that in general, you're not seeing a lot of investments period. But certainly, you know, we have seen more people reaching out to us, and you know, again, not the macro environments are very challenged. The amount of VC funding has gone dramatically down. But I think women's health continues to be an area that is top of mind for VCs, both because of the massive opportunity in front of it but of how underserved, and with Roe even more underserved so many patients are.
MS. SELLERS: And what broader impact do you think this decision may have on maternal health and maternal mortality in the United States, which is certainly a controversial and troubling issue?
MS. RYDER: Well, stats keep getting worse. So, before COVID, we saw the U.S. having the worst rate of maternal mortality in the developed world. Over the last two years, even before the Roe decision, during COVID, we saw maternal mortality go up by about 20 percent. Now, with this ruling, a lot of--you know, the University of Colorado, for instance, published a study about a month ago predicting that, you know, rates of maternal mortality will now go up 20 percent further in states where there is restricted access. And so I think if you also look at the data in a lot of the states with these trigger laws, rates of maternal mortality are 2x higher than states with better access to care. So, it is not looking positive at all. And unfortunately, I mean, the data is going to tell a story, but there's going to be a whole lost generation and--for years, I'm sure of people who are really losing because of--because of all of these laws.
MS. SELLERS: Kate, you mentioned earlier--and of course, we saw the press release that your company put out about menopause--what are you doing to bring menopause, which of course affects every woman as they move out of childbearing ages--what are you doing to support that process in the workplace?
MS. RYDER: Well, you know, menopause is another underserved area of women's health. And so we--we've had--we've been helping women with--through menopause or perimenopause, you know, since we launched in 2015, because we had access to all of this telehealth and to OBs and midwives and whatnot. And you know, we've asked, because we have this family care platform for employers and health plans, over the years if menopause would be of interest. And I mean, it always was, but it just wasn't the top priority. But then what happened in the last year is the UK actually came out with a working group on how menopause affects women in the workforce. They wanted to kind of lead the world in talking about this issue, which has been stigmatized for a while. And I think that--you know, a lot of their findings were that, obviously, this is a huge issue. It's not served at all. And so a lot of, you know, our multinational companies started hearing from their employees abroad, as well as then increasingly in the U.S. about this being a major issue that no one's talking about enough, that affects women's productivity at work.
And so, so this year, we just started to see a huge amount of interest. And so we have a client advisory board, and we asked them, you know, back at the beginning of the year, okay, is now the year, is this something you would be interested in. And it was kind of a unanimous yes by some of the largest employers in the country, which was really exciting. And so--and so we quickly took a lot of the core elements of our platform--our telehealth, which has those access to OBs that do serve, you know, women going through menopause.
A lot of--we produced a library of content so that people could really understand symptoms and what was normal, what was not. You know, we have virtual classes around going through perimenopause. We have, you know, care navigation to help people who are going through more extreme experiences, get that care in person that they need. And we brought all of that together pretty quickly. And we now have just in a very short amount of time about a million lives under contract with our--with our menopause product.
MS. SELLERS: And what's been most striking or surprising about the kinds of questions women bring to this discussion?
MS. RYDER: Well, I think it's the--I mean, it’s like a lot of women's health. It's the lack of education on what's about to happen. I mean, I'm not going to lie. Like, I'm not going through menopause, and it was eye opening. I learned so much going through this product. And no one ever teaches you about it or tells you about it. And so what to do if, you know, when the symptoms start coming and how to manage them.
Same thing, kind of even going back to preconception care, no one tells you how to--you know, what it's like to be pregnant or going through that preconception journey.
And so, again, I think there's a lot that that we've brought now to really shed light on the fact that every woman who's going to go through menopause is going to probably have different symptoms, it's going to start at different times based on your history, but that there's a ton of care out there and a ton of great providers who can help you through it so it doesn't have to be debilitating, whether you need hormone therapy, whether you can kind of manage the symptoms naturally, but at least kind of normalizes it, and really helps people kind of manage their day to day as they go through it.
MS. SELLERS: So this lack of knowledge and lack of ability to find information is of course linked to research. And I think a McKinsey report said that just 1 percent of health research and innovation was dedicated to female-specific health research that's outside of oncology. What's going to change that tide?
MS. RYDER: Well, I think that a few things. Number one, you know, as more and more companies kind of come into women's health and as some of the big--the big health plans and health systems have a bigger focus on it--which by the way, they should. Like childbirth is the number one reason for hospitalization in the United States. This is a massive industry. That, you know, as more of those leaders inside of industry as well kind of team up with digital health companies, you know, we can--we can produce a lot more data. And I think that the--when you--when you do not have research dollars going into these studies and you don't have technology platforms that are able to help collect a lot of this data, it's pretty hard to produce studies and do original research.
And so with Maven, you know, we've been--we have some interesting and exciting studies coming out, based on a lot of the data around the patient populations we've been managing, everything from digital phenotypes of types of users to, you know, how telehealth can improve maternity outcomes and fertility outcomes, to, you know, we see even our chief medical officer and his team just were at--was at ACOG, which is the American Academy of Obstetrician Gynecologist conference this year showing that even Black members use Maven at higher rates than White members, which is really encouraging because there's so much mistrust, you know, among that community, as well with the system. And so if we're able to bring, you know, that trust and care and match Black patients and Black providers, you know, that that also is just really encouraging. So, I think it's--you know, there's been a data problem. There's been a funding problem. But hopefully, you know, platforms like Maven can start to close that gap.
MS. SELLERS: And talking about collecting data, we've seen that long COVID--and I want to take us back to the pandemic just briefly--disproportionately affects women of childbearing age. Is that something you've also been collecting data on?
MS. RYDER: You know, that's one of the many things we haven't done any studies on it, but it's certainly--we’ll add to the list. It's certainly something that is definitely disproportionately affecting women. I think a lot of different things disproportionately affect women, whether it's, you know, mental health and depression. So, we have a long list of things that we want to go deeper on, in, you know, across our studies and our clinical research,
MS. SELLERS: Actually, jump into a couple of those for me. What are your future goals? You've got this very successful platform now. Tell us where it's going.
MS. RYDER: Well, I feel like technology can be a great leveler, and so a lot of these gaps that you've been highlighting, asking about, you know, first of all, through the virtual care, bringing that access to care equitably, to all corners--not just to the U.S. but of the globe--and to show up in a way that is trusting in a way that people want. You know, depending on where you live, what your race is, what your socioeconomic background is, what your--you know, what how you identify sexually and from--as a gender--whatever you need from the healthcare system that maybe a local healthcare system and bricks and mortar care can't give you, that, you know, Maven and telehealth can provide it. And so, you know, as we go into Medicaid, which is nearly 50 percent of the births in this country, it's more challenging and complex to, you know, address some of the social determinants, needs in that population. And we are, you know, working on are continuing to evolve our product to meet those needs.
And so I hope that Maven, you know, is credibly showing up both from an experience standpoint as well as an outcome standpoint across the diverse populations that we serve. Whether it's a woman working at Google in San Francisco, a gay man in New York, you know, a lower income woman in Alabama, you know, a couple in India trying to conceive, these are all of our users, and so continuing to personalize the care through the services as well as the technology.
MS. SELLERS: Kate, I want to squeeze in one last question. I can't resist. The pandemic particularly showed us how--and it certainly predated the pandemic, too--primary care has been ill served by infrequent bricks and mortar visits, things, particularly chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, all these other things. Do you see yourself as a model to help--to help solve this huge primary care problem across the country?
MS. RYDER: Absolutely. I think that what we talk about here at Mavin is that often family building and women's health is an onramp to primary care. And so one of the things we see in our population--and I'm guilty of this myself--is that almost 50 percent of our moms don't have PCPs. We're too busy. We have OB/GYNs. We have pediatricians. We do not have PCPs. The system doesn't make it easy. And so that is a huge issue. A lot of Gen Z and millennials as well. And so I think that oftentimes, what we see is when you start to build a family, whether you're a woman, whether you're a man, this is--this is the onramp to the healthcare system. And so how do we help kind of connect all of those dots back to primary care? So, I think there's a huge opportunity.
MS. SELLERS: Kate, unfortunately, that's all we have time for. Thank you so much for joining us and teaching us about the onramp to the primary care system.
MS. RYDER: Thank you so much for having me.
MS. SELLERS: Thank you, everybody else. As you know, if you’d like to see more programming from Washington Post Live, go to WashingtonPostLive.com, where you can sign up for our future programs. Thanks for joining us today. I’m Frances Stead Sellers. | 2022-08-16T20:38:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: The Path Forward: Health Care with Kate Ryder, Maven Clinic Founder and CEO - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/16/transcript-path-forward-health-care-with-kate-ryder-maven-clinic-founder-ceo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/16/transcript-path-forward-health-care-with-kate-ryder-maven-clinic-founder-ceo/ |
UNITED NATIONS — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskyy is meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday to review the deal allowing Ukrainian grain to be shipped to world markets to help alleviate the global grain crisis and discuss diplomatic ways to end the six-month-old war. | 2022-08-16T20:38:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leaders of Ukraine, Turkey and UN to meet Thursday in Lviv - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/leaders-of-ukraine-turkey-and-un-to-meet-thursday-in-lviv/2022/08/16/93fb0734-1da1-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/leaders-of-ukraine-turkey-and-un-to-meet-thursday-in-lviv/2022/08/16/93fb0734-1da1-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
If approved, the filing would make the warehouse Amazon’s fourth to vote on unionizing.
An Amazon Labor Union rally on Staten Island in April 2022. (Calla Kessler/For The Washington Post)
Amazon workers at a warehouse near Albany, N.Y., filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday.
They are seeking to join the independent Amazon Labor Union, which won a historic victory in Staten Island in April — making it the first U.S. Amazon warehouse to vote to unionize. If it goes through, it will be the third election for Amazon Labor Union and the fourth vote on unionization in Amazon’s history.
Typically, unions need signed authorization cards from more than 30 percent of eligible union members to qualify to hold an election. Amazon Labor Union would not confirm how many signatures they’ve gathered from employees at the Albany facility, but have previously said they had surpassed that threshold.
The group, which has largely organized workers in New York, is asking for higher wages and safer working conditions. It has repeatedly accused Amazon of illegally retaliating against workers who support the union, including in Albany, where lawyers have filed at least five unfair labor practice charges, alleging among other things that the company illegally implemented a policy that prohibits employees from “access[ing] Amazon buildings or work areas during off-duty periods.” Those charges are currently under investigation.
Organizers at the warehouse just outside Albany city limits announced their intention to unionize last month.
“The main concerns I hear from workers are about wages and safety,” said Heather Goodall, a lead organizer of the union campaign in Albany. “Besides that, there’s no job security. There’s no way to rest on a 15 minute break. Workers want to be able to use the bathroom freely.”
Amazon, which is the second largest private employer in the U.S., has increasingly been targeted by labor unions, including the Retail, Warehouse, and Department Store Union and the Teamsters. But it was the independent, grassroots Amazon Labor Union that scored the first real victory at Amazon when in April it won union representation at a warehouse in Staten Island.
Amazon objected to the results of that election, and the labor board’s decision on that case is still pending following a months-long hearing this summer. But new organizing activity like the filing in Albany suggests that even as Amazon has thrown up road blocks — and allegedly engaged in illegal retaliation — momentum in the labor movement at Amazon persists.
Amazon workers vote to join a union in New York in historic move
In its filing, Amazon Labor Union said there would be around 400 employees in the bargaining unit. More than half of the workers who vote would have to vote in favor of unionizing for the union to be certified. Amazon can challenge the union’s calculation; in the past, the company has argued to increase bargaining unit size to increase the threshold of yes votes the union has to reach.
Kayla Blado, a NLRB spokesperson, declined to say how many signed cards ALU submitted, but said the regional office in Albany will be reviewing the filing to make sure ALU has the number of signatures required to secure a vote.
On Tuesday afternoon, Amazon spokesperson Paul Flaningan said the company had not yet been made aware of the union filing. Amazon has previously said it values working directly with employees to resolve issues and that it pays high wages and offers great benefits. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
In recent weeks, the company has posted anti-union materials around the warehouse on fliers and digital TV screens that read: “don’t sign a card.” Management has also held group meetings, where they’ve warned workers about the consequences of joining a union.
Amazon workers walkout at Southern California air hub
Amazon has filed objections to Amazon Labor Union’s win in Staten Island, and the labor board’s ruling on that hearing are expected to be announced later this month. The trial has delayed the bargaining process, and it could be months or years until the union secures a collective bargaining agreement in Staten Island. The results of a union election in Bessemer, Ala., where workers have twice voted on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, are also tied up due to objections and appeals on both sides. | 2022-08-16T21:32:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon workers at a warehouse in Albany file to vote on unionization - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/16/amazon-albany-union-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/16/amazon-albany-union-election/ |
David McCullough’s legacy is the history he brought to life
Historian David McCullough poses with art by George Catlin, one of the artists featured in his book “The Greater Journey,” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in D.C. on May 13, 2011. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Douglas Brinkley introduced his Aug. 11 Style appreciation of David McCullough, “He knew our history, and still found the best in us,” with the (unnecessary) phrase “Like the Founding Fathers he wrote about, David McCullough stood for reason, enlightenment, education and incorruptible democracy.”
Listen to Jeffery Robinson’s presentation “Who We Are,” in which he uses the Founding Fathers’ own words to show that these men “stood for enlightenment” as long as it did not involve Native Americans. They “stood for education” as long as it did not mean that enslaved Africans could go to school. And they stood for “incorruptible democracy” as long as only privileged White men could vote.
Unfortunately, this over-reverential, sanitized view of our Founding Fathers is what is taught throughout our education systems, and it contributes to mindless chants of “U.S.A., U.S.A.” while attacking the U.S. Capitol.
Frank Scarbrough, Germantown
Douglas Brinkley’s Aug. 11 Style appreciation, “He knew our history, and still found the best in us,” was a poignant tribute to David McCullough.
I was crestfallen in learning of Mr. McCullough’s death, as this kind gentleman was such a notable American historian. It brought me back to when I taught fifth grade in Grand Rapids, Mich., with history being my favorite subject to teach.
As Grand Rapids is the home of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, I had the fortunate opportunity to attend a talk with Mr. McCullough. It was interesting as he shared how he was contemplating his book that would become “John Adams.” He stressed history’s importance with his statement: “You can’t know who you are unless you know where you come from.” I took that message back to my students, who understood it and were inspired by it.
Mr. McCullough’s fervor for American history was so admirable as his stories made history come alive. He was an inspiration, and I was thrilled when the parent of one of my students told me, “You turned my kid into a history nut!”
American history does matter, and continues to in these turbulent times. Thank you, Mr. McCullough, for leaving us a lasting legacy.
Martha E. Topel, Charlottesville | 2022-08-16T21:41:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | David McCullough’s legacy is the history he brought to life - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/david-mcculloughs-legacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/david-mcculloughs-legacy/ |
George Will too quickly blamed the FBI
Attorney General Merrick Garland at an Aug. 11 speech about the FBI's search warrant served at former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
As someone with a long-standing admiration for the wit and wisdom of George F. Will in dissecting complex political issues with his incisive logic and disciplined construction of well-supported theses, I was disheartened by his Aug. 12 op-ed, “Garland has a duty to explain the circus perpetrated at Mar-a-Lago.” I still marveled at his clever use of words and imagery in an attempt to make his points, but this time his arguments sounded hollow and more like a master class in sophistry.
There are certainly serious questions to be raised about the legitimacy of and urgency for the FBI’s search at Mar-a-Lago, but what is most disturbing is Mr. Will’s presumption of malfeasance and/or recklessness by the FBI. Anyone who has ever served our country with a top-secret clearance knows the FBI’s actions might have been not only appropriate but perhaps even overly cautious when weighed against the threat to national security.
We can all agree that, for many of the reasons cited, there is an urgency to know more, as prudence allows. Meanwhile, the only demonstrable circus is a surfeit of reflexive rhetoric by those who should know better.
Francis M. Siri, Parlin, N.J.
Given that George F. Will’s column appeared rapidly after Attorney General Merrick Garland’s news conference highlighted the urgency of the search Mr. Will disparaged, I eagerly await Mr. Will apologizing for using the term “circus.” The search was conducted with extreme discretion, with former president Donald Trump’s lawyer present and without notifying the media. The circus master, in this case, was the clownish former president who announced the search.
Mr. Will should admit that the “domestic tranquility” he praised so highly was threatened not by the lawful search but by the response to it from elected officials, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who are determined to undermine the rule of law.
Mr. Will might also clarify that the possibility of divulging nuclear secrets or selling them to, say, Saudi Arabia is, in fact, a time when the “punctilious enforcement of every law” is warranted.
Catherine Schum, McLean
Conceding that George F. Will is far more knowledgeable about political matters than I am, I fail to see the wisdom in not holding the former president accountable to the law because his loyal followers will throw a hissy fit. As I understand it, search warrants are often granted when the subject is deemed unlikely to comply, a trait displayed countless times by Donald Trump over the past many years. If the country is to suspend the rule of law out of fear that some elements of society will react violently if it’s enforced, we’ve already lost the democracy some of us actually hold dear. If that’s a new operating principle, perhaps president for life is not too far behind.
Richard G. Little, Williamsburg, Va. | 2022-08-16T21:41:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | George Will too quickly blamed the FBI - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/george-will-too-quickly-blamed-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/george-will-too-quickly-blamed-fbi/ |
Inferences can be drawn from Trump taking the Fifth
Secret Service agents stand guard Aug. 10 as former president Donald Trump sits for a deposition at the office of the New York attorney general in New York. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Regarding the Aug. 11 front-page article “Trump takes Fifth throughout N.Y. deposition”:
Like all Americans, former president Donald Trump is entitled to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, no matter how much hypocrisy it heaps on his past statements about others taking the Fifth. In a civil trial, however, jurors might draw a negative inference from his refusal to answer questions about his business practices, and, even more important, voters in the 2024 election are under absolutely no obligation whatsoever to disregard either his deplorable evasions or his astounding hypocrisy.
Aaron Goode, New Haven, Conn. | 2022-08-16T21:41:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Inferences can be drawn from Trump taking the Fifth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/inferences-can-be-drawn-trump-taking-fifth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/16/inferences-can-be-drawn-trump-taking-fifth/ |
Ezra Miller seeks mental health treatment as ‘The Flash’ stays the course
Ezra Miller, pictured at the annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund event in November 2018, said in a statement Monday that they are seeking treatment for “complex mental health issues.” (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
When news broke earlier this month that Warner Bros. would be shelving the nearly complete “Batgirl” instead of releasing it as planned on HBO Max, it prompted an immediate question: What would become of “The Flash”? While both DC superhero films were highly anticipated, the future of the latter seemed more questionable at times given that it stars Ezra Miller, the 29-year-old actor who has faced multiple criminal charges — in addition to abuse and assault allegations — over the past several months.
As of two weeks ago, when Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said on a quarterly earnings call that he was “very excited” about upcoming DC titles including “The Flash,” the film is still set for a 2023 release. On Monday, Miller announced they were addressing their “complex mental health issues.”
“Having recently gone through a time of intense crisis, I now understand that I am suffering complex mental health issues and have begun ongoing treatment,” Miller said in a statement shared via representative with news media outlets. “I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior. I am committed to doing the necessary work to get back to a healthy, safe and productive stage in my life.”
The statement arrived after months of silence from Miller about the allegations against them, and amid reported conversations at Warner Bros. about how to handle the $200 million film, which is expected to play a key role in the DC Extended Universe. According to Evan Nierman, a crisis management expert who serves as chief executive of the public-relations firm Red Banyan, this was a logical next step for Warner Bros. because it “puts the onus onto Miller.”
“It takes a situation where someone could be assumed to be criminal or malevolent and turns that into someone who’s worthy of some grace and understanding,” Nierman said. “I suspect Warner Bros. was all-too-happy to go down this road. I don’t know who’s paying for the [treatment], but even if the studio were paying for it, that seems like a pretty worthwhile investment considering what they’ve already poured into the movie itself.”
Reached for comment regarding Miller’s statement, Warner Bros. representatives directed The Washington Post to a publicist for Miller, who has not yet responded to the inquiry.
Miller has been arrested twice this year in Hawaii — once in March for disorderly conduct and harassment at a karaoke bar, and again in April for allegedly throwing a chair that struck a woman’s face at a private residence. Last week, Miller was charged with felony burglary in Vermont, where they live, for a May incident in which they allegedly stole bottles of alcohol from a house whose occupants were not present.
Assault allegations against Miller date back to April 2020, when a video went viral in which the actor appeared to be choking a woman in Iceland. Miller has also faced multiple allegations of abuse and grooming, some of which have resulted in requests for protection orders. In June, according to Rolling Stone, the parents of an 18-year-old sought a restraining order against Miller on behalf of their child, whom they said Miller had groomed for several years after visiting North Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation. Later that month, the Daily Beast reported that a Massachusetts mother and her 12-year-old were granted a temporary harassment prevention order against Miller after he was allegedly inappropriate toward the child.
It is unclear whether Miller will be involved in future projects as the Flash. Warner Bros. executives have their work cut out for them between now and the current film’s June 2023 release date, according to Nierman.
“The key is going to be, can Ezra Miller stay out of trouble until the premiere?” the crisis management expert said. “I would have to think that Warner Bros. is going to do everything in its power to increase the odds of that.”
A conservative’s plan for Trump to win, win, win — or at least avoid impeachment | 2022-08-16T22:07:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ezra Miller seeks mental health treatment as ‘The Flash’ stays the course - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/16/ezra-miller-allegations-warner-bros/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/16/ezra-miller-allegations-warner-bros/ |
Va. governor’s forays into national spotlight fuel speculation that he has presidential ambitions
Laura Vozzella
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he intends to stump for more candidates later this year. (Steve Helber/AP)
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) said Tuesday that he’ll travel to Michigan at the end of the month to campaign for that state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, the latest in a series of nationwide political trips that are likely to continue into the fall.
After remarks to the Greater Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce at the Colonial Heritage golf club, Youngkin on Tuesday also renewed criticism of the Biden Justice Department for its handling of the search of former president Donald Trump’s home in Florida last week, where federal agents seized sets of classified documents.
Youngkin’s forays into the national spotlight continue to fuel speculation that the political newcomer has presidential ambitions — chatter that he calls humbling without specifically denying. Youngkin visited Nebraska last month to speak with state Republicans and appear at a fundraiser with GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Pillen. On Tuesday, Youngkin said he intends to stump for more candidates later this year.
Youngkin hits Nebraska like a GOP star, but some want him to take it slow
“I’m going to go to work in the fall to support Republican governors in their races,” he said. “I got a lot of help from Republican governors in my campaign, and I’m looking forward to returning the favor. … There will be other trips set through the fall.”
Youngkin will travel to Michigan to headline the state GOP’s Aug. 27 convention and campaign for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, who is echoing some of the K-12 education themes that Youngkin rode to the Executive Mansion last year as she tries to unseat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in November.
“Governor Youngkin’s victory in Virginia demonstrated the political power of parents who want to be involved in ensuring their children get a great education,” Dixon said in a written statement. “He also understood the economic challenges facing families and the need for safe communities. I am honored for him to join me and help create a family-friendly Michigan.”
Ron Weiser, chairman of the Michigan GOP, said Youngkin would help the party “rally the troops.”
Left-leaning Progress Michigan greeted the announcement with a harshly worded statement that called out Youngkin for his personal opposition to same-sex marriage and for a lawsuit against him and several other current and former executives of the Carlyle Group accusing them of profiting at the expense of investors and taxpayers.
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter has noted that any Carlyle transactions were reviewed by “independent experts and advisers.”
“Democrats should learn that governing requires more than just throwing mud,” Kristin Davison, a political consultant to Youngkin, said in response to Progress Michigan.
On Tuesday, Youngkin was asked by reporters about his comments criticizing the Justice Department for its search of Mar-a-Lago and he repeated the charge that the effort has lacked “transparency.”
Youngkin said many Americans have “lost faith” in the Justice Department, in part because it “investigated parents in Loudoun County for being in board meetings.” The comment echoed a tweet he posted Aug. 9 on his personal Twitter account accusing the department of “selective, politically motivated actions” in its action at Mar-a-Lago.
The tweet said it was a “stunning move” and accused the administration of having “labeled parents in Loudoun County as terrorists.”
Youngkin’s comments appeared to be a reference to the Biden administration’s effort last year to investigate reports of threats and harassment at school board meetings in Loudoun and other parts of the country after a letter from the National School Boards Association referred to the incidents as “domestic terrorism.”
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D) last week accused Youngkin of misstating the facts. “Where is there a shred of evidence that DOJ labeled Loudoun parents ‘terrorists’?” Kaine tweeted, later saying in an interview with news media that Youngkin’s comment was “just a lie.”
Asked Tuesday whether it was wrong to say the Biden administration called parents terrorists, Youngkin seemed to double down on his criticism.
“I believe they did. I think the Department of Justice was investigating parents,” he said.
Pressed further on whether they called them terrorists, he said: “Department of Justice was investigating parents. And they were clear that they were. And what we saw was, was accusations of them being terrorists.”
Youngkin’s appearance at a business breakfast also provided him a chance to preview some priorities for next year’s General Assembly session, including economic development, workforce training, education and affordable housing.
He said he has convened a task force for considering how to improve housing availability as a way to attract people to stay in Virginia, from young people building careers to older residents looking for a place to retire. Youngkin said he’s particularly interested in how the state can work with localities to change zoning and regulatory policies that he said hamper efforts to build high-density housing, adding that he has asked the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to participate in finding ways to reduce demands on developers.
Youngkin also cited the need for transportation funding and investing in infrastructure as an economic development tool. And while he touted his efforts to cut taxes — including some $4 billion in overall tax reductions in the two-year budget passed this year — he made no mention of his unsuccessful efforts to reduce the state’s gasoline tax, which would reduce money flowing into the state’s transportation accounts.
Democrats and one Republican in the state Senate have repeatedly blocked Youngkin’s proposed cut, saying the state needs the money and that the wholesale gas industry and out-of-state drivers would disproportionately benefit from a reduction. | 2022-08-16T22:07:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Youngkin plans Michigan trip, criticizes Justice Dept. over Trump raid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/youngkin-michigan-trump-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/youngkin-michigan-trump-biden/ |
What surviving GOP impeachment backers have in common: Alternative primaries
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) speak as she departs following a vote on Capitol Hill in April. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Seven Republicans who voted to impeach or convict Donald Trump after Jan. 6 have sought reelection in 2022. And with the final two facing primaries Tuesday, it’s virtually assured that most of them will have sacrificed their political careers with the vote. So far, only two have advanced to the general election.
Tonight, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is presumed to be a goner given her ruby-red state and her unceasing, unapologetic crusade against the former president. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) should qualify for the general election, given that four candidates advance under Alaska’s new ranked-choice system, but it’s not clear she’ll do so in a strong position.
So what are the lessons of the Impeachment 7?
One of the more intriguing ones is the idea that those who survived might have been saved by the kind of alternative primary systems that activists have long pitched as facilitating more moderate lawmakers — but that, in practice, haven’t necessarily lived up to those hopes.
Both of the impeachment supporters to advance to the November general election so far — Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) and David G. Valadao (R-Calif.) — did so in the relatively few states with so-called “top two” primaries, in which two candidates advance regardless of party. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) also came within a point of advancing in her top-two primary.
Murkowski, meanwhile, appears to be benefiting from Alaska scrapping its traditional primary process in favor of a new one: She lost a GOP primary in 2010, and might well have done so again versus Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka — but she appears to have a fighting chance under the state’s new ranked-choice regime.
How ranked-choice voting could change the way democracy works
The fates of impeachment-supporting Republicans in those traditional primaries, by contrast, appears more decisive. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) lost by fewer than four points, but against an underfunded challenger. Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), by contrast, lost by a large margin — Rice was defeated more than 2-to-1 — and Cheney’s fate is likely similar.
This is a small sample size, but it should at least spur some talk about whether top-two and ranked-choice systems might embolden members to cross the aisle on issues of similar significance.
The conventional wisdom has been — and the available evidence suggests — that top-two systems have under-delivered as a moderating influence, if they’ve truly made a difference at all. A 2021 report from the New America think tank ran down a series of studies showing little or no impact, despite the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger having hailed the idea when it went into effect in California more than a decade ago.
Washington implemented its top-two system a few years earlier, in 2008. A 2017 study found Democrats in the California legislature became somewhat more moderate after the new system was put in place in 2011, but there was no impact for either California Republicans or either party in Washington. Another study last year showed the two states’ legislatures didn’t become less polarized after the top-two systems were introduced.
But in 2020, a study by Christine Grose of the University of Southern California focused on congressional delegations, and found a real — albeit still modest — moderating effect. Some of that was apparently because of incumbent lawmakers who faced the new systems and might have moderated their votes accordingly — but most of it was because newly-elected members were more moderate.
Grose found that “among new members of Congress, those elected in top-two primaries are more than 18 percentage points less extreme than closed primary legislators.”
As the New America report summarized, the true effects of top-two primary systems might take some time to truly register, because the effects of incumbency are so strong. There have only been a handful of elections since California and Washington implemented the systems, and thus there has been little time for things to truly turn over. Or, as Lee Drutman noted in the report, “As always, reform is part of a dynamic process.”
It’s too simple to say with any certainty that the results for the Impeachment 7 in California, Washington and perhaps Alaska will tell us anything conclusive about the moderating benefit of these systems. This is just seven races, after all. And other explanations are very much on the table.
It’s possible impeachment supporters are better able to survive out West, because Trump’s hold on the party isn’t as strong out there and voters might be more independent.
It’s also possible this is as much, or more, a matter of Trump and his allies’ uneven ability to recruit quality candidates: Newhouse’s and Valadao’s GOP opponents were never hailed as particularly strong, they struggled in fundraising, and Trump didn’t even bother to endorse Valadao’s challenger.
It’s also possible these races’ results may stem from how outspoken the members were about their votes. Cheney and Rice, in particular, have been completely unapologetic, and Meijer earned plenty of publicity for voting to impeach Trump very early in his first term. Herrera Beutler wound up being a key figure in impeachment after disclosing a conversation with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Newhouse and Valadao seemed to fly more beneath the radar, relatively speaking.
Ultimately, these will be key data points — but only data points — in the still-nascent debate over whether alternative primary systems have the desired impact.
And on that front, Murkowski’s fate will be particularly important, given Alaska is breaking new ground with its ranked-choice system. But while we’ll probably have a decent sense of her fate as the primary results come in the days to come, the real test will come in November. | 2022-08-16T22:08:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Did top-two primaries and ranked-choice save GOP impeachment backers? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/gop-impeachment-alternative-primaries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/gop-impeachment-alternative-primaries/ |
Chico Harlan
Police stand outside an Archdiocese of Quebec building before the visit of Pope Francis on July 27. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
TORONTO — Cardinal Marc Ouellet, one of the most prominent Catholic leaders in Canada, was accused of sexual assault in legal documents filed Tuesday in a Quebec court.
In the lawsuit, a woman identified only as “F.” accuses Ouellet of inappropriate touching and comments when he was archbishop of Quebec and she was a pastoral intern. She said the alleged abuse left her feeling “troubled” and gave her a sense of “deep unease,” and eventually prompted her to complain to Pope Francis last year.
The Archdiocese of Quebec said Tuesday that it “took note” of the allegations and “will not have any comment.”
In the lead-up to the 2013 conclave in which Francis was named pope, Ouellet was mentioned often as a candidate for leader of the world’s 1.36 billion Catholics. His name still sometimes appears on lists of potential successors to Francis, though the 85-year-old pontiff has said he does not yet feel ready to retire.
During Francis’s pontificate, Ouellet has played a sometimes-public role. This year, he helped organize a symposium on the priesthood, during which he expressed regret for the “abusive and criminal behavior” that “destroyed” the lives of victims.
When the Church was shaken in 2018 by accusations that Francis knew and covered up the alleged sexual misconduct of Theodore McCarrick, an American cardinal, Ouellet wrote the Vatican’s first direct response, dismissing the claims as a “political plot that lacks any real basis.”
The allegations against Ouellet appear in a class-action lawsuit that was certified by a Quebec judge in May. The plaintiffs’ lawyers say more than 100 people allege misconduct against more than 85 members of the Catholic clergy, religious and lay pastoral staff, or volunteers.
According to the lawsuit, F. met Ouellet at a dinner of the Sisters of Charity of Quebec in 2008 when she was a 23-year-old intern with the Archdiocese of Quebec. After the dinner, it claims, Ouellet massaged her shoulders and caressed her back, leaving her “frozen” and unsure how to react.
Why the Vatican continues to struggle with sex abuse scandals
At a celebration in 2010 for the ordination of a colleague, the lawsuit alleges, Ouellet told her that it was the second time that they were seeing each other that week and that he might as well kiss her again because “there is no harm in spoiling yourself a little” — a comment that she allegedly found “completely inappropriate.”
“That day, more than during previous meetings, F. understood that she must flee Cardinal Marc Ouellet as much as possible,” the lawsuit states. “The uneasiness she feels is more present than ever.”
When she spoke of the “discomfort” she felt around him, the lawsuit alleges, she was told that Ouellet is “warm” and she was not the only woman to have this kind of “problem” with him. It does not say to whom she complained.
She followed a friend’s recommendation and reported the alleged assaults to an independent advisory committee that hears allegations of sexual abuse in 2020, the lawsuit says. In January 2021, at the suggestion of the committee’s chair, she wrote a letter to Francis about Ouellet.
The next month, according to the filings, she was told that Francis had appointed the Rev. Jacques Servais to investigate Ouellet. The woman’s last communication with Servais was in March 2021; a conclusion about the complaint has not been communicated to her, the lawsuit alleges.
Ouellet traveled with Francis on a trip to Canada last month, when the pontiff apologized for Canada’s “catastrophic” residential school system, which separated Indigenous children from their families to assimilate them into Euro-Christian society. Most of the federally funded schools were run by Catholic entities. | 2022-08-16T22:37:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouelett accused of sexual assault - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/cardinal-marc-ouelett-sexual-assault-allegation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/cardinal-marc-ouelett-sexual-assault-allegation/ |
Washington offensive coordinator Scott Turner moved from the booth to the sideline to improve his communication with new quarterback Carson Wentz. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
“The communication … is huge,” Turner said. “[It’s just] hearing [how he sees things] directly from him, not through another person, not having to get him on the phone or have somebody give him a headset. … [The practices] really confirmed it, where it’s like, ‘Hey, I think this is important to have that direct line of communication.’ ”
Now, Turner’s adjustment for Wentz seems like a big bet ahead of a crucial year. In the past two seasons, while Turner has had one of the league’s least-talented units, his offenses have ranked 29th in points per game (18.5) and 27th in Expected Points Added per play (minus-0.09). This season, the 40-year-old has a much better chance to succeed with Wentz and key additions at skill positions.
Last year in camp with the Colts, Reich said he was still learning how to communicate with Wentz. The quarterback wanted control of the offense; the coach did too.
Commanders’ trade for Carson Wentz altered draft plans — for first round, at least
“Carson has been outstanding,” he said. “He's an outstanding communicator. We've had great back and forth.” | 2022-08-16T23:21:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can Scott Turner's move from the booth to the field help Carson Wentz succeed? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/carson-wentz-scott-turner-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/carson-wentz-scott-turner-commanders/ |
Proposed salmon farm stirs concern for last of Md. sturgeon
David Secor, left, is a sturgeon researcher who is asking AquaCon to build its salmon farm somewhere other than Marshyhope Creek on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. He is with faculty research assistant Mike O’Brien. (Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun)
What’s best for fish species and Maryland is now at the center of a debate the state has never seen.
And there are other concerns, including whether the facility would sap the groundwater supply, what would happen if salmon die-offs known to have occurred elsewhere hit its tanks, and even what its impact could be on the flavor of fish native to the Marshyhope. A common problem in salmon farming is buildup of a substance known as geosmin that can give fish an off, mudlike taste.
AquaCon declined to comment, but Easton attorney Ryan D. Showalter represents the company.
The company has said its technology has proved to be successful and sustainable, and that the facility is needed to meet increasing demand and to counter increased transportation costs.
“Obviously, it will have to be environmentally conscious,” Zohar said of the facility.
A portion of the creek is a state- and federally protected habitat for the endangered species, extending from its confluence with the Nanticoke River north to the Maryland Route 313 bridge on the south end of Federalsburg. The AquaCon facility is designed to release its wastewater on the other side of the bridge.
“They have no choice, but AquaCon does,” he told a crowd of about 80 people at a recent public meeting about the facility in Federalsburg.
The company also has a memorandum of understanding to collaborate with Zohar and IMET — a unit of the University System of Maryland — and Zohar was the only person at the recent public meeting to speak in favor of the project. He also wrote an open letter saying AquaCon “impressed me as a very environmentally conscious and responsible company” and told the Baltimore Sun it was written at the behest of Hogan administration officials.
The residents who came to the public meeting were more focused on risks. They included Frank Adams, a resident who said that, as founder of the Federalsburg Economic Development Committee, he has worked to bring many new businesses to town.
A Maryland Department of Natural Resources official has said that changes are needed to the facility’s proposed wastewater permit to protect the sturgeon.
State environmental officials will be accepting public input on the facility’s wastewater permit through Oct. 17, after which they could release a revised permit that could be subject to further public review. They said it’s possible, though unlikely, they would deny the permit outright. | 2022-08-16T23:25:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Proposed salmon farm stirs concern for last of Md. sturgeon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/proposed-salmon-farm-stirs-concern-for-last-of-md-sturgeon/2022/08/16/504a560c-1c2f-11ed-8d30-84c409e82eb3_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/proposed-salmon-farm-stirs-concern-for-last-of-md-sturgeon/2022/08/16/504a560c-1c2f-11ed-8d30-84c409e82eb3_story.html |
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is moving forward with its plan to award new tax credits to electric vehicle purchasers. It’s part of the rollout of a huge new climate, tax and healthcare law. Several new websites launched Tuesday to help people identify which vehicles qualify for the credits. Based on data submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, at least 31 new 2022 and 2023 models qualify for the tax credit. For starters, they must be made in North America to be eligible. President Joe Biden signed Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill into law on Tuesday afternoon. It includes a tax credit of up to $7,500 that could be used to defray the cost of purchasing an electric vehicle.
NEW YORK — Walmart reported better-than-expected second quarter results as more Americans looked to cut costs on groceries at the nation’s largest retailer in the face of surging inflation. Those rising prices, however, meant that customers where cutting back on non-necessary purchases. Walmart reported a $5.15 billion quarterly profit Tuesday. It easily topped Wall Street’s profit and sales forecasts. ___
NEW YORK — Home Depot’s sales rose in its fiscal second quarter, buoyed by continued demand for items related to home improvement projects. Revenue for the three months ended July 31 rose 6.5% to $43.79 billion. This beat the $43.35 billion that analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research were calling for. Sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, climbed 5.8%. In the U.S., the figure increased 5.4%. While the number of customer transactions fell 3%, the amount shoppers spent per transaction rose 9.1%.
WASHINGTON — Amazon has complained to federal regulators that they’re hounding company founder Jeff Bezos and senior executives. The e-commerce giant says regulators are making impossible-to-satisfy demands in their investigation of Amazon Prime, the popular streaming and shopping service with free delivery and an estimated 200 million members around the globe. The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating the sign-up and cancellation practices of Amazon Prime, starting in May 2021 with the issuance of civil subpoenas, the retail and tech giant disclosed in a petition to the agency. The petition asks the FTC to cancel, or extend the deadline for answering, subpoenas sent to Bezos and current CEO Andy Jassy.
DALLAS — American Airlines says it has agreed to buy up to 20 supersonic jets that are still on the drawing board and years away from flying. American announced the deal Tuesday with Boom Supersonic. Neither company is giving financial details, such as how much American is paying in what they call a non-refundable deposit. It has been nearly 20 years since the last supersonic passenger flight by Concorde, the British-French plane. Boom CEO Blake Scholl says tickets on one of his company’s planes will cost about $4,000 to $5,000, and they’ll fly from New York to London in about three-and-a-half hours.
NEW YORK — Amazon workers in upstate New York filed a petition for a union election on Tuesday, launching a major labor fight against the company. A spokesperson for the National Labor Relations Board says the petition was filed for a warehouse in the town of Schodack, near Albany. To qualify for a union election, the NLRB requires signatures from 30% of eligible voters. The agency now has to verify if the workers are qualified to seek an election. The Amazon Labor Union is backing the organizing effort. Earlier this year, it notched a historic win at a warehouse on Staten Island, New York, but also took a loss at another nearby location weeks later.
SAN FRANCISCO — Airbnb says it’s rolling out new technology to spot and block people who try to use the short-term rental service to throw a party. Airbnb said Tuesday that the new system examines the renter’s history on Airbnb, how far they live from the rental listing, and other factors. The system has been tested since last October in parts of Australia, and Airbnb says it has led to a 35% drop in unauthorized parties. Airbnb has been under growing pressure to clamp down on parties since 2019, when a Halloween house party in a San Francisco suburb ended with five people dead in a shooting. | 2022-08-16T23:38:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: EV tax credits, Walmart earnings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-ev-tax-credits-walmart-earnings/2022/08/16/a633b76e-1db2-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-ev-tax-credits-walmart-earnings/2022/08/16/a633b76e-1db2-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
The workers are off shift at the now open Pouyuen Vietnam factory, a unit of Taiwans Pou Chen Corp., in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. Plants across the Vietnams southern industrial belt were shuttered from lack of resources or workers, at least 70% of whom are women -- crippling supply chains across the globe when festive gifts and winter clothing are usually rolling off production belts. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
But there is one key difference. While China digs itself deeper into an economic hole, Vietnam’s Communist Party seems capable of correcting its mistakes.
Their approach to the Covid-19 pandemic makes an excellent example. At the outset, both nations were keen to develop their own vaccines, as a matter of national pride and strategic interest. When Vietnam’s Nanocovax started Phase 3 clinical trials in June 2021, the nation was way behind on vaccinations, with only 1.5% of its 98 million population having received at least one jab. Hanoi also had a zero-tolerance approach then. Just like Shanghai, the commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) went through a four-month lockdown last summer. The military was deployed amid food shortages and deaths.
Perhaps reeling from the chaos, Vietnam put aside its pride, approved vaccines from around the world, and in the fall of 2021 jabbed its people with doses from AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer Inc., and even China’s Sinopharm. It accepted donations from foreign governments, through the World Health Organisation’s Covax facility, and nudged businesses such as Samsung Electronics Co. to find and pay for the jabs.
With more effective vaccines protecting its population, Vietnam was able to reopen its border fully in mid-March. China, by comparison, still refuses to import the more effective mRNA vaccines and continues to resort to citywide lockdowns.
As a result, the economic contrast between the two countries couldn’t be sharper.
To enter Vietnam, travelers don’t need to show proof of vaccination or negative PCR test results. Meanwhile, the path into China is long and winding. Onerous requirements aside, travelers simply can’t get hold of air tickets. Before Covid, Hong Kong’s flagship airline Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. had hourly air shuttles to Beijing and Shanghai; today, it has more flights to Ho Chi Minh City than to either China’s political or commercial hub. The Hong Kong International Airport has become such a ghost town that a traveler couldn’t help but think of the Qing Dynasty, the final imperial era, when China tried to close its doors to ideas and innovation from abroad.
In recent months, there has been a lot of debate among the Chinese, about whether Vietnam will displace their country as the leading manufacturing center. Anxiety has also been engendered by an exodus of global firms. Vietnam is aiming for 7% growth this year, while Chinese leaders have all but acknowledged that the country will miss their 5.5% target.
A lot of Vietnamese electronics factories are still in low-end assembly, and many orders are from their Chinese parent companies, the influential Chinese financial outlet Caixin noted in a June cover story. The Chinese are also more efficient in road and rail infrastructure, which bodes well for its supply chain network. Ho Chi Minh City’s first metro line, for instance, which originally slated to start in 2018, is still not complete.
But that’s beside the point. A country’s economic growth can start with soaring exports, but does not end there. Vietnam grew 7.7% in the second quarter. Manufacturing accounted for 2.4 percentage points, but services, including retail sales and tourism, contributed 2.9 percentage points to the overall growth. When the economy re-opened, Vietnamese traveled to resort islands such as Phu Quoc with a vengeance, spending on hotels and restaurants. In China, by comparison, travelers to the southern Hainan island got stuck when the tourist hot spot entered snap lockdowns after a local Covid outbreak. Surely, that experience would scar some consumers. Real estate agents in Ho Chi Minh City like to call the eastern Thu Thiem area the “Pudong” of Saigon, a reference to a new urban development that aspires to be as prosperous - and expensive — as Shanghai’s main financial district. When I was here three years ago, standing on an empty stretch of grassland, I found the analogy a bit stretched. But during China’s Covid zero era, imagination runs a bit wilder this time, even though I am still standing on grass. After all, there are more international flights to Saigon than Shanghai these days.
• The Next China? Vietnam Looks Good Only on Paper: Shuli Ren | 2022-08-16T23:39:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can Xi’s China Correct Course on Covid — Like Vietnam? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/can-xis-china-correct-course-on-covid-like-vietnam/2022/08/16/97e071fa-1daf-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/can-xis-china-correct-course-on-covid-like-vietnam/2022/08/16/97e071fa-1daf-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Wolfgang Petersen, Oscar-nominated director of ‘Das Boot,’ dies at 81
He was later known for making action-packed blockbusters like ‘Air Force One’ and ‘The Perfect Storm’
Filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen earned two Oscar nominations as the writer-director of the 1981 film “Das Boot,” set on a German U-boat during World War II. (Mary Evans/Ronald Grant Archive/Everett Collection)
Wolfgang Petersen, a German filmmaker whose 1981 drama “Das Boot” earned global acclaim for its humane depiction of U-boat sailors during World War II, and who later had a long Hollywood career directing action-driven blockbusters including “Air Force One,” “The Perfect Storm” and “Troy,” died Aug. 12 at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. He was 81.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement shared on Tuesday by his representative Michelle Bega.
After launching his directing career in the 1960s on West German television, Mr. Petersen was vaulted to international prominence by “Das Boot,” or “The Boat” (1981), a harrowing antiwar film that brought audiences inside a cramped, sweaty German submarine during World War II. “The film is like a documentary in its impact,” wrote film critic Roger Ebert, observing that there were sequences “when we feel trapped in the same time and space as the desperate crew.” He added, “Wolfgang Petersen’s direction is an exercise in pure craftsmanship.”
Mr. Petersen said he had initially worried about the film’s reception in the United States. When he went to the Los Angeles premiere, he was alarmed to see the audience burst into applause as an opening title card noted that 30,000 German submariners died during the war. By the time the film ended 2½ hours later, he told the New Jersey Record, “the audience was in tears, in shock, and totally turned around by the message: ‘OK, I know these guys were the other side, but if you cut through to the bottom, what war is all about, is kids on all sides getting killed.’ ”
The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, with Mr. Petersen receiving two Oscar nods for his direction and screenplay, which he adapted from a novel by German author Lothar-Günther Buchheim. “Das Boot” grossed more than $80 million worldwide and reportedly became the highest-earning foreign-language movie ever released in the United States, where Mr. Petersen went on to work with Hollywood stars such as George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Glenn Close, Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman.
Even as he transitioned to big-budget action thrillers, Mr. Petersen sought to maintain a focus on intimate human drama in movies such as “In the Line of Fire” (1993), featuring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent trying to hunt down a would-be assassin, and “Air Force One” (1997), which made $315 million at the global box office and became one of the decade’s most popular action films, starring Harrison Ford as a U.S. president battling terrorists hijacking the presidential jetliner.
He also ventured into fantasy with “The NeverEnding Story” (1984), his first English-language movie, adapted from a best-selling children’s novel by Michael Ende. After three years working on “Das Boot,” Mr. Petersen said he was rejuvenated by the film, which celebrated the power of imagination and featured a flying dragon-dog and a magical kingdom called Fantasia. “If people don’t dream anymore, they won’t survive,” he told the New York Times, adding, “The whole idea of the film is that we need your imagination, your dreams, your wishes, your creativity to fight against all these dangerous problems in the world.” (The film spawned two sequels made without his involvement.)
Mr. Petersen later transported viewers to the world of Homer’s “Iliad,” directing the big-budget war film “Troy” (2004) with Pitt. He seemed especially comfortable working from historical material and journalistic research, adapting Richard Preston’s nonfiction book “The Hot Zone” into “Outbreak” (1995), a medical thriller about the spread of an Ebola-like virus. He later directed Clooney and Mark Wahlberg in “The Perfect Storm” (2000), based on Sebastian Junger’s nonfiction account of a Massachusetts fishing vessel lost at sea.
The film grossed more than $180 million at the box office, and offered Mr. Petersen a chance to return to a maritime setting without having to reenter the narrow tube of a submarine. Much of the movie was filmed in a specially constructed studio tank that helped Mr. Petersen create the illusion of monster waves threatening to capsize the Andrea Gail, which was tossed about like a toy boat.
Wolfgang Petersen was born in Emden, Germany, a port city near the North Sea, on March 14, 1941, and grew up in an era of postwar deprivation. He often lingered with other young Germans at the harbor, in the hope of catching candy thrown by American sailors coming into port on warships he described in almost mythical terms.
“They were like a spaceship, like a close encounter thing, and we were crazy about those beautiful ships,” he told the New York Times in 2001. “On them were Americans with these big smiles on their faces, and they were throwing food down to us. I had never seen before these oranges and bananas and chewing gum. We kids were like little rats down there, hungry, jumping on all that stuff. I have never forgotten that image of America. To us America was something like a paradise.”
By the early 1950s, his family had settled in Hamburg, where his father was a shipbroker and Mr. Petersen embraced American pop culture that had flooded Germany after the war — especially cinema. He hunted down every book he could find about filmmaking and used an 8mm camera to direct a western short with a few friends, paying homage to Hollywood tropes by including a card game scene, a saloon fistfight and a high-noon shootout.
At 19, he became an assistant director at a theater in Hamburg. He also studied acting at schools in Hamburg and Berlin before earning an apprenticeship for German TV in the late 1960s, gaining recognition for his taut direction of crime dramas and stories about obsession. One of his earliest feature films, “One or the Other” (1974), about a student who blackmails a professor, earned a national cinema honor. That he completed it on a budget of less than $1 million also boosted his stature as a director who excelled under financial pressure.
His later work included “The Consequence” (1977), a melodrama about the sexual relationship between an incarcerated young man and the prison warden’s teenage son, which generated controversy in Germany for its sensitive, forthright depiction of gay love. That same year, he directed “For Your Love Only,” a feature-length episode of a TV crime series, about the affair between a teacher and a schoolgirl, played by Nastassja Kinski, who was promptly launched to stardom in Germany.
Around that time, executives from Bavaria Studios persuaded him to make “Das Boot,” his first higher-budget film. Mr. Petersen insisted on unswerving accuracy to re-create the look and feel of a submarine, evoking what he described as “the smell of reality, the blood, the sweat and the tears, the claustrophobia.”
“We wanted to make sure every bolt and every screw in the boat was real,” he told the Silicon Valley newspaper Metro. “Our designers were obsessed with reality. I cannot imagine that almost 50 people spent months in one of these cigars without killing each other. That was our task and the challenge — me and my cinematographer, Jost Vacano — we’d either kill each other or make a great movie.”
It took two years and hundreds of artisans to build two submarines and giant machines that would jostle them to re-create an aura of fear and turbulence. Wielding an Arriflex camera outfitted with a gyroscope, Vacano moved through the set while wearing “padding like an ice-hockey player,” Mr. Petersen recalled, “which was good because he was always running into things. Sometimes it took 16 takes to get the right shot.”
His first marriage, to actress Ursula Sieg, ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Maria-Antoinette Borgel, who worked as an assistant director on several of his early films; a son from his first marriage, Daniel Petersen; and two grandchildren.
Mr. Petersen moved into American filmmaking with a pair of box-office disappointments — the science-fiction movie “Enemy Mine” (1985) and the Alfred Hitchcock homage “Shattered” (1991) — before bouncing back with “In the Line of Fire,” which grossed nearly $190 million and earned John Malkovich an Oscar nomination for his performance as a CIA veteran trying to assassinate the president.
After the release of “Troy,” which grossed nearly half a billion dollars worldwide but received mixed reviews, Mr. Petersen directed “Poseidon” (2006), a big-budget remake of the 1972 disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure,” which was savaged by critics. Mr. Petersen professed not to care about bad reviews, saying that too often reviewers were snobbish about his movies, failing to recognize the fact that they kept viewers glued to their seats.
“I want to tell a story everybody loves,” he told the Times after the premiere of “The NeverEnding Story.” “Another director might say: ‘That’s my vision and whoever understands it and loves it, fine. Whoever doesn’t, please go out!’ But that’s not me.” | 2022-08-16T23:40:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wolfgang Petersen, Oscar-nominated director of ‘Das Boot,’ dies at 81 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/16/filmmaker-wolfgang-petersen-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/16/filmmaker-wolfgang-petersen-dead/ |
The Trailer: In New York, a top House Democrat relishes a chance to beat his party’s left wing
In this edition: How President Biden's wins are impacting Democratic primaries, what you should watch in tonight's elections, and how to interpret the special election result in Minnesota.
Powered by crudités and sponsored by Wegner's, this is The Trailer.
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. — Another Democratic voter had answered the door, eager to talk with state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi (D) about her campaign against a sitting Democratic member of Congress, and how happy he was with Democrats in Washington.
“Finally, the Democrats are doing an awesome job,” said Christi Adams, 65.
“I agree!” said Biaggi, 36.
“Biden’s doing an awesome job,” Adams added.
“I one hundred percent agree with you,” said Biaggi. “What they’re doing now, they should be doing always.”
New York’s chaotic Aug. 23 primaries, delayed and reshuffled after a court threw out maps drawn by Democrats, are coming at a potentially opportune moment for some in the party’s establishment wing — and for Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who Biaggi is running against next Tuesday.
The revival of the party’s climate and drug-pricing legislation has perked up some Democratic voters. Panic about crime and how Republicans run on that issue have made those same voters nervous about the party’s left wing. Four years after Biaggi helped Democrats take back the state Senate, one year after ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned in disgrace, the race in New York’s 17th Congressional District has seen Maloney scoop up endorsements, as he relishes a chance to beat his party’s left wing.
“There’s been a huge, huge change in the mood of Democrats,” Maloney, 56, said in an interview after a house party on the other side of the suburban district. “It really undercuts the rationale of my challenger, who’s arguing that the problem is the Democrats. My argument is that we need to come together as Democrats and get things done and keep dangerous Republicans from taking back the House.”
The race between Maloney and Biaggi started late, and bitterly. On April 27, the state’s highest court tossed out new congressional maps that Democrats in Albany had drawn to create an advantage for the party.
On May 16, with the court set to approve a different map, Maloney announced that instead of seeking reelection in his 18th Congressional District he’d run in the new 17th District, which included his Cold Spring home — and where Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), who made history as one of the two first openly gay Black members of Congress, was finishing his first term.
“His job is to maximize the number of seats for Democrats,” Biaggi said in an interview. “The majority literally runs through New York and California. And he’s sacrificing the seat.”
After finger-pointing and fury, Jones moved out of the district to seek a safe seat in New York City; Ulster County executive Pat Ryan, who’s running in a special election for the expiring 19th Congressional District, is the likely Democratic nominee in the new 18th District.
But Biaggi, who had been running in a different seat demolished by the court, quickly announced a campaign against Maloney. First, she wanted members of Congress to “actually be champions for our rights, and not water down things.” Second, Maloney had pushed Jones out of a district that was proud to have elected him.
“What he did embodies everything I stand against,” Biaggi said of Maloney. “It felt very self-serving. It represents the politics of the past — or at least, something that some of us are trying to make the politics of the past.”
The switcheroo set up the sort of campaign New York Democrats have become familiar with recently, between a well-funded party leader and a challenger calling him an impediment to real change. Biaggi and other liberal legislators had passed dozens of bills previously blocked by Republicans, from bail reform to marijuana legalization to new anti-harassment rules.
Maloney was part of a majority that, as of late May, seemed destined to disappoint Democrats; as DCCC chairman, he’d left his competitive seat for a safer one, and approved a $450,000 ad buy in Michigan to help a 2020 election denier win a Republican primary — part of a bet that the candidate would be easier for Democrats to defeat in November.
“I’m really upset with them spending all that money on MAGA candidates,” said Shari Maurer, 55, the leader of the gun control group Moms Demand Action in Rockland County. Nine gun laws blocked by the GOP-led Senate were passed after Biaggi and the other Senate Democrats took power, and Biaggi had impressed her by showing up at an abortion rights rally and asking for donations to abortion funds, not her campaign.
“I’m just very disappointed that Maloney ran in our district,” said Maurer.
Other Democrats were happier about their choices, eager to support Maloney, and skeptical that Biaggi could win. Redistricting made Maloney’s old seat slightly bluer, while adding Rockland County to the new 17th District it made it more competitive; President Biden won it by 10 points, after winning inside the old lines by 20 points.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) endorsed Biaggi, raising money for her campaign. But nearly every prominent Democrat in the region got behind Maloney, from the chair of each county Democratic Party to Bill Clinton, whose Chappaqua home is in one of the bluest parts of the district.
“We can’t really afford to be attacking the Democrat leading the charge right now,” said John Gromada, 58, the chairman of the Rockland County Democratic Party. One problem for Biaggi, he said, was that she was building name recognition in a place she hadn’t represented before.
A bigger, seemingly unsolvable problem was tweets Biaggi had sent in 2020, endorsing the idea of “defunding” police, who she called “soulless.” She’d walked that back, but Democrats, nervous about the crime-centered campaigns Republicans were running across the state, said that the quotes made her especially vulnerable.
“We have a lot of retired law enforcement here, and the criminal justice attacks have really landed in our county,” said Gromada. “I think that's going to be really difficult for her to live down those tweets. And I'm sad about it. I’m sad that that message was put across that way.”
For Maloney, the chance to distance Democrats from the “defund” slogan was irresistible. “It's naive to believe that someone who says the police have no souls,” he said, “is going to win in this competitive district.”
Biaggi’s opponents have jumped at the chance to beat her; the Police Benevolent Association’s PAC put $400,000 into ads against her, with PBA President Patrick J. Lynch calling her a “privileged New York City radical” who “wants a national platform from which to spread her extreme ideology.”
The senator asked why Maloney wouldn’t condemn “election interference from pro-Trump organizations” — the PBA endorsed Donald Trump in 2020 — while Republicans said that they could wield the crime issue against either Democrat in November. Maloney had opposed cash bail for years, and GOP candidates up and down the ballot were blaming the state’s bail reforms, every day, for increased crime.
“Biaggi is more outwardly progressive, if you will, in both substance and tone,” said state Assemblyman Mike Lawler, the likely GOP nominee in the district. “But he’s not that far off. When you’re running the party committee and your job is to reelect people like AOC and Ilhan Omar, and you vote with Biden and Pelosi 100% of the time, you can’t say you’re a centrist.”
Maloney wasn’t calling himself a centrist — and he certainly wasn’t defending Ocasio-Cortez. In an interview on Saturday, after he celebrated an endorsement from the New York Times, Maloney said he couldn’t “think of a single race where AOC endorsed where the candidate won.” If he won the primary, he said, it would say far more about where their party stood.
“The socialist wing of the Democratic Party is losing all the races, whether you're talking about New York City's mayoral primary or ballot initiatives in Minneapolis or San Francisco,” said Maloney. “What Democrats want right now are people who are willing to work with people to get things done. They don't want a revolution and they don't want ideological purity and they don't want a bunch of people lecturing them on Twitter.”
In the race’s final days, Maloney has talked little about the party’s left, and more about the record in Washington. At a Saturday rally in Peekskill, flanked by union leaders who’d endorsed him, Maloney ticked off some of the most popular items House Democrats had delivered in the Inflation Reduction Act and last year’s infrastructure bill, from “a hundred thousand charging stations for electric vehicles” to “a hundred thousand Davis-Bacon union jobs” to money that had already flowed back into the district.
“There’s some good things going on — you might not know it, if you watch the news,” said Maloney. “I don’t know about you, but I kind of feel like President Biden’s getting a bad rap! I know it’s funny to run the guy down, but the truth is, he’s got a hell of a record for a guy who’s getting so much grief.”
“Biden, trying to tout his policies, faces a familiar intruder: Trump,” by Matt Viser
Why Democrats are sick of their news cycles getting hijacked.
“MAGA fanatics have a new enemy: ‘TINOs’ — Trump In Name Only,” by Kara Voght
One party, two county conventions.
“Election deniers march toward power in key 2024 battlegrounds,” by Amy Gardner
A definitive look at the conspiracy theorists winning key primaries.
“Doug Mastriano plans to use his Secretary of State pick to disrupt Pennsylvania elections,” by Jake Blumgart
How a Stop the Steal candidate for governor could upturn voting in a swing state.
“Liz Cheney’s primary is all about Donald Trump — except in Wyoming,” by Ben Jacobs
The battle for Cheyenne.
“Rep. Ilhan Omar survives close primary after campaign focused on policing,” by David Weigel
A near-disaster for the left in Minneapolis.
One of the defining stories of the midterms reaches its conclusion today: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) appear on the ballot for the first time since they voted, respectively, to impeach Trump and to remove him from office.
Polls close in Wyoming at 7 p.m. local time, or 9 p.m. eastern, and both Democrats and Republicans now expect attorney Harriet Hageman to easily defeat Cheney and become the GOP nominee for the state’s sole House seat.
Despite the resonance of the Cheney family name — and for some libertarian-minded Republicans, because of it — the three-term Republican has always faced some resistance from primary voters. Just over 90,000 voters turned out in the 2016 primary, when she first captured the nomination with 39 percent of the vote. In the higher turnout of 2018 and 2020, Cheney won clear majorities — 64 percent, then 74 percent.
She’ll likely have a different coalition in this race, as voters can register as late as election day, and Democrats and independents who have no competitive candidates in November can vote in the GOP primary. That could play a role down-ballot, where some conservative members of the state House are running for state Senate, in a bid to increase the clout of the Freedom Caucus in Cheyenne.
Polls close in Alaska at 8 p.m., or midnight on the east coast — not that it matters for results. This is the first year the state will use its new ranked-choice voting system, and final totals from the special House election won’t be final until Aug. 31. Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich share the ballot with Democrat Mary Peltola, and polls, which have a complicated (read: lousy) record in Alaska, have tended to find an advantage for Begich. If Peltola is eliminated in the first count, Begich runs ahead of Palin; if Palin is eliminated, Begich leads Peltola.
All three candidates are also on the primary ballot for a full House term, along with 19 other candidates — mostly independents and third-party hopefuls, but also Tara Sweeney, a former GOP official at the Department of the Interior who missed the cutoff for the special election. You want those results? You’ll have to wait, just like you’ll have to wait for answers in the U.S. Senate primary.
Meanwhile, Murkowski, whose pro-abortion rights votes have often set her against her party leaders, has minimal opposition on her left in the all-party primary — ex-Seward Mayor Edgar Blatchford, a Democrat, is running his umpteenth race for higher office, but the state Democratic Party has endorsed Patricia Chesbro, who’s centered abortion rights in her campaign.
Trump administration veteran Kelly Tshibaka, who’s endorsed by the former president, is the only significant GOP challenger to Murkowski, and has told reporters she hopes to place first to build momentum for November, when the top four finishers will face off again.
The race for governor has another test of conservative purity, with Gov. Mike Dunleavy seeking a second term and two challengers arguing that he didn’t do enough to resist pandemic mitigation measures: state Rep. Christopher Kurka and Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce. Kurka, who represents part of the conservative Mat-Su Valley, has pledged to immediately fire the state’s health director.
Democrats narrowly lost the 2018 election to Dunleavy, after independent ex-Gov. Bill Walker abandoned his race for reelection and endorsed the Democratic nominee. But Walker’s running again for a slot in the four-candidate runoff, and Democrats have coalesced around Les Gara, a former state legislator.
Liz Cheney for Wyoming, “The Great Task.” Most Republicans expect Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to lose today, and her final campaign advertising — funded by a surge of donations since her vote to impeach Trump — provide more evidence. The congresswoman's final digital spot addresses “citizens across our great state and across our country,” and focuses largely on Trump's campaign to overturn the 2020 election. “America will never be the same,” says Cheney, if Republicans who lie about the 2020 election prevail.
Hageman for Wyoming, “Desperate for Attention.” Cheney's chief opponent, Harriet Hageman, only appears at the end of her final campaign spot. Most of the 30-second runtime shows a Hageman sign on a windmill, a wide drone shot that contrasts the state's pastoral emptiness with the noise of Cheney's media stardom. “She's made her time in Congress and this election all about her,” says a narrator. “Well, it's not about her, it's about you.”
NRCC, “Helping Criminals.” GOP messaging across New York has focused on the criminal justice measures passed by the Democratic majority in Albany. This spot, running against Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan in his special election campaign for the state's 19th Congressional District, ties him to the state's rollback of cash bail, saying he's “bankrolled by extremists” who want to end cash bail entirely. The hit on Ryan's own record? A June 2020 op-ed he published, while running for county executive, opposing the “militarization” of local police.
Nick Begich for Congress, “Your Voice.” The other Republican in Alaska's special election, the one not named “Sarah Palin,” has played up his local work as a contrast with a far more famous conservative endorsed by Donald Trump. This radio takes a jab at Trump not for any policy reason, but because he's not an Alaskan: “Nick's opponent has some endorsements from celebrities in the Lower 48, but this isn't Celebrity Apprentice.”
Sarah for Alaska, “Negative Nick.” Palin's own messaging in the final weeks of the Alaska campaign has accused Begich and his endorsers or smearing her to prevent a true conservative from winning. “President Trump just came to Alaska to support Sarah,” a narrator says in this spot. “People across the state are joining her cause, too.” It's a different spin on Palin's celebrity status, suggesting it can only help her advocate for the state.
Republican Party of Florida, “Freedom is Here to Stay.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has no serious GOP challenge in next week's primary, but it's the first one to be held since Republicans outpaced Democrats in voter registration, and the incumbent wants a show of strength. In 30 seconds, the story of DeSantis resisting the pandemic restrictions other states put in place is summarized as a fight for American freedom, the kind other states have let go. “When other states shut people down, Florida lifted people up,” says a narrator.
“This year the candidates for the Republican nomination for U.S. Representative in Wyoming are … For which candidate do you plan to vote?” (July 25-August 5, 836 Wyoming residents)
Harriet Hageman: 57%
Liz Cheney: 28%
Anthony Bouchard: 2%
Denton Knapp: 1%
Before today, when Republicans started talking about Cheney in the past tense, this was why. No poll this year has found Cheney ahead of Hageman, or even close to her level of support. Trump's support for Hageman, while not convincing all of her rivals to quit the race, consolidated Republican support; Bouchard, a state senator who jumped in early, has become a non-factor. Nearly 100 percent of Democrats who plan to vote in the primary say they support Cheney, but independents are divided, breaking for Cheney by just 3 points.
New York. Two Democrats running in the state's 10th Congressional District, which covers parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, came together on Monday to denounce attorney Dan Goldman and urge primary voters to pick literally anyone else for the safe Democratic seat. Outside city hall, Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) condemned Goldman for using personal wealth to “buy” the seat, with Jones raising questions about the New York Times editorial board's endorsement of the candidate.
“Look, I have no idea whether the generations of close family relationship between the Sulzbergers and the Goldmans had any role at all to play in the endorsement,” Jones told reporters.
The Times endorsement was always going to play a pivotal role in the crowded race, which has divided the New York left; the Working Families Party, which helped elect Jones to his current seat in Westchester County, backs Niou in the new seat.
“It certainly helps Dan in the closing days,” said Chris Coffey, a New York Democratic strategist. “Will progressives make the case that there’s something biased about it. We’ll see. It feels like a long shot.”
Minnesota. Republicans held on to the 1st Congressional District in last week's special election, with now-Rep. Brad Finstad (R) prevailing over Democrat and former Hormel executive Jeff Ettinger. But the margin was closer than many Republicans explained, in a seat that backed Trump over Joe Biden by 10 points in 2020. Finstad edged out Ettinger by 4 points, a margin of less than 5000 votes in a race where more than 118,000 were cast.
It was the second special congressional election since the Supreme Court's decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, and the second to show Democrats over-performing — thanks, almost entirely, to higher turnout in suburbs and small cities. Ettinger flipped Mower County, where he lives, and which had voted narrowly for Trump in 2020. But he did best in Olmstead County, home to Rochester and the Mayo Clinic, where turnout skewed higher than it did in rural counties won by Finstad.
The Minnesota results came one week after a landslide victory for abortion rights activists on a ballot measure in Kansas, which has shaped Democratic thinking about their possible targets in November, and convinced some that they've regained support since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Pat Ryan, the Democratic nominee in next week's special election for New York's 19th Congressional District, said in an interview that there was a “real opportunity” to hold that seat — vacated when Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado took his current role — “building on the momentum from Kansas and Minnesota.”
Wisconsin. On Tuesday night, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos narrowly defeated Trump-backed challenger Adam Steen and won his Republican primary. Less than 72 hours later, Vos sacked Michael Gableman, the former judge he hired — and retained with taxpayer money — after Trump urged him personally to launch a probe of the 2020 election.
“He did a good job last year, kind of got off the rails this year,” Vos told WISN of Gableman, who urged the GOP-led legislature to decertify the 2020 election in the state, which Vos says is legally impossible. “Now we’re going to end the investigation.”
… seven days until primaries in Florida, runoffs in Oklahoma, and congressional primaries in New York | 2022-08-16T23:40:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Trailer: In New York, a top House Democrat relishes a chance to beat his party’s left wing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trailer-new-york-top-house-democrat-relishes-chance-beat-his-partys-left-wing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/trailer-new-york-top-house-democrat-relishes-chance-beat-his-partys-left-wing/ |
A Smith & Wesson semiautomatic firearm is shown in July during a House Oversight Committee hearing on the practices and profits of gun manufacturers. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
Amid a congressional investigation into gun manufacturers after back-to-back mass shootings this spring, Smith & Wesson CEO Mark Smith released a defiant statement criticizing politicians and the news media as at fault for violent crime.
Homicide rates dropped slightly in the first half of this year compared with 2021, yet they remain nearly 40 percent higher than where they stood before the pandemic, according to a report the Council on Criminal Justice released last month. The think tank also found a sharp decline in the percentage of reported robberies and property crimes.
Mass shootings in which four or more people are killed represent a small fraction of gun violence. They account for fewer than 1 percent of people killed by firearms, The Post reported. Yet such incidents are increasing, and they capture widespread attention because they take a toll on Americans’ psyches, creating fear of being in public places.
Mass violence takes toll on Americans’ psyches
The House Oversight Committee probe into gun manufacturers began in late May, after mass shootings at a Buffalo grocery store and a Uvalde, Tex., elementary school left 31 people dead in less than two weeks. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the panel’s chairwoman, contacted five companies seeking information about the manufacturing, sale and marketing of AR-15-style weapons used in the two incidents; each gun used in the shootings was purchased legally.
Along with Smith & Wesson, which produced the weapon used at the Fourth of July shooting in Highland Park, Ill., the businesses under investigation include Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of the rifle used at Robb Elementary in Uvalde and Bushmaster, the maker of the weapon used at a Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo. Sig Sauer, which made the gun used at the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, and Sturm, Ruger & Co., which manufactured the one used in a 2017 Sutherland Springs, Tex., massacre are part of the probe as well.
“The gun industry has flooded our neighborhoods, our schools and even our churches and synagogues with these deadly weapons, and has gotten rich doing it,” Maloney (D-N.Y.) said during a hearing on the issue.
Gunmaker’s Super Bowl stunt sheds light on marketing of ‘America’s rifle’
He added: “We will never back down in our defense of the 2nd Amendment.” | 2022-08-16T23:56:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Smith & Wesson CEO Mark Smith blames politicians for gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/smith-wesson-statement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/smith-wesson-statement/ |
Jenna Portnoy
Residents wait in line at a D.C. Health location administering the monkeypox vaccine on Aug. 5. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
D.C. public health officials said Tuesday they plan to publish an online dashboard of the city’s monkeypox cases, including demographic data, one day after a majority of D.C. Council members urged the health department to step up public communication about the virus.
The dashboard, which officials said will go live at 6 p.m. Wednesday, appears to address council members’ concerns about making sure the city’s limited number of vaccine doses go to underserved communities, and parents’ concerns about safety before the upcoming school year.
Anil T. Mangla, the state epidemiologist at D.C. Health, said the dashboard was “in the works for a while” but that he wanted to wait until he was sure the data was “clean and accurate” before publishing. It will include demographic data, including the age, gender, race and ethnicity, and ward of residence of people who test positive and those who receive doses, he said.
The lawmakers’ request, detailed in a letter signed Monday by eight of the council’s 13 members, comes at a time of great transition for the agency: Longtime health director LaQuandra Nesbitt stepped down last month, and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) appointed Sharon Lewis, previously a senior deputy director at the department, to lead during the search for a permanent replacement.
But as monkeypox infections rise across the region, the council — which at times butted heads with D.C. Health during the coronavirus pandemic over vaccine equity and public information — asked Lewis to strengthen the department’s messaging for residents who are not in the highest-risk populations. That includes some parents of young children — who the legislators wrote: “do not feel they have sufficient information to know what their own risk is or how to protect themselves and their family members.”
The letter urged Lewis to work with public schools on messaging around safety as well as provide lawmakers with details on vaccine distribution, mirroring data the department shared publicly at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Council members have also asked about how D.C. Health is relaying information about monkeypox to residents who don’t use social media, a primary communication tool for the department.
“There’s a desire for more information, there’s a concern about spread, concern about equitable distribution of the vaccine,” said Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who led the effort. “This letter was really to establish a relationship with the new leadership to say let’s communicate well with our residents … and make sure we’re learning from covid, where the equitable distribution of the vaccine was a big issue.”
D.C. Health’s messaging around monkeypox was initially geared toward groups widely recognized as the most at-risk: gay and bisexual men who had recently had multiple sexual partners. Last week, the agency expanded monkeypox vaccine eligibility to people of any sexual orientation or gender who have had multiple sexual partners in the past two weeks — in part to reduce stigma surrounding the virus that may have discouraged some residents from getting vaccinated.
But with the city’s public schools starting back up at the end of the month, Silverman and other lawmakers say they’re increasingly hearing from parents seeking information about how monkeypox is transmitted, and how the virus could spread between children who play and interact with physical touch.
The District continues to have more monkeypox cases per capita, than any state, with 341 as of Sunday, but Mangla noted only one case occurred in a minor. The median age is 34, he said. He added that 98 percent of cases in the District were transmitted through skin-to-skin contact or kissing with respiratory secretions; without contact with lesions, he said, the possibility of transmission is low. Like with coronavirus, practicing hand-washing and good hygiene is key, he said.
But mindful of parents’ concerns, Mangla said he meets weekly with school district leaders and the health department will issue an FAQ to schools after ensuring that it does not conflict with back-to-school guidance they are awaiting from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I want to make sure they have the right information rather than misinformation,” he said.
Last week, Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) said she had asked D.C. Health for a breakdown of monkeypox cases by race, gender and ward, and had pushed for the information to be published and regularly updated online. As of Tuesday, D.C.’s monkeypox website redirects users to a CDC map of the country that only shows the raw number of cases in the District.
Earlier this week, I asked @_DCHealth for monkeypox surveillance data disaggregated by a number of factors. The response is below.
I’ve also asked for this info to be published on the website & updated on a regular cadence. pic.twitter.com/WxQRKXHUvG
Henderson, who said she did not sign onto Silverman’s letter because it was duplicative of her own request, said her ask was fueled by the fact that other jurisdictions, like Virginia and New York City, already published detailed monkeypox surveillance data.
“I realized I didn’t know what was going on in D.C. beyond a specific case count,” Henderson said. “It shouldn’t have to be an ask … there are a lot of scars from how information was transmitted or not at the beginning of the pandemic.”
Mangla said D.C. has made strides in vaccinating Black residents in its Friday walk-up clinics, which do not require preregistration, and starting Aug. 19 will not require a name or date of birth either.
Almost 50 percent of monkeypox cases in the city occur among White men, compared with 36 percent among Black men, he said. Among people who preregistered for a vaccination via the city’s website, 21 percent are Black, but that number jumped to 54 percent for the walk-up clinics, Mangla said.
In addition, the city reserved 35 percent of its doses for Black residents and 20 percent for immunocompromised individuals, including those who are HIV-positive. “This was to assess and address some of the equity concerns we were seeing in cases and at the vaccination clinics,” he said.
Public data reporting is inconsistent across the D.C. region. While Maryland does not publish monkeypox data online, the Virginia Department of Health maintains a dashboard, which is updated daily, with case counts as well as data on the outbreak by region, sex, age group, and race and ethnicity.
As of Tuesday, Virginia reported 213 cases, including 150 in Northern Virginia. Men in their 20s and 30s make up about 80 percent of cases. About 35 percent of cases have occurred in Black men and 32 percent of cases in White men, data show. State public health officials say they are working with 35 health departments to gather information on who is accessing the vaccine and plan to post that online soon as well.
“Covid reminded us of the importance of understanding the different populations that are impacted by a condition and the importance of looking at data through an equity lens in order to make sure we have the resources, prevention strategies and vaccines, we need to [serve] populations that are being impacted,” Laurie Forlano, deputy director of the office of epidemiology, said in an interview Tuesday.
The Virginia health department is also considering holding listening sessions with clinical providers and town halls to make sure people at highest risk have all the information they need to decide whether to get vaccinated as well as equitable access to appointments, Forlano said.
Back in the District, Monday’s letter marks the latest example of lawmakers pressing the health department on its vaccination strategy and data reporting.
During a contentious call with D.C. Health early in the pandemic, lawmakers pointed out that residents from affluent wards were monopolizing scarce vaccine appointments to the detriment of hardest-hit wards. And in May, council members pressed Nesbitt to update case data more frequently, prompting her to write in a letter obtained by Axios that their public critiques risked “undercutting trust in DC Health and public health.”
In the council members’ letter, they asked Lewis how the department was employing lessons it learned during the coronavirus pandemic, specifically with communication and vaccine distribution.
“We didn’t know there was an inequitable distribution of the coronavirus vaccine until we saw the data, then we saw it was lopsided,” Silverman recalled. “It only helps increase public trust when you disclose information — maybe D.C. Health has done a great job and we cheer them on.” | 2022-08-16T23:56:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. to publish monkeypox data online after critique from council members - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/dc-monkeypox-data/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/dc-monkeypox-data/ |
“He has a lot of versatility, he brings a lot of energy, brings a lot of toughness and he understands the system,” Tampa Bay Coach Todd Bowles said of Carl Nassib, shown in 2019. (Will Vragovic/Getty Images)
Buccaneers Coach Todd Bowles appeared to confirm multiple reports that Tampa Bay was signing Carl Nassib, a free agent defensive end who is the NFL’s first openly gay active player.
“We look forward to him coming here,” Bowles said of Nassib to reporters Tuesday.
Nassib previously played for the Buccaneers in 2018 and 2019. He then signed in free agency with the Las Vegas Raiders and was a member of that organization in June 2021, when he made history by coming out.
“I’m a pretty private person,” Nassib said then in a video he shared online, “so I hope you guys know that I’m really not doing this for attention. I just think that representation and visibility are so important.”
Several NFL players saluted him at the time, as did a number of league officials and advocates for LGBTQ issues. In a message to Nassib and Kumi Yokoyama, a National Women’s Soccer League player who came out as a transgender man, President Biden wrote: “I’m so proud of your courage. Because of you, countless kids around the world are seeing themselves in a new light today.”
Another defensive end, Michael Sam, had blazed a trail by coming out before the 2014 NFL draft. He was subsequently selected in the seventh round by the St. Louis Rams but released before the start of the season and never played a regular season snap in the NFL. Sam then became the first openly gay player in the Canadian Football League when he took the field in August 2015 for the Montreal Alouettes.
Nassib said earlier this summer that he had some trepidation about taking the step of sharing his video last year.
“I stared at the phone for, like, an hour just looking at it, trying to hype myself up,” the 29-year-old Pennsylvania native told “Good Morning America” correspondent Michael Strahan, a former NFL star, in July. “The last thing I said was, ‘You know what — for the kids.’ And I pressed post.”
Nassib added that, having come out to his friends and family years before, he decided to make it public last year to “own the story and make sure I did it on my terms.”
By the time Nassib made those comments last month, he had been released by the Raiders, following a two-year stint that coincided with a turbulent period for Las Vegas. Head coach Jon Gruden stepped down in October 2021 after the revelation of emails he had sent that included racist, misogynistic and homophobic language.
In the wake of the Gruden scandal, Nassib was excused from team activities to take a personal day.
“He just said he’s got a lot to process,” then-general manager Mike Mayock said of Nassib at the time. “There’s a lot that’s been going on the last few days. And, of course, we support that.”
Gruden was replaced on an interim basis by Rich Bisaccia before Josh McDaniels was hired in January to be the team’s new head coach. At the same time, the Raiders brought aboard a new general manager, Dave Ziegler, after they fired Mayock earlier in the month.
Now Nassib is set to reunite with General Manager Jason Licht, who has held that position for the Buccaneers since 2014, and Bowles, who was the team’s defensive coordinator for three years before replacing former head coach Bruce Arians in March.
After starting his NFL journey with the Cleveland Browns, with whom he spent two seasons, Nassib enjoyed some of his most productive moments with the Buccaneers. Of his 22 career sacks, 12.5 came in a Tampa Bay uniform, as did 25 of his 53 quarterback hits.
Bowles praised Nassib on Tuesday as a sturdy run defender who can also be deployed in different ways in the coach’s scheme.
“He’s a very good pass-rusher on the outside, and he can also play inside in some nickel situations,” Bowles told reporters. “He has a lot of versatility, he brings a lot of energy, brings a lot of toughness and he understands the system. He was comfortable in it [in his previous stint].” | 2022-08-17T00:22:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carl Nassib, NFL's first openly gay active player, set to rejoin Buccaneers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/carl-nassib-tampa-bay-buccaneers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/16/carl-nassib-tampa-bay-buccaneers/ |
The former president’s current legal team includes a Florida insurance lawyer who’s never had a federal case, a past general counsel for a parking-garage company and a former host at far-right One America News
Donald Trump departs Trump Tower in New York City on Aug. 10, two days after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
“The Trump team needs a first-rate, highly experienced federal criminal practitioner,” said Jon Sale, a prominent Florida defense attorney who worked on the Watergate prosecution team and said he turned down representing Trump last week because he did not have enough time to devote to the case. “You have to evaluate whether you want to take it. It’s not like a DUI. It’s representing the former president of the United States — and maybe the next one — in what’s one of the highest-visibility cases ever.”
Others on the team have relatively more experience with federal criminal probes. James Trusty formerly served in the Justice Department’s criminal division and headed the organized crime and gang section. He has recently represented clients accused of financial fraud, defrauding the U.S. Department of Agriculture and trading in counterfeit military uniforms. He referred questions to Trump’s spokesman.
Evan Corcoran is a former federal prosecutor viewed by Trump aides as a serious and experienced attorney. His recent clients include a former Capitol Police officer accused of obstructing the Jan. 6 investigation by telling a riot suspect to remove Facebook posts, and a Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to participating in the riot and was sentenced to 60 days in prison. Corcoran also represented former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon in his contempt trial for defying a House subpoena in the Jan. 6 probe. Bannon was convicted in July.
Two longtime Trump top legal advisers during the Mueller investigation, Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin, are still close to the former president but not involved in his current legal team. Among other alumni of the defense to the Mueller investigation, Ty Cobb has become publicly critical of Trump, and former White House counsel Donald McGahn is no longer close with the former president. McGahn represented Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who is fighting a subpoena in a separate investigation into Trump and his allies in Georgia. Another former Trump lawyer, Emmet Flood, is now representing Marc Short, adviser to former vice president Mark Pence. | 2022-08-17T00:57:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump is rushing to hire seasoned lawyers — but he keeps hearing ‘No’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/trump-lawyers-fbi-raid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/trump-lawyers-fbi-raid/ |
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) confounds us all. That alone is a win. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When you study the speaking style of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — the unwavering tone of voice even as she’s delivering dire warnings about the precariousness of American democracy, the slight forward tilt of her head as she fixes a listener with her gaze, the unhurried cadence in her admonishment of election deniers, even the set of her jaw — it’s impossible not to see her father Dick Cheney. The former vice president’s mannerisms and style are forever present in his daughter.
On Tuesday, she went to her polling place in Jackson Hole, Wyo., with her father, he a stooped man in a blue oxford shirt with a breast-pocket full of pens, she an unbowed legislator in her blue checked shirt, dungarees and espadrilles. She was dressed in a manner that signifies regular folk, but of course, there’s nothing common about being part of a political dynasty. And there’s nothing average about Jackson Hole, which is in Teton County, which has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the country. She is exceptional and privileged. But she is a politician, too. Cheney stood in line along with other voters. She chatted and smiled. She faced the cameras and the microphones.
She infuriated the new Republican Party, the one that has pledged its allegiance to former president Donald Trump, traffics in election lies and is laying waste to democratic traditions. As the vice-chair of the Jan. 6 committee, one of only two Republicans on the panel, she has confronted Trump’s allies with facts and for that she has paid a tremendous political price, forced to wander in the political wilderness where she was befriended by Democrats aghast at right wing lies while also aghast at their sudden admiration for Cheney.
She ran for reelection in her state’s primary fully realizing that she was likely to lose and winning isn’t everything. That surely counts as a personal victory.
The harrowing aftermath of counting votes
Cheney defies the cliches so often attached to women in circumstances of stress or pressure. It is the men in her party, her combatants, who give in to hysteria and hyperventilation. They are the ones who see offense at every turn, who swoon when they are challenged, who cannot stand the heat. It’s the former president who issues statements on social media and through email blasts that are mostly exclamation points periodically interrupted with all-caps bleats of oppression. Cheney is not a public complainer about her political fate.
When she is on the job and in her Washington wardrobe, it’s the usual unremarkable blazers and dresses. They are as standard as a traditional man’s suit in shades of gray or navy. They don’t speak to her distinct personality as much as they help to enshrine a different aesthetic code into the culture when the subject turns to courage, patriotism and defiance. Those ideals aren’t defined solely by a uniform full of ribbons, a baseball hat-wearing worker waving a flag or a kid in a costume. They are also symbolized by a lady in a jewel-tone sheath.
Cheney has favored shades of blue during the Jan. 6 hearings. She’s worn black. And white, too. And it’s possible to take those colors as representative of a multitude of notions: bipartisanship, sobriety, women’s self-determination. Perhaps that is how some would like to see it: Her wardrobe is just another way to rile an already outraged Republican Party. But Cheney is not leading the charge on policy compromises with Democrats. She’s not in mourning for America; she’s trying to get the patient to take its wounds seriously. And when it comes to abortion, she’s fine giving states’ rights precedence over the bodily autonomy of women.
Cheney has staked out political ground that is neither bipartisan nor independent. She is admirable and maddening. She is confounding. And that is respectable and rare kind of victory. | 2022-08-17T01:10:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The winning defiance of Liz Cheney - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/winning-defiance-liz-cheney/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/winning-defiance-liz-cheney/ |
The affidavit has emerged as the latest flashpoint in the ongoing criminal probe involving classified materials at Mar-a-Lago
Former president Donald Trump departs Trump Tower in New York last week after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
Former president Donald Trump has called on a judge to unseal the affidavit central to last week’s FBI search of his Florida home, believing that any information made public about the investigation into his handling of classified material will electrify his supporters and benefit him politically, according to people he has conferred with in recent days.
Some within Trump’s circle believe that releasing the document would give him additional ammunition to attack the integrity of the Justice Department’s inquiry. Yet others fear that such a move could backfire because they do not know exactly what it contains, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their private conversations with the former president.
The affidavit, which likely contains witness names and other sensitive details about federal law enforcement’s methods and evidence, has emerged as the latest flash point in the ongoing criminal probe stemming from Trump’s dispute with the National Archives over materials taken from the White House when his term ended last year.
Following the FBI’s Aug. 8 search at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., multiple media outlets, including The Washington Post, asked a federal court there to release the affidavit. In arguing for the document’s disclosure, attorneys for the news organizations have cited the “historic importance of these events.”
The Justice Department this week filed a motion to keep the document under seal. The affidavit, officials argued, pertains to “highly classified information.” Releasing it, they contend, could hamper the ongoing investigation, put the safety of named witnesses at risk and require so many redactions that it would not enhance the public’s understanding of the investigation.
Then there’s Trump, who harbors deep animosity for both institutions. Late Monday, in a post on the social media site he started, Truth Social, the former president said that “in the interest of TRANSPARENCY,” the affidavit should be released without redactions.
A former senior Justice Department official who has closely watched the case unfold cast doubt on there being anything “good” for the former president in the affidavit.
“It’s an advocacy document,” this person said. While “everything needs to be true, there’s no exculpatory information. It’s never a good story for the defendant.”
Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart has called a hearing for Thursday afternoon. Trump’s legal team has until Thursday morning to file a motion with the court if the former president intends to make a formal appeal for its release. His attorneys had not done so as of Tuesday evening.
Trump remains at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, huddling with a coterie of aides. Much of his legal team is not there, as the former president and his advisers seek to bring on new lawyers who have worked high-profile cases involving the Justice Department and posses experience arguing cases in Florida, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump’s lawyers, these people added, have not received a full briefing on precisely what was taken from Mar-a-Lago, complicating discussions about the affidavit.
Additionally, there is some confusion within Trump’s orbit about how much legal trouble he or others close to him could face, people familiar with the matter said. Many of his close advisers have said they do not know exactly what classified documents were stored in boxes at Mar-a-Lago while others encouraged him last year to return materials taken from the White House, people familiar with the matter said.
And surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago that was captured over 60 days and subpoenaed by the Justice Department shows people going in and out of the storage area where the classified documents were kept, said a person with knowledge of the footage.
A spokesman for the former president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The intense public and political intrigue surrounding the affidavit has amplified the pressure facing Attorney General Merrick Garland as the federal investigation continues, observers say. There may be an insatiable desire for more information, but the Justice Department “cannot care that much about it,” said Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for the agency.
“The Justice Department is one of the few agencies that says transparency for the sake of transparency doesn’t always make sense — particularly in an ongoing situation,” he said. “They just have to do their work and if they take a hit for not telling the public something, they have to take a hit.”
Other legal experts said the Justice Department’s reticence to publicize the document is in line with how the agency typically conducts investigations. And they noted that Garland — who makes relatively few public appearances — already has said more about this investigation than he does about most.
Last week, Garland made an unusual public statement at the Justice Department, announcing that he personally authorized the decision to seek court permission for a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago. He also called on a judge to release the search warrant and an inventory detailing the 11 sets of classified documents that agents retrieved, but not the affidavit.
Those documents indicated that agents who went to Mar-a-Lago were seeking evidence of potential violations of federal statutes, including a section of the Espionage Act that makes it a crime to possess or share national defense secrets without authorization.
“Merrick Garland has already spent a few more minutes talking about this in public than he normally would,” said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and former deputy assistant attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. “The tradition in the department is keeping the investigation and sources confidential. The thing that makes this stand out is that this is the first time they have searched a former president’s home like this.” | 2022-08-17T01:10:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump wants Mar-a-Lago affidavit released, as some aides ponder risk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/16/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit/ |
Rep. TJ Cox (D-Calif.) speaks at a 2019 news conference in Washington. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
A former congressman from California has been indicted on 28 charges, including 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of campaign contribution fraud, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
The FBI arrested TJ Cox on Tuesday morning, according to records from the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office. Cox, a Democrat, represented California’s 21st District from 2019 to 2021.
The charges in the unsealed 28-count indictment also include 11 counts of money laundering and one count of financial institution fraud.
The indictment, filed Aug. 4, says Cox schemed to fund and reimburse people close to him for donations to his campaign, according to the Justice Department statement. Federal laws do not allow “conduit” or “straw” donations, in which someone makes a political contribution through someone else to their own campaign.
Between 2013 and 2018, the Justice Department said, Cox diverted $1.7 million from companies he was affiliated with and their clients into unauthorized bank accounts he created. If convicted of wire fraud and money laundering, Cox could face 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Mark Coleman, who is representing Cox, told The Washington Post that his client pleaded not guilty on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. Authorities released him from custody, and his next hearing is set for Oct. 12.
Coleman added that Cox plans to “mount a rigorous defense.”
The 28-count indictment alleges that Cox received mortgage loan money after submitting fabricated bank statements to a lender. Though he allegedly told the lender that the property would be his primary residence, Cox bought it and rented it to someone else, the Justice Department said.
This isn’t the first time Cox’s residence has been under scrutiny.
In 2018, when he was running in a close race against Rep. David G. Valadao (R), Cox had claimed two houses as his primary residence — one in Bethesda, Md., and another in Fresno, Calif. — while federal tax laws only allow a person to claim one.
At the time, Cox’s staff said it was an “honest mistake.”
Cox ran against Valadao once more in 2020 and lost by a narrow margin. This year, he opted not to run, instead endorsing Rudy Salas (D).
Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this report. | 2022-08-17T01:10:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former California congressman charged with multiple counts of fraud - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/california-congressman-fraud-charges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/california-congressman-fraud-charges/ |
She was the only one to survive a lightning strike. She wonders why.
Amber Escudero-Kontostathis was among four people hospitalized after a lightning strike in Lafayette Square this month. The other three died.
Amber Escudero-Kontostathis. (Family photo)
When Amber Escudero-Kontostathis regained consciousness days after she was struck by lightning, she had a bad feeling that there were other victims.
So the 28-year-old grabbed the iPad beside her hospital bed and typed “Lightning Strike D.C.” into a Google search. She saw headlines that three people had died, and one person had survived during a storm near the White House. But it wasn’t until she saw two familiar faces in pictures that she grew distressed.
“I just remember reading an article and being like, ‘There is no way,’ ” she said in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post. “But then I looked at photos of the older couple.”
Escudero-Kontostathis approached them as part of her work with the International Rescue Committee, canvassing the area for donations to help refugees in Ukraine. They bonded over the Muellers’ home state of Wisconsin, where Escudero-Kontostathis had recently traveled for a family reunion, and the joys of visiting the Green Bay Packers stadium, Escudero-Kontostathis recalled.
She recommended that they check out the National Museum of African American History and Culture and Planet World while in D.C.
In the days since lightning struck at Lafayette Square, Escudero-Kontostathis has learned to live with second-degree burns down her left side that feel like “ten thousand grains of sand are trying to get through each pore at the same time.” But the guilt of surviving the lightning strike that killed the Muellers and Lambertson haunts her.
Escudero-Kontostathis said she cannot remember the minutes before the strike, but she worries she motioned for the Muellers to join her under a tree to seek shelter from the rain.
“My biggest fear is that I called back out to them,” she said. “I couldn’t live with myself if that’s the case. It’s my biggest fear, that it’s because I wanted to say ‘Hi’ one more time before they left.”
“I have this guilt of, ‘Why did I make it?’ ” she said. “I try to calm myself with gratitude of, ‘Well, I did, so I’m not going to waste it.’ ”
The four victims of the lightning strike were brought together by happenstance — three out-of-towners and Escudero-Kontostathis, standing together not far from the president’s home.
It was Escudero-Kontostathis’s 28th birthday, and it was nearing time for her birthday dinner at the Hamilton when the storm rolled in.
Before 6 p.m. that day, she declined a call from her sister-in-law and nieces who wanted to wish her a happy birthday.
“At work Rn @thewhitehouse ! Dinnertonight tho!” she wrote from her Apple Watch.
“Went from feeling like 105° all day (literally based on my weather app) and now here comes thunder,” she texted her sister-in-law, adding a laugh-crying emoji.
“It shook the whole area,” an eyewitness told The Washington Post. “Literally like a bomb went off, that’s how it sounded.”
All four were taken to a hospital. Authorities soon revealed the Muellers had been killed. So, too, had Lambertson, whose dad described him as “probably the best human being I know.”
Escudero-Kontostathis’s heart also stopped, with her husband 12 minutes away from picking her up for dinner. But two nurses visiting the White House on vacation rushed to help. They performed CPR on all four victims, alongside law enforcement.
She wore those same platform shoes back to Lafayette Square on Monday, when “Good Morning America” filmed her reuniting with the nurses whom she credits with saving her life.
“Hi, I’m Jessee, can I give you a hug?” said Bonty, who two weeks ago had felt Escudero-Kontostathis’s hand grip hers before losing its pulse on two separate occasions.
“Hi, I’m Amber. Yes please,” Escudero-Kontostathis replied, before wrapping her bandaged arms around the woman who saved her.
“We’re literally besties now,” she said. “They will be in my life forever.”
William Wan contributed to this report. | 2022-08-17T01:53:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lafayette Square lightning strike survivor shares her story - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/lafayette-square-lightning-survivor-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/16/lafayette-square-lightning-survivor-interview/ |
Offerings sit at a mural of slain Army Spec. Vanessa Guillen in Fort Worth in 2020. Guillen, who was serving at nearby Fort Hood, was killed by a fellow soldier. (LM Otero/AP)
The family of Spec. Vanessa Guillén, the Fort Hood soldier who was sexually harassed, killed and dismembered while she served at the Texas base, is suing the Army over “the nightmare she had to endure while serving,” her lawyer says.
According to a complaint filed Friday, Guillén’s family is seeking $35 million from the Department of the Army after she “suffered mental anguish, fear, emotional distress, physical injury, and death as a result of sexual harassment, rape, sodomy and physical assault” between Oct. 1, 2019, and April 22, 2020. The family is seeking $10 million for wrongful death and $25 million for personal injury claims two years after Guillén, 20, was killed by a fellow soldier, a death that helped press the Army to investigate how it handles missing members.
The Defense Department said in a statement Tuesday that “as a matter of policy the Department does not comment on pending litigation.”
Guillén’s death ignited a slew of disciplinary actions and waves of protests calling for change in how the military handles claims of sexual assault. More than 20 soldiers, including a general and other officers, were punished, and some were suspended.
Army fires, suspends leaders after systemic failures at Fort Hood, officials say
That court got it right, Natalie Khawam, the attorney for the Guillén family who filed last week’s lawsuit, told The Washington Post.
“The Department of Defense has wrongfully applied Feres for years,” she said. “Any victim that has experienced sexual assault can now proceed with a case.”
In a statement attached to the lawsuit, Guillén’s sister Mayra Guillén said she started noticing differences in her younger sister’s behavior in January 2020.
Among the allegations in Mayra Guillén’s statement was that her sister’s superior had solicited her for sex in September 2019. Another soldier reported Guillén’s alleged harassment, leading to the retaliation she feared and prompting her suicidal ideation.
“The ARMY must be held accountable for their wrongdoings, the way they handled their investigations early on, the way that Vanessa was treated, the nightmare she had to endure while serving and only trying to serve her country and her family,” Mayra Guillén wrote. “Vanessa did not deserve to be sexually assaulted, to be murdered, to be cut up into pieces, to be burned, to be buried into cement.”
A 2021 Army report, and a complementary civilian review in December 2020, found a permissive environment for sexual assault and harassment throughout the installation and within Guillén’s unit, the 3rd Cavalry Regiment.
For nearly a year, Army officials have said they had no evidence that Guillén faced sexual harassment, often denying the family’s specific allegations that Robinson had harassed her and refusing to address whether there were other potential abusers.
The report described two incidents in 2019 that disturbed Guillén, who didn’t officially report them because she feared retaliation. In one incident, a supervisor who was consistently hostile toward her made sexual remarks to her in Spanish.
Guillén’s death and the attention it brought helped transform the way the Army considers and looks for missing soldiers. She was declared absent without leave, or AWOL, until the day her remains were discovered despite it being clear that her disappearance was not voluntary, the report said. The designation was a matter of policy and didn’t affect the search effort, which the Army concluded was conducted well. The Army’s failure to detain Robinson helped him escape confinement and take his own life, and Guillén’s sister criticized its handling of the case.
‘A lack of responsibility’: How Vanessa Guillén’s killer fled a guard before taking his own life
The lawsuit, Khawam said, aims to help Guillén’s family deal with the pain of their loss, though the anguish that’s followed will never bring back what they want most — Guillén.
“DOD never had that accountability,” she said of the recent court ruling and the lawsuit. “I believe the accountability we’re going to see is a lot of progression of law being put in place but also enforced.” | 2022-08-17T02:24:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Spc. Vanessa Guillen's family sues Army over her death at Fort Hood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/fort-hood-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/16/fort-hood-lawsuit/ |
The Rev. J. Deotis Roberts in 2007 at his home in Bowie, Md. (Charmaine Roberts Parker)
The night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, the Rev. J. Deotis Roberts was attending a conference at Duke University, listening to German theologian Jürgen Moltmann present a paper on the theology of hope. Dr. Roberts, a soft-spoken Baptist minister and theology professor at Howard University in Washington, had spent years wrestling with philosophical questions about God, existence and meaning. Now he began to wonder what Moltmann’s theology — what any theology — had to say to “a hopeless people” living in an age of anger and despair.
“It was then,” Dr. Roberts later wrote in an essay, “that the seed of ‘black theology’ began to germinate in my own mind.”
Dr. Roberts went on to help pioneer Black theology, a new perspective on Christianity that evolved in response to the revolutionary spirit of the Black Power movement, with a focus on issues of racial justice and liberation. “I am pleading for a theology of the Black experience which grows out of the soil of our heritage and life,” he wrote in a 1976 article for the Journal of Religious Thought, outlining his vision. “For us faith and ethics must be wed. There can be no separation of the secular and the sacred. Jesus means freedom.”
A first-generation Black theologian, Dr. Roberts rose from an upbringing in the segregated South, where the county prison was within sight of his elementary school, to become the first African American to earn a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh’s divinity school in Scotland. His work emphasized both liberation and reconciliation, drawing from King’s emphasis on nonviolence as well as Malcolm X’s message of Black self-determination. As he saw it, the church had an obligation to address social issues and engage with the daily struggles of marginalized people, including African Americans.
Over the decades, Dr. Roberts’s work became “a touchstone” for generations of Black theologians, according to his former student David Emmanuel Goatley, director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Dr. Roberts was 95 when he died July 22 at his home in Clinton, Md. His daughter Charmaine Roberts Parker confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.
For years, Dr. Roberts was engaged in an intellectual dialogue with the Rev. James H. Cone, who effectively launched Black theology as a formal discipline with his 1969 book “Black Theology & Black Power.” While Cone emphasized the need for liberation, Dr. Roberts insisted that reconciliation was just as important. “He did not want to support any notion of freedom, of liberation, that would in any way create separation,” said the Very Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, dean of Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
Dr. Roberts liked to say that he lived “with one foot in the academy and one foot in the church,” and preached and taught at churches while spending much of his academic career at historically Black institutions. He taught at Howard’s divinity school for 22 years before leaving in 1980 to become president of the Interdenominational Theological Center, a consortium of seminaries in Atlanta. He was later a distinguished professor of philosophical theology at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in the Philadelphia suburbs, and in 1992 he was elected the first Black president of the American Theological Society, one of the field’s oldest professional associations.
He felt an obligation, he said, to help “overcome the cancer of racism” afflicting seminaries and other religious institutions, in part by bringing more people of color — and more women — into leadership positions. For many years he also taught alongside Latin American theologians at a seminary in Buenos Aires and collaborated with scholars from around the world, focusing in particular on Black theology’s African spiritual heritage.
Dr. Roberts earned a master of sacred theology degree in 1952 from Hartford Seminary (now Hartford International University for Religion and Peace) and received his doctorate in philosophical theology five years later. In part, said Goatley, he completed his education in Scotland because of racial barriers at American divinity schools: “There were exceedingly few opportunities in the United States for an African American to be able to pursue a PhD in theology or philosophy.”
The year after he got his doctorate, Dr. Roberts joined the Howard University faculty. He took a leave of absence in the mid-1970s to serve as dean of the theology school at Virginia Union University in Richmond, and taught at Eastern Baptist from 1984 until 1998, commuting to the campus in Wynnewood, Pa., from his home in Silver Spring, Md. Later he taught for three years at Duke.
Dr. Roberts published more than a dozen books, including the essay collection “Quest for a Black Theology” (1971), which he edited with James J. Gardner; “A Black Political Theology” (1974); and “Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking Truth to Power” (2005), which explored the theological perspectives of King and German minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
After he started writing about Black theology, Dr. Roberts appeared at conferences and church gatherings to discuss his views, including at a 1989 conference in New York City where speakers noted some of the problems facing Black Americans, including poverty and violence. | 2022-08-17T02:41:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | J. Deotis Roberts, a pioneer of Black theology, dies at 95 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/16/black-theology-deotis-roberts-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/16/black-theology-deotis-roberts-dead/ |
Swizz Beatz, Timbaland sue Triller for $28 million in missing acquisition payments
Triller bought music series Verzuz for an undisclosed sum in January 2021. Now its creators say they’re still owed money.
Artists Timbaland and Swizz Beatz attend day 1 of REVOLT Summit x AT&T Summit on Sept. 12, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Revolt)
Music artists Swizz Beatz and Timbaland sued Triller Tuesday, alleging the social media platform owes them more than $28 million after acquiring their live-streaming music series Verzuz.
Triller acquired Verzuz, a webcast series pitting musical acts against one another, in January 2021 for an undisclosed sum. “This is a momentous occasion not only for Verzuz and Triller but the music business as a whole,” Swizz Beatz and Timbaland said in a joint statement at the time.
But the lawsuit alleges the company began missing payments in January 2022, skipping out on a large settlement promised in March.
A social media app that looks and functions similarly to TikTok, Triller gained prominence in 2020 when a number of right-wing influencers joined the homegrown app.
The company has previously been accused of nonpayment. Last year, the Triller boasted a new partnership with 300 Black creators, who would receive a collective $14 million along with equity for participating in the deal. Many of those creators, however, allege that the social media company began missing payments almost immediately, according to reporting in The Washington Post. Creators who produced custom shows for Triller TV, the company’s live-streaming service, also told The Post that the brand owed them tens of thousands of dollars.
Triller chief executive Mahi de Silva said in a statement to The Post at the time that the company “has met its financial commitments to the creators in this program and will continue to do so.” Regarding Triller TV, de Silva added “anyone owed has been paid or still has deliverables or brand approvals. The creators said they met all deliverables, and no outside brands were involved in their streams.
Verzuz started out as an Instagram Live series in March 2020, as the pandemic took hold in America driving people on line. Swizz Beatz and Timbaland challenged famous artists — including Brandy vs Monica, Jeezy vs Gucci Mane, and Ashanti vs Keyshia Cole — to live musical battles on Instagram.
The series quickly became a cultural phenomenon, garnering 6 million views on a single episode, breaking Instagram’s live-streaming record, and winning a Break the internet Webby Award in 2020. In August of that year, Verzuz inked a partnership with Apple and Twitter, to expand its broadcasts outside of Instagram, allowing viewers to watch the battles on Apple Music.
As part of the terms of the deal, Swizz Beatz and Timbaland joined Triller’s management team, distributing a portion of their equity among the 43 performers who had appeared on Verzuz. “Both Triller and Verzuz share the ‘artist first, music first’ vision,” Bobby Sarnevesht, executive chairman and co-owner of Triller, said in an announcement at the time. “We view this acquisition as more of a partnership than an acquisition.”
Since the acquisition, Verzuz has continued to grow its power and influence online, becoming a go-to show for popular music artists to attract attention and generate buzz. Recently, Swizz Beatz and Timbaland announced a partnership with Amazon Studios for a feature-length documentary about Black music, inspired by Verzuz’s origin story. The documentary will use “poignant interviews, gripping vérité and magnetic archival footage,” to detail Black music’s impact on culture, according to Deadline.
But according to the suit, things began to sour in January, when Triller missed a large payment to the Verzuz founders. The company then agreed to a settlement requiring Triller to pay Swizz Beatz and Timbaland $18 million by March 20, with $1 million a month for the 10 months following. According to the lawsuit, Triller has missed every one of these payments. | 2022-08-17T02:42:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Timbaland, Swizz Beatz sue Triller over $28 million in missing payments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/16/timbaland-triller-verzuz-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/16/timbaland-triller-verzuz-lawsuit/ |
A campaign sign for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) along a road in Cheyenne on Aug. 16. (David Williams/Bloomberg News)
Ten days ago, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) was already almost certainly going to lose her reelection bid. There wasn’t a lot of polling in the race, but what there was showed Cheney down by more than 20 points — the sort of margin that disinclines pollsters from spending their money conducting more polls. Cheney’s once-defiant rhetoric about the contest had become tinged with resignation.
The contest was not between Cheney and Harriet Hageman, declared the winner on Tuesday night of the Republican nomination for the state’s sole House seat. It was, instead, between Liz Cheney and Donald Trump, and Trump had the upper hand. Cheney’s earnest effort to draw a line between her Republican Party and Trump’s, a line running directly through the Capitol riot, showed that her Republican Party simply didn’t have very many members. Maybe in the suburbs of Virginia, but certainly not in Wyoming.
Then the one thing happened that could have made Cheney’s position worse: The search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club gave the GOP a new reason to rally to Trump’s defense.
Again, Cheney was going to lose anyway. Republican primary voters preferred Hageman/Trump and even if every Democrat and nonpartisan voter had registered with the GOP to aid Cheney (as some did), the number of existing Republicans still outnumbered them. To the extent that Cheney had any hope, though, it depended on something like Trump-loyal Republicans being indifferent and her base being energized.
I can’t say with certainty that this didn’t happen, in much the same sense that I can’t say with certainty that a lamppost won’t suddenly start shouting basketball scores. What I can say is that there was little reason to think this was likely before even consistently Trump-skeptical portions of the Republican Party suddenly picked him over the integrity of federal law enforcement. Cheney’s uphill fight had moved from Devils Tower to Mt. Everest.
Lots of things can be identified as the starting point for the road that led to Cheney’s defeat on Tuesday night. I’d offer this one, a news conference from late February 2021 on the eve of Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was asked if Trump should speak and quickly supported the idea. The period of less than a week during which McCarthy had expressed concern about Trump’s actions surrounding the Capitol riot was no longer even visible in his rearview mirror. It was ancient history — a lost, forgotten civilization.
Then the reporter asked Cheney.
As McCarthy awkward fiddled with paper at the microphone, Cheney was blunt: Trump should not play a role in the future of the party.
“On that high note,” McCarthy concluded, “thank you very much.” With unintentional symbolism, he departed in one direction. Cheney left in another.
Over the next 18 months, McCarthy — the embodiment of the establishment’s friendliness to Trump — and Cheney dug into their positions. Cheney backed the creation of a select committee to probe the riot and was named its vice chair. Not through McCarthy’s doing, mind you. He opposed the committee and refused to appoint any Republicans to participate. In addition to exploring how Trump attempted to retain power after his 2020 loss, Cheney made obvious that one of her desired outcomes was to put obstacles between Trump and any return to the White House. (She said so explicitly in her concession speech.) Most Republicans — even ones who hoped they themselves might defeat Trump in the 2024 primary — either supported Trump over the committee or kept their thoughts to themselves.
Despite the strength of his political position, the former president decided to salt the earth. He raged against Cheney and the committee at every possible opportunity. He endorsed Hageman nearly a year ago and has disparaged Cheney any number of times since. It wasn’t just that he wanted to beat Cheney for voting to impeach him on Jan. 13, 2021. He wanted to destroy her career, to have the moment he’ll have on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning in which he loudly proclaims his victory. (Update: It came Tuesday night.) He wanted a proverbial head on a pike to plant outside the gates of Mar-a-Lago as a warning to anyone else.
Again: He was going to get that victory no matter what. But then the search happened.
Former vice president Mike Pence fell in line with Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) fell in line. Even blue-state Gov. Larry Hogan (R) of Maryland offered a Trump-sympathetic take. Conservative commentators who had been critical of Trump to some extent suddenly found themselves opining about the dangerous precedent of a “raid” on a former president. There had been some small pocket of air for Republicans who didn’t want to actively side with Trump — and then it appeared to be used up.
Two weeks ago, the story of the night might have been about how Cheney’s loss reveals the strength of Trump’s grip on the party. That, despite rumblings, it was his to do with as he pleased. But we don’t need to reinforce that lesson now. Cheney’s loss isn’t a rupture — it’s an aftershock.
In some other dimension, the revelation that Trump was hoarding documents at Mar-a-Lago would have inspired new caution within his party about his leadership. But if that was the dimension in which Cheney was running for reelection, it would have been Kevin McCarthy, not her, who rebuked Trump at the microphone in February 2021. | 2022-08-17T03:12:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Cheney’s loss is suddenly an afterthought in the GOP embrace of Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/liz-cheneys-loss-is-suddenly-an-afterthought-gop-embrace-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/16/liz-cheneys-loss-is-suddenly-an-afterthought-gop-embrace-trump/ |
He explored God and faith in nearly 40 works of fiction, nonfiction and memoir, earning comparisons to C.S. Lewis
Frederick Buechner in Rupert, Vt., in 1977. (Alan Fortney)
Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian minister who found his flock not in a church but among the readers of his books, dozens of works of fiction, nonfiction, memoir and theology in which he sought to capture “the elusive presence of the holiness of God,” died Aug. 15 at his home in Rupert, Vt. He was 96.
Mr. Buechner (pronounced BEEK-ner) was the author of nearly 40 books translated into more than two dozen languages. A master of many genres, he produced a small library of volumes that included funny novels about characters who are saintly, sinful or both, historical fiction drawn from the lives of actual Catholic saints, and more directly theological writings that earned him comparisons to C.S. Lewis, the British author of the allegorical “Chronicles of Narnia” series.
Mr. Buechner expounded on his vision of Christian theology in his widely acclaimed memoirs, including “The Sacred Journey” (1982), “Now and Then” (1983), “Telling Secrets” (1991) and “The Eyes of the Heart” (1999). He candidly addressed the defining elements of his life, including the suicide of his father when Mr. Buechner was 10 and the comforting presence of his grandmother, seeking spiritual meaning in his experiences in an effort to help readers find purpose in their own.
“What I propose to do now is to try listening to my life as a whole … for whatever of meaning, of holiness, of God, there may be in it to hear,” Mr. Buechner told the New York Times in 1982. “My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.”
Mr. Buechner’s autobiographical works, Martin added, “can take their place among other great spiritual memoirs,” among them Lewis’s “Surprised by Joy,” Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Storey Mountain” and Dorothy Day’s “The Long Loneliness.”
In 1967, Mr. Buechner and his family moved to Vermont, where he focused full-time on his writing. He had been married since 1956 to Judith Merck, a daughter of George W. Merck, president and chairman of the pharmaceutical concern Merck & Co.
In addition to “Lion Country,” Mr. Beuchner’s Bebb Tetralogy included “Open Heart” (1972), “Love Feast” (1974) and “Treasure Hunt” (1977). | 2022-08-17T04:13:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Frederick Buechner dies; prolific novelist and theologian was 96 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/17/frederick-buechner-religious-novelist-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/17/frederick-buechner-religious-novelist-dead/ |
The European Union is on pace for a record fire season. Waves of extreme heat, compounded by widespread drought conditions, provoked a summer of devastating blazes. According to the European Forest Fire Information System, about 1.6 million acres of land — equivalent to an area more than eight times the size of New York City — burned across the continent so far this year. That figure is 56 percent higher than a previous record set in 2017 and double the annual average calculated between 2006 and 2021, according to the E.U. agency.
Spain, Romania and Portugal were among the worst hit E.U. countries; thousands of people died amid soaring temperatures. Last week in the southwestern Gironde region of France, home to Bordeaux’s famous vineyards, hundreds of firefighters from across the European Union rushed in to help combat a wildfire sweeping through thousands of hectares of pine woods.
“It’s really a dragon spitting its fire,” a local mayor told my colleagues. “It’s devouring the forest.”
The ongoing drought in many parts of Europe is both a cause and effect of the continent’s extremely hot summer, as my colleagues at The Post’s Capital Weather Gang explained: “The hotter weather dries out the landscape, which dries the atmosphere, in turn making the air easier to heat up. That cycle is extremely difficult to break, particularly when the overarching weather pattern favors ridging, or the establishment of broad high pressure, over Europe. That high pressure ‘heat dome’ deflects inclement weather, including rain, to the north, allowing Europe to bake beneath inescapable sunshine and anomalous warmth.”
Analysts expect these conditions to only worsen in summers to come. A report from the European Commission, the executive wing of the European Union, warned that “climate change is aggravating the situation, making countries more prone to wildfires and increasing the intensity of such events.”
There is a parallel, more immediate crisis also building up in Europe. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a major set of sanctions on Russian exports and forced E.U. governments to push forward plans to wean themselves off Russian gas. But the transformation in European energy consumption won’t come fast enough for this winter, and countries across the continent are bracing for surging heating costs.
“The winter is coming, and we don’t know how cold it will be, but what we know for sure that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will continue to play his dirty games,” Jozef Sikela, the Czech Republic’s minister of industry and trade, said last month following meetings in Brussels.
On Tuesday, Russian state gas company Gazprom warned that European gas prices could rise a further 60 percent to more than $4,000 per 1,000 cubic meters, as it reckons with Western sanctions and diminished exports. The company reduced supplies to only 20 percent of the capacity of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs through the Baltic Sea to terminals in Germany.
Already, the price of gas in Europe is roughly four times what it was last year. Industrial output has been badly affected. E.U. governments have committed to a voluntary 15 percent reductions in their use of natural gas ahead of the winter. Many have mandated a slate of energy-saving measures while also trying to offer subsidies to help defray costs for households.
Local authorities have asked ordinary citizens to do their part — the Dutch, for example, have been urged to limit showers to five minutes and forswear using air conditioning or clothes dryers. Meanwhile, the energy emergency has forced major rethinks in policy, as well. On Tuesday, German officials said they are planning to delay shuttering their nation’s last three remaining nuclear power plants.
The CHART OF THE DAY comes today from Elements, the new Bloomberg energy and commodities newsletter.
Germans are busy searching on Google for firewood !!!
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Where are Russia’s barrels of oil going?
Bracing for winter, no matter the current summer heat, Europeans are also taking a more rustic approach. As Bloomberg News’s Javier Blas noted recently, there’s been a remarkable spike in German Google searches for firewood. That’s hardly an anomaly. In Belgium and the Netherlands, prices for firewood have in some instances doubled. In war-torn Ukraine, municipalities are sawing down trees in preparation for the uncertainty that war and the biting cold may bring.
In Hungary, whose illiberal ruling government bucked the European trend and negotiated an increase in Russian gas imports, authorities have also loosened logging restrictions in a bid to boost firewood stocks. That decision triggered protests in Budapest last week, as thousands marched against measures they viewed as harmful for the environment.
“This is our common future,” a protester named Fanni Fodor told Reuters. “We all feel the effects of the climate change on our skins and cutting down trees will only make it worse.”
Climate change, of course, is not ancillary to the energy crisis gripping Europe. Drought and high temperatures have depleted the continent’s rivers, to costly effect. “The energy crisis is being exacerbated by very low water levels at key waypoints on Europe’s rivers that are making it difficult for diesel, coal and other commodities to be transported through the continent,” reported Bloomberg News. “Utilities could end up using more gas as an alternative.”
Even as the summer reminded many Europeans of the shared dangers posed by climate change, a cold winter and skyrocketing heating bills may provoke new divisions. Governments in the short term are racing toward stocking up on whatever fossil fuels they can, as prices for coal and natural gas surge. Jason Bordoff, an American energy expert and former White House adviser to Barack Obama, told New York Times opinion writer David Wallace-Wells that while European governments prepare for the winter, their energy stores may prove to be insufficient.
“There are going to have to be efforts taken to curb demand as well and to prepare for the possibility of really severe energy rationing this winter,” Bordoff said. “I think now you’re seeing — in terms of the efforts toward efficiency and rationing — some countries are more willing than others. If things become really severe this winter, I fear that you could see European countries start to look out for themselves rather than one another.” | 2022-08-17T04:14:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amid wildfires and heatwaves in Europe, Europeans search for firewood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/firewood-europe-wildfire-winter-energy-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/firewood-europe-wildfire-winter-energy-crisis/ |
Manchester United player Bruno Fernandes reacts during the soccer club's loss to Brentford on August 13. (David Klein/Reuters)
Hours after sending the internet into a frenzy with a tweet suggesting that he was buying Britain’s Manchester United soccer club, Elon Musk issued a clarification: it was all a joke.
“Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome,” the world’s richest man tweeted Tuesday, as a follow-up to a tweet that said he supported “the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party.”
Early Wednesday morning, Musk responded to a query on the social media platform by saying he was referencing a “long-running joke on Twitter,” and that he was “not buying any sports teams.”
Musk has a history of irreverent tweets about business purchases. In April, after the board of Twitter accepted his $44 billion offer to buy the social-media company, he wrote that he was “buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.”
The Tesla CEO’s Twitter proclamations have occasionally landed him in hot water. In 2018, he tweeted that he had “Funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share — a claim later found to be untrue, but only after it had caused the stock price to jump. Musk and Tesla were each fined $20 million, The Washington Post reported, and he also had to step down as Tesla board chairman and agree to have potentially market-moving tweets vetted by an approved securities lawyer.
Manchester United is worth $4.6 billion, according to Forbes, making it one of the sport’s most valuable franchises. The club, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The English Premier League soccer club has won a record 20 titles, and counts among its former players stars such as David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, who have also played in Major League Soccer. But United has endured one of its worst ever starts to a season, sitting bottom of the table after losing its first two matches. Its storied stadium, Old Trafford, is in dire need of refurbishment. And a long-running fan protest against United’s controlling shareholders — the Glazer family, Americans who also own the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers — continues to rumble.
The Glazer family took over United in 2005 through a leveraged buyout, involving borrowings of roughly $1 billion that the club was then forced to repay. By 2018, the takeover had drained the club of more than about $1.2 billion in interest, costs, fees and dividends, the Guardian reported.
The Glazers would need to agree to any potential takeover, as they own a special class of shares that gives them enhanced voting rights. They have not previously indicated a desire to sell the franchise.
In a Twitter thread this week, soccer finance analyst Swiss Ramble pointed out that United has paid roughly $900 million in interest since the buyout, and the club’s interest payments in the past 12 years nearly equaled that of the rest of the Premier League combined. United is also the only Premier League club to pay dividends to its shareholders — chiefly the Glazers — and as of this spring, it was more than $716 million in debt, financial filings show.
While United continues to spend heavily on transfers under the Glazers, fans have long been disgruntled by the sums the family has taken out of the club, and by its lack of sporting success in the past decade. An organized campaign against the owners began in 2010, and that simmering anger boiled over in 2021 when the Glazers revealed plans to join other clubs in a breakaway European Super League. Supporters invaded Old Trafford in protest, causing the postponement of a game against archrivals Liverpool. Plans for the breakaway league have since been shelved.
A fan group is set to stage another protest against the owners when Liverpool visit for a league game Monday. Separately, the Manchester United Supporters Trust, the official supporters’ group, this week likened the Glazers’ ownership to “a fish that rots from the head,” and said it would continue to publicize any “credible, lawful and peaceful protest.”
Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report. | 2022-08-17T05:40:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk says tweet on buying Manchester United was joke - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/elon-musk-buy-manchester-united-stock/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/elon-musk-buy-manchester-united-stock/ |
A dried riverbed is exposed after the water level dropped in the Yangtze River in Yunyang county in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. Unusually high temperatures and a prolonged drought are affecting large swaths of China, reducing crop yields and drinking water supplies. (Chinatopix Via AP) CHINA OUT (Uncredited/CHINATOPIX) | 2022-08-17T05:44:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chinese factories close as drought hurts hydropower - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chinese-factories-close-as-drought-hurts-hydropower/2022/08/17/bae41cd8-1deb-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chinese-factories-close-as-drought-hurts-hydropower/2022/08/17/bae41cd8-1deb-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Value, Interest Rates, and Durable Unicorns
But it hasn’t always been this way, and Cliff Asness, the legendary founder of AQR Capital Management, has just published a paper designed to show that the recent correlation is a coincidence, or at best a phenomenon that will soon pass. Over a much longer time scale, this is how the “value” factor as defined by the finance professors Eugene Fama and Kenneth French has correlated over the last 90 years with the 10-year Treasury yield:
The correlation is very variable, and never particularly strong. However, it’s true to say that it appears to have been greatest, and most consistent, in the last decade or so. Treating value as a rates phenomenon is at least a reasonable response to the events of the last few years. The pattern shows up again if we look at the data in a scatter plot. There is a much stronger correlation over the last decade than over the years before, although the fit is still not that strong:
Asness balances the arguments as follows:
Basically, there’s grist for both sides’ mills here. Long-term there is very little evidence that the return of the value factor is anything other than trivially correlated to changes in interest rates. But, in more recent times, the correlation has been strong and in the direction hypothesized: When rates go up, value tends to do better and vice versa. Now we have to ask whether this correlation makes sense.
Well, in a word, no.
The argument for the link is that growth stocks’ value is piled up in cash flows a long way into the future, and thus they are a longer “duration” asset. In other words, a rise in interest rates, increasing the rate at which those future cash flows should be discounted, should have a much bigger effect on them than on value stocks. With rates plummeting during Covid, while optimism for internet platform groups intensified, by this logic it was natural that growth stocks’ valuation would surge relative to other companies. But can it be taken as far as the market has taken it?
This is Asness’ estimate of the spread of value stocks’ valuations compared to the rest. The higher the spread, the cheaper value is. Amazingly, value last year was briefly even cheaper than it was at the top of the dot.com bubble (whose bursting prompted a great few years for value). After correcting at the beginning of this year, value stocks are once again as relatively cheap as they were in the insanity of early 2000:
For a cruder illustration of the same phenomenon, the following chart shows the spread between the price/book multiple payable on prominent growth indexes, compared to equivalent value indexes. For years this spread steadily widened (meaning growth stocks grew more relatively expensive), and then the premium for growth stocks surged during the pandemic and its aftermath. The snapback that started at the turn of this year made obvious sense — and the rebound for growth in the last few weeks, which started when growth stocks still looked historically expensive, looks bonkers. Or, put more politely, it looks as though the market has provided another good entry point for those who want to buy value:
And yet, big investors don’t see it that way. The latest Bank of America survey of fund managers (of which more below), finds that for the first time since August 2020, a majority think growth will outperform value over the next 12 months.
How can they think this way? Jefferies equity strategist Steven DeSanctis points out that the relative rolling 12-month performance of value has ticked back up to the 87th percentile thanks to its strong performance at the start of the year. That prompts fear of a reversion to the mean, while the recession in housing could have a much bigger impact on value. “The decline and rebound has been more severe than average for growth this time around, while value’s rebound has been in line,” he says. “Investors just don’t want to give up on growth, as flows have picked up for the style while value continues to see outflows.”
Is this well advised? Asness accepts that the perceived correlation is so strong at present that lower rates would likely mean continued dominance for growth:
If something is trading a certain way, then on average it will continue for a while. Thus, while there are no guarantees, I expect this correlation to be around for a bit. But given that it’s likely either random or based on the same bubble reasons driving super wide value spreads, this all means that upcoming rate moves can affect the path of when (assuming I’m right about value spreads and the future!) value wins, but not whether it will win.
Does the hypothesis that value and growth are being driven by rates and duration really justify paying up hugely for growth stocks? Asness argues that it doesn’t, and that the whole idea rests on the notion that all growth stocks are in fact more like unicorns, whose earnings will explode into the future. The following chart is a work of genius:
Asness invokes unicorns, but I might call this the Amazon Fallacy. Amazingly, you could have made plenty of money by buying Amazon.com Inc. shares at the top of the dot.com bubble in 1999 and 2000. Lots of things were to break right for the company over the decades that followed, and it would also grab opportunities then unthought of, such as cloud computing.
But the point of Amazon is that there’s only one of it. Amazon was better run than the many companies that were trying to do much the same thing back in 1999, and went on to make lots of good strategic calls. It became so profitable and dominant because it eradicated the opposition and became a virtual monopoly in many of the things it did. Of its nature, the success of Amazon cannot be replicated by many at any one time. There can only ever be few startups that go on to build a large and well-defended monopoly. Asness’ point is that growth investors are behaving as though all growth stocks can be Amazon, and they can’t.
This is important, because by his math, the argument about duration and interest-rate sensitivity might make a little sense for true unicorns, but not at all for normal growth stocks. It’s worth reading his piece in full, but here is his exposition:
A duration of 10 years means that a 100 basis point fall in rates would, to a linear approximation, lead to a 10% increase in market value. If all three investments are assumed to have equal long-term expected returns... the “duration” of the growth portfolio (blue line) is 0.4 years longer than the duration of the value portfolio. If you think that’s trivial, you are correct.
Meanwhile, the unicorn in his hypothetical example would have a duration 10 years longer. It’s only when a company’s cash flows are tied up in massively higher earnings a very long way into the future that interest rates begin to matter to its current valuation. If investors in 1999 had had an accurate grasp of Amazon’s future cash flows, its share price should have been very sensitive to interest rate changes. But unless the growth stock you hold truly is a unicorn, lower rates really shouldn’t help it much compared to a cheap value stock.
Unfortunately, one of the few things we know for sure is that the great majority of growth stocks aren’t unicorns.
Not Apocalyptically Bearish
How are big investors feeling? They’re still bearish, according to Bank of America Corp.’s latest monthly global fund managers survey, but at least not “apocalyptically bearish” any more. That lack of capitulation in turn means that the current rally can continue; it will only end once all the bears have thrown in the towel.
The turnaround over the month stems from optimism that surging inflation has reached its peak, while global growth and profit expectations have rebounded from the all-time lows they hit in July, according to BofA’s strategists Michael Hartnett and Myung-Jee Jung. The survey, which included 250 participants with $752 billion under management in the week through Aug. 11, revealed that those overweighting equities and those expecting a stronger economy had both risen slightly from historically depressed levels:
The bank’s custom bull & bear indicator remains “max bearish,” which means its strategists see no immediate reversal of the bear market rally. “But we remain patient bears,” they said, adding that they would begin to exit the benchmark S&P 500 once it exceeded 4,328 (it closed Tuesday at 4,305), as “rates up-profits down” continues to be their base case.
To support BofA’s patient bearishness, a growing number of fund managers think the global economy will experience a recession in the next 12 months (58% from 47%, highest since May 2020 during the first Covid shutdown) and those who think inflation levels will decrease in the next year (highest since Global Financial Crisis).
US stocks have rallied since their June low, a point many perceived as the market bottom, buoyed by better-than-expected second-quarter corporate earnings and hopes that inflation in the US is finally cooling. That raises the hope that the Federal Reserve can reduce the pace of its interest-rate hikes enough to avoid a hard landing. JPMorgan strategists led by Marko Kolanovic, who has been stridently bullish of late, expect global inflation to slide to 4.7% in the second half of the year, half its current pace:
“Signs that a peak in inflation is behind are growing, which reinforces the idea that Fed hawkishness is likely behind and a soft landing is increasingly likely. The prospect of a recession in Europe is still very much alive, but this should be manageable so long as the US and China are still growing.”
It follows from this that the persistently high inflation would be the biggest “tail risk” confronting bonds and equities. And indeed, the BofA survey shows that stubborn inflation is now seen as more dangerous than a global recession, and remarkably, far greater than the war in Ukraine:
The survey revealed continuing caution as exposure to cash fell but remained well above the long-term average. But long cash also ranked third in investors’ nominations for the most crowded trade. Despite their recent pullbacks, the dollar and oil are seen as even more crowded.
Relative to the past 10 years, investors remain very overweight in cash and underweight in equities — particularly in the eurozone and emerging markets:
China’s real estate market is seen as the most likely catalyst of a systemic credit event, followed by Italian sovereign debt and US leveraged loans. Returning to tail risks, the following chart shows the full history of the survey dating back to 2011. The dominant themes are made clear by the color coding. One overriding lesson is that investors have a short attention span. The heightened tension between the US and North Korea in 2017 and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 both ranked as the greatest tail risk for only one month. Neither has been resolved, but for some reason they seem no longer to worry investors:
The purple streak, which reflects concerns of hawkish central banks worldwide, has been going on for more than a year. For all that stocks are rallying, investors are still worried about excessive zeal from central banks. And they should be.
Sentiment is in a strange place. In the short term, people are still too worried about inflation to flush out all the bears and bring the current rally to an end. But in the longer run, they’re right to be worried about price rises; there really is a big risk still that inflation doesn’t fall as hoped and central banks have to force a recession. The clearest conclusion is that equity prices are still very vulnerable to any nasty surprise on inflation.
—Assistance from Isabelle Lee
I’ve been sent some more examples of sportsmanship, and they’re inspiring. First, watch this clip from a girls’ softball game between teams from Washington and Oregon in 2008. The hitter whacks her first ever (and only) home run, but then damages a ligament rounding first base. If she doesn’t round all the bases it won’t be a home run, and no member of her own team is allowed by the rules to help her. So two members of the opposing team pick her up, and take her for a trip around the bases. Then there are times when fierce competitors can agree to share. The first London Marathon, in 1981, had two winners who crossed the finish line holding hands; and last year two high-jumpers agreed to share the Olympic gold medal. In cricket, in the Centenary Test between England and Australia in 1977, the great Aussie wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh called the English batsman Derek Randall back after he had been declared out by the umpire. Marsh knew he hadn’t made the catch — and Australia won anyway. Fast forward to 2005, and Australia oh-so-nearly triumphed over England only to lose by two runs; and the first reaction of England’s hero Andrew Flintoff was to console the Australian Brett Lee who had come so close. And it would be hard to beat the handshake at this year’s Tour de France between Tadej Pogacar, the two-time defending champion, and the yellow jersey and eventual winner, Jonas Vingegaard, who slowed and waited for Pogacar to recover from a fall, leaving himself open to a challenge from the only man who could beat him. Pogacar refused to press him for the rest of the day.
And for sportsmanship where these days it is all too rare, it can even happen in soccer. This is a compilation of players deliberately missing penalty kicks which they knew they shouldn’t have been given, along with a few strikers telling a referee not to award a penalty because they hadn’t been fouled. It would be nice if such things happened more often. They’re good for the soul.Like Bloomberg’s Points of Return? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.
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(Updates with Tour de France link. An earlier version corrected the winner’s name toVingegaard.) | 2022-08-17T05:44:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where the Amazon Fallacy Runs Into the Growth Rebound - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/where-the-amazon-fallacy-runs-into-the-growth-rebound/2022/08/17/f5d95642-1dea-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/where-the-amazon-fallacy-runs-into-the-growth-rebound/2022/08/17/f5d95642-1dea-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Analysis by Mike Cohen | Bloomberg
A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in East Africa, which is in the grip of its worst drought in at least four decades. More than 80 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Djibouti are food insecure, and almost half of them are having to sell their possessions in order to eat, according to the World Health Organization. With forecasters seeing a high risk of rains failing for a fifth consecutive season and aid flows falling short of what’s needed, the region is at risk of a famine that’s on a par with -- or even worse than -- one that Ethiopia experienced in the 1980s and claimed an estimated 1 million lives.
1. How dire is the current situation?
Malnourishment is already widespread, especially among children, millions of whom need treatment. Millions of head of livestock have died, vast swathes of croplands have been decimated, and rural communities have been torn apart as families migrate in search of food and grazing. Many parents can’t afford to keep their children in school, drop-out rates have soared and there are reports of girls as young as nine being married off for dowry payments or to ease economic pressure on households. While Europe, parts of the US and other regions are also experiencing severe droughts, they are better equipped to deal with the fallout than cash-strapped African nations.
2. What’s the backdrop?
Climate change has resulted in extreme weather patterns, and nations across Africa have increasingly been contending with drought and flash floods. The coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have compounded the continent’s woes, making it more expensive and difficult to obtain supplies of food, fuel and fertilizer. Food prices have since eased, but relief has yet to filter through to most consumers. Hunger is especially pervasive in the Horn of Africa nations of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
3. Are there other contributing factors?
An infestation of locusts, which thrive in hot and dry conditions, have wiped out crops across large parts of eastern Africa. Somalia and Ethiopia have also been contending with internal conflict that’s disrupted farming and made it dangerous to distribute aid. In Somalia, militant group al-Shabaab has been trying to topple the government since 2006 and impose its version of Islamic law. And in Ethiopia, the government and rebels from the northern Tigray region fought a civil war that dragged on for more than 16 months before a truce was agreed in March. Tensions are still high and relief agencies say getting access to conflict-hit areas remains challenging. Kenya held presidential elections on Aug. 9 that may have diverted some attention away from the drought.
4. Who has been trying to help?
The US says it gave more than $6.6 billion in humanitarian and food assistance to Africa in the first seven months of 2022, which would make it the single biggest donor. The European Union, Canada, Sweden, Germany and the UK were also leading contributors. Kenya’s government has introduced corn and fuel subsidies but says it can’t afford to maintain them indefinitely. While Somalia needs $1.5 billion to help 7 million needy people -- almost half the population -- only 79% had been pledged by early August, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The shortfall was even bigger for Ethiopia, with just a third of the $3.1 billion that’s required to help 20 million people committed.
5. What about West Africa?
The Sahel region is confronting a hunger crisis of its own, mainly due to ongoing conflict that’s decimated food production and exacerbated the impact of higher grain prices and the pandemic. More than 38 million people in the arid area on the southern fringe of the Sahara are food insecure, a 40% increase from a year ago, according to the Alliance for International Medical Action. Nigeria is contending with attacks by Islamic State and Boko Haram Islamist militants in the northeast of the country and a surge in banditry in the northwest, while insurgents have been wreaking havoc across Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. | 2022-08-17T05:44:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why East Africa’s Facing Its Worst Famine in Decades - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-east-africas-facing-its-worst-famine-in-decades/2022/08/17/555a6bb6-1de5-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-east-africas-facing-its-worst-famine-in-decades/2022/08/17/555a6bb6-1de5-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Man is arrested in Jamaica in Georgetown death, D.C. police say
Victim was shot on M Street NW, police said
A man was arrested Tuesday on the Caribbean island of Jamaica in connection with a homicide earlier this year in the Georgetown neighborhood of Northwest Washington, the D.C. police said.
Ranje Reynolds, 24, of Beltsville, Md., was arrested in Kingston, Jamaica, by the U.S. Marshals Service on a D.C. Superior Court warrant in the death of Tarek Boothe, 27, of Alexandria, the D.C. police said.
Boothe was found Jan. 31, 2022, in the 3200 block of M Street NW suffering from an apparent gunshot wound, police said. He died at a hospital, they said.
Shortly after the shooting, D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III said police thought the victim may have been targeted. However, as of the next day, no motive had been given.
The site of the shooting was just west of the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, one of the most prominent in Georgetown and the District.
Even with an increase in the number of homicides in the city in recent years, killings in Georgetown are rare. In addition, few of the arrests made in connection with killings anywhere in the city are made outside the borders of the United States.
Reynolds is to be extradited and returned to Washington, the police said.
No information was available late Tuesday about what led authorities to Jamaica. However, in an announcement of the arrest, the D.C. police thanked the Marshals Service and also thanked the public for “numerous tips.” | 2022-08-17T06:32:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arrest is made in Georgetown killing, D.C. police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/arrest-jamaica-georgetown-killing-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/arrest-jamaica-georgetown-killing-shooting/ |
Liz Cheney went against the ‘clear’ path. Now she leads an anti-Trump movement
Rep. Liz Cheney vowed to continue her fight against former president Donald Trump after losing Wyoming’s Republican primary on Aug. 16. (Video: AP)
She won her 2020 primary with 73 percent of the vote, she was already the No. 3 ranking House GOP leader and she was well on her way to becoming the first female Republican speaker.
Cheney used her defiant concession speech Tuesday night, after losing badly in the GOP primary to Trump’s handpicked candidate, to kickoff a sustained campaign against the ex-president and his allies. She surrendered her rising-star status in Congress in a sacrificial manner toward a higher calling to take on the most powerful figure in her increasingly conspiratorial political party.
Cynics back in Washington discounted this race long ago as lacking importance, given that it was trading one deeply conservative Republican for another. Cheney, after all, voted with Trump and the GOP leaders she now decries more than 90 percent of time.
Rep. Liz Cheney's (R-Wyo.) is now looking far beyond her Republican primary loss and possibly toward the White House. (Video: Michael Cadenhead/The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Liz Cheney loses primary while vowing effort to keep Trump from White House
“We must be very clear-eyed about the threat we face and about what is required to defeat it. I have said since January 6, that I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office. And I mean this,” she said, drawing cheers from a crowd that featured a few newfound admirers among local liberals, but was largely made up of old-time hands from Wyoming Republican politics. Tucked off to the side of the crowd sat two of the most notable of the latter group: Cheney’s parents, former vice president Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne, herself a former chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities in the Reagan and Bush administrations.
Not to mention, taking the stage before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, Cheney reached a few million viewers back East who watched as cable networks covered the speech live. From the stage, Cheney looked straight up a mountain range that, on the other side, is home to the Spring Creek Ranch, where last year a longtime family supporter hosted a fundraiser for Trump’s truest believers in the House.
To be even less subtle, as Cheney’s speech ended, the sound system blared Tom Petty’s defiant anthem “I Won’t Back Down.”
Opinion | The country needs more Liz Cheneys
Instead, after some early positive advertisements that discussed those matters, Cheney focused her final weeks almost singularly on prosecuting the case against Trump and those local Republicans who tout his fallacies about the 2020 election. Right down to running a 60-second ad featuring the former vice president calling Trump a “coward.”
On Tuesday morning, just before she cast her vote here at the county library, she once again politely rejected that advice about focusing on other issues than Trump.
In the early 1950s, first-term Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) led the counterattack to McCarthyism. In 2006, as Democratic voters recoiled against the Iraq War, then-Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) stood in support of a surge into the war. And in 1993, first-term Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-Pa.) broke her vow not to raise taxes to cast the deciding vote approving a tax-hiking budget that set the nation on the course to remarkable economic stability.
Smith served another 20 years, getting rewarded for her opposition to McCarthy. Lieberman lost his primary but then ran as an independent and won another six-year term. Mezvinsky lost in 1994, but her politically courageous vote did not create nearly as many death threats as Cheney and her family now endure for crossing Trump.
Several rank-and-file Republicans are currently running full-force campaigns to win the chairman’s gavel of the very prestigious House Ways and Means Committee, in the expectation of a GOP majority next year. Whoever wins will be forgotten quickly by history, remembered only as someone who mouthed the right pro-Trump platitudes to appease a House GOP that forbids divergence from the ex-president.
Just two have advanced to the general election, Reps. David G. Valadao (R-Calif.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), and both tried hard to avoid talking about Trump in their campaigns.
Wolfensberger’s closest proximation to the way Cheney sacrificed her congressional career for higher principle was John Anderson in 1980. The Illinois Republican had served as House Republican conference chairman for a decade, but resigned his post so that he could run as a moderate independent for president.
That’s the same post Cheney claimed in January 2019, after just one term in the House. She surrendered that leadership post in the spring of 2021, when it became clear that she could not continue to embarrass Trump’s sycophant allies, particularly House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and not face blowback.
She would nod to local issues, but she focused on Trump. By late March she found herself at a civic-engagement event in this resort town, a crowd dominated by local liberals. | 2022-08-17T07:15:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Cheney went against the ‘clear’ path. Now she leads an anti-Trump movement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/17/liz-cheney-anti-trump-movement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/17/liz-cheney-anti-trump-movement/ |
Freya, a 1,300-pound walrus, was euthanized on Aug. 14 by Norwegian authorities, who said she was a threat to human safety. (Video: The Washington Post)
‘Cheeky’ sea lions are returning to New Zealand’s shores — and locals are learning to share the coast
“You wouldn’t be on the Serengeti and thinking it is okay to be up close and personal with a lion,” Stockin said. She said that in cases such as Freya’s, authorities should focus on “people management, not animal management.”
“Something weird happens when it comes to marine mammals. People will get far closer than they ever would with any typically sized terrestrial wild animal. It’s nuts,” Stockin said. “And if it’s not adequately managed by authorities … it’s the animal that suffers.” | 2022-08-17T07:33:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fundraiser for statue of Freya, walrus euthanized by Norway, launches - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/freya-walrus-statue-fundraiser-norway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/freya-walrus-statue-fundraiser-norway/ |
Elena Delle Donne has been impressed with how ownership has invested in the team. (Jess Rapfogel for The Washington Post)
Elena Delle Donne said it so casually. The Washington Mystics’ franchise cornerstone was winding down some thoughts on her history with the organization, standing alone on the team’s pristine practice courts after the regular season finale. Up next for her and the Mystics was a trip to Seattle for the first two games of a best-of-three WNBA playoff series.
“I don’t plan to play anywhere else,” she said.
In an era when superstars regularly change teams, some may roll their eyes at her statement. But the two-time league MVP raves about the environment in D.C., where she can compete for titles while being treated with the same respect as her male counterparts. That’s what Delle Donne hoped for when she was traded from Chicago after the 2016 season to join an organization that had just two winning seasons in the previous 10 years. She signed a four-year extension before the 2020 season, one year after leading the Mystics to their first WNBA title.
“I saw the investment that our ownership group was going to make to this team,” Delle Donne said. “Knowing that [the Entertainment and Sports Arena] was going to be built, knowing that they were willing to invest in a strength coach, we’d be having a chef, all those things. When you see that and you see the commitment to putting into your players, the success will also come, and you just kind of have to get the right people in and get the belief shifted.
“So for me, I saw this organization wanted to be great. They wanted to win because they were already investing in the team without even having much success.”
The Mystics celebrated their 25-year anniversary this season by earning the No. 5 seed in the playoffs, in which they will face No. 4 Seattle in the opening round Thursday. It is the eighth postseason berth in 10 years under Coach and General Manager Mike Thibault.
There were dark times before Thibault arrived. The team had gone through four coaches in six seasons, and that doesn’t include a pair of interim coaches. Thibault often tells the story of visiting as the coach of the Connecticut Sun to play inside what is now Capital One Arena in 2012. The building was empty. The Mystics were in the midst of a 5-29 season, which followed a 6-28 campaign in 2011. Things were bleak.
Less than 12 months later, Thibault was introduced as coach and general manager. That was the day the Mystics started to emerge from the darkness.
“I like challenges. I like building stuff,” Thibault said. “When I met with [owners Ted Leonsis and Sheila Johnson], they were at a point like, ‘Do we really want to keep doing this at all?’ And I was at the point: ‘How badly do you want it to be good because I need to know that you’re all in if I take this job? … Do I have the power to come in and, if it means blow everything up, blow it up, whatever that is?’ They said, ‘Go for it.’ ”
The acquisitions of Thibault, the winningest coach in WNBA history, and Delle Donne were the two biggest moves that led to the 2019 championship and the sustained success that has followed. But ownership had to make drastic changes first. Johnson joined the ownership group — Lincoln Holdings — led by Leonsis that purchased the controlling stake of the franchise in 2005 from Abe Pollin. The organization joined the league in 1998 and had just one winning season in those first eight years. Johnson is believed to be the first African American woman owner-partner in American pro sports. Lincoln Holdings eventually merged into Monumental Sports and Entertainment in 2010.
Johnson admits to extreme frustration during those early years. The co-founder of the BET cable channel, she says she is an uber-competitive person who has become one of the wealthiest black women in the country.
“Whatever I take on, I’m going to take it on at 100 percent,” said Johnson, who has also developed the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg. “People can say whatever they want to say. Yes, maybe I was the first. I see that as a badge of courage and an honor.
“And what it’s doing is bringing other ownership, people of color into the sports arena. And we’ve just never really had the opportunity. It’s not that we can’t do it, we have to be given the opportunity.”
Investment was the pathway to success. That included everything from working with the city to build a new arena that cost nearly $70 million, to hiring additional staff specific to the Mystics, to Leonsis and Monumental partner Laurene Powell Jobs chipping in on the league’s $75 million capital raise. It also included handing the keys over to Thibault, who changed the roster and the culture and brought in the superstar in Delle Donne to compete for a title.
Part of that culture change included a familial atmosphere throughout the organization. The new home includes the practice facilities for the Washington Wizards, and there’s a feeling of equality between the two teams. Players interact with each other regularly, and Bradley Beal, who signed a $251 million supermax contract this summer, can often be seen watching the Mystics practice.
“From the top down, Ted Leonsis and the ownership group has really instilled a value on people and treating people well, expecting results, but treating them really well,” said Marianne Stanley, the Mystics’ coach during the 2002 and 2003 seasons who later returned as an assistant before leaving to coach the Indiana Fever. “I can tell you that that’s not the case everywhere. And I can tell you that with Monumental and the ownership group that led the change, it’s been integral to everything.”
Natasha Cloud, the longest-tenured Mystic at seven seasons, remembers going to games when she was a freshman at Maryland in 2010-11. The team was so bad Cloud and her friends would come to watch the opposing team.
Thibault’s cultural shift started with the acquisitions of Ivory Latta and Kia Vaughn. Then core pieces of the title team started to arrive in Emma Meesseman (2013); Tianna Hawkins (2014); Cloud and LaToya Sanders (2015); and Delle Donne, Shatori Walker-Kimbrough and Kristi Toliver (2017). Aerial Powers and Ariel Atkins arrived for the first Finals appearance in 2018 before they won it all in 2019.
Delle Donne won her second MVP in 2019 as she became the first player in WNBA history to shoot 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from three-point range and 90 percent from the free throw line.
Cloud marvels at the changes and says players are allowed to simply focus on basketball instead of worrying about a lack of resources.
“The management before just kind of ran it into the ground,” Cloud said. “It’s been a crazy ass ride. I’ve seen it from the beginning stages of, like, this is what our vision is to now that vision being complete and us just trying to win championships. And when all you have to worry about is showing up to work every day, being your best and fighting for a championship, it makes a world of difference that you don’t have to worry about outside [stuff]. …
“You compare things that other teams don’t have, that we have — they put their money where their mouth is.”
Leonsis calls the makeover Mystics 2.0 from the time they moved into the new building in 2018. The team missed the playoffs just once since then and is one of the league’s models of consistency. But he knows there’s still plenty of work to be done. Twenty-five years of existence is particularly young compared with teams in other major sports. Leonsis said mistakes made with his other sports franchises allowed the Mystics to be confident in hiring Thibault and getting out of the way.
“There’s a scenario that says the Mystics are 1 to 2 percent of our overall revenues,” Leonsis said. “We certainly put a lot more than 1 to 2 percent of our time, commitment, passion, ownership attention on it. Sheila has kept us mission-based, and it was a long rebuild. But now we have one of the most important WNBA teams, and I think we’re one of the most engaged ownership groups. …
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but every day they were laying a brick.” | 2022-08-17T08:47:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Mystics celebrate 25 years in the WNBA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/mystics-25-year-anniversary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/mystics-25-year-anniversary/ |
American Airlines to buy supersonic jets amid clamor for ultra-fast travel
American Airlines plans to buy Boom Supersonic jets that may be years away from flying. (Boom Supersonic/AP)
American Airlines will buy up to 20 supersonic planes from aircraft manufacturer Boom Supersonic, the two companies said Tuesday, marking the second time in two years that a major U.S. airliner has moved to purchase such ultrafast jets.
Nearly 20 years after the supersonic Concorde was last commercially available, aircraft makers and governments around the world are again developing such planes, which can halve the flight time between London and New York. Colorado-based Boom has secured 130 orders, including options, said company spokeswoman Aubrey Scanlan. She declined to reveal the value of the American deal, which also gives the airline the option to purchase an additional 40 Overture aircraft — a model with the touted ability to fly at up to 1.7 times the speed of sound (approximately 1,300 miles per hour) that is being readied for market by 2029.
Boom founder and chief executive Blake Scholl has said that each Overture will sell for $200 million apiece, though it is not unusual for airlines to pay below list price if they purchase multiple aircraft. Last year, United Airlines ordered 15 Overtures with an option to buy 35 more.
The Concorde, which had a maximum speed of just over Mach 2, last made a commercial flight in 2003. It was primarily operated by British Airways and Air France, and had the capacity to fly from London to New York in just about three hours. The aircraft was a symbol of luxury, providing access to a super-exclusive lounge and offering high-end wine with Angus beef and lobster during flights. Britain’s Princess Margaret and former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger were among its most famous passengers.
But it was forced out of business after years of unsustainable fuel costs, coupled with repeated complaints from people living near airports about the noise generated by supersonic jets.
The crash in July 2000 of an Air France Concorde flight that was headed to New York from Paris left 113 people dead and hurt the image of supersonic aircraft as a safe travel option.
The Concorde failed to change how we fly, but it still could
There are lingering questions about whether it is possible to build ultrafast, safe, comparatively quiet and environmentally friendly planes.
“I think you cannot ignore the obstacles that will be on the path to getting there,” aviation journalist Jon Ostrower said on CBS News last month. He suggested that Boom would need to invest at least $15 billion to develop a supersonic jet. At the time, Boom said in response that it could build the Overture at roughly half the price tag that Ostrower had indicated.
The manufacturer collaborated with British industrial conglomerate Rolls-Royce — which co-developed the engines for the Concorde — on an engine design for the Overture that Boom is now evaluating, according to Scanlan, the spokeswoman. Boom says the Overtures will be lighter and more fuel-efficient than the Concorde, while better software will enable the new jets to be more aerodynamic.
Keeping noise down could remain a challenge, because supersonic aircraft require narrow aerodynamic engines, which can be relatively loud. The Concorde was largely restricted to flying over water because of its noise, limiting the number of routes it could offer.
Another barrier may be the cost of sustainable aviation fuel, which is derived from organic matter. Scholl has promised that the Overture will fly exclusively on greener fuel, which is two to five times more expensive than fossil fuel. Supersonic jets can also burn seven to nine times more fuel compared with subsonic planes, The Washington Post has reported.
Pranshu Verma contributed to this report | 2022-08-17T08:47:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | American Airlines to buy 20 Boom Supersonic Overture jets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/17/american-airlines-boom-supersonic-jets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/17/american-airlines-boom-supersonic-jets/ |
Campaign banners in Brasilia show President Jair Bolsonaro, left, and former leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
About two months out from Brazil’s presidential election, the main candidates are in a war for the evangelical vote.
Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, had shared a video of da Silva, who is Christian, at an African-derived religious ritual. The video alleged the former president, who is commonly called Lula, was connected with “the underworld.” The first lady has said the presidential palace had been “overtaken by demons” by previous administrations, before being consecrated on her husband’s watch.
Polling indicates that Lula has a lead of about 10 points over the incumbent — but his advantage has narrowed in recent months. The former union leader has campaigned on a platform of religious tolerance and said he would stand up for minority practitioners of African-derived religions. Now, he hopes to curry favor among evangelical voters on the fence.
Over the past 20 years, Brazil’s evangelical population has more than doubled. Today, experts estimate around 30 percent of the country’s 210-plus million people identify as evangelical. That rise is mirrored in Brazilian politics, with a growing evangelical congressional caucus gaining power. Evangelical denominations hold special sway among the poor, with charismatic pastors often instructing congregations on how to vote.
Bolsonaro, a Christian who rose to power on a platform of bringing God and family to the forefront of politics, won the support of 70 percent of evangelical voters in 2018. But their enthusiasm for the former army captain has weakened in recent years. Recent opinion polling indicates that just under half of evangelical voters approve of his government.
For many evangelicals, the breaking point came during the coronavirus pandemic. For months, Bolsonaro shrugged off the severity of the virus as it killed hundreds of thousands of Brazilians, while a recession, rising inflation and steep interest rates battered the country’s poor.
The support of Black evangelical women who are economically disadvantaged may be key to any victory, analysts say. “I have no doubt that black evangelical women will decide these elections,” Jacqueline Teixeira, an anthropology professor at the University of São Paulo, told the BBC.
Lula, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2011, was jailed on a corruption conviction that was eventually overturned. His campaign sees this election as an opportunity to win over undecided religious voters. This week, he accused Bolsonaro of using religion for political gain and of lying to his voters.
“If anyone is possessed by the devil, it’s this Bolsonaro,” Lula told a crowd at a manufacturing plant Tuesday, as he formally began his effort to win the support of the country’s 150 million voters.
Lula’s campaign missteps stir the question: Has he lost his touch?
The president’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
Bolsonaro has claimed that Brazil’s electronic voting system is “flawed,” an allegation dismissed by electoral courts as “disinformation.” At a March for Jesus demonstration in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, he urged Christians to take part in a Sept 7. rally in “defense of democracy.”
Lula’s wife also took to social media to appeal to religious voters. “I learned that God is synonymous with love, compassion, and above all, peace and respect,” wrote Rosângela “Janja” da Silva. “It does not matter what your religion or belief is. My life and my husband’s life have always been and always will be guided by these principles.” | 2022-08-17T09:04:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil’s Lula and Bolsonaro court evangelical vote for elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/brazil-evangelical-election-lula-bolsonaro/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/brazil-evangelical-election-lula-bolsonaro/ |
By Steven Godfrey
Virginia Tech football coach Brent Pry is trying to bring the glory back to Blacksburg. (Matt Gentry/The Roanoke Times/AP)
BLACKSBURG, Va. — It wasn’t that long ago that Virginia Tech football’s Beamerball, an idiosyncratic mix of Tidewater talent, special teams wizardry and Metallica entrances made the Hokies a national brand, and Brent Pry was there.
“This was Clemson before Clemson was Clemson,” Pry said.
Pry, a graduate assistant under legendary Tech coach Frank Beamer and defensive coordinator Bud Foster from 1995 to 1997, left his defensive coordinator job at Penn State to sign a six-year contract as Virginia Tech’s head coach in December. Now he’s tasked with a balancing act of modernizing the program while maintaining the Beamer culture. And winning big.
“I was not trying to re-create ‘Coach Beamer and Coach Bud 2.0,” Athletic Director Whit Babcock said about hiring Pry.
Tech is mindful of how they’re messaging their second attempt at life after Frank, because the first one failed. When the program’s architect, and native son, announced his retirement in 2015, Babcock moved swiftly to hire Justin Fuente, then the head coach of a surging Memphis program and one of the hottest names in the industry.
Brent Pry working to bring winning tradition back to Virginia Tech football
At the time, the plan was lauded across the industry: Bring Fuente, a soft-spoken, spotlight-averse offensive coach to quiet Blacksburg to renovate Tech’s scoring attack, and pair him with Foster, the defensive mastermind who agreed to stay on after Beamer’s retirement. Fuente and Foster produced a 10-win debut, but a sharp decline followed. Foster retired in 2019, the offense never developed, and the in-state goodwill Beamer had built over decades was squandered in recruiting.
Fuente was fired in November with a 43-31 record, no ACC titles, and four consecutive years without a Top 25 finish. Virginia Tech went on to finish 6-7 last season and was walloped by Maryland in the Pinstripe Bowl.
“I don’t have anything bad to say about Justin,” Babcock said. “I think he worked as hard as he could and really tried and was dealt a tough hand following coach Beamer. I also learned I was probably a little stubborn. I was going to will it to work and do everything I could, and have Justin’s back. I learned a lot as an AD and realized how hard it is not to take it personally, but yeah, I don’t like making $9 million mistakes.”
Pry is, both on paper and in person, the polar opposite of what one would anticipate to replace a failed predecessor: a personable, casual, defensive coach who’s effortless at small talk, and already very familiar with Blacksburg and the rest of the Commonwealth.
If Pry seems to fit Virginia Tech too well, it raises the question of why he’s such a necessary breath of fresh air.
“Six years ago I wouldn’t have been what they were looking for,” Pry said. “I think they wanted the offensive prowess. I think they hired a coach, a good Midwestern guy that didn’t have in his plan and vision all the things that I think most people believe and now fully realize are really important to Tech’s success: the lettermen, recruiting in the state, community relations, all these things that come naturally to me, quite honestly.”
If anything, Pry got the Tech job because of what he’d done to the Hokies, not for. As one of the Nittany Lions’ top recruiters under James Franklin, Pry helped win recruiting battles for some of Virginia’s top players to leave the Commonwealth for Happy Valley. As the Hokies’ in-state recruiting waned under Fuente, outside recruiters such as Pry raided the state for talent.
“If you’re looking for a snapshot of the Fuente era, one of the things we saw, especially as a few years passed, was that [Tech] only went for Virginia guys they were heavily involved with from the onset,” said Brian Dohn, a recruiting analyst for 247 Sports.
After finishing with Top 30 classes nationally for three consecutive years, Tech finished 2020 last in the ACC in recruiting and farmed out offers to players far out of state, where Fuente and his staff had previous connections.
“It looked like they took the easy way out instead of battling for recruits, instead of fighting and utilizing the connections they had in the state of Virginia. There’s a point when it looks like they decided, ‘We’ll just out-scheme you and out-coach you and not really push for the best prospects,’” Dohn said.
At least in recruiting, Tech has signaled the old ways have to go. Unlike Fuente, Pry came to Tech from a national powerhouse with a massive support staff, and he communicated the disparity between Blacksburg’s expectations and the reality of Top 25 recruiting.
“There’s no such thing as keeping a Michael Vick quiet anymore, not like [Beamer] could 20 years ago,” Dohn said.
If Tech wanted a modern equivalent to the dominance of Virginia recruiting during Beamer’s time, relationships were only half the problem, and the price tag wasn’t cheap.
“What was important for me was to be honest when I interviewed. I needed to know that what they were looking for was what this place needed and that their vision was similar to mine. And it was,” Pry said.
Since his hiring in December, Tech officials have increased the football assistant salary pool to $5.2 million annually and created 10 new positions in the football department.
“We want to be in the top three or four budget-wise in the ACC in football, and hopefully get to the top, but we can do fine overachieving from fourth in budget better than we can overachieving from eighth,” Babcock said.
Pry’s new-hire honeymoon period has been dedicated to renewing relationships with high school coaches in Virginia and former Tech players. As soon as February’s signing period ended, he put his new staff on a bus to Richmond, where he invited local high school coaches to meet and greet over beer and pizza to talk ball and build relationships. The next day the bus headed to Norfolk to do the same, and so on. Once the high schools were greeted, it was on to the rest of Virginia.
“I’ve said yes to everything they’ve asked me to do, and asked to do it all,” Pry said, counting off his tour schedule: “Booster meetings, forestry association, chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, country clubs, all the Hokie clubs, NASCAR, drag racing … if people are asking and it’s university-based, community-based, high school-based, or donor based, we’ve said yes to everything.”
Such a routine is fairly standard for any new college football head coach, but in a community welcoming only its third coach in just under 40 years, they’re eager to certify Pry’s professed love of the Virginia Tech culture because of his prior experience here. Here Tech is more than willing to conjure Beamer nostalgia to erase the perceived standoffishness of Fuente.
Far past Fuente’s quiet personality, Tech and Southwest Virginia took serious umbrage with the coach’s flirtation with Baylor in January 2020, maybe a greater sin than Tech breaking a 15-year winning streak vs. Virginia in the Commonwealth Cup under his watch. No fan base responds well to its head coach playing the job market, but after succeeding a lifer who built the program outright, Fuente’s wandering eye was received as a condemnation of Tech.
“Even though not many people know Coach Beamer deeply, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people would tell you they know Coach Beamer,” Babcock said. “They have met him, they affiliate with him, because they want to know the head football coach.”
Babcock, born and raised in Harrisonburg, Va., also hired Radford native Mike Young as men’s basketball coach in 2019 but has been wary of how native-son and former-assistant narratives can sour quickly if there aren’t results.
“These feel-good stories are great, but they have to produce, right? Sometimes that emotional tie can work both ways. I wasn’t just trying to create a throwback to the old days.”
Fans feel assured Pry will love them back by sticking around, due in part to how little interest he’d shown in playing the job market throughout his career. Before Tech, the only head coaching jobs Pry considered were smaller schools at which he’d worked as an assistant, including Louisiana and Georgia Southern. Otherwise, he was content as a well-compensated coordinator under Franklin. But in Tech, Pry’s familiarity from his G.A. days inspired him to armchair the job from a distance.
“I always had an idea of what this place should look like and what it was for me. I didn’t know what the plan would be if I was the head coach at Michigan State or Florida State. But I felt like I identified with this place and had a good idea.” | 2022-08-17T10:10:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What went wrong at Virginia Tech and can Brent Pry fix it? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/brent-pry-virginia-tech/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/brent-pry-virginia-tech/ |
Approximately 24 percent of homes for sale in D.C. had a price drop in June, according to data provided by Bright MLS. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
“The party’s over,” according to Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS.
While home sellers may feel sad about the end of bidding wars, buyers in the D.C. region are more likely to feel relief. Sturtevant predicts that the number of sales and the pace of price appreciation will slow for the rest of this year and into early 2023. She says the housing market will look more like 2019, before the pandemic-induced frenzied housing market.
Overall, Sturtevant anticipates that home prices won’t drop even in the cooling market conditions. However, some localities have a greater risk of price declines. Generally, these are neighborhoods where prices grew faster than average over the past two years, where inventory is rising fast and where household incomes are lower than the average for the region.
In addition, the communities most at risk include those where second home buyers drove up prices during the pandemic and where remote workers relocated and heated up demand — in other words, rural and exurban areas, and vacation home markets.
Sellers beginning to reduce prices
Sellers began to recognize the slower market conditions and perhaps realized that they had overestimated buyer demand earlier this spring, especially as higher mortgage rates cut into buyers’ housing budgets.
Approximately 24 percent of homes for sale in D.C. had a price drop in June, according to data provided by Bright MLS. By neighborhood, price drops ranged from a low of eight percent of listings in Park View to a high of 46 percent in Fort Dupont Park.
Other D.C. neighborhoods with the highest percentage of reduced sales prices include Marshall Heights (43 percent), Southwest Waterfront (42 percent), Carver Langston (39 percent) and Lily Ponds (39 percent).
Neighborhoods where sellers lowered their prices in June include Adams Morgan (30 percent), Deanwood (29 percent), Dupont Circle (26 percent), Georgetown (23 percent), Petworth (20 percent), Mount Pleasant (20 percent) and Capitol Hill (19 percent). | 2022-08-17T10:18:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Housing market heads back to 2019 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/17/housing-market-heads-back-2019/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/17/housing-market-heads-back-2019/ |
Kesha Williams, a trans woman, went to Fairfax County’s jail in November 2018 and was housed in the men's facility. (Gigi Jackson)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has become the first appellate court in the country to find that gender dysphoria is covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act, after a transgender woman sued Fairfax County for housing her with men during her time in jail.
“Being transgender is not a disability,” the court wrote in an opinion issued Tuesday, but “many transgender people experience gender dysphoria,” or distress over the discrepancy between their identity and their assigned sex. “A transgender person’s medical needs are just as deserving of treatment and protection as anyone else’s.”
The decision in the case of Kesha Williams comes amid a wave of legislation across the country limiting transgender youths from accessing medical treatment, discussing sex and gender in school, or playing sports and using bathrooms that match their identity.
“When states have cut transgender people off from basic protections under law, we have seen federal courts step in to correct that,” said Jennifer Levi, director of the Transgender Rights Project at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which wrote an amicus brief in Williams’s case.
The case now goes back to District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton of the Eastern District of Virginia, who had ruled the lawsuit couldn’t move forward.
“We are excited to get back into court to vindicate Kesha’s rights,” Williams’s attorney, Josh Erlich, said in an email. “Critically, this holding applies to any individual seeking accommodations for gender dysphoria, including in employment, public accommodations, and in any other context in which the ADA provides disability protections.”
The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
Williams, 41, was initially housed with women when she went to jail in Fairfax in 2018 after admitting to helping a drug-dealing boyfriend. But when she asked about the hormones she had been taking for the past 15 years, she was reclassified. Williams, who had not had genital surgery, was housed with men, referred to as male and searched roughly by men. She could not get a bra or consistent hormone treatment.
“Guys would watch me shower from the balcony,” Williams said in an interview earlier this year. “Nobody was helpful; I didn’t feel safe.”
New Title IX rules set to assert rights of transgender students
She contacted a lawyer before her six months in jail was up, saying she was worried for transgender people in the Fairfax jail.
“The next girl could really want to hurt herself, could kill herself,” she said.
But her case faced a major obstacle. In 1990, when the ADA was passed, “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments” were specifically excluded. The first federal judge to hear Williams’s case found that exclusion meant she could not sue under the law. The appeals court disagreed, on several grounds.
First, the court found that “gender identity disorder” is different from gender dysphoria. The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders eliminates “gender identity disorder,” defined as a desire to change sexes, and defines “gender dysphoria” as discomfort caused by a discrepancy between gender identity and assigned sex that not all transgender people suffer from and that can be mitigated by treatment.
“The obsolete diagnosis focused solely on cross-gender identification,” the court wrote, while gender dysphoria “concerns itself primarily with distress and other disabling symptoms, rather than simply being transgender.”
The identity exception was put into the ADA at the urging of conservative senators, one of whom called it “behavior that is immoral, improper, or illegal.” Other exceptions included kleptomania, pedophilia and pyromania.
Moreover, the court found that Williams’s disorder was physical; she treats her conditions medically, and some research has indicated dysphoria has genetic origins.
These LGBTQ lawmakers want to make their states a refuge for trans kids
Finally, if gender dysphoria was excluded from the ADA, the court ruled, it “would discriminate against transgender people as a class, implicating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The court also found that Fairfax’s policy of classifying those detained according to genitalia appears to violate the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PERA), which bars sorting transgender people who are detained based on genitals alone.
“A policy that houses transgender inmates based solely on their genitalia puts transgender inmates at further risk of harm,” the court found, citing research showing that transgender women in male prisons are at much higher risk of sexual assault than other incarcerated people.
The opinion by Judge Diana Gribbon Motz was joined by Judge Pamela Harris; both are appointees of President Barack Obama. Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr., a Trump appointee, dissented in part, saying that while some of Williams’s claims could proceed under the Constitution, “when the ADA was signed into law, gender identity disorder was understood to include what Williams alleges to be gender dysphoria.” He also agreed with Hilton that the sheriff’s policy on transgender defendants showed enough care as to not be gross negligence, writing, “There are pros and cons for every possible approach.”
Prison systems housing prisoners according to gender identity have faced pushback; a lawsuit in California alleges the state has put females being detained at greater risk of sexual assault with its policy.
The D.C. Department of Corrections entered a settlement this year to change its policies regarding transgender people at the jail. A transgender woman in Maryland won a lawsuit in 2015 against a state prison under the PREA. A bill was introduced this year in the state legislature that would require transgender people to be housed according to gender identity, absent specific safety concerns, as some states have done; it did not pass. | 2022-08-17T10:19:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kesha Williams wins Fourth Circuit case on gender dysphoria as disability - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/trans-jail-fourth-circuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/trans-jail-fourth-circuit/ |
Jamil Jan Kochai became a writer in part because of Ms. Lung’s dedication to helping him learn English
Susannah Lung with Jamil Jan Kochai, whom she taught during second grade. Lung surprised Kochai at his book reading on Aug. 13. (Courtesy of Jamil Jan Kochai)
Jamil Jan Kochai was terrified to start second grade. He practiced writing the English alphabet at his parents’ dining room table in West Sacramento, Calif., and was ashamed when just 10 letters came to mind.
“I associated language and learning with punishment, fear and disappointment,” said Kochai, now 30, adding that in kindergarten, he didn’t know a single word.
Kochai emigrated to the United States from Pakistan when he was a toddler. At home, his family only spoke Pashto and Farsi, and the little English he knew vanished from his mind after first grade when he and his family spent the summer in Afghanistan — his parents’ homeland, which they fled during the Soviet invasion.
When the family returned to California for his second-grade year, Kochai summoned all his courage to walk into his classroom. That’s when a teacher named Ms. Lung came into his life — and, according to Kochai, single-handedly shifted the course of it.
Lung, Kochai’s teacher at Alyce Norman Elementary School, reached out to help him. She dedicated herself to supporting him as he learned English — a stark contrast to his previous educators, he said.
“From the beginning, she had this warmth and incredible sense of care for her students,” Kochai recalled.
Nearly every day after school, Lung would sit next to Kochai at a tiny desk, patiently teaching him how to read and write in English.
“She showed me that I didn’t have to be afraid of it, and it could actually be something that I could come to love,” he said.
By the end of second grade, Kochai was fluent in English, and the following year, he won a reading comprehension award.
“I went back and showed my award to Mrs. Lung,” recalled Kochai — who went on to become a published author, writing two books, as well as several essays and short stories.
After third grade, Kochai and his family moved around, and he lost touch with his favorite teacher. But he never forgot the impact Lung had on him.
“I would tell everyone I could about Mrs. Lung,” Kochai said. “I owed everything to her.”
As he moved through life, he repeatedly tried to track her down by scouring the internet.
When that didn’t yield results, he called his elementary school, and he also visited the district office. He had no luck finding Lung, mainly, he said, because he didn’t know her first name.
As he got older — and advanced in his writing career — he appreciated her influence even more.
In fact, to promote his first novel — “99 Nights in Logar” — Kochai wrote an article for a literary website in 2019. In it, he mentioned Lung.
“I was helped along that year by a generous teacher. Ms. Lung (through months and months of after-school sessions) retaught me everything I was supposed to know about English, and by the end of the year, I had adopted the new language,” Kochai wrote.
Soon after, Susannah Lung — now a retired teacher living in Elk Grove, Calif. — had an appointment with her neurologist, when the doctor happened to mention that she’d stumbled upon an interesting article. She shocked Lung by asking her: “Are you the Mrs. Lung that taught Jamil Jan Kochai?”
Lung could hardly believe it.
“I remembered the name, and I remembered what he looked like,” she said of Kochai. “He had a cute little smile.”
She had no idea at the time, though, that her then-struggling student became a successful author. She also learned that Kochai was an educator, teaching creative-writing courses at the University of California at Davis and the University of Iowa.
As she read about Kochai’s accomplishments, “proud is the right word,” said Lung, now 75. “He deserves it all.”
Her husband, Allen, decided to send Kochai a message on Facebook, hoping to connect him with his wife, who was eager to reunite with her former student.
“I didn’t see that for months and months, because it was stuck in my message requests,” said Kochai, who still lives in West Sacramento.
Even though Kochai hadn’t responded, Lung was flooded with vivid memories of marveling at Kochai’s capacity for growth as a child.
“It was very rewarding, because I only had him for one year and he was quick,” Lung said. “He got it, and I got to see it.”
Her effort with him, she said, wasn’t out of the ordinary.
“That’s just what teachers do,” said Lung, explaining that she offered extra help to numerous students over her 30-year teaching career. In Kochai’s case, though, “he tried really hard, and he wanted to learn the language. That makes it easy.”
Plus, “he was showing an interest in things and asking questions. It wasn’t like pulling teeth to teach him,” Lung continued. “The joy that we get as teachers from seeing these little kids blossom is incredible.”
Months after Lung’s husband sent the Facebook message, Kochai finally saw it. As he sifted through his inbox in the summer of 2020, he was floored. He responded immediately, and they arranged to have a call that evening.
“It was very, very emotional,” Kochai said. “My whole family was there. My parents had also been searching for her and wanted to thank her for years. We all cried that night.”
“She showed me the beauty of teaching, and how one year and one class can change someone’s life,” he added.
The call was also deeply meaningful for Lung.
“Not only to have him get on the phone and express what that whole time was to him, but to have his parents thank me for doing my job,” she said.
They hoped to reunite in person, but because of the pandemic and other life events — including the birth of Kochai’s first child — plans to meet stalled.
Then, on Aug. 13, Lung and her husband planned a surprise.
They saw on Facebook that Kochai had an upcoming event for his latest book, “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories,” at UC-Davis. They decided to attend.
After the book reading, Lung’s husband approached Kochai, first introducing himself, then motioning toward his wife. Kochai did a double take when he saw his teacher from 23 years ago.
“When I saw Mrs. Lung there, my heart dropped,” he said. “It wasn’t like seeing someone from my past, it was like seeing someone that I’ve known and cared for and loved all my life.”
“I gave her a big hug; a hug I had been waiting 20 years to give her,” he said. “I felt like a 7-year-old kid with his beloved teacher again.”
His parents also were at the reading.
“We were all very emotional and teary-eyed,” said Kochai.
The warm feelings were mutual: “Teachers rarely ever get to follow their kids into adulthood and find them doing good things,” Lung said. “He is something else.”
Seeing her student — who first hesitantly approached her classroom 23 years ago, knowing no English at all — being celebrated for his writing, felt like “a miracle,” Lung said.
She bought a copy of his new book, and “I wrote a note about how this book belongs to her more than anyone else,” Kochai said.
He chronicled the story in a Twitter thread, which quickly amassed tens of thousands of likes, shares and comments. People chimed in with similar stories about teachers who made a resounding difference in their lives.
“My father always used to say in Pashto that every child is a rocket filled with fuel and all they need is a single spark to light off into the sky,” Kochai wrote. “Ms. Lung, he said, was my spark.” | 2022-08-17T10:19:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Author Jamil Jan Kochai finally got to thank his English teacher - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/17/author-jamil-jan-kochai-teacher/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/17/author-jamil-jan-kochai-teacher/ |
The Inflation Reduction Act reflects the changing politics of RX drugs
Pharmaceutical companies have finally lost a key battle while maybe still winning the bigger long-term war
Perspective by Jeremy A. Greene
Jeremy A. Greene is a professor of medicine and the history of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University. Greene has authored or edited five books on the history of pharmaceutical marketing and health policy, including "The Doctor Who Wasn’t There: Technology, History, and the Limits of Telehealth" (University of Chicago Press, October 2022).
On Tuesday, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Democratic lawmakers promise that the “historic” law will lower the cost of prescription drugs by, for the first time, granting the secretary of health and human services the power to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare patients.
This achievement reflects 20 years of work by advocates who have labored to close a loophole in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which set up a pharmaceutical benefit for seniors with no direct functional basis for limiting costs. It also reflects a new political reality in which drug companies’ most potent political threat — warning that any attempt to lower drug prices would stifle innovation — may no longer hold the same kind of traction it has for more than a half-century. In recent polls, most Americans, including 90 percent of registered Republicans, no longer believe that measures to reduce the cost of drugs will prevent the development of lifesaving medicines.
Yet, if the industry’s best defense against measures to lower prescription drug prices has weakened, so too has the range of tools wielded to cut those costs narrowed. Nothing makes that clearer than how different the act is from the first big push to address the rising price of prescription drugs by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) in the 1950s and 1960s. No one who wants to be taken seriously in Washington in 2022 could even whisper aloud about tying the length of pharmaceutical patents to their comparative efficacy as the centrist Kefauver did in the early 1960s.
Kefauver held two years of televised hearings vividly detailing the industry’s manipulative marketing and pricing strategies — inflaming a public already fuming over the soaring costs of prescription drugs.
He also proposed a solution: limiting the spurious use of marketing exclusivities by pharmaceutical firms, tying the approval of new drugs to the demonstration of superior value and reducing the duration of drug patents. He argued that pharmaceuticals were simply too vital to Americans’ health and welfare to be universally protected by 17-year patents, and calculated that manufacturers should be able to recoup the true investment in research and development in a shorter period — possibly as short as three years. Under Kefauver’s bill, drug manufacturers would only receive patents and other market exclusivities if they demonstrated that their new products were substantially more effective than existing medicines. The senator pointed to countries like Norway and the United Kingdom in which approval, reimbursement and access were connected in a system that guaranteed the quality and relative value of therapeutics, while maintaining accessibility for all citizens.
An alarmed pharmaceutical industry launched a nationwide public relations and advertising blitz. The American Pharmaceutical Manufacturer’s Association smeared Kefauver’s efforts as “merely another proposal to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs of progress,” and the group and its allies attacked Kefauver’s proposal as a system of socialized medicine — a loaded term during a Cold War moment when voters equated socialized anything with the decidedly un-American Soviet Union. To a Cold War liberal like Kefauver, the comparison was out of line. The senator retorted that the drug manufacturers were the ones receiving handouts from the federal government in this case — all he proposed was to remove the barriers to a free and competitive marketplace.
As a result, the drug law that bears Kefauver’s name — the 1962 Kefauver-Harris amendments to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act — paradoxically helped to uncouple the purchasing power of the federal government from its role in propping up patent monopolies. Kefauver’s hearings ended up setting the stage for the opposite of what he wanted to achieve: extended federal monopoly protection as an essential, almost naturalized feature of U.S. drug policy.
After 1962, the FDA’s new sequence of clinical trials increased the time and expense involved in bringing a new drug to market. This added more weight to industry arguments that pharmaceutical firms needed to make higher profits, charge higher prices — and even receive longer patent protections — for investment in innovation to continue. These claims became accepted in federal law in 1984, when the Hatch-Waxman Act extended the patent life of prescription drugs by up to five years.
In 1988, a Democratic Congress approved — and then repealed — the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, which included a prescription drug benefit, as outraged seniors protested over potential increased fees. President Bill Clinton’s failed effort in 1993 and 1994 to institute universal health care — including universal prescription coverage — again drew attention to the high cost of prescription drugs.
The measure embodied the half-century trajectory away from Kefauver’s vision of coupling drug approval with pricing and reimbursement. And its critics have proved correct. Since the Medicare prescription drug benefit began in 2006, Part D spending on pharmaceuticals has become the fastest-growing outlay of health-care expenditures, swelling from a negligible amount in 2005 to 18 percent of total U.S. pharmaceutical spending by the end of its first year and 30 percent by the year 2017 — totaling a projected $111 billion in 2022. It has also helped enable the lopsided rise of a new cadre of untenably expensive drugs. A mere 11 percent of the prescriptions filled now generate a whopping 60 percent of this spending.
The Inflation Reduction Act aims to change this. The law will allow the secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower prices for the top 10 drugs by sales volume in 2026. Those negotiations are estimated to save the government nearly $100 billion dollars by 2031. But while this is a stunning accomplishment for legislation deemed dead in the water just a few weeks ago, it is also a limited achievement. The law limits negotiations to 10 drugs in the first year, up to a total of 70 drugs by 2029 depending on how it is implemented. But it does not apply to any newly-approved drugs during their first nine to 13 years of market exclusivity. And manufacturers have proved adept at gaming previous legislation, abusing the Hatch-Waxman Act to create “pay-for-delay” monopolies after patents expire, and to distort the goals of the Orphan Drug Act by charging higher prices for blockbuster drugs. They will no doubt work swiftly to short-circuit the Inflation Reduction Act, too.
Tuesday’s action is a vital first step in breaking down barriers that have prevented the federal government from achieving the price reductions that come with purchasing power. But it is only a first step. It will take sustained attention to growing the space for price negotiation for this measure to ensure long-term, sustained savings on essential medicines for America’s seniors. Even then, it can only do a fraction of what Kefauver envisioned in the late 1950s — most crucially, demanding a demonstration of value if manufacturers want a monopoly on producing a drug. Only by recapturing this element of Kefauver’s forgotten agenda can we hope to stem the untenable increase in pharmaceutical costs that threaten us all. | 2022-08-17T10:19:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Inflation Reduction Act reflects the changing politics of RX drugs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/17/inflation-reduction-act-reflects-changing-politics-rx-drugs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/17/inflation-reduction-act-reflects-changing-politics-rx-drugs/ |
El Cuervo, Mexico, 1992. (Larry Towell/Magnum Photos)
Gost Books has published a new edition of photographer Larry Towell’s seminal work, “The Mennonites.” This book has become a bona fide classic work of longform photojournalism in the years since its initial publication. If you are a fan of photojournalism, you probably know about it. The new edition expands on the original, published in 2000, by including previously unpublished images.
In 2000, I was still in graduate school at the Missouri School of Journalism. I was studying photojournalism alongside a hefty group of like-minded idealists hoping to make a difference in the world. Most of us had yet to set foot into a newsroom. We were mostly blank slates. And we tended to be like sponges soaking up the work that “real” journalists were doing or had done before we waded into the waters.
The Missouri School of Journalism provided an incredibly solid foundation upon which we have all built on as the years have gone by. Early on, while reading and looking at work that would serve as inspiration down the road, I stumbled across the work of photographer Larry Towell.
Towell’s work became very interesting to me because it built on other work I had begun to absorb that showed how photography, and more specifically photojournalism, could break the boundaries of what I had begun to think of as traditional photojournalistic work.
That is, Towell’s work showed me that things didn’t need to be presented in neat, linear packages; you could breach the foundational tropes being taught in journalism school. And that made for much more intimate, feeling work that functioned alongside the great longform writing I had also begun to absorb.
I don’t really know how I found it (there wasn’t really a vibrant internet community back then), but I bought “The Mennonites” that year. It’s a book of lyrical and immersive black-and-white photos exploring the world of the Old Colony Mennonites. This was no quick hit wide-shot, tight-shot package like you might produce for a newspaper story. No, Towell threw himself into the lives of the people he was photographing. He spent nearly 10 years doing it! It was an enthralling read then, and continues to be today.
I won’t go on and on about how the internet and the 24/7 news cycle have eroded our appetites for patient, painstaking reporting in favor of the quick hit and hot take. That’s for another time and another place. It used to be more common to take one’s time, get to know the people you are writing about or photographing. It’s still done today, but it’s more common to cover events and not go as deep as you would with a project like “The Mennonites.”
Anyway, as I mentioned above, Towell made the photos in this book over a period of nearly 10 years, both in Canada and Mexico. Some of the photos have achieved near iconic status — the photo of three young men staring into the camera as one of them smokes or the one of young girls holding onto their hats as wind kicks up dust or even the one of a family cast against the backdrop of their hardscrabble home, reminiscent of Arthur Rothstein’s iconic dust bowl photos from the 1930s. His first encounter with Mennonites was near his home in Ontario, Canada.
Towell became friends with some of them, and that is how he gained access to photograph them, eventually documenting the lives of Mennonites not just in Canada but in Mexico as well. The following is Towell’s description of how he gained that access:
“In 1989, I discovered them in my own backyard, landhungry and dirt poor. They came looking for work in the vegetable fields and fruit orchards of Lambton, Essex, Kent and Haldimand-Norfolk Counties. I liked them a lot because they seemed otherworldly and therefore completely vulnerable in a society in which they did not belong and for which they were not prepared. Because I liked them, they liked me, and although photography was forbidden, they let me photograph them. That’s all there was to it.”
Gost’s new edition brings this classic work back and makes it available to a whole new generation to be able to discover. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the first edition from 2000. It comes in a handsome black slipcase, and the book itself resembles a Bible (or maybe a hymnal?), replete with thin pages and even a black ribbon bookmark.
You can find out more about the new edition and buy it here. It is also available to preorder here. | 2022-08-17T10:19:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of Mennonites - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/17/larry-towells-iconic-mennonites-is-back-expanded-edition/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/17/larry-towells-iconic-mennonites-is-back-expanded-edition/ |
ATLANTA — Rudy Giuliani is set to testify Wednesday morning before a Georgia special grand jury as part of a criminal probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The former New York mayor, who was informed Monday that he is a target of the investigation, will be the highest-profile member of Donald Trump’s inner circle to appear before grand jurors.
Willis initially requested that Giuliani appearance as “a material witness.” On Monday, Giuliani’s lawyers were informed that his status had changed and that he was now considered a “target” of the ongoing inquiry, meaning he could be indicted if the investigation moves forward.
“We will provide alternate transportation including bus or train if your client maintains he is unable to fly,” her office wrote in an email to Giuliani’s lawyers. As Giuliani pressed for a delay, prosecutors filed a legal brief contending that he had traveled outside New York since his surgery and saying they had obtained records showing him paying cash for airline tickets for late July to Rome and Zurich.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, called the prosecutors’ claims “ludicrous,” adding that “Giuliani has not flown anywhere since his operation. He has not purchased these tickets and never purchased airline tickets for cash for any reason.”
The Fulton County Superior Court judge hearing the case, Robert McBurney, had postponed Giuliani’s appearance by a week but then rejected further requests for delay.
Giuliani's legal jeopardy in Georgia
Being a subject of the special grand jury is not a direct indication that Giuliani will eventually be prosecuted by Willis’s office. Rather, the notice informs Giuliani’s lawyers that evidence gathered thus far by investigators indicates he may have broken the law in Georgia.
The subpoena requested Giuliani’s appearance because he has “unique knowledge concerning communications between himself, former President Trump, the Trump Campaign, and other known and unknown individuals involved in the multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”
In announcing the scope of the inquiry in February 2021, Willis said her team would be examining “potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud,” the making of false statements to state government bodies, conspiracy and other matters.
Willis’s effort to pursue other Trump advisers continued Tuesday when a Colorado judge ordered Ellis to appear before the Fulton County special grand jury this month. The order issued by Colorado’s 8th District Judge Gregory Lammons followed efforts by Willis’s team in July to subpoena Ellis, who lives in Colorado, to appear before the grand jury.
Separately, lawyers for 11 of Georgia’s would-be Trump electors filed a motion Tuesday asking that Willis and her team be disqualified from investigating them — and perhaps from the entire investigation — for conducting what they say is a politically motivated prosecution.
The court filing cites the judge’s recent decision to disqualify Willis from investigating one would-be Trump elector — Republican state Sen. Burt Jones — after Willis hosted a fundraiser for Jones’s opponent in the upcoming lieutenant governor’s race. The judge called it a “what are you thinking moment.” | 2022-08-17T10:20:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rudy Giuliani expected to testify before Ga. grand jury over 2020 election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/17/giuliani-georgia-grand-jury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/17/giuliani-georgia-grand-jury/ |
Syria denies holding Austin Tice after Biden demand for release
A banner reading Bring Austin Home is displayed outside The Washington Post building in Washington, D.C., on August 10. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
BEIRUT — Syria denied on Wednesday that it is holding missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice, who was abducted in Syria a decade ago at the height of the civil war that has torn the country apart.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry addressed President Biden’s claim last week that Tice is being held by the Syrian government, calling it “invalid accusations against the Syrian government of kidnapping or arresting U.S. citizens, among them Austin Tice, a service member in the U.S. Army.” It added that Tice and others had entered illegally.
Biden says U.S. knows that Syria has held Austin Tice, again calls for journalist’s release
Tice was abducted in Damascus on Aug. 14, 2012, just days after his 31st birthday. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and later became journalist covering Syria, including for The Washington Post and is one of the longest held U.S. hostages.
“We know with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime,” Biden said in a statement on Aug. 10. “We have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home.”
In early May Biden met with Tice’s parents, Marc and Debra, and promised to work on securing his release.
Tice was last seen in a video posted on YouTube soon after his disappearance showing him blindfolded and being led through rugged terrain by armed men in white robes.
Tice served as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan and then went on to graduate from Georgetown University’s school of foreign service. He attended the law school there until 2012 when he decided to cover Syria as a freelance journalist.
Journalists covering the conflict outside the Syrian government’s control had to enter the country illegally through Turkey or other neighboring countries. Tice won a Polk Award for his reporting on the war for McClatchy newspapers. | 2022-08-17T10:20:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Syria denies holding Austin Tice after Biden demand for release - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/syria-austin-tice-biden-kidnap/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/syria-austin-tice-biden-kidnap/ |
Baltimore rapper Shordie Shordie is coming to the Fillmore Silver Spring. (Bryan Chong)
Shordie Shordie hit the Baltimore music scene a few years ago as a member of Peso Da Mafia, a trio that scored a dance-assisted regional hit with “Money Man.” He soon went solo, quickly establishing himself as a gravel-voiced griot. As much a crooner as a rapper, Shordie Shordie squeezes every ounce of emotion out of elongated vowels, and his rapid-fire raps never lose buoyancy or sense of melody. Last year, he linked up with Murda Beatz, a Canadian producer who has helmed hits for the likes of Drake, Migos and Travis Scott, for “Memory Lane.” The project showed how comfortable he is on hard-edge trap beats with complements of gentle guitar and piano melodies, but he’s probably best when in California bounce mood, whether navigating love in this club on “Bitchuary” or on the East Coast-meets-West Coast jam “Both Sides.” Aug. 19 at 8 p.m. at the Fillmore Silver Spring, 8656 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. fillmoresilverspring.com. $20-$95.
In an interview with Vulture’s Craig Jenkins, Chris Stapleton discussed how certain bands — Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers — defy record store or digital platform categorization: They make Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty music. Stapleton has quickly reached that type of singular classification. File him under outlaw country, Southern rock, bluegrass or Americana — he makes Chris Stapleton music. That’s certainly the case on “Starting Over,” the 2020 album that notched him his third Grammy for best country album. From songs that rock and stomp with an outlaw sneer, to sunny strummers and love-swept ballads, to his most soulful and orchestral songs yet, the album showcases all the things he can do. “There’s two kinds of music,” Stapleton told Vulture, “good music and bad music.” It’s clear which kind he makes. Aug. 20 at 7 p.m. at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia. merriweathermusic.com. Sold out.
Will Butler
For nearly 20 years, Will Butler was a member of art rock titans Arcade Fire alongside his brother Win. Along with playing various instruments across the band’s six albums, Butler has released solo albums and scored music for stage and screen; for a few days in 2015, he even wrote a series of songs inspired by stories in the Guardian. These days, he has more time for those ventures and adventures, having left Arcade Fire at the end of 2021. “There was no acute reason beyond that I’ve changed — and the band has changed — over the last almost 20 years,” he wrote on Twitter. “Time for new things.” So far, he’s offered two glimpses of what will come next: the nervy and unnerving “A Stranger’s House,” which unspools a tale of yearning over subtle electronics and twinkling piano, and “Nearer to Thee,” which turns a hymn into something noisy and explosive. Aug. 20 at 7 p.m. at DC9, 1940 Ninth St. NW. dc9.club. $19-$21.
Every generation gets the anniversary tour it deserves. For millennials who spent the beginning of the millennium as club kids, there’s a 20-year celebration of the wide release of Peaches’ “The Teaches of Peaches.” After dabbling in folk, rock and punk, the Canadian musician born Merrill Nisker eventually landed on electroclash, a genre that does exactly what it says on the tin. Over drum machine beats and gurgling synthesizer bass lines, Peaches delivered half-rapped, half-shrugged come-ons in pro-sex, postfeminist anthems. Two decades on, “The Teaches of Peaches” sounds raw and transgressive, with a playful, expansive view of gender identity that is decidedly modern. Plus, the tour is well timed to the revival of “indie sleaze,” the garish, early-aughts hipster aesthetic of which Peaches served as soundtrack. Aug. 24 at 7 p.m. (doors open) at 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com. $40. | 2022-08-17T11:15:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 concerts to catch in D.C.: Aug. 19-25 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/17/concerts-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/17/concerts-dc/ |
Woman dead after crash in Montgomery County
Authorities said a 68-year-old woman has died after a crash that happened earlier this month in Montgomery County.
The incident happened around 4:35 p.m. on Aug. 5 near Randolph Road and Hawkesbury Lane in the Colesville area.
Montgomery County police said an initial investigation found that Gity Karamouz of Silver Spring was trying to turn left in a Nissan Altima from eastbound Randolph Road into a parking lot in the 500 block when a Honda Civic that was going west on Randolph collided with her.
Karamouz was taken to a hospital, where she died on Monday. The driver and a passenger in the Honda were taken to a hospital with injuries that weren’t life-threatening. | 2022-08-17T11:37:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman dies after Montgomery County crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/crash-kills-woman-montgomery-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/crash-kills-woman-montgomery-county/ |
70-year-old man killed in crash in Prince George’s County
A man died after a crash on Piscataway Road in the Clinton, Md., area. (Prince George's County Police)
A 70-year-old man was killed in a crash Sunday in Prince George’s County, authorities said.
The crash happened around 7:30 p.m. when the driver — who was later identified as Michael Grigsby of Clinton — was driving in the 9400 block of Piscataway Road, not far from Branch Avenue in the Clinton area.
Local police said an initial investigation found that Grigsby was headed north when the car left the road and hit several signs and a fence before stopping in the southbound lanes.
He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. The crash remains under investigation. | 2022-08-17T11:37:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man dies after crash on Piscataway Road - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/man-killed-crash-piscataway-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/17/man-killed-crash-piscataway-prince-georges/ |
My teen says they’re nonbinary. How do we know it isn’t a phase?
Q: Five months ago, my 16-year-old daughter approached my husband and me and informed us that she is nonbinary. We’re not sure what to do. We think it may be just a “phase.” She and all of her close friends (seven total) are all identifying themselves using the monikers bisexual, nonbinary, trans, polyamorous and a whole host of other words that have sent all the parents to the dictionary. They have spent a lot of energy discussing how their favorite celebrities and influencers identify in an interview or on social media.
Two months ago, she began insisting that we refer to her by a new name, which I try my best to remember and call her. The name she was given at birth was a beautiful name, one she used to be proud of. Now she complains that I am “deadnaming” her if I call her by her “birth name.”
There is no attempt by the mental health professionals or school counselors to even entertain that maybe she is confused — quite the contrary. The school counselor said schools are not allowed to question or challenge who or what the student identifies as, for fear of a lawsuit. Even the clergy person I asked to speak to my daughter only wanted to help her develop something they termed as a “lesbian identity.” Every professional has admonished and chastised my husband and myself to not even question my daughter’s decisions as to what she is, but to simply accept whatever she offers to us, even though she has insisted she was four different things over the past few months.
I am so sad. I want her to become whomever she is destined to be, and I would be happy with that. Is it possible for a teen to identify as something different every month? How much influence do a teen’s friends have on each other to identify?
How do we find a therapist, counselor or pastor who can gently ask questions while respecting that perhaps a 16-year-old doesn’t know everything?
A: Thank you for writing; many parents struggle with their children’s gender and sexuality changes, and you are not alone. Our culture has made a huge shift toward openness and acceptance in this domain, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for parents to “get it” the way our teens do. Remember: Any human who didn’t fit the cultural norm (heterosexual) has spent their lives either in a form of hiding or living out loud while often endangering their emotional, physical and economic safety.
While our culture and families are grappling with this enormous shift, I want to be clear around the dangers of denying, shaming or trying to change your daughter when it comes to sexual and gender identity. From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “LGB youth are at greater risk for depression, suicide, substance use, and sexual behaviors that can place them at increased risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Nearly one-third (29%) of LGB youth had attempted suicide at least once in the prior year compared to 6% of heterosexual youth.” I’m not exaggerating when I say that it is a matter of life and death to accept LGBTQ+ teens for who they are. So, if you begin to slide back into fear, disbelief and control, repeat this phrase to yourself: “By loving and fully accepting my child, I am helping them to love and fully accept themself.”
When it comes to their teen mind, though, you aren’t wrong to feel as if they are all over the place. Developmentally, teens are in an intense time. Their brains are rapidly growing, and the science shows that they are drawn to risk-taking, as well as to close connections with their friends. But this isn’t all bad. Recent studies have shown that teens are also interested in risk-taking when it benefits not just themselves but also their friends and family. Although this may not seem great to many adults, this risk-taking is a necessary step in them moving from childhood to young adulthood. Can the risks be extreme and dangerous? Yes, but many teens are developing a keen sense of reasoning during this time.
What does this have to do with your child? Well, you may be assuming that the group they are in is pressuring them and influencing their sexuality and gender, but what if your child is purposely surrounding themselves with people who make them feel safe? What if your child is taking the risk of changing their name because they feel safe and accepted? You may think the group is causing the “problem,” but what if their group of friends is a reflection of your child?
I am not suggesting that your child’s nonbinary status isn’t dizzying for you, nor would I expect you to feel neutral about calling your child by another name. I know that fear, confusion, sadness, frustration, worry and anger can come with these changes, and, depending on how you grew up, this could feel downright threatening. But it is time to stop throwing out lines to find an adult to shame your child into a hetero lifestyle. Does your child, at 16, know everything about life? Of course not, and neither do you. Your parenting job isn’t to bring them into line; it is to completely love and accept them for exactly who they are (today, this week, next year, etc.). I rarely give explicit advice in my columns, but the stakes are high for our LGBTQ+ children and teens. You obviously care, and you state that you don’t want to harm your child, so please stop vilifying their decisions.
Instead of convincing your child that they are just a follower of their friends, ask them thoughtful questions. “(Their chosen name), we didn’t grow up with these identities, and we want to understand more about it. Tell us about being nonbinary, from your standpoint.” Then be quiet and listen. You don’t have to get everything right or be perfect; just be open. This is also a good time to affirm your core family values. For instance, you can say: “In our family, honesty, compassion and being with people who affirm us are most important. Your friends must do this for you. What are they like?” Your child may give you a serious case of side-eye — they may not trust you yet — but if you open your doors for your child and their friends (food is the best way), you will probably find some sensitive, tenderhearted, loving teens in your midst.
Finally, there is so much support for you out there, such as from PFLAG, where you can find facts and definitions, as well as groups near you, and amaze.org, which provides age-appropriate, easy-to-digest facts on gender and sexuality. I know it is a brave step to begin to put down your armor and fear, and it will be a process that will unfold for a long time, but it is the difference between maintaining a loving relationship with your daughter and not doing so. Get the help you need; your whole family deserves it. Good luck. | 2022-08-17T11:46:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | My teen is nonbinary. Could it be a phase? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/18/my-teen-claims-be-non-binary-how-do-we-know-she-isnt-just-confused/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/18/my-teen-claims-be-non-binary-how-do-we-know-she-isnt-just-confused/ |
Colonial gems in a lush hideaway mark this Northwest D.C. community
From left, Tamy Lukacs, Ellie McGuire and Jack Fischl, holding his and Lukacs's daughter Luna, go for a walk along the Valley Trail in Rock Creek Park near the Colonial Village neighborhood. Many residents of the neighborhood say they enjoy being close to the park's green space. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Year-round, elegant colonials and ramblers, with their classic details, red brick and stonework, grace Colonial Village in Northwest Washington. But each year in May, these homes — many of them dating to the 1930s and 1940s — reveal their most lovely secrets in a self-guided garden tour. For some neighbors, it’s a highlight of the year.
“Sometimes, from the front of the home, you just never know,” neighborhood resident John Goodloe Jr. said of the hideaway landscaping and pollinator gardens the tour reveals. “What really makes it special is that even a home that you think is just like any other home, when you get a chance to go inside, you realize that it’s something unique.”
Goodloe, 45, grew up in Petworth but attended Shepherd Elementary and fell in love with the neighborhood young. He and his wife moved to neighboring Shepherd Park in 2005 before buying their home in Colonial Village in 2019; their 14-year-old just completed eighth grade at Deal Middle School.
Residents find plenty of reasons to stay in Kings Park
Colonial Village is a hideaway green gem at the northern tip of Washington, edged on nearly every side by the lush, leafy wilderness of Rock Creek Park. On streets facing parkland, such as Parkside Drive NW and Portal Drive NW, homeowners tend to take full advantage of the view with prominent picture windows. Shaped like a butterfly, the neighborhood includes some 400 homes bounded to the east by 16th Street NW and to the west by the park and the D.C.-Maryland border.
According to the Shepherd Park Citizens Association, the neighborhood organization supporting both Colonial Village and Shepherd Park, the history of Colonial Village began in 1930, when a developer, the Edson W. Briggs Company, began building replicas of historic American colonial homes. The first was a reproduction of the Yorktown, Va., house where George Washington accepted England’s surrender to end the Revolutionary War in 1781.
As the neighborhood took shape in the decade that followed, it was also part of a darker history: the exclusion of Black and Jewish people from ownership. Goodloe, who is Black, uncovered his 1939 home’s original restrictive covenant earlier this year when he looked up the deed. Racial restrictions on homeownership were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1948, and the diversity that has blossomed in the neighborhood since then is all the more meaningful in light of the ugly past.
“I fell in love with the neighborhood before,” Goodloe said. “But then recognizing this transformation and our part in that just made me appreciate our place and space in it that much more.”
Colonial Village sees little annual turnover. Brenda Mejia, an agent with Compass who moved to Shepherd Park in 2013 and has been selling homes in Colonial Village since 2017, said just 11 homes have sold in the neighborhood this year, ranging from $2.8 million for a five-bedroom, 5,400-square-foot updated residence with a cobblestone front to $985,000 for a three-bedroom on 16th Street. No homes are currently on the market, she said.
Beyond limited inventory, low name recognition makes the neighborhood feel like a hidden treasure.
“A lot of people don’t even know about this neighborhood, because it is a little bit off the beaten path. And there’s no Metro, there’s no sign when you go by it,” she said. “So people either grew up here and return, we have a lot of that. Or they learn about it from a friend or their Realtor. I think mostly word of mouth — that’s my impression about how people end up here.”
Kate Snyder, 48, who moved to Colonial Village with her husband, Seth, in 2014, said their 7-year-old loves walks and bike rides in Rock Creek Park. The nearness to nature, she said, became even more valuable during periods of pandemic isolation.
“This is the first time in my adult life that I’ve had windows on all four sides of my house; it’s great. And it made covid so much more bearable, to be able to have a space in my backyard to sit,” she said. “This is a really nice neighborhood to raise kids and have a family.”
The neighborhood is entirely residential, with no commercial district. But residents say Silver Spring, a short walk to the west, offers the benefits of a nearby downtown. Parkway Deli and Restaurant, just over the border in Maryland, is a particularly popular spot for a bite. Most are also looking forward to a major redevelopment of the historic Walter Reed campus, just east of 16th Street. That project, expected to be completed in 2023, will include a row of new retail options anchored by a Whole Foods.
Ed Atkins, 77, who has lived in Colonial Village since 1996, said he monitored that development while serving on the board of the Shepherd Park Citizens Association and is enthusiastic about the added value it will bring to the area. Atkins said another favorite nearby spot is the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in downtown Silver Spring, which shows a mix of classic films and new releases.
But for him, too, the greatest local attraction is the park.
“I go for walks and observe nature, the changing seasons,” he said. “And I think it just brings a peaceful feeling to me.”
Schools: Shepherd Elementary, Deal Middle, Jackson-Reed High
Transit: The D31 and S9 bus lines have stops along 16th Street NW; the nearest Metro station is Takoma on the Red Line, 1.5 miles outside neighborhood boundaries to the southeast. | 2022-08-17T11:50:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Neighborhood profile: Colonial Village in Northwest Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/17/living-in-colonial-village-in-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/17/living-in-colonial-village-in-dc/ |
Lender Mariner Finance accused of predatory practices by five states, D.C.
State regulators allege the company took advantage of low- and moderate-income consumers to generate profits for its private-equity owner
A loan company controlled by one of the nation’s largest private-equity firms is engaged in a nationwide scheme that takes advantage of low- and moderate-income consumers, according to a lawsuit filed by five states.
Mariner Finance adds costly insurance policies and other products to loans without the knowledge of borrowers and deceptively induces them to refinance their debts to generate fees for the company, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday by attorneys general in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Utah, Washington, Oregon and the District of Columbia.
‘A way of monetizing poor people’
The lender is owned by an investment fund managed by Warburg Pincus, a Wall Street private-equity firm. The president of Warburg Pincus is Timothy F. Geithner, who, as treasury secretary in the Obama administration, condemned predatory lenders.
“Mariner’s unlawful behavior is motivated by the high-growth demands of its owner,” the lawsuit said.
The company “padded its bottom line by deceiving hard working [people],” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a statement. “Products consumers never asked for and often didn’t realize they’d been signed up for were tacked on to a kind of loan that we already know people struggle to pay back. These tactics are predatory.”
Executives at Warburg Pincus and the lender denied any wrongdoing.
“Mariner Finance delivers a valuable service to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have limited access to consumer credit,” according to an emailed statement from Warburg Pincus. “Throughout our ownership of Mariner, Warburg Pincus has always supported ethical business conduct, compliance with all applicable state & federal regulations, and a high standard of customer care.”
The statement noted that the company’s operations are subject to frequent examination by state regulators.
State officials said they began investigating Mariner Finance after The Washington Post published a story in 2018 featuring the company and the role of private-equity firms in consumer lending.
The Post story detailed the company’s practice of mass-mailing live checks to consumers who, if they cashed them, were obligated to repay the money at interest rates of over 30 percent.
Mariner’s targets “are often in financial crisis, decidedly unfamiliar with receiving unsolicited checks in the mail, and in desperate need of economic relief,” according to the lawsuit. “Mariner uses live checks as an entrée to the most vulnerable portion of the targeted population.”
The story also reported that the company made millions from the sale of insurance policies of questionable value and, while it borrowed money at rates as low as 5 percent, the company charged interest rates as high as 36 percent.
The Wall Street private-equity firm was instrumental in Mariner’s growth. When Warburg Pincus acquired Mariner, the company had 57 branches in seven states. Today, it has over 480 branches in 27 states. Mariner manages $2 billion in loans every year, according to the lawsuit.
Mariner executives said its practices are legal.
“Over the course of nearly four years, Mariner has cooperated with the investigation and provided data, documents and testimony that clearly demonstrates the legality of its products and the vital support they provide to consumers,” Mariner founder and chief executive Josh Johnson said in a statement. “The states’ allegations are based on minimal consumer interviews, the details of which were never shared with Mariner, and reflect a misunderstanding of the law, or simply a decision to ignore any evidence which negates their claims.”
“A full and fair consideration of the investigation evidence should lead to this matter being immediately dismissed with no further action,” Johnson said. | 2022-08-17T11:50:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lender Mariner Finance accused of predatory practices by five states, D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/17/mariner-geithner-consumer-finance-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/17/mariner-geithner-consumer-finance-lawsuit/ |
FILE - Elon Musk attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala on May 2, 2022, in New York. Musk caused a stir among Manchester United fans by tweeting that he was buying the English soccer team, then saying several hours later that it was just part of a long-running joke. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-08-17T11:50:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Musk tweet joking about buying Manchester United causes stir - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/musk-tweet-joking-about-buying-manchester-united-causes-stir/2022/08/17/d0e9e49c-1e20-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/musk-tweet-joking-about-buying-manchester-united-causes-stir/2022/08/17/d0e9e49c-1e20-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
One of the provisions of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act is a small 1% tax on stock buybacks. The idea of a tax on buybacks is a bipartisan issue that has been around for a while. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio in 2019 proposed a plan to tax buybacks on equal footing with dividends, but that didn’t go anywhere.
Regardless, the bigger issue is that the horse has left the barn and taxes on buybacks will surely increase over time until it becomes too costly for companies, taking away what has been a major tailwind for the market. The S&P 500 Buyback Index, which seeks to track the 100 companies in the S&P 500 Index with the highest buyback ratio in the trailing 12-month period, is up 231% the past 10 years and 692% the last 20 years, topping gains of 198% and 427% for the S&P 500.
Buybacks are generally viewed two ways. The first is that they are a form of stock manipulation that enriches corporate executives who control a lot of shares. The second more benign view is that they are simply a way to increase financial leverage and earnings per share. There’s probably some truth to both opinions but, nevertheless, when a company finds that it has too much in cash and has little in the way of investment opportunities, it can return cash to shareholders through dividends or buybacks.
Buybacks are far more tax efficient for companies since dividends are taxed twice -- once as corporate income and again as dividends. Buybacks are only taxed once. Taxes on buybacks would have to increase dramatically — perhaps to about 10% — before it made sense for a company to declare a dividend instead. Of course, many companies pay dividends, and some have a mix of dividends and buybacks, but a lot of this has to do with pleasing one class of shareholder over another.
My issue with buybacks is that many companies are generally terrible stewards of their own capital. An efficient use of capital is when a company buys its stock at the lows and issues stock at the highs. To be sure, studies show that most companies do it in reverse, buying stock at the highs and issuing it at the lows. Starbucks Corp. halted a $20 billion buyback program in April after just six months and the stock down about 40% from its recent highs, which is probably the exact opposite of what a company should do. It is better to give cash to shareholders at that point and let them decide what to do with the money. Starbucks said the cash would be better spent on stores and staff, and the shares have outperformed the S&P 500 since the announcement.
The Stock Market’s Rebound Has History on Its Side: Aaron BrownMore Tax Breaks Should Be Adjusted for Inflation: Alexis LeondisHow Inflation Can Be Both 0% and 8.5% at Once: Justin Fox | 2022-08-17T11:50:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 1% Tax on Stock Buybacks Is Just the Start - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-1percent-tax-on-stock-buybacks-is-just-the-start/2022/08/17/8bd011a0-1e1c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-1percent-tax-on-stock-buybacks-is-just-the-start/2022/08/17/8bd011a0-1e1c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
By Barbara Ortutay and Amanda Seitz | AP
FILE - This combination of photos shows logos for social media platforms Facebook and Twitter. Social media companies are sharing their plans for safeguarding the U.S. midterm elections, although they are offering few specifics. Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter are generally staying the course they were on in the 2020 voting season — which was marred by conspiracies and culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-08-17T11:51:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. midterms bring few changes from social media companies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-midterms-bring-few-changes-from-social-media-companies/2022/08/17/cd62ff48-1e20-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-midterms-bring-few-changes-from-social-media-companies/2022/08/17/cd62ff48-1e20-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
The 53-year-old superstar’s trademark claim is largely based on her 1994 smash hit and holiday classic ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’
Mariah Carey performs at the 82nd annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Dec. 3, 2014, in New York. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Mariah Carey to Texas bar that banned ‘All I Want for Christmas’ until Dec. 1: ‘It’s time’
Chan quit her job as a Condé Nast executive a decade ago to become a full-time Christmas singer and songwriter and has since released seven albums and scored multiple Billboard hits, the New Yorker reported. Last year, she dropped an album named “The Queen of Christmas.” Three years earlier, a 2018 New Yorker profile of her carried the same title. And there are several instances of the phrase on her website.
Mariah Carey is sued over ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ song
Carey is involved in an unrelated dispute tied to her most famous holiday song. In June, songwriter Andy Stone sued Carey, alleging that “All I Want for Christmas Is You” infringes on the copyright of his song with the same name, which dropped several years before Carey’s megahit, The Post reported. Stone filed a revised version of his lawsuit at the end of that month, but there’s been no movement in the case since then, according to court records. Lawyers for Carey and Sony Music Entertainment have not filed anything in the case. | 2022-08-17T11:51:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Singers fight Mariah Carey’s bid to trademark ‘Queen of Christmas’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/17/mariah-carey-queen-christmas-trademark/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/17/mariah-carey-queen-christmas-trademark/ |
Psychedelics as a sacrament? Lawsuit says drugs are a religious right.
The drug-friendly Zide Door Church is suing over a 2020 police raid, alleging violations of its rights
Magic mushrooms are seen at the Procare farm in Hazerswoude, central Netherlands. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
At the Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants in Oakland, Calif., the minister wears a robe covered in cannabis leaves. During sermons, members are free to smoke marijuana — received as a “sacrament” — in an effort to connect with a higher power.
In August 2020, the church’s operations were interrupted when Oakland police officers raided the building and seized around $200,000 in cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms and cash, claiming the establishment operated more like an illegal dispensary than a religious institution. No one was arrested or charged, though the items seized were never returned, according to news reports.
Now, the Zide Door Church is suing the city of Oakland and its police department, alleging that the raid violated its constitutional and religious freedoms.
In California, recreational marijuana is legal, and businesses with permits can sell it. In Oakland, elected officials voted unanimously in 2019 to effectively decriminalize certain natural hallucinogenic products, like mushrooms, though they cannot be sold.
Neither the Oakland Police Department nor the Oakland city attorney’s office immediately responded to a request for comment from The Washington Post late Tuesday. Barbara Parker, the city attorney, told the San Francisco Chronicle that her office hadn’t yet been served with the lawsuit and did not comment further.
The Zide Door Church opened its doors in early 2019 as the physical worship center for members of the Church of Ambrosia, “a nondenominational, interfaith religious organization that supports the use and safe access” of certain natural psychedelics, according to its website. In the lawsuit, it outlined what it calls the “sacramental use” of cannabis, mushrooms and other hallucinogenic substances as a way to connect with “a higher consciousness, their own eternal souls, spiritual beings and God,” though psychedelic mushroom consumption is not allowed on-site.
Dave Hodges, the church’s founder, told the Chronicle that the church has some 60,000 members.
To become a member, applicants must complete an online questionnaire that asks if they work in law enforcement and if they accept marijuana and mushrooms as “part of your religion.”
Zide Door is located in East Oakland and has armed security personnel guarding the entrance, the Oaklandside reported. Hodges told the outlet the guards are there because the church is in a “very high-crime area.”
The church does not sell drugs, Hodges told the Chronicle. Instead, it charges a monthly $5 membership fee and then asks for donations in exchange for psychedelic products. As many as 200 people visit the church each day to get marijuana and mushrooms, Hodges told the Chronicle.
For about a year, the church held on-site services every Sunday at 4:20 p.m., during which Hodges donned his clerical robe adorned with marijuana leaves and passed out joints, according to the Chronicle. But since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, it has rarely held services.
Following the raid, some were skeptical that Hodges was running a real church and instead suspected it was a front to sell drugs, Vice reported. But Hodges has repeatedly insisted he’s running a religious establishment.
“This is not just an excuse to sell drugs,” he told the Chronicle. “This is what we truly believe is the origin of all religion and really what religion should be.”
In May 2019, according to a search warrant affidavit, the city received a complaint that the church was operating as a cannabis dispensary without a permit. In August 2020, an undercover police officer showed up at the church, became a member and exchanged money for pot, according to court records.
Days later, police raided the church.
Surveillance video of the raid, posted to Hodges’s Instagram account, shows police officers stream into the building, some with their guns drawn. Footage also shows firefighters taking heavy machinery to locked safes. Law enforcement officials seized a computer, some documents, cannabis products, mushrooms and cash, according to the lawsuit.
In the end, Hodges was given a fine and a warning, though the seized items were not returned, the Chronicle and Oaklandside reported.
The lawsuit alleges that the raid violated the church’s “sincere exercise of religion” in violation of federal law, as well as the church’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law, told The Post in an email that the church may have a hard time defending itself as exempt from state drug laws.
“The general rule is that there is no exception to laws for religious beliefs,” he wrote. “Assuming that the California law applies to everyone and does not have discretion to grant exceptions, then there is not a basis for challenging it based on religion.”
But Jesse Choper, another law expert at UC Berkeley, told the Chronicle that the religion argument might just work. | 2022-08-17T11:51:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Church that says psychedelic use is a ‘sacrament’ sues over police raid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/17/zide-door-church-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/17/zide-door-church-lawsuit/ |
Teenagers' biological need for more and later sleep renders them “incompatible with aspects of modern society," one study said. (iStock)
Last month, when a 2019 law took effect in California demanding that public high schools begin classes no earlier than 8:30 and junior highs at 8 a.m. I was ready to celebrate — except for one thing. What took so long?
It was decades too late for me, who lived across the street from my high school and was still late most days. I was tired. So tired. And my experience was, apparently, more common than not.
Sleep deprivation is a major issue among teens, so much so that the American Academy of Pediatrics has been calling for later junior high and high school start times since 2014. It’s “an important public health issue,” they said, one with implications not just for safety but for “academic success.”
But fewer than 1 in 5 high schools currently does what’s best for their students. For this, we can mostly blame a combination of inertia, school administrators and teacher unions, which have staunchly fought both parent-driven and legislative efforts to push opening times to match teenagers’ inner clocks.
Guest Opinion: We're ignoring a major culprit behind the teen mental health crisis
The issue for the kids is their circadian rhythms, the biological clock that dictates when to sleep and wake up, are substantively different than those of adults. They suffer what’s known as “delayed sleep phase,” what seems to be a need for later and more sleep occasioned by puberty. This renders them “incompatible with aspects of modern society, notably early school start times," as one study put it.
To an almost puzzling extent, many school officials have argued that the issue of teen sleep deprivation is overblown. They’ve claimed state usurpation of local control (this was a common cry in California), that later starts will result in greater transportation expenses, and that students will just stay up later and turn up at school equally tired. They also argue that later start times cut into after-school time for homework, sports and jobs.
The objections can be countered fairly easily. Leaving the decision to individual districts just means the issue will be fought over and over again. Greater transportation expenses? A number of districts that staggered high school start times found they saved money, since they could employ the same bus drivers to do multiple trips.
But it’s when schools claim teenagers won’t benefit that the case for earlier start times completely falls apart. The evidence is impossible to dismiss.
Studies of schools that have already made the switch show teens — who all too frequently stay up into the wee hours of the morning — do not take advantage of later school bells to stay up even later. Instead, they get more shut-eye — about a half-hour a night, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances, after Seattle shifted its high school start time one hour later. They are also less likely to be late for their first class.
Helaine Olen: Let's make daylight saving time permanent
And their work benefits, too. When the suburban Denver community of Greenwood Village shifted its junior high school start time from 8 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. and high school from 7:10 a.m. to 8:20 a.m., students were less likely to claim they were too tired to complete their homework. Standardized test scores go up. The way they spend their leisure time improves, too. A 2019 paper in the Economics of Education Review found teenage boys with later school start times spent less time watching TV and playing video games.
Later start times improve both physical and emotional health. At a time when children’s mental health issues are in all but a crisis, a later school day can mean lower rates of self-reported depression among teens, according to a 2010 study in the journal Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine. And student athletes who get more sleep are less likely to get injured.
Shifting school starts is so powerful that Teny Shapiro, an economics professor at Santa Clara University, has found beginning school an hour later is the functional equivalent of cutting class size by a third. As for parents, the change makes getting their kids up in the morning easier. Andrea Howe, a California parent, told me when her two high schoolers needed to get to their first class by 7:50 a.m, they were “zombies.”
But the status quo works for teachers, many of whom would like to hit the snooze button on making this change. When Education Week recently asked teachers to comment online about their preferences, many said they believed the gains were exaggerated. Others talked about the inconvenience — to themselves. “Teacher absences are up because they can’t get those 4 p.m. appointments anymore.” Cue the tiny violin.
Are there downsides to the shift? Certainly. It’s true that the added afternoon time can cut into extracurricular activities or work after school . But we shouldn’t be asking high school students to endure chronic sleep deprivation so they can take on one more activity — and it’s worth noting that students working more than 20 hours a week can lead to worse academic performance.
In the United States, we like to say we put children first. Pushing high school start times later would be an easy way to do so. Kudos to California for taking the issue of older children and sleep seriously — now it’s up to other states to heed the alarm. | 2022-08-17T11:51:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | California's new law on high school start times is a victory for sleepy teens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/california-high-school-start-delay-sleep-teenagers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/california-high-school-start-delay-sleep-teenagers/ |
The dueling perceptions of the Trump age
A Trump supporter near the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on Aug. 9. (Eduardo Munoz/ Reuters)
The riot on Jan. 6, 2021, an investigation of which has consumed our interest for the past two months, left many Americans, including me, slack-jawed. Our Bush-era war motto of “shock and awe” came to mind as Trump backers wearing animal skins and horned headgear toppled the barricades and stormed our version of the Bastille.
The violence and malevolent spirit of that day — a hangman’s noose for Vice President Mike Pence and the mocking taunts of angry men hunting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — were profoundly disturbing, even horrifying. Most people, I think, would agree.
Now, switch channels to witness 30 to 40 federal agents arriving at Mar-a-Lago to search the premises for classified papers Trump allegedly had taken from the White House. The agents removed 11 sets of classified documents, some of them marked “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” one of the highest levels of classification.
We weren’t privy to the search in real time; and Trump was in New York City that day preparing for his deposition in a state investigation of his sprawling business empire. Except for a few men in suits, most of the federal agents wore T-shirts, cargo pants, masks and gloves.
Having federal agents descend on your property is shocking under any circumstances. Unless, of course, you’re a criminal, in which case you surely wouldn’t have been a president of the United States, right? Trump might have been both. But what if he isn’t a criminal guilty of espionage, as has been suggested? Isn’t it equally possible that he’s merely stubborn, prideful and dangerously irresponsible? Intent would seem to be crucial to the answer.
I’ve wrestled with both events, trying to gauge their effect on our politics in a time of deep division and distrust and asking why my own feelings are mixed. The two historic moments are not the same, obviously, but they both signal profound disruptions in our values. Neither should happen in America. And yet both did, and, inarguably, Trump is to blame for both.
Part of me thinks the Mar-a-Lago search couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. I wouldn’t trust Trump with my dry-cleaning stubs, much less boxes of documents containing classified information that could pose a risk to national security.
The other part of me, informed by history’s examples of government overreach, finds the search of a former president’s home as unsettling as the destruction of public property by U.S. citizens. Perhaps this is the legacy of the World War II generation that taught its children to be ever wary of government’s power. Or maybe it’s just the reporter in me.
Again, these two episodes are hardly mirror images — one was lawful, and the other plainly was not — but they do reflect the dueling perceptions of our times.
If you see Trump as the worst excuse for a president in our nation’s history, then the search bordered on the mounted cavalry riding to the rescue. If he indeed possessed nuclear-related classified documents, as has been reported, then he should be held accountable. If this was the government’s Al Capone strategy — the feds couldn’t pin racketeering charges on Capone, so they jailed him for tax evasion — then, fine, please get on with it.
However, if you happen to like Trump, then the search was yet another piece of a larger picture in which the FBI, the media and Democrats are in cahoots to deprive Trump and his voters their share of power.
This belief, of course, ignores the fact that another supposedly “deep state” conspirator on that crowd’s “most wanted” list, former FBI director James B. Comey, deserves much credit for throwing the 2016 election to Trump.
It was Comey’s letter to Congress just days before the election, saying the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, that is widely believed to have handed Trump his victory. If there were any fence-sitters left, they quickly tumbled into Trump’s camp, especially in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.
The FBI search, similarly, was a Comey-esque deus ex machina for Trump, whose popularity has supposedly swelled among his party faithful.
The search might have been justifiable — and obviously met the probable-cause standard for a court-ordered search warrant — but the image of federal agents trampling the sacred grounds of their hero’s castle has emboldened Trump supporters as little else could.
If the Justice Department intends to indict Trump, then it needs to act quickly so he is prevented from ever holding public office again.
Otherwise, in the battle of dueling perspectives, Trump might have the lead. | 2022-08-17T11:51:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What the Mar-a-Lago search and Jan. 6 have in common - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/fbi-mar-a-lago-jan-6-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/fbi-mar-a-lago-jan-6-trump/ |
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks after a swearing-in ceremony in Hong Kong to inaugurate the city's new leader and government on July 1. (Selim Chtayti/Reuters)
A Chinese high-school graduate has had nearly three more years of classroom education than an American counterpart, Augustine says, “simply due to the length of the respective school years.” The standardized U.S. test called the Nation’s Report Card rates 76 percent of 12th graders below proficient in math and 78 percent below proficient in science. Augustine notes acidly that increased spending on K-12 education has enlarged schools’ administrative staff 88 percent while student enrollment has grown just 8 percent.
In the percentage of all baccalaureate degrees granted in engineering, the United States ranks 76th globally. Twenty-three percent of U.S. PhDs are in science, technology, engineering or mathematics; in China, 79 percent. Augustine says a “substantial” reason for U.S. proficiency in STEM subjects is immigration: 28 percent of U.S. university faculty members in science and engineering were born abroad, as were 38 percent of American Nobel laureates in chemistry, physics and medicine since 2000. “And nearly half of U.S. Fortune 500 companies had a founder who was an immigrant or the child of an immigrant,” Augustine says.
America’s choices can win the competition with China. The United States can choose more-welcoming immigration policies, including retaining foreign nationals who earn about one-third of science and engineering PhDs from U.S. universities. The U.S. government can choose to spend much more than 0.2 percent of GDP on basic research. (This percentage has declined in 20 of the last 28 years, and now ranks 29th globally.) The United States has, after all, 16 of the world’s 25 best universities, according to the Times Higher Education 2022 ranking. And while China’s allies (North Korea, Iran, Russia) represent 17 percent of global GDP, the United States and its closest allies — counting just Europe and Japan — represent almost 50 percent.
Meanwhile, China is choosing to make itself stupid. The Financial Times reports that China’s youth unemployment is 18.4 percent and university graduates are struggling to find work — “unless they have degrees in Marxism.” In 2018, the education ministry ordered universities to hire at least one Marxism instructor for every 350 students. In this year’s second quarter, there was a 20 percent increase, over the same period last year, of job openings requiring a Marxism degree. Good: Marxism makes adherents stupid. All those brain cells devoted to a 19th-century prophet whose prophecies have not fared well. | 2022-08-17T11:51:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | China’s decline may be looming. Here’s how the U.S. can win, if it so chooses. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/how-united-states-beats-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/how-united-states-beats-china/ |
The fatwa on Rushdie defined Iran’s intolerance and little has changed
Author Salman Rushdie at the National Book Awards Ceremony in 2017. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
On a freezing February afternoon in 2005, Christopher Hitchens and I took the Tehran metro to the end of the line: Behesht-e Zahra, one of the world’s most populated cemeteries. Looking out at the seemingly endless rows of tombstones, and unsure of where to begin, we hired the lone taxi we found to drive us around the sprawling grounds.
The driver, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, guided us through some of the high-profile burial areas reserved for martyrs to the cause of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution.
Then he stopped at a grave and read the inscription. The man buried there was “martyred” in a demonstration against author Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” sparked outrage in parts of the world for what some readers considered a blasphemous depiction of Islam. The man had apparently died in a stampede of enraged protesters who supported Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against the writer.
Hitchens listened and asked a couple questions, which I translated. Then he drew in a very deep breath into his stuffed, smoky sinuses and spat empathically on the tombstone.
I’d never seen anyone do that before. In the moment it felt extreme, but few people, if anyone, understood better than Hitchens how Khomeini’s edict — a full-frontal assault on the notion of free expression — had upended his friend’s life.
Our guide was taken aback, but it didn’t stop him from continuing the tour.
The following day, Hitchens called Rushdie from Tehran on what happened to be the 16th anniversary of the fatwa. “Or Valentine’s Day, as most people know it,” Rushdie told me when I recounted this story to him, the one time we met.
I have thought about that episode in the cemetery a lot since hearing of the attack on Rushdie by a U.S. citizen who was born almost a decade after Iranian authorities unleashed a torment of violence on a man — and anyone associated with him — over a work of fiction.
Since the fatwa, there have been attempts to blow up bookstores. The Japanese translator of “The Satanic Verses,” Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered in 1991 at the university outside Tokyo where he taught Islamic Studies.
No matter one’s views on faith and religion, there’s no question the attack on Rushdie was an attack on the very idea of a free and open society. Sadly, worryingly, the fact that that must be emphasized is a sign of how far we have strayed from those ideals.
“Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect,” Rushdie said after the 2015 terrorist attack on the office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Although levels of tolerance have eroded in the United States, we can’t ignore the role the intolerant ideology of the Islamic republic and its mouthpieces may have played in the attack, directly or indirectly.
On Monday, Iran denied any link to the stabbing but was quick to the blame Rushdie and his supporters for the attack that left him with serious wounds.
“We do not blame, or recognize worthy of condemnation, anyone except himself and his supporters,” a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanaani, said in a televised news conference.
Arguments by pro-engagement officials and observers claiming that the death mark on Rushdie ceased to be official Iranian policy are irrelevant. More so now after Iran’s statement. I know what it means to be a target of this brutal propaganda machine, and there is nothing subtle about its intent to do harm.
Some reports, citing unnamed intelligence officials, claim the suspect, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, had contact with members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force. But even if Iranian officials were not directly involved in planning the attack, as they claim, the Islamic republic was the inspiration, and it bears some of the responsibility for what happened.
Put bluntly, the attack was an act of state-promoted terrorism.
The attempt on Rushdie’s life, and Tehran’s disgusting response to it, are important reminders of Iran’s inability to adhere to international laws and norms. It considers critics, dissidents and anyone who questions its worldview to be subhuman, unworthy of basic protections, a target to be eliminated.
The essential fact is that a great champion of free expression was violently attacked and severely wounded for daring to continue to express himself. No amount of whitewashing or politicizing will change that truth. | 2022-08-17T11:51:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The fatwa on Rushdie defined Iran’s intolerance and little has changed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/iran-fatwa-rushdie-attack-intolerance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/iran-fatwa-rushdie-attack-intolerance/ |
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Gov.-Gen. Mary Simon greet Pope Francis in Quebec City, July 27. (John Locher/AP)
"I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” the pope said. Canada’s own government has previously expressed its regret.
She told the story of 61-year-old Alan Nichols, who requested — and received — euthanasia less than a month after entering a British Columbia hospital in June 2019 suffering from suicidal thoughts, dehydration and malnutrition. The decision was apparently based on a medical history that included serious but typically non-life-threatening conditions such as depression and hearing loss.
Cheng described the case of a man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, who felt driven to seek euthanasia because British Columbia officials would not provide him adequate support to live at home. In a case separately reported by Canadian media this year, a 31-year-old Toronto woman with a disability sought and received approval for euthanasia after what she said was a futile search for safe housing — only to decide to continue living after private parties helped her find an appropriate dwelling.
Another warning sign: Last year, a top United Nations disability rights official wrote to Trudeau advising him that legalizing euthanasia for the non-terminally ill creates an implied negative judgment on “the value or quality of life of persons with disabilities.”
However, the website of the leading pro-MAID group Dying With Dignity Canada summarizes the argument that has prevailed so far: It’s discriminatory to deny qualifying disabled persons physician-administered death upon request. “Those with a disability must have the same right to autonomy and end-of-life choice,” it reads.
In that same spirit, Canada is on course to authorize euthanasia for patients whose only diagnosis is a psychiatric condition, a practice that has led to controversy over alleged abuses in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Properly, if belatedly, recognized by Francis and others as “evil” today, in their own time the schools for the Indigenous in Canada were started confidently, with self-consciously good intentions, as places to provide children much-needed assimilation into the dominant English-speaking, Christian culture.
The policy’s intellectual authors were later honored and the Canadian public remained broadly supportive, or indifferent, even after abuses had been reported.
"One of the most haunting aspects of the Canadian Indian Residential School system was that one of Canada’s worst historical crimes was managed and defended by people who fervently believed they were doing the right thing for ‘the Indian,’” Tristin Hopper wrote in the National Post last year.
As they expand euthanasia today, Canadians should bear in mind that they, too, are subject to the law of unintended consequences and to the judgment of future generations.
Opinions about Canada
The pope’s apology to Canada’s Native peoples is belated but apt | 2022-08-17T11:51:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Will future Canadians owe the disabled an apology for euthanasia? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/pope-francis-and-canada-euthanasia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/pope-francis-and-canada-euthanasia/ |
A Ukrainian serviceman is seen near an anti-tank grenade launcher at a position in a front line in Mykolaiv region, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, on Aug. 10. (Anna Kudriavtseva/Reuters)
If you want to understand the Ukrainian way of war, you could do worse than to pick up, as I recently did, a 1954 book called “Strategy” by the influential British military thinker Basil Liddell Hart. Having been gassed during the 1916 Battle of the Somme, where much of his battalion was wiped out, Captain Liddell Hart had developed a burning hatred of brutish generals who led their men to slaughter in frontal and futile attacks on the enemy. He called this the “direct approach,” and he attributed it to the great nineteenth-century Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who held that “only a great battle can produce a major decision.”
Rejecting Clausewitz, Liddell Hart embraced the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who wrote, “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” In tracts that he began publishing in the late 1920s, Liddell Hart surveyed thousands of years of military history to argue that the key to victory was to strike where least expected, dislocating the enemy psychologically and materially and making possible a relatively bloodless victory. He cited examples ranging from Hannibal’s march across the Alps to Sherman’s march across Georgia to demonstrate “the superiority of the indirect over the direct approach.”
Many historians have critiqued Liddell Hart for twisting history to make every conflict fit his argument. It’s true that no single theory can possibly explain all military outcomes over thousands of years. Yet Liddell Hart’s thinking seems quite applicable to the war in Ukraine. The Russians have pursued a brutal, unthinking direct approach that hearkens back to World War I, while the Ukrainians have outsmarted them with the indirect approach that Liddell Hart claimed was the hallmark of “Great Captains.”
The war began on Feb. 24, when the Russians mounted an armored and air assault on Kyiv. Remember the 40-mile Russian column headed for the Ukrainian capital? Rather than counterattack with their own tanks, the Ukrainians used hand-held missiles such as the Javelin to carry out pinprick strikes, targeting trucks carrying supplies in particular. Before long the column ran out of fuel and food, and the Russians were forced to pull back. Kyiv was saved. This was the indirect approach par excellence.
The Russians regrouped in mid-April using overwhelming artillery fire to clear their path in Luhansk province just as World War I generals did. That offensive forced the Ukrainians to stage a fighting withdrawal in early July from Lysychansk, the last major city they had held in Luhansk. But they inflicted such heavy casualties on the attackers that the Russian offensive has stalled without having secured the whole of the Donbas region.
Since then, Ukraine has been using U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to take out Russian command posts and ammunition dumps far behind the front lines. This strategy has impeded the flow of shells to Russian batteries and greatly slowed the bombardment of Ukrainian positions.
On Aug. 9, a Russian air base in occupied Crimea was rocked by at least six explosions that destroyed or heavily damaged at least eight warplanes. Then on Tuesday another blast hit a large Russian ammunition depot in Crimea. Ukrainian officials did not comment in public but privately told reporters that both blasts were the work of their special forces.
Now, the Ukrainians are using the indirect approach to squeeze the Russian garrison in Kherson, the largest Ukrainian city under enemy occupation. Rather than mounting a direct assault, which would result in heavy casualties, the Ukrainians have been using the HIMARS and other systems to target the bridges across the Dnieper River that deliver supplies to the Russian forces in Kherson. The Ukrainians claim to have damaged all four bridges, leaving the Russian troops in danger of being stranded.
Ukrainian officials said Russian commanders have already evacuated to the east bank of the Dnieper, and some analysts predict the entire force may be forced to pull out of Kherson due to lack of supplies or risk of being captured. A similar Ukrainian strategy of interdicting logistics previously forced the Russians to evacuate Snake Island, a strategic chokepoint in the Black Sea.
“We do not have the resources to litter the territory with bodies and shells, as Russia does,” said Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov. “Therefore, it is necessary to change tactics, to fight in a different way.” Another Ukrainian official told the Wall Street Journal they are inflicting “a thousand bee stings.”
Australian retired major general Mick Ryan has written that the Ukrainians are pursuing a strategy of “corrosion” that seeks to erode “the Russian physical, moral and intellectual capacity to fight.” Another name for this strategy, as Ryan notes, is “the indirect approach” championed by Basil Liddell Hart.
The problem is that it can be hard to achieve a decisive result with indirect attacks. Sooner or later, if the Ukrainians want to liberate their land, they will have to attack and drive the Russians out. But they are being savvy in doing everything possible to weaken the invaders before that happens. | 2022-08-17T11:52:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why Kyiv’s ‘thousand bee sting’ strategy is costing Russia dearly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/ukraine-indirect-approach-hitting-russians-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/ukraine-indirect-approach-hitting-russians-war/ |
What Americans think about China and Taiwan
Majorities support backing Taiwan as the U.S. has backed Ukraine, as long as U.S. troops aren’t involved
Analysis by Dina Smeltz
Craig Kafura
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gestures next to Legislative Yuan Vice President Tsai Chi-Chang as she leaves the parliament in Taipei, Taiwan, on Aug. 3. (Ann Wang/Reuters)
Just over two weeks ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan as part of a broader congressional visit. Beijing responded with outraged denunciations and live-fire military exercises, reminding the world that it claims the self-governing island as part of its territory. While many U.S. political figures praised Pelosi’s visit, a few American observers characterized the trip as reckless.
Before the speaker’s trip to Taipei, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs fielded its annual foreign policy survey to better understand how Americans view the U.S. role in the world, including questions about the U.S.-Taiwan relationship. Conducted at a time when U.S.-China relations were tense, results reveal an American public with increasingly favorable views of Taiwan, negative views of China, and a willingness to support Taipei, at least with some measures, should China invade.
American’s views of China and Taiwan
The 2022 Chicago Council Survey was conducted from July 15 to Aug. 1 by Ipsos using its online KnowledgePanel, a random national sample of 3,106 adults living in the United States, with data weighted to match Census Bureau demographic estimates of gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, region and income.
Asked to rate their feelings about various countries on a thermometer, with zero as the coldest and 100 as the warmest, Americans give Taiwan an average of 60 degrees. That’s the highest rating Taiwan has ever received in Chicago Council surveys dating to 1978. Feelings about China remain cold: 32 out of 100, tied for the lowest rating since the council first asked the question in 1978.
Americans also increasingly view China as a threat to the United States. In a March 2022 Chicago Council survey, 57 percent of Americans said China’s development as a world power was a critical threat to U.S. vital interests. That’s a big jump from 38 percent in January 2020, the last time we asked the question. And in the latest survey, 52 percent rated China’s territorial ambitions as a critical threat. Fully 76 percent of Americans think it’s likely that China will view Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a precedent, encouraging it to invade Taiwan.
As Americans grow more concerned about a threat from authoritarian China, they may also be growing more favorably inclined toward democratic Taiwan.
What Taiwanese people think about Pelosi's visit
Americans are willing to back Taiwan — to a point
The parallel to Ukraine doesn’t stop there. If there’s a crisis, Americans say, they are willing to support aid to Taiwan that’s much like current U.S. aid to Ukraine. If China were to invade Taiwan, 76 percent say they would support imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions on China; 65 percent say they would support sending additional arms and military equipment to Taiwan; and 62 percent would support having the U.S. Navy prevent China from imposing a blockade around Taiwan. But only 40 percent of Americans would favor sending U.S. troops to help the Taiwanese government defend itself.
All those numbers are similar to what we found on Ukraine, where Americans also back sanctions and military aid but not U.S. troops on the ground.
Despite the strong partisan divides running through the United States on so many issues, we found that Republicans and Democrats had similar attitudes on all these aspects of U.S. support for Taiwan — much as party leaders have appeared to agree, no matter their party.
How far have human rights eroded in Hong Kong? We measured.
U.S. policy toward Taiwan is in line with public opinion
Both Pelosi’s trip and the more recent congressional delegation visit to Taiwan may be over, but the Senate will be debating the Taiwan Policy Act after its August recess — which could further rile Beijing. The bill would give Taiwan nearly $4.5 billion in security assistance along with designation as a “Major Non-NATO Ally,” and would support Taiwan’s participation in international organizations and multilateral trade agreements.
While the White House would clearly prefer less “tough-on-China” congressional involvement on these issues, American attitudes differ. In a 2021 Chicago Council Survey, most Americans viewed Taiwan as either an ally (30 percent) or a necessary partner (30 percent). Majorities also favored U.S. recognition of Taiwanese independence (69 percent), Taipei’s inclusion in international organizations (65 percent) and a U.S.-Taiwan free trade agreement (57 percent). A slimmer majority (53 percent) supported the United States signing a formal alliance with Taiwan, though just 46 percent of Americans were willing to explicitly commit to defend Taiwan from attack.
Biden walks a fine line with Congress, Beijing, and the American public
Since the speaker’s visit to Taipei, Beijing has made its displeasure with the United States clear. In addition to sanctioning Pelosi and her family, China has suspended bilateral talks on climate, transnational crime and other global issues on which the United States has sought to make progress.
Given all this, the Biden administration will probably try to reassure a deeply skeptical Xi Jinping that the United States remains committed to its One China Policy and a peaceful resolution of the situation — all without letting up on the political and military support Taiwan badly needs. And while administration officials have been trying to uphold the traditional U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan, Congress and the American public — and President Biden — seem to be less ambiguous in their support.
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Dina Smeltz (@RoguePollster) is a senior fellow in public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Craig Kafura (@ckafura) is the assistant director of public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Truman National Security Fellow, and a Pacific Forum Young Leader. | 2022-08-17T11:52:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Do Americans support Pelosi's visit to Taiwan? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/17/public-opinion-china-taiwan-pelosi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/17/public-opinion-china-taiwan-pelosi/ |
A Woman passes Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022. A 20-year-old man has been charged with intending to injure or alarm The Queen under the Treason Act following an incident on Christmas Day 2021 at Windsor Castle. Jaswant Singh Chail was charged with an offence under section two of the Treason Act 1842 - last used more than 40 years ago - which is ‘discharging or aiming firearms, or throwing or using any offensive matter or weapon, with intent to injure or alarm Her Majesty’. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
10:47 AMThe latest: Alaska special congressional race involving Sarah Palin remains unresolved | 2022-08-17T11:52:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK man in court over threat to 'kill queen' with crossbow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/uk-man-in-court-over-threat-to-kill-queen-with-crossbow/2022/08/17/013567ac-1e21-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/uk-man-in-court-over-threat-to-kill-queen-with-crossbow/2022/08/17/013567ac-1e21-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
In this photo provided by the Indian Army, soldiers carry the remains of Chandra Shekhar, an Indian army soldier found more than 38 years after he went missing, in Leh, India, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022. The soldier and 17 other colleagues were occupying a ridge on Siachen Glacier, high in the Karakoram range in disputed Kashmir’s Ladakh region, in May 1984 when they were hit by an avalanche, officials said. (Indian Army via AP) (Uncredited/Indian Army) | 2022-08-17T11:53:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Missing India soldier's body found on glacier after 38 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/missing-india-soldiers-body-found-on-glacier-after-38-years/2022/08/17/11182ff8-1e1a-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/missing-india-soldiers-body-found-on-glacier-after-38-years/2022/08/17/11182ff8-1e1a-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto leader, in Mecca on Aug. 16. (Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Royal Court/Reuters)
BEIRUT — Saudi Arabia quietly sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison over her Twitter activity last week, marking the longest sentence ever for a peaceful activist and launching a fresh wave of fear among the government’s detractors.
In January 2021, Salma al-Shehab was detained in Saudi Arabia, where she was on vacation, days before the Saudi citizen and mother of two was set to return to her home in Britain, rights groups said. The charges faced by the 33-year-old all revolved around her Twitter activity, said the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, which reviewed the court documents and spoke to her friends.
Shehab had been active on the social media platform during campaigns demanding the abolition of the country’s guardianship system, which gives men control over certain aspects of female relatives’ lives. She had also made calls for the freeing of Saudi prisoners of conscience.
The European-Saudi human rights group, which tracks arrests in the kingdom, said Shehab was charged with undermining the security of society and stability of the state, spreading sedition, helping those who seek to disrupt public order, and spreading false and malicious rumors on Twitter.
The charges are familiar: Sowing sedition and destabilizing the state are accusations frequently used against activists in the kingdom who speak up against the status quo. Saudi Arabia has long wielded its counterterrorism law against its citizens whose protests are deemed unacceptable, especially if they criticize the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In late 2021, the initial ruling against Shehab gave her six years in prison. When she appealed, however, it was increased to 34 — the country’s longest sentence against a peaceful activist, according to several human rights groups.
The sentence includes a 34-year travel ban and the closure of her Twitter account, said Lina al-Hathloul, head of monitoring and communications at ALQST, a London-based Saudi rights group. “Now we’re working with Twitter not to close it or to make them aware that at least if they’re asked to close it, it comes from the Saudi government and not from her.”
In its statement on Tuesday, the European-Saudi rights group said the decision to sentence Shehab under the counterterrorism law “confirms that Saudi Arabia deals with those who demand reforms and critics on social networks as terrorists.”
The group said the ruling sets a dangerous precedent and shows that Saudi Arabia’s widely lauded efforts to modernize the kingdom and improve women’s rights “are not serious and fall within the whitewashing campaigns it is carrying out to improve its human rights record.”
Saudi dissidents call Biden’s planned visit to kingdom a betrayal
Shehab is a PhD student at Britain’s University of Leeds and a lecturer at Princess Nourah University in Saudi capital, Riyadh. The oral and dental medicine specialist belongs to the Shiite sect of Islam — viewed by many hard-line Sunni Muslims as heretical.
Saudi Arabia often has been criticized for its treatment of the Shiite minority. Earlier this year, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in its annual report on human rights that the kingdom “systematically discriminates against Muslim religious minorities,” including Shiites.
Shehab’s last Twitter activity was on Jan. 13, 2021, two days before her arrest, when she retweeted a classic Arabic song about missing a loved one’s company.
On her Twitter page, which remains active, her pinned tweet topping her activity is a prayer asking for forgiveness if she had ever transgressed against another human unknowingly and asking God to help her reject injustice and help those who face it.
Annabelle Timsit in France contributed to this report. | 2022-08-17T12:11:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Salma al-Shehab, Saudi activist, sentenced to 34 years for tweeting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/saudi-salma-shehab-activist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/saudi-salma-shehab-activist/ |
Serena Williams lost in straight sets to Emma Raducanu on Tuesday night. (Jeff Dean/AP)
For the second time since indicating last week that she will soon retire from tennis, Serena Williams lost in straight sets, this time in the opening round of the final tuneup before the U.S. Open.
Emma Raducanu, the 19-year-old who was the surprise winner of the U.S. Open last year, scored a 6-4, 6-0 victory over Williams on Tuesday night in a sold-out match that lasted 65 minutes and gave fans on Center Court at Cincinnati’s Western & Southern Open little to cheer for.
In her first match since telling Vogue that the remainder of her career can be measured in weeks, Williams lost, 6-2, 6-4, to Belinda Bencic on Aug. 10 in the second round of the Canadian Open in Toronto, where, with a few tears, she said goodbye to Canadian fans and was given the kinds of parting mementos typical of a farewell tour.
Want to see Serena Williams at the U.S. Open? Good luck getting a ticket.
The scene was different in Cincinnati. The power game so elegantly displayed by Williams in her prime was missing — she lost her opening service game at love and her last three service games. Her diminished ability to move because of leg injuries was evident as she racked up unforced errors and missed returns. On her second serve, she won only two of 16 points.
When it was over, Williams declined an on-court interview and quickly left the court after shaking Raducanu’s hand, heading into an uncertain couple of weeks leading up to the U.S. Open, which begins Aug. 29. Although she did not explicitly say when her tennis career will end, she said last week that “the countdown has begun” on her final appearances.
“Well, I think we all need to just honor Serena and her amazing career,” Raducanu told the crowd. “I’m so grateful for the experience to be able to play her and for our careers to cross over. Everything she has achieved is so inspirational, and yeah, it was a true honor to share this court with her.”
Buckner: Serena Williams, bigger than any label, is now something new: Relatable
Raducanu added that she was “all for it” when the crowd cheered for Williams, who has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, second only to Margaret Court’s 24.
Williams, who will turn 41 next month, has played in only four singles matches over the past 14 months and missed a year of action after tearing her hamstring when she slipped at Wimbledon in 2021. Williams told Vogue that however long her tennis career lasts, “retirement” is a difficult word.
“There is no happiness in this topic for me,” Williams told the magazine. “I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain. It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it.
“I hate that I have to be at this crossroads. I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next.”
Williams added that her evolution from tennis is in full swing as she concentrates on her Serena Ventures business and other opportunities as well as possibly expanding her family.
“There comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction. That time is always hard when you love something so much,” she wrote last week on Instagram under a shot of the Vogue cover. “My goodness do I enjoy tennis. But now, the countdown has begun. I have to focus on being a mom, my spiritual goals and finally discovering a different, but just [as] exciting Serena. I’m gonna relish these next few weeks.” | 2022-08-17T12:42:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena Williams loses to Emma Raducanu at Western & Southern Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/serena-williams-emma-raducanu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/17/serena-williams-emma-raducanu/ |
Taking the Fifth should disqualify a politician from taking office
Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times in New York’s investigation into his business’s finances. Of course, the defeated former president and alleged mishandler of classified material has every right to avoid self-incrimination, but that doesn’t mean he’s protected from adverse judgment, either from the jury in this civil suit or from voters.
Indeed, taking the Fifth — especially concerning his alleged misconduct related to the attempted coup — should disqualify him from the presidency.
Tribe adds, “In that special sense, a president or a former president, more than any other public official or private citizen, arguably betrays his or her duty to the American people by taking the Fifth.”
Of course, oaths mean little to Trump. As Norman J. Ornstein, an author and political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, notes, “Fealty to the law meant nothing to him. The country’s interests meant nothing to him. The only oath he has taken is to his own greed and self-preservation.” But that does not mean voters can ignore the obvious conflict that occurs when someone simultaneously thwarts a government investigation and pledges to enforce the Constitution.
Nor should the obligation to one’s oath be limited to the president. Tribe, in his 1978 book “American Constitutional Law,” discusses the importance of the oaths of office, which are required not only for presidents but also for Supreme Court justices, state legislators and every executive and judicial officer in the country. Tribe notes that Article VI of the Constitution specifies that public officials must take an oath “not just to obey the Constitution and laws of the United States but ‘to support this Constitution.’ ”
In other words, should members of Congress implicated in the plot to overturn the 2020 election choose to take the Fifth, they would be setting up a conflict between their self-interest and the interest in upholding and supporting the Constitution. The same goes for Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) should he refuse to answer questions in the inquiry regarding the pressure campaign on election officials in Georgia.
As lawmakers decide whether to cooperate with prosecutors or grand juries, they, too, should keep in mind: Taking the Fifth is their prerogative, but it is the prerogative of voters to hold it against them as evidence that they are putting themselves above the interests of the country. | 2022-08-17T12:51:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump taking the Fifth should disqualify him from office - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/trump-taking-fifth-disqualify-office/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/17/trump-taking-fifth-disqualify-office/ |
Hi Jules: I want to share on TikTok but I am really self-conscious about it. How can I get past my feelings of inadequacy to post my videos?
— C.
C: Feeling self-conscious happens to everyone, even well-established creators. It’s not natural to reach hundreds, if not thousands or millions of people instantaneously from the comfort of your phone. What is natural is considering what other people think of you. To overcome these mental barriers, what you need is a shift in mind-set.
Putting yourself out there on a platform like TikTok is vulnerable and personal; you shouldn’t worry about if other people find your account appealing. We are not for everyone. Sometimes it’s easy to question if we are even for anyone, but TikTok’s personalized algorithm is bound to help you find at least one person who resonates with what you decide to share.
Though, let’s be real — shifting your mind-set is easier said than done. To fully comprehend how something can bring value to your life, sometimes you need to just throw yourself into the fire. Luckily, there are low-stake ways to do so.
Creating a pseudonymous or anonymous account allows you to experiment with posting on TikTok while limiting the parts of the process you might feel nervous about. The ability to explore and express yourself is part of the beauty of the internet, and I can’t recommend it enough.
I started on TikTok with a pseudonymous account, and none of the people in my life knew about it until I had more than 100,000 followers. There is freedom in building from zero and releasing yourself of the expectations that you assume from others.
Being truly anonymous can be tough on TikTok unless you go all-in on voice-overs, animations, or other forms of visual yet personless content. Keeping the trial and error process focused on creating content you’re interested in, independent of what anyone you know might think, will help you build a degree of that confidence you’re looking for.
If these feelings of self-consciousness and inadequacy are also present in other areas of your life, you have to push your comfort zone in those areas as well. It’s all interconnected. But these small efforts will seem big once you look back and see how they’ve impacted your personal growth. | 2022-08-17T13:21:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Jules: I want to post on TikTok but I'm too self-conscious - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/17/ask-jules-terpak-self-conscious-post-tiktok/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/17/ask-jules-terpak-self-conscious-post-tiktok/ |
Supersonic Passenger Jets Are Back? Not So Fast
A model of the Overture supersonic aircraft at the Boom Technology Inc. stand on day two of the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, UK, on Tuesday, July 19, 2022. The airshow, one of the biggest events in the global aerospace industry, runs through July 22. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
American Airlines Group Inc. just agreed to purchase 20 supersonic jets from Boom Supersonic that are designed to carry as many as 80 passengers. So, when will you be able to buy a ticket to fly at 1.7 times the speed of sound from New York to London and cut your travel time in half? Well, probably never.
Boom has lined up some impressive partners, and a couple of airlines have agreed to make purchases. This doesn’t mean the plane will ever be built. The partners, including the defense giant Northrop Grumman Corp., are on board for now, but they have no obligation to stick around. There’s no real skin in the game.
That goes for American Airlines, United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Japan Airlines Co., which have all added to the order book for Boom’s supersonic airliner, the Overture, which costs $200 million. But they aren’t paying anything close to that now. It’s easy for an airline to put down a small amount of money on the chance that a startup pulls it off and restarts the era of supersonic travel. It’s more akin to a venture investment. American Airlines’ down payment is nonrefundable, Boom said in the statement on Tuesday. Nobody is disclosing the amount, so it’s bound to be tiny.
If all this sounds a little familiar, it’s because it is. Recall this headline from a Bloomberg News article in May 2021: “Texas Billionaire’s Supersonic-Jet Dream Dies as Aerion Folds.” The startup’s demise came just when it looked as if it was truly going to produce its supersonic aircraft, the AS2. The company had hired a lot of experienced aviation industry executives, boasted many orders and, more important, had an engine maker. General Electric Co. was taking a crack at developing the perfect engine that was quiet and able to cruise efficiently above and below the speed of sound.Aerion ended up owing $32 million to GE for engine work, according to a list of assets for sale that was published last year. Development Specialists Inc., which is handling the fire sale of the few assets Aerion has, has set a deadline of Sept. 7 for submitting bids.
Aerion had all the right partners, including Boeing Co., and had Flexjet, the second-largest operator of private jets, as a launch customer. The list of wealthy people willing to sign up for a chance to buy a showboat aircraft that would smoke all their rivals’ clunkers grew. NetJets, the largest operator of private aircraft owned by none other than Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., signed up to buy 20 AS2s in March 2021. Two months later, Aerion collapsed. Robert Bass, the Texas billionaire from the headline, wouldn’t support the project any longer just as it was poised to map out its pathway to manufacturing. When a last-ditch attempt to line up investors — rumors say from Saudi Arabia — failed, the project collapsed.
Aerion’s experience doesn’t mean that this same fate will befall Boom, but the challenges are similar and formidable.Environmental and noise-limit standards make the challenge of developing an engine for a civilian supersonic aircraft incredibly daunting. Regulations that restrict supersonic travel over land will have to change, but Boom says there are hundreds of airline routes over the ocean to drum up demand. The startup also says it will use only sustainable aircraft fuel (SAF), which is expensive and scarce.
Scholl said that his Overture aircraft will be “very profitable” with a round-trip ticket from New York to London at $5,000. That would be a great deal for cutting in half the seven-hour flight from JFK to Heathrow. For the engine, Boom is in talks with Rolls Royce Plc, which has a technical design, and other unidentified companies, Scholl said. Safran SA, Raytheon Technologies Inc.’s Collins unit, Eaton Corp. and other well-known suppliers are paying for their own research for the project, he said.
The project begs the question: If the business opportunity were so solid, why wouldn’t one of the experienced planemakers such as Boeing Co., Airbus SE or Lockheed Martin Corp. already have such an aircraft in development? Sure, startups can and do disrupt established industries, but manufacturing such a complex plane on budget and on time to keep down the price per passenger requires more than entrepreneurial brashness. Passengers probably aren’t going to pay too much more than a business-class ticket to reduce the trip from Los Angeles to Hawaii to about three hours from five.
• Airline Chaos Makes High Fares Harder to Bear: Brooke Sutherland
• Airline Chaos Gives Travel Scammers an Opening: Alexis Leondis | 2022-08-17T13:22:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supersonic Passenger Jets Are Back? Not So Fast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/supersonic-passenger-jets-are-back-not-so-fast/2022/08/17/f3b3cf7a-1e24-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/supersonic-passenger-jets-are-back-not-so-fast/2022/08/17/f3b3cf7a-1e24-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” stars Tatiana Maslany as a superhero who’s a bit different from Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk.
Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) take a moment to explore what it means to be green. (Marvel Studios/Disney+)
She-Hulk is the alter ego of a lawyer who’s Bruce Banner’s cousin
‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ trailer: The five biggest takeaways | 2022-08-17T13:22:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is ‘She-Hulk’? Six things to know before her Disney Plus series. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/08/17/she-hulk-attorney-law-disney-plus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/08/17/she-hulk-attorney-law-disney-plus/ |
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