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A preacher scolded his flock for not ‘honoring’ him with luxury watch
The Rev. Carlton Funderburke asked his church: ‘I ain’t worth your Prada? I’m not worth your Gucci?’
The Church at the Well in Kansas City, Mo. (Google Maps)
The Rev. Carlton Funderburke condemned his congregation not because they had sinned too much, loved God too little or done too few good deeds out in the world. Instead, Funderburke rebuked the “cheap sons and daughters” of the Church at the Well in Kansas City for not “honoring” him with a luxury gift.
“That’s how I know you still poor, broke, busted and disgusted, because of how you been honoring me,” Funderburke told his congregation, according to a video. “I’m not worth your McDonald’s money? I’m not worth your Red Lobster money? I ain’t worth your St. John Knit — y’all can’t afford it nohow. I ain’t worth y’all Louis Vuitton? I ain’t worth your Prada? I’m not worth your Gucci?”
Preachers and their $5,000 sneakers: Why one man started an Instagram account showing churches’ wealth
The Church at the Well did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post late Wednesday, but a day earlier, it posted a video of Funderburke apologizing. The pastor called that part of his Aug. 7 sermon “inexcusable” and said “the video clip does not reflect my heart or my sentiments toward God’s people.”
“The zeal of any presentation must be tempered with love and respect. And that was not displayed,” he said.
Earlier in the video, Funderburke hinted at “context behind the content of the clip” but didn’t elaborate. He also acknowledged that “no context will suffice to explain the hurt and anguish caused.” He said he’s addressed what happened with his congregation.
“I've spoken to those I am accountable to and have received their correction and instruction. I have also privately apologized to our church, who has extended their love and support to me.”
During the sermon, Funderburke reminded parishioners he’d asked them for gifts before. He even told them where they could make their purchases.
“You can buy a Movado watch in Sam’s,” Funderburke said in the clip posted by the Defender. “And y’all know I asked for one last year. Here it is the whole way in August — I still ain’t got it. Y’all ain’t said nothing. Let me kick down the door and talk to my cheap sons and daughters.”
Funderburke told them he wasn’t giving them a tongue-lashing because of greed or want on his part but so that they might realize the path to righteousness.
“I’m saying it because I want you to understand just what God is saying,” Funderburke told them.
Preacher and his wife robbed of $1 million in jewelry during sermon
In 2017, an Alexandria pastor and his wife were convicted of swindling their friends and congregation at Victorious Life Church out of millions of dollars, The Post reported at the time. The couple promised those who invested in their various ventures — a microloan operation and business focused on the Nigerian oil industry — that they would make their money back or even turn a profit, all while boosting economies in developing countries. Instead, the pastor and his wife used the money to bait new investors, make payments on their $1.75 million home and pay for personal expenses, including golf games and pricey furniture, prosecutors said.
Last year, a plumber doing maintenance work at Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston discovered cash and checks stashed in a bathroom wall, possibly helping to solve a $600,000 burglary seven years earlier. The plumber, Justin Cauley, scored a $20,000 reward for his find.
The purchases of preachers have become enough of a public curiosity that there are social media accounts dedicated to dissecting the wardrobes of religious leaders. In 2019, Ben Kirby grew curious about the lifestyles of rich and famous pastors while watching worship songs on YouTube and noticing that the lead singer of a megachurch’s band was wearing $800 sneakers, The Post previously reported. He then wondered how the church’s pastor could afford a new designer outfit almost every week.
That led him to start the Instagram account PreachersNSneakers, which he uses to juxtapose photos of religious leaders alongside screenshots of the clothes they’re wearing — price tags included. In an entry from last month, there’s a photo of a smiling pastor wearing what appear to be Lanvin sneakers, made to look like they’ve been splattered in at least a half dozen colors of paint. On the right, a picture of the sneakers on Saks Fifth Avenue’s website and how much they were going for: $1,420. | 2022-08-18T10:43:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Missouri preacher scolds church for not buying him a designer gift - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/missouri-pastor-luxury-watch-broke/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/missouri-pastor-luxury-watch-broke/ |
Afghanistan’s women in exile continue to push for equality
Activists and former politicians put pressure on the international community regarding concerns over key women’s rights
Analysis by Mona Tajali
Taliban fighters fired into the air to disperse a rally by women chanting “Bread, work and freedom” as they marched in front of the Education Ministry building. Under Taliban rules, women in Afghanistan have had to quit their jobs, and girls after the age of 12 can no longer go to school. (Nava Jamshidi/Getty Images)
On Aug. 13, a group of women demonstrated in front of the Education Ministry in Kabul, demanding “bread, work and freedom.” This week marks one full year since the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover in Afghanistan. Many warned that the Taliban would quickly act to reverse the advances in women and girls’ rights — predictions that have proved highly accurate.
Afghan women — including some who still reside in Afghanistan and many who fled Taliban rule — haven’t remained silent. These women, including former politicians and longtime activists, continue to mobilize to demand women’s rights and gender equality across all aspects of life in Afghanistan.
How have women fared under Taliban rule?
Within days of taking over the presidential palace, the Taliban began reversing the many advances in gender equality achieved over the past two decades. The Taliban dismissed female employees from banks, universities, media and most other places of employment. Afghanistan’s new government allows women to exit their homes only if accompanied by a male guardian, reinstating a requirement from the Taliban’s earlier time in power, from 1996 to 2001. And despite international condemnation of the new restrictions on education, secondary education for girls in Afghanistan remains banned.
In the face of the Taliban’s repression, women have mobilized. In Afghanistan, women have taken to the streets of major cities throughout the past year to protest their marginalization from public life. These protests often end in violent attacks at the hands of the Taliban. Others continue their activism while remaining in hiding, such as operating underground schools in Afghanistan for girls who have no other means of obtaining an education.
These efforts are not without risk. Reports of violence against women and girls have been on the rise, including news of targeted killing and kidnapping of female activists who have been resisting the reversal of their rights.
Activists in exile have stepped up their work
My research focuses on female parliamentarians and leaders who suddenly found themselves out of office with the return of the Taliban. While the Taliban dismissed government officials regardless of gender, women comprised a sizable number of policymakers in Afghanistan, thanks to constitutional gender quotas that reserved at least 27 percent of the parliamentary seats for women.
The U.S. couldn’t build Afghanistan a democracy. That rarely works.
As I’ve argued previously, Afghanistan adopted this quota provision as a result of local women’s activism during the post-2001 era, with important support from the international and transnational community. Countries around the world use gender quotas to boost women’s access to political decision-making. Given the male-dominated nature of most legislatures, quotas may also contribute to the creation of a critical mass of women in politics — which helps boost representation of women’s needs and demands in policymaking.
Quotas can also help support women as leaders even after they are removed from formal political roles. My research suggests that many of Afghanistan’s female politicians — some with years of experience — continue to view themselves as representatives of women’s interests, even after the Taliban ousted them from power. Hundreds of female leaders at the national and local levels were forced to flee suddenly a year ago. After hasty arrivals in major cities such as Istanbul, Athens or Toronto, these former politicians have worked hard to collectively pressure the international community on key women’s rights concerns.
My interviews with female Afghan activists revealed that their strategies in exile have mostly consisted of positioning themselves as spokespeople and representatives of the women of Afghanistan as they engage with and lobby international organizations. Despite being spread out across the globe, many former parliamentarians have formed networks and remain in regular contact with one another to coordinate their activities.
These networks of female former parliamentarians and leaders in exile have captured the attention of international and transnational organizations, providing further platforms to voice their demands. The European Union’s diplomatic service, for instance, has organized a number of public events in recent months — inviting former Afghan female leaders to share their objectives on women’s rights, peace and security in Afghanistan and the region.
Has this lobbying proved effective?
These networks have had a number of important successes in securing support for women’s rights. Over the past year, for instance, female leaders have lobbied key Western powers and organizations to deny the legitimacy of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. At times, U.S. and European leaders have demonstrated some willingness to recognize the Taliban. The extensive lobbying and reporting on human rights violations in Afghanistan have been one factor that has prevented this. Recognizing girls’ education as a fundamental necessity, many women have focused on efforts to pressure the Taliban to reopen girls’ schools.
My research revealed that many female Afghan leaders aren’t necessarily opposed to the international community meeting with Taliban leaders, particularly given the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. But female activists emphasize the importance of ensuring that Afghan women are present in all meetings held with the Taliban outside of Afghanistan. Similarly, women have been calling for the international community not to send male-only delegations and force the Taliban to meet and negotiate with women.
Professors: Check out TMC’s newest topic guides for your class.
Activism by Afghanistan’s women in exile has also succeeded in facilitating the reopening of nongovernmental organizations in Afghanistan that support women’s rights, most of which were forced to cease operations following the August 2021 takeover. Global sanctions against the Taliban have severely restricted funding for NGOs in Afghanistan. A number of female Afghan activists have convinced the international community to release funds within Afghanistan, to be used and distributed directly by established women-focused NGOs for the support of communities.
The key advancements of the past two decades in Afghanistan on women’s rights, including the adoption of the gender quotas, have helped support a coalition of politically experienced and politicized women inside and outside of the country who are interested in working toward peace, gender equality and democracy. These efforts offer an important reminder of the goals of U.N. Resolution 1325, a landmark 2000 resolution on the significance of women’s inclusion in peace, security and development processes.
Mona Tajali (@MonaTajali) is an associate professor of international relations and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Agnes Scott College. She is the author of “Women’s Political Representation in Iran and Turkey: Demanding a Seat at the Table” (Edinburgh University Press 2022) and co-author with Homa Hoodfar of “Electoral Politics: Making Quotas Work for Women” (WLUML 2011). | 2022-08-18T10:43:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taliban violence against women and girls is on the rise in Afghanistan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/afghanistan-women-exile-activism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/afghanistan-women-exile-activism/ |
WNBA star Elena Delle Donne has one of the best jumpers in all of basketball, and she honed it with her father, Ernie Delle Donne. Ernie is still her shooting coach today. (Photo courtesy of Elena Delle Donne) (Candace Buckner/Elena Delle Donne)
The architect of one of the finest jump shots in basketball can’t come to phone right now.
It’s Wednesday at noon, and Ernest Delle Donne is back to his day job as the CEO of Delle Donne & Associates, a real estate development firm located in Delaware. The previous two days, however, he returned to being Ernie — Elena’s dad and shooting coach.
Decades before Elena Delle Donne became the Washington Mystics’ superstar and a two-time WNBA MVP, she was a 6-year-old heeding lessons about where to properly place her thumb before shooting a marked-up toy basketball. Ernie taught her that; he also taught her to shoot while wearing a beach visor, as well as to aim over a 14-foot structure (a broom atop a ladder) named “Oscar.”
And though statistics have shown Elena to be the greatest free throw shooter in basketball history and the league’s first player to reach the holy grail of 50-40-90 percentages from the field, behind the three-point arc and from the free throw line in a season, Ernie still gets the occasional call from his only client when she wants to correct her mechanics.
“It’s funny. It’s still consistent. I got some shots up with him [Monday and Tuesday],” Elena says. “He’s been my shooting coach since I’ve started playing basketball, and he’s been there ever since.”
Ernie — it’s Ernest for professional settings but just Ernie for anything related to Elena — calls back about an hour later. He has some time ahead of lunch, before diving back into financing an office tower, and he always will make time to talk about his favorite basketball player.
“Like I tell people, if I was a really good shooting coach, I’d have about 10 to 15 players that I coach,” Ernie jokes. “I coach one player, and she just happens to be so gifted.”
But that’s not all keeping him from making this his side hustle.
“I have a full-time job already,” Ernie says, “and to be truthful, the only person’s shooting that I really care about is Elena’s.”
Care? He’s being modest. While listening to both Delle Donnes’ accounts of her baller upbringing, it seems that Ernie has obsessed over her shot.
“When it became important to my children, I thought what’s the best thing as a father I can do than to at least try to learn as much as I could,” he says. “I guess it was just being observant and giving a darn about your kids doing their best.”
Ernie was a golfer and played basketball growing up, and he later majored in biochemistry and economics at Columbia. So in merging lessons from golf and using his mind to effectively break down physics to a kid, Ernie tutored Elena in sports science before it was even a thing.
Ernie started with her right hand. He made sure her index finger was perpendicular to the floor. And just how did he ensure a 6-year-old would understand that? He traced her fingers on that little orange basketball, so she knew how to place her hand on the exact right spot every time before lifting and flicking her index finger toward the 4½-foot rim.
As she got older, Elena remembers Ernie telling her to wear a baseball cap when shooting jumpers. He recalls it as an accountant’s visor or a beach visor about eight inches long. The purpose: He needed her elbow, forearm and glenohumeral joint to be at a 90-degree angle. The ball would then be about 14 inches from Elena’s face, and if her mechanics ever lapsed and the shot released closer to her head, then she would knock off the hat.
Also, an 8-year-old Elena wore an oven mitt on her left hand — to teach her to use it only as a stabilizer — and spent a lot of time with “Oscar.”
“He made it fun,” she said. “Shooting over Oscar was really fun for me, and little did I know, I was developing an arc in that moment.”
For the final component, Ernie coached his daughter to shoot the ball to the midway distance of the rim, which would be the apex of the arc. Forget about elbow extension — that’s shooting a dart — and instead think about the forearm going vertical. So on a 22-foot shot from long distance, Elena is actually aiming for the 11-foot midpoint. Her legs do the rest.
“It’s pretty much just always been my dad. He’s been the one,” Elena says. “Even if other trainers come around, they know: ‘Uh- uh. Don’t touch that.’ That’s mine and his thing.”
All these decades and awards later, Elena still shoots the same way that she did on those 7-foot rims at the YMCA. And when it’s time to work, the Delle Donnes still return to the same drills — but the oven mitt, beach visor and Oscar long since have been retired.
Still, they have a rule. While Ernie notices what’s happening with Elena’s shot better than anyone else, he can offer help only when asked.
“The biggest thing is I have to reach out to him. It probably kills him because I’m sure there’s times he sees my shot not being as efficient as he’s used to seeing and he probably wants to reach out and say something,” she says, “But our rule is always that I have to be the one to reach out because in the end he’s my dad. He doesn’t want to mess that up or be too much about basketball. So it’s kind of like our rule with each other, and it’s worked.”
But following the Mystics’ regular season finale Sunday, when Elena shot 8 for 13 overall and 1 for 4 from the arc, she scheduled her shooting coach. She’s a turn shooter, so her feet should never be squared to the basket, and Ernie noticed one of her three-point attempts from the left side of the arc missed to the right because her body was not sideways. On Monday, the pair worked on those mechanics. Then they returned the next day and improved those mechanics even more.
“And as soon as she got that elbow and that 14-inch distance, she was turned sideways perfectly. I mean, just perfectly,” Ernie says. “I would say Tuesday she had one of the best shooting drill days we’ve ever had and probably the best shooting day [since] she was 14 playing AAU basketball.”
Elena Delle Donne’s shooting coach now has to get back to his 9-to-5. Those office buildings aren’t going to finance themselves. But he will be watching Thursday night, when the Mystics open the first round of the playoffs in Seattle. He will study her index finger, the 90-degree angle of her arm, how she’s turned slightly away from the basket. And Ernie will be ready to break all of it down anytime she calls.
“It’s not like off feel and touch. It’s more like if you check these things off a list, the shot should go in,” Elena says. “That’s just kind of how his brain works, and I’m lucky to have a dad with that sort of way of thinking. He’s been my shooting guy my entire life and always will be.” | 2022-08-18T10:43:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics star Elena Delle Donne relies on same shooting coach: Her dad, Ernie - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/elena-delle-donne-father-ernie-shooting-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/elena-delle-donne-father-ernie-shooting-coach/ |
Solange Knowles makes perfect sense as New York City Ballet composer
The Grammy-winning artist, the latest of NYCB’s major music collaborators, is deeply creative with an appetite for dance
Solange Knowles performs during a fashion show as part of Paris Fashion Week in 2019. (Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)
In keeping with its history of high-profile music commissions, New York City Ballet asked Solange Knowles to compose an original score for a new ballet, which will premiere at the company’s Fall Fashion Gala next month. But the partnership with Knowles, the Grammy-winning R&B, pop and dance-oriented singer-songwriter, is notable for more than its buzz and box-office potential.
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Of course, those may well have been reasons one and two for tapping the musician — who also happens to be Beyoncé’s younger sister. Knowles’s name guarantees publicity for the Sept. 28 event at New York’s Lincoln Center, along the lines of Paul McCartney’s involvement in the company’s 2011 fall gala. The celebrated musician composed the score for “Ocean’s Kingdom,” choreographed by Peter Martins, the company’s director at the time.
According to NYCB spokesman Robert Daniels, Knowles came to the company’s attention after her 2019 work with dancers in a performance-art piece at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Former NYCB dancer Ryan Kelly had collaborated with Knowles on that piece, titled “Bridge-s,” where dancers moved through the museum’s outdoor plaza while Knowles sang, and suggested her to NYCB associate artistic director Wendy Whelan as a possible collaborator, Daniels said.
Knowles also attended a rehearsal of Justin Peck’s ballet “Rotunda,” which Peck created for the company just before the pandemic. In early 2022, Whelan approached Knowles about writing the score for the new ballet.
The piece, which has yet to be titled, will be choreographed by Gianna Reisen, 23, a graduate of the company’s training arm, the School of American Ballet. Reisen made her first ballet for the company in 2017, when she was 18 and the youngest choreographer to create a repertory work for NYCB.
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The Knowles/Reisen pairing promises at the very least to prompt curiosity from ballet’s most coveted age group, the difficult-to-lure millennials and Gen-Zers. They’ll have ample occasions to buy tickets: In addition to the premiere, the piece will be performed in October and in May, during the company’s spring season at Lincoln Center.
There are clear advantages to linking the high-art world of dance with mainstream pop culture. Yet it appears there’s more to the choice of Knowles, 36, than the obvious marketing bonanza springing from her large fan base and wide appeal to younger audiences. What’s especially interesting about this deeply creative artist is her evident fascination with the art side of dance. In recent years, she has branched off into dance-centered performance art. In addition to “Bridge-s,” Knowles directed and composed “Witness!” at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, in which she accompanied an ensemble of dancers with her vocals, backed by an orchestra.
The NYCB commission is Knowles’ first ballet score, and it’s NYCB’s first commission of a Black female composer. According to NYCB, Knowles has composed her piece for a chamber ensemble. (Knowles could not be reached for comment.)
After NYCB’s announcement this week, Knowles tweeted photos of herself in the vast marble lobby of Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater. Tantalizingly, she wrote that the score would be performed by the City Ballet Orchestra and a “soloist from my ensemble.”
Who might this be? NYCB’s statement noted only that Knowles’s work would be performed by “some of the composer’s frequent musical collaborators.”
These are anyone’s guess; Knowles has worked with such boldface names as Kelly Rowland, Pharrell, Lil Wayne, Questlove and Tyler, the Creator, though she might more easily choose from her less well-known colleagues.
In addition to Knowles and McCartney, mainstream commercial musicians have often figured among NYCB’s commissions for new ballets. Resident choreographer Justin Peck has frequently turned to folk-electronica composer Sufjan Stevens. Other premieres have featured original scores by Colombian-Canadian singer-songwriter Lido Pimienta, indie rocker Bryce Dessner and jazz eminence Wynton Marsalis.
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In 2018, NYCB premiered dance piece “The Runaway” at its gala, with a score that included existing recordings by Kanye West and Jay-Z. Though these artists weren’t commissioned, the piece drew attention for the music as well as for its choreographer, Kyle Abraham, who at the time was the first Black artist to create a ballet for the company in more than a decade. Abraham is also premiering a work at next month’s gala, alongside the Knowles/Reisen piece.
How Netflix helped Kyle Abraham create his new dance
But ballet companies aren’t the only ones lucky enough to elicit new music from recording stars. In 2003, at age 84, Merce Cunningham, the pioneering guru of avant-garde dance, collaborated on a dance with two adventurous rock bands: the enormously famous British band Radiohead, fresh from a concert at Madison Square Garden, and the lesser-known but widely respected Icelandic group Sigur Ros.
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke dances like no one’s watching — and it’s a beauty to behold
Both bands played live in the orchestra pit for the world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Opera House. Radiohead’s contributions sprang mostly from a soundboard. Sigur Ros drummed out beats from various custom-made instruments, including pointe shoes screwed into a rack. After the opening, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed the dance, titled “Split Sides,” to recordings of the two bands’ original contributions, along with the dance company’s live musicians.
Cunningham, who died in 2009, delighted in working with musical innovators, notably experimental composer John Cage. He’d sent out requests to the bands to join his project, and when both unexpectedly agreed, he simply expanded the piece into halves, with separate lighting, costumes, decor, music and choreography for both parts. And in keeping with his affinity for “chance operations,” a preperformance roll of a die determined the order of each element.
Cunningham was an expert at finding ways to surprise his audience and flout tradition, and he had a knack for choosing nonconforming musical artists who relished working in new ways. By turning to Knowles, New York City Ballet seems to have found a musical artist in that mold, one who has an appetite for new sounds, new ways of creating — and new collaborators. | 2022-08-18T10:44:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Solange is the perfect choice to compose for New York City Ballet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/08/18/solange-new-york-city-ballet/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/08/18/solange-new-york-city-ballet/ |
Patrick Behan was 34 when he was diagnosed with ALS. He wasn’t going to stop leading the basketball team he loved.
By Adam Kilgore
St. John's College High School boys' basketball coach Patrick Behan, several days after telling his team about his ALS diagnosis. (Caitlin Buckley for The Washington Post)
Alone at his kitchen table, Patrick Behan opened the online meeting he had called the day before, short notice meant to limit gossip and worry. He stared into his laptop screen at faces he considered family.
Behan saw the players and parents of the boys’ basketball team at St. John’s College High, where he had been the coach for the past five seasons. As introduction, he detailed the start-of-school schedule. He informed incoming players their fall workouts would be taxing. Maybe the mundane would settle his nerves.
“The main reason I wanted to meet is to share some personal news about myself,” Behan told them. “I’ve known about this and, um, I hate to get emotional, but I figured that this would … Sorry.”
He leaned back and sipped from a red water bottle. He cleared his throat, trying to find the words.
“Late spring, early summer, um … ”
He blinked and rubbed his nose, his breath catching.
“I haven’t cried like this since Malik made the game-winning basket against Gonzaga.”
He chuckled and cleared his throat.
“I was diagnosed with ALS.”
In early May, doctors told Behan he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the terminal neurological disease commonly associated with Lou Gehrig and the Ice Bucket Challenge. It has no cure, causes harrowing muscle degeneration and carries an average life expectancy of three to five years after diagnosis. The best treatments are emerging drugs, promising but not proved. It has ravaged Behan’s family, and it came for him at 34 years old. Only 3 percent of ALS patients are so young.
Behan, a 6-foot-8 former power forward at Bucknell, cannot lift his left arm higher than 90 degrees or wiggle the toes on his right foot. He walks with a hitch. Unopened medical bills stack up on a table by his front door. A pill case sits on his footrest. He doesn’t know how or if his body will change, and he tries not to think about it.
“Unfortunately, you’ll learn more about the disease,” Behan told his players, tears rolling down his face. “It’s a vicious thing. There’s been significant progress in terms of what it is, what can be done. While you’re seeing me like this right now, I’m still your coach. And you still have everything humanly possible that I can give.”
‘We’re in this together’
Basketball season had been three months of bus rides, fast food and constant stress. When it ended last spring, Behan resolved to get back in shape. One night in early March, he dropped to his floor for a set of push-ups. He struggled to complete the first and couldn’t finish the second, his left arm and shoulder too weak to lift his body. At night in bed, his girlfriend Nataly Johanson noticed Behan’s upper arm muscles twitching. He knew something was wrong.
Johanson guessed the symptoms might be related to stress, but insisted Behan see a doctor just in case. An MRI indicated it could be a pinched nerve. Another test determined it wasn’t. Behan told Johanson he feared it was ALS.
In late winter 2020, Behan’s father, Jeremiah, started feeling weakness and stumbled when he tried to walk. His muscles deteriorated rapidly as doctors struggled to determine a cause. By the time he was diagnosed with ALS, it was too late for treatment. That April, Jeremiah died at 70.
Behan’s best friends did not know about his family’s ALS history until Jeremiah died. Behan’s grandmother died young of ALS. His aunt died at 30 and his uncle died of ALS. By his sister Alexis’s count, nearly 10 Behans have had ALS.
Doctors diagnose ALS as a last resort, and over weeks Behan endured a battery of tests. None eliminated ALS. In early May, he underwent an electromyography at a neurologist’s office, a test that would determine whether he had a motor neuron disease. It wouldn’t be a final diagnosis, but a near-certain signal of ALS.
The doctor walked in the door with results two hours later. Behan could tell by the look on his face what he was going to say. He cried in his car and called his sister and girlfriend.
On May 6, a doctor gave him the final diagnosis. Sitting in the office, he turned to Johanson. “I don’t care what it takes,” Behan said. “I want to fight this however possible.”
“After you hear that diagnosis, anything that was normal is not normal anymore,” Johanson said. “You always need something to give you purpose. In his case, it was fighting it.”
Behan would have many tough conversations, none tougher than the one that weekend with his mother. Darcy Behan was diagnosed in late 2020 with Stage 4 lung cancer. Behan drove 90 minutes to her house in Easton, Md. He told his mother her strength would give him courage in his own fight. “We’re both going to fight,” Behan told Darcy. “You’re fighting. I’m fighting. We’re in this together.”
Behan called his friend Pete Thamel, an ESPN college sports reporter whom Behan met while playing at Bucknell. Thamel had a connection at Boston College to Nancy Frates. She is the mother of Pete Frates, the former BC baseball player whose promotion of the Ice Bucket Challenge helped raise $100 million for ALS research before he died in 2019. She has seen what ALS does, and she has made it her life’s mission to help people afflicted with it.
The next afternoon, Behan and Johanson were on a Zoom call with Frates. The first thing she told them was, “Open up your heart and open up your arms for all the love that is going to come to you.” She asked questions and gave counsel about creating a support group that would allow Behan to focus on living his life and fighting the disease.
Frates emailed four leading ALS doctors and researchers. Within hours, they all emailed back. Behan would be enrolled at the Sean M. Healey and AMG Center for ALS at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the top ALS treatment facility in the world, under the care of James Berry, a leading ALS doctor.
With Frates’s guidance, Behan developed a plan. Alexis and Anthony Sosnoskie, his best friend from high school, contacted a lawyer to create a trust. Tim Brooks, a coaching friend, helped organize a fundraising cornhole tournament and college football viewing party on Sept. 17 in Olney. A web site rolled out this month under the banner Behan Strong, with the hashtag #PunchBack4Pat.
Behan met Ron Hoffman, a caregiver who runs the nonprofit Compassionate Care ALS and provided mental and spiritual support. Behan contacted Chris Caputo, the new coach at George Washington, who had recruited Behan as a young George Mason assistant. Caputo helped Behan arrange appointments at George Washington University Hospital. Behan spoke with Blair Casey, the ALS caregiver for former New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason, who advised him to avoid Googling for medical guidance.
“It could have been easy for him to be collapse in on himself,” Alexis said. “Instead, he tried to expand his network.”
Genetic testing revealed Behan had the SOD1 gene, a sliver of good fortune buried under a sea of bad. Researchers have developed a drug called Tofersen that treats SOD1, a form of the disease only 2 percent of ALS patients have. Money raised from the Ice Bucket Challenge made possible those kind of breakthroughs. Clinical trials have shown reduced muscular and respiratory decline, according to parent company Biogen.
Behan read about Chris Snow, a Calgary Flames assistant general manager who was diagnosed with ALS in 2019 and took part in an early Tofersen trial. Doctors gave Snow less than a year to live. Snow uses a feeding tube and his right arm has withered. But this spring and summer, Snow watched the Flames in the playoffs and ate lobster with his family at Merrymeeting Lake in New Hampshire.
In the first round of calls he made to share his diagnosis, Behan cried. In the next wave, he spoke with confidence. “I’m going to be okay,” he would tell them. “There’s a lot of good that can be done. I’m going to fight this.”
Alexis often reminds her brother that treatments have progressed since their father died. Behan is younger, stronger. ALS presents uniquely, even among people who share genes. “It’s different,” Alexis tells him. “It’s different.”
During one doctor’s visit, Behan spotted a chart on the wall detailing the average life expectancy for different forms of ALS.
“Then I thought back to Steve Gleason, and the doctors told him you’ve got a year to live,” Behan said. “And he’s alive. I’m sure Chris Snow’s doctors told him something [similar], and look where he is. So you see things like that, and you’re like, ‘F--- you. Why is that here?’ ”
Refuge on the court
In the overwhelming moments after he received the diagnosis, Behan asked a doctor, “Will I still be able to coach?” As long he was physically capable, he was told, then he should continue doing what he loved.
From youth, Behan devoured sports. He played marathon games of H-O-R-S-E and one-on-one on the cinder block court Jeremiah built in their Leesburg backyard. He memorized rosters and wrote game recaps in a composition notebook. He started a college football blog in high school. On long car rides with Brooks, they passed time reciting old NCAA tournament brackets from memory.
In high school, Behan shot to 6-foot-8 and transferred to Notre Dame Academy, then moved on to Bucknell. “He had skill, he could shoot it, tough as nails,” former Bucknell coach Pat Flannery said. “ … I used the word old soul. If there was a group of them, he was always the guy in the middle of it. You just could count on him. He was just so solid.”
Behan played professionally in Germany for a season, then semipro in the U.S. as he figured out what came next. He considered sports writing, and Thamel got him freelance work for the New York Times when the 2011 NCAA tournament came to Washington.
Behan covered a second-round game between Pittsburgh and Butler that ended in chaos, Butler winning by a point after consecutive fouls nowhere near the basket. In the locker rooms afterward, he saw Pitt players sobbing and coaches consoled by families. He watched Butler players hug each other and celebrate.
“The joy, the heartbreak — it’s like, ‘That’s where I need to be,’ ” Behan said. “For right or wrong, that’s kind of who I am.”
He spent nights recruiting across Maryland, Washington and Northern Virginia, and in those gyms he fell in love with the high school game. He got a job the next year as an assistant at St. John’s, moved to be the head coach at St. Mary’s Ryken and returned, at age 29, to become the St. John’s coach.
Friends view Behan and basketball as inseparable, something less a part of his life than a piece of his soul. When he met Johanson four years ago, his offer of a first date was to come watch St. John’s play Bishop O’Connell.
ALS is insidious in a thousand different ways. One is how it makes people feel less like themselves. Behan feels most like himself on a basketball court. The best ALS patients can hope for is maintenance of symptoms, not improvement. “Coaching, that's the one thing where I actually feel like things improve,” Behan said.
This summer, he coached a dozen St. John’s games and ran basketball camps. When he stood to instruct a player or yell at a referee, he felt intense focus on the moment, his illness fading out of his mind. He told his assistant coaches about his diagnosis, but otherwise kept it private.
“Our conversations weren’t about how he was going to handle this awful disease,” assistant coach Patrick O’Connor said. “They were about, how are we going to handle a 1-1-2-1 press? How are we going to handle the other team’s ball screens?”
In the first week of August, Behan met with St. John’s President Jeffrey Mancabelli to share his diagnosis and tell him he planned to coach. Mancabelli heard optimism and faith in his voice and asked how the school could support him. “He’s going to be a model of courage to the students and to everyone around him,” Mancabelli said.
A few nights later, he called the meeting to tell his team.
The Cadets’ first full practice is in early November. Behan knows he will delegate more — no more choosing designs for team gear. Early in the summer, he could still rebound for players. In July, a 6-year-old basketball camper asked for help tying his shoes. Behan knelt down and lost his balance. He barely mustered the strength to get back to his feet.
Behan doesn’t know what his body will allow him to do. He just knows he will coach.
“My first reaction was, what a lucky bunch of kids that get to see this,” Nancy Frates said. “What a lucky, blessed community that they’re going to get to see true heroism, true courage, true selflessness. When you see the impact he’s going to have on this community, it’s going to be like nothing those people have seen. These people will be changed forever.”
Finding light in the dark
On a recent morning, Behan ate a bacon, egg and cheese bagel sandwich in his Alexandria living room, “SportsCenter” on in the background. Doctors tell him to eat as much as he can, and the protein shakes remind of his father’s final days. He swallowed a cocktail of 14 pills; that day he didn’t need a 15th, his anxiety medication.
On a chair rested a breathing device, a plastic pouch of air attached to a crinkled tube meant to maintain lung strength. Behan wedged the air bag under his right armpit and placed a clip on his nose. He exhaled deeply before he stuck the end of the tube in his mouth. He squeezed the bag against his body and inhaled nine times. The air expanded his lungs. He breathed out slowly. He repeated the process.
Behan has felt his body grow weaker. His limp, caused by weakness in his right foot, has become more exaggerated. When he exerts himself, he breathes heavy. He loves pools, because the water soothes his muscles and he can stretch without bearing weight. When he flies, he checks his suitcase because he knows he won’t be able to lift it into the overhead.
After he finished breathing exercises, Behan walked outside to his gray truck. He wanted to visit players at a voluntary weightlifting session. As he drove down Rock Creek Parkway to St. John’s, he considered the possibility of buying a new car.
“Will I be able to drive?” Behan said. “The pushback is like, you could say that about coaching. You could say that about anything you do. Don’t try to predict the future. Focus on now.”
Behan hates talk about death, even the use of the word. Something a therapist told him months ago, though, stays with him: “Death is on your left shoulder.”
“Whenever you’re making a decision, go to your left shoulder and ask the question, Is this something that is going to make my life better? Is this something I’m going to enjoy and enhance life?” Behan said. “If the answer is yes, then do it. If you’re still not sure and it’s a coin flip, just make a decision, because if you’re thinking about it, you’re just wasting time. If you’re right or wrong, just make a decision.”
Behan pulled into St. John’s parking lot and walked through the athletic center. “What’s up, Coach Behan?” one kid asked. He high-fived and hugged his way to the weight room. Before he entered, he stepped on the scale. “247,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”
He opened the door and saw players squatting barbells. “We got a crew today!” he said. He stayed for a few minutes, chatting with a couple freshmen, and headed back to his office. He proudly pointed out old media guides on the wall with photos of his players who played in college. He had been standing for about an hour, and his legs felt wobbly. He sat down behind his desk.
Behan finds light in the dark. He caught a Red Sox game at Fenway Park and ate Italian feasts in the North End on his first treatment visit to Boston. He splurges on good food and drink.
Last week, Sosnoskie invited Behan to stay at his brothers-in-law’s in St. Mary’s County for a night. As they drove around, Behan pointed out places he used to visit. At the house, Behan propped an iPad on the pool deck and watched golf from the water. “Good, you’re happy,” Sosnoskie said. He handed Behan a cold beer.
Behan doubts he has the stamina for extravagant vacations, but he still has plans. He wants to take another trip to Maine. The Red Sox will be in town for his next visit to Mass General. He loves Ohio State, a consequence of the buckeye trees that lined streets near the school where his mom taught. Sosnoskie’s brother lives in State College, and he wants to see Ohio State play at Penn State this fall.
“He has a bucket list of things he wants to do without calling it a bucket list,” Sosnoskie said.
One morning earlier this month, Behan sat in his living room, “SportsCenter” muted on the television. A visitor asked Behan what scared him.
“The outcome,” Behan said. “Yeah. And not being able to achieve or do certain things you’ve always wanted to do.”
What are those are things?
“Just, you know,” Behan said. “Sorry.”
Behan wiped his face with a tissue, sipped his water bottle and remained silent for 30 seconds.
“Having a family,” Behan said. “The things that I enjoy doing now, not being able to do them, you know, for more years.”
Reminders are constant. Every bill is a reminder of the horrible illness he has and how much it costs. Every trip could be interrupted by phone tag with a doctor’s office. Every morning means another two handfuls of pills. “I’ve come to accept it,” Behan said.
Behan still FaceTimes his mother every day. Seeing her, he said, is a constant source of strength for him. Alexis recently underwent genetic testing and started the six-week wait for results to find out if she won or lost a cosmically cruel coin flip.
Monday afternoon, Behan drove home from St. John’s and parked across the road from his house. He would fly to Boston that evening for three days in a doctor’s office. Sosnoskie and Brooks would meet him there, and he would eat great food and drink through happy hour with two of his best friends. Basketball season was another day closer. He looked over his left shoulder and crossed the street. | 2022-08-18T11:29:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Patrick Behan has ALS. And the St. John's high school basketball team to coach. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/als-high-school-basketball-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/als-high-school-basketball-coach/ |
In a federal lawsuit, the worker said she faced discrimination and retaliation for asking to work from home 6 to 8 days a month for migraines
A former Booz Allen Hamilton employee is suing the company in federal court, alleging she faced discrimination and retaliation for seeking disability accommodations for migraines. (iStock)
A former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton is suing the consulting firm, alleging she faced discrimination and retaliation for asking to work from home up to six to eight days a month to make her migraine attacks more bearable.
In a complaint filed Monday in the Eastern District of Virginia, lawyers for Deirdre Cosmann argued that the company had breached the Americans With Disabilities Act by denying her remote work and terminating her in April 2020 — amid a companywide layoff freeze during the pandemic.
“No employee should have been fired due to their need to occasionally telework for a disability at a time when everyone in the company was teleworking due to COVID-19,” said Lenore Garon, one of Cosmann’s lawyers, alleging the company “actively penalized and targeted Ms. Cosmann for her disability.”
A spokesperson for Booz Allen Hamilton told The Washington Post that, although the company can’t comment on pending litigation, “Booz Allen remains committed to fair and equitable treatment for all employees and operates in strict compliance with its Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Policy and applicable laws.”
The case illuminates the challenges employees with migraines can face in navigating the workplace, according to the American Migraine Foundation, an advocacy group.
“Migraine is a major reason for lost productivity in the workplace,” said Lawrence Newman, the chair of the foundation.
Women are nearly twice as likely to suffer from migraine attacks than men, according to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The patient living with migraine goes to work when they don’t feel well because they don’t have any options, and when they are there, they are often met with unsupportive co-workers or managers,” Newman said. “This can set up a vicious cycle in which the person loses confidence, incurs stress, is stigmatized and becomes more disabled.”
Cosmann, 42, had worked for Booz Allen Hamilton for over a decade when she was terminated after a lengthy battle to renew a disability accommodation she had in place since 2013, the complaint says.
She told The Post that she had been “really transparent” with Booz Allen Hamilton ever since she was first diagnosed with migraines in 2013. Her attacks could drag on for days. Several times a month she found herself fighting off pain, nausea and vertigo that were worsened by the lighting and sounds of the office.
“When you do have a migraine everything is amplified,” Cosmann said. “Being in a low-lit environment helps significantly. If I was able to telework and control the environment I was able to work through it.”
She had just started consulting on a major government project in June 2019 when she went to her new manager at Booz Allen Hamilton and asked to continue working remotely up to six to eight days a month to help manage her migraines, according to the complaint.
The manager told her “that it would be ‘bad optics’ for the client to have an employee not physically present in the office,” the complaint states. Cosmann went to the client, who was “very sympathetic” and approved her request for occasional remote work, but her manager remained unmoved, according to the complaint.
Cosmann was told she would have to use sick leave if she had a migraine, even though she was capable of performing her duties from home, the complaint states.
“The Job Manager expressed the sentiment that when employees are teleworking, they are not truly working,” the complaint states.
In July 2019, Cosmann filed a renewed reasonable accommodation request, as she had done twice before. The company waited months to respond, then said it “inadvertently” closed her case, according to the complaint. In October, she was told she’d been granted just two to three days of remote work per month.
“The level of energy and effort I had to expend just to legitimize my telework to accommodate my migraines was mountainous at times,” Cosmann told The Post. “It was distracting to have that as a backdrop when I was just trying to do my job.”
Michal Shinnar, senior counsel at Joseph Greenwald & Laake and another lawyer for Cosmann, said that employers often misunderstand their legal obligations by the ADA. The core principle is that if someone can do the core parts of their job with a reasonable accommodation, they’re qualified for that job, Shinnar said.
“They think that if they have a preference for how a job would be done that that means they don’t have to let someone do it a different way, even if they need to do it a different way because of their disability,” Shinnar said.
The law also prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for requesting reasonable accommodations or for calling out violations of the ADA, Shinnar explained.
“If your employee requests accommodations you can’t start treating them worse, but what happened to Ms. Cosmann was that she was being treated worse than other people without disabilities,” Shinnar said. “She was being scrutinized, and the more she complained, the worse things got.”
The stress of fighting for her accommodations exacerbated her migraines, Cosmann said. On the rare days she was permitted to telework, the manager required her to submit “minute-by-minute activity logs,” the complaint states. Her manager started “berating” her in front of colleagues and clients. She scrutinized Cosmann’s time cards, alleging she “couldn’t or shouldn’t have spent certain amounts of time on specific projects.”
“In some instances, Ms. Cosmann gave up on convincing the Job Manager that she had worked the hours she said she worked, and instead agreed to convert portions of her time card to be classified as Paid Time Off,” the complaint reads.
Cosmann said she faced further retaliation after reaching out to HR and higher-ranking managers about the mistreatment. She was removed from her project in December 2019, the complaint states. Booz Allen Hamilton requires consultants to be actively working on billable projects or risk termination. Cosmann said she applied for new projects but was not given approval to work on any “onsite” contracts because of her need for occasional telework.
Even after the pandemic forced Booz Allen Hamilton to shift entirely to remote work, the company did not change its position.
“If the client wants you there five days a week, it’s five days a week,” she was told by a principal at Booz Allen in April 2020, according to the complaint. “There’s no accommodations.”
Cosmann was terminated on April 21, 2020, even though the company had said it wouldn’t lay off employees or reduce their hours through July 2020, according to the complaint.
“They took me out to pasture,” Cosmann said. “That’s what it looked like and that’s what it felt like.” | 2022-08-18T11:42:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Booz Allen employee lost job over remote work for migraines: lawsuit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/booz-allen-hamilton-lawsuit-migraines-disability/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/booz-allen-hamilton-lawsuit-migraines-disability/ |
Review by Diane Cole
All who entered the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz between the spring of 1943 and January 1945 observed, and all too often suffered, the evil that lurked inside SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele (1911-1979). Today he is remembered as “the archetypal cold, sadistic Nazi: a monster,” writes Olivier Guez in “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,” his deeply researched novel about the post-World War II decades of one of the most hunted, and hated, fugitives of the 20th century. It is as gruesome as it is indelible. Perhaps that is why, in addition to winning the prestigious Prix Renaudot literary award in 2017, the French novel has been translated into 25 languages and become a worldwide bestseller.
Guez opens his documentary-style chronicle, translated by Georgia de Chamberet, with the 1949 arrival in Buenos Aries of Helmut Gregor, a secretive 38-year-old German who hides his face behind an overgrown mustache and a hat whose brim shadows his eyes. He has been on the run for four years, living under different guises in Bavaria and Italy, and hopes now, at last, to find sanctuary in a city that has become a well-known safe haven for Nazis who have — at least, so far — evaded arrest for their war crimes, among them Gregor’s fellow émigré Ricardo Klement, a.k.a. Adolf Eichmann.
The story of twins who endured Josef Mengele, the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’
Despite his new freedom, though, Gregor — a.k.a. Josef Mengele — feels shackled by the need to hide a Nazi past he remains gloriously proud of. He is aggrieved by the absence of his wife, Irene, and their son, Rolf, who refused to accompany him into exile, and embittered by what he views as Hitler’s inexplicable defeat in the war. Most painful of all has been the forced abandonment of his life’s work as a self-styled “soldier of biology” in the field of “racial hygiene,” a Nazi euphemism for ridding the German gene pool of any “impure” traces. It was his moral duty, he believed, “to uncover the secrets of twinship, to produce supermen and increase German fertility.” At the risk of giving away his true identity, he has even brought with him from Germany a suitcase filled with blood specimens, cell samples and research records in hopes of salvaging, perhaps even continuing, his interrupted studies.
In private, Mengele revels in this grisly past. He had earned his infamous nickname, the Angel of Death, for his brutally efficient “selections” among incoming prisoners at Auschwitz, routinely sending the vast majority to immediate death in the gas chambers and singling out a small minority to live for at least a bit longer as slave laborers who could be discarded at whim. His chief whim was his passion for human torture — conducted, or rationalized, as genetic and medical experimentation designed to further the Nazi cause of racial purity.
He did so with what some would call the zeal of a mad scientist or others would describe more clinically as pathological amorality, by systematically seeking out twins, pregnant women, blue-eyed individuals and those with any sort of physical abnormality to be used as human laboratory specimens, and subjecting them to all manner of “injecting, measuring, bleeding; cutting, killing, performing autopsies,” Guez writes. Indeed, so fixated on the Nazi ideal of racial purity symbolized by blue eyes was Mengele that he decorated an office wall with “eyes pinned to it like butterflies.”
Obsessed with his lost life and lost status, Mengele simmers in rage and stews in self-pity. Yet as the 1950s wear on, he begins to warm to his new life. He basks in the company of fellow Nazi expatriates as they celebrate Hitler’s birthday and toast their vision of a reconquered Fatherland under new Nazi leadership. He lives in comfort, thanks to regular payments from his well-to-do family back home in Germany; in return, he serves as the South American sales representative for the Mengele family’s expanding international farm machinery business. In this Nazi cocoon, he comes to believe that he is safe at last, that Argentine President Juan Perón and his Nazi-friendly regime will never allow his arrest. With his self-confidence — and his hubris — returned, he boldly abandons his assumed identity, takes out a passport under his real name, revisits his family in Europe and, upon his return to South America, remarries.
But timing is everything. By 1960, Perón has been ousted from power and Argentina’s new government, eager to erase its reputation as a Nazi sanctuary, begins to break up popular Nazi clubs and hangouts. Leaks are everywhere. West German prosecutor Fritz Bauer tips off Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, about the Argentinian whereabouts of Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann. After he is captured, brought to Israel to stand trial, found guilty and executed, new public scrutiny falls on Mengele and his horror show of human experiments. But even with government agencies and Nazi-hunters from around the world on his trail, he manages to disappear once more, this time to Paraguay, and later to Brazil, moving from one isolated hiding place to another, each more dilapidated, derelict and utterly depressing than the one before, with Mengele himself devolving ever deeper into uncontrollable rage, paranoid terror and narcissistic delusions of grandeur.
Such is the trajectory of the last 19 years of Mengele’s life — and the final half of Guez’s gruelingly horrifying book. Although Mengele drowned after suffering a stroke while swimming in 1979, his family in Germany did not confirm his death until 1985. Mengele held no pity for anyone except himself, and Guez’s noxious portrait contains no redeeming detail to dissuade us of his toxic malice. As I finished reading, I thought, we did not need this book to remind us that the evil Mengele did lives on, in the bitter ashes of the millions murdered in the Holocaust. Then again, in our world today, maybe we do.
Diane Cole is the author of the memoir “After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges.”
Verso. 224 pp. $19.95 | 2022-08-18T12:13:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Disappearance of Josef Mengele book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/18/josef-mengele-disappearance-bestseller-novel-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/18/josef-mengele-disappearance-bestseller-novel-review/ |
Two lawyers have helped build thousands of affordable houses in 30 cities using an obscure federal tax incentive
A home built by Habitat for Humanity St. Louis using New Markets Tax Credits joins historic homes along Park Avenue in the city's Gate District neighborhood. (Sid Hastings/For The Washington Post)
ST. LOUIS — For decades, the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood on the north side, with its boarded-up rowhouses and empty lots, was one of the most distressed areas of this city.
Now the neighborhood — once the only place where Black people could own property in the city — is transforming into a vibrant, working-class community, thanks not to gentrification but to a program that sells homes with mortgages as low as $550 a month.
More than a decade ago, two St. Louis lawyers created an innovative model using an obscure federal tax credits program to finance for-sale affordable housing. They collaborated with the city’s Habitat for Humanity nonprofit to initially build more than 67 houses and over the next decade shepherded $18.3 million in tax credits investments to build a total of 103 affordable homes across the city.
Building housing that people can afford to buy, instead of rent, is the kind of personal investment that is the first step to turning the corner for a neighborhood, according to housing advocates.
“When Habitat first start building [in the neighborhood], there was for the most part swaths of vacant land,” says Kimberly McKinney, chief executive of Habitat for Humanity St. Louis. “There was no community. There were no eyes on the street.”
One home, a lifetime of impact
These days, the eyes keep watch on streets with neat two- and three-bedroom homes. Every house has a front porch, encouraging community. Crime is down, way down. Residents, some of whom have been homeless, talk proudly of owning a home for the first time and changing the area. One hosts a regular July Fourth holiday gathering on a vacant lot next to a boarded-up house that in the early years served as a center for the drug trade. Repeated calls for police by residents shut it down. The number of owner-occupied buildings in the area has more than doubled to 26 percent from 12 percent.
The lawyers, Donna and Howard Smith, started the project in St. Louis 14 years ago. Since then, they have through their corporation SmithNMTC guided nonprofit community development entities nationwide to use nearly $500 million in New Markets Tax Credits to build more than 4,200 for-sale affordable homes in about 30 other cities, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Newark, Baltimore, Santa Fe, N.M., Pittsburgh and Memphis.
Research shows that the program has been critical in building wealth. A 2021 study by the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP) found those who had owned their homes for five years gained an average of more than $135,000 in equity through principal payments, down payment assistance and market appreciation.
In Santa Fe, N.M, Jessica Salazar, a single mother of three, took the required home-buying classes and waited a year for her opportunity to buy a three-bedroom home in El Camino Crossing. She and her family had lived with her parents because she couldn’t afford an apartment in the city. After five years in the house, she sold while the market was hot this year, allowing her to pay off the second mortgage and still make a profit. She bought a bigger property on the outskirts of town suitable for her older children.
For her, subsidized affordable housing worked. She became a homeowner. She built wealth and a good credit score with help from the subsidies. And now, she’s leveraging that. “It just really set me up for success,” she says. “I can’t say enough [good] about the program.”
Here’s how the program works: The New Markets Tax Credits program is designed to attract investors to distressed areas by offering them a 39 percent income-tax break over seven years. The corporations use that investment in several ways to subsidize the cost of housing. Buyers, for instance, may get down-payment assistance or may benefit from a second loan payable when they sell the property. Developers may be paid to reduce the price of a home in amounts ranging from $30,000 to $100,000, depending upon the neighborhood.
The Smiths have championed using the $5 billion-a-year program to build affordable housing, something most community development entities (CDEs) tapping into the credits said could not be done. New Markets Tax Credits are highly regulated, but the Smiths have created plug-and-play templates, models that any nonprofit can use to navigate the tax credits program from application through project completion.
While the Smiths remain frustrated at the slow acceptance of using the credits to fill a small hole in the gaping affordable housing crisis, they say more and more nonprofits are embracing the strategy.
“There’s a 30 percentage-point differential between how many Blacks own homes and how many Whites own homes today,” Donna Smith says. “We really need to be doing a better job of increasing the opportunity for low-income folks and people of color to own homes.”
For years at industry conferences, the Smiths heard lawyers on panels proclaim that the complicated New Markets Tax Credits program could not be used for housing. Each time, they’d raise their hands and respond that they’d helped create $300 million, then $400 million, and now nearly $500 million in affordable for-sale housing in distressed areas.
“They’d just look at you like ‘I wish you weren’t here,’ ” says Donna Smith. Funding affordable housing has been a long-standing example highlighted on the program’s Treasury Department website. But the Smiths say the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI) does not actively promote it. Part of the problem is that CDEs compete for tax credit allocations annually and are scored on their track record. They didn’t want to try something new such as for-sale affordable housing.
A spokesman for the CDFI declined to comment about the use of tax credits for affordable housing.
In Atlanta, ANDP used $20 million in tax credits to purchase and renovate 133 homes scattered throughout the city’s south metro region where half the population earned less than $35,000 and homeownership had dipped to under 40 percent. In Santa Fe, N.M., where housing prices have soared, the Smiths’ tax credits model helped transform a blighted former mobile home park site into El Camino Crossing, a project with 40 affordable houses and 13 condominiums. In Pittsburgh, the mayor in 2020 hailed it as a new model after the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority built 26 homes, 18 of them sold to families with incomes below 80 percent of the area’s median income.
Black homeownership continues to lag in 50 largest U.S. cities
“For-sale housing is a relatively new and growing part of the New Markets program,” says Brett Theodos, a senior fellow and director of the Community Economic Development Hub at the Urban Institute who has studied New Markets credits for more than a decade. “I think it’s a really intriguing and innovative contribution. There are surprisingly few federal subsidies for owner-occupied affordable housing in this country. And this is one small way to make good on that need.”
It’s one small way because affordable housing created through the program so far is an eyedropper contribution to a sea of need. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that 6.8 million more rental units are needed for low-income families. A 2021 analysis by the Urban Institute and Moody’s Analytics reported that there is less housing for rent and for sale than at any time in 30 years with the annual supply of new housing 100,000 units below the new demand.
“The lion’s share of the undersupply is concentrated in the lower end of the market,” the report added, resulting in dramatically rising prices in that segment of the market. “The rise in house prices is putting the economic opportunity of homeownership out of reach for more and more families, particularly those of color. Today the homeownership rate for Hispanics is 48 percent and for Blacks it is 42 percent, a level not seen in decades,” the report added. By comparison, White homeownership is at 72 percent.
Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics and a co-author of the report, said the housing shortage continues a downward spiral. It’s now about 1.6 million homes below what’s needed, according to his calculations. “That’s a massive shortfall,” he says. “And it’s turning out to be a problem that’s only intensifying.”
He said the tools in place to address the problem are not enough. “We need to think about how to marry different forms of government subsidy with private capital and supercharge the development of more affordable housing,” Zandi adds. “This kind of innovation is exactly the thing we need, figuring out ways to take the tools that we have, fashion new tools and build more homes.”
The definition of “affordable housing” can vary from place to place. Households that pay more than 30 percent of their gross income for rent or a mortgage are considered “cost burdened” and may have trouble affording needs such as transportation, food and medical care. The New Markets Tax Credits program targets distressed or severely distressed census tracts. The homes offered by the nonprofits that have participated generally are sold to people who earn 80 to 125 percent of the annual median income in the area.
The majority of federal support for affordable housing and infrastructure passes through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which contributed $10.4 billion in 2021. An analysis by the Smiths concludes that only $702 million out of $55.9 billion in credits awarded from 2003 through 2019 went toward housing.
Proponents of for-sale affordable housing point to it as a means to build wealth, particularly for Black families who may have been shut out of the housing market during decades of redlining. According to an Urban Institute report, buying a home is more affordable than renting in two-thirds of American counties.
“This is a direct way of building wealth for families,” says William Carson, vice president at U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corp., which has invested in the program. “That is a way of getting people out of intergenerational poverty.”
Zandi says the effects of homeownership ripple into the community. “When you own your home, you have skin in the game. You’re invested to help your community,” he says. “Homeownership is key to not only lifting people out of being lower income, but it’s also key to healthy communities in a vibrant, well-functioning economy.”
John O’Callaghan, president and chief executive of the ANDP, says the program provides the flexibility to best create affordable for-sale housing. “The great thing about New Markets is it gives us and the CDE the ability to make decisions about how the subsidy is needed in the context of the market you’re working in.”
The model created by the Smiths means that the Housing Partnership Network, a nonprofit collaborative of more than 100 community and development organizations, can take an allocation of tax credits and spread them among three, four, five or more local partners across the country, cutting legal and administrative costs.
“The way the Smiths have set it up, it’s a very streamlined process,” says Katie Rodriguez, president of the Housing Partnership Fund and Housing Partnership Ventures, the organization’s CDE. “It’s significantly less expensive than a one-off market project.”
In Santa Fe, N.M., Daniel Slavin, senior director of Homewise, which built the El Camino Crossing project, said a person grossing 80 percent of the annual median income in the area might be able to afford a $175,000 house. Building that house costs $250,000. So the buyer will get a mortgage for $175,000 with a deferred loan for the other $75,000 to be paid when they sell.
The ‘heartbreaking’ decrease in Black homeownership
“You’re giving people an opportunity they just wouldn’t be able to do unless this financial model was available,” he adds. “The house is an asset so you can build wealth and financial stability. Rents go up every year, but your mortgage payment stays consistent for 30 years.”
In St. Louis, McKinney says the funds are used to buy down the cost of the house by subsidizing construction. “In our market, what it costs to build the house and what our buyers can afford, there’s a pretty big gap,” she says.
That gap varies from city to city, but it’s increasing. The ANDP says since 2010, the average income of a home buyer in Atlanta has been stagnant at about $40,000 per household while home prices have increased 65 percent to nearly $190,000. In the neighborhoods where ANDP invested in homes, more than a third of the households earned less than $25,000 and roughly half earned less than $35,000 annually.
Many families stay, stabilizing neighborhoods. McKinney says the first home Habitat built in St. Louis is owned by the same family. In the hard-hit Atlanta neighborhoods where ANDP has built or renovated homes, more than 90 percent of owners remained after five years.
O’Callaghan points to Atlanta’s Pittsburgh neighborhood, which he calls “foreclosure ground zero in the country” during the Great Recession. New Markets Tax Credits was one of the funding mechanisms used there through two rounds of creating homes. “It was a neighborhood with a great history that had been decimated,” he adds. “The neighborhood today has been completely transformed.”
The ANDP has created a plan to develop or renovate a total of 2,000 residences by 2025, including 500 single-family houses. “We have been searching for more reliable sources of subsidy that can be scaled,” O’Callaghan says. “New Markets has been critical to us raising our scale.”
Slavin says bringing homes to El Camino has spurred private investment, including apartments and a couple of restaurants coming to the neighborhood. “What we’re trying to create is more of a walkable, multiuse living and business setting,” he adds. “It definitely has worked. And it’s only going to spark more growth in the surrounding areas.”
Pamela Wells, 62, has worked in a Santa Fe, N.M., pottery shop for more than two decades. She purchased her first home in El Camino through the program after living in an efficiency apartment out of the city.
She no longer has to commute. Her one-bedroom home has solar panels, reducing her costs.
“I’m actually paying less on my mortgage than I did renting and in the last couple of years rents have really shot up,” she says. “For me, having a mortgage is cheaper than paying rent in Santa Fe, which is kind of crazy.” | 2022-08-18T12:13:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Welcoming low-income people to the American dream of homeownership - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/for-sale-homes-for-low-income-buyers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/for-sale-homes-for-low-income-buyers/ |
Biden’s Next Grand Bargain Could Retire Trump
The golf course is a good place for him to stay. (Photographer: Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images North America)
For those searching for a legal process to keep Donald Trump from returning to the Oval Office, I have a simple suggestion: Lobby President Joe Biden to pardon him.
Imagine, then, that Biden offered Trump a pardon in exchange for a promise not to seek public office again. If Trump said yes and then ran for office anyway, the underlying pardon would become null and void.
Challenging the conditions has proved fruitless. In 1971, President Richard Nixon commuted convicted Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa’s prison sentence, conditioned on Hoffa’s agreement not to engage in union politics. After his release, Hoffa filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the condition. Pointing to the president’s “unfettered discretion” in exercising the pardon power, the court dismissed the action.(1) Moreover, as the courts have long held, the president (or his successor) is the “sole judge” of whether the conditions have been violated.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t an our-long-national-nightmare-is-over argument. By the time Nixon resigned in August 1974, his popularity had collapsed. Only 24% of those surveyed wanted him to remain in office. The current moment is far from analogous. No matter how passionately some would like Trump to disappear, his influence is unlikely to wane soon. Recent polls even have him beating Biden. My point is simply that who are most strongly anti-Trump should be pressing for a pardon.(2)
• Liz Cheney’s Defense of Democracy Needs a Political Strategy: Jonathan Bernstein
(1) Hoffa also claimed that he was unaware of the condition at the time he accepted the grand of clemency. The court was skeptical that this was true, but deemed the point irrelevant, because even if Hoffa indeed was unaware at the time of his release, once he learned of the limits on his freedom, he could have rejected the deal and returned to prison.
(2) True, they might have to lobby for similar pardons from certain states. | 2022-08-18T12:13:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s Next Grand Bargain Could Retire Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bidens-next-grand-bargain-could-retire-trump/2022/08/18/e83841ce-1ee9-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bidens-next-grand-bargain-could-retire-trump/2022/08/18/e83841ce-1ee9-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Why the climate bill’s impact might not match what many expect
Models could be over- (or under-!) estimating the climate impact of the Inflation Reduction Act
President Biden, seated, shakes hands with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Tuesday after signing the climate and health care bill called the Inflation Reduction Act into law. From right, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also attended the signing. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The Inflation Reduction Act — the health care and climate bill that was signed into law by President Biden on Tuesday — marks the largest climate action ever taken by the federal government. With roughly $370 billion earmarked for clean energy, electric vehicles and carbon capture storage, the bill will certainly decrease the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The question is by how much.
The most popular number — the one that has been repeated by the president, scientists and journalists alike — is 40 percent. In a statement released shortly after the deal was reached, Democratic senators Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) claimed the new bill would, by 2030, cut emissions 40 percent from 2005 levels. That figure was later supported by results from three independent modeling teams. Rhodium Group, an economics and energy research firm, estimated that the bill would cut emissions by 31 to 44 percent by 2030; Energy Innovation, a climate think tank, predicted a reduction of 37 to 41 percent; and a group of Princeton University researchers called the REPEAT project calculated a carbon dioxide cut of around 42 percent.
The agreement between the senators’ claims and the projections is no surprise — the modeling teams were advising Capitol Hill staff on the likely impacts of the deal before it was made public, said Jesse Jenkins, one of the leaders of the Princeton REPEAT modeling project.
That 40 percent number will be repeated at international climate negotiations and in presidential speeches for years to come. It marks progress toward the president’s signature climate goal — to cut emissions in half by 2030 — and may offer some hope to the millions of young people who have been drawn to climate action in recent years.
But is it correct? That depends — on how you’re measuring, and what you’re measuring against.
At the heart of these predictions are scientists’ highly complicated models of how the economy works, including how energy is used, which can both provide helpful forecasts for the future and are always somewhat inaccurate. As one popular modeling saying goes: “All models are wrong; some are useful.”
The energy models used by Rhodium, Energy Innovation and the Princeton researchers are complex systems of equations, spreadsheets and data that try to represent all the energy used in the United States over a period of time. These models can estimate how many solar farms will be built once tax credits are in place to make them cheaper, or how many Americans will buy electric cars in the next 10 years.
The fact that all three independent modeling groups yielded similar findings is a good sign for the results. But there are still reasons to think that the reality could be different from what the models suggest the bill’s impact will be — or what the public might expect it to be.
1) Humans are quirky
On the one hand, the models predicting a 40 percent drop in carbon emissions may be overly optimistic. Jenkins, a Princeton engineering professor, says that one of the major problems is predicting how quickly consumers, utilities and businesses will switch over to clean technologies.
“The biggest thing in our model that is an abstraction of the real world is the assumption that financial considerations drive decision-making,” he explained. Models assume that human beings are rational actors who base their decisions off costs and benefits; in the real world, that’s not always true.
That means that if it’s cheaper to build a wind farm than a natural gas plant, or cheaper to buy an electric car than a gas-powered car, the model predicts that more wind farms will be built and more electric cars purchased. The REPEAT model currently predicts that all cars sold in 2030 will be electric vehicles, since by that time EVs are projected to be lower cost than gas-powered cars. But in the real world, some consumers will be afraid to switch to EVs even if they are cheaper, simply because they don’t see enough car chargers in their neighborhoods.
Similarly, wind farms and solar panels may be stymied by locals who find them ugly to look at. Long-distance transmission lines, which will be needed to carry renewable electricity from one state to another, could also be held up by red tape.
External economic factors could also slow the push away from fossil fuels. Ben King, associate director of climate and energy at Rhodium Group and one of the authors of the group’s analysis of the IRA, says that cheap fossil fuel prices and faster-than-expected growth could lead to a slower-than-predicted shift to clean energy sources.
2) There’s potential upside
There are also reasons to think that 40 percent is an underestimate for the effects of the bill. Jenkins notes that none of the models can effectively predict technological advancement spurred by government cash — for example, funding for research and development that causes costs for solar, wind, carbon capture and storage or batteries to plummet. Those cost changes, he argues, could cause the clean energy transition to go even faster than expected — but they’re hard to predict in an energy model.
The models also don’t try to predict any changes in state and federal policies. But over the next few years, many states and cities are likely to implement new climate policies, such as requiring electricity to come from renewable sources or phasing out gas-powered vehicles.
“This bill makes it cheaper for every other jurisdiction in the country to increase their ambition and policies,” Jenkins said.
It will also make it easier for the Biden administration to impose stricter limits on emissions from cars and power plants — which in turn could reduce CO2 emissions even more.
Still, there is no “sure thing” in modeling. The emissions reductions from the IRA may be higher or lower than the 40 percent estimate; at the moment, modelers can only provide their best guess of how the future will pan out. But, Jenkins argues, the result is not that different from estimates for the cost of the bill.
Since the IRA’s clean energy provisions are made up mostly of tax credits, it’s hard to predict how many of those credits will ultimately be claimed and how much the bill will cost the government and taxpayers.
“Forty percent is an imperfect estimate,” Jenkins said. “But I think it’s a pretty good estimate.”
3) Progress is already baked in
Depending on how you read that 40 percent estimate, it could be a bit misleading. This is a case of where the models may be correct, but not widely appreciated. The bill is expected to cut emissions by 40 percent compared with 2005 levels — not compared to current U.S. emissions. That’s because emissions have already decreased substantially since 2005. Between 2005 and 2020, CO2 emissions dropped by about 21 percent, thanks largely to a shift from heavily polluting coal to less-polluting natural gas. (The COVID-19 pandemic also caused a dramatic decline in emissions, as millions of cars and planes ground to a halt virtually overnight.)
Over the next eight years, emissions are expected to continue to trend slowly downward, thanks to cheap solar and wind power and a gradual shift to electric vehicles.
Indeed, according to the same three modeling groups, by 2030, emissions are expected to decline by 24 to 32 percent — even without the Inflation Reduction Act.
That doesn’t mean that the bill is without impact, of course. While it might not be as dramatic a shift as it seems initially, in a world in which every extra ton of CO2 not emitted into the atmosphere can help can help curb global warming, an additional 10 to 15 percent reduction in emissions will help to avert serious environmental damage. | 2022-08-18T12:13:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The IRA is predicted to reduce emissions by 40%. It’s not that simple. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/ira-inflation-reduction-act-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/ira-inflation-reduction-act-climate-change/ |
Longtime victims’ advocate Marcey Rinker grew increasingly frustrated with how the justice system was changing, as homicides continued to mount
Marcey Rinker, a now-retired crime victims’ advocate for the U.S. attorney’s office in the District, poses for a portrait outside of D.C. Superior Court. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
For nearly 40 years, Marcia Rinker sat with victims of violent crimes and their families on the hardened benches in courtrooms around the D.C. region.
She held their hands. Prayed with them. Provided tissues or an Irish worry stone when the proceedings became too much. She walked them through throngs of sometimes angry supporters of the accused. Through the years, as a crime victims’ advocate for the U.S. attorney’s office in the District, she helped thousands of grieving families navigate the bureaucracy of the court system and gave them step-by-step updates of how their cases were progressing.
Then, late last year, the spirited Rinker — known as Marcey around D.C. Superior Court — had enough.
During the two prior years, Rinker was tasked with tracking down and telephoning families who had loved ones killed as far back as the 1990s to tell them that a judge was considering ordering the release of the convicted killers.
The work was grueling, and voluminous. Citing health concerns from the coronavirus pandemic, defense attorneys flooded D.C. judges with early-release petitions. A separate law allowed for early release of inmates who were convicted of violent crimes when they were 24 or younger.
Rinker — who had grown used to inmates serving at least 85 percent of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole — realized the system that she trusted to provide justice for victims of violent crime had changed. So in December, just shy of her 69th birthday, she retired.
“My phone calls took these families right back to day one, back to the place of terror and horror to what happened to their family,” Rinker said. “It wasn’t just a lot of work. It was having to revisit that pain with these families and tell them that their case is coming back.”
‘No longer truth in sentencing’
Rinker had a courtside seat to some of the most horrific and violent crimes in the nation’s capital. She also watched criminal justice evolve.
When the city council last year expanded the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, or IRAA, it was something of a turning point for Rinker. The law allows prison inmates who were 24 or younger at the time of their crimes — and who have been incarcerated for at least 15 years — to have a judge review their records to consider early release.
From 2016, when the original law was passed, to July, more than 100 inmates were released, according to recent U.S. attorney’s office data. The move, part of the city’s justice reform initiative, allows inmates who committed crimes during their youth to show that they have matured and are no longer a threat to society. Prosecutors have opposed the legislation. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) and D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) have argued that fears about the law are “overblown and unfounded.”
For Rinker, the changes represented something else. “It meant there was no longer truth in sentencing for my families,” she said.
In 2019, Rinker phoned Carla Dyer to tell her that one of the men convicted in the 1997 kidnapping and fatal shooting of her 12-year-old son Darryl Hall had petitioned a judge for early release via IRAA.
The two women talked on the phone for hours, Dyer remembered. “Marcey was really upset about that. I just didn’t trust anybody no more. But she broke it down to me,” she said.
Jovan James was 17 when he was charged as an adult in the slaying of Dyer’s son. James was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison. A judge ordered him released after 22.
“After all these years, he gets to go home and see his family,” Dyer said. “That’s not fair. And Marcey said she agreed with me. She told me she couldn’t imagine how I felt, but that she would be there for me. And she was.”
James’s public defender did not return calls for comment.
‘Tough and fearless’
The daughter of Adelphi, Md., interior decorators and painters, Rinker majored in psychology at the University of Maryland and earned her master’s degree from Vermont College in criminal investigative psychology. Before joining the District’s U.S. attorney’s office, she spent 16 years as a domestic violence victims’ advocate in Montgomery County, where she helped create an intake center for battered women. When she was hired in D.C., she was one of two victim witness coordinators; the office now has 16.
While most prosecutors and defense attorneys often keep their court calendars on their iPhones or Androids, Rinker would pull a large paper calendar from her shoulder bag, scribbling information about upcoming hearings as she meticulously recorded the day’s events.
Prosecutors and judges recalled her compassion, while still serving as a dogged fighter with an uncanny memory.
“My job is not as difficult as Marcey’s,” said David Gorman, head of homicide for the U.S. attorney’s office. “The amount of personal pain she has to hear about, hearing the personal loss that a family member or individual has been dealing with, is worse than what any other lawyer is going to hear.”
Eric H. Holder Jr. — who was the U.S. attorney in D.C. when Rinker was brought on, and who later went on to become U.S. attorney general — recalled how federal prosecutors in his office were often so focused on securing convictions that they spent little time tending to the victims’ families.
“She was a Godsend,” Holder said of Rinker. “You could just tell that she was somebody who cared deeply about the people she was working with. It was the perfect job given her DNA.”
Holder said Rinker — unlike other advocates in the office — would interject her thoughts on behalf of the families in strategy meetings, anticipating any financial or housing needs, as well as the impact of trauma and grief.
“She set the bar for what good witness advocacy is and what a good program should be,” he said. “She was very caring. But tough and fearless.”
One of Rinker’s most challenging cases was in 2010 following a series of slayings that culminated in one of the deadliest shootings in the nation’s capital, known as the South Capitol Street massacre. Nine people were shot, and three died, when a packed minivan of gunmen armed with an AK-47-style rifle drove down the Southeast Washington street, shooting at a group of people gathered on a sidewalk after the funeral of their friend, 20-year-old friend Jordan Howe. Howe had been killed eight days earlier by the same men.
During one of the first court hearings in the case, Rinker sat next to Norman Williams, Howe’s father. As the suspected shooters were escorted into the courtroom, Williams — a 6-foot tall, 286-pound former college linebacker — grabbed the back of the seat in front of him and began rocking back and forth and exhaling loudly. Three federal marshals rushed over to grab Williams and usher him out the courtroom.
The 5-foot, 5-inch, 120-pound Rinker jumped from her seat with her arm extended and stepped between the marshals and Williams.
“I got him. He’s going to be okay. He just needs a minute,” she told the marshals.
“He was in so much pain. And he had every right to that pain. But the marshals didn’t care,” Rinker recalled. “I told him: ‘You can’t keep doing this. I know you’re angry and I know why you are angry and you have justified anger. But you have to control this otherwise they will kick you out.’”
Williams said Rinker earned his trust. “During that time of our pain, she was there. She listened. She even cried with us,” he said. “Most people operate for money. It’s their job and it’s over at 5 p.m. But she was there night and day and weekends, taking or returning our calls.”
‘The only White family member we have’
With her large, golden blonde curls sitting on top of her small frame, Rinker is one of the most recognizable figures inside and outside the courthouse. At homicide victims’ funerals, hers is often the only White face in the pews. She also is often the only White person sitting with Black families in courtrooms in D.C., where African Americans make up the majority of violent crime victims.
Barry Campbell was counseled by Rinker when his daughter Latisha Frazier was murdered in 2010. Campbell, who is Black, said families drowning in grief want honest answers and assurances; the race of the person providing that information is unimportant. “Marcey quickly became part of our family,” he said. “The only White family member we have.”
A divorced mother of two, Rinker is a grandmother of five. Two of her grandsons, ages 18 and 24, are biracial and identify as Black. She said she sometimes feared for their safety. “Few people know that I see my grandsons’ faces in many of these victims,” she said.
Rinker said the grieving families she worked with often struggled to find a satisfying answer to an elusive question: “Why?”
“We don’t always understand why anything happens,” she said. “But what you can do is to make sure that your loved one didn’t die in vain. Part of getting through grief, is finding purpose.” She said she worked with families to establish foundations in their love ones’ names, organize peace marches or even fight for legislative changes.
In 2017, 31-year-old Paula Renee Coles was fatally stabbed by her ex-boyfriend, Larry Fearn, as she held their infant son. After Fearn was sentenced, Rinker whispered to Annquinette Coles, Paula’s mother, “I think I can use you to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Coles recalled.
Rinker, Coles and a prosecutor responsible for the city’s legislative issues worked on a new initiative closing a loophole in D.C. law so that a person on supervised release and subject to a stay-away order could be rearrested and charged immediately if they violated the order.
The proposed law, which D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser endorsed last year, is expected to be voted on later this fall, a city council spokesperson said.
“It’s such a relief knowing this could help someone who was in my daughter’s position,” Annquinette Coles said.
Rinker, who spent 24 years in the D.C. office, says now that she is retired, she is most concerned about how her former colleagues can handle the backlog of homicide cases that were stalled by the pandemic, while at the same time dealing with the onslaught of new cases gripping the city each week. The pandemic, she said, generally pushed back cases about a year.
As cases age, witnesses may become more difficult to locate, or their memories fade. Many prosecutors, Rinker said, try to identify cases where they can offer plea deals, then move to the next case. “They want to make plea offers with whatever cases they can,” Rinker said. But such pleas, she said, can be “crushing” to families. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
Rinker said she still plans on attending court proceedings for those cases that were originally assigned to her.
“You cannot do this work for 40 years and just walk out the door. I carry these families with me. This was never a job for me. This was a calling. A mission,” she said. “It was for me a way to reach out to these families who needed help in a way that I thought they needed. When you are with someone during the darkest days of their life, they remember you.”
Monika Mathur contributed to this report. | 2022-08-18T12:14:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After decades helping victims’ families, the system left her disillusioned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/longtime-victims-advocate-retires-crime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/longtime-victims-advocate-retires-crime/ |
The photo of Megan Smith, one of Virginia Military Institute’s first female freshmen, captured the school’s struggle to accept women into its ranks 25 years ago
By Ian Shapira
The image of freshman Megan Smith being shouted at by male cadets came to symbolize VMI's struggle to integrate women into its ranks. (Nancy Andrews/The Washington Post)
Megan Smith was lost.
It was Aug. 20, 1997, a landmark week at the Virginia Military Institute. After a fierce battle that had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, the nation’s oldest state-supported military college had finally admitted women.
Smith was one of them. Inside the school’s Gothic Revival barracks, the 17-year-old from Colorado was trying to survive Hell Week and VMI’s “rat line” — the intense boot camp-style training for freshmen, known on the Lexington campus as “rats.”
But when Smith hustled the wrong way along an open porch overlooking the barracks courtyard, she was suddenly surrounded. Four beefy male upperclassmen in gray tunic-style uniforms and crisp white pants got her in face. The 5-foot-4, 120-pound freshman — one of 30 women at a school that had admitted only men for nearly 158 years — looked straight ahead as the cadets berated her. One man’s mouth was fully open in a scream. A second upperclassman was so irate that a thick furrow puffed up over his eyebrows. A third man’s vein bulged from his ear to the top of his buzz-cut.
Why, they demanded, are you not with members of your company, F-Troop? What are you doing with Golf, an all-male company?
The exchange lasted maybe a minute. But Nancy Andrews, then a Washington Post staff photographer, caught the moment in an image seen around the world that symbolized VMI’s struggle to accept women into its ranks.
Twenty-five years later, the woman in the photo — who now goes by her married name, Megan Portavoce — thinks many people misinterpret what was happening to her.
“When people look at that photo, they say I looked liked a plucked chicken and that I was scared. But I didn’t feel scared,” said Portavoce, 42, a European patent attorney who lives in southern France, near the city of Marseille. “I think the photo is often taken out of context. It’s used as proof of harassment towards women. But it was equal opportunity harassment that day.”
The male freshmen were being verbally abused, too, she said. “Everyone gets yelled at. They just find something to needle you with, to get under your skin. It’s part of the system of testing everyone.”
But she acknowledged that the test for women didn’t end after Hell Week or their time as freshman rats. She and her female classmates encountered resistance and misogyny all four years on campus.
And women at VMI still face hostility a quarter-century later, a state-ordered investigation last year found, even as the school prepares to mark the anniversary of co-education next month and works to make the campus more welcoming to female cadets.
“Sometimes,” Portavoce recalled, “my classmates and I, we’d say, ‘Why did we come here? Why did we want to do this?’ ”
One of her roommates, Rachel Peterson, remembers male cadets whispering slurs in their ears or shouting at them indiscriminately in the barracks.
Among the ugly names once hurled at Portavoce: “Whore” and “slut.”
From France, Portavoce (pronounced “POR-ta-vohs”) has followed the fallout from the state-funded investigation, which found last year that VMI had tolerated “a racist and sexist culture” and failed to adequately address sexual assault. Since the probe, VMI has hired its first chief diversity officer, expanded its Title IX staff and plans other initiatives to improve the culture for women, who made up 14 percent of the school’s 1,650 cadets last year.
Last year, the college celebrated the appointment of Kasey Meredith as the corps’ first-ever female regimental commander, VMI’s highest-ranking cadet. But the milestone was tainted after VMI students mocked Meredith relentlessly on the anonymous social media app Jodel, saying she’d been picked only out of “bull---t politics” or as a “publicity stunt.” Meredith graduated in May and commissioned into the Marine Corps.
The modern-day misogyny has surprised Portavoce, who graduated from VMI in 2001.
“I did think, over time, it would getter better, not worse,” she said. "We expected to have it the worst. And to find out that it’s still like that is disappointing.”
But she doesn’t regret choosing VMI.
“I’m glad I went there,” Portavoce said. “I got a good education. I think it was worth it. Would I go again? I think I would. Whatever people wanted to say about me back then didn’t define the experience. That was their problem, not mine.”
‘I can do this’
Portavoce was still in elementary school when the legal fight began to force VMI to open its doors to women.
It started with an anonymous complaint to the Justice Department in 1989 from a Virginia high school girl who wanted to go VMI. It ended on June 26, 1996, when the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 that VMI’s all-male policy violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late justice who authored the majority opinion, wrote that though the college “serves the State’s sons, it makes no provision whatever for her daughters. That is not equal protection.”
Now VMI’s Board of Visitors faced what its members viewed as an agonizing choice. The federal service academies had gone coed in 1976. VMI’s chief rival, The Citadel, had reluctantly enrolled its first female student into its corps of cadets in 1995, although she dropped out of the military college in Charleston, S.C., days later.
VMI’s board debated whether the school, founded in 1839, should abandon taxpayer funds and become a private institution to preserve its all-male corps — or remain public and go coed. In September 1996, the divided board opted to stay public and accept women. The vote was 9 to 8.
Once its path was set, the college had to renovate — and recruit. In the fall of 1996, it sent out mailers to more than 35,000 high school girls, according to the 2001 book, “Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of Women,” by Laura Brodie.
One of the recipients of VMI’s recruitment materials was a teenager at Lewis-Palmer High School in Monument, Colo., about an hour south of Denver.
Portavoce was a senior already gravitating toward a military career. Her father, Edward Smith, had served in the Army and later joined the State Department, taking the family all over the world, from East Germany to Ecuador.
Portavoce wanted to serve her country, too, she said. Although she lived about 15 minutes from the Air Force Academy, she applied to the Naval Academy because of her interest in oceans, engineering and submarines.
Then VMI contacted her, offering a weekend visit for prospective students. She signed up and found herself unfazed at the prospect of being in the first group of students to break VMI’s gender barrier.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I can do this,’ ” Portavoce recalled. “My parents were concerned about sexual harassment and hazing, but they talked with a friend who was teaching there, and he reassured them that VMI was doing everything to prepare for women.”
A week later, she got turned down by the Naval Academy, while VMI promised a free academic ride.
When she arrived on campus in August 1997, she signed her name in VMI’s matriculation book, joining 16,000 male cadets listed in the college’s leather-bound ledgers.
More than 250 journalists, photographers, video cameramen and sound technicians chronicled matriculation day, according to “Breaking Out.”
Two days later, it was time for Hell Week. The new cadets were greeted inside a barracks courtyard with all sorts of taunts from the upperclassmen. “You’re dead!” they shouted. “You’re gonna lose, rat!”
On Aug. 20, 1997, the first female students at the Virginia Military Institute began their initiation and endured a months-long period of intense training. (Video: AP)
Portavoce and the other rats were hustled up stairs for a series of exercises. That’s when she got mixed up in the wrong company and encountered the four hulking upperclassmen.
Andrews, The Post photographer perched across the barracks courtyard, used a 500mm lens to capture the moment.
“What you’re striving for as a photographer is to feel the event,” said Andrews, now an independent journalist who lives in Pittsburgh. “The guy in the photo with his blood vessel bulging — that is a visual way of showing the intensity.”
Ralph “Woody” Cromley, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound junior from Florida, was the guy with the bulging vein — and the only man in the photo who agreed to talk to The Post.
“You can obviously tell from the picture I was engaged in the conversation,” said Cromley, now a 45-year-old active-duty military officer. “But as long as she was a rat, I wasn’t going to have a casual conversation with her. We weren’t singling her out because she was a woman. We were abiding by our training. And she stood there like any other male rat would have.”
By the standards of 1997, the Hell Week photo went viral.
On Aug. 21, a black-and-white version appeared on the front of The Post’s Metro section. The newspaper also published it, along with several other photos from that day, in a gallery on its nascent website. The image landed in numerous outlets: The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Newsweek and the New York Times.
The next morning, Portavoce was eating breakfast in the cafeteria when an upperclassman plunked The Post down next to her plate. You’re famous, he declared.
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh, great, that’s a problem I don’t need,’ ” Portavoce said.
Back in Colorado, her parents, who’d heard from friends in Germany, Japan and England about the photograph, felt a certain a pride in their daughter’s ability to keep her cool.
“She had that determined jaw line,” said her father, Edward Smith, now 84. “She seemed to be saying, ‘I am going to listen to these guys, and I am not going to be cowed by them.’ ”
The photo prompted an outpouring of letters. One man wished Portavoce luck, referred to a John Wayne quote, and, after signing his name, wrote, “P.S. I’m not after a date. I’m married and I’m 74 years old.” A woman from Alaska said her 6-year-old daughter saw the picture on her local newspaper’s front page: “Her comment was, and I quote: ‘She must be one tough girl to stand up to all those boys!’ ”
‘Go home’
Over the next four years, Portavoce and her classmates broke barriers and confronted sexism.
At the end of their sophomore year, in May 1999, VMI expelled a rising senior — who was slated to become the corps’ regimental commander — for “allegedly using his position to pressure freshman women for sex,” The Post reported at the time.
When Portavoce joined the college’s cheerleading team, she and others were frequently taunted by VMI students, who threw peanuts during games and shouted, “You suck” and “Go home.” She remembers being called “whore” and “slut.” According to the school newspaper, the Cadet, a petition delivered to VMI’s superintendent called for “an end to the rat cheerleaders.”
“Sexual tension may arise after upperclassmen see female rats maneuvering while wearing short skirts,” the petition stated.
Rachel Peterson, who shared a room with Portavoce, remembers lots of men wearing “Save the Males” T-shirts. Also popular: a poster of a woman clad in what appears to be a VMI uniform but opened to draw attention to her barely concealed chest and midriff. “Women out of uniform...a gratifying spectacle,” the poster read in all-caps.
“We weren’t permitted to have anything on the walls. [The poster] was more like something that was shown and then put away,” said Peterson, 43, a middle school teacher in North Carolina. “There were plenty of supportive men at VMI, but I would be shocked if any of the women in my class could say they were completely accepted 100 percent.”
At 19, Portavoce apparently triggered male cadets with a wardrobe choice. “Skirt Stirs Up Controversy,” read the Cadet’s front-page headline. According to the article, Portavoce was seen several times on campus wearing a VMI-issued skirt.
“A powder keg erupted,” the student newspaper reported, when a male upperclassman tried to send her up for disciplinary charges on the grounds she was dressed improperly outside of barracks — and that she was possibly violating guidelines that said, “female cadets will be issued a gray wool skirt for occasions where a skirt is appropriate.”
But within 48 hours, the case fizzled out. The college clarified that skirts could be worn with “any appropriate uniform combination” except for formations. Her roommate, Gussie Lord — now one of three women on the college’s 17-member Board of Visitors — was outraged, telling the Cadet at the time, “I can’t believe this bull----. We didn’t come here to be men.”
Lord, now 42, said she understands why some male cadets pushed back against accommodations for female students, such as permission to wear skirts or certain jewelry. “It’s my understanding that before women came, the corps of cadets was told nothing would change. But you can have slightly different uniforms and still have one standard for a coed corps of cadets. The important things — the honor code, the adversative training method, the spartan barracks — didn’t change,” Lord said. “Navigating VMI as a young woman, and figuring out how to be a young woman in that environment, was challenging.”
Portavoce said she considered leaving VMI as a freshman but stuck it out.
“It was gratifying to get all the way through it,” Portavoce said. “When we got through the rat line, you think the hard part is over, but then you get to the next year, and find out there are new issues with our haircuts or skirts, and then the year after that, with male rats not listening to female upperclassmen. It just felt like we had issue after issue. It wasn’t going to be like the graduation of our class was going to magically end those problems. The resentment would still linger.”
On Saturday, May 19, 2001, she and 12 other women who’d entered VMI four years earlier graduated. Some of the original 30 were transfer students who’d already gotten their diplomas. Others had dropped out. And two had been expelled for violating the college’s honor code.
It was a momentous day for VMI’s Class of 2001. Sen. John McCain gave the graduation address, acknowledging the “ladies” among the graduates.
That morning, The Post had published a new photo of Portavoce, captured as she was practicing for graduation. Once again, she was surrounded by men. But this time, none of them was shouting at her. Instead, she was dressed in uniform, looking at the camera. Her lips were set and her arms were crossed, resting over a belt buckle that read, “VMI.”
Story editing by Lynda Robinson. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Video editing by Amber Ferguson. Design by J.C. Reed. | 2022-08-18T12:14:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | VMI’s male cadets berated female freshman in 1997 Hell Week photo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/18/vmi-women-25th-anniversary-/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/18/vmi-women-25th-anniversary-/ |
Wind power is one of the ways companies aim to reduce the carbon dioxide that’s harming the ocean
Ever wonder how some toys get to your doorstep? Many travel across the ocean in ships powered by fossil fuels, such as coal and oil. As ships burn fossil fuels to propel themselves, they release carbon dioxide (CO2). The ocean absorbs about 30 percent of human-caused CO2.
According to the International Maritime Organization, shipping generates close to 3 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2). That’s more CO2 than the entire country of Germany emits.
Sails and kites
Airplane wings | 2022-08-18T12:14:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New ships designed to use wind power to reduce emissions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/18/wind-power-ships-ocean/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/18/wind-power-ships-ocean/ |
Bob Odenkirk of "Better Call Saul" accepts the award for best actor from the Hollywood Critics Association on Aug. 13 in Beverly HIlls, Calif. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
“Better Call Saul,” which ended its run on AMC this past weekend, has always been two shows in one. As a prequel to the smash-hit antihero drama “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul” is the backstory of a well-known roster of cartel bosses and corrupt lawyers. Foremost among them is Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), the con man who transforms himself into Saul Goodman, the lawyer who eventually launders “Breaking Bad” drug lord Walter White’s money.
But the series achieved greatness on its own by exploring a subject uniquely relevant in these dark times. Jimmy’s evolution from huckster to outright villain became a way for “Better Call Saul” to examine the difference between treating the law as an ideal to be upheld and approaching it as a game to be finessed.
When “Better Call Saul” began, the show seemed to present Jimmy’s older brother Chuck (Michael McKean) as the primary antagonist. One-time conman Slippin’ Jimmy was supposedly trying to go straight. He was getting his law degree via correspondence school while working in the mailroom at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, his brother’s firm. Jimmy’s hope was that, after getting his degree, his brother Chuck would recognize his hard work and give him an office at the firm — a hope Chuck cruelly dashed.
But instead, the show pivoted, and by its third season, it was clear that Chuck was, in fact, a moral conscience, a rebuke to the fondness that shows about antiheroes foster for charming-but-monstrous protagonists. Despite Chuck’s flaws and foibles, he was the only person who could see Jimmy for what he was: a menace, however goodhearted.
Viewers watched Jimmy commit fraud in a successful effort to get Chuck stripped of his malpractice insurance, denying Chuck the ability to keep working as a lawyer. They saw as he corrupted Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), a former public defender who tried to help those who cannot afford decent representation avoid being chewed up by the justice system’s pitiless maw. And the audience witnessed how, with Kim’s help, Jimmy falsely convinced the world that a former colleague, Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), was a drug addict, and then covered up Hamlin’s murder.
“Slippin’ Jimmy with a law degree is like a chimp with a machine gun. The law is sacred. If you abuse that power, people get hurt. This is not a game. You have to know,” Chuck almost implored his brother near the end of the show’s first season. “On some level, I know you know I’m right. You know I’m right!”
In the series finale that aired on Monday, Jimmy finally acknowledged that Chuck was correct about the importance of the law — and tried his best to lay Slippin’ Jimmy to rest once and for all.
In a series of flashbacks, we see Jimmy contemplate regrets. When he tells a drug cartel fixer he wishes he could go back in time to invest in a way that would make him a billionaire, the man asks whether money is all he values. During a similar discussion with “Breaking Bad” drug lord Walter White (Bryan Cranston) set a few years later, Jimmy says his main regret is slipping too hard in a slip-and-fall scheme. That statement disgusts even White, a meth kingpin and the man responsible for multiple murders, including that of his own brother-in-law.
When White tells Jimmy, “So you’ve always been like this,” the jibe is rich — but not wrong. “Better Call Saul,” like “Breaking Bad” before it, is less the story of a man falling from grace than showing the danger of a maladjusted person achieving apotheosis. “Saul Goodman” was just the perfected form of “Slippin’ Jimmy.” Redemption for Jimmy McGill cannot come without admitting that, just as Chuck warned he would, he has used and abused the law rather than treated it as an ideal.
In the end, Jimmy realizes saving his soul will require him to make a sacrifice. After getting arrested while on the lam in Omaha, Jimmy deploys his typical tricks to talk himself into a sweetheart seven-year plea deal — far lower than the 30 offered by the feds. But after hearing that Kim has come clean about Hamlin’s death, and realizing the jeopardy this put the woman he loved in, Jimmy realizes he has to come clean — not merely to protect her, but to right a lifetime of wrongs. And doing so means fully admitting to acting like Chuck’s machine-gun-wielding Law Chimp.
In our age of antiheroes, the best endings are those that offer appropriate punishments for their protagonists. Mob boss Tony Soprano spends the rest of his life looking up every time a door opens until it cuts to black. “The Shield” protagonist, corrupt cop Vic Mackey, is confined to a desk filling out reams of reports while he stares at a picture of the team he betrayed. It’s one reason the finale of “Breaking Bad” rang false to some: Walter White got to go out a hero, killing neo-Nazis and rescuing his former partner.
Jimmy McGill abused the law in his quest to keep his drug lord clients out of prison. As a result, people died. Justice demands that he, and all those like him, spend his remaining years imprisoned within the physical manifestation of the ideal he so calculatedly and repeatedly violated. Sic Semper Slippin’ Jimmies. | 2022-08-18T12:14:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | 'Better Call Saul' finale was a testament to the power of the law - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/better-call-saul-finale-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/better-call-saul-finale-law/ |
Author Salman Rushdie with a copy of “The Satanic Verses” during a 1992 news conference in Arlington, Va. (RON EDMONDS/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
In the aftermath of the appalling attack on author Salman Rushdie, his novel “The Satanic Verses” made a striking return to the bestseller list. Let’s hope people read their new acquisition, and not just to see what the 33-year-old fatwa is all about.
The greatest possible tribute to Rushdie as he recovers would be to excavate “The Satanic Verses” from the thick layers of geopolitical sediment that have settled over it, and to restore it to the pantheon of great literature.
Then-Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini apparently never read “The Satanic Verses” before or after he issued his murderous judgment against the book in 1989. I imagine that wouldn’t have surprised Rushdie. Among the characters in “The Satanic Verses” is an imam who avoids looking at the country that has given him refuge so he will “be able to say that he remained in complete ignorance of the Sodom in which he had been obliged to wait.” But then, a close reading of the text was never the point. As Robin Wright explained in the New Yorker, the fatwa was about Iranian domestic politics, not a careful parsing of whether a fictional schizophrenic’s dreams ought to be taken as Rushdie insulting Islam.
The best possible resistance to the reduction of literature to an instrument is, of course, to read. In pure aesthetic terms, “The Satanic Verses” is a delight: funny, broadly erudite and wrenchingly gorgeous. And as a matter of politics and religion, this novel embodies the unique ideological power of art: to push beyond what’s possible, to say what would be too costly for actors in another arena to speak aloud, to expand the audience’s sense of what the world can be.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I once wanted to burn ‘The Satanic Verses.’ Now I weep for Salman Rushdie.
Art itself is one of the many subjects of “The Satanic Verses.” The book’s two main characters are Indian actors: one a star of Bollywood theological dramas, the other an assimilated voice actor. Both men are passengers on a hijacked plane, and when it’s bombed, they survive, but are transformed in the fall. Gibreel Farishta, who portrayed gods, finds himself possessed of a halo. Saladin Chamcha, the so-called man of a thousand voices, grows horns, hooves and a tail, and acquires a terrible case of halitosis.
Their duality is a way for Rushdie to explore religion, specifically the question of prophetic certainty. But to treat “The Satanic Verses” as only, or even primarily, a religious novel is to miss the point and to undersell its scope. Gibreel and Saladin represent a tussle between India and Britain, between a melting pot and a glorious cultural bouillabaisse, mysticism and rationality, the best impulses and the worst, culture high and low. Rushdie has sympathy for people on both sides of these many divides, be they prophets or the angels from which visionaries extract their revelations, cheating wives or cuckolded husbands, assimilationists or separatists.
Rushdie has a Dickensian gift for names; one of the passengers on the hijacked plane is a creationist named Eugene Dumsday. He sends his angel to a music shop to pick out a trumpet and his devil to a racial justice meeting in formalwear. The characters attend a party for a truly awful-sounding musical adaptation of “Our Mutual Friend” and argue about political philosophers like Antonio Gramsci and Frantz Fanon. James Baldwin, Daniel Defoe and Herman Melville haunt the text, as do ghosts on flying carpets and in tartan tam-o’-shanters. “The Satanic Verses” is full of chains of butterflies leading pilgrims back to each other, a burned tree that once contained an expatriate’s soul, and reels of film that spontaneously combust.
Certainly, there are books that are most notable for the offense they give or the controversy they spark. No one deserves death sentences for writing those books; if literary genius is no defense against a fatwa, mediocrity is still protected by freedom of expression.
The Post's View: The Salman Rushdie attack should sharpen focus on Iran’s misdeeds
But a book that gives offense may have a great deal more to offer as well. That’s a lesson worth keeping in mind for those of us unmoved by the charge that “The Satanic Verses” is blasphemous. When the day inevitably comes when we find ourselves taken aback by a work of art, better to do as the writer Ray Bradbury suggested in “Zen in the Art of Writing,” and “behold beauty yet perceive its flaw / Then, flaw discovered like fair beauty’s mole, / Haste back to reckon all entire, the Whole.”
To allow things we might dislike or be disgusted by — much less a bad-faith non-reading of a great book — to loom over everything else about a work of art is to shrink down the world to the comprehensible and the comforting, at the potential cost of transcendence.
“A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract,” Rushdie wrote in a startlingly prophetic passage in “The Satanic Verses. “Dr. Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he’s lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least.”
Salman Rushdie should enter posterity not merely for his courage, but also for the beauty he brought into the world. | 2022-08-18T12:14:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses' is more than grounds for a fatwa. It’s a fantastic book - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/dont-reduce-satanic-verses-politics-rushdie-literature/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/dont-reduce-satanic-verses-politics-rushdie-literature/ |
The Teton mountains and Jackson Hole in Wyoming are seen from Snow King Mountain on Aug. 14. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Last week, I was lucky enough to find myself giving talks in two of America’s most gorgeous spots — the majestic mountain idyll of Jackson Hole, Wyo., and the rolling green hills of western New York.
As it happened, my New York speech was on the future of housing in a world where remote work is disrupting millions of offices. Naturally, this started me thinking how that might affect the communities where I was speaking.
In one case, it already had. Like many resort destinations, Jackson Hole became a “Zoom town” during the pandemic, as the footloose and flush escaped to locales where they could substitute spectacular views for human contact.
The result has been predictable to anyone who has watched that same class of affluent professionals crash into the zoning and land use restrictions of America’s most prosperous coastal cities. Since only about 2 percent of the land surrounding Jackson Hole is available for development, home prices spiked; the median listing value is now north of $3 million. Locals are necessarily being displaced — and presumably their resentments are growing, as they certainly are in similar places such as Bozeman, Mont.
Quite a contrast with Buffalo, N.Y., the heart of the region where I gave my New York talk.
Instead of too little capacity to meet booming demand, Rust Belt cities such as Buffalo have more houses and infrastructure than they need or can (easily) afford to maintain. As recently as 2017, Buffalo was one of only six cities in the country where more than 15 percent of the housing stock sat vacant; the median listing price in the area is less than $200,000. The pandemic may have somewhat boosted Buffalo’s fortunes — at least, the 2020 Census registered the first increase in the city’s population since 1950. But that’s still less than half of what it was 70 years ago.
The locals would love to see people filling up those vacant places again, and doing so would certainly ease the financial and economic woes of depopulation. Young people have been leaving for decades, chasing Sun Belt weather or big-city excitement, but mostly chasing jobs. And while many of them are glad for the change, many others would rather be back among the gentle hills and endless lakes, and all the people they were forced to leave behind.
Over decades of intermittent inquiries into the region’s future, I’ve interviewed dozens of that latter group — enough to make me sure that there were thousands or maybe millions more of them out there, longing for home. I’ve also spoken to people from other areas who found the region appealing, whether for its stock of lovely old prewar houses or as a haven from global warming. But all of them said, regretfully, that they couldn’t make the move; the jobs just weren’t there.
Remote work can’t accommodate all those folks’ wishes — too many jobs, from trash collection to neurosurgery, have to be done in person. But if the more mobile workers migrate, they’ll create more demand for those other services. Potentially, they could also help re-create the kind of middle-class life that both left and right are so nostalgic for: prospering communities with deep roots, where kids could grow up surrounded by aunts and cousins, parents could count on help raising their families, and grandparents could enjoy plenty of time with the grandkids, as well as someone nearby to help out as they age.
Cities and towns, of course, could use the tax revenue, and the social capital that their most ambitious and capable young people take with them when they’re forced to leave in search of work. And frankly, some of the other areas people have been moving to could use a break from relentless population pressure. The Mountain West and the Sun Belt could probably do with less competition for scarce water, and the prosperous coastal cities would be better off with fewer people to house since they refuse to allow enough building to let supply meet demand.
Whether or not this happens, of course, depends on how willing employers prove to commit to a long-term future of remote work. But it also depends at least partly on policy choices: Despite an abundance of cheap real estate, western New York has a comparatively high cost of living, thanks to heavy taxes, and high prices for such essentials as electricity and gasoline.
The most important question, however, might be cultural: What is it that we want from the Zoom revolution? Is it freeing us to retreat deeper into our private worlds, or is it enabling us to build up richer communities beyond the office? I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that remote work ought to be good for something besides letting rich people enjoy better views. | 2022-08-18T12:14:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Jackson Hole boomed from remote work, but places like Buffalo, not so much - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/jackson-hole-buffalo-remote-work-revolution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/jackson-hole-buffalo-remote-work-revolution/ |
If Pence won’t testify, he has no business running for president
Vice President Mike Pence delivers remarks at St. Anselm College's New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, N.H., on Aug. 17. (Cj Gunther/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Former vice president Mike Pence disingenuously said on Wednesday that he’d “consider” testifying before the House Jan. 6 select committee if asked to participate. Who’s he kidding?
The committee’s members have made it abundantly clear they want to talk to anyone with knowledge of the coup attempt. Pence — a target of the mob that President Donald Trump stirred up on Jan. 6, 2021 — would certainly qualify.
But it’s not up to Pence to “consider” whether he will testify. It’s up to the committee to decide whether his testimony would be useful. If so, it should promptly send Pence an invitation — or better yet, a subpoena.
Far too many Trump cronies (e.g., former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former communications staffer Dan Scavino) think that a congressional subpoena is a suggestion, not a legal mandate, or that they can pick and choose what questions to answer, a la former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Enough already. Pence, who apparently wants to present himself as a viable 2024 presidential contender who could faithfully uphold his oath, should be eager to share what he knows. That is what responsible and patriotic Americans with knowledge of the events surrounding Jan. 6 have done. If former Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson or Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) can do their part to assist the committee’s investigation, surely Pence can as well.
And certainly no one running for president should be willing to thwart a criminal investigation. If Pence cannot cooperate with law enforcement in their separate investigations, he fails the fundamental test of the presidency: putting public interest and defense of the Constitution ahead of personal or political concerns.
Pence seems to think that by virtue of his past service as vice president, his testimony is optional. “I would have to reflect on the unique role I was serving in as vice president,” he declared. “It would be unprecedented in history for a vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill.”
That might be because no other president has refused to peacefully transfer power or endangered the life of his vice president. Moreover, Pence is no longer vice president. (Does he think, as Trump seems to believe, that the benefits and privileges of office adhere to him indefinitely?)
Neither does the hobbyhorse of “executive privilege” excuse him from testifying. As Renato Mariotto, a former federal prosecutor, tells me, “Executive privilege could cover conversations between Pence and other executive branch officials, including Trump, but would not cover Pence’s own observations, views or beliefs. Also, there is a strong argument that any privilege here would be overcome by the need for Pence’s testimony or that the privilege has been waived by [President] Biden.”
Pence is in a unique situation because of the uniquely reprehensible conduct of his former boss. Norman Eisen, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, tells me it is “imperative” that Pence testifies, given his “unique proximity to and knowledge of the attempted coup." He adds, “As we have seen with other White House officials who have complied with requests to testify or subpoenas, privilege concerns if any can be addressed on a question-by-question basis.” There is no “blanket constitutional or legal exemption” to a congressional subpoena for a vice president, Eisen says, so “it is time for Pence to step forward and share what he knows.”
Regardless of whether the committee asks for Pence’s testimony, the Justice Department must summon the former vice president before a grand jury if there is to be a complete investigation of Trump’s misconduct.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, while explaining his decision to execute a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, said last week, “Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy.” He added, “Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor. Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.” That also means a percipient witness to alleged serious crimes must be questioned under oath, whether that person is a lowly White House staffer or the former vice president. Garland risks undermining his own standard if he gives an obviously critical witness a pass.
The Jan. 6 committee and the Justice Department should not let Pence slide by without getting his account under oath. His testimony is not only critical to the investigation but also to confirm that the judicial system should operate without fear or favor, even when a former high-level official is involved. | 2022-08-18T12:14:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | If Pence won’t testify, he has no business running for president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/pence-testify-trump-jan-6-committee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/pence-testify-trump-jan-6-committee/ |
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Leigh Ann Caldwell, a co-author of The Early 202, helped write the top of today's newsletter with Maxine. Sign up for the Early 202 here.
Meet 'the three climateers’: Sens. Brian Schatz, Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse
“This is a planetary emergency, and this is the first time the federal government has taken action that is worthy of the moment,” he told reporters at the time. “Now I can look my kids in the eye.”
Schatz, who came to Congress in 2012 after serving as the lieutenant governor of Hawaii, embodies a new type of climate hawk on Capitol Hill — one that has successfully pushed global warming to the forefront of the Democratic Party's agenda.
He is not alone. Whether in closed-door Democratic lunches or at United Nations climate summits, Schatz has frequently teamed up with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), an avid hunter and outdoorsman who has championed conservation legislation, and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), an erudite New Englander who has delivered nearly 300 “Time to Wake Up” speeches on the Senate floor to urge legislative action on climate change.
At a time when youth climate activists are putting pressure on the party, the three are relatively young — at least by Senate standards. Schatz is 49, Heinrich is 50 and Whitehouse is 66.
The trio also come from parts of the country that are facing different climate disasters.
In Hawaii, sea levels have risen about 10 inches since 1950, increasing the frequency of dangerous flooding for coastal communities. In New Mexico, a stretch of the Rio Grande recently ran dry for the first time in 40 years amid a historic megadrought. And in Rhode Island, rising ocean temperatures are straining the state’s lobster industry.
The three senators have been meeting every week since 2019 to plan actions, legislation and social media campaigns around climate change. They have also spoken regularly at weekly closed-door Democratic lunches to keep climate top-of-mind for their colleagues.
In November, the trio flew to the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Some attendees of the summit called them the “three amigos” because they appeared inseparable.
During the negotiations over the Inflation Reduction Act, the trio were in constant contact with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the White House, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his staff. The three senators made clear that they wouldn't kill a deal because of its perceived imperfections, and they trusted Schumer to represent their interests in his private talks with Manchin.
“I met with a group of them and I told them there might have to be things in there that we don’t like to reach an agreement with Manchin. They said get what you can, just make it a good bill,” Schumer said in a statement of Schatz, Whitehouse and Heinrich, as well as Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). “They had my back. They really did.”
While Schumer haggled with Manchin over the climate package, Schatz was the lead progressive negotiator with Manchin on his desire to reform the permitting process for energy infrastructure projects, a separate deal that was essential to the main bill. When the Schumer-Manchin talks fell apart, the permitting negotiations did, too.
At that point, Schatz said he encouraged the administration to declare climate change a national emergency and pivot to executive action, hoping Manchin would come back to the table.
On the day the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate, meanwhile, former senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she got a phone call from an emotional Schatz.
“He's part of a new generation of environmentalists, and he's wonderful,” said Boxer, who was part of the failed effort to pass the cap-and-trade climate bill in 2010. “And he just called to say, ‘Thanks for laying the groundwork.' ”
Climate in the courts
A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down a lower court’s decision from last year that blocked the Biden administration from halting new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters, a key part of President Biden’s climate agenda, The Washington Post's Dino Grandoni and Anna Phillips report.
Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sent the case back to the district court, which ruled in favor of Louisiana and other oil-producing states last year, saying that its initial decision to stop Biden’s moratorium on leasing was too vague.
The new ruling could help revive Biden's efforts to slow global warming by reforming the federal leasing program. But what happens next isn't clear, in part because the decision came a day after Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law.
As part of a compromise with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the law mandates new lease sales off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico. The measure also ties the approval of new renewable energy projects on public lands to ongoing oil and gas auctions, another painful concession for many climate activists.
3 big insights behind the climate bill’s impact, explained
With about $370 billion earmarked for combating climate change and bolstering clean energy, the Inflation Reduction Act will certainly decrease the country's greenhouse gas emissions. But the question of how much is still up in the air, Shannon Osaka reports for The Post.
In a statement released shortly after the deal was reached, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) claimed that the bill would cut emissions 40 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. Since then, the figure has been repeated by President Biden and backed by three independent modeling teams: the research firm Rhodium Group, the think tank Energy Innovation, and a group of Princeton University researchers called the REPEAT project.
However, the models used to inform these predictions rely on highly complicated estimates of how the economy works and how energy is used, making the real impact of the bill hard to quantify. Here’s why:
The models assume that people will switch to climate-friendly technologies because they're cheaper. But this is not always the case. For example, the REPEAT model predicts that all cars sold in 2030 will be electric vehicles. But in the real world, some consumers will be afraid to buy EVs because they don't see enough chargers in their neighborhoods.
Emissions have already been reduced substantially compared to 2005 levels, so the 40 percent estimate is a little bit misleading, given measurements that have already been baked in. Still, each ton of carbon not emitted into the atmosphere can help slow global warming, no matter how much progress has already been made.
The 40 percent figure could actually be an underestimate. The influx of government cash could cause the costs of clean energy technologies to plummet, meaning the clean energy transition could happen faster than expected. But these cost changes are difficult to predict for all of the models.
Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act. Now the real work can start.
Now that President Biden has officially signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, federal regulators across nearly every agency can start writing policies to implement the bill’s climate and clean energy provisions, Jennifer A. Dlouhy reports for Bloomberg Law.
The Environmental Protection Agency will need to create a program to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. At the Energy Department, officials will be tasked with vetting applications for billions of dollars' worth of loan guarantees.
Meanwhile, it could take six months to a year for the Internal Revenue Service to issue guidance for dozens of new and expanded tax credits for renewable energy, manufacturing plants and hydrogen projects. That could leave many companies waiting for additional direction before signing off on new projects. In particular, companies could seek clarity on how they can meet prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements to secure the full value of some tax incentives.
Democrats could subpoena PR firm over work with Big Oil
Two House Democrats are threatening to subpoena a prominent public relations firm if it doesn't turn over information about its campaigns for oil and gas clients on the topic of climate change.
House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who chairs the panel's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, issued the threat in a Wednesday letter to FTI Consulting, which has designed and staffed influence campaigns for some of the world's largest oil and gas companies.
The lawmakers initially requested the documents from FTI and four other PR firms in June, as The Climate 202 reported at the time. They are now seeking the information by 5 p.m. on Aug. 24, at which point they could issue a subpoena.
Asked for comment on the letter, an FTI spokesman said in an email: “Our company takes the subcommittee’s request very seriously. We continue to be in regular contact with subcommittee staff as we progress our efforts to be responsive to the chair’s request in a manner consistent with our legal obligations to preserve our clients’ confidentiality and privileges.”
The spokesman added that the firm is "committed to ensuring that all professional services we deliver align with our firmwide position to support action to address climate change.”
After a quiet start, Atlantic hurricane season could ramp up into September — Matthew Cappucci for The Post
China and U.S. spar over climate on Twitter — Ken Moritsugu for the Associated Press
Makers of heating, cooling systems expect climate bill to boost sales — Katy Stech Ferek for the Wall Street Journal
Lawyer who defeated Cheney spent career fighting environmental rules — Trip Gabriel for the New York Times
ICYMI, Dodge will stop making its signature muscle cars next year, as automakers shift toward electric vehicles. Our colleagues on The Post's TikTok team had some fun with the announcement:
Today’s first @washingtonpost TikTok features Dodge Chargers and Challengers pic.twitter.com/JKINv1IU3a | 2022-08-18T12:15:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The three climateers' represent a new type of climate hawk on Capitol Hill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/the-three-climateers-represent-new-type-climate-hawk-capitol-hill-2/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/the-three-climateers-represent-new-type-climate-hawk-capitol-hill-2/ |
Good morning, Early Birds. We are VERY grateful for The Climate 202 anchor Maxine Joselow's help and expertise for today's Early. (Sign up for The Climate 202 here.) Tips: earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us.
In today's edition … Biden quietly signs law enforcement mental health bill, upsetting some supporters ... What we're watching: Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, and the hearing to unseal the affidavit that led to the FBI Mar-a-Lago search … Poll Watch: Record high say life will be worse for the next generation … but first …
‘The Three Climateers’
Climate change was not always a winning issue for Democrats, and even now, Democratic strategists admit that it won't play well in every district or state in November's midterm elections.
The lowest point for climate advocates was in 2010, when moderate Senate Democrats facing head winds in their reelection efforts urged President Barack Obama to walk away from a major cap-and-trade bill after a bruising fight to pass the Affordable Care Act. (He did.) Little happened since — until now.
Schatz has not attracted as much attention for his climate advocacy as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has delivered nearly 300 “Time to Wake Up” speeches on the Senate floor to urge legislative action on global warming. But Schatz came to the Senate with climate credentials: He asked Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii's governor at the time, to appoint him to serve the rest of longtime Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye’s term after Inouye’s death in 2012 because climate was Schatz's top priority.
Schatz's arrival gave Whitehouse, the most vocal climate activist in the Senate, a more soft-spoken partner. They organized an overnight talk-a-thon to raise awareness about climate in 2014 and introduced a bill to tax carbon emissions. And in 2015, they traveled to the United Nations climate conference in Paris, where a major climate accord was adopted.
Soon, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a close friend of Schatz's, made the duo a trio.
Schatz, Heinrich and Whitehouse embody a new type of climate hawk on Capitol Hill — one that resonates with a younger generation of climate activists. The three are relatively young for the Senate: Schatz is 49, Heinrich is 50 and Whitehouse is 66 years old.
The trio also comes from different parts of the country that are facing different climate disasters.
In Hawaii, sea levels have risen about 10 inches since 1950, increasing the frequency of dangerous flooding for coastal communities. In New Mexico, a stretch of the Rio Grande recently ran dry for the first time in 40 years amid a historic megadrought. And in Rhode Island, rising ocean temperatures are placing a major strain on the state’s lobster industry.
In November 2021, Schatz, Whitehouse and Heinrich flew to the COP26 United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Some attendees of the summit called them the “three amigos” because the trio appeared inseparable.
They also saw a shift in their colleagues.
Schatz said the climate movement — and their persistence — transformed “an issue that used to divide Democrats into an issue that motivates and unites Democrats.”
“We reached the point in this Congress where it was a major issue for the vast majority of the caucus,” Heinrich said. “I think leadership and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer (D-N.Y.), in particular, responded to that. I mean, he saw the activism that was occurring in his home state and then also the way the entire caucus was making that a priority.”
Whitehouse said the Trump administration helped.
“The absolutely foul and filthy way that they've dealt with pollution and energy issues was so flagrant and so appalling that even if this wasn't your top issue, you just couldn't help but be disgusted what you saw in that administration,” Whitehouse said. “I think that had a very strong binding effect on the caucus.”
During negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the “three climateers” were in constant contact with the White House, Schumer and his staff, and made clear they wouldn’t kill a deal because of its imperfections. They weren't in the room but said they trusted Schumer to represent their interests. The senators were also in constant contact with Manchin (as was nearly every other Democratic senator.)
“We just wouldn't take ‘no’ for an answer,” Schatz said, but acknowledged that they had to be very flexible in accepting what was left on the cutting room floor.
“I met with a group of them and I told them there might have to be things in there that we don’t like to reach an agreement with Manchin. They said get what you can, just make it a good bill,” Schumer said in a statement of Schatz, Whitehouse, Heinrich as well as Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). “They had my back. They really did.”
Schatz encouraged the administration to move to a Plan B of executive actions and declaring a climate emergency both as an alternative but also hoping it Manchin would come back to the table. But President Biden never declared that climate emergency and didn’t move on the executive actions.
Then suddenly a deal.
Former senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who was part of a failed effort to pass the cap-and-trade climate bill in 2010, said she got a phone call from an emotional Schatz after the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate.
“He just called to say, ‘Thanks for laying the groundwork,’” she recalled.
Biden quietly signs law enforcement mental health bill, upsetting some supporters
Late Tuesday night, after Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into a law, he also signed another bill — with much less fanfare.
The Public Safety Officer Support Act expands a Justice Department program that provides death and disability benefits for police, firefighters and other first responders to treat mental health injuries on par with physical health injuries and provide survivor benefits to officers who die by suicide.
“I am disappointed to know that this bill will not be receiving the attention it deserves, and it feels like suicides again are being pushed to the side just as they have been for years, because of political calculations that have nothing to do with all the men and women who don’t get a choice, including my husband, of when to put on their badge and go to work,” Smith said in a statement.
Not everyone is upset.
“I'm not ready to throw stones because there wasn't a bigger signing ceremony,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which backed the bill. “Because the most important thing is that, in part because of the White House's support, that very important legislation is passed.”
Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), one of the bill's co-sponsors, said it creates “a safeguard system to include disability is a mental illness, mental anxiety, depression, as a result of line of duty service.”
Mental health needs of law enforcement has been on the rise, police groups say. Last year, 179 officers died by suicide and 2019 saw the most officer suicides, with 248, according to Blue H.E.L.P., a law enforcement mental health advocacy organization.
Today’s a big day for Trumpworld. Here’s what to expect:
Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg is expected to plead guilty to a tax fraud scheme that lasted for 15 years. The plea deal – which would reduce his sentence from up to 15 years to five months – requires that Weisselberg testify at the company’s October 24 trial, making him the prosecution’s key witness.
Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart will hold a hearing on whether to unseal the affidavit that led to last week’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Reinhart could side with the Justice Department and decide not to release the affidavit or choose to release a redacted version.
The affidavit, which the Justice Department has opposed unsealing, likely contains witness names and other sensitive information. The DOJ argues that unsealing the affidavit could put the investigation and the safety of those named at risk.
Record high say life will be worse for the next generation
From Post polling analyst Emily Guskin: For months now, Americans have said that the country and economy are in bad shape. And new data show pessimism is extending to hopes for the country’s long-term future, too.
A Fox News poll released last week found 70 percent of registered voters predicted that life for the next generation of Americans will be worse than it is today, up from 47 percent in 2018, 41 percent in 2020 and a record high since Fox began asking the question in 2002.
Majorities across parties believe life will get worse in a generation: 76 percent of Republicans, 79 percent of independents and 57 percent of Democrats – the party in charge of the federal government right now.
Today’s economic concerns likely explain part of the shift. The poll found 48 percent of registered voters rated economic conditions as "poor," down from 57 percent in June but up from 33 percent last summer. Strongly negative ratings fall below Great Recession levels, with 74 percent rating the economy as poor in January 2009.
Other polls point to similar feelings of bleakness about the next generation’s economic standing: A spring 2022 Pew Research Center poll found 72 percent of Americans saying that they expect American children today will be worse off financially than their parents – up from 57 percent in 2020 and mirroring increases in other countries.
Ratings of the economy seesaw with the business cycle and the current mood is a significant political liability for Democrats heading into the midterm elections. What’s less clear is whether an extended period of record high inflation will have a lasting impact on Americans’ confidence that living standards will improve.
How the Mar-a-Lago raid has helped fuel GOP attacks on the IRS. By The Post’s Marianna Sotomayor.
Trump’s dominance in GOP comes into focus, worrying some in the party. By The Post’s Hannah Knowles, Josh Dawsey and David Weigel.
Trump rakes in millions off FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. By The Post’s Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf.
D.C. won’t have a vote in the midterms — but it has plenty at stake. By The Post’s Meagan Flynn.
Post-Roe differences surface in GOP over new abortion rules. By AP News’s Hannah Fingerhut and Scott Bauer.
NY-10 debate is a lion’s den for Daniel Goldman. By Politico’s Joe Anuta.
U.S. to begin formal trade talks with Taiwan. By the New York Times’s Ana Swanson.
Context: Dr. Oz owns 10 houses, and he’s lying about it. | 2022-08-18T12:15:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Three Climateers' represent a new type of climate hawk on Capitol Hill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/the-three-climateers-represent-new-type-climate-hawk-capitol-hill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/the-three-climateers-represent-new-type-climate-hawk-capitol-hill/ |
What you need to know about E. coli
A lab technician holds a bacteria culture that shows a positive infection of enterohemorrhagic E. coli, also known as the EHEC bacteria, from a patient. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
A “fast-moving” E. coli outbreak has been reported in Michigan and Ohio. At least 29 people are ill and nine of them hospitalized, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an urgent message Wednesday.
The CDC said that a source of infection has not yet been identified in this outbreak and that no deaths have been reported.
Here’s everything you need to know about Escherichia coli — commonly known by its abbreviated name “E. coli.”
How do you get an E. coli infection and how long does it last?
What are E. coli symptoms?
Is there an E. coli vaccine or treatment?
What foods and places have been linked to E. coli?
How can you prevent E. coli? | 2022-08-18T12:48:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is E. coli, what are the symptoms, and how do you prevent it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/18/ecoli-causes-symptoms-treatment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/18/ecoli-causes-symptoms-treatment/ |
Anne Frank adaptation, 40 more books pulled from Texas school district
Books that are banned in many U.S. public schools are stacked at the Central Library in Brooklyn on July 7. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)
A day before school began for its approximately 35,000 students, Keller Independent School District announced a last-minute review of scores of books that had been challenged in the previous school year, an email obtained by The Washington Post shows. While those conflicts had already been resolved by book committees made up by parents, librarians, administrators and teachers, policies adopted earlier this month by the new school board sparked the recall of 41 publications, including classics like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”
The removal of Anne Frank’s diary adaptation has sparked backlash since it was announced. In a joint statement Wednesday, the Jewish Federation of Fort Worth & Tarrant County and the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas and its Jewish Community Relations Council expressed disappointment over the decision and urged the school district “to put the book back on the shelf.”
A school district spokesperson told The Post that “books that meet the new guidelines will be returned to the libraries as soon as it is confirmed they comply with the new policy.” In a Facebook post, the president of the board of trustees, Charles Randklev, said the review was necessary “to protect kids from sexually explicit content.”
But for Hawes, whose four children are students in the district, the decision to take the books off the shelves underscores how politics have seeped into school boards — a trend that’s been playing out across the U.S.
Book challenges are nothing new, but they’ve feverishly ramped up over the past year, as a growing movement on the right embraces them as a political talking point. An April report from PEN America, a free speech advocacy organization, found 1,586 books were banned in 86 school districts from July 2021 to March 2022, affecting over 2 million students. Texas — where a legislator distributed a watch list of 850 books last year — ranked above the 25 other states that have bans, with 713 book bans, according to the report.
The rise in book bans, explained
In Keller schools, the list of challenged books includes LGBTQ touchstones like Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”; poetry tomes like Rupi Kaur’s “Milk and Honey”; and young adult novels like Jesse Andrews’s “Me, Earl and the Dying Girl” and the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. Many center on gay or transgender characters. All had been reviewed by the district’s book committees — with some being approved, removed, or assigned age restrictions.
In spring, Hawes — one of the parents on the book committee — had been called to analyze a complaint about Ari Folman and David Polonsky’s adaptation of “The Diary of a Young Girl.” Based on the unabridged version of Anne Frank’s journal, it was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “so engaging and effective that it’s easy to imagine it replacing the Diary in classrooms and among younger readers.” The novel illustrates the hope and despair Frank felt during her time hiding from the Nazis inside a tiny annex. But it also includes some of her references to female genitalia and a possible attraction to women. The parent who complained about the book didn’t show up to the book committee’s review, so it’s unclear what that person objected to, Hawes said.
Nashville debuts limited-edition ‘I read banned books’ library card
Keller is part of 20 school districts in Tarrant County, a politically divided area where Joe Biden won by just 1,826 votes in 2020 presidential election. The election results kindled a conservative push to take over school boards in the county, Hawes said. Patriot Mobile Action, a Christian political action committee based in Texas, endorsed and funded the campaigns of 11 school board candidates across the county, who all won. Three of them joined Keller’s seven-person board of trustees in May. | 2022-08-18T12:48:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anne Frank adaptation, 40 more books pulled from Texas school district - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/anne-frank-book-school-texas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/anne-frank-book-school-texas/ |
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, seen from southern Kenya in 2012. (Ben Curtis/AP)
If your climb to the top of Africa’s tallest mountain isn’t posted on Instagram, did it even, like, happen?
Adventurers can now upload their ascents to share with family, friends and followers in real time, after Tanzania’s Information Ministry moved this week to install high-speed internet in the area.
“Today Up on Mount Kilimanjaro: I am hoisting high-speed INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS (BROADBAND) on the ROOF OF AFRICA,” tweeted Tanzania’s minister of information and communication, Nape Moses Nnauye. “Tourists can now communicate worldwide from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.”
At an event on Tuesday some 12,450 feet (3,795 meters) above sea level, flanked by officials and international tourists, Nnauye proclaimed that high-speed internet provided by the state-run Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation was now available to all.
Plans to extend the coverage to the Uhuru Peak, 19,291 feet (5,880 meters) above sea level, are in place for the end of the year, he added.
“Previously, it was a bit dangerous for visitors and porters who had to operate without internet,” Nnauye said, according to AFP. “All visitors will get connected … (up to) this point of the mountain,” he added, speaking from the Horombo Huts campsite on the mountainside.
The move has been welcomed by some in Tanzania as a boost to the tourism industry, but others derided the government on social media for not ensuring better internet access in remote villages and towns and improving services in commercial centers.
Defeated Kenyan candidate declares election results ‘null and void’
Tourism is vital to Tanzania’s economy, accounting for about $1.4 billion in revenue in 2021, almost 6 percent of GDP. The sector is still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, which saw global travel grind to a halt.
Mount Kilimanjaro stands as high as about 13 Empire State buildings and is a protected UNESCO World Heritage site. It is also Earth’s largest free-standing volcanic mass, and its snowy top attracts visitors from around the world to Tanzania. Thousands of tourists attempt to climb Kilimanjaro annually, taking about a week to summit the majestic mountain.
The internet rollout is part of a wider government project called the National ICT Broadband Backbone, which is partly supported by China. Beijing has long sought to finance and develop communication and other infrastructure in the East African nation, and China’s ambassador to Tanzania, Chen Mingjian, tweeted her support Tuesday for the Kilimanjaro project.
Earlier this month, on a tour of the continent, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled the Biden administration’s strategy for developing partnerships to help African nations become less dependent on foreign aid and address challenges such as climate change. The push comes as China pours money into Africa in the form of loans and investment and Russia sends arms and mercenaries.
“The United States will not dictate Africa’s choices, and neither should anyone else,” Blinken said in an address at South Africa’s University of Pretoria. “The right to make these choices belongs to Africans, and Africans alone.”
Tanzania’s government sparked uproar in recent years after announcing plans for a cable-car system on the southern side of Kilimanjaro, to boost tourist numbers and provide access to those unable to climb it. Expedition groups, porters who help climbers, and climate experts said the project would endanger the mountain’s delicate ecosystem and hurt the local economy.
Earlier this month, climate experts warned that Africa’s national parks, home to thousands of wildlife species, were increasingly threatened by below-average rainfall, prolonged drought and large scale infrastructure projects that hamper conservation efforts. | 2022-08-18T13:01:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tanzania brings internet to Mount Kilimanjaro, Instagram-hungry tourists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/mount-kilimanjaro-internet-tanzania-africa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/mount-kilimanjaro-internet-tanzania-africa/ |
Why Crimea is so important in the Russia-Ukraine war
Smoke rises after explosions were heard from the direction of a Russian military air base near Novofedorivka, Crimea, on Aug. 9. (Obtained by Reuters)
A series of blasts at Russian military sites in Crimea this month has put a spotlight on the contested peninsula, which until now had been spared the heavy fighting of the nearly six-month-long war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have told The Washington Post that the explosions — including those at two air bases and an ammunition depot — were the work of Ukraine’s special forces seeking to disrupt Russia’s supply lines. Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 and has occupied it since.
The Black Sea peninsula, which is about the size of Massachusetts, has long been fought-over by the world’s great powers. For years, it has been a point of contention between Moscow and Kyiv.
As it emerges as a new battlefront in the war, here’s what you need to know about Crimea and its strategic importance.
Where is Crimea and what country is it in?
How did Russia annex Crimea in 2014?
Why is Crimea important to Russia and Ukraine in the current conflict?
Who carried out the recent attacks against an air base and ammunition depot in Crimea? | 2022-08-18T13:14:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Crimea is so important in the Russia-Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/crimea-russia-ukraine-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/crimea-russia-ukraine-war/ |
Briona Butler
Chuck Brown, D.C.’s legendary godfather of go-go, will be honored at Saturday’s annual Chuck Brown Day concert, with performances by Rare Essence, Doug E. Fresh and, of course, the Chuck Brown Band. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Washington Mystics playoff viewing party at As You Are Bar: For the eighth time in 10 years, the Washington Mystics are in the WNBA playoffs — a record that’s the envy of most other professional sports teams in D.C. The best-of-three series against the Seattle Storm tips off at 10 p.m. on this coast, and the Mystics’ official viewing party is at As You Are Bar, the welcoming new nightspot at the top of Barracks Row that was named one of the team’s partner bars earlier in the season. Look for food and drink specials as well as giveaways. 10 p.m. Free admission.
Artwalk Dupont: Feel like your midweek could use a bit more cultural appreciation? Dupont Circle’s “Third Thursday” Artwalk is back for monthly happenings at the neighborhood’s galleries. This month’s activities include exhibitions at the Embassy of Argentina, a musical performance by D.C.-based harpist Iliana Garabyare and a live painting by multimedia artist Claire De Pree. Stroll through a concurring FreshFarm farmers market, or check out exhibits at locations including the Heurich House Museum, set in a Gilded Age mansion, and Studio Gallery, the oldest artist-owned gallery in the city. 5 to 8 p.m. Free.
Montgomery County Agricultural Fair: Monster trucks and racing pigs: What else do you need? The final weekend of the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair arrives with all the entertainment you’d expect, including barns full of animals, performances by musicians and illusionists, and a midway stuffed with everything from highflying rides to mirrored mazes. Thursday’s featured events include racing piglets, which take to their track four times between noon and 7:30 p.m., and the Renegade Monster Truck Tour, in which eight trucks with names like Crushstation and Virginia Giant show off their tricks for the crowd. Friday and Saturday trade monster truck destruction for the all-important demolition derby. Thursday from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to midnight. Admission $12 in advance, $15 at the gate. Children ages 11 and younger admitted free. Rides and some attractions, such as the monster trucks and demolition derby, cost extra. See the fair’s website for details.
D.C. Environmental Film Festival: International Spotlight Shorts: The annual D.C. Environmental Film Festival is held in March, but organizers also schedule virtual screenings and filmmaker discussions throughout the year. This mini-fest contains five short films delving into environmental issues around the world, from centuries-old traditions of Japanese lumberjacks to the impact of climate change on Swedish snowboarders. The films, ranging in length from seven to 31 minutes, are available to stream for three days, along with a Q&A featuring three of the directors. Through Sunday. Free.
‘Rear Window’ outdoor screening at Hillwood Estate and Gardens: What would Grace Kelly bring to a picnic? That’s the assignment for a stylish outdoor movie screening at D.C.’s historic Hillwood Estate, in honor of the museum’s special exhibition “Grace of Monaco: Princess in Dior.” You’ll get to see the exhibit and take a tour of the mansion and gardens, then settle in on the Lunar Lawn to watch the actress’s classic film “Rear Window.” The winner of the picnic spread competition will score an annual membership to Hillwood, so do your homework: Judges will be looking for fine tablecloths and flameless candelabras, impeccable 1950s fashion, and a theme that connects to Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece. 6 to 10 p.m. $5-$20. Free for children ages 5 and younger.
‘Mexican Geniuses’: A Frida and Diego Immersive Experience: A company that previously imagined Van Gogh’s starry night as an immersive experience is turning its attention to one of art’s most famous power couples. “Mexican Geniuses: A Frida and Diego Immersive Experience” arrives in D.C. after debuting this spring in London. Art from Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera will appear larger than life, thanks to 360-degree video-mapping technology. Four galleries re-create Kahlo’s and Rivera’s individual and shared spaces, with more than 300 projections featuring paintings, photos, quotes and animation. Through Oct. 9. $19.90-$64.90.
‘Mixology for the Lovelorn, Then and Now’ at the National Building Museum: The Building Museum’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”-inspired collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library wraps up on Aug. 28, but there are a few more events taking place before Robin Goodfellow restores amends. A love potion plays a key role in the events of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and mixologists Derek Brown (founder of the Columbia Room) and Bridget Albert (author of “Life, Love, Happiness and Cocktails”) team up with culinary historian Marissa Nicosia to discuss the origins of potions, how they were used to treat heartache as well as physical ailments, and their evolution into the modern idea of cocktails. 6 p.m. Free; registration required.
DJ Bri Mafia at the Howard Theatre: Bri Mafia was a self-described “YouTube DJ” in college, spinning the likes of Key!, Retro Sushi, Dom Kennedy and “almost every artist of the hip-hop blog era,” she says. But her career really began in 2015 after she attended South by Southwest, when she left the graphic design program at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina and moved to Prince George’s County to be near family and pursue DJing full time. Her reasons were straightforward: “I only saw two female DJs the entire weekend I was [at South by Southwest], and that is absolutely what convinced me to drop out of school and take my DJ career seriously.” Onstage, she seamlessly blends raunchy trap, dreamy pop and thrashing emo-core into exhilarating live sets. Her knack for finding what’s new in a sound has had her opening for acts including A$ap Ant, Nardo Wick and Larry June before this concert with Curren$y at Howard Theatre. 8 p.m. $10.
Interview: DJ Bri Mafia is more than just a record spinner
Shordie Shordie at the Fillmore Silver Spring: 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.” 8 p.m. $20-$95.
Punkie Johnson at Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse: Punkie Johnson joined “Saturday Night Live” as a featured player in 2020, and while she might not have featured as often as some other cast members, she consistently steals scenes, whether uproariously telling stories about her family’s holiday gatherings on “Weekend Update” or portraying the twerking devil on Selena Gomez’s shoulder. Johnson, the second Black LGBTQ cast member in the show’s history, visits Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse for four shows this weekend. Friday and Saturday at 7 and 9:30 p.m. $20.
Chuck Brown Day at Chuck Brown Memorial Park: Washington’s annual celebration of beloved local musician Chuck Brown, the godfather of go-go, returns to Langdon’s Chuck Brown Memorial Park for an afternoon of funk and community. Headlined by the Chuck Brown Band and hosted by DJ Kool, the day features performances by Doug E. Fresh, Rare Essence and Uncalled 4 Band (UCB), bringing together the sounds of multiple generations. Outside of the beat, which goes and goes, there are food trucks, family activities and a back-to-school giveaway, and the first 1,000 people to RSVP online can claim a free Chuck Brown T-shirt. 2 to 7 p.m. Free.
Bands and Brews in Del Ray: Music and drinks flow in the heart of Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood during the second annual Bands and Brews festival. At least 18 restaurants are hosting live entertainment, including Lena’s Wood-Fired Pizza, Evening Star Cafe, and the Barkhaus dog park and bar. After checking in, participants can wander freely up and down Mount Vernon Avenue in search of music and drink specials, which vary by bar, or avail themselves of a trolley to move between locations. A portion of the day’s proceeds benefits the nonprofit Senior Services of Alexandria. 1 to 6 p.m. $15; $20 at the door.
Asia Collective Night Market at the Howard County Fairgrounds: The Howard County Fairgrounds turns into a food lover’s dream with bites from 40 Asian restaurants, including Baltimore Asian-fusion spot Ekiben, Rockville Philippine staple Kuya Ja’s Lechon Belly and the Hong Kong-inspired Columbia Heights bistro Queen’s English. Snacks range from Vietnamese egg rolls to soup dumplings and Chinese barbecue skewers to boba tea. Asia Collective Night Market stays open fittingly late, and organizers say the ticketed format with extended hours and multiple entrances to the fairgrounds will cut back on long lines. 2 to 11 p.m. $10; free for children younger than 10.
R&B in the Fort at Fort Dupont: When the National Park Service announced the 50th anniversary of the Fort Dupont Summer Concert Series, it pledged performances by “artists whose music recalls the early days of the Fort Dupont concerts.” This week’s lineup fulfills that promise, thanks to Pieces of a Dream, the Philadelphia group whose soulful smooth jazz sound earned it numerous headlining slots over the years, beginning in the early 1980s. Also on the bill is the Urban Guerilla Orchestra, a funk ensemble whose members have backed Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and Michael Jackson, and whose sets are heavy on ’70s and ’80s party classics. Gates open at 5:30 p.m., concert starts at 7 p.m. Free.
Will Butler at DC9: 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. 7 p.m. $19-$21.
Arlington County Fair: While the Metro-accessible fair offers rides, games and live performances throughout its five-day run, Saturday features some of the most traditional — and nontraditional — county fair activities. The day kicks off at 9 a.m. with goat yoga, which is exactly what it sounds like: a mellow yoga class surrounded by grazing farm animals. After that relaxing vibe, the rest of Saturday continues a bit less peacefully with ax throwing, escape rooms and a magic show. The ever-classic pie eating championship at noon features pastries and the chance to win a gift certificate from Livin’ the Pie Life. While kids frolic at the “foam party,” adults can enjoy New District Brewing Co.’s beer garden or live evening performances from the Sunshine Gang and Red Sun King. 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Free admission; event prices vary.
‘Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway’ at the Textile Museum: Long before Seoul street-style blogs and K-pop costumes captured the world’s attention, viewers at the Korean panel in the 1893 Chicago world’s fair marveled over embroidered silk robes made for the royal court. The Textile Museum’s exhibit “Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway” showcases more than 125 years of Korean design, including garments shown in Chicago and high-end clothing that wowed during Paris Fashion Week. Through Dec. 22. Suggested donation of $8.
Sneaker Con at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center: It’s going to be hard to leave Sneaker Con without a fresh pair of shoes. More than 400 vendors set up shop to buy, sell and trade during the two-day sneaker and streetwear convention at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Meanwhile, eBay experts are on hand to authenticate vintage sneakers and run a live auction. Saturday and Sunday from noon to 7 p.m. $30-$50.
Flashband Summer Rock Showcase: There’s nothing like D.C. weather in late August to make you wish you were at the beach, sipping an ice-blended cocktail and listening to your summer playlist through a portable speaker. This show at Union Stage promises that feeling without ever leaving the District. Flashband, 7DrumCity’s catchall organization that forms bands from hobbyists to perform one-time gigs, is playing a “summer rock showcase” featuring covers from beach and poolside favorites like (you guessed it) the Beach Boys. 7 to 11 p.m. $15.
Beneficial Insect Basics class: Inundated with invasive red lantern flies and wondering which insects may help your garden instead of kill your trees? Nonprofit collective DMV Beneficials hosts a class to teach the basics on bugs and principles on pests. At PLNTR in Adams Morgan, it covers how to use insects in place of pesticides to benefit a garden or indoor collection without chemicals. Guests leave with a small houseplant and a bag of beneficial bugs to try out their new skills. 2 to 4 p.m. $25.
Adams Morgan Pedestrian Zone: On Sunday afternoon, traffic will come to a halt in Adams Morgan. Instead of Uber Eats drivers blocking traffic outside restaurants and buses idling at stoplights, 18th Street NW will be filled with diners enjoying restaurants alfresco and families doing yoga together while an entertainer riding a big-wheeled penny-farthing cycles past. Well, that’s the idea, anyway. Sunday marks the debut of the Adams Morgan Pedestrian Zone, a pilot program that will close 18th Street to vehicular traffic between Columbia and Kalorama roads one Sunday each month, from noon to 10 p.m., through October. The goal, according to the Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District, is to draw more people to the neighborhood, then make it easier for them to move around and socialize or participate in activities on the pavement. Beyond hanging out on rooftop bars and at streateries, free scheduled activities include yoga and Zumba classes, instructors from Words, Beats and Life leading a dance academy, face painting and balloon artists for children, and the creation of a chalk mural in the middle of the street. Noon to 10 p.m. Free.
Giant panda birthday parties at the National Zoo: August is a big month for the giant pandas at the National Zoo; Tian Tian and little cub Xiao Qi Ji are both celebrating birthdays, and everyone is invited to their parties. Xiao Qi Ji turns 2 on Aug. 21, and it’s bound to be adorable to watch the youngster chow down on a special birthday ice cake. Then, less than a week later, it’s Dad’s turn to feast on his own cake. The pandas will be presented with treats at 9 a.m., but activities continue all day. Tune in to the live stream on the Giant Panda Cam, or reserve free passes to visit the Asia Trail in person for the festivities. 9 to 10 a.m. Free. Passes required for in-person admission.
STAR Fest at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library: “Singing, Talking and Reading” is the theme of this family event marking the 50th anniversary of the central library. Highlights include a story time with guest reader the Cat in the Hat, music from Latin Grammy winner 123 Andrés and Mr. Prather (of “Move With …” fame), author talks and book signings, a petting zoo, face painting, and bubbles. Because it’s the library, there will be free books to take home. 1 to 5 p.m. Free.
Diary of an R&B Songwriter and Producer: Rich Harrison at Songbyrd: One of the most talented music producers to emerge from D.C. in the 2000s, Rich Harrison was responsible for the beats on Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” and Amerie’s “1 Thing,” and has worked with Usher, Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton and Marsha Ambrosius. The members of the R&B Club — “think of it as a musical book club” — perform a deep dive into Harrison’s output and legacy over brunch at Songbyrd. Noon to 2 p.m. $15-$20.
From 2005: Rich Harrison: Quietly making some noise
Peaches at 9:30 Club: 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. 7 p.m. $40. | 2022-08-18T13:23:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Music festivals, county fairs, concerts and things to do around D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/best-things-do-dc-area-week-aug-18-24/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/best-things-do-dc-area-week-aug-18-24/ |
Outrage in India as men convicted of rape, murder walk free
Activists protest the early prison release of 11 men convicted of gang-raping Bilkis Bano during the 2002 communal riots in the western Indian state of Gujarat. (Money Sharma/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW DELHI — Bilkis Bano was five-months pregnant when she was attacked by a Hindu mob in 2002 as anti-Muslim violence gripped the western Indian state of Gujarat.
Bano, then 21, was gang-raped by sword-wielding men from her neighborhood. Fourteen of her family members were killed, including her 3-year-old daughter, who was snatched from her arms and bashed against a rock.
This week, 11 men serving a life sentence for the crimes were released from prison on remission by the Gujarat state government, sparking widespread outrage and an emotional appeal for justice from Bano.
In a statement issued Wednesday through her lawyer, Bano said the news left had her “numb” and “bereft.”
“I trusted the system, and I was learning slowly to live with my trauma,” she said, adding that the release had shaken her faith in the justice system. “No one enquired about my safety and well-being before taking such a big and unjust decision.”
The development comes as a shock to the country that has struggled to address widespread sexual violence against women. In recent years, authorities have made laws stricter and instituted harsher punishments, but conviction rates for rape remain low.
An 8-year-old girl’s gang rape and murder trigger new outrage over India’s rape culture
Women’s rights groups said that the release of the perpetrators on Aug. 15, an anniversary of the country’s 75 years of independence, was a blow to every rape victim.
“It shames us that the day we should celebrate our freedoms and be proud of our independence, the women of India instead saw gang-rapists and mass murderers freed as an act of State largesse,” the groups said in a statement.
It was also a setback for survivors of the Gujarat riots, who have fought long and hard for justice. The riots erupted in 2002 after a train fire blamed on Muslims killed a group of Hindu pilgrims. More than 1,000 people were killed in days of vigilante violence that followed, most of them Muslims. Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat at the time, is now India’s prime minister. Under his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, hate speech and violence against Muslims has risen sharply.
The men released this week have received a hero’s welcome. In one video from outside the prison, they are given sweets. Local media said the men were later honored with garlands by members of Hindu nationalist groups affiliated with the BJP.
Bilkis Bano rape case: Released convicts greeted with garlands.#VHP's @snshriraj says, "They also have a basic right of livelihood. Some kind of motivation has to be there."
Watch #NewsToday, full show with @sardesairajdeep: https://t.co/hc0sPQJNNS#BilkisBanoCase #ITVideo pic.twitter.com/05erIgYy0j
Sujal Mayatra, the official who led the panel in Gujarat that recommended the men’s release, said the decision was based on various factors.
“They had completed 14 years of tenure. We enquired about their conduct and parole time,” he said. “The nature of crime and victim’s safety was also taken into consideration.”
In India, life sentences are meant to last until death, but convicts are eligible to seek early release after 14 years. While the latest remission policy says those convicted of rape and murder cannot be released prematurely, the policy at the time of the Bano case did not make that distinction.
In a 2017 BBC interview, Bano said she was fleeing the violence in a group of 17 that included her mother and young siblings in March 2002 when a mob accosted them.
Besides raping Bano and killing her daughter, the men gang-raped her cousin before murdering her and her 2-day-old baby. Bano was one of only three people from the group to survive the massacre.
Human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover, who has been part of efforts to reform legislation on violence against women, described the government’s decision as “grossly arbitrary and discriminatory.”
“The mask of the government being concerned about sexual violence against women has slipped. This is a majoritarian state signaling impunity for hate crimes,” she said.
Bano’s case took years to work its way through the Indian justice system, finally resulting in convictions in 2008. All the while, she was a target of death threats, forced to move frequently and live in hiding.
In 2019, India’s Supreme Court ordered the state government to pay about $62,000 in compensation to Bano, noting that she had been forced to live like a “nomad” and an “orphan.”
Now, her family feels like they are back at square one.
“The battle we fought for so many years has been wrapped up in one moment,” Yakub Rasool, Bano’s husband, told the Indian Express.
Bano, in her statement, said that her grief was not hers alone “but for every woman who is struggling for justice in courts.” | 2022-08-18T13:36:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Release of convicts in Bilkis Bano case in Gujarat sparks outrage in India - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/india-gujarat-riots-bilkis-bano/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/india-gujarat-riots-bilkis-bano/ |
Ask Sahaj: My sibling and I aren’t close. How can I change that?
Dear Sahaj: My older brother and I have our own unique relationship. We’re rather quiet people in general and have unspoken rules in our relationship. For example, our mom makes us hug and say “I love you” on Christmas, and we usually give each other a look of embarrassment because we know we love one another but this doesn’t need to be said or shown with a hug.
He’s five years older than me and there are gender differences in how we were raised as Mexican Americans. As the firstborn male, he had more freedom and got away with a lot more, while I was held to different standards as a daughter. This causes me to feel a bit of resentment, but more toward my parents.
Sometimes I think we’re so stuck in our reserved dynamic that it feels difficult to get out of it. We used to go out for burgers and talk. I’ve tried to say directly and indirectly that he doesn’t take me out anymore. He’s usually unresponsive or shrugs and that’s how he is with everyone around him. It’s hard to tell if he notices my bids to connect. It’s just hard when it involves two awkward people that never communicated well to begin with.
Now, we’re adults with full-time jobs, friends and hobbies, and he has an infant. Life is busy for us both, but I want to get back to where we used to be of having burgers and catching up. I know nothing about him as a person any more and he probably knows nothing about me too, and this hurts sometimes.
How can we go back to being siblings who engage with one another without the discomfort and awkwardness of breaking our silence?
— Silent sibling
Silent sibling: Sibling relationships are often overlooked yet incredibly important relationships in our lives, so it makes sense that you’ve been thinking a lot about you and your brother’s dynamic.
The reality is that siblings can grow up in the same environment and be completely different people in the ways they show up with others. This can be because of gendered socialization, genetics, birth order, childhood experiences and overall differing relationship with parents.
In order to let go of any residual resentment you might have, you’ll need to accept your brother for who he is today. He’s not the same person he was when you were kids, and neither are you. Essentially, you’ll want to approach this as learning about a new person in your life despite having known him forever.
It seems like there were different gender roles that shaped your family system growing up. So it will be important to consider how you yourself have internalized these gendered differences and expectations, too, and how you may consciously or not be imposing these expectations on your relationship with your brother. For example, I hear you say “he doesn’t take me out anymore,” which can imply a level of expectation and reverence that could be causing more distance.
Both people play a part in any relationship dynamic. If things feel unspoken or reserved between the two of you, then it makes sense that you have both been responding to the other’s continued silence and reservation — hence you’re stuck in this feedback loop where nothing is changing.
It’s time to broach this head on. When we don’t communicate what we are thinking or feeling and expect someone else to know, we will always be disappointed in the relationship. It may feel like you have made attempts to connect, but sometimes people need to be told more than once.
It also sounds like something else is holding you back: a fear of vulnerability. But for your dynamic to change, you will have to change the way you show up in it. Start with smaller steps. Maybe you ask more questions about his life and take more of an interest in his kid.
And instead of focusing on how you used to connect, consider new ways. This may look like doing an activity together rather than talking over dinner — that could take away some of the pressure of having to fill the silence or hold a long conversation. You could also try to connect over text by checking in more casually, or by sending funny memes or videos that make you think of him.
Sibling dynamics don’t change overnight, but again, it’ll be less overwhelming to approach the relationship as a new one rather than one you have to completely change. And this shift in thinking might also allow you to view your brother as his own person — rather than an extension of you and your family dynamics. | 2022-08-18T13:44:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Sahaj: My sibling and I aren’t close. How can I change that? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/18/ask-sahaj-silent-siblings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/18/ask-sahaj-silent-siblings/ |
Researchers say the melting is ‘off the charts’ — and the season isn’t over yet
Tourists are seen next to the Fee Glacier above the Swiss Alpine resort of Saas-Fee on July 30. Scant snow cover and the alarming rate of glacial melt during Europe’s sweltering heat waves have put some of the most classic Alpine hiking routes off-limits. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
“By mid-June, it was really, really kind of shocking,” said Egli, who received his PhD in glaciology from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland this summer. “It was getting so hot and things are melting so fast, you couldn’t safely do certain 4,000-meter [13,000-feet] peak routes anymore because some crevasse bridges were a bit unsure.”
#Rockfalls in Goûter couloir on #MontBlanc normal route two days ago due to anomalously high temp. this summer.#Goûter and Tête Rousse mountain huts are now closed (!) since yesterday to stop use of the area...
“I would say it is off the charts compared to anything we’ve ever measured before,” Mylène Jacquemart, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich, said in an email. “We are currently seeing conditions that, even in a pretty bad year, we would only expect at the very end of the season. When we calculate the final mass balance at the end of September, I expect that it will be the worst year on record by a large margin.”
Andrea Fischer, a glacier scientist at the Austrian Academy of Science, agreed that this year’s melt season is exceptional. “This melt season does not compare to others, as we have no evidence of such an extreme melt in our records,” which began in 1948. Data shared with Reuters indicated mass loss in the Alps is the highest in at least 60 years.
The Alps, as well as other European glaciers, play an important role in the region. Mountain snowpack provides water to major rivers, delivering up to 90 percent of water to lowland Europe for drinking, irrigation and hydropower. The Alps also attract more than 120 million people, like Egli, for adventure sports and to ski resorts. Declines in these Alpine glaciers can stress the economy, and the loss in snow cover can exacerbate global warming and increase sea level rise.
Winter rubble brings summer trouble
Winter snowpack was lower than normal — only half the typical amount at the end of the season, Jacquemart said — limiting the growth of the glacier. For instance, Switzerland’s Gries Glacier recorded its lowest snow quantity on record at about 53 percent below average in April.
#Glaciers in the Alps are so completely off from what we've seen before. I'm really alarmed by the situation.
The measurements collected at Griesgletscher today show that even with respect to the previous record in 2003 we're one month ahead with melting. And no relief in sight. pic.twitter.com/f1KKUmmoeL
— Matthias Huss (@matthias_huss) July 17, 2022
Satellite data showed several glaciers shrinking after a heat wave in mid-June that brought temperatures 10 degrees Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) higher than average in some regions. After about a week of unusually high temperatures, the Sabbione Glacier, which feeds into a hydropower reservoir, lost about 35 percent of its snow cover.
Losing snow cover early in the melt season is problematic because bare glacier ice melts 50 percent faster than if it were covered with snow. As heat waves continued, melting hastened in July.
“Glacier melt there in July was higher than the ever-recorded maximum for the full season,” Fischer said..
Satellite data shows significant melting of the Rhone Glacier, which feeds into the Rhone River, from June to July. By July 15, the snow line on the glacier was located at 2,950 meters (9,700 feet) — about 150 meters (500 feet) higher than is typical.
Egli said he began to realize that “some of the glaciers we used to run over, they simply won’t exist anymore.”
Fischer said the shifts coincide with long-term changes in the climate. Since the 1980s, the Alps have experienced an increase in temperature from 0.2 to 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade (0.36 to 0.9 Fahrenheit) — significantly affecting snowfall and melt during the spring and summer.
“In the last 2 decades, the lack of summer snow got normal, and the melting season was getting longer and longer,” Fischer said in an email.
“We would not be seeing this in the absence of [human] influence on climate,” Pfeffer said. “Things that became kind of once-in-a-lifetime events started to become kind of routine. … We’re seeing the future.” | 2022-08-18T13:45:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alps see record glacier melt during Europe heat waves - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/glaciers-alps-europe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/glaciers-alps-europe/ |
What teachers really want parents to know about interacting with them
The coronavirus pandemic has made the past few years incredibly difficult for teachers, who have had to adapt to teaching remotely (sometimes while their own children were attending school from home), teaching in hybrid classrooms, teaching behind masks and teaching while risking exposure to the coronavirus.
The stress is driving many from the field. Early this year, the Merrimack College Teacher Survey found that 44 percent of teachers said they were “very” or “fairly” likely to leave the profession within two years. Many teachers have already done so, leaving some states with catastrophic staffing shortages for this school year and creating extra work for those who remain.
How can parents best support teachers in a tumultuous time? The Washington Post collected written responses from teachers about what they want parents to know about their work — and what makes a good parent-teacher relationship.
“Parents are often surprised by stories of other parents’ treatment of teachers,” wrote Margaret Flaherty, 42, a high school English teacher at a public school in Byfield, Mass. “When I share some of the things parents have said or written to me, mouths go agape. They can be mean. Very mean. And we are so tired. Start with assuming good intentions and take it from there.”
A number of the teachers’ remarks focused on communication: urging parents to access grade sites rather than asking them for updates, to acknowledge emails sent by teachers and to give teachers time to respond, but, most of all, to try to be on the same team.
Annika Dukes, a 45-year-old alternative education teacher at a public middle school in Vancouver, Wash., advised: “In the first week, a quick email of, ‘Hey, my student really likes …’ something about the class or the teacher is meaningful. It opens lines of communication to partner on students’ learning, rather than only meet when there is a problem to work through.”
Most striking were the heartfelt pleas to parents to understand that teachers mean well and that they’re doing their best. The atmosphere has become so fraught that one public elementary school teacher in Texas wrote on the condition of anonymity, citing the risk of negative attention in a “dangerous” climate for educators.
“We love your kids,” the teacher wrote. “We love our jobs (even though we’re exhausted). And the only things we are activists about is your child’s academic and emotional growth. The constant anger and vitriol we see about book bans, and [critical race theory] are seriously taking a toll on us. We’re not indoctrinating anyone. We’re just trying to teach your kids.”
Below are more comments, which have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the top ‘do’ you would give parents about interacting with teachers?
Do your best to try to know your child’s teacher, and for the teacher to get to know you better.
— Juliana Yoes, 47, dual-language first-grade teacher in a public school in Austin
Think of me as a teammate. I always aim to have a true partnership with my families. We can celebrate the great things their child is doing and work together when there are specific areas the child needs to work on. If home and school have similar goals, the child is more likely to feel safe and secure and hit all their developmental milestones.
— Nora Rosenberger, 43, early-childhood special-education teacher in a public school in Falls Church, Va.
Do communicate before you are mad. Reach out when you feel inclined, not just when you are upset. Do be willing to accept that teachers may have insight about your child that you do not.
— Laurie Chin, 45, speech language pathologist in a public school in Ellicott City, Md.
Recognize that the demands of our work are causing so many of us to leave our profession. Be intentional about how you approach a professional, because they might be desperately trying to tread water in this storm.
— Margaret Flaherty
What is the top ‘don’t’ you would give parents about interacting with teachers?
Don’t assume that your child is the same at school as they are at home.
— Elisabeth Villemez, 36, third-grade English as a second language teacher in a public school in D.C.
Don’t bring culture wars into your interactions with your students’ teachers. When I was in high school, my mom told me, “I don’t always agree with your teachers, but I know they are challenging you to think and grow better than I can.” She and my dad made sure to discuss our learning with us, helping us work issues and ideas through the values my family had. My parents expected that public schools would prepare us for life and work in a diverse society, rather than serving as an echo chamber with our family or faith tradition.
— Annika Dukes
Do not assume that whatever your child tells you is the full picture. Start by giving the teacher the benefit of the doubt, and preface all questions, concerns or comments with, “I know that I am only hearing my child’s perspective here, and I understand that there is a good chance that perspective is incomplete, biased or skewed.”
— Ellie Pojarska, 45, 11th-grade English teacher in a private school in Los Altos, Calif.
Do not undermine teachers in front of your student. If you disrespect teachers and schools in front of your student, then they will never engage meaningfully with us. That’s fine if all you desire is day care, but if you want them to learn and grow through school, they need to be expected to respect us. It’s fine if you disagree with us as a parent, but address your concerns through productive channels, and refrain from bad-mouthing schools and staff in front of your student.
— John Perfetto, 38, public school special-education teacher from Columbia, Md.
What is something you think parents don’t understand about being a teacher that you wish they did?
We have their child’s interest at heart at all times. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be teaching.
— Rhonda McDonnell, 46, sixth-grade math teacher in a public school in Ellicott City, Md.
We work so hard, but it never seems to be enough. The school systems are constantly giving us new responsibilities, new curriculums and new tests, and most of them are not developmentally appropriate. We need help with life skills and behaviors.
— Katherine Reck, 37, kindergarten teacher in a public school in Ellicott City, Md.
School runs from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and from mid-August through May. That sounds like an “easy” schedule, but it’s not. My work day is typically 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus a half-day every weekend, then I teach summer school through June and take classes the rest of the summer. To say that I only work during school hours is like saying lawyers only work when they’re in court or professional football players only work 18 Sundays a year!
— Elizabeth Pauls, 57, fourth- and fifth-grade accelerated math and language arts teacher in a public school in Arlington Heights, Ill.
How much teachers give up of their life for your children. The work after school, weekends, holidays, the professional development, the stress, the low pay, the dozens of standardized evaluations we are expected to do that do nothing to show who your child truly is.
— Karen Peak, 51, substitute teacher (elementary and special education) in public schools in Woodbridge, Va.
There is simply nothing easy or glamorous enough about teaching that it would be worth staying with if your motivation was to mess with kids. Every teacher who remains is fighting the good fight and trying to help kids despite policies, rhetoric and sentiment that undercut us at every turn. Please trust that we do this to help, otherwise we wouldn’t do it at all.
— John Perfetto | 2022-08-18T13:45:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What teachers want parents to know about back-to-school season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/18/parents-teachers-relationship-stress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/18/parents-teachers-relationship-stress/ |
The Big Ten Conference has finalized a monumental set of media rights agreements, expected to be worth more than $1 billion annually, with Fox, CBS and NBC — and notably without ESPN. The Big Ten’s new deals will make it the wealthiest conference in college sports, just weeks after the conference announced it would add University of Southern California and UCLA from the Pacific-12.
The new deals, which begin in 2023 and were announced Thursday morning, will give the conference an NFL-like schedule spread across three broadcast networks on college football Saturdays with set windows for each — noon on Fox; 3:30 p.m. on CBS; and primetime on NBC. It is the first time in four decades that the conference will not have a formal partnership with ESPN.
The additions of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, which will give the conference a footprint in the lucrative Los Angeles TV market, boosted the value of the agreements as the multibillion-dollar industry of college sports navigates a rapidly changing landscape. Beginning in the 2024 season, the Big Ten, once synonymous with the Midwest, will have 16 teams spread from New Jersey to California. It is a national conference in a sport once prized for its regional appeal.
“What expansion did for us, and for our fans, it really shrunk the United States, shrunk our country,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said in an interview, “to where people recognize they’ll be able to watch our teams compete and their schools compete morning, noon and night and at unique times during the year, like on Black Friday, and from coast to coast. That’ll be really exciting.”
Other Big Ten sports, including men’s and women’s basketball, will air across Fox (and FS1), CBS and NBC, along with the Big Ten Network, of which Fox owns 61 percent equity, and Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. The deals run through the 2029-30 season.
Even in a more fragmented media environment, ESPN remains the country’s dominant sports network. Its daily talk lineup drives sports conversation of the day and it retains the rights to the College Football Playoff. ESPN, for decades, was key to putting the Big Ten on TV across the country.
“We’re a key component of college athletics, and especially college football,” Warren said. “I think everyone recognizes that it’s important that we all work together and all have a collaborative voice. I’m confident, where we stand in the Big Ten, we’ll be able to have a voice in shaping the future of college athletics both on and off the playing field.”
Fox and FS1 will continue to show a large chunk of the conference’s football games: 24 to 27 games in 2023, then 30 to 32 games in the following years.
In 2023, CBS will broadcast seven football games. The network is still tied to the SEC through a contract that requires the conference’s top game to be exclusively aired by CBS at 3:30 p.m. Starting in 2024, the Big Ten will occupy that afternoon window all season long, and CBS will broadcast 14 or 15 games each year, including one in the afternoon on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
The power and peril of being Adam Schefter, the ultimate NFL insider
NBC will broadcast 14 to 16 football games each season, introducing programming described as “Big Ten Saturday Night,” an effort to mirror the success the network has had with “Sunday Night Football.”
Those three major networks will share the rights to broadcast the Big Ten football title game with Fox televising the game in 2023, 2025, 2027 and 2029, and CBS (2024, 2028) and NBC (2026) broadcasting the marquee event in the other years.
Fox also has the rights to 45 men’s basketball games each season and can broadcast select women’s basketball games and Olympic-sport competitions.
CBS will televise 9 to 11 men’s basketball games in 2023-24, then increase to 15 games, including 13 conference matchups, in the remaining years of the deal. The network will also broadcast the championship game of both the men’s and women’s basketball conference tournaments, along with the men’s semifinals.
NBC’s Big Ten inventory only includes football, but Peacock, the network’s direct-to-consumer streaming service, will carry dozens of contests in other sports. The platform is slated to have eight football games (up to four conference matchups). Peacock will televise 32 men’s basketball games, including 20 conference games, in the 2023-24 season, then increase to up 47 men’s basketball games (32 conference games) in the years that follow. Peacock will also broadcast the opening night pair of games in the men’s basketball conference tournament.
Peacock will carry 30 women’s basketball games, including 20 conference games, and the opening night doubleheader of the women’s basketball conference tournament. The platform can also air up to 40 live events per year for Olympic sports.
BTN will carry 38 to 41 football games in 2023, then up to 50 games from 2024 to 2029. The network will broadcast at least 126 men’s basketball games and at least 49 women’s basketball games. During the men’s basketball conference tournament, four games on Thursday and four quarterfinals will be shown on BTN. For the women’s tournament, BTN will have four games on Thursday, four quarterfinals and two semifinals. BTN will continue to be the conference’s primary home for Olympic sports programming.
Warren, the conference’s commissioner since 2020, said this summer that he’s been thinking about Big Ten expansion since he interviewed for the job. So when the conference welcomed UCLA and USC this summer, the jolt in the college sports landscape didn’t rattle the negotiations. He built the idea of expansion, just not the specific schools, into the earliest term sheets discussed with networks, he said.
“We’re a historical conference,” Warren said. “I think people recognize that we try to make sure that we honor our tradition but also be smart and prudent about forward-thinking cutting-edge ideas.”
The Big Ten and SEC remain far ahead in terms of revenues of rival conferences. The SEC signed a deal with ESPN worth $3 billion over 10 years, according to Sports Business Journal, for its top Saturday game that begins in 2024. (Other parts of that deal bring the value of the SEC’s media rights to around $700 million each year.)
The Big Ten is just the latest sports property to collect a windfall in recent years, proving again the value of live sports to media companies, both traditional and new. The NFL signed a deal with the four broadcast networks and Amazon last year that will pay it around $100 billion over a decade. Major League Baseball’s new deal with Fox Sports is worth more than $5 billion a year. Last year, the English Premier League doubled the annual value of its American rights fee when it re-signed with NBC for $2.7 billion over six years. Live sports continue to be key to maintaining cable customers, while streaming platforms hope to use them to recruit new subscribers. (The Big Ten had conversations with Amazon, as well.)
In the evolving world of college athletes’ rights, Warren said, he is open to having a conversation with players about potential revenue-sharing models from the new deals. “I think all of these open issues have to be put on the table to discuss legitimately," he said. | 2022-08-18T13:46:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Big Ten lands new TV megadeal with Fox, NBC and CBS — but not ESPN - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/big-ten-tv-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/big-ten-tv-rights/ |
The 30-year fixed average drifted down to 5.13 percent this week
Even as home loan rates moved lower, mortgage demand declined last week to its lowest level in 22 years. (Theodore Taylor III/Illustration for The Washington Post)
According to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed-rate average fell to 5.13 percent with an average 0.8 point. (A point is a fee paid to a lender equal to 1 percent of the loan amount. It is in addition to the interest rate.) It was 5.22 percent a week ago and 2.86 percent a year ago.
The 15-year fixed-rate average dropped to 4.55 percent with an average 0.7 point. It was 4.59 percent a week ago and 2.16 percent a year ago. The five-year adjustable rate average slipped to 4.39 percent with an average 0.3 point. It was 4.43 percent a week ago and 2.43 percent a year ago.
“Mortgage rates have steadied after a few weeks of big up-and-down swings as bond markets found little impetus to move in either direction,” said Holden Lewis, home and mortgage expert at NerdWallet. “As mortgage rates stood relatively still, the number of people applying for mortgages dropped to the lowest level since 2000. This year’s rapid rise in mortgage rates and home prices has discouraged buyers. On top of that, would-be buyers increasingly believe that house prices will fall, so they’re shelving their homebuying plans for now, hoping to buy at lower prices later. That’s why mortgage applications are at a 22-year low.”
The minutes from the Federal Reserve’s July meeting released this week showed no indication that the central bank is considering pulling back on its interest rate hikes, even though Fed officials noted that housing activity had “weakened” and that the slowdown would likely continue. The Fed has raised the federal funds rate four times this year in an effort to tame inflation.
Before slowing the rate increases, Fed officials first want to see inflation decrease substantially. The most recent data for July revealed that inflation was up 8.5 percent annually, but flat month-to-month. Most economists expect the Fed to increase its benchmark rate by 50 or 75 basis points at its September meeting. (A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.)
“Mortgage rates remain elevated as the Federal Reserve’s actions to bring the economy down to a ‘soft landing’ may be starting to work,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS. “The better-than-expected July jobs report suggests that the overheated economy may be cooling without damaging the labor market. Recession risks may be easing, which has investors moving out of the relatively safe bond market.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury grew to its highest level since late July this week, closing at 2.89 percent on Wednesday. Yields move in the opposite direction of prices.
“One of the things that suggests we may be at or near a cycle high for mortgage rates is the higher-than-normal spreads between yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury and rates on 30-year fixed-rate loans,” Sharga wrote in an email. “Recent Treasury yields have been between 2.8-2.9 [percent], which would normally mean rates on a 30-year mortgage between 4.25-5.0 [percent]. So today’s interest rate of nearly 5.5 [percent] is anywhere from .50 to 1.25 [basis] points higher than we’d normally expect to see. While there’s no guarantee that rates might still not go up a bit higher, this relatively high spread suggests that there’s actually room for mortgage rates to come down marginally in the near future.”
“Inflation news from the UK has bond markets selling off,” said Michael Becker, branch manager at Sierra Pacific Mortgage. “The headline inflation number in the UK hit 10.1 percent, above the forecast of 9.8 percent. Core inflation also exceeded forecast. This serves as a reminder that central banks still have some work to do in regards to bringing inflation down. This will lead to higher mortgage rates.”
Bloomberg News reported this week that Wells Fargo, once one of the nation’s largest residential mortgage lenders, was pulling back from the mortgage market. According to the story, a variety of factors contributed to the decision. Home loans have been on the decline since mortgage rates skyrocketed earlier this year. Wells Fargo has faced stiff competition from non-bank lenders. And by reducing its home loan activities, Wells Fargo is less likely to face regulatory risk. The bank was fined $250 million by regulators last year for its past practices in its mortgage business.
Meanwhile, mortgage demand declined last week to its lowest level in 22 years. The market composite index — a measure of total loan application volume — decreased 2.3 percent from a week earlier, according to Mortgage Bankers Association data.
The refinance index fell 5 percent from the previous week to its lowest level since November 2000. It was 82 percent lower than a year ago. The purchase index slipped 1 percent. The refinance share of mortgage activity accounted for 31.2 percent of applications.
“While overall mortgage application activity fell slightly this week, mortgage rates continued their downward trajectory and have now fallen more than [a half-percentage point] since June, providing some relief to borrowers,” Bob Broeksmit, MBA’s president and chief executive, wrote in an email. “MBA still expects that both mortgage rates and home price growth will moderate, bringing more prospective buyers into the market by the end of the year.” | 2022-08-18T14:37:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mortgage rates for Aug. 18 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/mortgage-rates-wander-lower-after-weeks-volatility/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/mortgage-rates-wander-lower-after-weeks-volatility/ |
New movies to stream this week: ‘Spin Me Round’ and more
From left, Alison Brie, Molly Shannon and Aubrey Plaza in “Spin Me Round.” (IFC Films)
In “Spin Me Round,” Alison Brie plays Amber, the recently single manager of an Olive Garden-like chain restaurant with 10 years of experience under her apron. When she’s nominated to participate in a special management retreat in Italy, Amber is whisked off with (unrealistic) romantic aspirations. But the trip quickly turns into a lesson about how someone with anxiety might expect a vacation with strangers to go. Amber’s hotel room door doesn’t lock, and Deb (Molly Shannon), a fellow manager, quickly becomes clingy and unhinged. Things begin to look up when Amber hits it off with the chain’s owner, Nick (Alessandro Nivola), and is plucked out of the group by Nick’s assistant (Aubrey Plaza) for a private nautical getaway with the boss. The romance hasn’t gotten very far before Amber realizes this retreat is not as idyllic as it appears, and she may not be as singular as she was led to believe. The hardest sell in the film, a comedy that leans into grandiose paranoia, is not all the theories that Amber’s fellow manager (Zach Woods) throws out about the real purpose of the retreat. Rather, it’s the unsuccessful attempt to make the lukewarm chemistry between Nivola and Brie keep up with the constant electricity generated by Plaza and Brie. Co-written by Brie and the film’s director, Jeff Baena (who is married to Plaza), the screenplay allows for some hilarious lines — mostly delivered by actors in comedic cameos — while in the end leaving the audience craving more Aubrey Plaza. Unrated. Available on AMC Plus and other on-demand platforms. Contains bloody images, crude language, nudity, sex and sexual humor, smoking and drinking. 104 minutes. In English and some Italian without subtitles. 104 minutes. — O.M.
The action flick “Bullet Proof” centers on an unnamed protagonist (James C. Clayton, who also directed): a thief who has stolen money from a sadistic mob boss (Vinnie Jones of “Snatch”), only to find the gangster’s pregnant wife (Lina Lecompte) hiding in the getaway car he uses to elude the posse of violent thugs and bounty hunters now in hot pursuit. R. Available on demand. Contains violence. 92 minutes.
The co-writing and co-directing duo of Terrence Martin and Dominique Braun, who are married in real life, play T.J. and Domi, a troubled married couple seeking to rekindle the spark in their relationship by taking a sailing trip together, in “Get Away If You Can.” But when Domi decides to explore a deserted island, against her husband’s wishes, they reach a breaking point. Ed Harris also stars, in flashbacks, as T.J.’s angry, chauvinistic father. Unrated. Available on demand. 90 minutes.
Much of the indie horror film “Glorious” takes place inside a remote rest stop bathroom, where the film’s protagonist (Ryan Kwanten of “True Blood”) finds himself locked in with a mysterious stranger (J.K. Simmons) speaking to him from an adjacent stall. According to Collider, Simmons has a blast “without relying on hamming it up, playing his character as a strange force of both horror and humor to Kwanten’s straight man.” Unrated. Available on Shudder. 80 minutes.
Emile Hirsch and Kate Bosworth play Mikey and Kate in “The Immaculate Room,” a thriller about a couple who agree to participate in a psychological experiment with a potential $5 million paycheck — if they can survive 50 days isolated in a minimalist white room. According to Collider, “The problem is [filmmaker Mukunda Michael] Dewil doesn’t give them (or the audience) enough to hang on to. Kate and Mikey’s backstories are necessarily hazily sketched, and their dynamic ahead of their confinement is similarly left unexplored. That means their breakdowns as they begin to go stir crazy feel rather arbitrary. Instead of illuminating something about them — or the human experience, even — they come off as acting exercises.” R. Available on demand. Contains some drug use and nudity. 88 minutes.
From Ava DuVernay’s Array releasing — the company that brought you “Residue” — “Learn to Swim” is a romantic drama, set in the world of contemporary jazz, about the bumpy relationship between a deeply private saxophone player (Thomas Antony Olajide) and a vivacious singer (Emma Ferreira). Unrated. Available on Netflix. 90 minutes.
Based on Australian writer Henry Lawson’s 1892 short story “The Drover’s Wife,” “The Legend of Molly Johnson” marks the filmmaking debut of writer, director and star Leah Purcell, who previously wrote and starred in an acclaimed 2016 play based on the same story (before also adapting it as a novel). Purcell plays the title character, who, with her husband away tending sheep, finds herself confronted by a shackled Aboriginal convict (Rob Collins) on the run from the law — and bigotry. Purcell, according to Variety, “is brutally specific while defining her 19th-century world and expressing her concerns. At the same time, however, she repeatedly emphasizes — sometimes too insistently, but more often eloquently — the enduring wisdom of William Faulkner’s much-quoted observation that the past is never dead, it’s not even past.” Unrated. Available on demand. 109 minutes.
On the eve of her college graduation, and after a casual hookup, a young woman (Lili Reinhart) considers the different paths her life might take as she awaits the results of a pregnancy test in “Look Both Ways.” Also starring Luke Wilson. TV-14. Available on Netflix. 111 minutes. | 2022-08-18T14:54:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New movies to stream from home this week. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/18/august-19-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/18/august-19-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Strikes pound Kharkiv; U.N. chief to discuss grain d...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and one of his top advisers, Oleksiy Arestovych, have appeared to disagree in recent days about banning ordinary Russians from traveling to Europe. (Laurent Van Der Stockt; Evgen Kotenko/Ukrinform/Future Publishing/Getty Images)
KYIV, Ukraine — As discussion of a possible ban on tourist visas for Russian nationals heats up in the European Union — a measure backed publicly in recent weeks by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — not everyone is on board.
That includes some of Zelensky’s own advisers and European supporters.
Zelensky, in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post conducted in early August, said the way to stop Russia from annexing any more of Ukraine’s territory is for Western countries to announce that they would ban all Russian citizens in response.
Ukraine’s wartime leaders implied that ordinary Russians — even those living outside Russia — shared a collective responsibility for the war and the loss of Ukraine’s land. “Whichever kind of Russian … make them go to Russia,” Zelensky told The Post.
That point of view — as well as other aspects of the wide-ranging interview — have proved controversial both inside and outside Ukraine, including among Zelensky’s allies.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser in Zelensky’s administration, said he did not agree with the idea of a blanket ban for all Russians and Belarusians.
“I’m still not a supporter of collective responsibility [but of] individual,” Arestovych told The Post. He said he would be “more selective” in choosing which applicants should not be granted visas, giving the example of those who openly support Russian President Vladimir Putin. “They would be banned [and have] other sanctions imposed on them,” he said.
Arestovych conceded that it would be “technically very difficult” to determine “whether someone supports or doesn’t support Putin” — and he suggested this might have pushed the Zelensky administration to decide it would be “easier to ban everyone,” although he said he was not part of those discussions.
Even as the war in Ukraine approaches its six-month mark, there is no blanket prohibition on travel for Russian nationals such as the one Zelensky is suggesting. Russian airlines have been banned from flying over most of Europe and North America, which has made it more challenging for Russians to travel abroad. But Russian citizens remain free to apply for a visa to visit the United States, for example.
Still, in recent days, some European countries have moved to impose restrictions on the issuance of visas to Russians.
Finland announced it would slash the number of available visa appointments in Russia, allocating just 100 appointments a day out of 500 for tourist visa applicants, according to Reuters. Authorities in Latvia are debating a measure to stop issuing temporary residence permits to Russians and Belarusians.
And Estonia said it would invalidate most previously issued visas for Russian nationals. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas urged other European countries in a tweet to “stop issuing tourist visas to Russians.”
The Czech Republic, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said it plans to invite a discussion on an E.U.-wide visa ban for Russian tourists at an informal meeting of European foreign ministers on Aug. 31. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky has expressed support for a ban.
“We are convinced as a government that halting visas for ordinary Russian citizens gives a very clear and straightforward signal to the Russian society,” Lipavsky told Politico last week. “Citizens of these countries should realize that such a militant policy has consequences,” he added.
Zelensky celebrated the growing calls for a visa ban in his nightly address Sunday. “The discussion about visa restrictions in Europe for holders of Russian passports is expanding every day. New states and new politicians are joining it,” he said.
As the ranks of those calling for a visa ban grow, not all countries are on board. On Monday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to back an E.U.-wide ban for Russian travelers. “This is not the war of the Russian people, but it is Putin’s war,” Scholz said in Oslo. He added that many Russians are fleeing their country “because they are disagreeing with the Russian regime.”
But Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Kyiv is not proposing a ban on “those few Russians who may need an asylum or humanitarian entry.”
Russia has itself moved to restrict the issuance of visas to travelers from countries deemed “unfriendly” by the government, including the United States and European nations.
A key sticking point in the debate has been the question of how wide-ranging a visa ban should be and how it could be enforced. Zelensky himself may have contributed to the confusion, by at times arguing that all Russian nationals — including those studying in Europe — should be sent home.
“Whatever the citizens of the Russian Federation may be — there are those who support and do not support it — their children are there, studying abroad, in schools, universities and so on. Let them go to Russia,” he told The Post.
He later acknowledged that any visa ban could not be universal. “There are people who really need protection, who are persecuted in Russia, may even be killed, and therefore they should receive help from the civilized world,” he said Friday, adding that mechanisms exist for them to receive asylum or refugee status. However, he argued, “the rest of Russian citizens in Europe, tourism, entertainment, business affairs” should be banned.
On Tuesday, Arestovych criticized Ukrainians who prefer to antagonize all Russians instead of bringing them over to Kyiv’s side.
“It’s easier to hate and deny everyone,” Arestovych wrote in a lengthy social media post. “These are tens and hundreds of thousands of [Russians and Belarusians] on the fence who could take our side — at least by internal disagreement — but now they will not.”
“You chose to hate and to fence off where you need to skillfully count and calculate, provoke, involve and create,” Arestovych wrote, speaking as if he were addressing all Ukrainians.
However, he told The Post that his statements were not connected to the proposals for a visa ban. Instead, he said, they were aimed at Ukrainians who wanted to create a “culture of cancellation” for Russians and Belarusians.
In response to the growing debate about a visa ban in Europe, applications from Russians for short-term Schengen visas — which generally allow the bearer to travel freely within the 26 countries of the Schengen Area — have jumped in recent weeks, the Moscow Times reported, citing local travel agents.
Timsit reported from France and Khurshudyan from Tbilisi, Georgia. Mary Ilyushina in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report. | 2022-08-18T15:03:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych opposes visa ban for Russians - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/ukraine-russia-visa-ban-zelensky-arestovych/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/ukraine-russia-visa-ban-zelensky-arestovych/ |
First ramp to open as I-66 HOT lanes on track for December debut
Traffic patterns continue to shift as work progresses, ramps and bridges open, and paving and testing get underway
A toll gantry and fresh asphalt are seen in the 66 Express Lanes near Route 234 in the Manassas area. (N/a/FAM Construction LLC)
Changes are coming this fall to Interstate 66 in Northern Virginia, where construction is winding down on a multibillion-dollar widening of the route and new express lanes are set to debut by the end of the year. The first new exit ramp will open next week.
Construction is on pace for a December opening of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes stretching from University Boulevard in Gainesville to the Capital Beltway, the Virginia Department of Transportation said. Paving and striping will wrap up in the coming months while crews continue working on opening new ramps and bridges, installing signage and toll gantries, and testing tolling technology.
Unlike other major transportation projects in the Washington region — such as the nearby Silver Line Metro extension and Maryland’s Purple Line rail project — the I-66 lanes are on schedule and on budget, despite pandemic and supply chain challenges, officials said. Their opening will bring a transformational shift for the busy 22.5 miles of highway outside the nation’s capital.
“We have billions of dollars worth of work, and we’re delivering it on time, with everybody working very hard together in some very unusual times,” said Susan Shaw, VDOT’s director of megaprojects.
The expansion of I-66 outside the Beltway is among Virginia’s largest and most expensive transportation projects in history, carrying a price tag of about $3.7 billion. The project is being built through a public-private partnership between the state and I-66 Express Mobility Partners, a consortium of investors that will maintain and operate the toll lanes under a 50-year concession.
The project will keep three general-purpose lanes eastbound and westbound, adding two HOT lanes in each direction — with generally 10 through-travel lanes. Those lanes will connect with 10 miles of rush-hour, peak-direction toll lanes that opened in December 2017 between the Beltway and the District.
From 2020: I-66 is expanding amid a pandemic, and toll lanes are two years away. Commuters are seeing the changes.
The new lanes will be the latest addition to the region’s growing network of express lanes, of which more than 60 miles are in Northern Virginia. State transportation officials say they expect that the improvements to interchanges, ramps and transit connections will provide relief along the traffic-choked corridor.
Drivers are starting to see some of those improvements as new bridges and ramps near completion. Traffic patterns along the corridor are changing, with lane closures and split traffic in some stretches.
One major new ramp will open around Aug. 25 at the I-66 interchange with the Beltway — marking the first exit ramp and bridge to carry traffic as part of the project. Traffic from the Beltway’s northbound lanes will take a new ramp to westbound I-66.
Elsewhere, a final installation of bridge beams will go up later this month on the Route 28 interchange — the corridor’s busiest junction after the Beltway — where work also includes the removal of four traffic signals between Westfields Boulevard and Route 29 in Centreville to help reduce traffic backups.
Crews have worked at 12 interchanges, on 63 bridges and overpasses, and along more than 11 miles of new bike trails in the corridor. Workers have collectively put in more than 11 million hours, officials said, working with more than 3 million tons of asphalt and 57 million pounds of steel.
At the project’s peak, as many as 2,000 workers were on-site completing about $70 million worth of work each month. As construction winds down during its fifth year, workers are still scattered throughout the corridor.
Nancy H. Smith, a spokeswoman for contracting firm FAM Construction, a joint venture of Ferrovial Construction and Allan Myers, said as many as 1,000 workers are on-site.
“We’re kind of sliding back down that hill but still at over $30 million of construction activity a month, which is just massive,” Smith said. “We are looking forward to opening the express lanes by the end of the year and being able to bring more reliable travel options to the corridor.”
Virginia explores extending 495 Express Lanes another 11 miles to Wilson Bridge
When lanes open, motorists will be able to choose between the general lanes, which will remain free, or the new toll lanes, which buses, carpoolers and motorcyclists can use free. Solo drivers will pay to use the lanes. Carpoolers will need an E-ZPass Flex transponder to use the lanes without paying. The lanes will have a dynamic pricing system, with tolls that rise and fall based on traffic conditions.
High-occupancy vehicle rules will change along the corridor when the new lanes open. Vehicles will need to have three occupants to qualify for the free ride — a rule that will apply across the I-66 corridor from the D.C. line to Gainesville. Currently, drivers using the I-66 express lanes inside the Beltway during peak travel periods are required to ride with at least one passenger.
An opening this year would be a significant accomplishment for a Washington-area project of its size. The I-66 express lanes originally were expected to open in July, but early in the process the timeline was changed to late 2022 because of delays in financing, officials said.
Virginia 95 Express Lanes to Fredericksburg to open in late 2023
Other major projects in the region have been plagued by delays, including an extension of the I-95 express lanes to Fredericksburg, which originally were to open this year but are projected for a late-2023 opening — while also $100 million over budget. The Silver Line extension in Virginia and the Purple Line light-rail project in Maryland are years behind schedule and millions over budget.
Along I-66, drivers will continue to see more traffic splits in different stretches of the route as paving operations move forward. Most of the remaining work is in the eastern end of the corridor, as well as around the Beltway and Route 28 interchanges. The western section has toll gantries up and is ready for testing, officials said.
“There will continue to be some traffic shifts,” Shaw said. “Driving through those major interchanges, people need to stay alert and look for new traffic patterns as we finish up the work.” | 2022-08-18T15:03:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I-66 toll lanes in Virginia are close to opening by end of year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/18/virginia-i66-express-lanes-opening/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/18/virginia-i66-express-lanes-opening/ |
FILE - This Photo made available from a Government of Dubai Media Office’s footage, shows the smoke from a container ship, Ocean Trader after an explosion, July 8, 2021. A Dubai court has found that the cargo ship’s mishandled peroxide caused the explosion, Abu Dhabi’s English-language newspaper, a state-linked newspaper reported Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. The Dubai Misdemeanor Court sentenced five crew members on board the vessel to one-month suspended prison sentences and fined them 100,000 dirhams ($27,225) for not caring for the cargo and allowing fumes to build up, according to the newspaper. (Government of Dubai Media Office via AP, File) (caith603/Government of Dubai Media Office)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A Dubai court has found that a cargo ship’s mishandled peroxide caused an explosion at the city-state’s busy Jebel Ali port in 2021, a blast that was felt through the emirate, a state-linked newspaper reported Thursday. | 2022-08-18T15:16:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dubai court finds mishandled peroxide caused 2021 port blast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dubai-court-finds-mishandled-peroxide-caused-2021-port-blast/2022/08/18/c46bb908-1efb-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dubai-court-finds-mishandled-peroxide-caused-2021-port-blast/2022/08/18/c46bb908-1efb-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Hochul has said the project would take four to five years and cost $6 billion to $7 billion. But documents released by the state’s economic development agency put the cost of Hochul’s overall plan at about $22 billion. Under a funding deal announced in July by Hochul and current Mayor Eric Adams, the state would sell development rights to private real estate companies and would also collect payments-in-lieu-of-taxes, known as PILOTs, on anything new built in the neighborhood. The city would collect a share of the PILOT payments equal to current taxes on each development site with a 3% increase each year. The remainder of the station renovation costs would be funded by the federal government, New Jersey, New York state, Amtrak and other public sources. | 2022-08-18T15:16:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Penn Station’s $6 Billion Makeover Means for NYC - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-penn-stations-6-billion-makeover-means-for-nyc/2022/08/18/1c82907c-1f05-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-penn-stations-6-billion-makeover-means-for-nyc/2022/08/18/1c82907c-1f05-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
By Sheila McClear
Allen Weisselberg arrives for a hearing at New York State Supreme Court in the Manhattan on Aug. 18. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
NEW YORK — Allen Weisselberg, the longtime top financial officer of former president Donald Trump’s company, pleaded guilty to more than a dozen counts on Thursday, more than a year after he and the business were indicted and charged with undertaking a long-term scheme to avoid paying taxes by concealing executive pay.
Weisselberg was charged last year with grand larceny and criminal tax fraud, among other alleged crimes. He and the Trump Organization were accused of carrying out a “scheme to defraud” government authorities by failing to report their real compensation. Trump and his namesake company denounced the case at the time and said it was driven by politics.
Appearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday morning, Weisselberg, 75, acknowledged guilt on every charge and agreed to testify, if called, at a pending trial for the Trump company. As part of his plea agreement, Weisselberg would spend five months behind bars, followed by five years of probation.
Word that Weisselberg was expected to reach a plea deal in his case emerged on Monday, his 75th birthday. Two people with knowledge of the matter said that day that his guilty plea was expected, and one of them said Weisselberg was not expected to help with an ongoing inquiry into the former president. Weisselberg’s indictment in July 2021 was in part an effort to secure his cooperation against Trump, people with knowledge of the strategy had said last summer.
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has faced public pressure over his office’s investigation into Trump. Earlier this year, two veteran prosecutors resigned in protest after learning Bragg would not authorize them to seek an indictment against the former president. Bragg made a public statement in the spring saying the investigation was continuing.
The former president, who is said to be plotting another bid for the White House, is facing a swell of legal peril and other scrutiny, including probes into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his handling of classified documents after leaving office, his taxes and his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Underscoring the array of probes and legal jeopardy facing the former president and others in his orbit, Weisselberg’s plea came the same day as a hearing in South Florida about whether an affidavit submitted before an FBI search of Trump’s residence might be publicly released. A day earlier, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has worked as Trump’s lawyer, appeared before a Georgia grand jury as part of a criminal probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Giuliani has been informed he is a target of that investigation, according to his lawyers.
For Weisselberg, who has worked for the Trump family for nearly 50 years, the plea deal signals a seeming endgame to his criminal case that sidesteps a trial in the heart of Manhattan, which would likely have drawn significant media attention.
In the indictment last year, Weisselberg was described as “one of the largest individual beneficiaries” of what prosecutors depicted as a wide-ranging, long-running scheme.
The indictment alleges that the Trump Organization paid the rent and utilities for a Manhattan apartment where he lived, and financed the leases for the Mercedes-Benz cars for Weisselberg and his wife, but failed to report this as income and pay the necessary taxes. The indictment also said he “intentionally omitted” his compensation from his tax returns.
All told, the indictment said, Weisselberg obscured about $1.7 million in his compensation from tax authorities over a period from 2005 through 2017, dodging “hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal, state, and local taxes.”
Berman reported from Washington. | 2022-08-18T15:17:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg pleads guilty in tax-fraud case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/weisselberg-trump-guilty-plea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/weisselberg-trump-guilty-plea/ |
This combination of photos show LL Cool J hosting the iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles on March 22, 2022, left, Nicki Minaj at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala in New York on May 6, 2019, center, and Jack Harlow at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York on Sept. 12, 2021. The rappers will host the MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 28. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-08-18T15:17:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LL Cool J, Nicki Minaj and Jack Harlow to emcee MTV Awards - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ll-cool-j-nicki-minaj-and-jack-harlow-to-host-mtv-awards/2022/08/18/884a4770-1efe-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ll-cool-j-nicki-minaj-and-jack-harlow-to-host-mtv-awards/2022/08/18/884a4770-1efe-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Transcript: The State of Youth Mental Health
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Paige Winfield Cunningham, deputy newsletter editor here at The Post, and today we’re here to talk about something that has taken an immense toll on children and teenagers in the last two years, and that is the pandemic and the toll on their mental health and well‑being. And today I’m delighted to be joined by two guests to discuss this.
My first guest is Zeinab Hijazi, the senior mental health technical advisor at UNICEF. Zeinab, welcome to Washington Post Live.
DR. HIJAZI: Thank you, Paige. Thank you for having me.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: A quick note to our audience before we start. We would love to hear your questions. So please tweet us using the handle @PostLive, and I will try to incorporate those during our conversation.
Zeinab, let's start off with some statistics. I've heard that seven‑‑one in seven kids under 19 years old experiences some kind of mental health disorder around the world. Do those figures sound correct to you?
DR. HIJAZI: Yes, absolutely, Paige. You know, mental health and these statistics really are an important indication of mental health being this global issue, but of course, it remains stigmatized and underfunded in almost every country, rich or poor. And poor mental health in childhood and adolescence prevents children from fulfilling their rights and reaching their true potential.
But, you know, you mentioned the statistics, and even before the pandemic, far too many children were burdened under the weight of unaddressed mental health issues, with the latest available data estimating other statistics that are important to note, including that one in four children live with a parent who has a mental health condition, and that really half of all mental health conditions start by age 14 and three‑quarters by age 25. But most cases, while treatable, go undetected and untreated, and this puts an emphasis on the importance of acting early and prioritizing child mental health.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: I know one question that always comes up in my mind when I think about this issue is, you know, by many measures, the world is a better place than it's ever been before on almost every measure. Is it the case that mental health for kids is worsening, or is it more that we now have the resources to be aware that to track it and to try to counter it? What's your take on that?
DR. HIJAZI: It's a really good question. I mean, of course, throughout the pandemic, there were very frequent warnings that we may be facing a wave of mental health problems. I think we saw in many headlines the word "tsunami," and numerous studies and surveys have appeared during the pandemic that seem to bear out these concerns. And, of course, combined, they paint a picture that children and young people are reporting feelings of being anxious, of being depressed, of being overwhelmed, and parents reporting changes in children's behavior, including difficulty concentrating, restlessness, and irritability and more.
But we need to be a little cautious here. You know, the pandemic has produced a flood‑‑call it a "tsunami"‑‑of research studies of variable quality. For those researching the field, the challenge is not finding evidence but rather assessing how much of this evidence is really useful, and this, sadly, is not a new problem. You know, even before the pandemic, it was very clear that evidence and knowledge around children's mental health was sadly lacking.
Data on mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, and self‑harm, are available for less than 7 percent of the world's children and adolescents, and most of these children and adolescents live in high‑income countries. So, in other words, when it comes to understanding the mental health of most children in most of the world's countries, we just don't know nearly enough.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, that's a great point.
Let's drill down into some of the specific causes of these mental health difficulties, and of course, you mentioned the pandemic when you're sort of looking at how a variety of countries handled the pandemic. What did you observe in terms of how, you know, what opportunities children were given to, say, go to school, to have social interaction, and then what toll that did take on kids as those things changed and were rolled back?
DR. HIJAZI: Yeah. You know, no generation has experienced a childhood quite like this one. In cities, towns, and villages around the world, the lives of children and young people were repeatedly put on hold for over a year, and many are still impacted to this day. And so, what the COVID‑19 did was it, you know, triggered shocks on multiple fronts that intensified certain vulnerabilities for children such as, you know, increased exposure to violence, neglect, and deprivation; disrupted access to education, as you just said; and social isolation. So, alone or in combination for many children, these likely led to negative educational outcomes and increased stress levels.
Parents and caregivers, of course, were also affected and needed help as they provided the necessary environment and support for children's continued learning and to cope during the crisis. So, yes, less visible but no less worrying for many is the impact of the pandemic on children, including their mental health, and this is not surprising, you know, given that children's mental health and wellbeing is affected by how well they are supported by their schools and their peers and even more broadly by the economic and political structures in our societies and, yes, by events like disaster, war, community violence, and major health emergencies like the pandemic, which impacted all of these areas that are usually protective factors for children's mental health.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: I want to pull in an audience question here from Gael in North Carolina who asks, is the risk of isolation to prevent COVID worth the mental health consequences of depression, and how do you assess the risk/reward ratio? And I find this an interesting question because, of course, this has sort of sparked a furious debate in the U.S. as people have looked at the school closures and sort of in retrospect, you know, realized that maybe this has a greater toll than it needed to have no kids. What is your take on all that?
DR. HIJAZI: You know, this is a‑‑I guess it requires a two‑fold response. The first is, you know, from a public health perspective, and, you know, the measures that were put into place were necessary to protect children at the physical level. But certainly, you know, UNICEF and partners, we worked very hard to ensure that children remained connected, that the peer‑to‑peer interaction was supported through different channels.
You know, we talk a lot about social media and platforms that are‑‑you know, certainly, pose a risk to young people but that also provide new possibilities for increased youth and peer‑led opportunities for promoting mental health among young people and also strengthening interaction. So, it's hard to respond to whether or not it was worth it because, also, I think there are measures that have been put into place to also ensure that the peer‑to‑peer and social interaction and connectedness was maintained through different channels within families and within schools and within communities as well.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Let's talk about social media for a minute, and this is also just a fascinating debate because, as you say, it can facilitate connectedness, but, of course, we've also heard a lot about how different social media platforms are especially harming girls in the way that they are being used. Do you see social media as a net positive or a net negative when you think about teenagers in particular and how they're using these platforms?
DR. HIJAZI: I mean, it's no doubt that technology has transformed the way children and young people interact with each other and how they interact with the world, with profound impact on behavior, day‑to‑day activities, and all with positive as well as negative implications on mental health.
You know, new possibilities for improving the availability, reach, and quality of mental health care and services are a reality because of social media and these types of technological platforms, but we've also noted, of course, that social media has led to increased frequencies of anger words or varied negative emotions and related patterns of language use associated with social media users' likelihood of self‑reported mental health problems.
So, yeah, I mean, we cannot deny that the use of online platforms and popular social media present risks for users, especially young users and girls, including worsening of mental health symptoms through prolonged screentime use, exposure to hurtful content, and hostile interactions with others, threats to privacy as well as negative consequences of everyday life due to stigma, impact on personal relationships, and unintended consequences of disclosing personal health or mental health information online.
But really, the big question is if digital technologies such as social media and other online platforms are here to stay, what are the ways to ensure safe use of these technologies, and how do we minimize the risks that impact mental health?
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. That's an interesting question because I could see people seeing it, viewing it as, you know, maybe technology helps to correct these problems, but maybe technology is leading to some of these problems in the first place.
I wanted to zoom back quickly to something you mentioned at the outset, and that is when you're sort of surveying countries for where we see the biggest problems with youth, mental health, is there a difference between, way, wealthier countries and poorer countries in terms of children that are reporting mental health problems?
DR. HIJAZI: Yeah. Of course, when children are exposed to humanitarian crises, of course, you know, we are going to be seeing increased levels of distress in low‑ and middle‑income countries that are not necessarily impacted by humanitarian crises. Usually, the infrastructure that is available to support these children is just not there. So, yes, we see a difference in a sense where in developed countries and high‑income countries, there is an infrastructure available to provide the care and services, but this is not a rule. You know, we're seeing in Europe and in Ukraine and the neighboring countries that sometimes high‑income or developed countries who have not experienced emergencies before are less equipped to respond to the emerging mental health needs.
So, we're active, for example, at the moment in that emergency, but luckily enough, in those developed contexts, there are active partners, and the government has the resources to roll out care and services for families and communities.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Are there factors kind of that cross country lines that are sort of consistently true in terms of risk factors? Like, in other words, if you're trying to perhaps identify a child that might be at a higher risk for mental health difficulties, what might some of those factors be?
DR. HIJAZI: You know, I think to answer that question, I think it's important to understand that children's mental health and wellbeing is linked to their environment. So, in other words, child development and well‑being are embedded in a child's own contacts and experiences, with risk and protective factors tied to relationships with caregivers, friends, and family, supports in schools and communities, sociocultural influences, as well as broader political and economic factors.
So, you know, if you have a child who is being displaced because of a certain humanitarian crisis, but they are still with their family, their parents are supported and are able to provide nurturing care for the child and the child is able to resume some sense of normalcy in school, it's very likely that that child will continue to do well.
In a developed context, in a poor setting, where a child might be experiencing neglect or abuse within the home and they don't have a nurturing relationship within the home and they're not receiving the support that they need in school, that child is likely not to do well. So, across lines, across settings, it is the child's world and circles of support that surround them that really are the key indicators for how well that child is doing and an indicator for their mental health status.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: It's hard to think of a region of the country where children may be struggling more than in Ukraine, which I know you already alluded to. We know they've been under attack for months, unfortunately. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you're doing in that region to support the needs of Ukraine's young people?
DR. HIJAZI: Yes. So, you know, in Ukraine, we, of course‑‑there's‑‑we had to respond to the immediate needs, you know, in any emergency, we go in. We are‑‑immediately carry out a rapid needs assessment to better understand what are the experiences of children and families, what are the support systems that exist that we could leverage in our response, who are the partners that are active on the ground. You know, we are far beyond this medicalized, solely health approach that requires mental health services be delivered through the health sector. We've now‑‑we are now able to advocate and implement an approach that supports mental health services through education, through health services, and through social services and child protection.
And in the Ukraine response, specifically, we are, you know, establishing a network of Blue Dot support hubs in coordination with other partners and United Nations agencies, and essentially, these hubs are located within neighboring countries where displaced families are received. They provide child and family friendly spaces, information and advice desks, legal aid, identification, referral of children at risk, and basic mental health and psychosocial support services. So, anyone who is on the front line providing any type of service should receive basic training in mental health, mental health care as well as psychological first aid.
And, of course, that's the immediate response. Now we're moving into a medium‑term response, and we're working very closely with the government and other partners to strengthen systems for care. Protection and education for children is critical, and also, we're really investing in capacity building of social workers and education personnel who are working directly with children, so really meeting children where they are in an environment where there is likely going to be a lot of stigma and discrimination around seeking services directly, should those families and children need it.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Well, we're almost out of time, but for the last minute or so, I'd love to hear from you whether you've seen any success stories. Are there any countries that seem to be really ahead of the curve in terms of trying to provider these mental health supports?
DR. HIJAZI: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You know, usually, when we talk about emergencies, we talk about emergencies as an opportunity for making a change, for bringing awareness to mental health, and really investing in support and building care systems for young children and families.
And I touched a little bit on stigma and discrimination, and maybe it's a good opportunity to maybe talk a little bit about an experience that we had in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, about a decade ago, had one of the highest adolescent suicide mortality rates in the world, and suicide was the leading cause of death among adolescents, ages 15 to 19. And since 2012, UNICEF has collaborated with the government of Kazakhstan to develop and implement adolescent mental health and suicide prevention program, and this program is a school‑based response that aims to strengthen the national education and health system's ability to respond to adolescents' mental health and psychosocial needs, and it does this by improving early identification and referral of those at risk.
Fast forward to 2018. We've scaled up the implementation to over 1,500 schools across five regions, and an evaluation very recently found that adolescents were identified at risk experienced a significant decrease in suicidal ideation, depression and anxiety, and stress after receiving treatment. So, this is a really successful example of where, you know, we're able to mobilize resources, understand the problems that are experienced at the country level, and respond and scale up an effective and promising approach to address mental health issues and decrease risk and improve access to services and roll that out at the national level and importantly really focus in on the data piece. It is because of the data available in Kazakhstan that we were able to identify a problem, and it is through data that we're able to understand better that what we are doing works, and we're seeing a decrease in mental health issues as well as building and contributing to the evidence that could be applied in other countries and other settings.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Well, unfortunately, we're out of time, so we'll have to leave it there. But, Zeinab Hijazi, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a great conversation.
DR. HIJAZI: Thank you, Paige.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Well, I'll be back in just a few minutes with my next guest, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Please stay with us.
MS. KOCH: Hi. I'm Kathleen Koch. Young people around the world have been experiencing higher levels of anxiety, stress, and grief in recent years. It started before the pandemic. Of course, the pandemic only made things worse by limiting social interaction and reducing access to education.
To help us understand how we can respond with meaningful solutions, I would like to welcome Heidi Kar. She is principal advisor for Mental Health, Trauma, and Violence Initiatives at Education Development Center. Welcome, Heidi.
DR. KAR: Thanks, Kathleen. Pleasure to be here.
MS. KOCH: Heidi, the global youth mental health crisis presents such an enormous set of challenges. What are the barriers would you say to addressing the crisis, and where should we start?
DR. KAR: Well, Kathleen, I'd say we need to think holistically across a continuum of mental health needs. So we need to think about how do we interweave promotion of mental health, prevention of mental health issues, treatment of mental health disorders, of course, but also recovery from mental health issues because we know most people do recover from mental health challenges, and understand how we link those different pieces across the continuum and what the different entry points are.
You know, a lot of conversations seem to focus lately on how do we increase the number of mental health clinicians and how do we scale up acute treatment in health systems, but the truth is we're never going to have enough clinicians to meet our demand. And in many places, health systems are not accessible to the majority of people, especially outside of the U.S. So we need solutions that don't require mental health professionals if we're going to really achieve large‑level change.
There are three pillars that guide a lot of our work in mental health at the Education Development Center. One is that interventions are scalable, right, so that we're designing interventions that can be administered to large groups of youth at the same time. The second is that they're multipronged. So we can bring mental health interventions into many different settings in our communities, homes, schools, workplaces; and finally, that they're horizontal, which means that we are addressing co‑occurring issues, not kind of continually creating an intervention for one thing at a time. It's just not a way to address the staggering need that's out there.
EDC is actually working to create solutions and adhere to these three pillars. We are in the middle of designing a mental health curriculum that can be administered by non‑clinicians, that can be administered in a variety of settings, and that addresses many of these co‑occurring issues together.
MS. KOCH: Heidi, what do you think will happen if we don't confront this challenge facing children around the world? What are the implications would you say?
DR. KAR: Well, we already know the ways that poor mental health kind of affects the whole aspect of individuals' lives. We know that pretty well, but we often fail to recognize what mentally unhealthy groups of people or communities fail to get out of life if people are not mentally well.
On the community level, we know that mental unwellness leads to increase in conflict, for example, both interpersonal but also group‑based. The ability of individuals in groups to think flexibly, which is, you know, thinking about there are many different solutions to every problem is a core mental health skill, and that ability to think flexibly has a huge part to play in group violence, like violent extremism, but also in domestic violence.
We know that mentally healthy people are also more able to contribute to their economies. They're more able to be creative, to take risks. They're more effective in their jobs, which means the economic health of a culture greatly depends on the mental health of its people, and so the mental health of a community or society, Kathleen, really underscores its ability to grow, to innovate, and as such, we really have to get better at understanding the repercussions of not investing in mental health.
MS. KOCH: So fascinating. If you could leave our audience with one call to action, what would it be, and what would you say are the most urgent next steps that should have been taken yesterday to help young people struggling with mental health issues?
DR. KAR: Great question. I would say we need community‑led, culturally humble, and innovative solutions to meet this need. Of course, they need to be based on our evidence that we know in terms of what works, but they need to be adapted. No matter what area of work you might be involved with or lead, we need to be incorporating a mental health lens into that sector, every sector, working with youth or working with people who care for youth, because we know that, you know, the environments youth grow up in, learn and live in have so much to do with their own mental health. So whether we are talking about a workplace, employers can strengthen the mental health of their workforces in comprehensive ways, more than just sending individual people to clinicians.
Health systems can focus on culture change and policy adaptation to support their beneficiaries but also their staff. We know that if staff are healthy in health systems, they deliver better care.
And, finally, in our education systems, we need to focus, of course, on social‑emotional learning instruction, but we need to go deeper, and we need to teach mental health skills to youth in systematic innovative ways.
So, in other words, I think I'm calling for a clear understanding that every sector has a role to play, and it's beyond time for all hands on deck.
MS. KOCH: Heidi Kar, principal advisor for Mental Health, Trauma, and Violence Initiatives at Education Development Center, thank you so much.
DR. KAR: My pleasure.
MS. KOCH: All right. And now I'll hand it back over to The Washington Post.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Hello, and welcome back. For those just joining, I am Paige Winfield Cunningham, deputy newsletter editor here at The Washington Post, and I'm pleased to welcome my next guest, who is someone I've spoken to a number of times on here before, and that is U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, here to talk us through the mental health of young Americans.
Dr. Murthy, welcome back to Washington Post Live.
DR. MURTHY: Thanks so much, Paige. It's good to be with you again.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: So, before we get started, a quick note again to our audience, we'd love to hear your questions. Tweet us using the handle @PostLive, and we'll incorporate those.
Dr. Murthy, of course, lots to talk about in terms of youth mental health, but I want to quickly throw a couple of questions at you about monkeypox because I know that that is top of mind for a lot of people in this moment and certainly dominating headlines.
And, at the moment, the U.S. has the most known cases in the world. It's spreading particularly rapidly in New York City, and of course, the administration has sort of been under fire for its response. I'd love to hear from you. What should the government be doing more of to try to get this outbreak under control?
DR. MURTHY: Well, Paige, I'm glad you asked. I know that people have been hearing about monkeypox, and they may be worried about it. So here are some of the key things that people need to know, and here is some of what our government is doing and plans to do more of.
Monkeypox is an illness that we are very concerned about and are mobilizing our resources to try to address. This is a virus that has symptoms that includes swollen lymph nodes, symptoms that can mimic a flu or a cold, but also, it has a characteristic painful rash that many people that have had monkeypox have experienced.
And what's important to know is that it's spread primarily through skin‑to‑skin contact. That can occur during sexual activity, as has been discussed a lot in the press, but it could also happen through other forms of close physical contact. So it's important to know about. As important as monkeypox is, this is not spreading with the level of contagiousness that we saw with COVID, which is a different route of spread and a different illness altogether.
The key, though, with monkeypox is to also recognize that treatments and vaccines and tests, these are three critical aspects of the response, and what the administration has been doing has been mobilizing either the vaccine portion of the response, getting more than a million doses of vaccine committed and working on more on the way. Testing is now available in commercial labs as well as state public health labs, and we also have treatments that have been sent out to jurisdictions across the country.
But this is‑‑as much as has been done, there's more that has to be done in all of these areas, and that's why you're seeing across the administration from the CDC, the FDA, to other parts of Health and Human Services, there's a lot of work ongoing to speak to communities, especially those where the virus is spreading the fastest, which are among the community of men who have sex with men. That's why many of our messages of vaccines and other testing have been targeted to that community.
So we'll continue to work on this, and people should be aware of what this is and how it spreads so you also know how to keep yourself safe.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: I know my colleagues have been working on a story about what the CDC recommendations will look like and, as you note, that this is chiefly spreading among gay men, and I know the agency has been hesitant to recommend limiting sexual partners among this population for different reasons. In your opinion, would that be a helpful recommendation at this moment in time?
DR. MURTHY: Well, I think people should be aware of all the different pathways to which they can reduce risk, and if you are somebody who has, let's say, a number of‑‑many sexual partners and may have many new sexual partners, you should know that that does increase your level of risk. And, certainly, you know, thinking about how to reduce your exposure during a time like this when the virus is spreading and we're still working to make vaccines more accessible, that's an important consideration that we want people to be aware of.
It's also important that people know, again, the other aspects of how this is spread, through skin‑to‑skin contacts. We want people to know that vaccines are available now in many parts of the country. Hundreds of thousands of doses have been shipped out, with many more on the way, and it's also important that people know testing is available too. So we want to make sure people have all the tools necessary so that they can protect themselves against this virus.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: And on that question of vaccines, of course, I know there's a limited supply, and the administration has talked about splitting doses to try to get that supply to go further. But, in response, the manufacturer has threatened to cancel all future vaccine orders from the U.S. if that happens. So it seems to be quite a conflict here, but what's your own take on that? Is it a good idea to try splitting vaccine doses?
DR. MURTHY: Well, this is a recommendation that was not made lightly by the FDA and by HHS more broadly. They carefully looked at this. They have some data from a prior study that indicates this strategy would, in fact, be effective, and it was on that basis that they made a recommendation to split the doses. And, specifically, so people know what we're talking about is the notion of taking a single dose, splitting it into five, and administering it through a slightly different way, something called "intradermally," which is into the layers of the skin, and this is a strategy that we believe will not only allow for more vaccine doses to be available but would also still have a robust response in terms of protecting people from monkeypox. So I think it is a reasonable strategy to pursue, especially under the circumstances.
Now, it doesn't mean that the FDA is not going to continue studying this and looking at the data to make sure that people continue to have the protection they need from the vaccine, but this is a very reasonable strategy to take at this point in the monkeypox outbreak.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Okay. Well, let's go on to talking about youth mental health because so much to address there, and I know that you have given the assessment that what we're currently in is something of a youth mental health pandemic, even as we come out of the COVID pandemic. Can you unpack for us some of the challenges you're seeing at the moment when you look at what young Americans are facing in terms of their mental health?
DR. MURTHY: Yeah. I'm deeply worried, Paige, about the mental health of young people in America right now, but we are in the midst of a crisis, and we have been for many years, even though it hasn't always made the headlines or been top of mine for people.
But what COVID did is it really pulled back the curtain on just how severe the mental health epidemic is in the United States, particularly among youth, and there are three numbers, Paige, that always stick in my head. One is the number 11. That's the number of years it takes on average for a child to receive treatment after developing symptoms. The second number is 57. That's the percentage increase in the suicide rate that we had among kids in the decade prior to the pandemic, and this got worse for a number of kids during the pandemic. And the other number that I remember is 42 percent. That's the percentage of high school students‑‑sorry‑‑44 percent. That's the percentage of high school students who say they feel persistently sad or hopeless.
And think about it. When you think of high school, it's a time where your life is opening up for you, but nearly half of high school kids are feeling despondent about themselves and about the future. So these to me stick in my head because they give me a snapshot of where we are, and it's echoed by the conversations that I have with young people all across the country who routinely tell me that they are struggling with anxiety or depression, many of whom also tell me that their experience on social media often leaves them feeling worse about themselves and about their friendships.
And, finally, I think it's important to not lose sight of the experience of parents here as well, and I say this as a dad myself. I have two small kids who are four and five, and my interest in this topic of youth mental health is partly motivated by them. When I think about their future, I want to make sure that they are well, but when I talk to parents across the country, they are struggling right now. They are dealing with their own anxieties and worries, whether it's about COVID, economic worries, et cetera, but they're also worried about their kids. And I'll tell you that one of the worst feelings that you can have as a parent is to see your kid struggling and to not be able to get them the help that they need, and that is a situation that many parents are in.
With all of that said, though, Paige, the good news is we can do something about this. It does not have to be this way, and we, in fact, know much of what we have to do. We know we've got to expand access to treatment, and we know how to do that. We know that we've got to increase the workforce of people who can provide and deliver mental health care, and we know we have got to invest in prevention and prevention programs especially that are school based that we know work. And, finally, we've got to shift our culture around mental health as well to one that is not so imposing of this terrible stigma on mental health; it doesn't make people feel ashamed to ask for help. These are things we can do. We've already started to do. We've got to accelerate because there are millions of children who are struggling right now, and they can't wait any longer.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: It strikes me that when we talk about youth mental health, you know, there's perhaps two aspects to this, and as you note, very troubling statistics in terms of suicides going up, serious mental illnesses sort of thing. But then there's another aspect to it that I'd like to ask you about, and that is, you know, we've removed stigma of talking about mental health and mental illnesses. But one thing that I often hear among my friends who are parents‑‑and I'm a parent myself, although my kids are not on social media yet, thankfully, but that in some cases, it's almost become trendy for young people to say that they have a mental health condition, to, you know, say they have multiple personality disorder or something else. And, of course, we know that teenagers are highly susceptible to suggestion and social contagion.
So, without diminishing, of course, the seriousness of real cases of mental illness, I wonder if there is another component to this of perhaps social media contagion. Is that anything that you've thought about or heard discussed?
DR. MURTHY: Sure. It's certainly something I have thought about and I've heard others ask about this and wonder, you know, is there‑‑is there a contagion here around people sort of wanting, in fact, to admit that they have a mental health problem, but while I do hear those concerns, my sense is that that is not where the vast majority of people are. I still find that there are young people all across our country who are ashamed to admit that they are struggling, and even if they do admit they're struggling, they feel a sense of shame around actually asking for help and getting continued help.
There are so many children I encounter who are bullied that don't feel comfortable admitting that because they feel that that says something about them, that they're weak, that they're not worthy, that they can't defend themselves, and so there is still a heavy burden of stigma and shame that people carry around the country.
I think to guard against what you're raising, we need to make sure we're talking about mental health in the right way. We know that everyone struggles at some point in their life, whether they're public about it or not, whether it's short‑lived or long‑lived. Everyone struggles at some point. We have to be open and honest about that, but we also have to be clear that we don't want people to struggle. It's not a state that we desire for anyone, but what we do want to do is to meet those moments of struggle with compassion, with help, and with support. That's how we'll ultimately help this crisis get better.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: You've said that the challenges that today's young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate. What are some of those things?
DR. MURTHY: You know, I think, Paige, so often about like my own experience growing up, and, you know, this topic is personal to me because I also struggled with my mental health as a young person. I struggled with loneliness, you know, as a kid, and then later times as an adult, I struggled and wondered if I, you know, was experiencing depression at various points during my childhood, didn't always know how to talk about it, rarely told anyone, including my parents about it, even though they loved me unconditionally and were very supportive. So it is‑‑it's certainly a very personal sort of matter to me as well.
But when I think about the broader crisis, Paige, I think there are a couple of things that we have to keep in mind. One is that young people today are growing up in an environment where they are digital natives. They're surrounded by social media.
Years ago, if I did something, you know, embarrassing in class, 25, 30 people knew about it. Now, you know, a child does something that may be embarrassing and hundreds or thousands of people may learn about it online. Bullying, which is not new‑‑it's been happening for generations‑‑can now take place offline and online.
But you also look at the experience that social media creates for one's own self‑esteem, and that's also deeply concerning to me. And what social media does for many young people is it accelerates the culture of comparison that already exists in society. People have been comparing themselves to each other for, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of years. But social media makes that a moment‑to‑moment experience. It happens numerous times throughout the day, and all of this leads to an experience of technology that can be really hurtful to people in terms of their relationship and their sense of self at a time where kids are still developing in terms of their identity.
But, finally, Paige, let's keep this in mind as well. It's not only technology that's profoundly different for kids. Young people growing up today are surrounded by crises that they really look at as existential, profound crises that affect how they think about whether the future is truly bright or not, that's a crisis of climate change, of racism, of violence, and yes, you know, these challenges have existed for years. But they're hearing about them. They're seeing about them 24/7 now on the news, on social media, and through other venues. And so, when I meet young people today, I often ask them, "Do you think the future is brighter than the past?" Many of them wonder. They're not quite sure because of these crises. These are all challenges, and the media environment, in particular, especially the social media environment, these are features of growing up today that are quite different from the experience that I and prior generations had.
That's why I think we have to be mindful of how unique the challenges are that the current generation is facing and recognizing that the numbers are not lying to us. These suicide rates that we're dealing with, the rates of hopelessness, the rates of loneliness, which are sky‑high among young adults and adolescents, we have to take this seriously because our kids are suffering. And they're telling us that through their stories and through the numbers.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: I want to pull in an audience question here, which I think fits well with what we're talking about, and this question is from Lisa in Maryland. And Lisa asks, I have followed the Surgeon General's profound work on the loneliness epidemic in America. I worry greatly that our children who are exposed to virtual learning and play around every corner will and are suffering from, quote, "alone together syndrome." Please discuss the relationship between screen time and mental health, as you see it.
So, Dr. Murthy, would you elaborate a little bit more on that? I know there are some positive things about technology but also a lot of negatives. So can you talk more about that?
DR. MURTHY: Well, Lisa, I love this question because this is a question that I grapple with as a parent too, right, and I think parents all across America are trying to figure out, which is how much screen time is okay for my kids, what kind of screen time is enough, and if I'm totally exhausted and I give my kid, you know, a device for a short period of time so I can just have a moment to relax, does that make me a bad parent? The answer to that last question, by the way, is no. It does not make you a bad parent. It's something I find myself having to do from time to time, but this is a universal struggle for all of us as parents.
But there are a few things, I think, we can use as guidelines. Number one is just to recognize that screen time and I'll say more broadly the use of technology, whether it's utilizing social media, to watch videos online, to engage in other forms of entertainment or learning, technology is not bad in and of itself. It's a took that can be used to help or to hurt ourselves, and there are some cases where kids can find ways to use tech that are helpful. Some kids have used technology to learn, to connect with other friends, to find communities and moments where they have felt like they didn't belong or there is no one else who share their interests or their identity, and that is very, very powerful.
And as parents, what we have to be aware of are a couple things. One is how much time are our kids actually spending on social media, and what is their actual experience with social media and technology more broadly? Are they getting bullied online? Is their experience leading them to feel worse about themselves and their friendships? We can only understand this if we actually start a conversation with our kids on their use of technology, screen time, and social media, in particular.
The second thing, though, is to look at what the impact of their screen time may have on the rest of their life. Is it crowding out their time with family and friends? Is it reducing the amount of time that they actually spend going out and playing? Is it compromising their ability to do their work for school? If the answer is yes in any of those categories, that may tell us that we need to change something about how much our kids are using technology.
And, finally, keep this in mind. All of us, both our kids and ourselves, we need sacred spaces in our life that are free of technology. You might decide that that's the dinner table and that you're going to have meals as places where there is no tech, no phones. It's just all of you talking. There might be other times right before your child goes to bed or when they first get up in the morning that they're free from technology, but we all need these.
This last piece I'll mention is probably the toughest one for many of us as parents, myself included, which is that we also have to be good role models here, and the truth is that we all struggle with our own use of technology, right? I've had conversations with friends where I've been catching up with them, and somehow, I find that my hand is reaching into my pocket and taking out my phone, and I'm refreshing my In Box or checking the scores on ESPN.com or doing something else that I don't really need to be doing online, and then I'll realize, oh, my gosh, what am I doing? I don't need to be doing this. We do this unconsciously. It doesn't make us bad people. These devices are often designed in ways to pull us in, but I think when kids, in particular, we have to be conscious about modeling the right behavior for them. It doesn't mean we have to be perfect, but it means that if we're going to draw boundaries around‑‑ask our kids to draw boundaries around where they use technology, then we've got to do the same. If we're going to prioritize our time with people and make sure we're fully present and not distracted by our phones and we want our kids to do that, we've got to do that as well.
So all this to say that this is a challenge how to manage technology with your kids, and I'm certainly right there with you as a parent. But these are a few tips that may help you along that journey.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Well, on that note, let's imagine for one moment that you wake up tomorrow, someone hands you a magic wand, and you are able to eliminate social media for all kids under, say, age 18. Would you do it?
DR. MURTHY: Well, that's a really good question. I certainly think that kids start using social media at way too young an age right now. Even though the legal limit is 13 on many of these platforms, I routinely have parents who talk to me about their kids who are 10, 11, and 12 who are utilizing multiple platforms and have often multiple counts on individual platforms.
So I certainly think the age needs to be higher. If it was left up to me, I think that I certainly wouldn't want kids using social media in middle school, and I'd also be quite concerned about them using it in high school, certainly not early in high school. So I do think the age at which kids use it should be higher.
But here's the other thing I'd say for parents. If you're interested in your kid waiting to be older until they use social media, I recognize that's not always easy because if they're the only one who's not on social media and all of their friends are, that can be really difficult, right? It can make them feel like they're left out, they're not part of the conversations that everyone else is part of, which is why these kind of movements that I'm starting to see among parent groups, to make a pact with one another, that among a group of parents, that they're going to make sure that none of their kids actually use social media until an older age. Maybe that's 15. Maybe it's 16. Maybe it's 17. These pacts are actually much more effective than an individual parent trying to make the decision because then at least your child looks around and they have peers who are similarly not using social media at that age.
So bottom line is I certainly would be in favor of our kids waiting longer until they use social media. I think it starts way too early right now, and that should change.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: I like that advice. Us parents need to band together.
Let's talk about schools for a moment because students are preparing to return to school and to college campuses. For some college students, this is their third year of college life with pandemic‑related restrictions, although certainly less than in the last two years. What's your advice to these young people as they start the new school year?
DR. MURTHY: Well, let me just say young people today, whether you're in college or whether you're in grade school, they've just been through so much during this pandemic. Their life has been turned upside‑down. They haven't been able to interact and spend in‑person time with their classmates nearly as much as pre‑pandemic, and in their learning as well, both their academic learning as well as their social learning has been just profoundly interrupted. And I think we will be seeing the impacts of this for some time, which is why it's so important again for us to focus on our kids, to think about how to make their educational experience more robust, to get them back to school safely, but also to recognize the mental health impact of the pandemic from the last few years.
For young people who are going back to college, here are a few things that I would say. Number one is just to recognize that the last few years has taken a toll on all of us, and if you feel like you're struggling, like you're having some anxiety around or reengaging with other people socially or you're worried about being behind academically, just please know that you're not alone. There's nothing to be ashamed about, about struggling in a moment especially like this.
The second thing to remember is that it's really important to ask for help when you need it. Help is there for a reason. It's there because it can help you over a difficult moment, over a hump, and all of us have those difficult moments.
You know, when I first got to college, I struggled mightily, let me tell you. I just did not want to be there. I didn't know how to reengage and build a community. I really, really struggled, and the one regret I have is I never asked for help. So that's something I don't want people to feel any compunction or shame over, and there is help available. Many universities have counselors that are set up to provide care especially for moments like this.
We also, though, want everyone to know we have now the 988 number available. Everyone is familiar with 911. 988 is a number you can dial, simple, easy to remember, for mental health emergencies, and you'll find a trained counselor who's there and willing to help you and to support you.
And, finally, one last thing that's important, I think, for young people to know as they return to college, which is don't forget how incredibly powerful your relationships are to help buffer the stresses and mental health struggles that you may experience in the months ahead.
One of the things that I learned over the years as a doctor, as a surgeon general in the past, but also just as a human being, as somebody who struggled with loneliness myself, was that our relationships are healing. They're natural buffers to stress, and so it's in moments like this when we're feeling stress, when we're going through transitions that it's especially important to reach out to the people that we love, the people who care for us.
That might be our friends on campus. It might also be our parents and our friends from back home. I know things get busy when you go back to school, but stay in touch with the people you love. That could just be five minutes a day, you know, calling home or calling a friend and saying, "Hey, I'm just thinking about you. I want to see how you are." But those connections, those are like lifelines, and they help sustain us during the difficult moments we have in our journeys.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Well, we're running short on time, but I do want to fit in a quick question on the 988 number that you referenced, and we know this new mental health crisis hotline was launched earlier this summer. But we've heard reports that these call centers may be understaffed. Is that something that you're watching? Are you concerned about that, especially the people who are in serious distress are perhaps calling and maybe there's nobody to pick up the phone?
DR. MURTHY: Well, Paige, I'm glad you asked because, you know, we certainly are following very closely what's happening with the 988 service. The good news is it's being utilized more. The number of calls has increased. You can text as well to 988, and people are utilizing that function. And we are seeing that, yes, in some parts of the country, there are longer wait times than we want, and we are certainly working on this as well.
In fact, the administration has pumped in millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, in fact, into strengthening the 988 system because it has been underfunded for years, and this is a place also where localities, states and local communities, also have an important responsibility here to help build up that local system so there is more capacity, so we reduce wait times.
And while, yes, it took about five decades for the 911 system to really build up and get to the capacity it has today, we can't wait that long, you know, for 988, and that's why we're pulling out the stops, getting more funding in there, and working with states and localities to make sure we increase capacity.
But just, you know, I want to say, though, just more broadly, as we think about mental health, in fact, I'll leave you with one sort of key message is this. It's that this is a make‑or‑break moment for our youth mental health in our country. We cannot afford to continue down the path that we're on right now. Too many of our kids are suffering. Too many of our children are losing their lives. Too many parents are suffering as well as they watch their kids go through these incredibly difficult struggles.
But the good news is we know how to turn this around, and now is the time for us to summon the will and the determination to do so. I want to be able to look back in a few years as I think about my own children and many children I've met across the country and know that we seized this moment to make the investments that we needed to make, to have the conversations in our communities that we needed to have, to step up and talk to our children and open up a conversation on mental health, recognizing that conversation we have with them as a parent‑‑that conversation, they might tell them it's okay to talk about these struggles. That could be a conversation that makes a huge difference in their life and that might ultimately save their life.
But, as much as the policy changes are important to expand access to treatment and invest in prevention, we won't solve this problem if we also don't build a culture in America that supports youth mental health, and that has to be a culture that's centered around compassion, around kindness, and around belonging. There are too many children who are walking around today who feel that they don't belong, who feel that they don't matter, who feel nobody cares about them in the world, and even though whether‑‑even if you don't have a policy lever, even if you're not a legislator, even if you're not a doctor or a mental health expert, you can make a difference in someone's life by reaching out to them, by checking on them, by letting them know that you care.
And so that is a step all of us can take today, and I would encourage you to do so because together I do believe we can solve this young mental health crisis, and I will certainly use every day that I have as Surgeon General and beyond that to make sure that we are advancing this cause around youth mental health and getting our kids the help that they need.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Well, we'll have to leave it there, but thank you so much for joining us today, Vivek Murthy, and a wonderful conversation, as always, with you.
DR. MURTHY: Thanks so much, Paige. It's always good to talk to you as well. Take care.
MS. WINFIELD CUNNINGHAM: Please come back and join us again sometime.
And thanks to all of our viewers for watching this afternoon. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and find out more about our upcoming programs.
I'm Paige Winfield Cunningham, and thanks again for joining us today. | 2022-08-18T15:18:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: The State of Youth Mental Health - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/18/transcript-state-youth-mental-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/18/transcript-state-youth-mental-health/ |
Pennsylvania becomes the 27th state to restrict ‘conversion therapy’
Advocates and medical experts say the move could have a powerful impact on young LGBTQ people in the state and beyond
Over the last decade, more than half the country has moved to protect LGBTQ youth from “conversion therapy,” a widely discredited practice that aims to “cure” queer and transgender people. This week, Pennsylvania became the 27th state to restrict conversion efforts, in a move advocates and medical experts say could have a powerful impact on young LGBTQ people in the state and beyond.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) signed an executive order Tuesday that would prevent conversion therapy practitioners from using state funds. The action also directs state agencies to discourage conversion efforts and establish culturally appropriate care and services for LGBTQ people.
“Conversion therapy is a traumatic practice based on junk science that actively harms the people it supposedly seeks to treat,” Wolf said in a press release.
Wolf cited the fact that the conversion efforts have been rejected by most medical and scientific professionals, and has been linked to worse mental health outcomes for LGBTQ youth.
Conversion therapy associated with severe psychological distress in transgender people, study says
Troy Stevenson, senior campaign manager for advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention group, called the order “hugely significant.”
“Our research shows that just a single affirming adult in a young person’s life makes them 40 percent less likely to attempt suicide in the past year,” Stevenson said. While a politician may not have the same impact on a young person’s life as a teacher, parent or coach, he said, “it is a huge message to young people across the Commonwealth that says that they do have that support.”
The action comes amid an increasingly polarized landscape for LGBTQ rights, with much of the energy focused on queer and trans youth. While some states have passed laws restricting the health care, recreational activities and educational support that LGBTQ youth can access, other states have moved to advance protections.
10 anti-LGBTQ laws just went into effect. They all target schools.
California was the first state to ban conversion efforts in 2012, according to data from the nonprofit Movement Advancement Project. Since then, 26 states have instituted partial or full bans on conversion therapy for minors. (This doesn’t include local prohibitions, which can be found in cities in Alaska, South Carolina and more.)
For decades, conversion efforts have been denounced by the vast majority of medical associations in the country, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which states that these interventions “lack scientific credibility and clinical utility” and could harm patients.
The underlying premise of conversion therapy, medical experts note, is that same-sex attraction or nonconforming gender expression and identity are pathological — the result of physical or mental illness.
These kinds of “therapies,” practiced by both medical providers and faith-based groups, have taken many forms and been given an array of names over the years, such as “reparative therapy” or “aversion therapy,” which involved giving patients electric shocks or inducing vomiting if they looked at gay pornography or “cross-dressed.” In the most extreme cases, doctors would perform surgeries or chemical castrations.
But the practice has shifted over time. It is now primarily aimed at minors, with therapists using psychotherapy, most commonly “talk” therapy, to push the patient to reject their gender or sexual identity.
Jack Turban, an incoming assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, said conversion efforts have been linked to “dramatically higher odds of a range of poor mental health outcomes,” including increased suicidality.
Even when they are not physically abusive, conversion efforts are “very emotionally harmful” and send the message to the patient that who they are is “wrong or shameful,” Turban said. Still, Turban said, conversion therapy is a “fringe practice” among mental health professionals, and most providers reject these efforts.
But the issue has been muddied in recent years as trans youth make up a greater share of those targeted by this practice, experts say. Some conversion efforts now come under the label of “gender exploratory therapy,” Turban said.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards of care advises that mental health professionals not impose a binary view of gender, and “give ample room for clients to explore different options for gender expression.” As Turban described it, this means an “open-ended” exploration of “all the nuances of gender and sexuality,” like talking to young people about gender roles and how they relate to them, or how they relate to their body.
“You’re just helping someone understand themselves,” he said.
However, some therapists may have a predetermined goal of discouraging a young patient from expressing their sexuality or gender if it isn’t straight or doesn’t align with their sex at birth, Turban said. In these cases, a therapist may be forcing their own narrative on a child or adolescent instead of letting them explore their own.
“You may not know that [therapists are] practicing conversion efforts, because generally, they’re not publicly advertising this. It’s more something that they’re spreading through word of mouth or among parents,” he said. “Probably the only way you’re going to know is if you see them doing public speeches or making comments on social media.”
Florida memo on gender dysphoria contradicts leading medical guidance
Protecting minors from conversion therapy can be challenging, experts say. Some state governments have tried to do this by revoking clinicians’ licenses for unethical or dangerous practices. But it’s unclear to what extent actions like denying state funds could help, because that would only affect providers who receive public funding, Turban said.
There are also ongoing questions about the legality of banning conversion therapy. Some legal and medical professionals have concerns over the extent to which state and local governments should regulate medical practice, particularly as more lawmakers try to ban gender-affirming care for minors. (Unlike conversion efforts, gender-affirming care is widely considered safe and effective by the medical community.)
Some also view conversion efforts as a free-speech issue. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked bans in Palm Beach County and Boca Raton in 2020 on the grounds that it violated therapists’ First Amendment rights. The federal appeals court refused to reconsider that decision in July.
“The perspective enforced by these local policies is extremely popular in many communities,” Judge Britt Grant wrote in a concurring opinion. “And the speech barred by these ordinances is rejected by many as wrong, and even dangerous. But the First Amendment applies even to — especially to — speech that is widely unpopular.”
At a time when trans and queer Americans find their rights debated in statehouses and courts across the country, the mental health impact of Wolf’s executive order and other policies supporting LGBTQ youth should not be overlooked, advocates and medical experts say.
One 2017 study found that states that passed marriage equality bills saw lower rates of adolescent suicide attempts, compared with states that did not — with the greatest effect among LGBTQ youth.
“It wasn’t the direct impact of the bill” — these adolescents weren’t getting married — Turban said. “It was the fact that these bills have a really big symbolic value and an impact on the national conversation.”
There is also a valuable public education message when policies like these are enacted, said Stevenson of the Trevor Project — one that is especially important at a time when misinformation about queer and trans people are being spread at alarming rates.
“This type of action, this type of attention shows ... this is not something that should be done,” Stevenson said. “And just that alone, we believe, could reduce the number of young people who this is inflicted upon.” | 2022-08-18T16:26:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pennsylvania bans ‘conversion therapy.’ Here’s what to know. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/conversion-therapy-pennsylvania-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/conversion-therapy-pennsylvania-ban/ |
Grand jury indicts Salman Rushdie’s alleged attacker
The author remains hospitalized with severe wounds from the stabbing
Hadi Matar, 24, arrives for an arraignment in the Chautauqua County Courthouse in Mayville, N.Y., on Aug. 13. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
A grand jury in western New York has indicted the man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie and leaving the renowned author with severe wounds and a long, uncertain recovery ahead, prosecutors announced Thursday.
The indictment means the alleged attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, will be arraigned and move straight to trial rather than face a preliminary hearing to assess the evidence against him. The arraignment is scheduled for Thursday afternoon in Chautauqua County Court in New York.
Rushdie has lived a mostly secretive life since 1989, when the late Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s leader, issued a religious decree calling for the author’s death. The declaration, known as a fatwa, raised grave concerns over the right to freedom of expression in much of the world.
Khomeini cited Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” as the reason for his decree, calling the work blasphemous. Earlier this week, the Iranian government denied involvement in the attack, and blamed the violence on Rushdie and his work.
Video of last Friday’s attack shows a man identified as Matar storming a lecture stage where Rushdie, who holds Indian, British and U.S. citizenship, was scheduled to speak at a writers conference. According to wire reports, Matar’s lawyer had not seen the charges to be filed against his client as of Thursday morning.
Rushdie, 75, remains in the hospital, beginning what his doctors have said will be a difficult recovery. He was stabbed multiple times in the stomach, neck and chest. And he may lose his right eye, authorities have said.
The host of the Chautauqua Institution event, Henry Reese, also was injured in the attack.
There has been no word about what may have motivated Matar, who is from Fairview, N.J., and holds U.S. and Lebanese citizenship, to allegedly attack Rushdie. The arraignment may provide more information, according to lawyers involved in the case.
In a recent interview from jail with the New York Post, Matar said of Rushdie, “I don’t like the person.”
“I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar said in the interview. “He’s someone who attacked Islam. He attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.” | 2022-08-18T16:26:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grand jury indicts Salman Rushdie’s alleged attacker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/salman-rushdie-hadi-matar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/salman-rushdie-hadi-matar/ |
A spice vendor's stall at Market Square in St. George's. (Photos by Nevin Martell for The Washington Post)
Snacks on the plane: Chefs share their favorite high-altitude bites
Coyaba Beach Resort
26FQ+FG2, The Lime, Grenada
coyaba.com
Situated at the center of Grand Anse Beach, this classic resort offers straightforward rooms, many with ocean views, complemented by on-site amenities, including a pool and dive center. Rooms from about $195 per night.
BB’s Crabback
Progress House, The Carenage, St. George’s
bit.ly/bbs-restaurant
Overlooking the harbor, this long-running favorite powered by chef Brian Benjamin specializes in island cuisine, including an excellent rendition of Grenada’s national dish, oil down. Open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.; closed Sundays. Entrees from about $20.
Sandra’s Roti
27X2+FJ, St. George’s
The ever-buzzy roadside stand specializes in top-notch roti — including those packed with goat, chicken and vegetables — and freshly squeezed local juices. Open Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.; closed Sundays. Roti are $4.50.
Francis Bits & Bites Café
Wall Street, Grand Anse
bit.ly/francis-grenada
Perched under a tent on the side of the road, this casual takeout operation puts out solid local fare, including bakes (sandwiches) stuffed with escovitch-style salt fish, samosas, fried plantains and roti. Hours are flexible; open Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to early afternoon, and Friday, 7 to 11 a.m. Closed Saturdays and Sundays. Sandwiches from $3.75.
Umbrellas Beach Bar
26FQ+F6P, Grand Anse Beach
umbrellasbeachbargrenada.com
Right on beach with beautiful sunset views, this breezy eatery offers tropical cocktails, island fare and more familiar continental cuisine. Open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Entrees from about $7.
362W+XJ4, St. George’s
A colorful collection of vendors selling fresh produce, local spices and preserves, handicrafts and street food. The best time to go is Saturday morning, when the activity there peaks. Open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.; closed Sundays. Free.
House of Chocolate
10 Young St., St. George’s
houseofchocolategnd.com
This museum-boutique-chocolateria is devoted to all things chocolate, so you can learn about how it’s made, buy locally made bars and bonbons, and, of course, eat it. Open Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed Sundays. Free.
59FF+W68, St. Patrick
belmontestate.gd
The bean-to-bar chocolatiers offer tours that explore the history of the estate and the chocolate-making process, before ending in the gift shop for a tasting. Open Sunday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; closed Saturdays. Tours $5 per adult, $2.50 per child 12 and under.
L’Esterre Estate Organics
St. Andrew’s, Grenada
lesterreorganicsgrenada.com
This estate organically grows cacao, bananas, fresh vegetables and a variety of spices, which visitors learn about on casual, informative walking tours, which run January through March. Email hello@lesterreorganicsgrenada.com to arrange a tour, which starts at $60 per adult and $40 for children 5 to 13; children 4 and under are free.
puregrenada.com | 2022-08-18T16:30:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A food-focused itinerary in Grenada - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/18/grenada-food-vacation-travel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/18/grenada-food-vacation-travel/ |
Idris Elba elevates the tale of a man facing down a marauding lion
Idris Elba in “Beast.” (Lauren Mulligan/Universal Pictures)
The marauding-animal thriller is a horror staple, reliably cropping up in late summer, as evidenced by “Piranha” (Aug. 3, 1978), “Cujo” (Aug. 12, 1983), “Arachnophobia” (July 18, 1990), “Burning Bright” (Aug. 17, 2010), “The Meg” (Aug. 10, 2018) and a host of other fauna-centric titles before, since and in between, representing a virtual Noah’s ark of scare-inducing species. In that lineage falls “Beast,” the latest entry in the dog days canon of cautionary tales pitting man vs. Mother Nature’s less well-behaved progeny. If the film is elevated by the great Idris Elba — playing an American widower on safari in South Africa with his two daughters who must face down a rogue lion bent on, for lack of a better word, revenge — it nevertheless falls squarely in the camp of formula.
Meaning that “Beast” obeys certain rules, and does so effectively yet predictably, under the stewardship of director Baltasar Kormakur, a filmmaker who, since making his name in Iceland, has staked out a patch of the Hollywood turf reserved for such mindless if visceral thrillers as “Adrift” and “Everest.”
“Beast” is a legitimately scary movie, opening with a prologue in which we watch a group of poachers massacre several lions, then get massacred themselves, one by one, by the film’s titular critter: a convincing CGI cat that then goes on a human-killing rampage, not eating his prey — random villagers, surviving poachers, etc. — as an ordinary lion might, but in a sense stalking and killing them out of some anthropomorphic sense of justice. Into that unlikely scenario wanders Elba’s Nate and daughters Meredith and Norah (Iyana Halley and Leah Jeffries), who are on a mission of reconciliation after their African-born mother has died while estranged from Nate, leaving the film’s hero with some healing to do.
It’s not just reconciliation he seeks, but redemption for being absent from his family during their time of need. And as everyone knows, redemption, at least in Hollywood, requires sacrifice. All this falls into place, like a morality play, against a scenic backdrop, with solid performances rendered by the aforementioned actors and Sharlto Copley, who plays an old friend of the family and their tour guide to the wildlife preserve in which the action takes place.
The jump scares are genuinely jumpy, but the film plays out more like a theme park ride than a family drama with teeth. It’s pulse-pounding, in other words, from a cardiac perspective, but not especially engaging as a narrative, despite the earnest efforts of the cast to breathe life into a personal story arc that feels pasted onto another one: one that is, in essence, the tale of a dumb but deeply disagreeable beast.
R. At area theaters. Contains violence, bloody images and some coarse language. 93 minutes. | 2022-08-18T16:47:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Beast’ is a dumb but genuinely pulse-pounding creature feature - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/18/beast-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/18/beast-movie-review/ |
From a world away, a U.S. volunteer guides Afghan allies left behind
A woman in Upstate New York struggles to help the Afghan allies her country left behind when the United States ended its war in Afghanistan
Kim Staffieri begins her day by setting up a work station on her front porch in Fairport, N.Y., from where she volunteers to help Afghans who assisted the U.S. government during 20 years of war. (Lauren Petracca for The Washington Post)
FAIRPORT, N.Y. — Kim Staffieri woke before dawn to find the latest in the seemingly never-ending stream of desperate text messages and voice mails from Afghanistan.
It was a Monday, one of the four days a week that Staffieri devotes her full attention to helping men and women who once helped the United States during its longest war, but could not leave their country before Taliban militants took over a year ago.
“I have three small children and I’m scared,” read one message. “Please help me.”
At a glance, Staffieri, 56, might seem an unlikely candidate for the volunteer role that consumes so much of her life. She has no law degree, has never been to Afghanistan and never served in the U.S. military. She’s an accountant, which is what pays the bills.
But over the past five years, she has donated thousands of hours of her time to helping Afghans navigate the U.S. government’s program for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) — the visas set aside for Afghans who worked for the U.S. government, at their own peril, during 20 years of war.
The aid gained greater urgency last summer, when the United States withdrew from the country and left the majority of those SIV-seekers behind.
Staffieri, who in 2019 had co-founded the Association of Wartime Allies (AWA) to help SIV applicants, estimated in a February report that 96 percent of them were still in Afghanistan.
“It’s so disheartening to see the U.S., [which] had the biggest interest in this war of any country in the world, turn their backs on people,” she said. “If we don’t take care of the folks who worked with our troops, who kept our troops safe, who made our troops effective over there, the next time we step into a conflict zone, who is going to help?”
Staffieri comes from a military family and started volunteering six years ago to resettle SIVs in her area of Upstate New York as a way to “help the folks who helped our folks.”
“Then I learned about the massive difficulties people were having getting their visas approved,” she said. The work sent her down a rabbit hole of need that never let up.
The Afghan SIV program, created by Congress in 2009, is one of the most heavily vetted visas in the U.S. immigration system — partly a product of the U.S. government’s discriminatory suspicion of Muslims in the post-9/11 era, and partly a product of America’s more broadly dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy, advocates say. Its 14 steps are sometimes redundant and hard to understand — for Afghans and U.S. officials alike.
In the years after the program began, Afghanistan grew more dangerous, and the SIV backlog grew exponentially, slowed further by a Trump administration opposed to immigration and a global pandemic. U.S. officials say SIV processing still takes, on average, more than a year and a half.
The subject of allies left behind has been a sore point for the Biden administration, which has weathered broad criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike for the chaotic way the United States left Afghanistan.
Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Sunday disclosed findings in a report criticizing the Biden administration’s failure to evacuate many of its allies last year. The White House dismissed the report as “partisan” and "riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry-picked information and false claims.”
Despite the urging of nonprofits, veterans and volunteers, the administration did not create a mass evacuation plan for the estimated 81,000 Afghans — SIV applicants and their dependents — who advocates say were waiting for the visas last summer.
A year later, the estimated backlog of SIV applicants and their dependents has surpassed 346,000 people.
While President Biden hailed the successful mass evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans during the pullout, the administration has repeatedly declined to say how many SIV applicants it evacuated.
Meanwhile, officials say they have continued to move more Afghan allies to safe resettlement in the United States. A senior State Department official said many allies weren’t “queued up for us to move them” ahead of the withdrawal.
A few thousand people already had SIVs in their passports but had previously chosen not to leave, department officials said, and the collapse of President Ashraf Ghani’s government took everyone by surprise.
“Nobody in Afghanistan, including all of us who were there, felt or knew that the Ghani administration was going to collapse when it did,” said the State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, under terms set by the department.
Staffieri is part of a loose network of a couple hundred organizations and scores of volunteers, who came together amid the withdrawal to form the Evacuate Our Allies Coalition and the Afghan Evac Coalition in an effort to get allies to safety.
A year later, many of them are still working toward that goal, with Staffieri and others — like the attorneys from the nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) — filling a void of information for thousands of desperate Afghans.
More than 18,000 SIV applicants now claim membership in AWA’s Facebook page, flooding its private chat forum and Staffieri’s inbox daily with pleas for help.
Staffieri and her colleagues provide answers and raise recurrent problems with the government. The senior State Department official credited the volunteers and nonprofits with being fantastic “partners” in providing applicants with guidance.
But the advocates are frustrated. They say the administration has been slow to address problems, and too many Afghans remain stranded.
“What we are seeing are small improvements, improvements that can make all the difference for an individual, but that are not nearly commensurate with the size and gravity of the task,” Sunil Varghese, the policy director of IRAP, recently told reporters on a call with other advocates. “The U.S. military and diplomatic presence in Afghanistan may have ended last August, but the U.S. government’s obligations did not.”
‘I just want to cry because I’m so scared’
Among those still in Afghanistan, there is a profound sense of abandonment.
“They promised me that whatever happened, they would take me to the United States, or take me out of the country,” said Mohammed, 60, who said he worked for a CIA contractor for 15 years. The Washington Post is using his middle name to protect his identity.
With SIV applications pending at the time of the withdrawal, his family tried to make it onto an evacuation flight, but couldn’t get through the chaos.
“We are 13 people,” he said in a phone interview from Kabul, the Afghan capital. His employer gave him $5,000 before departing for the United States last summer, he said. “But that has run out … We have had to sell a lot of our belongings to be able to afford meals.”
There is no longer a U.S. Embassy in Kabul; no clear instructions on how to get evacuated; and no U.S. guidance on how long SIV applicants will need to survive — many of them now a year without income — before they might get out.
Mohammed, who spoke by phone late at night, said he has tried to keep a low profile since the Americans left.
He grew his beard long and tries to dress conservatively “so the Taliban don’t interrogate me when I go out,” he said. “Most of my [former] co-workers conceal themselves now.”
Fearful that the Taliban would kill him if they knew about his work, he has moved his family around Kabul several times. He spoke from the basement apartment they are currently renting, where he had closed the windows against the summer heat, kept his voice low and asked his wife to turn on the fan “so that my neighbors can’t hear my voice carry,” he said.
“I just want to cry because I’m so scared,” he said.
In June, a year after he applied for the SIV, he received a case number. That means the State Department has received it.
‘They need a place to point their anger’
Staffieri, who has not been involved in Mohammed’s case, hears pleas from other SIV applicants in similar circumstances.
They write that they are running out of money; that they have new babies who need to be added to case files; that they think the Taliban is looking for them. They say the U.S. government never responded to paperwork filed long ago, or that they responded with the wrong information.
“My interview was scheduled in Doha … They thought I was in Doha,” wrote one applicant in Kabul. “Now I am in a bubble of confusion, and I don’t know what to do.”
Some have used their dwindling resources to fund their temporary relocation to Pakistan so that the U.S. Embassy there can finish processing their SIVs. But they’re not allowed to work there, and the costs of visas, rent and mandatory SIV-related medical checks add up.
U.S. officials say the government has no responsibility for the financial woes of those waiting on visas.
But the biggest obstacle, Staffieri says, is the SIV process itself — and that few Afghans have dedicated and competent advocates to push their cases through to completion.
Nearly half of SIV applicants receive denials on their first try. Among the reasons for application denials at the earliest — “Chief of Mission” approval — stage is missing or incomplete paperwork, or a lack of sufficient documentation of employment from a supervisor, who may be difficult or impossible to reach, particularly if the contracting company is no longer in existence.
State Department officials recently said that of the 77,000 Afghans — which, including their dependents, would amount to an estimated 346,500 people — who have currently pending SIV applications, more than 85 percent have incomplete applications. A department official declined to say whether those applicants had yet been notified.
In 2016, Staffieri took up the case of Sayyed, a military interpreter, who had been waiting two years for a visa.
In 2021, as Staffieri pressed for progress from the government, Sayyed’s application suddenly hit a snag; denied because of what officials described as new “derogatory” information. Attorneys say such information can be as innocuous as having missed a day of work.
It took a carefully drafted appeal — by Staffieri — along with the re-submission of letters from six U.S. military officers all vouching for Sayyed’s loyalty, service and character, to get the decision reversed.
“Most people don’t have that,” Staffieri said. “If they’re lucky, they have one supervisor who writes a letter. He had six, sending letter after letter and calling their Congress members and making a fuss.”
Even then, it took eight years in all for Sayyed to receive his SIV. The Taliban arrived nine months before the visas did, forcing the family to seek temporary refuge in India.
Now they are settling into a new life in Rochester, N.Y., about a 15-minute drive from Staffieri’s house.
Applicants like Mohammed who don’t speak English, are less computer literate or don’t have former colleagues or attorneys advocating for them, face a greater disadvantage, she said.
Sometimes the people begging Staffieri for help get angry with her; that she’s not helping enough, or fast enough. Some are angry at her because they didn’t get evacuated — as if she holds that power. She understands.
“They need a place to point their anger,” she said.
Her dining room has become a small testament of her passion for this country that she has never seen and this specific group of people, many of whom she will never meet. A bookshelf contains Dari and Pashto phrase books, and there is a framed photo of a U.S. military C-17 airplane on the tarmac of the Kabul airport last August, a long line of Afghans visible in the plane’s shadow.
Her computer background is a picture of Sayyed and his children.
“It’s that picture and those little faces that keep me going,” she said. | 2022-08-18T16:48:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Distant volunteers help Afghans who assisted U.S. during 20-year war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/18/afghanistan-refugees-visas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/18/afghanistan-refugees-visas/ |
Judge to hear arguments over unsealing Mar-a-Lago affidavit
The affidavit likely contains witness names and other evidence gathered in the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified material
The FBI’s unsealed search warrant for former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. (Jon Elswick/AP)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal judge on Thursday is set to hear arguments about whether to unseal the affidavit central to last week’s FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home, where agents have said they retrieved several boxes of classified government materials.
On one side, the Justice Department has argued that unsealing the court document could pose safety risks for named witnesses and undermine authorities’ ongoing investigation.
On the other side, multiple media outlets, including The Washington Post, have argued in court filings that the affidavit should be made public given he “historic importance of these events.”
The hearing here in West Palm Beach is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.
Trump has denounced the inquiry as politically motivated, saying on social media this week that he believes the document should be unsealed with no redactions “in the interest of TRANSPARENCY.”
His lawyers, however, have not submitted any formal motion to the court declaring such a stance. The judge had set a 9 a.m. deadline for other parties wishing to enter their position into the official record.
Former Justice Department officials who have closely followed the case have said the affidavit is unlikely to contain any “good” information for the former president and, as The Post reported earlier this week, Trump’s advisers had not reached a consensus on whether its disclosure would be in his best interest.
It has become the latest flash point in federal authorities’ 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.
Late last week, federal Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart — with the Justice Department’s endorsement — unsealed the search warrant and an inventory list including broad descriptions of the classified materials federal agents say they recovered from Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s club and residence in South Florida.
Legal experts said the Justice Department’s reticence to publicize the document is consistent with how the agency typically conducts investigations and that it would be highly unusual for a judge to release the documents in full amid an ongoing investigation.
People who have conferred with Trump in recent days said the former president believes that any information made public about the investigation into his handling of classified material will rile his supporters, ultimately benefiting him politically.
But others in Trump’s orbit fear that such a move could backfire because they do not know exactly what it contains. | 2022-08-18T16:48:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mar-a-Lago affidavit: Judge to decide if key Trump document is unsealed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/18/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/18/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit/ |
How Democrats can help Liz Cheney bring down Trump
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) appears at the Mead Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Aug. 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) all but announced her 2024 presidential run on Tuesday. But the big question looming over her potential candidacy is how she expects to take down defeated former president Donald Trump in a party still in his thrall.
She hinted at the answer on Tuesday:
As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and independents — against those who would destroy our republic. They are angry and they are determined, but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united in defense of our Constitution and committed to the cause of freedom. There is no greater power on this earth, and with God’s help, we will prevail.
In the context of a presidential primary, it will take not only decent Republicans but millions of Democrats — and even President Biden — to help her eliminate Trump in the primary, force the nomination to go to the convention or do enough damage to set him up for defeat in the general election.
It starts with Biden declaring his reelection bid (which he seemed intent on doing anyway), thereby effectively eliminating a Democratic presidential primary. That then frees up Democrats to vote in the GOP primaries (as some, but not enough, did in deep-red Wyoming on Tuesday to support Cheney). In some cases, they will be able to vote in open primaries. In other states, they will need to re-register to vote in Republican primaries.
There is nothing nefarious about this. To the contrary, this would turn the Republican primary into a bipartisan affair and referendum on democracy. In essence, Cheney will be starting the general election against Trump right away.
This will no doubt raise several questions:
First, didn’t she try this in Wyoming? Not really. With more than 70 percent of voters registered as Republicans — and a Democratic primary in operation — the math simply did not work. But consider a state where the registration is heavily Democratic, such as New Jersey or New York. It would take only a fraction of those Democrats voting in the GOP primary to bring down Trump’s share of the vote. And remember, this is not so much about Cheney actually winning (a remote possibility) but about creating a national anti-Trump movement. As Eugene McCarthy did against President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, Cheney might undermine Trump’s coronation just by taking a significant share of the primary vote in early contests.
Second, would Democrats have to do this in every state? No. It wouldn’t make much sense for Democrats to replay the Wyoming primary, or to lend their effort in similarly deep-red states. However, if a significant number of Democrats were, for example, to help her out just in states with a robust Democratic registration, that might be enough to deny Trump a majority of the GOP delegates. It certainly would help educate the electorate as a whole, which is ultimately Cheney’s audience.
Finally, how does she run ostensibly for the Republican nomination without putting off her Democratic allies? She would likely run the same sort of one-issue campaign she did in Wyoming. It will need to be an explicit referendum on democracy, the rule of law and the risk of a second Trump term. That’s what she has in common with Democrats — and what her political career is now all about.
Again, Cheney likely wouldn’t run to win herself but to stop Trump from winning — in the primary if possible and, if not, in the general election. This wouldn’t be a traditional campaign. Her aim wouldn’t be self-promotion but Trump’s defeat. Her message wouldn’t be about policy but preserving democracy and weakening Trump’s grip on the party. As she said, there can be no serious policy debates unless we secure democracy first. And the GOP can never become a decent pro-democracy party so long as Trump remains its leader.
To accomplish this, Cheney will need to turn a partisan primary into a national crusade enlisting Republicans, Democrats and independents against Trump. It will take a unique primary strategy unlike anything we’ve seen to remove a unique threat to our democracy. | 2022-08-18T16:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How Democrats can help Liz Cheney bring down Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/cheney-president-2024-democrats-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/cheney-president-2024-democrats-trump/ |
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 18. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The 37-point smackdown of Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney might have produced the most headlines from Tuesday’s primary elections. But Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s first-place finish in her hotly contested Senate primary is the more important outcome. The Republican’s surprising performance demonstrates both the limits of pure Trumpism and the power of ranked-choice voting.
Murkowski has long vexed Alaska’s conservatives. The longtime moderate was a surprise loser in Alaska’s 2010 GOP primary, but she managed to win reelection that year as a write-in candidate. She also won her 2016 race by garnering many votes from Hillary Clinton voters.
The 49th state narrowly adopted a new system in 2020 that eliminated single-party primaries in favor of all-party first rounds similar to those used in Washington and California. It also added a twist by allowing ranked-choice voting. Under that system, the top-four primary candidates advance to the November general election. Voters would then rank each candidate in the order of their preference rather than simply choose one. Votes for the worst-ranked candidates would be reallocated to those voters’ second-favorite choice until one candidate reaches a majority.
This result shows the limited appeal of pure Trumpism. Alaska is no one’s idea of a moderate state. It regularly sends Republicans to the House and Senate and hasn’t been carried by a Democrat for president since 1964. But a clear majority of Alaskans prefer someone who at least is open to dealing with the other party than a conservative ideologue.
This is likely true elsewhere, but it is obscured by the artificial forced choice between extremes that most states’ voting systems create. Partisan primaries allow only the winner to carry the party’s label into the general election. This forces moderates in both parties to decide whether the ideologue nominated by their party is so bad that they must abandon ship. Most reluctantly stay with their party because even an extreme choice within their camp is preferable to someone from the other side, especially when that person is also an extremist. That’s why progressive “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is a lock for reelection despite barely winning renomination in her primary last week; moderate Democrats will hold their nose and vote for her rather than elect the conservative Republican on the ballot.
Alaska’s all-party, ranked-choice voting system avoids this conundrum. Moderates of either party can run with or without a party label and have a shot at winning. They usually can’t do it on their own, as Murkowski has, but they can win in the general as one party’s disappointed partisans decide to vote for the lesser of the two remaining evils after their candidate is eliminated. This gives the increasingly disaffected middle a real voice in America’s increasingly polarized politics.
The forced choice between extremes in other states is the only reason Trump-backed Republicans such as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake have a prayer in the general election. Many Republicans who backed Lake’s erstwhile opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, will hold their noses and vote for the crude demagogue to avoid electing the Democrat. Robson would still be on the ballot under Alaska’s system — and could have defeated Lake when votes for other GOP candidates or independents, who don’t normally vote in primaries, decide whom they like best.
This simple fact should give hyper-partisans pause. If their power rests mainly on a simple voting system that forces unnatural choices, that means they are living on borrowed time. Eventually, one of two things will happen: Either more states will adopt Alaska’s system, or the frustrated middle will become large enough to push both sides out. That latter response is what’s happening in many European countries as traditional parties are swept aside in favor of new, outsider ones. | 2022-08-18T16:48:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Lisa Murkowski is showing the limits of political extremism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/murkowski-alaska-senate-results-ranked-choice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/murkowski-alaska-senate-results-ranked-choice/ |
Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister Imran Khan addresses supporters during a rally to press the government for fresh elections, in Lahore, Pakistan, on Aug. 13. (K.M. Chaudary/AP)
Pakistan has just turned 75. The anniversary should be a cause for celebration, but also for serious self-criticism. Many Pakistanis are fond of citing our achievement of becoming the world’s first Muslim nuclear power. But how are nuclear weapons supposed to save Pakistan if our institutions are falling apart? The army, of course, remains strong. But our parliament, judiciary and media are becoming weaker by the day.
It is a matter of shame that four military dictators ruled Pakistan for more than 32 years. Civilian prime ministers — 29 of them — have ruled the country for 43 years. No elected prime minister has completed a full five-year term. Three different constitutions of Pakistan were abrogated or suspended five times in the 75 years since the country achieved statehood.
True, Pakistan – once routinely referred to as a garrison state – has not seen a military intervention since 2007. Yet democracy is still very weak. The Economist Intelligence Unit recently described Pakistan as a hybrid regime — a country that doesn’t qualify as a proper democracy even if it has some democratic aspects. It’s not a secret that the generals effectively installed Imran Khan as prime minister with a rigged election in 2018.
When Pakistan became ungovernable under Khan, the army decided to stay neutral. Earlier this year, Khan created a crisis by dissolving the national assembly to save his government — but he was ultimately ousted by a parliamentary no-confidence vote. He then proceeded to blame the United States for his downfall. He started attacking the neutrality of the military leadership and declared them to be traitors. He tried to return to power by blackmailing the same generals who once made him prime minister. His trick didn’t work.
His anti-Americanism and economic crises did help him to regain a degree of popularity. Now, his political opponents are trying to disqualify him from another term with allegations of corruption and receiving prohibited funds. Back in 2017, the Supreme Court made Khan’s victory possible by disqualifying previous prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The current government now wants to do the same. Even if it is justified, the disqualification of another popular leader will create yet more instability.
The Pakistani judiciary does not enjoy a good reputation. The World Justice Project, a group that tracks legal systems around the world, ranks Pakistan 130 of 139 countries on the rule of law. A historical pattern of collaboration between dictators and judges has weakened democracy. Pakistani judges need to stop getting involved in politics. On one side, Khan is challenging the “neutrality” of the army, and on the other the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is pushing the courts to disqualify Khan. Both the government and opposition are fighting with state institutions.
Media freedom is another casualty of the political war among power players. Pakistan is ranked 157 of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index of 2022. Pakistan fell 18 points in the ranking since 2018, when Khan took power. TV channels were blocked. Journalists were attacked, arrested and banned.
Media freedom is under threat even now that Khan has left power. When my colleagues Asad Toor and Absar Alam were attacked last year, then-opposition leader Sharif visited them and expressed his commitment for media freedom. Now, he is prime minister, and his government has banned ARY, a pro-Khan TV channel. The owner and anchors of that channel are facing sedition charges for allegedly airing criticisms of the army.
When I was facing sedition allegations last year, ARY commentators wanted to see me behind bars. One of its anchors declared me an enemy of Pakistan just because I made a harsh speech against those who had attacked one of my journalist colleagues. Yet, I never left the country. I chose to stay. My former critics are now facing similar allegations. I don’t support silencing them.
Freedom of the press is an essential pillar of democracy. It is hard to imagine any form of democracy that does not allow for wide-ranging discussion of social and political problems. Last year, I was banned from the air for nine months without an order from any court. A few days ago, yet another anchor, Imran Riaz, was taken off the air by his channel without any charges being filed. These kinds of tactics will not only weaken the media as an institution but ultimately turn Pakistani democracy into a joke.
I know I might face a lot of criticism from people in positions of power for taking the side of those who were not nice to me. But I don’t think that revenge is a solution to our problems. I think that Khan should say that supporting a disqualification of Sharif was his mistake. Sharif should also oppose the disqualification of Khan.
President Arif Alvi belongs to the biggest opposition party, which is led by Khan. Shehbaz Sharif is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who made Pakistan a nuclear power in 1998. Can these two power players start a dialogue with all political stakeholders to strengthen democratic institutions? The best way forward is the rule of law and supremacy of the constitution. Only they can save the institutions from crumbling. | 2022-08-18T16:48:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Pakistan at 75: Attacks against democratic institutions have to stop - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/pakistan-75-democratic-institutions-crumbling-weak/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/pakistan-75-democratic-institutions-crumbling-weak/ |
The Biden administration's monkeypox messaging challenge
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. This is Caroline, your usual researcher, in today for Olivier. On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women the right to vote.
To say gay or not to say gay? Toeing a sensitive line between transparency and stigma
Monkeypox messaging is a delicate issue. And months into the public health crisis, the Biden administration still seems unsure of the best way to navigate the challenge.
The first U.S. case of monkeypox was reported on May 17. As of today, the nation has more than 13,000 cases — far more than any other country experiencing an outbreak.
The virus is overwhelmingly infecting gay and bisexual men and while it’s not a sexually transmitted disease, the majority are contracting it during close contact during sex. It has been identified in semen and saliva, and is known to spread through contact with lesions. (The World Health Organization reported today that in 9,100 cases with data on sexual orientation, 96.9 percent were men who have sex with men. Of more than 6,600 reported types of transmission, 91.2 percent of cases stemmed from a sexual encounter.)
But there is disagreement among the gay community, public health experts and government officials about the best way to communicate with the public and at-risk groups without further stigmatizing an already marginalized group. And it seems that the administration has been struggling with that question as well.
An internet archive shows that earlier this summer, several of the Centers for Disease Control’s pages on monkeypox referenced men who have sex with men, warning that the community made up “a high number of cases.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, that information no longer appeared on the multiple pages, which no longer referenced specific groups and instead said the virus was “spreading mostly through close, intimate contact with someone who has monkeypox.” (H/t to science reporter Benjamin Ryan, who flagged this in a tweet last week.) But the agency's webpage on monkeypox was updated either Wednesday evening or early Thursday to reinstate the references.
Asked about the changes, CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said in an email that the agency has tried to be clear in its guidance based on the data.
“Since the beginning of the monkeypox outbreak, CDC has continually emphasized to healthcare providers, media, and partners that most cases are among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men,” she said. “We’ve been in close contact with the LGBTQ+ community throughout the outbreak on our recommendations and guidance for prevention, treatment, and vaccination.”
Monkeypox information released by the White House references gay and bisexual men, and the officials President Biden tapped to lead the response to the virus regularly speak about how that community has been most affected.
In a White House monkeypox briefing this morning, officials announced that the U.S. is boosting its vaccine supply with 1.8 million more doses — and that 50,000 doses are being set aside for local health jurisdictions where large LGBTQ events are happening.
A risk for all
Some experts say putting too much emphasis on the spread of monkeypox in gay communities can put a target on gay men. Conservative pundits and politicians have begun using monkeypox as the punchline of crass, often homophobic jokes, and D.C. police are investigating a recent attack on a gay couple as a hate crime after the couple told officers the assailants used an anti-gay slur and referenced monkeypox.
Experts say while the virus is currently mostly contained within the gay community, it’s important for everyone to understand that they could contract the virus too. Some activists have compared the situation to the HIV/AIDS crisis, saying the messaging in that era left people outside of the gay male community vulnerable by giving them a false sense of security.
Julie Swann, a disease modeler at North Carolina State University who has advised the CDC, said representing monkeypox as a gay disease ignores other populations that could be at risk of contracting it — and could also decrease the likelihood of someone outside of the gay male community getting tested.
“If people don't want to ask to be tested for this disease because they don’t identify as [a man who has sex with men] and don't want the health care provider to identify them as an MSM, then that is going to cause additional problems,” Swann told The Daily 202.
But others argue that not being clear about who is most likely to be affected by the virus leaves hundreds of thousands of gay men vulnerable to an agonizing illness that has not led to U.S. fatalities but can cause painful lesions.
Demetre Daskalakis, deputy coordinator of the White House Monkeypox Response Team, told writer and veteran AIDS activist Mark S. King last week that “clear and culturally appropriate” communication on monkeypox is a priority for the CDC. At the time, King was pleased with the center’s candor.
But looking at the revised CDC guidance Wednesday, King was frustrated.
“We have come way too far, I would hope, to regress to being coy about the who’s and how’s of monkeypox,” he told The Daily 202. “Why make people read between the lines? Tell the truth, plainly.”
King said the delicate messaging is likely a well-intentioned overcorrection from the homophobia of the HIV/AIDS era (the illness was first referred to as “gay-related infectious disease,” or GRID), but intentions aren’t what matter in a public health crisis. People who are going to stigmatize gay men are going to do it regardless of monkeypox messaging, he said.
Overall struggles
How to talk about the infection is far from the only monkeypox problem the Biden administration has. Even on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, officials failed to recognize how aggressively monkeypox was spreading and struggled to meet demand for testing, vaccines and treatments. Officials also failed to order enough vaccines to combat the outbreak, later opting to stretch the supply by splitting doses into fifths, angering the vaccine’s manufacturer.
In their story Wednesday, my colleagues Dan Diamond, Fenit Nirappil and Lena H. Sun explained what we should be keeping an eye on as the nation grapples with its latest public health crisis:
Federal judge to hear arguments on releasing Mar-a-Lago affidavit
“The document is believed to hold key details about the government’s investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified materials. Multiple media outlets, including The Washington Post, are seeking the affidavit’s public release,” John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report. Arguments are scheduled for 1 p.m. Eastern time.
“Allen Weisselberg, the longtime top financial officer of former president Donald Trump’s company, pleaded guilty to more than a dozen counts on Thursday, more than a year after he and the business were indicted and charged with undertaking a long-term scheme to avoid paying taxes by concealing executive pay,” Sheila McClear and Mark Berman report.
“The agency’s proposed complaint, against Idaho-based Kochava, argues the company violates laws that prohibit ‘unfair or deceptive practices’ by allowing its customers to license data collected from mobile devices that can identify people and track their visits to health-care providers,” Cat Zakrzewski reports.
How the Mar-a-Lago search has helped fuel GOP attacks on the IRS
“As Republicans work to find their message in the days after their standard-bearer’s Florida residence was searched by the FBI, the verbal attacks on federal law enforcement have become enmeshed with another talking point tied to a totally different issue: the idea that Democrats are supercharging a tax agency to surveil regular Americans,” Marianna Sotomayor reports.
“The nation’s top public health official acknowledged Wednesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had failed to respond effectively to the coronavirus pandemic, and announced plans for extensive changes, including faster release of scientific findings and easier-to-understand guidance,” Lena H. Sun and Dan Diamond report.
“Contributions to Trump’s political action committee topped $1 million on at least two days after the Aug. 8 search of his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, according to two people familiar with the figures. The daily hauls jumped from a level of $200,000 to $300,000 that had been typical in recent months, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information,” Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf report.
“Federal prosecutors investigating the role that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies played in the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have issued a grand jury subpoena to the National Archives for all the documents the agency provided to a parallel House select committee inquiry, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The New York Times,” Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater report.
“The threats against [U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart] are part of a broader attack on law enforcement, particularly the FBI, by Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the search. But experts warn that the focus on a judge, coming amid an uptick in threats to the judiciary in general, is dangerous for the rule of law in the U.S. and the country’s viability as a democracy,” the Associated Press's Gary Fields and Nicholas Riccardi report.
“The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it expects the formal talks on the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade to begin in the fall. Washington had excluded Taiwan from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a trade initiative widely seen as an effort to counter China’s influence in the region, despite some U.S. lawmakers lobbying for Taiwan’s inclusion,” Eva Dou and Lyric Li report.
Biden signs bill to help police respond to those with mental health issues
“Biden signed the measure Tuesday without fanfare. It would renew the existing Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program and provide funding for a new training program for law enforcement and other first responders,” Jonathan D. Salant reports for NJ.com.
How Education Dept. plans to lift 7.5 million borrowers out of default
“The Biden administration has created a plan to bring 7.5 million Americans in default on their federal student loans back into good standing, restoring their eligibility for financial aid and removing the incident from their credit history, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post,” Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports.
How ranked-choice voting works, visualized
“With a traditional ballot, all the votes are added up, and the candidate with the most votes wins, even if that candidate did not win a majority of votes,” Harry Stevens explains.
“With the ranked-choice ballot, if none of the candidates receives a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and her votes are distributed to her voters’ second-choice candidates. The process repeats until one of the candidates collects more than half the votes.”
“In her crusade against Trump, it doesn’t work for Cheney to run as a Republican. She’d serve as a foil to energize Trump’s base and help him win the nomination,” Robert Kuttner writes for the American Prospect.
Musk tells GOP elite to be more compassionate
“Elon Musk told GOP congressional leaders and big-dollar donors on Tuesday that Republicans need to present a more compassionate front to voters and appeal to immigrants like himself,” Axios's Hans Nichols reports.
“While Musk has been publicly flirting with the Republican Party all year, his attendance at an exclusive GOP retreat in Wyoming marks a new level of involvement in helping the party define its agenda and prepare for its potential takeover of the House.”
The president is in Delaware and has no events on his public schedule.
“A brilliant display of auroras could grace northern skies Wednesday through Friday after the sun shot off several waves of energy toward Earth earlier this week. Activity is expected to peak Thursday into Friday as a strong geomagnetic storm, rated G3, reaches Earth,” Zach Rosenthal reports.
Where to watch: From New England across the Great Lakes into northwest Oregon and Washington state | 2022-08-18T16:49:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Biden administration's monkeypox messaging challenge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/cdcs-monkeypox-messaging-challenge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/cdcs-monkeypox-messaging-challenge/ |
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump addresses his supporters on the final day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 in Cleveland. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The natural place to start with any examination of whether a certain electoral outcome is possible — in this case, whether Donald Trump could be defeated in the 2024 Republican presidential primary — is with an admission-slash-cop-out.
Certainly he could. Lots of things could happen between now and then, things that would be hard to predict, developments that reshape the political landscape completely. My favorite example of this is a recent one: in August 2018, would you have assumed that the 2020 election would be largely defined by a global pandemic?
But, again, that’s a cop-out. The actual answer to the question is that, should patterns hold even loosely, Trump is extremely well-positioned to be his party’s 2024 nominee should he desire to be. And there are numerous — countless! — indicators that he desires to be.
A lot of what will follow is admittedly instinctual. That’s frustrating to me, personally, as I prefer to be able to affix thoughts to data as much as possible. And while we have some data that addresses the question, no one would seriously argue that polling nearly two years before a primary contest is particularly useful.
We will nonetheless begin with the data we do have. RealClearPolitics has a very early average of primary polling that gives us a good sense of where things are. Asked who they support as their party’s nominee in 2024, most Republicans (and, in some polling, independents who plan to vote in the GOP primary) say they prefer Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is consistently in second, cruising along near 20 percent. Then there are a few people below 10 percent: former vice president Mike Pence, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) among them.
Let’s consider these numbers in two contexts: how they compare historically and what they would mean if they held into late 2023.
To the first point, the best recent point of comparison is Hillary Clinton’s lead at a similar point in the 2016 nominating contest. In an October 2014 poll conducted by The Washington Post and our partners at ABC News, Clinton led the field with the support of 65 percent of the Democratic primary electorate. Joe Biden came in second, at 13 percent. He ultimately decided not to run that year.
Clinton, of course, went on to win the nomination — a point in Trump’s favor, even if his numbers aren’t quite as robust as hers were. But the biggest challenge to her candidacy came from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who in that poll came in at a not-impressive 1 percent support. By the time voting began in the 2016 primaries, Sanders had pulled nearly even.
How? Largely by running to her left. Sanders energized a segment of the Democratic Party — heavily younger voters — that felt the party was too moderate. He himself became a symbol, a popular figure in his own right that helped polarized reactions to his candidacy. But it also rallied voters to his candidacy.
Perhaps you see how the narrowing of the 2016 Democratic primary is an imperfect guide to the GOP in 2024. After all, Trump’s own election that year was a mirror image of Sanders’s: running to the party’s right, embracing its fringe and becoming a political symbol himself.
Why did Trump triumph where Sanders didn’t? For a few reasons. First, the Republican field was more fragmented, meaning that Trump’s solid base of support allowed him to win more contests. More of those contests allocated delegates through a winner-take-all mechanism, rather than a proportional one, meaning that a narrow win yielded a lopsided number of delegates to bring to the convention.
Which brings us to our second point: what if the current polling pattern holds by early 2024? A big if, yes, but let’s explore.
If Trump is at or around 50 percent in polling — if he’s even at, say, 35 percent, as he was in early 2016 — he’s in a strong position. Primaries are determined at the state level and, there, results could be mixed. (In a June poll in New Hampshire, for example, Trump and DeSantis were effectively tied.) But having a healthy lead nationally will translate to easy wins in a number of states and to a quick accrual of delegates.
Now the question becomes: will Trump’s lead hold? And we start to get into the instinctual stuff.
Before we do, though, let’s consider more mechanics. A primary process is not an up-and-down thing, it’s a winnowing. So a field of 10 people (or however many) quickly becomes one of four and then of two. So we have to ask how much of the support for candidates other than Trump is actual opposition to Trump and how much is simply liking other candidates slightly better.
YouGov, polling for Yahoo News, gives us a sense. Both last month and earlier in this one, they posed a head-to-head question: Trump or DeSantis. And while the gap between the two narrowed, in each case voters preferred Trump. Many weren’t sure, but it’s not the case that the 50-plus percent of Republicans would all glom onto whoever wasn’t Trump should the field narrow to the top two contenders.
Could this change? Sure. But one of the worst bets in American politics since 2015 has been to assume that Trump’s support from his party would fade. Yes, his favorability dropped among Republicans in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. But it’s still above 80 percent in YouGov’s most recent polling — not far from where Hillary Clinton’s was among Democrats in their polling in October 2014.
What DeSantis seems to be doing in response to this is interesting. He’s making a bet on beating Trump at his own game, appealing to and energizing the right-most flank of the GOP by a relentless public focus on amplifying what the fringe is talking about. Much was made of Laura Ingraham’s public skepticism about whether it was useful to bring Trump’s baggage into a 2024 presidential contest. But for my money, the more interesting development was Alex Jones’s endorsement of DeSantis — on the grounds that DeSantis, unlike Trump, has credibly appealed to the anti-vaccine fringe.
In 2016, it was Fox News and Breitbart who were driving conversation in the base, conversation that Trump repeated and elevated, earning him enthusiastic support. Now, that center of energy has moved, and DeSantis is doing a better job of speaking to and amplifying it.
Much of what made Trump successful was differentiating between us and them. Things were pretty good for us — the average American taxpayer — during Trump’s presidency, prompting people to be less concerned about the attacks Trump was making on them, the people at the fringes, like immigrants. DeSantis is making the same bet for his reelection: that since, for us things in Florida are pretty good, his efforts to marginalize them — gay teachers, transgender people — will energize the base while earning at worst some tsking from average citizens.
But while he may be replicating Trump’s approach, DeSantis (unlike Trump in 2016) isn’t running against a collection of sniffy Republicans who’ve spent a lifetime in D.C. He’s running against the guy who pioneered appeals to the fringe and who’s still actively prowling those waters.
One of the most-cited metrics for Trump’s electoral clout is his focus on the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him. Eight will certainly not be in Congress next year, either defeated in primaries or choosing to avoid that ignominy by retiring.
This raises its own question, though: How much of the response to Trump’s demands that those politicians he ousted is a function of Trump, and how much is it a function of the insistence on loyalty? In the wake of the search of Mar-a-Lago last week, we saw a lot of people who are generally Trump-skeptical taking Trump’s side, to his glee — but many did so not as a pro-Trump statement but (like DeSantis) as an anti-deep-state one. If what’s being measured in the purge of the pro-impeachment Republicans is fealty to a particular political approach and not fealty to Trump, Ingraham’s speculation about openness to other candidates may prove prescient.
DeSantis is better poised to benefit than most others. If GOP voters want to maximize their chances of electoral success while preserving as much of the Trumpian approach to politics as possible, the Florida governor is tanned, rested and ready to step in. If they want Trump, though? A substitute won’t suffice.
One final note on all of this, returning to the theme of the unpredictability of presidential primaries 18 months out. In that Post-ABC News poll from October of 2014, Clinton earned 65 percent of the Democratic primary vote. On the Republican side, the field was led by the party’s 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, with 21 percent.
The eventual winner of the 2016 Republican nomination wasn’t included in the options because no one anticipated he would run. Things change. | 2022-08-18T16:49:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is Donald Trump beatable in the Republican primary? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/trump-elections-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/trump-elections-republicans/ |
Deshaun Watson originally was suspended for six games, but the NFL appealed the decision. (David Richard/AP)
Under a settlement reached between the league and the NFL Players Association, Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson has been suspended for 11 games and fined $5 million for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy based on allegations of sexual misconduct. The settlement also includes mandatory treatment for Watson.
This ends the disciplinary process, avoiding a ruling by an attorney whom NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had designated to resolve the league’s appeal of Watson’s original suspension. Sue L. Robinson, a former U.S. district judge who is the disciplinary officer jointly appointed by the NFL and NFLPA, initially imposed a six-game suspension on Aug. 1.
The appeal ruling was to have been made by Peter C. Harvey, the former attorney general of New Jersey. The league had been seeking an indefinite suspension of at least one full season, a fine and required treatment in its appeal, according to a person familiar with the situation. If Harvey had decided to increase Watson’s suspension to a full season, that perhaps could have led to a lawsuit by Watson and the NFLPA, renewing the courtroom clashes between the league and the union over player discipline.
Instead, the NFL and NFLPA reached an agreement. Watson’s suspension is without pay. He signed a five-year contract worth a guaranteed $230 million with the Browns when they completed a trade with the Houston Texans for him in March. The deal included a salary of $1.035 million for this season.
In late June, Robinson conducted a three-day hearing. She then considered a post-hearing brief from each side and ruled that Watson had violated the conduct policy and that the NFL proved its case on all three points that it raised, including that Watson committed sexual assault (as defined by the league as unwanted sexual contact with another person).
Robinson ruled that Watson, as the league contended, also violated the policy with conduct that posed a genuine danger to the safety and well-being of another person, and by undermining or putting at risk the integrity of the NFL. She called Watson’s conduct “predatory” and “egregious.” But Robinson also wrote that Watson’s sexual assault was nonviolent, and she was bound, she said, on the length of the suspension by previous NFL discipline for nonviolent sexual assault.
Under a revised version of the personal conduct policy established by the 2020 collective bargaining agreement, either the league or the union was permitted to appeal to Goodell or a person designated by him. The NFLPA and Watson announced on the night before Robinson’s ruling was delivered that they would abide by her decision, urging the league to do the same. The NFL instead exercised its right to appeal on Aug. 3, and Goodell chose Harvey to hear the case.
Each side submitted a brief, and Harvey was to have made his decision without additional testimony or evidence beyond what was available to Robinson.
Goodell said at the conclusion of a one-day NFL owners’ meeting last week in Bloomington, Minn., that the league appealed Robinson’s decision because it felt “it was the right thing to do.”
The NFL continued to pursue a suspension of an entire season, Goodell said then, “because we’ve seen the evidence. She was very clear about the evidence. She reinforced the evidence that there [were] multiple violations here and they were egregious and it was predatory behavior. Those are things that we always felt were really important for us to address in a way that’s responsible.”
Watson issued a public apology in a televised interview before the Browns’ opening preseason game last Friday.
On Thursday, both Watson and Browns owners Jimmy Haslam and Dee Haslam released statements. Watson apologized for “any pain this situation has caused” and wrote that he takes accountability for his decisions.
“Now that a decision on discipline has been reached, we understand this is a real opportunity to create meaningful change and we are committed to investing in programs in Northeast Ohio that will educate our youth regarding awareness, understanding, and most importantly, prevention of sexual misconduct and the many underlying causes of such behavior,” the Haslams wrote in their statement.
Some observers viewed Watson’s apology as a potential precursor to a settlement between the league and union on the disciplinary measures. As they negotiated with the NFLPA on the settlement, NFL leaders had to weigh their desire to see Watson punished sufficiently with an inclination to keep a courtroom case from extending into the regular season.
Watson did not play at all last season, as the Texans placed him on their game-day inactive list on a weekly basis. He was not suspended and was paid his entire $10.5 million salary. A hefty fine was seen as a means by which the NFL and NFLPA could seek retroactively to make Watson’s idle 2021 season more closely resemble an unpaid suspension.
The CBA says that Harvey’s written decision would have represented the “full, final and complete disposition of the dispute.” But that might not have prevented Watson and the NFLPA from challenging the appeal ruling in federal court, even if some legal experts said in recent weeks that they would have faced long odds because of the deference the courts would have been expected to give to the collectively bargained dispute-resolution process.
In 2015, the NFLPA managed to put on hold the four-game suspension of quarterback Tom Brady, then with the New England Patriots, for his alleged role in a scheme to under-inflate footballs. Brady played the entire 2015 season, based on a ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman. But Brady served his entire Deflategate suspension in 2016 after a federal appeals court reinstated it.
Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott likewise served his full six-game suspension under the personal conduct policy after dropping an appeal in November 2017. The NFLPA managed to postpone the onset of Elliott’s suspension for half of that season.
More than two dozen women filed civil lawsuits against Watson based on his conduct in massage therapy sessions. Watson has denied those allegations. Of the 25 lawsuits filed, Watson has reached settlement agreements with 23 of the women, according to their attorney, Anthony Buzbee. One lawsuit was withdrawn, and one remains pending.
Buzbee also announced settlements by 30 women with the Texans. One woman had filed a lawsuit accusing Watson’s former team of enabling his alleged behavior.
Watson has not been charged with a crime. The personal conduct policy allows for a player to be disciplined without criminal charges.
Watson reported to training camp last month and has been practicing with the Browns. He participated in last Friday’s preseason opener in Jacksonville, Fla., after saying in his pregame interview that he was “not sure” when he would be allowed to play again after that.
The team signed veteran quarterback Jacoby Brissett in the offseason and has said that Brissett would become the starter while Watson is suspended. The Browns are scheduled to open their season Sept. 11 at Carolina. There has been recent speculation that they could attempt to trade for San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who is available after losing the Niners’ starting job. The Browns’ 12th game of the season, for which Watson would be eligible to return, is scheduled for Dec. 4 in Houston against his former team. | 2022-08-18T16:49:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson suspended 11 games, fined $5 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/deshaun-watson-suspended-appeal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/deshaun-watson-suspended-appeal/ |
Nationals catcher Keibert Ruiz is playing his first full MLB season. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The life of a big league catcher can be a grueling one, both mentally and physically. And recently, Keibert Ruiz, the rookie catcher for the Washington Nationals, has taken some shots that have been a reminder of how brutal it can be.
Ruiz, 24, was hit twice in the face mask with foul balls Monday and both times was tended to by Nationals Manager Dave Martinez, with head trainer Paul Lessard by his side. He was also hit by a pitch in that game, so Martinez opted to not start him the next day. But Ruiz pinch-hit in the seventh inning Tuesday and remained in the game, which went to extra innings. Then he started Wednesday’s game against the Chicago Cubs, the team’s 80th loss of the season.
“I just try to do everything I can possible off the field physically to maintain my energy,” said Ruiz, who joked that he takes Tylenol and Advil for the postgame headaches so he can get ready for the next day. “My strength with the lifting in the weights in the gym, just so that it doesn’t take a toll on me during the season.”
The Nationals face the Padres in San Diego on Thursday night.
Ruiz’s first full season in the big leagues has been a bumpy one as he worked through growing pains both at the plate and behind it. Martinez said earlier this week that the team wants him to play as much as possible to get live game reps and learn how to grind through a 162-game season; he caught 101 games across two organizations and two levels a year ago.
Entering Thursday, Ruiz has started 83 games behind the plate this year, trailing only three catchers, including the Philadelphia Phillies’ J.T. Realmuto, who tops with 94 starts. Ruiz has caught 743.1 innings, which ranks third among catchers.
The hands-on experience that Ruiz is getting behind the plate has resulted in success — he’s thrown out 19 runners this season, which ranks second among catchers, behind only Realmuto. Martinez added that he’s seen better game-calling from Ruiz as the season has progressed.
Still, Martinez has expressed concern about his catcher’s health in recent days.
“He’s been hit a lot this year and it’s kinda scaring me a little bit,” Martinez said after Monday’s game. “We’re gonna have to monitor him and keep an eye on him … those foul tips are really hard.”
Martinez said that Ruiz has a tendency to stay low and underneath hitters on swings, a technique that leads to a lot of caught foul tips. The downside is that it leaves Ruiz vulnerable to taking an excess of balls of his body.
“Those are the bad things about being a catcher,” Washington’s backup catcher, Tres Barrera, said about getting hit. “People say ‘Why did you choose to be a catcher?’ I didn’t choose to be a catcher, [being a catcher] kind of chose me … But yeah, man, he’s gotten beat up but he’s doing a great job.”
Barrera is one of the few people in the clubhouse who can actually relate to Ruiz’s experiences. He has been sitting in on daily meetings with Ruiz since July and has filled in as his backup, primarily catching on day games that follow night games to give Ruiz a breather.
Barrera noted that Ruiz has to deal with not the physical demands the game, but also the mental ones. If a catcher isn’t performing well at the plate, Barrera said, sometimes that can carry over to the defensive aspect of the game if he doesn’t compartmentalize.
That, coupled with the physical hits, can be taxing for a catcher in a long season. But Barrera has been impressed with how Ruiz has handled it all.
“Obviously, he’s gone through some ups and downs, but that was all expected,” Barrera said. “It just shows his maturity level, going in there attacking everyday like it’s a new day and I think he’s done a good job.” | 2022-08-18T16:49:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Catcher Keibert Ruiz adjusts to demands of MLB season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/keibert-ruiz-hit-catcher/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/keibert-ruiz-hit-catcher/ |
With political tensions on the rise, Pakistan launches media crackdown
Aide to ousted premier jailed after talk show outburst, top TV news station shut down
Shaiq Hussain
Journalists and employees of ARY News, a private news channel, protest the channel being taken off air by the government in Karachi, Pakistan, on Aug. 16. (Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images)
ISLAMABAD — The power struggle between Pakistan’s government and its ousted prime minister, Imran Khan, has escalated dramatically, with authorities targeting the pro-Khan press, and officials charging that India, Pakistan’s archrival, is among those supporting his surging comeback campaign.
A senior aide to Khan, arrested and imprisoned for making anti-military comments on a TV talk show two weeks ago, was transferred Wednesday to a hospital after his lawyers said he had been tortured in custody. The popular cable channel where he spoke, ARY News, has been forced off the air, and two of its news anchors have fled the country. Other journalists say they have been harassed and threatened.
The crackdown has come at a contentious and uncertain moment for the country and its leaders. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who took office in April, has made little progress in addressing the dire economic crisis that sent consumer prices skyrocketing. Khan, by contrast, has gained momentum in local elections and continues to lead large, boisterous rallies where he castigates the government.
The armed forces, which have pledged to stay out of the political feuding, are caught in the middle. The current army chief — widely considered the most powerful person in Pakistan — is due to retire in three months, and the replacement process has sparked a swirl of rumors and criticism. The Army’s image has also come under attack, especially among Khan supporters on social media.
Some made snide comments online about the fatal crash of a military helicopter Aug. 1 as it was providing humanitarian aid to a flood-ravaged region. The posts provoked a rare, emotional response from military officials, who said they had dishonored the victims and caused “anguish and distress” to their families.
The comments by Khan’s aide Shahbaz Gill on ARY, the most openly pro-Khan TV station, struck an especially raw nerve. In an indirect challenge to military discipline, he exhorted Pakistanis to follow their conscience rather than orders. “When you receive an order, you need to know your values and you have to be on the right side,” he said. “You are not a madman or an animal.”
The government response was swift. The Interior Ministry withdrew ARY’s security clearance, and the Electronic Media Regulatory Authority revoked its operating license, accusing the station of “false, hateful, and seditious content.” Officials then cut off its broadcast signal, silencing one of Pakistan’s most popular news channels. A senior government official, planning minister Ehsan Iqbal, said Khan was “conspiring to divide” Pakistan’s army.
Gill was detained for days, until a judge ordered him to be shifted to a hospital for medical reasons. Finally, he was carried out on a stretcher after a dramatic three-hour standoff outside the prison gates between two police departments that both claimed jurisdiction. His lawyer, Salman Safdar, said he had been tortured “in his private parts” while in custody, a claim Pakistan’s defense minister has denied.
A senior vice president at ARY was arrested at home and charged with sedition, as were several other staffers. One of the two anchors that fled the country, Sabir Shakir, tweeted that he had left “not under duress but to save the institution I love and my colleagues from any harm.”
Both Pakistani and international media organizations condemned the treatment of Gill and ARY. Dawn newspaper, an influential English-language daily, warned that the crackdown “could set a dangerous precedent” and said that by overreacting, the government had “given ammunition” to Khan and his party.
“Let’s not be fooled,” said Daniel Bastard, the Asia-Pacific Director for Reporters Without Borders. Although the Sharif government must be held accountable, he said, “it is the military that intervenes behind the scenes to bring Pakistan’s journalists to heel … The rule of law’s credibility is at stake.”
The crackdown has intensified as Khan’s political strength has grown. Although he was once seen as close to the military establishment, analysts say the former cricket star is now seen by the armed forces as an unreliable populist, while Sharif and his government are viewed as more cooperative members of the Pakistani establishment.
“The battle lines have been drawn and the press is being squeezed in between,” said Ayaz Amir, a veteran newspaper columnist and former liberal legislator. He has also faced intimidation for making outspoken public comments; in July he said he was pulled from his car and beaten by unknown assailants after giving a speech in Lahore.
“There is no coherent policy against the media, but sensitivities have grown,” Amir said. “The taboo now is Imran Khan. If you mention or praise him, you are suspect.”
On Saturday, Sharif and Khan staged contrasting events to celebrate Pakistan’s Independence Day. Sharif addressed the nation on TV, dressed in a sober green suit and tie, and invited Khan to join him in finding a path to economic recovery.
Khan led a raucous, late-night rally in a crowded hockey stadium, where he touted a new path to “real freedom” and denounced a “conspiracy” by the Sharif government to force him out of politics by charging him with illegally raising funds from foreign sources, including India.
In a tweet on Sunday, Khan warned the nation of “an unprecedented crackdown campaign by the imported government and state machinery” against journalists and media outlets aligned with his party. “If we allow these terror tactics to succeed, we will be returning to the dark days of dictatorship,” he said.
The government’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, denounced the “negative” social media campaign against the armed forces as a “joint project” and a “smear campaign” by Khan’s party and the Indian government against the Pakistani army.
Asif said 18 social media accounts supporting Khan had been found in India, and that the ex-premier is working to “safeguard and advance” the interests of India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan and remains its main enemy. | 2022-08-18T17:09:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With political tensions on the rise, Pakistan launches media crackdown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/pakistan-ary-news-khan-sharif/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/pakistan-ary-news-khan-sharif/ |
Dan Price stepped down as CEO of Gravity Payments, the Seattle-based payment-processing company he formed in 2004. (MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images/MediaNews Group via Getty Images)
Dan Price said Wednesday that he was stepping down from Gravity Payments, a credit card processing firm, to dedicate more time to “fighting false allegations.” Earlier this year, he was accused of attempting to kiss a woman against her will, the Seattle Times reported.
He also reduced his own $1 million compensation to that floor, taking a more than 90 percent pay cut, and tapped roughly three-quarters of that year’s profits to cover the higher wages, the report added. Price said he would keep his salary low until the profits were earned back.
On Twitter Price touted the success of his company’s model and the benefits afforded to employees. The minimum pay for workers is now $80,000, he said, and staff received a $10,000 baseline raise this year. Job openings typically attract more than 300 applicants, he said.
The original salary floor was set the same year Price won a legal battle against his brother, Lucas Price. A three-week court battle ensued after his older brother, Lucas Price, alleged that his rights as a minority shareholder were violated when Dan Price upped his own salary later that year. A King County Superior Court judge disagreed, and ordered Lucas Price to pay his brother’s legal fees, totaling $1.3 million.
Now 38, Price’s public persona is shaped around his advocacy for average workers and criticism of big business. He authored a 2020 book entitled “Worth It: How a Million-Dollar Pay Cut and a $70,000 Minimum Wage Revealed a Better Way of Doing Business.” That same year, he wrote a perspective piece for The Washington Post, championing his company’s treatment of workers as a model that allowed staff to decide how to confront the economic shocks during the early months of the pandemic.
He also wrote that 98 percent of Gravity Payments employees volunteered to temporarily cut their pay from 5 to 100 percent to avoid layoffs. On Wednesday Price said that the company has never laid off a single employee in its 18-year history. | 2022-08-18T18:19:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price resigns amid assault allegations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/dan-price-resigns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/dan-price-resigns/ |
Residents of the West Coast face a multitude of hazards
Jesse Moore cools off in the Salmon Street Springs fountain in Portland, Ore. (Craig Mitchelldyer/AP)
Weather alerts blanket the West Coast, even as much of the rest of the country remains relatively quiet weather-wise. All across California and the Pacific Northwest, heat advisories and excessive heat warnings are in place, and temperatures are expected to top 100 degrees in spots. A few dry thunderstorms could bring fire concerns, too, and in the Desert Southwest there’s potential for flooding.
The maelstrom of meteorological chaos is delivering seemingly contrasting hazards to one of the most populous corridors of the Lower 48. As places like Fresno, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Portland and Seattle deal with high temperatures 10 or more degrees above what’s typical, Tucson, Phoenix and Santa Fe are bracing for excessive rainfall. It’s an active summertime pattern delivering some high-impact results — and it may continue through at least the remainder of the workweek.
The culprit? A high pressure heat dome parked just east of the Sierra Nevada. It’s delivering hot, dry, sinking air to much of the West Coast, while clockwise flow around it is helping scoop a tongue of monsoonal moisture into the Desert Southwest. That leads to a feast or famine weather pattern. Some wind up with too much rainfall, while others are drought-stricken and moisture-starved.
Excessive heat in California
More than 17 million Americans are under heat advisories on the West Coast, with another million or so included under excessive heat warnings. Advisories stretch through the entire San Joaquin Valley in California and blanket most of Washington state and the northern half of Oregon. Excessive heat warnings are in effect for central Washington state and include the city of Yakima.
The heat will last through Saturday in the Central Valley, where just about everyone is expected to see highs climb to between 102 and 107 degrees. Redding, Calif., has seen highs at or above 102 degrees every day since Aug. 13, and even made it to 110 degrees Tuesday and Wednesday. That tied a 102-year-old record on Tuesday, and hit a new record Wednesday. The city is expected to hit 108 degrees Thursday, 107 on Friday and 108 Saturday before a cool-down back to the century mark into Sunday.
Temperatures in Sacramento won’t be quite as extreme but could still hit 102 degrees Thursday, 105 on Friday and 103 on Saturday.
“Widespread moderate to high heat risk [is] expected,” wrote the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “Hot temperatures will significantly increase the potential for heat-related illnesses, particularly for those working or participating in outdoor activities.”
One slight silver lining to the heat, if it could be called that, is that dry conditions will allow overnight lows to bottom out in the upper 60s to near 70, offering some nocturnal relief.
By Sunday, a trough, or a dip in the jet stream, will approach the California coastline, turning winds onshore and ushering a cooler, more manageable air mass.
A hot day or two in the Pacific Northwest
The heat is shorter-lived in the Pacific Northwest. In Seattle, for example, Thursday is the only day expected to be anomalously hot. After a projected high of 93 degrees, which would break a daily record of 88 set in 1991, the temperatures should fall back to the lower 80s on Friday and upper 70s to near 80 on Saturday.
Farther east, that incipient onshore flow will be more delayed in its arrival, leading to an extra day of heat for places like Kennewick, Wash., in the Columbia River Basin, where Friday could hit 103 after a day around 106. Both weekend days should flirt with or exceed 100 degrees. The same will be true in Yakima, where readings are projected to hit 104 on Thursday and 101 on Friday.
An excessive heat warning is in effect and the local National Weather Service office is warning of “dangerously hot conditions.”
In Portland, the heat is also fleeting. Temperatures on Thursday could hit 95 degrees, but highs will settle back into the 80s thereafter.
Fire concerns for some
The extreme heat will be of serious concern in Northern California and southern Oregon, where “abundant lightning on dry fuels” could become a major issue for wildfire ignition. The heat will desiccate the landscape, extracting what little moisture remains from already dry vegetation, allowing the landscape to act as a tinder box with dry fuels ready to burn. Add a lightning threat and possible ignition source, and the situation becomes precarious.
There is risk for dry thunderstorms both Thursday and Friday — thunderstorms with rain that evaporates in a layer of near-surface dry air before hitting the ground. That means lightning can spark new fires without the presence of rain to extinguish the quickly kindled flames. That concern is expected in parts of central Oregon and Washington, too, albeit to a slightly lesser extent.
Flooding in the Desert Southwest
1128pm: A zone of showers and thunderstorms extends from Gila and northeast Maricopa County south-southwestward through western Pinal and into central Pima County. Expect this to last for another couple of hours before diminishing. #azwx pic.twitter.com/rdUOYUtRaL
Over New Mexico and Arizona, the thunderstorms will be far from dry. In fact, they’ll be robust in their precipitation, with rainfall rates briefly topping 1 inch per hour in a few areas. While most storms will be few and far between, they’ll pepper the landscape and blossom in humid southerly flow at the atmosphere’s mid-levels, wafting north across much of Southern California and Nevada, the majority of Arizona and New Mexico, and even a few zones north of the Four Corners.
The term “monsoon” doesn’t mean a downpour. Instead, it refers to the seasonal wind shift that induces downpours. For most of the year, westerly flow keeps the Southwest bone dry, but this time of year it turns more southerly, introducing moisture.
Flood watches are up for most of New Mexico and Arizona, as well as in southern Utah.
Most of the Desert Southwest records less than 10 inches of precipitation per year. A quick-hitting monsoonal downpour can deliver 10 percent or 20 percent of that in an hour or two. While the rainfall is welcomed, when it falls so rapidly it can quickly overwhelm the sandy soil’s ability to absorb it, leading to runoff and pockets of flooding.
Just last week, Death Valley, Calif., recorded 1.46 inches of rainfall in a single day from the monsoon, missing the all-time daily rainfall record by 0.01 inches. The geographically extreme rainfall rates were regarded as a “thousand-year rain event.” | 2022-08-18T18:19:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Western United States is facing high heat and possible fires and flooding - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/heat-fire-flooding-west/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/heat-fire-flooding-west/ |
Brian Stelter will leave CNN as his 'Reliable Sources’ is cancelled
The 30-year-old show is the first major programming casualty under the management of new network boss Chris Licht.
Brian Stelter speaks onstage at a conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2018. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter is leaving the company and the network will cancel the 30-year-old weekly media news show that he has hosted since 2013.
Sunday’s episode of “Reliable Sources” will be the last, a network spokesperson said. “We appreciate his contributions to the network and wish him well as he embarks on new endeavors,” the spokesperson added.
CNN executive Amy Entelis, in a separate statement, said that Stelter “departs CNN an impeccable broadcaster” and that the company is “confident [his team’s] impact and influence will long outlive the show,” Entelis said.
The cancellation news, which was first reported by NPR, is the first major programming shake-up under the management of new network boss Chris Licht. The veteran news producer and television executive began serving as chairman and chief executive of CNN Worldwide this spring, replacing Jeff Zucker, who was pushed out by parent company management in February.
Licht has made other recent changes to CNN’s weekend lineup, though, including the decision to dedicate the 7 p.m. hour on Sunday nights to former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.
Stelter, 36, joined CNN from the New York Times in 2013, where he had established himself at a young age as a top media reporter; he got his start in the field by launching his own much-read blog about the broadcast news industry, TV Newswer, while an undergraduate at Towson University. He is the author of a 2020 book about Fox News, which he has covered closely for many years, and another book in 2013 that chronicled the world of morning television.
“I’m grateful for my nine years with CNN, proud of what we accomplished on Reliable Sources and so thankful for the viewers who tuned in every week for our examination of the media, truth and the stories that shape our world,” Stelter told The Post in a statement. “It was a rare privilege to lead a weekly show focused on the press at a time when it has never been more consequential.”
Stelter said he would address his departure on Sunday’s episode of the show.
Oliver Darcy, a senior media reporter for CNN, will continue working at the network and will helm the network’s nightly media newsletter, a spokesperson said. | 2022-08-18T18:19:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brian Stelter will leave CNN as his 'Reliable Sources’ is cancelled - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/08/18/brian-stelter-cnn-reliable-sources-licht/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/08/18/brian-stelter-cnn-reliable-sources-licht/ |
Rachal Dollard, 33, was arrested over the weekend and charged with second-degree murder and introduction of contraband into a penal facility, the Tennessee Department of Correction said in a news release. Authorities said she was spotted giving drugs to Brown as the two shared a kiss during a February visit at the Turney Center Industrial Complex. Brown swallowed a small balloon filled with half an ounce of methamphetamine and died at a hospital.
Dollard could face up to 60 years behind bars if found guilty of the murder charge. In the interview with NBC News, her mother said, “we’ve all been kind of blindsided by this.” | 2022-08-18T18:19:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman faces murder charge after sneaking meth to inmate boyfriend in kiss - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/meth-kiss-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/meth-kiss-death/ |
The GOP’s child tax credit proposals could lift more than 1 million kids out of poverty. Will Democrats do the right thing?
Perspective by Daniel Hemel
Daniel Hemel is a professor at New York University School of Law.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), left, and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) head to a vote on Capitol Hill in February. Their child tax credit proposal with Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) could lift more than 1 million children out of poverty, writes Daniel Hemel. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Comedian George Carlin once quipped — in a routine that’s gotten fresh attention since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — that pro-life conservatives “are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months,” but “once you’re born, you’re on your own.” Democratic politicians and left-leaning pundits have trotted out various versions of Carlin’s witticism as Republican-led states race to enact ever-more-restrictive abortion laws.
As an attack line, Carlin’s wisecrack remains a zinger. But in recent weeks, three antiabortion Republican senators have put forward a proposal to expand the federal child tax credit, challenging Carlin’s claim that pro-lifers don’t care about life after birth — a proposal that, despite its flaws, is projected to lift more than 1 million children out of poverty. While that complicates the Democrats’ effort to brand themselves as the only party that cares about humans outside the womb, it also creates an opening for a bipartisan compromise that could meaningfully improve the lives of low-income children.
Granted, the three GOP senators — Mitt Romney (Utah), Richard Burr (N.C.) and Steve Daines (Mont.) — are not necessarily representative of Republicans writ large. A fourth Republican senator, Marco Rubio (Fla.), has introduced his own proposal to expand the child credit, though it would do less for many low-income children than his colleagues’ plan. The other 46 Senate Republicans are missing in action.
Yet the Democrats have not exactly covered themselves in glory either when it comes to aiding children in need. When a six-month Democratic-backed boost to the child tax credit neared its December 2021 expiration date, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected the possibility of extending the enhancement via stand-alone legislation, saying that the credit was “really important leverage” in the discussion over the Democrats’ broader Build Back Better package because “children and their families will suffer without that payment.” The version of Build Back Better that passed the House late last year would have extended the increase for only 12 more months, and when Democrats downsized that legislation to win the swing vote of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), they scrapped even the one-year extension and left low-income children on the cutting room floor.
In fairness, President Biden has presided over the most significant expansion of the child credit in the provision’s quarter-century history. The March 2021 pandemic relief package, which Biden signed into law, temporarily raised the credit from $2,000 per child through age 16 to $3,600 for children under age 6 and $3,000 for children ages 6 through 17. The law also provided for half the credit to be paid out in monthly installments from July through December 2021, and it allowed low-income families to receive the credit on the same terms as their middle-class counterparts.
Biden and congressional Democrats deserve praise for the 2021 expansion. (Not a single Republican in either chamber voted for the measure.) In the second half of last year, according to Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, the changes to the credit kept more than 3 million children out of poverty (as calculated using the supplemental poverty measure, which accounts for government benefits). And contrary to a conservative canard about the credit sparking a mass exodus from the labor force, the Columbia researchers found that the expansion had no significant effect on whether parents worked.
Welfare is no substitute for a child tax credit
But by the same token, Biden also has presided over the most dramatic contraction of the child credit in the provision’s life span. In January, the benefit reverted to a maximum of $2,000 per child — and less for low-income families. It’s about to get even stingier. The $2,000 amount is itself a temporary measure put in place by the 2017 Trump tax cuts — and set to expire at the end of 2025. After that, the credit is scheduled to return to Obama-era parameters: a maximum of $1,000 per child, with households having to earn more than $3,000 to receive even a cent.
With that grim scenario on the horizon, most low-income families with children should welcome the new proposal from Romney, Burr and Daines. Their plan would increase the maximum annual credit to $4,200 for each child under age 6 and $3,000 for each child ages 6 through 17, paid out in monthly installments. While their bill still would require families to earn income to receive the credit, the income phase-in would be much faster than under current law: Families could start receiving the credit with their first dollar of income and could receive the full credit once their income reached $10,000. Under current law, by contrast, a single parent with two kids would have to earn at least $29,400 to receive the credit in full.
For many poor families, the impact would be immediate and substantial. For example, a single parent with two young children who works full-time at the federal minimum wage would — by my calculations — receive $2,645 more under the Republicans’ plan than under current law. Moreover, all the provisions in the Republicans’ proposal would be permanent.
The bill also would allow parents to receive credit payments starting four months before a baby’s due date. Pro-abortion-rights Democrats may balk at defining fetuses as children for tax credit purposes, and antiabortion groups, for their part, have embraced the provision as supposedly signifying that life begins before birth. The two sides can say what they want about symbolism, but in any event, giving cash to pregnant women is a good idea: Solid social-science evidence shows that cash transfers to expectant mothers reduce the incidence of low birth weight, an indicator of improved infant health outcomes.
Child care has bipartisan support. But the culture war could wreck that.
Not all low-income families would stand to benefit from the Republicans’ bill. Indeed, some single-parent families with one or two older children would actually be worse off. That’s because the bill would reduce the maximum earned-income tax credit — which supplements the pay of low-wage workers — and would eliminate head-of-household filing status, which allows unmarried adults with dependents to pay lower rates than other single taxpayers.
Still, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that roughly two-thirds of children in families with incomes below $50,000 would benefit from the bill, and the total number of children living in poverty would decline by 1.3 million.
To be sure, Romney and his Republican co-sponsors would demand their pound of flesh from Democrats in exchange for expanding the child tax credit. Their bill would pay for the expansion by — among other measures — eliminating the state and local tax deduction. That would be a bitter pill to swallow for Democratic lawmakers from high-tax states like California, New Jersey and New York, whose upper-income constituents would see their federal taxes rise if the SALT deduction were ditched. Even so, Democrats should jump at the opportunity to lift more than 1 million kids out of poverty. The theoretical arguments for the SALT deduction — for example, that it makes it easier for state and local governments to raise revenue — can’t compete with the concrete impact on a young child’s life of a significant and recurrent boost to family income.
Plugging his own plan this month, Rubio wrote that “being pro-life means more than opposing abortion.” Reciprocally, being pro-choice means more than supporting the right to end a pregnancy. It also means making parenthood financially feasible for lower-income people, so that “choice” doesn’t mean a Hobson’s choice between having an abortion and raising a child in poverty.
When it comes to supporting children, neither side has lived up to its commitments. Republicans’ exclusion of low-income families from the full credit is far from a “pro-life” position. Whether life begins at conception, at birth or sometime in between, it certainly begins before family income crosses the $10,000 threshold. And, of course, Romney, Burr, Daines and Rubio are outliers in their party for proposing any additional aid to low-income families.
But if Democrats are serious when they say abortion and parenthood should both be real options, they should pursue a bipartisan deal to expand the child tax credit permanently. Hopefully they can bring Republicans on board while fixing some of the flaws in the new GOP plans, but even if the only option is an up-or-down vote on the proposal from Romney, Burr and Daines, lifting more than 1 million children out of poverty is better than lifting none. And if Democrats instead choose to use low-income kids as “leverage” for other policy priorities, then Carlin’s quip will boomerang on them. “Once you’re born, you’re on your own” will be a motto befitting both parties. | 2022-08-18T18:20:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Expanding the child tax credit would improve the lives of children - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/18/child-tax-credit-romney-rubio-carlin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/18/child-tax-credit-romney-rubio-carlin/ |
Florida is making life harder for academics like me. We can’t let it.
Gov. DeSantis’s Stop Woke Act is trying to keep academics from teaching what’s true and right
Perspective by Diane Roberts
Diane Roberts is a journalist and professor of English at Florida State University. Her most recent book is "Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addresses attendees during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Friday, July 22, 2022. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
For professors, the advent of the fall semester means nailing down the course syllabus as you gear up to engage a new set of sharp, eager young people. But with the passage of the Stop Woke Act in Florida, it also means that if you make the wrong choices in your course prep, your university could lose millions in state funding, and you could be disciplined or even fired for teaching something Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) doesn’t like. And there are a lot of things he doesn’t like: interrogating traditional gender roles, studying how slavery was baked into our founding documents, exploring the stories of transgender people and acknowledging that America enshrines inequality even as it celebrates liberty.
Last year, DeSantis made a point of crowing about Florida universities’ impressive U.S. News & World Report rankings. Florida State (where I teach) was No. 19 among public research institutions; the University of Florida hit the heights at No. 5. But this is an election year. DeSantis is running for a second term as governor and positioning himself as a 2024 presidential candidate. Branding himself an anti-education belligerent in the culture wars may be a winning strategy. The Ivy League graduate says higher education is, by its very nature, “elitist.” He’s taken to calling a college degree a mere “piece of paper” that can “cost too much anyway,” and accusing Florida universities of promoting “a radical political agenda” and “indoctrinating” students into Marxism.
Well, if academics aim to inspire the youth of Florida to seize the means of production and overthrow the bourgeois order, we’re doing a bad job of it. Most of my students are too busy working to pay their rent, trying to land a decent internship or studying for the LSAT to foment revolution.
Like most of us in history, social science, the arts and the humanities — topics at which DeSantis, who has a BA in history, constantly sneers — I’m aware that subjects I raise in my classroom might fall into the state’s list of dangerous “concepts.” I teach creative-writing workshops in which I encourage students to tell uncomfortable stories about people on the margins. I also teach literature by the likes of William Faulkner, James Baldwin and Octavia Butler — authors who struggled with this country’s unfinished civil war and unfulfilled promise of racial justice. If I ask my class to analyze how Mark Twain satirizes White privilege or to think about ways Toni Morrison’s novels lay bare the systemic racism that has poisoned the American body politic, will I be hauled before some tribunal, accused of causing a White student to suffer — as the Stop Woke Act puts it — “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex”?
I’ve taught for 30 years in Southern state universities where the undergraduates are rich, poor, White, Black, Brown, Asian, gay, straight, queer, trans, on the right, on the left and everything in between. I’ve never seen a White student paralyzed by guilt or anguish from reading Frederick Douglass’s account of being viciously whipped by the plantation overseer. I’ve never known a student of color to blame her or his White classmates for Jim Crow. I have seen them come to understand that America often does not live up to its promise. We can study how great writers challenge hatred without getting our feelings hurt; we can examine a full spectrum of thought from Abraham Lincoln’s assurance that America is “the last best hope of earth” to Baldwin’s charge that, as a Black person, “the country to which you have pledged allegiance along with everyone else has not pledged allegiance to you.” Young people want not to worship their country but to investigate it as they strive to advance that more perfect union politicians like to talk about. Students aren’t haplessly seduced into socialism by college professors. That’s not how it works, and DeSantis, conservative alumnus of those liberal fleshpots Yale and Harvard, surely knows as much.
DeSantis is trying to scare Florida’s academics. Unfortunately, it’s working. The University of Central Florida recently removed statements promoting inclusivity and racial justice from its department websites. Talented young scholars hesitate to take jobs in Florida, while some of the state’s most eminent thinkers are getting out, as I know from my own conversations with some of those who’ve left or are planning to leave. As for those national rankings the governor was so proud of? They’ll almost certainly suffer.
I'm a Florida school board member. This is how protesters come after me.
Florida has a tradition of self-defeating and frankly embarrassing assaults on higher education. In the early 1970s, conservative Democrats in the Legislature tried to shut down FSU’s Center for Participant Education, a “free university” that they claimed was run by anti-American “radicals.” From 1956 to 1965, a legislative committee led by state Sen. Charley Johns scoured Florida campuses looking for what he saw as deviants and promoters of racial integration. The Johns Committee, modeled on the House Un-American Activities Committee, targeted Florida A&M University, a historically Black college, in an attempt to uncover “communists” in the NAACP and supporters of the 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott. The committee then expanded its scope to all of Florida’s public institutions, hunting “reds” and homosexuals, demanding that anyone rumored to be gay, anyone who taught evolution, or anyone who assigned “subversive” books such as “The Catcher in the Rye” and “The Grapes of Wrath” be fired or even prosecuted. More than 400 students were forced to drop out of college, and around 100 faculty members lost their jobs. Far from supporting his people, UF’s then-president, J. Wayne Reitz, colluded with Johns in persecuting them.
Sixty years later, cowed college administrators are still caving to zealots in Florida’s government. In 2021 a pediatrician at the UF College of Medicine was told he could not testify in a lawsuit challenging the state’s ban on school mask mandates. The university also refused to allow three voting rights scholars to appear as expert witnesses in a case involving Florida’s new election laws. The university informed the political science professors that “outside activities that may pose a conflict of interest to the executive branch of the State of Florida create a conflict for the University of Florida.” Though UF later relented and allowed the professors to testify, Kent Fuchs, the school’s president, did little to protect academic freedom on his campus. The chairman of UF’s Board of Trustees, a big-money GOP donor, called the professors “disrespectful” and threatened them: “Let me tell you, our legislators are not going to put up with the wasting of state money and resources, and neither will this board.”
DeSantis and his political vassals are not finished with us, either. Draft legislation unearthed by investigative reporter Jason Garcia reveals a plan to force universities to “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization” and give university trustees — many of whom are political appointees chosen by DeSantis or former governor (now senator) Rick Scott — the power to hire and fire faculty at will. These proposals were shelved but may be back at next year’s legislative session.
DeSantis likes to call Florida “the freest state in these United States.” University faculty wonder if that freedom extends to the mind. Many, perhaps most, of us will continue to teach the way we always have, raising difficult questions and encouraging debate. But junior faculty not protected by tenure may think they must censor themselves in the classroom. That will be a shame. Education demands that we search for truth, even painful truth. I will continue assigning books by Herman Melville and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alice Walker and Alison Bechdel, Claudia Rankine and Richard Wright — writers who confront America’s past sins to help new generations shape America’s future. That’s my job. I might even use the words “critical” and “race” in the same sentence. | 2022-08-18T18:20:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeSantis is trying to stop academics like me from teaching the truth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/18/florida-stop-woke-act-teaching-desantis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/18/florida-stop-woke-act-teaching-desantis/ |
I suffered a traumatic brain injury. It made me a better doctor.
Becoming a patient helped me remember that the best doctors listen compassionately. We need to ensure that all physicians are empowered to do the same.
Perspective by Daniel M. Horn
Daniel M. Horn is a primary care physician and director of population health and quality for the Division of General Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
A typical primary-care doctor has an active load of more than 2,300 patients, leaving little time for personalized care. (iStock)
I’ve been a primary-care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School for 12 years. I always thought that I was great at what I did. Then I had an accident. In becoming a patient, I became a better physician — but I also faced the uncomfortable truth that our health-care system isn’t set up to support being a good primary-care doctor.
In July 2018, I was on a late-afternoon, 30-mile Sunday bike ride to Dover, Mass. By the time I made my way back home, it was dusk. About two miles from my house, at the bottom of a steep downhill section, a construction crew had left a pile of sand in the middle of the road. I hit the sand straight on. My back tire fishtailed, and I found myself heading straight into a pond. I decided to jump off the bike. As I landed, I smashed my forehead into the road and cracked my helmet in half. I didn’t lose consciousness. I foolishly got up and biked home, took a shower, drank some wine, and went to bed.
The next morning when I started seeing patients, I found that their words were passing directly through me. The room began spinning and I couldn’t think. I was certain I was about to die in my own exam room. I called for help and was rushed down to the ER. Fortunately, a scan showed that my brain looked normal. I had a concussion and was told that I needed to take it easy for 10 days.
Ten days turned into nearly 100. I could not read, use screens or spend time with my amazing, but amazingly loud, children. I could not bend down to put clothes into the laundry without vertigo. I talked to a lot of doctor friends who told me that this was just how concussions were and that I’d improve soon. But I didn’t.
A month in, I sent a panicked message to my primary care physician, who connected me directly to the concussion guy at my hospital. He was an internationally renowned expert and also a great caregiver, two things that don’t necessarily go hand in hand. We immediately began having frequent, long appointments with lots of phone calls in between.
Chronic pain is surprisingly treatable
I didn’t need medication, but I did need a doctor who had the patience and time to determine what would serve me best. My doctor performed a thorough physical exam and found that my vertigo could be reversed with special maneuvers, and he connected me to a physical therapist with the expertise I needed. My doctor determined that my brain injury had caused a vision issue that made it difficult to focus on things close by, such as books or a computer screen. I was given eye exercises and special glasses, which, over time, allowed me to begin reading again. He referred me to a psychologist who helped me work through the intense anxiety that is common after a traumatic brain injury. Through it all, my concussion doctor was the shepherd, ready to guide me though every step. It really mattered: My recovery was an agonizing two years long, and the real medical magic was in talking, listening, access and advocacy.
The experience ultimately transformed my own medical practice. Early in my career, I was concerned with fixing the problems that plague primary care: extraordinarily high rates of burnout, a sense that we are governed by the electronic health record and unreasonable expectations about the number of patients we could see in a day. I did things like establishing team-based protocols so that my patients would be better cared for by the phenomenal nurses and medical assistants on our team. I implemented a medical scribe program, providing assistants who could transcribe physicians’ notes into the electronic health record. I was able to meet all the targets for quality, volume and revenue targets set by my institution. I quickly became a leader within my organization. I was a happy, fulfilled primary-care doctor.
At the same time, my passion for fixing problems had translated to an excessive focus on boundary setting, delegation of important tasks and clock management. There were layers of staff between me and my patients, even when things were going really wrong. I never went out of my way to connect my patients with specific specialists because I relied on our referral management system to do its job. I scorned my colleagues who always made sure to see their own patients who were admitted to the hospital — what dinosaurs!
A surprising pandemic side effect: It has improved health care
My accident taught me that most of the work I was doing isn’t what really matters to patients. Now, I listen to my patients more attentively, talking through their concerns and their goals. I make sure they know how to reach me if something is going wrong. I call them and their family members to discuss important issues. I offer hugs and high-fives. I routinely write personal notes to the specialists I am sending my patients to, framing the clinical scenario for them. I even started serving as the doctor of record when my patients are in the hospital. The magic is in the talking, listening, access and advocacy.
In doing all of that, however, I’m practicing medicine in a manner that is unsustainable for the average doctor. A typical primary-care doctor cares for an active patient load of more than 2,300 patients. That allows barely enough time to see each patient once per year, and many need to be seen far more frequently than that. The overwhelming volume of patients, coupled with a payment model that pays less for primary-care visits than for minor specialty procedures, forces primary care physicians to see patients every 15 to 20 minutes. In a recent national survey, 25 percent of primary-care physicians indicated that they expected to leave clinical practice in the next three years. That’s why I focused on boundary setting, delegation and clock management early in my career: I wanted to survive in primary care for the long term.
How do I manage to do things differently now? Simple: I see patients part-time. I care for elderly patients with highly complex medical conditions, and I can serve them the way I want to only if I care for no more than 500 at a time. That is equivalent to about 25 percent of a full-time clinical effort. But let’s be clear: If I didn’t have an academic job that supports the rest of my salary, I would make only around $65,000 per year for that 25 percent effort. That salary wouldn’t allow a typical doctor to pay down their average medical student debt of $241,600 while living in an expensive metropolitan area.
Things are changing. Many innovators are building primary-care delivery models that pay doctors full-time salaries to provide high-touch care to a total of around 500 elderly patients with multiple health issues. A concept called direct primary care is also steadily growing. In this model, employers or patients pay a monthly membership fee that averages between $20 and $85 per person. In exchange, their care teams provide them ready access and attention, either in person or virtually, when they need it. They can do so because the average load for a full-time direct primary-care doctor ranges from 400 to 600 patients. (Amazon currently plans to purchase One Medical, a direct primary-care company. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The problem is that as these models grow and offer a more appealing way to practice medicine, they will rapidly suck up the available primary-care clinicians, exacerbating a severe workforce shortage. In many parts of the country it is already impossible to find a primary-care doctor accepting new patients, and as physicians see fewer patients in these new models of care, things will only get worse. We will need to increase the number of medical students, nurse practitioners and physician assistants going into primary care dramatically. Most important, these private-sector models risk neglecting our most vulnerable communities.
So how do I reconcile my experiences since my accident — as a patient and as a doctor — with the fact that there are so many problems still to solve in primary care? I have learned that physicians need to be empowered to care for their patients with the dedication and compassion they envisioned when they first went to medical school. More important, the medical system must find a way to appropriately value that dedication and compassion, talking and listening. In doing so, we can restore love to the practice of medicine — and we may save primary care. | 2022-08-18T18:21:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paying doctors to listen to their patients would improve primary care - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/18/primary-care-traumatic-brain-injury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/18/primary-care-traumatic-brain-injury/ |
But Vance shuttered the nonprofit last year and its foundation in May, shortly after clinching the state's Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, according to state records reviewed by The Associated Press. An AP review found that the charity’s most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. | 2022-08-18T18:21:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vance's anti-drug charity enlisted doctor echoing Big Pharma - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/vances-anti-drug-charity-enlisted-doctor-echoing-big-pharma/2022/08/18/b1dec7ac-1f1f-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/vances-anti-drug-charity-enlisted-doctor-echoing-big-pharma/2022/08/18/b1dec7ac-1f1f-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Health, economic disparities continue to affect some coronavirus hot spots
Neighbors described the coronavirus as a hurricane that swept through violently: It sickened thousands, put dozens to mourn, it stripped jobs away, and today it continues to wreak vengeance
Nidia Navarro sits next to her husband, Carlos Gomez, at their home in Langley Park, Md. Navarro lost her job cleaning houses early in the pandemic, and Gomez was recently diagnosed with kidney failure and is now unable to work. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
A few yards from Isabel Espinoza’s Langley Park apartment, the area shows signs of the labors of this working-class immigrant neighborhood: Carpet cleaning trucks sit in parking lots, corner street vendors sell fruit cups with chile and lime, and men walk into three-story brick buildings, their jeans stained with paint.
Then Espinoza pointed to the windows.
“People were evicted there,” Espinoza said, her right index finger indicating an apartment complex across from hers.
“She’s now having long covid symptoms,” she continued, moving her finger slightly to the left.
Her finger moved upward. “He spent last Christmas and New Year’s hiding in a basement because he caught the virus, thinking he was going to die. He even called his children to say goodbye,” she said.
When the coronavirus pandemic first hit in March 2020, thousands of front-line workers like Espinoza’s neighbors became essential — caring for the sick, cleaning schools, packing and delivering supplies, picking produce and processing food that made it to the tables of millions of Americans. As they worked, often in close proximity and without enough personal protective equipment, the coronavirus ran rampant, turning their communities into deadly virus hot spots.
Now, nearly two and a half years later, hot spots like Langley Park in Prince George’s County or the areas around the poultry-processing plants on the Eastern Shore are still suffering from economic and health effects.
“The situation here is that we haven’t been able to recover,” said Espinoza, 55, who despite her diabetes — which puts her at higher risk of complications from the coronavirus — has risked her own health to care for sick neighbors.
During the first coronavirus wave, the 20783 Zip code, which includes the Langley Park neighborhood where Espinoza has lived for more than two decades, had the highest infection rate in the state: 2,671 cases by August 2020.
Coronavirus is still an issue in the area — as of Thursday there have been 9,173 cases in Zip code 20783, according to Maryland Department of Health data — but cases are likely undercounted as many contract coronavirus more than once but don’t seek medical care or testing. Seventy percent of this Zip code’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, but some neighbors said they are still hesitant or fearful of getting a second dose or a booster.
Families in these areas have long endured health and economic inequities, and that is why advocates like Michelle LaRue, senior manager of health and science at CASA de Maryland, saw an urgent need to reach the community directly at the start of the pandemic to lessen the hit. A network of volunteer health promoters, or promotoras, led community outreach initiatives to provide information about coronavirus vaccines and food pantries, along with help with applications for rental assistance and health benefits.
Despite these efforts, advocates and families said long-standing issues have worsened since the start of the pandemic — many are unemployed or have had their work hours reduced, and more are facing housing instability. With rising gas prices, it has become harder to afford food, and access to health care continues to be a challenge.
“We are going to have the longest and slowest recovery phase of the pandemic,” said LaRue. “Other sectors of the community fared pretty well. If you had your own transportation, if you had a job that allowed you to do remote work, if you were already economically stable, I think people weathered the storm a lot better. Our communities didn’t have a lot of those luxuries and still don’t.”
Robust coronavirus relief programs such as direct cash payment, eviction protections, unemployment expansion and sick leave prevented many people from falling further into poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state government budget policies. As the pandemic has dragged into its third year, though, these benefits have expired or are about to do so. And many families never could access these benefits due to their immigration status.
That is the case for Nidia Navarro, who lost her job cleaning houses early in the pandemic.
First, work was scarce until there was none, she said. Because Navarro is undocumented, she did not qualify for unemployment benefits, and losing her income has meant less money for food, clothes and school supplies for her three children, and to buy medicine to treat her diabetes.
“We stop buying medicine to pay for electricity,” said Navarro, who is uninsured.
Life for Navarro and her family has been a never-ending battle ever since. Earlier this year, Navarro’s husband, Carlos Gomez, was diagnosed with kidney failure. Navarro is caring for him — he receives dialysis three times per week and has fainted going up the stairs — and she has not been able to go back to work. Now both are unemployed.
“We are worried about paying rent this month,” Navarro said the last day of July. “How are we going to pay?”
Del. Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s), incoming chair of the Health and Government Operations Committee in the state House of Delegates, said in an interview she is working on finding solutions to expand health care for the uninsured, including the 4 percent of Maryland residents she said are undocumented.
During this year’s legislative session, Peña-Melnyk introduced legislation to expand Medicaid for immigrants regardless of their immigration status, but the bill did not leave committee. Another bill she wrote, allowing undocumented pregnant women access to Medicaid, was successful.
“I had to decide which one was going to be the priority,” Peña-Melnyk said. “We are going to try again next year.”
In Prince George’s County, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program designed to help families who are behind in rent has not been taking new applications since December. County officials said the application portal was closed to address the backlog of applications they received.
“If additional funding is provided to us by our State and Federal Partners, we will assess whether the portal can be reopened to new applicants,” Jose C. Sousa, assistant deputy chief administrative officer for economic development, said in an email.
As of May, an estimated 14 percent of Maryland renters were behind on rent; of those, half are unemployed and 82 percent are low income, according to a Maryland Food Bank report released last month.
Rethinking health equity
On a recent Saturday morning in Princess Anne in Somerset County, a coalition of community organizations, volunteers and local health officials came together to support a particularly vulnerable population living in the most remote areas of the Eastern and lower shores: food processing workers.
“Is it difficult to schedule or find an appointment to get a vaccine?” Ricardo Ortiz, an activist at the migrant rights organization Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), asked a poultry worker.
Among the options offered, Rosalva Rojas, from Guerrero, Mexico, who works in a Mountaire Farms chicken hatchery, responded, “Totally agree.”
Meat processing workers became critical to preventing disruptions in the food supply chain during the worst days of the pandemic. But the plants themselves became hot spots for the virus, as workers stood elbow to elbow chopping, deboning and packing chicken, meat and crab.
In May 2020, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced poultry workers in Maryland’s Eastern Shore had registered 279 cases, positioning Salisbury on the Eastern Shore on the national list of coronavirus hot spots. Congregate work, lack of protective equipment and inappropriate ventilation at work became key factors in the spread of the virus that put these workers at elevated risk, said advocates.
Community organizations, volunteers and local health departments came together to form the Lower Shore Vulnerable Populations Task Force to address health disparities and connect residents to critical services in the area. The coalition has held events three weekends a month in Wicomico, Worcester and Somerset counties to collect health data, provide vaccines, coronavirus tests, rental assistance, food and translation services to low-income residents, including poultry and farmworkers who are primarily foreign-born and speak languages other than English.
“While covid may be dissipating compared to what it was two years ago, the problems are not,” said Richard Hutson, bilingual program and outreach coordinator at Tri Community Mediation, a nonprofit that is part of the task force.
Advocates said they are concerned about the lack of up-to-date health regulations in the workplace and lack of policies that guarantee paid sick leave for those who continue to fall ill to the coronavirus. In June the Marylanders for Food and Farm Worker Protection Coalition called on Hogan’s administration to properly track coronavirus case data for the poultry industry and migrant seasonal food and farmworkers.
“Current data collection masks infections in the meat and poultry processing industry, which nationally have been a covid-19 hot spot,” said Leila Borrero-Krouse, community outreach organizer of CATA’s Farmworker Support Committee in Maryland.
A Maryland, Virginia and Delaware survey released in December assessing poultry, seafood and meat workers during the pandemic showed approximately 1 out of every 6 workers surveyed reported having been diagnosed with the coronavirus or suspected that they had it between March 2020 and the first week of May 2021. Immigrant and migrant workers were eight times more likely than U.S.-born workers to have been diagnosed with — or to suspect that they had been infected with — the virus during that time, according to the “Unpacking the Facts” report sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of workers reported working less than six feet from other people.
While community efforts have proved to be successful, community health-care initiatives face constant financial uncertainty, advocates said. The CDM, which is part of the task force, has a five-year cooperative agreement with the CDC to assess workplace risks and concerns during the pandemic in this area, but funding is not necessarily guaranteed, said Julia Coburn, CDM’s director of health initiatives.
“There was an influx of covid funding during the pandemic, and a lot of that is starting to run out,” said Coburn. “We are in a great position to continue doing this work long term, but we will not be able to do so unless that there’s funding.”
In these three counties, fully vaccinated rates remain below overall rates in the state, and coronavirus transmission as of early August remains high. “Our country has moved on from the virus, but the virus has not moved on from us,” said Amy Liebman, director of Environmental and Occupational Health at Migrant Clinicians Network.
“We have rising rates of domestic violence, of STDs, gaps in immunization for children and adults. We have long covid, which we barely understand,” said Denise Smith, executive director at the National Association of Community Health Workers. “This is a perfect storm, and communities are going to suffer.” | 2022-08-18T18:49:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Health, economic disparities continue to affect some coronavirus hot spots - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/covid-hotspots-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/covid-hotspots-maryland/ |
Grant Wells named starting quarterback for Virginia Tech
Grant Wells, a transfer from Marshall, is set to be the starting quarterback when the Hokies open the regular season. (Matt Gentry/The Roanoke Times via AP)
Grant Wells has been named Virginia Tech’s starting quarterback in new Hokies Coach Brent Pry’s most significant on-field decision since arriving in Blacksburg, Va., with a mandate to rebuild the program.
Pry and his staff selected Wells, a transfer from Marshall, following a competition with Jason Brown that began in the spring. Brown is also a transfer, having played previously at South Carolina and lower division Saint Francis (Pa.), and will serve as the primary backup.
“He’s had an exceptional camp,” Pry said of Wells (6 feet 2, 208 pounds) Wednesday afternoon after practice. “Very accurate, great ball placement, great decision-making. Moving forward Grant’s our guy.”
Wells is set to make his debut with the Hokies Sept. 2 on the road against Old Dominion after starting for two seasons for the Thundering Herd. The redshirt junior threw for 3,623 yards and 34 touchdowns with 23 interceptions at Marshall, where he was first-team all-Conference USA as a freshman in 2020.
The 2020 Conference USA freshman of the year had moved ahead of Brown for the starting job by the end of spring practice. In the spring game finale, Wells completed 11 of 21 passes for 178 yards with a pair of touchdowns.
“Grant was a little bit ahead in all aspects of just overall command of the offense, understanding the offense,” Hokies quarterbacks coach Brad Glenn said. “Quick, intermediate and deep-ball accuracy. He was just ahead of [Brown] in all of those.”
Wells and Brown — as well as Connor Blumrick, Tahj Bullock and Devin Farrell — were in the mix when the quarterback competition commenced in the spring. Wells and Brown separated themselves midway through spring practice, and Blumrick, who played the position last year, moved to tight end.
Brown gained some ground during summer workouts, but Wells’s arm strength and accuracy locked up the starting job, with Glenn calling him perhaps the most accurate passer he has coached during his career.
The decision punctuates a journey that brought Wells to the school where his father graduated and just down the road from his mother’s alma mater, Radford.
“I felt comfortable coming out of the spring in this offense,” Wells said. “We worked a lot over the summer with verbiage and signals and all that. In the spring it was a new offense, but I don’t think anyone looks at it as a new offense. It’s our offense.”
Wells is in line to be the sixth opening-week starter over the past eight years at Virginia Tech, which parted ways with former coach Justin Fuente last year with two games left in the regular season. Fuente had recruited Wells before he elected to attend Marshall.
Pry and his staff targeted Wells almost immediately when he announced he would be entering the transfer portal in January. Initially Wells had Notre Dame and Arizona State, among other schools, on his early list of potential landing spots.
“He’s very coachable, a great student of the game,” Pry said. “He’s getting better and better all the time. I’m just so impressed with the ball he throws. It makes it tough on the defense.” | 2022-08-18T19:24:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grant Wells is Virginia Tech Hokies' new starting quarterback - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/grant-wells-virginia-tech-quarterback/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/grant-wells-virginia-tech-quarterback/ |
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies on Capitol Hill on June 16. (Keith Lamarque/Reuters)
Battered by criticism of its response to the covid-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday announced an overhaul. The director, Rochelle Walensky, correctly recognized that the agency must become more action-oriented, clear in messaging and better grounded in data and laboratory science. That is a start. But there are also larger, urgent questions about the nation’s public health system that cannot remain unaddressed if the country is going to fight the next pandemic more successfully than it has fought covid.
“To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes, from testing to data to communications,” Dr. Walensky told CDC employees in a video message about the pandemic response. The agency dropped the ball on developing an early diagnostic test for the coronavirus. Once a trusted source of public information nationally and globally, in the first year of chaos and confusion it went quiet under pressure from the Trump White House. Under the Biden administration — which promised competence and science-based policies — guidance and decision-making from the CDC on masking, isolation and booster doses have been repeatedly faulted as slow, opaque and confusing. A swift internal review ordered by Dr. Walensky concluded the agency needs to share its scientific findings and data more quickly; translate science into practical, easy-to-grasp policy; prioritize its public health communications practices; and respond with greater alacrity to public health emergencies.
Some fixes seem logical, such as rewiring the agency to expedite its scientific findings, creating incentives for experts to report promptly rather than hold back their papers for publication. Also, the agency must overcome its long-standing troubles with data-sharing and modernize its laboratories. Finding a way to deliver crystal-clear, action-oriented communications to the American people to protect their health should not be rocket science.
Along with the CDC’s own troubles, the pandemic response was hampered from the outset by White House meddling under President Donald Trump. Although Mr. Trump deserves credit for pushing to develop coronavirus vaccines, his attempts to play down the virus threat, mute the CDC and interfere with its work for political benefit caused unforgivable disruption. President Biden has vowed to rely on the science. But the pandemic response remains under a White House coordinator; shortly before monkeypox became an emergency, it, too, was put under a White House overseer. The goal should be for experts at retooled public health agencies to fight health crises, not politicians in the White House. And it should be clear who is responsible for doing what. The outfit run by the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services is being elevated to a stand-alone agency, on par with the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration. The bridge on this ship is getting crowded.
Dr. Walensky’s reforms will not do enough to prepare for future pandemic threats or establish trust with the public in times of crisis. The country needs a national genomic surveillance system to monitor and alert experts to Mother Nature’s next curveball. It needs to fund public health up and down the line as if it is vital to national security, not an afterthought. Congress has already started dragging its feet on vital covid funding, even as the pandemic continues; this under-investment must stop. In short, the country needs to finally quit the cycle of public health panic and neglect, and it needs the CDC to be its very best. | 2022-08-18T19:37:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | CDC changes are just a start toward preparing for the next pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/cdc-changes-next-pandemic-preparation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/cdc-changes-next-pandemic-preparation/ |
D.C. to provide $1,000 for school expenses to 15,000 low-income families
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser. (Michael Blackshire/The Washington Post)
About 15,000 low-income D.C. families will receive a $1,000 payment before the end of the month to help with expenses for the upcoming school year, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced Thursday.
Bowser said the one-time payments are intended to offer another layer of support for families enrolled in the city’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which provides monthly cash assistance and other benefits to low-income households with children in the District. As she walked through possible ways families might choose to spend the $1,000 — on uniforms, haircuts, shoes or other supplemental supplies for school and extracurricular activities — Bowser emphasized the recipients can spend the money however they see fit.
“Quite frankly, they may need a family night out, and that’s okay,” Bowser said at a news conference at the Frederick Douglass Community Center in Ward 8. “Sometimes in government, we spend a lot of time on rules and regulations that create red tape that slow down payments and don’t let families make decisions about what’s really necessary for their kids.”
The one-time payments were made possible through money the city received through the Pandemic Emergency Assistance Fund, a federal program for U.S. states and jurisdictions to provide aid and boost benefits for low-income families who have been hit hardest during the coronavirus pandemic.
Laura Zeilinger, director of the D.C. Department of Human Services, said the TANF households won’t need to take any action to receive the payment — the $1,000 will be transferred automatically to each family’s benefits card ahead of September.
Report signals benefits of pilot project giving no-strings-attached cash to low-income D.C. families
The TANF benefit is one of several new ways D.C. is aiming to support students ahead of the school year: on Monday, Bowser called on city businesses to host high school interns as part of a program to help students build career skills. And in July, Bowser said the city would provide $41 million in food assistance to 81,000 children who would normally receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year, as part of an expanded effort to provide them with nutritious food options.
“When we’re under a tremendous amount of stress, like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills’ or, ‘my kids’ shoes don’t fit and they need shoes for gym class’ … when you’re under that kind of stress, it affects everybody’s brains,” Zeilinger said. “Part of the reason to make sure people have resources is to decrease the scarcity, decrease the stress, so you can do the things you need to do as parents.”
Over the course of the pandemic, D.C. lawmakers have increasingly explored ways to provide direct financial benefits to low-income residents. In January, Bowser announced a $1.5 million cash assistance program for new and expectant mothers in wards 5, 7 and 8, offering monthly $900 payments over the course of a year. A D.C. Council measure passed last year established trust funds for certain needful children in the District, which they will be able to access after turning 18.
Pointing again to the stress faced by many parents facing financial uncertainty, Zeilinger on Thursday tried to dispel a stigma she says is often attached to families enrolled in TANF or other financial assistance programs.
“There are far too many people out there who believe if you’re receiving TANF you must not want to work, you’re not hustling hard enough,” she said. “We have to start telling true stories about what people are facing, and the ways that they’re making it work — and the way they’re prioritizing their children — with the resources they have.” | 2022-08-18T19:37:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. to provide 15,000 needy families with $1,000 payments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/bowser-tanf-cash-payments-families/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/bowser-tanf-cash-payments-families/ |
Is Captain America a virgin? ‘She-Hulk’ solves this Marvel mystery.
Chris Evans as Captain America in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” in 2015. (Jay Maidment/Marvel/Walt Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock)
This article contains spoilers for the first episode of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.”
After just one episode, “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” has solved one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s greatest mysteries.
Has the first Avenger (played on-screen in Marvel Studios’ first decade by Chris Evans) ever had a first time? Did the Captain ever make it happen? Can a super-soldier who fought in World War II and was frozen for decades now find the time to swipe left or right?
The evidence is out there to support the MCU’s least sexy rumor ever. Before a super serum gave him a superhero stature and the muscles to carry the world on his shoulders, Steve Rogers was a scrawny kid from Brooklyn who was far from a Casanova. By the time he transformed into Captain America, he fell in love with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), which led to a kiss before he had to save the world during World War II, crashing a plane into a mountain in the process, and then became a super-popsicle. After being unfrozen years later, Captain America dealt with Loki, Ultron, a civil war, Thanos and instant old age after time travel. That doesn’t leave much time for love.
In “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” when the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Captain America must kiss to hide from agents hunting them down, Black Widow later asks if she was the first woman he’s kissed since 1945. The Captain responds, “That bad, huh?”
By the time “She-Hulk” arrives at its first post-credits scene after Episode 1, we finally get an answer.
That’s when Banner lets her in on a little secret: Captain America lost his virginity in 1943, with a woman he met on a U.S.O. tour.
Walters immediately shuts off the fake faucets in her eyes, revealing she’s not really drunk like her cousin thought, and screams for joy.
Is this the sexual revolution of the MCU? It’s not that kind of party yet, but the moment is a huge step forward for a universe that is way more super than sensual.
There was nothing particularly spicy about the all-time MCU great Iron Man’s (Robert Downey Jr.) love life with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) — you could find more chemistry in the (mostly) platonic relationship between Captain America and Black Widow. Speaking of platonic relationships, don’t forget about the Black Widow and her best friend, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). And why didn’t Hawkeye take his wife with him during his Christmas vacation with the kids in last year’s “Hawkeye” series? What’s that all about? Remember that time Bucky (Sebastian Stan) flirted with Sam’s (Anthony Mackie) sister in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier?” No? Well, it happened. “WandaVision’s” Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) started off in the 1950s sleeping in separate beds like an “I Love Lucy” episode. That’s all to say that if you’re wearing your glasses to an MCU event, you probably haven’t had to wipe off any steam. And that includes the first-ever MCU sex scene, in “Eternals.”
‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ post-credits scenes, explained
The MCU hasn’t been that sexy in part because it doesn’t have to be. But that doesn’t mean it can’t try. It’s not like it lacks hot source material from the pages of the comics. Google Sub-Mariner and the Invisible Woman (yes, the married Invisible Woman) and get a load of the fan fic that stuff could inspire. Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Keaton in “Batman Returns,” Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz in “The Batman,” Adam West and his multiple Catwomen in the 1960s, and Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder in “Superman” prove there’s plenty of romantic appeal in superhero movies. Wait? Is DC the champion of superhero sexiness on-screen? Hey, at least they’re doing something right over there.
“She-Hulk” feels like something new and different for the MCU. Even without the Captain America revelations, this series is just as provocative as it is hilarious. Its protagonist heroine isn’t interested in being a superhero just yet, and she believes those that do save the day deserve a tender moment every now and then. As the series continues, hulking out won’t stop her from hooking up.
“She-Hulk” may be just the start of a sexier MCU. But, hey, you never forget the first time, right? | 2022-08-18T19:46:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is Captain America a virgin? ‘She-Hulk’ solves this Marvel mystery. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/08/18/captain-america-virgin-she-hulk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/08/18/captain-america-virgin-she-hulk/ |
Analysis by Iain Wilson and Jonathan Tirone | Bloomberg
Cooling towers release water vapor at the Nogent nuclear power plant, operated by Electricite de France SA (EDF), in Nogent-sur-Seine, France, on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. The French government asked Electricite de France SA to restart some nuclear reactors earlier than planned in order to help with a winter energy crunch across Europe. (Bloomberg)
Always controversial, nuclear power has been on a steady slide in prominence, supplying 10% of the world’s electricity today compared with 18% at its peak in the mid-1990s. While a few countries, notably China and India, have been expanding their capacities, concerns about reactor safety led most advanced economies to move in the opposite direction. In recent years, however, the climate crisis has given this carbon-free source of energy fresh appeal. Now insecurities about fuel supplies provoked by Russia’s war in Ukraine are making nuclear power even more attractive to policy makers as a way to keep the lights on.
1. Who’s reinvesting in nuclear energy?
The UK and France are leading the pack. The UK, which used nuclear power to generate 16% of its electricity in 2020, wants to boost that to 25% by 2050, in part by building eight large reactors. France plans to build six and to extend the lifetime of all existing reactors where it’s safe to do so. France already generates 70% of its electricity with nuclear power. Both countries are also among those investing in so-called small modular reactors, although it will be several years before they’re in use.
2. Why extend a reactor’s lifetime?
Many of the reactors in advanced economies are approaching their original design lifetime, which is usually 40 years. The average age of nuclear plants is 38 years in Europe and 36 years in North America; in India it’s 15 years and in China just five years. A reactor’s longevity can be extended, but only with significant investment in refurbishment. Belgium decided in March to make that investment for two of its reactors. In Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. has spent about 1.16 trillion yen ($8.6 billion) reinforcing its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility, a plant whose oldest reactor is almost 40 years old.
3. What are other advanced economies doing?
• As part of its efforts to combat climate change, the US government is making $6 billion available over four years to bail out nuclear power plants at risk of closing prematurely for economic reasons. California Governor Gavin Newsom has encouraged the operator of the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility to apply for the funds, saying, in a reversal, that he wants the plant to keep running given potential electricity shortages in the years ahead.
• Canada’s national government, in collaboration with several provinces, aims to be a global leader in advanced reactor technology. Its plan for the development and deployment of SMRs, domestically and abroad, envisages the first units coming online in the late part of this decade.
• Japan’s government is pushing to accelerate the restart of about two dozen reactors that remain shuttered after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, when three reactors melted down at a plant in northern Japan following an earthquake and tsunami.
• South Korea has announced the construction of four more nuclear reactors by 2030 and the extension of 10 older units.
• Germany, which decided after Fukushima to close all 17 of its nuclear plants, may pull back from that decision, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying that extending the life of the nation’s nuclear power stations might make sense in the wake of the Ukraine war and the threat that reduced flows of Russian gas could result in a winter fuel crisis. There’s still been no formal decision to continue operating the country’s three remaining reactors past 2022.
• Russia, the world’s biggest exporter of reactors and nuclear fuel, is building new plants in Egypt and Turkey, while adding business from Myanmar to Uganda potentially worth billions of dollars.
• Elsewhere in Europe, Belgium has asked Engie SA to extend the life of its Tihange 2 nuclear plant to ensure energy supplies this winter. The Netherlands is contemplating two new reactors. Poland is exploring its first. The Czech Republic and Hungary have plans to build large new units. In July, European Union lawmakers voted to allow nuclear energy to be labeled as green investments, removing the last major barrier to potentially billions of euros of funding from environmental investors.
4. What about China and India?
Of the 10 reactors worldwide whose construction began in 2021, China accounted for six, followed by India with two. (Turkey and Russia had one each.) Altogether, China has 23 reactors under construction, with the government aiming to expand capacity by almost a third within the next three years compared with current levels. Beijing has also sold its Hualong reactors to Pakistan and is finalizing a contract to build a reactor in Argentina. India expects to start building ten more new reactors between 2023 and 2025.
5. What are the arguments against nuclear?
Opponents of nuclear energy say Fukushima was only the most recent accident to demonstrate that reactors are too dangerous. Reactor calamities also released radiation at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979 and Chernobyl in the Soviet Union seven years later. Critics cite large cost overruns that have plagued new reactor projects in the US and Europe as well as the expense and environmental risks of disposing of nuclear waste. But the biggest problem is time: large new nuclear plants require at least a decade to build while western economies need to cut greenhouse gas pollution by half by the end of this decade to meet climate goals. Opponents argue that cleaner and safer forms of energy such as solar and wind power should be deployed more quickly instead.
6. What are the arguments for nuclear energy?
Nuclear energy’s proponents say accidents like Fukushima are rare, that fossil fuels are responsible for more deaths through coal mine accidents and pollution, and that the smaller, advanced reactors of the future will be even safer. The choice, they argue, isn’t between nuclear energy and renewables but rather between nuclear energy combined with renewables and a climate catastrophe. Low-carbon sources accounted for about 40% of the share of the world’s electricity supply in 2021 -- only about 4 percentage points more than 20 years earlier because, while renewables scaled up, nuclear power scaled down. The need to replace fossil fuels quickly enough to head off extreme global warming, advocates of nuclear energy say, makes it no longer an option, but a necessity. | 2022-08-18T19:50:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What’s Boosting Nuclear Power? War and Climate Change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/whats-boosting-nuclear-power-war-and-climate-change/2022/08/18/ee251a9c-1f2c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/whats-boosting-nuclear-power-war-and-climate-change/2022/08/18/ee251a9c-1f2c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
A brain tissue specimen after a Naegleria fowleri amoebic infection. (CDC) (CDC)
A Nebraska child died earlier this week after a suspected rare infection from a brain-eating amoeba — the first reported death from that specific organism in the state’s history, according to state and local health authorities.
The child, who has not been publicly identified to protect their privacy, is thought to have contracted an infection called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM) caused by Naegleria fowleri, a single-celled organism found in warm freshwater such as rivers, lakes and streams. Health authorities believe the child may have become infected after swimming Aug. 8 in shallow water in the Elkhorn River in Douglas County.
Federal health officials are working to confirm the case, the Douglas County Health Department said.
“We can only imagine the devastation this family must be feeling, and our deepest condolences are with them,” Douglas County Health Director Lindsay Huse said in a statement on Wednesday. “We can honor the memory of this child by becoming educated about the risk and then taking steps to prevent infection.”
This brain-eating amoeba kills 97 percent of the people it infects. Not Sebastian DeLeon.
Huse told reporters Thursday that the child had engaged in “typical swimming activity.” Health experts say the concern is that the amoeba can enter the body through the nose when in the water.
The child was hospitalized five days after swimming, the health department said.
“We just want people to be aware there is a risk there,” Huse said.
The brain-eating amoeba can be found in warm freshwater sources, most often in southern states, but not in salt water, such as the ocean, federal health authorities said.
Infections from Naegleria fowleri are very rare. From 2012 to 2021, only 31 cases have been reported in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, the vast majority — 28 people — were infected in recreational water, while two were infected after performing nasal irrigation with contaminated tap water and one was infected by contaminated water on Slip ’N Slide, the CDC said.
“Millions of recreational water exposures occur each year, while only 0 to 8 Naegleria fowleri infections are identified each year,” state epidemiologist Matthew Donahue said in a statement. “Limiting the opportunities for freshwater to get into the nose are the best ways to reduce the risk of infection.”
In recent years, a 19-year-old woman died after becoming infected with the waterborne parasite in Maryland. A 6-year-old boy and 3-year-old boy died in separate incidents after exposures in Texas.
Data shows an estimated 97 percent of those who become ill die of the infection. Only four patients over the past 60 years have survived. Death usually occurs within about five days after the onset of symptoms, the CDC said.
Although the risk of infection from Naegleria fowleri is very low, health experts recommend taking certain precautions such as avoiding freshwater sources during the late summer weeks when infections are more likely to occur, refraining from submerging the head or engaging in activities such as diving that forces water into the nose, and, whenever possible, using a nose clip or manually plugging the nose when going underwater. | 2022-08-18T19:51:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nebraska child dies of suspected infection from brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/18/brain-eating-amoeba-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/18/brain-eating-amoeba-death/ |
Americans see an ‘invasion’ at the border. But what does that mean?
Border Patrol agents process migrants who crossed the United States/Mexico border June 24 in Yuma, Ariz. (Eric Thayer/The Washington Post)
In February and March, as Russia prepared to invade and then invaded Ukraine, the word “invasion” appeared on Fox News at least 2,400 times each month. As developments in the war were surpassed by other news stories, mentions of the term dropped: about 700 times in April and under 400 in May. But then, last month, the word jumped back up, crossing the 400-mark once again.
Why? While CNN and MSNBC had matched Fox’s mentions of “invasion” earlier this year, they didn’t in July. What happened?
Fox News had turned its attention to a different “invasion”: the one it said was occurring at the United States border with Mexico. About half of the uses of “invasion” on Fox News occurred within the context of either the border or the word “immigration.”
This idea that the United States is facing an “invasion” of migrants has gained popularity broadly on the political right. Candidates running in Republican primaries, like Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, are using the increased number of migrants stopped at the border over the past two years as a pitch to voters. Lake promised to issue a “declaration of invasion” should she win in November, an action with unclear policy ramifications but obvious political ones.
On Thursday morning, NPR released new polling conducted by Ipsos showing that this language is broadly accepted by Americans. More than half of respondents to the poll said that it was “completely” or “somewhat” true that the United States was experiencing an “invasion” — including a plurality of Democrats. More than half of Republicans said the statement was “completely true.”
But here we get into tricky, if familiar, terrain. What do we mean when we say an “invasion”?
To many observers — probably some of you reading this article — this is a silly question. It means that millions of people are trying to cross the border, of course. And, in very broad strokes, that’s true. Since January 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has, in fact, logged more than 3 million encounters at the border.
But, already, perceptions come into play. Is stopping 3 million people at the border actually a bad thing, if you’re worried about the number of migrants coming to the United States? It’s like the repeated and deeply odd complaints from (mostly Republican) legislators about the scale of drug enforcement at the border. When Donald Trump was president, the Republican Party touted drug seizures as a mark of border security. Under President Biden, it’s somehow a failure.
Or take this tweet from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.):
Migrant encounters have surpassed 2M in FY22, a new record.
At this time last year, Border Patrol reported over 1.2M encounters.
Biden is breaking all the wrong records. #BuildTheWall
While stopping more people is an indicator that more people are likely seeking entry to the United States, isn’t it good that they are stopped if your goal is to limit entry? How is it an invasion if the purported “invaders” — to use that loaded, pejorative term — are being stopped when they try to come in?
As I’ve written before, the figures cited by Blackburn are also misleading in their own right. For example, an enormous number of those stopped at the border are then quickly removed from the country under a policy introduced by Trump, purportedly as an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Since January 2021, 52 percent of those stopped at the southern border were removed from the United States in short order.
What’s more, that’s part of the reason that the number of encounters is so high! People who are removed from the United States often quickly turn around and try to enter again — and are often again stopped. U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates that around 27 percent of those stopped at the border in fiscal year 2021 were repeat offenders. If that holds for this year as well, the distribution of encounters since January 2021 looks something like this.
This is an estimate, since not everyone who is stopped more than once was a subject of removal. But it gives a sense of how the top line number of 3.1 million misrepresents what’s happening at the border.
The sense that politicians and media outlets often try to give is that millions of people arrive at the border and then millions of people flood into the country. Those reports about migrants being shuttled around the country give a sense that those millions of arrivals are somehow translating into a steady stream of new migrants into various communities.
In reality, relatively few of those stopped at the border are released into the country. If we split up the pool of encounters another way, we see that less than a quarter of those stopped at the border end up being released, either through a “notice to appear” for an immigration hearing or after being released on parole or other alternatives to detention.
“About a million people, since Biden took office, have been able to access the asylum process, have been released into the country in some form or another,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council told me in a phone call on Thursday. His figure includes people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and then released. In most cases, mind you, they are being released to await a legal hearing that will often result in their being slated for deportation. (Most migrants do show up for those hearings, incidentally.)
A million people since January 2021 is a lot, certainly, but it is not exactly an unprecedented number — not a “record” as Blackburn would put it. From 1990 to 2005, Reichlin-Melnick said, the average annual increase in undocumented immigrants was near that level even in a system where migration was more cyclical and centered on agricultural seasons.
This raises another question: how many migrants are entering the country without being detected? This is always a rejoinder when one points out that stopping drugs isn’t a bad thing. Well, how many drugs aren’t being stopped?
For migrants, government data offers an answer. Rates of apprehension are much higher now than they used to be.
The Department of Homeland Security offers two metrics to estimate how many of those who should be stopped at the border actually are. The first is an observational estimate: how many people are observed entering without being stopped. The other is a modeled estimate, a statistical assessment of what percentage of border-crossers are stopped. In the past decade, that later figure has increased dramatically.
“In 2006, when there were 650,000 estimated got-aways” — the term for migrants who are spotted but not stopped — “there were an additional 1.5 million successful unlawful entries on top of that that were never even detected,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “Today, that is just not the case. The border is blanketed in cameras and surveillance technologies.” Not to mention the increase in barriers both under Trump and following the passage of a law expanding barriers in 2006.
“They now say they detect more than 90 percent of the people crossing the border,” he added.
That data can be used to compile a count of how many people were both apprehended and estimated to have entered the country unlawfully without being stopped. Reichlin-Melnick’s organization did just that.
Apprehensions are up — but few of those apprehended wind up released in the United States. Some people cross the border illegally and aren’t detected — but that happens much less frequently than it used to.
“Even though we are at record apprehensions,” Reichlin-Melnick said, “we are not anywhere near record crossings.”
So what’s the invasion? That more people are being released into the United States than in recent years? That more people are being kicked out of the United States than normally happens?
The answer, of course, is that “invasion” is an inherently subjective word, influenced by how people talk about the situation at the border. That’s the other finding from the NPR-Ipsos poll: public sentiment on immigration has soured since Trump left office, in part because public opinion often moves in the opposite direction from public policy. In part, though, it’s a function of how the recent increase in apprehensions is framed by people like the senator from Tennessee and the Arizona gubernatorial candidate.
Call something an “invasion” enough and people will begin to believe it. | 2022-08-18T19:51:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Americans see an ‘invasion’ at the border. But what does that mean? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/immigration-border-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/immigration-border-republicans/ |
Potomac basketball star Kyle Honore dies just after leaving for college
Keith Honore, a star player at Potomac High in Dumfries, died this week after an accident at college. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post)
When Nazareth Lee transferred to Potomac High School in Dumfries two years ago, he did what any new student might: he looked for friends. He found one within the basketball program, where the coach’s son, Kyle Honore, welcomed Lee to the school and the team with an open, easygoing attitude.
“When you talked to him, you got so comfortable so easily and so fast,” Lee said. “You’d be talking for five minutes and all of a sudden it would be an hour.” Honore quickly became an adviser, a workout partner and a friend.
On Wednesday morning, Lee woke to news Honore had died. He was 19.
Honore, who had recently moved to Wingate University just outside Charlotte for his freshman year of college, was struck by a train near campus Tuesday night. According to the Wingate Police Department, he succumbed to his injuries while being transported to a hospital. The incident is still under investigation.
In the storied Potomac basketball program, Honore was first and foremost known as the third son of Keith Honore, the Panthers’ coach since 2005. But over time he made a name for himself as a leader and a star, earning a scholarship to Wingate on the back of a remarkable senior season.
“We’d discuss our goals before the season,” Lee said. “We wanted to win it all and he wanted to hit 1,000 points. And I wanted to make sure he got that.”
Basketball, the thing that drove Honore six hours south to college, had long been the motor of his life.
“Everybody says that their love of the game starts when they were young,” he said in February, “but I have a picture of me at 2 years old with two basketballs in hand, wearing an NBA headband and a Carmelo Anthony jersey. It’s always been in me, and in middle school I started to understand that this is what I’d be doing for a long time.”
It was in those middle school years that Honore would hang out at the Potomac gym, watching and sometimes participating in his father’s practices. He would run sprints with the team, looking up to each crop of Panther leaders.
When he made it to high school, Honore became just as synonymous with Potomac basketball as those players and his two older brothers before him. All three Honore brothers wore the same number Keith wore when he played at Potomac in the 1990s: 11.
As a four-year starter, Honore developed a deep on-court resume and earned a rare level of respect locally.
“It wasn’t just respect throughout the county, but also across the state,” Patriot coach and former Potomac assistant Sherman Rivers said. “He was a special kid and a special player. You would never find anybody across the state to say a bad thing about him.”
By his senior year, Honore was one of the most experienced and talented players in Northern Virginia. He took on a leadership role with confidence. On days he might not have it, one of his brothers, Keijon — an assistant with the Panthers — gave it to him. Before every game of his senior season, Keijon delivered the same message.
“We do our little handshake and he tells me that I’m the best player in the state,” Honore said during last season. “Coming from him, that gives me confidence.”
Off the court, he brought the team closer by helping to organize team outings. The lanky teens would pile into a car and drive off to the movies or the mall, building bonds they hoped would pay off on the court.
“It would be like two cars and both of them would be packed with people,” Lee said. “We built trust with each other.”
Honore averaged nearly 20 points per game as a senior and finished the season by winning Cardinal District Player of the Year and earning All-Met and all-state honors. Keith Honore retired from coaching after the season, in part so he could watch his son play in college.
In the spring, Kyle Honore got his jersey painted on the wall of the Potomac gym. Below his last name and the number 11 was listed his career point total, 1,003.
“It means so much more than just scoring 1,000 points for me,” Honore tweeted in April. “My family has put so much into this program that they deserve to walk in the gym and see our name on that wall for as long as the school stands.” | 2022-08-18T19:52:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Potomac basketball star Kyle Honore dies just after leaving for college - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/kyle-honore-potomac-death-train/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/kyle-honore-potomac-death-train/ |
Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Amber Midthunder
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Good afternoon. I’m Arelis Hernández, national correspondent for The Washington Post, and welcome to Washington Post Live for another program in our Race in America series.
Joining me today is breakout star of the new film, "Prey," Amber Midthunder. Welcome, Amber.
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Hi.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Thanks for joining us. First, a quick programming note for our audience: We want to hear from you. So, send us your questions for Amber on Twitter using the handle, @PostLive.
I'm just going to go ahead and launch into questions if that's okay with you, Amber. Does that work?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, that works.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Awesome. Well, you play Naru--I happen to have watched it last night--in "Prey." She's a Comanche woman who doesn't quite fit in with her tribe. Can you tell us a little bit about her and why she wants to prove herself in this story?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah. Naru is a young Comanche woman who wants to be a hunter. You know, she's quite, I think, stubborn and very focused and determined, and that, to me, is what makes her special. I think she's relatable in the way that, you know, the feeling of wanting something and feeling called to something and not always having other people see you be fit for that thing, but you know that you are, I think is what, you know, is really driving her, along with, you know, I think the need to kind of just--she feels like she needs to prove herself. You know, it's not--Comanche people did have a female warrior society. So, it's not about like, oh, you're a woman; you can't hunt. You can't fight. It's people looking at her as an individual and saying, we know you. We don't think this is best suited for you. So, you know, she wants to prove--it's a mix of things. She wants to prove people wrong. She wants to do it because she loves it. You know, it's everything.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: She's quite a dynamic character. And in this film, which is set in 1719 in the Great Plains, Naru is used to seeing rabbits and mountain lions and bears, but we have a clip of something else that she sees lurking in the forest. Let's take a look.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: That is not a bear. Naru finds ways to outsmart the Predator, which is the latest in the franchise, and at one point she says, I am not a threat; that's what makes me dangerous. Can you explain what she means by that?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, I mean, I think constantly being underestimated and also that's the whole idea of, you know, I think historically this franchise, you know, is like specifically the Predator hunts for sport. It looks for the greatest threat. And I think that that parallels in a lot of ways. So, there's the literal meaning of that within the movie, and then there's, I think, the concept of anybody who underestimates her, and also the, you know, mending of skills, I think, that's what makes her unique. And that I think is what maybe makes her strong.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, so, there's not a lot of dialogue in the film itself, but we do see Naru speaking Comanche and also use sign language. The film is also available to stream completely in Comanche, if I'm correct on that.
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: How did the cast and crew work to make the film feel authentic to Indigenous people?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Well, Jhane Myers, our producer, is an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation in Oklahoma. She was involved, you know, for a very long time and she's--I mean, she was there every single day making sure that things were accurate to her people and to the time period. And that was also a big interest, you know, of Dan Trachtenburg, our director, and all of us, you know. We're--none of us were Comanche but you know, are all Indigenous people. And so, that's obviously something that we care about personally. And I mean, just everything from, like, there's a scene where you see me brushing my teeth and that's like my favorite--that's like one of my favorite little pieces that's in the movie because, you know, at one point, Dan was like, how did that work? Like, what did people do? And I guess Jhane was like, oh, well, here, let me show you. And she, like, made a toothbrush. And she was like, this is what we did.
And so, details like that to bigger things like there's a scene with buffalo or, like, the Comanche dove is--all the original actors came back to do our own characters and we worked with, like, Comanche language--you know, the Comanche language department of the Comanche Nation and professionals and people who have given their lives to that. So, the effort was there in, to me, a way that was just like commendable and amazing.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, you've given our viewers such a dynamic description of your character, Naru. I wonder, did you feel like you could relate to her and her experience in some way?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the first time that I've been in a position in a movie this big and I've never--like, I've never been the lead of a Predator movie before. So, I didn't know--I very much felt that way, that there were times that I was like, I don't know if I can do this. And then, there would be times that I was like, 100 percent, like, this is me. So, that was like a very easy way for me to relate to her, you know, that--like I said, I think everybody can relate to the feeling of feeling called to something. I think we can all relate to having doubts. So, like, feeling called to something and then immediately thinking, like, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I--as soon as you're faced with that opportunity. So, yeah.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, so, you said it yourself, it's the first time you're a lead in a movie, but it's also the first time an Indigenous woman is the lead of a major studio film if--I think I'm right on that. I'm curious to talk about sort of your development as an anchor and how you came into this. You're sort of--I don't know if it's fair to say born into the industry. I mean, your mom is a casting director and actor and your dad is an actor.
I'm curious about what drew you into the industry, apart from the fact of being ensconced into it.
MS. MIDTHUNDER: It's funny that people say my mom is an actor, because she's not. She accidentally became an actress the first time that she ever had an industry-related job, and then immediately decided that she hated it, which I think is so funny, just for me to later find it in my life and then to also marry an actor.
But yeah, I mean, it was never anything that was actually super related to me growing up, which I'm really grateful for. You know, like, I just felt like any other kid that, like, my parents had jobs and, like, they would do them during the day and then come home and we would cook dinner and watch a TV show and everything was normal.
So, I didn't really know and then I think it was just, like, very clear to my personality that I love to like--like, I was like eight years old and I was, like, making movies with my friends and stories and memorizing full episodes of TV shows and stuff like that. And so, you know, I was--so, I think I just at one point said to my mom, like, I want to do that. And so, I tried it and I got, like, I think, a line in a DWI commercial or something and immediately decided that I hated acting, quit for a long time, and then came back to it. And then, now, that's what I do.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: And look at where you are now. I was reading that when you were auditioning for the role or you were reading your audition, that you didn't know what kind of film it was or what--that this was going to be a Predator film. So, what did you think was actually going on as you were reading the lines?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: None of the dialogue had to do with, like, anything that would give that away. It was all--it's from a few scenes that are in the movie, still, but that are very different now. So, really, all that I knew and the only context that I had was this was a movie about a young Comanche woman who wanted to be a hunter. That was truly all that I knew, and I knew obviously that Dan Trachtenburg was directing it, because I met with him, but that was really it. And I just thought that, you know, I really connected with this character. I thought she was really interesting, even though I didn't know a lot about her. I thought that there was just like something very special there that just made me--that kind of like lit that fire for me, and that was it. And then, it disappeared from COVID and then it came back, like, over a year later, and still had no idea what it was. And then, I think a couple months went by and then somebody told me. So, it was a very, very long time until I actually knew what the whole picture of the movie was.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: And how did you react when you found out it was--you know, you were going to be in a line of sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger and all these other action heroes with this Predator series?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: That's so funny. I didn't even think of that. I just--I was wildly anxious. I cried immediately, and I didn't even have the job. It was not happy tears; it was just terror. And I don't know why. I couldn't tell you to this day.
But I think it was just like--I think it was some amount of, like, relief and also, like, a new set of fears, you know, of, like, not knowing for so long and then, in a way, there's no more questions and in a way there's a lot of questions. So, I think it was just the bigness of the idea of, like, facing the unknown, you know, like--much like my character has to do, I also felt like I was doing here. So, yeah, a lot of tears.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, I'm going to yo-yo back to more of your background. You are an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribe, but you told The Hollywood--
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yes.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Did I get it right? Did it work?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yes, good job.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Thank you. Well, so you told The Hollywood Reporter that you have been very intentional about not pursuing Indigenous-specific roles. Why is that?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Because often the representation that we get is not something I think to be proud of or something that makes us feel proud. You know, that was a really big deal to me with this movie, and something that I was really conscious of and really scared about every single day. Like, I would come to work and, you know, I get a lot of questions about, like, oh, following up Arnold and this and that, and like, that's not how I think about this.
The way that I was thinking about it every day going to work was, like, man, this could be a really big opportunity for Native people and for Native women to be represented well, and I wanted to take that opportunity and make the most of it, you know, because it's so rare. It's happening more now, you know, we have shows like "Reservation Dogs" and "Rutherford Falls," and "Echo" is coming and, like, our movie now. We're starting to get good Native representation with Native filmmakers and actors and all these things that we can feel proud of. But so rarely in history, you know, have we had that. Normally, it's, I think--especially in a period piece like this is, you know, usually I think we're just these kind of like represented as like subhuman, either, like, overly spiritualized or just, like, savage trope or whatever, and like that's not obviously who we are. We're people with innovation and invention, even back, you know, in the 1700s. Like, we had relationships and thoughts and ideas and all kinds of things. So, to me, that representation is the most important thing that, you know, I can do by existing in my field.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: And how did you know that, particularly with this role, that that was going to confer that opportunity, that this young woman, this Comanche woman, was going to give you a chance to show and portray a full human, Indigenous person?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: For a number of reasons, but also, like, I was still scared, you know, because you just--in a way, you never know, but also there were a lot of things to be confident about from the very beginning. Like, I mean, Dan cares so much. Like, I cannot speak highly enough of the effort that Dan Trachtenburg and 20th Century has put into being involved with the community and conscious and aware and obviously having Jhane, our producer--you know, like, they actually listened to her and things she has to say. It's not like she's there just to like tick off a box. She's there giving her opinions and they're being applied. This film, you know, before it was done, we screened it at the Oklahoma--like, in Oklahoma at the Comanche Nation for the Comanche people and did a Q&A with them to incorporate their thoughts and notes, and that was an idea, you know, that came specifically in service to Comanche people. So, like, having those things and that--you know, from pre-production all the way to finishing the movie, that effort has not stopped. So, that is something that I just--like, I cannot be more grateful for.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, in light of that and sort of these learning experiences, we know that Native America is not monolithic in any way; it's composed of dozens of nations, or more than that. So, I'm curious what you learned as--you know, about the experiences of--
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: --Indigenous people in Hollywood and in this experience, overall.
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, I mean, just so many tribes. It's like, unreal. You know, people are like, oh, Native American people. You're like, no, no, no, we're very--there's so many. So, that was a very cool experience for me, because we are different. You know, I'm Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota, but I still come from plains people, as the Comanches do, as well. The Comanches are also plains people. So, that was a really cool experience for me to get acquainted with Comanche culture and language and be able to look at like some--there are some things in our culture that we share. Like, there's a scene in the movie where it's nighttime and my character whistles, and that's a cultural thing that the Comanches and my culture also share.
But then, there's a lot of other things that, you know, we don't. So, it was just like getting to learn like--even conversations that you don't necessarily see in the movie but just--that become a part of kind of the fabric of the environment that you watch when you watch the movie, yeah, it was really special.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, you brought up the issue of representation and I wanted to talk to you about something that happened this week. The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts, and Sciences announced that it will host an evening conversation of healing and celebration with--in September, that is--with activist Sacheen Littlefeather.
You tweeted about this and, you know, she famously declined the Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando in 1973. She was booed off the stage. She talked about, you know, the standoff at Wounded Knee at the time, but she really didn't get a warm reception from the folks who were in that audience that day. They issued this public apology in June. She was 26 at the time, which is about your age now. I'm curious, like, how does it make you feel that the Academy came out and apologized, and do you think it is the right way for the Academy to atone for the harassment she received?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: I mean, visibility is one of the most important ways and it's one of the initial steps. I think when you're talking about reconciliation or apologies or how to mend anything. You know, we specifically have a very long history of a lot of hard things. So, I think something like that at that time is only in a way to be expected, because that was, I think, just--that just barely showcases what was actually happening for our people that you weren't seeing.
So, you know, I think that this is an incredible first step, and I think that it should have happened a while ago, but it's happening now and that's great, and that is, I think, the first step of what should be many.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Well, then, what should be the next step, you think, or what are the next steps?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: I think what we're talking about, which is like having space for Native people. You know, I believe that we've been storytellers since the beginning. We have always--that's how we preserve our language and our culture. You know, we are people of an oral history and specifically storytelling.
So, Native people in every capacity are, I believe, an untapped resource, especially within this industry. So, creating space for our people that isn't just, like I said, like lip service or like checking off a box on a list of things to say, like, oh, look, we had somebody, but actually making space for Indigenous people to say what they have to say to help our communities.
Because that's really what it comes back to is, like, individuals can thrive, but it's also about Native people as a whole, who, you know, we still deal with the implications of all of our history and all the things that happened to our people to this day who, all those traumas. So, it's about healing that and that is done, I believe, through, like I said, visibility and creating space.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: You mentioned storytelling specifically and how crucial that is to many tribes' traditions and to their cultures and the way they preserve history. I'm curious about the way that you've seen that oral storytelling tradition used in the projects that you've been a part of, if it has been.
MS. MIDTHUNDER: I mean, I think it is just in the medium. You know, I think that is what filmmaking is. It's entertainment, but it's also, like, a vehicle to say whatever you have to say or, if you have to say nothing--like, you know, I think that's what's beautiful about this art form, whether you're Native or not. It is a place where imagination and creativity, collaboration, you know, narrative all can collide in a way that gets delivered to large amounts of people, potentially.
So, I think that, you know, whether or not I played a Native role or worked with Native people, it's just the nature of filmmaking. So, that's why I think it's important to use and it's important to acknowledge.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: In addition to talking about representation, you've also raised awareness about a couple other issues, including missing and murdered Native women and cultural genocide. Are these issues that you plan to lend more than your voice to? I know that you're still very early in your career, but I'm curious, like, where you want to take this now that you have visibility, you have a little bit of a platform, now. Where do you see that going, your activism, I don't know?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, I mean, everywhere that I can. You know, like that to me, if there is any space where I can be helpful in any possible way, especially, you know, to my own people, like, that's what matters the most, because there are so many people who have never heard of a plethora of--you know, there's so many things that are happening to Native people, still, that nobody's talking about, nobody is aware of.
So, absolutely. I mean, whatever way I can be helpful, any opportunity that I ever have to help my people, that's where I want to be. That's what I want to be doing.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: So, I got a question from a friend of mine, a colleague at The Washington Post who covers comics and movies and whatnot. He wanted to ask you whether you'd be interested in being part of the Marvel cinematic universe. Is that something you'd be interested in in your future?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Switching gears, but yes, 100 percent. I love Marvel. Yes, absolutely. I did a Marvel series a few years ago for, you know, FX, and that was a great time. `And I am a Marvel fan. I was a Marvel fan before that and after that. So, 100 percent.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: So, what's next for you? What are you working on?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: I recently had a film come out called "The Wheel." It was released in July on many platforms. I produced that in, I mean, August of 2020; so, like, peak pandemic. So, that was wild. I think we were one of the first productions to, like, return post-COVID.
And it was just--it's very different from "Prey." It's just a work of a small group of people who really, really cared about this movie. And last year, we premiered at TIFF. So, in October I believe it's going to Hulu, as well. So, yeah.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: So, I read a piece about how your family--you said your family is a little weird because you're all into, like, being outdoors and you give each other, like, ninja stars and things like that as gifts for Christmas and axes and whatnot. Does this mean that you think that you'll stick to action and drama, perhaps, or is comedy in your future?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: That's so funny. I did get my dad a set of throwing axes for Father's Day sometime before this movie. I, to me--that is how I grew up, so I just feel like it's normal. But I like it, I think it's fun.
I mean, yeah, I would be--I think when it comes to my career, I've ended up doing a lot of action roles, because they've also coincided with interesting characters and great filmmakers. And ultimately, that's always what I'm going after. So, I think I wouldn't be afraid to do another action movie, but I also would be really excited to do a comedy or a musical or a heavy drama. Like, I think being able to have the opportunity to do anything with quality is kind of what every actor wants.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: So, we've talked a lot about representation, about visibility, about how passionate you are about the issues rep--you know, and authenticity within the filmmaking, the storytelling that happens in Native America.
You know, I'm just curious about--and I lost my question in the course of that. I'm curious about how you, with this experience--the idea of doing Indigenous-specific roles, has your perspective changed on that because of the sort of success and acclaim you're getting from this role, or is that something that you're going to be really sort of cautious and judicious about in the future, still?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: I mean, it's always been the same. It's not like I don’t want to play Indigenous roles. I do, naturally. I have no option but to wake up and be Native. So, it kind of is, whether the role is that or not, I'm there.
But yeah, I mean, I've always wanted to do them, I think, in--as long as they're good and as long as they're respectful and as long they're something that we can be proud of. And I also think it's important to see Indigenous people play roles that are not specifically Indigenous, because that's not all that we are as people. So, why would you limit us to that when you're talking about film and television? You know, we are comic book fans; we are doctors and nurses and your neighbor and the guy who makes a movie. You know, like, all these things. So, I think having Native people play a multitude of things is only helpful.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: And I hear that. And I've talked to bunches of actors and producers and storytellers who are, you know, non-White, and through this platform.
But one of the things--that might be the goal, but one of the things that's really difficult, then, is sort of navigating Hollywood in a way where you can tell those stories, where you can play those roles. I mean, are you getting advice from anybody in the industry, maybe your parents, maybe--do you have a mentor in the industry to try and steer your career in such a way where you are playing these fully flourished individuals?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, definitely you know, my parents are my biggest role models and influences, and I go to them for advice constantly. I think--whether or not this is their job, I just think they are sound, good people and especially when it comes to advising career. You know, my dad has been around for a long time, and we always have those conversations.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Sorry, I have time for one more question, and I remember the question that flew out of my mind earlier, which is, what does this all mean for you, the fact that you are the first Indigenous woman in a lead role in a major studio production.
Just at the very base level, what does it mean for you, personally?
MS. MIDTHUNDER: I mean, for me, it's huge, I am just so excited. I'm so proud, really, for what it means for my people. But also, like, you know, it's exciting for me to be in this position and I had a great time doing this role, and I'm excited to see what comes next.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: Awesome. Well, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have. Amber Midthunder, thank you so much for joining us.
MS. MIDTHUNDER: Thank you so much.
MS. HERNÁNDEZ: And thanks to all of you for joining us today. To check out what interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPostLive.com to find more.
I'm Arelis Hernández. Thank you for joining Washington Post Live. | 2022-08-18T19:53:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Amber Midthunder - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/18/transcript-race-america-giving-voice-with-amber-midthunder/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/08/18/transcript-race-america-giving-voice-with-amber-midthunder/ |
By Richard Scorza
Agios Nikolaos on the Greek island of Crete, which provides the setting for Daphne du Maurier’s “Not After Midnight.” ( iStock)
I just finished reading Daphne du Maurier’s suspense thriller “Not After Midnight,” sipping Cretan wine on the balcony of the Airbnb I booked for a five-night stay in Agios Nikolaos, on the Greek island of Crete.
The read is a result of a travel enhancement I stumbled into many years ago. I had some free time in a rural administrative capital in a mountain region and it was raining — the bane of the lone traveler. A traffic sign announced something I could make out, “Bibliotheca,” which I guessed could be the local library.
I dashed in the direction the sign pointed and found the very library-looking building’s entrance open. Of course it was quiet, and empty, a bit musty, but it was dry. I discovered there that librarians joyously welcome foreign visitors. I was greeted warmly and invited to tour the collection of foreign-language books in a special section.
The librarians, who spoke very competent English, had much more than travel guides at their disposal: They had literary works by foreign writers set in their locale. I sampled some in the reading area, spending a memorable rainy day very profitably.
Travel guidebooks aren’t dead, but they’ll never be the same. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Ever since, if I have a bit of extra time, no matter the call of sand, sea or cuisine, I go to the local library. Once, in Smolyan, a small town in Bulgaria, the librarians offered to issue me a borrower’s card, so enthusiastic were they that their collection would be perused. On numerous occasions, I’ve been invited to coffee, drinks, even meals in homes by warm and truly dedicated librarians.
Here, on my current drive around Crete, the stop in Agios Nikolaos would be the longest. The scenic port with a crammed marina, pristine beaches, ancient ruins and great food draws its share of tourists, so when I found the Koundoureios municipal library, I assured my greeters that I wasn’t looking for guidebooks. They beamed with approval when I asked whether they had works whose stories took place in Agios Nikolaos. That’s how I found du Maurier’s story.
Stopping at a foreign municipal library is a perfect way to enrich your travel experience, especially if you find a literary gem or two along the way. The libraries themselves are often in town centers, though not budget priorities, and when baggage allowances were far more generous, I would present a book from my personal collection (I’m a former English professor), having packed a few for just such a purpose.
But literary excellence is a secondary consideration. The most rewarding part is the local detail so many authors — who often have years of experience in the place you may be visiting for a few days — include in their stories. So the mention of a cafe or a trolley route is worth taking note of and including on your itinerary.
When I began to travel, in 1968, resources such as published travel guides were about the extent of my research on my chosen destination. So when I bumbled into my first library visit, I was flying blind, only finding whatever titles the librarians had managed to stock in their collections.
But in recent years, I’ve developed a variation that produces similar results and allows me the same interaction with helpful librarians. In my most recent visit to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, I preceded my call on the library’s staff with an internet search for “stories set in Sofia.” One site listed 22 books in English set in the city.
Eight new travel books you should be reading
The list gave me a targeted approach instead of my more random method. With it, I went to the city library, which overlooks a pedestrian plaza bordering a modernized tram line. I love the circular marble stairs with carved wooden banisters and wrought-iron posts that climb past the Vazrajdane theater, which shares the old building.
Once inside, I found it easy to spot the reference desk. Predictably, the librarians there were helpful and engaged. One, who introduced himself as Peter, took me under his wing and we checked the upper floors for another colleague before settling in front of a computer in an attempt to locate one of the titles on my list. Peter knew several of the authors and told me that one, Garth Greenwell, wrote in Bulgarian, too.
Sadly, our search was futile, and here is where I think the exemplar of kindness resides: Peter called a friend who was in contact with the author. After a short conversation, it was arranged that I would receive Greenwell’s latest novel, “Cleanness,” set in Sofia like his last, “What Belongs to You,” via email — one more unique memory of my trip.
I have now searched the phrase “stories set in …” many times, and there is always a site or two with lists of surprising length. I’ve been amazed at the wealth of book titles, regardless of the location. Of course, I could always order them online and read them at home or in my hotel room.
But it is far more fun to search the stacks in a foreign library, usually in the company of one or more extraordinary people volunteering their assistance. For me, these shared moments are as memorable as any in my wanderings. And as my experience in Sofia demonstrates, it is the search and not the book that is the most rewarding.
Scorza is a writer based in University Park, Md. | 2022-08-18T20:12:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why you should go to the library on your next vacation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/18/foreign-travel-libraries-books/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/18/foreign-travel-libraries-books/ |
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks out of the Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 6, 2022. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is warning that the GOP may not win back control of the Senate in November’s midterm elections — a cycle that typically would be favorable to the party not in power — as a political action committee linked to McConnell stages a rescue effort in the Ohio Senate race.
Still, polls have shown a remarkably close race between Vance, a venture capitalist and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” and his Democratic opponent, Rep. Tim Ryan, as they vie for retiring Sen. Rob Portman’s (R) seat. Vance’s primary race was in part financed by billionaire Peter Thiel, who previously employed Vance at his venture capital firm. But Vance was outraised 4 to 1 by Ryan in the second quarter of 2022.
In Georgia, Republicans are seeking to unseat Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D), whose victory in January 2021 helped Democrats achieve their narrow majority in the Senate. However, GOP candidate Herschel Walker — who has come under scrutiny for past falsehoods and the revelation of several children who had not previously been publicly disclosed — trails Warnock in the polls.
In the Senate race to replace retiring Pennsylvania Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R), recent polls show Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) holding a double-digit lead over Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, a celebrity television doctor. Oz’s campaign has spent much of the last week fending off attacks about how many houses he owns and withstanding online ridicule over a recently resurfaced video in which Oz botches the name of a local grocery store chain while supposedly buying ingredients for “crudités.”
The shift comes as GOP Senate candidates in some of those states have lagged behind their Democratic opponents in fundraising, potentially hindering their ability to keep up on the airwaves and promote their own candidacies. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson (R) raised about $7 million to Democratic nominee Mandela Barnes’s roughly $2 million in the second quarter of the year, before Barnes’s primary rivals dropped out.
Barnes has a 51 percent to 44 percent lead over Johnson in the poll, larger than Barnes’s two-point margin in June. The poll has an error margin of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Hannah Knowles contributed to this report. | 2022-08-18T20:42:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | McConnell warns GOP may not win Senate, as group linked to him invests heavily in Ohio - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/mcconnell-senate-gop-ohio/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/mcconnell-senate-gop-ohio/ |
Baltimore woman leads fight against city’s blight
Nneka N’namdi, the founder of Fight Blight Bmore, surveys the 500 block of North Carrollton Avenue in Harlem Park, which is blighted by many abandoned rowhouses. There are more than 14,000 vacant properties in Baltimore, according to the city housing commissioner. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
BALTIMORE — Nneka N’namdi was driving home in Baltimore’s Upton and Harlem Park neighborhoods on Mother’s Day in 2016 when she came across a situation she thought could turn into a tragedy.
“I noticed some kids were on foot. I think two on foot, two on bikes. And it was a huge demolition site. But it didn’t have no gates, no signs that say ‘stay out’ — nothing,” N’namdi said. “Just huge mounds of debris where the houses used to be.”
Her research led her from one topic to the next. Studying why those houses had to be demolished turned into learning why there are so many vacant, abandoned properties in Baltimore, she said.
Blight is a tough issue to tackle because it isn’t defined by one thing, Kennedy said. Blight, for example, can be abandoned or vacant properties, but it can also include litter and have a crime component, she said.
“But it definitely altogether points to communities that have been negatively impacted by not just disinvestment, but what that disinvestment brings — historic racist housing policies and other policies that contribute to blight,” she said.
One of the major contributors to blight is vacant properties, of which there are more than 14,000 in Baltimore, Kennedy said, with the bulk of them privately owned. She added that Westport and Harlem Park are areas with concentrations of blight.
“It’s extremely difficult for residents that are living in blighted neighborhoods. It impacts our residents’ everyday lives, whether or not you’re an adult or a child that has to walk past vacant properties on the way to school,” she said. “There’s a lot of stress, a lot of fear that is experienced living in these communities.”
The city is trying to address blight, Kennedy said, and programs such as Housing Upgrades to Benefit Seniors, which assists with home repairs, are meant to help reduce it.
“One of the things that we have been doing is increasing our investment in our communities,” Kennedy said. “We’ve worked with communities within the impact investment areas to create block-level planning, where we’re literally looking at block by block, how to transform not just the vacant properties . . . but creating different and thriving communities.”
The message is clear, N’namdi said: “A blighted Baltimore is a bleeding Baltimore.”
Fight Blight Bmore wants to reduce blight throughout the city, but its focus is on Old West Baltimore, Sandtown-Winchester, Druid Heights, Marble Hill, Penn North and Upton, where N’namdi lives with her two sons.
“This was not cool. Like, this is dangerous. They put gates up when they do demos in other parts of the city. Why is it no gates are up here by people who live here?” she said. The initiative “really just grew from that.”
N’namdi founded Fight Blight Bmore in 2016 so residents could identify, report and track blight in the city. The group recently launched a pilot version of a Fight Blight Bmore app that allows people to document blight.
During the pilot phase, the group will go into neighborhoods to do door-to-door surveys, N’namdi said. The data will then be compiled and made available through the app to members of the community.
“Baltimore City has a myriad of issues,” she said. “. . . But at the end of the day, as a taxpayer — I don’t care about none of that. You’re not going to endanger our community in this way and not think that at least I and other people are not going to bring attention to it.” | 2022-08-18T21:09:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baltimore woman leads fight against city’s blight - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimore-woman-leads-fight-against-citys-blight/2022/08/18/74fc5488-1e9f-11ed-8d30-84c409e82eb3_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimore-woman-leads-fight-against-citys-blight/2022/08/18/74fc5488-1e9f-11ed-8d30-84c409e82eb3_story.html |
Rare, powerful thunderstorms bring severe winds to Europe, killing multiple people
Wind gusts reached nearly 140 miles per hour in one part of France. At least nine people were killed in the storm.
France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin walks by a damaged car as he visits the Sagone camping site in Corsica, where a tree fell on a bungalow during storms on Thursday (Pool/Reuters)
A massive storm complex has traveled a nearly 1,000-mile path across Europe, reportedly killing numerous people and causing devastation on the French island of Corsica and to important landmarks in Venice, before continuing on to cause major wind damage in parts of Austria and Slovakia.
According to the Associated Press, at least five people in France and two in Italy were killed by the wicked storm complex. Some experts believe the storm complex may qualify as a derecho, a particularly damaging widespread and long-lived wind storm. Two children reportedly were killed by the same long-tracked storm complex in Austria.
The storm complex was moving exceptionally fast, enhancing its damaging wind risk. The intense line of storms hit the Corsican capital of Ajaccio on the southwest coast at 8:15 a.m. local time on Thursday, then reached Cap Corse on the northeast tip around 9:15 a.m., according to Meteociel. That is a forward speed of roughly 70 mph.
Preliminary reports of wind gusts in Corsica include: 140 mph (225 km/h) in Marignana, 128 mph (206 km/h) in l’Ile Rousse, 122 mph (197 km/h) at Calvi, and 116 mph (188 km/h) in Bocognano among others.
Dramatic video from Corsica’s Ajaccio Napoleon Bonaparte Airport shows the extreme destruction that 136-mile-per-hour wind gusts, equivalent to the force of a Category 4 hurricane, can cause. The winds damaged an Airbus A319, a large commercial jet that can hold up to 156 passengers, with one of its wingtips bent over by the storm, according to reporting from AIRLIVE.
At least five people were killed in and around the French island during the storm: a 13-year-old girl and a 46-year-old man were killed at two separate campsites; a 72-year-old woman died when a roof collapsed onto her vehicle; and two individuals died at sea: a kayaker and a 62-year-old fisherman whose bodies washed ashore after the storm, according to the Associated Press.
Several other people injured, and at least a dozen people were hospitalized in Corsica, according to the report. The high winds also left 45, o00 people without power.
Further on the system’s path, two people were killed in the Italian province of Tuscany when trees were ripped out of the ground, while several others were injured by falling trees at a campground. In Venice, the rowdy winds tossed tables and chairs like toys in the city’s popular St. Mark’s Square, and pieces of brick were ripped straight off St. Mark’s bell tower, the tallest structure in the city.
In Piombino, Italy, a dramatic video of the storm shows a Ferris wheel spinning rapidly in the storm, with the wheel’s carriages jostling out of control as the howling winds took over the wheel’s operations. According to the AP, hailstones the size of walnuts caused substantial damage in the Liguria region of Italy, busting windows and damaging farmlands that had already been scorched by drought.
The storm continued to bring intense lightning and strong winds even after ripping through parts of Northern Italy. A video from Kranj, Slovenia, shows intense winds ripping off the roof of what appears to be a large apartment complex, damaging several cars parked below.
In Austria, another astonishing video shows high voltage power masts bent in half. According to reporting from Austrian broadcaster ORF, at least 65,000 people in Styria, a province in the heart of Austria, lost power during the storm, which brought wind gusts of at least 139 kilometers per hour (86 mph).
Elsewhere in Austria, at least two children were killed in the Carinthia region after strong winds toppled trees near a busy lake.
The storm’s peak winds were seemingly on par with some of the highest ever recorded outside the mountains in Europe. Such strong wind gusts in widespread fashion are uncommon during summer in the region. A majority of the significant widespread wind damage events occur in the fall through spring, typically coming from strong mid-latitude storm systems dancing along the jet stream.
Some speculate that the storm may meet the requirements of a derecho — a widespread and long-lived windstorm at least 60 miles wide that leaves 400 miles of damage. Even then, a complex of storms must have wind gusts of at least 58 mph across most of its length, with several gusts of at least 75 miles per hour, according to the U.S. National Weather Service.
Squall lines or derechos occur in Europe, perhaps about one or several a year on a small scale. Per research by European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) scientists, most of these convective wind storms have a much smaller and less intense footprint than the swath that occurred Thursday. The location and directional movement also appear to be somewhat uncommon.
It is reminiscent of a derecho that struck Germany, including Berlin, in July 2002. That storm complex was responsible for eight deaths and 50 injuries.
Authors of a study on that derecho found that “severe convection can attain a size and intensity comparable to that in the United States.” | 2022-08-18T21:22:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rare, powerful thunderstorms bring severe winds to Europe, killing multiple - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/thunderstorm-winds-derecho-europe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/18/thunderstorm-winds-derecho-europe/ |
Hogan calls GOP gubernatorial nominee mentally unstable
Dan Cox swatted back, and also labeled his Democratic challenger Wes Moore a ‘socialist’ as the campaign begins to shift tone
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) arrives for a news conference about coronavirus updates on Feb. 8. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan has ratcheted up the rhetoric about GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox, describing him earlier this week as mentally unstable.
Hogan, who has previously called Cox a “Q-Anon whack job,” described the GOP nominee as “a nut” during a recent radio interview and reiterated his prediction that Cox has “no chance whatsoever” of being elected as Maryland’s governor in November.
Cox, a Republican delegate from Frederick, handily defeated Hogan-endorsed candidate Kelly Schulz last month in a primary largely viewed as a proxy war between Hogan, who has presidential ambitions, and former president Donald Trump, who endorsed Cox. In January 2021, Cox tweeted that he was organizing buses to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. During the insurrection, he tweeted that Vice President Mike Pence was “a traitor,” though he later apologized for his language while facing a legislative ethics inquiry.
The popular outgoing governor’s denigrations of Cox have shown no sign of slowing, and coupled with Cox’s own comments this week, signaled a potential shift in tone for the race.
“Hogan has a problem with telling the truth and mounting smear antics,” Cox said in statement. “As a lifelong Marylander, father of 10 children and experienced state delegate, businessman and attorney at law, the people of Maryland and I trounced Hogan’s lockdown agenda candidate. And I intend to do it again this fall by unifying Maryland to win big for freedom.”
Cox’s campaign is seen as a long shot in Maryland, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin. And Hogan’s repeated attempts to paint Cox, a first-term delegate and a relative unknown across the state, as unfit to replace him will likely dampen Cox’s efforts to lure the Democratic voters and independents he would need to win.
Hogan’s comments were not the only example of unrestrained rhetoric swirling around the top of the ticket.
Earlier this week, Cox agreed when his running mate Gordana Schifanelli said, “This is not a campaign [of] Republican versus Democrat. This is a campaign between freedom and a socialist-communist politics that has driven the people of this state to the ground.”
Cox said he “absolutely” agreed that Moore promoted socialist and communist ideas, citing a Moore campaign invitation that required proof of vaccination and later labeling the teaching of the history of race in schools and discussion of gender identity as socialist causes.
“The socialist model is a top-down model that requires more government control of our education. And we’re seeing that he is advocating that. You can’t even attend his events without a vaccination passport of an experimental vaccination. That’s an egregious overstep,” Cox told reporters at the opening of his Annapolis campaign headquarters on Monday.
He went on to criticize teaching about gender identity to children in third grade or younger, which is not a specific policy Moore endorsed. Cox also criticized Moore about embracing “CRT,” an acronym for critical race theory, an intellectual movement that examines the way policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism. Critical race theory is not taught in Maryland schools; Moore has not advocated that it should be.
“He’s going to have a hard time getting voters to believe I’m a communist or a socialist,” Moore said in a Thursday interview, noting he has led soldiers in combat and built a business.
He faulted Cox for talking in “trite” rhetoric inspired by Trump and dodging substantive policy ideas.
“It’s not surprising because Dan Cox doesn’t have policies to talk about,” Moore said. He’s not talking about issues.”
During his radio interview, Hogan said he has no plans to campaign for Cox, who sued him for imposing coronavirus restrictions at the height of the pandemic and attempted to impeach him earlier this year for those and other actions.
Hogan said he will stump for several GOP candidates in down-ballot races, including some running for Congress, state Senate and county executive. He will continue to campaign for GOP candidates across the country and also work to help his daughter, Jaymi Sterling, in her bid for state’s attorney in St. Mary’s County.
“The people I think are worth supporting I’m going to go out and support,” he said. “I think that makes your endorsement more meaningful than just saying I’m going to automatically endorse every Republican, even if they’re crazy.”
Hogan’s presidential ambitions undampened after Tuesday’s primary
Asked if he is hurting the GOP by not backing its gubernatorial nominee, the governor said his decision not to endorse Cox, who he described as “not a typical candidate,” does not make him disloyal to his party.
“I’ve been a loyal Republican since I was 18,” he said. “I’ve been involved in every single election but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to support wacky people that I don’t agree with or like anything about them.”
Hogan did not vote for Trump in 2016 in his first run for office or in 2020 for his reelection bid. In 2016, Hogan wrote in his father’s name, Larry Hogan Sr., a former congressman. His choice two years ago, he said, was former president Ronald Reagan. | 2022-08-18T21:22:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hogan calls GOP gubernatorial nominee mentally unstable - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/hogan-cox-moore-governor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/hogan-cox-moore-governor/ |
Plácido Domingo’s days as a performer should be over
A new report linking the disgraced tenor to suspected criminal activities in Buenos Aires should make even his diehard fans say time’s up
Perspective by Michael Andor Brodeur
Classical music critic
Plácido Domingo performs in Malta on July 26. (Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters)
Plácido Domingo, the disgraced 81-year-old operatic tenor roundly exiled from opera circles in the United States for allegations of sexual harassment that spanned three decades, has now reportedly been linked by Argentine prosecutors to a criminal enterprise in Buenos Aires that included sex trafficking of minors.
In wiretaps obtained by prosecutors and reported on Wednesday, what authorities say is the Spanish-born tenor’s voice — the same one that made him an international superstar on the world’s grandest stages — is heard organizing a rendezvous with a woman referred to as “Mendy.” (Elsewhere in the recordings, “Mendy” is allegedly heard referring to the man as Plácido.) The man gives “Mendy” instructions on how they should avoid being seen together and asks her to arrive separately to his hotel room.
The operation was one of about 50 raids conducted by authorities on the criminal front (a.k.a. the “Buenos Aires Yoga School”) in which 19 people were arrested. As of Thursday morning, no charges had been filed against Domingo and his representatives did not immediately respond to a Washington Post request for comment.
The news may be shocking even to those who know of the events of 2019, when multiple allegations of harassment against the singer first emerged from nine female artists. One month after the initial wave of accusations, 11 more women reported being harassed by the singer, who they say pressured them into sexual relationships, dangled job opportunities as leverage and doled out professional punishment if they spurned his overtures, which included groping and forced kissing. Dozens of witnesses corroborated the women’s claims that Domingo just couldn’t — or more precisely, wouldn’t — keep his hands to himself.
In the aftermath, he withdrew from performances at Metropolitan Opera in New York and he resigned from the L.A. Opera, where he had served as general director. His name was stripped in March 2020 from the Washington National Opera’s prestigious young artist program — now known simply as the Cafritz Young Artists of Washington National Opera.
In wake of harassment allegations against Plácido Domingo, companies step back
As for Domingo, he took the brave step of confronting his demons in public by posting to Facebook an apology that quickly morphed into a denial.
“My apology was sincere and heartfelt, to any colleague who I have made to feel uncomfortable, or hurt in any manner, by anything I have said or done,” he typed, setting up the twist. “But I know what I have not done and I’ll deny it again. I have never behaved aggressively toward anyone, and I have never done anything to obstruct or hurt anyone’s career in any way.”
“On the contrary,” he continued. “I have spent much of my half-century in the opera world supporting the industry and furthering the careers of countless singers.”
A very countable number of singers who allege Domingo’s vile behavior derailed their careers might disagree.
After a 2020 investigation by the American Guild of Musical Artists found that Domingo had in fact acted inappropriately, he followed up with a more cleanly tailored apology: “I respect that these women finally felt comfortable enough to speak out, and I want them to know that I am truly sorry for the hurt that I caused them,” he said in a statement.
And now we have this. What will Domingo’s excuse be this time? That “Mendy” wasn’t a singer? And more important, what will the rest of the world’s excuse be?
As of Thursday morning, Domingo was still on the calendars of Arena Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico (singing in concert); Arena Di Verona (a week-long engagement with the company still battling criticism for its stubborn adherence to blackface in its recent production of “Aida,” which led soprano Angel Blue to withdraw in protest from her scheduled performance in the company’s “La Traviata.”); the Ljubljana Festival in Slovenia; plus concerts in Spain, Turkey, Germany, Hungary, Paraguay, Bolivia, Belgium, Croatia, the United Arab Emirates and Italy.
These come on the heels of uninterrupted months of performances across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, unhindered by the hermetically sealed antipathy the American opera world has managed to sustain toward the singer. On the international stage, Domingo has largely weathered the storm of consequence and remained an in-demand international star. But why?
I can tell you right now it’s not his voice — an understandably diminished instrument, these days more suited to channeling strained nostalgia than delivering fresh expression. What fire once lit up his voice is half-supplied by the flame that lives in the listener’s memory.
Still, that strained nostalgia is valuable stuff. Domingo himself may increasingly be a void, but his presence still fills seats, keeps the doors open and (importantly) meets demand.
How desperate and sad to see institutions pretend that Domingo is a legend instead of a man, that his artistic legacy must be preserved at the expense of their own integrity. Then again, that integrity needs to come from somewhere. The opera world, overly prone to protecting its own bad habits, just can’t seem to quit Domingo.
Companies that continue to support abusive men send a crystal clear signal to young artists entering the world of opera: You’re on your own. They also broadcast a special kind of cowardice — not just a fear for the future, but a palpable fear of it. What happens when we stop treating talented men as earthbound gods? What are the stakes of removing the reins of power from the hands of those most likely to abuse it? Why don’t these companies see behavior like this as a betrayal of the art they work so hard to produce?
Most changes take time in opera — diversifying casts, re-examining the canon, raising marginalized perspectives to the level of the stage. But the Domingo problem is easy. Stop booking him.
At the top of his website, a self-aggrandizing mantra remains under his name: “If I rest, I rust.”
To the scrapheap. | 2022-08-18T21:22:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Plácido Domingo’s days as a performer should be over - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/18/placido-domingo-accusations-argentina/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/18/placido-domingo-accusations-argentina/ |
Chewing over what might have been
A Mickey Mantle baseball card is displayed at Heritage Auctions in Dallas on July 21. (LM Otero/Associated Press)
In the 1940s, when I was lucky enough to have a nickel to buy some bubble gum wrapped up with a card, I quickly put the gum in my mouth and threw away the card. Egad! What an act of stupidity. Now, in 2022, I read that I might have thrown away $10 million [“Bought for $50,000, mint Mantle card could fetch $10 million,” Sports, Aug. 15].
The sheer idea that a Mickey Mantle baseball card could now have made me a millionaire many times over is mind-boggling. I didn’t associate with the right crowd; I wasn’t a baseball fan. My close friends and I collected pictures of movie stars and intensely traded them.
Just another example of “if I had known then what I know now!”
Alice L. Haber, Frederick | 2022-08-18T21:24:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Chewing over what might have been - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/chewing-over-what-might-have-been/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/chewing-over-what-might-have-been/ |
We need deeper context for Congo and Rwanda
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, is greeted by Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Vincent Biruta on Aug. 11 in Kigali, Rwanda. (Andrew Harnik/Pool via Reuters)
The Aug. 11 news article “Fearing climate setback, U.S. urges care of Congo basin” stated that “the last presidential elections, in 2018, resulted in the first peaceful transfer of power in the DRC’s history.” The Catholic Church and numerous independent observers confirmed that Martin Fayulu won that election by a significant margin, not Félix Tshisekedi, the announced winner and president, or Emmanuel Shadary, Joseph Kabila’s handpicked successor. So the above statement is true but doesn’t tell the full story that the 2018 election results were not observed and electoral returns were falsified. Citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo are much likelier to be wary and cynical about democracy, their own government and Western benefactors rather than happy with the “first peaceful transfer of power.”
The Aug. 12 news article “Once a U.S. darling, Rwanda’s Kagame hears concerns amid Blinken visit,” about Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Rwanda, stated that Rwandan President Paul Kagame “has faced mounting criticism over his treatment of dissidents, journalists and other critics, including allegedly targeting them beyond Rwanda’s borders in violent attacks in South Africa and other nations.” That is a pretty watered-down version of the truth. Mr. Kagame’s government was responsible for killing Seth Sendashonga in Kenya in 1998 and Patrick Karegeya in South Africa in 2013, among many other opposition figures both inside and outside Rwanda. It also kidnapped Paul Rusesabagina in Dubai to put him on trial in Rwanda.
I hope The Post can look at these examples and improve its coverage of Africa. The continent and the West benefit from more honest and accurate coverage of its history, politics and context.
Ian MacNairn, Takoma Park
Opinions about Africa
Ghana’s tragic turn toward anti-LGBT extremism
For African Americans tired of U.S. hostility, Ghana is still calling
This crumbling African slave fort should be preserved to honor the enslaved | 2022-08-18T21:24:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We need deeper context for Congo and Rwanda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/deeper-context-congo-rwanda/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/deeper-context-congo-rwanda/ |
Fallout from the FBI’s search of Trump’s residence
President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is seen in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 8, 2021. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
The Aug. 14 news article “Decoding the classified information included in the Trump search warrant” omitted the critical “need to know” requirement before access to classified information is granted. “Need to know” means that access to specific classified information is required for a person to carry out official duties.
Once President Donald Trump left office, no staffer at Mar-a-Lago needed to know any of the details of the classified information recovered by the FBI during its Aug. 8 search, even if those employees had background investigations and clearances. There is no evidence the Biden administration sought advice from Mr. Trump on national security matters.
From media accounts, it appears Mr. Trump believed the seized documents were his personal property to be used as he saw fit. Given the former president’s history, it is quite possible he intended to use classified intercepts of foreign leaders’ private conversations and other information to coerce their silence, if needed, during his 2024 presidential run. Future investigation will reveal whether this was one of his motives.
Marty Brumback, Sykesville, Md.
Are former president Donald Trump’s supporters not tired of the boy crying wolf? I’m hoping “MAGA” stands for the time historically when all the American taxpayers had to worry about was whether a president was having sex with an intern in the Oval Office.
Worrying about Mr. Trump is exhausting and stressful. That he might have stashed papers with nuclear codes that could annihilate the world is beyond my comprehension.
The images of Mr. Trump throwing a temper tantrum with a plate of ketchup, flushing documents down toilets, calling people he dislikes incredibly pathetic slurs, not being able to keep his lies straight, etc., are not what I envisioned when saying the Pledge of Allegiance as a youth.
Trump Republicans go on and on about money being wasted by the Democrats but are never held accountable for what Mr. Trump’s presidency has cost the citizens of this great land.
Joan Roehm, Leland, N.C.
“Unprecedented” is the word chosen by most of former president Donald Trump’s defenders to attack the legally authorized search of his Mar-a-Lago residence ["Trump’s secrets: How a records dispute escalated to an FBI raid,” news, Aug. 14].
Though we all know what the word means, if you look it up, you would find some interesting synonyms for the word. Among them are: “fresh,” “new,” “novel,” “original,” “strange,” “unaccustomed,” “unfamiliar,” “unheard of” and “unknown.”
Without looking for the humor in those words, all synonyms for “unprecedented,” several of them also describe the unprecedented presidency of Mr. Trump.
It was novel, strange and unheard of before his term. It, too, was unprecedented.
Therefore, I posit that it certainly was an unprecedented (legal) search caused by unprecedented circumstances brought about by an unprecedented presidency.
Gerald S. Rose, Falls Church | 2022-08-18T21:24:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Fallout from the FBI’s search of Trump’s residence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/fallout-fbis-search-trumps-residence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/fallout-fbis-search-trumps-residence/ |
A sign in support of abortion rights stands outside Women and Teens Healthcare, a clinic that provides abortion services, in North Miami Beach on July 7. (Josh Ritchie for The Washington Post)
In their zeal to control women’s bodies, Republicans are threatening the lives, health, well-being and privacy of women and girls across the nation. But this modern-day Inquisition is one you can do something to stop when you cast your vote in November.
These are the questions on the ballot:
Should a parentless 16-year-old who says she knows she is not able to care for a baby be denied an abortion by a judge?
Should a woman undergoing a miscarriage, with the fetus showing no cardiac activity, be sent home to suffer 48 hours of heavy bleeding and excruciating pain before doctors will perform a surgical extraction that would have been done immediately just a few months earlier?
Should a teenager and her mother be made to face criminal charges for terminating the girl’s pregnancy early in the third trimester based largely on evidence gleaned from private messages they exchanged on Facebook about abortion pills?
Do not dismiss these cases as outliers. Such horrors are likely to be the norm in GOP-controlled states following the Supreme Court’s June 24 ruling striking down Roe v. Wade. Republican state legislatures and governors are enacting draconian abortion bans that leave doctors, pharmacists, patients, judges and police officers worried that once-routine decisions about patient care and individual privacy could now be illegal. And even if the worst doesn’t come to pass frequently, extreme cases are still important stress tests for the law.
Republicans fought for decades to pack the high court with a majority that would eliminate the constitutional right to reproductive choice. During that time, however, a broad consensus emerged in support of the basic framework established by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey: Abortion was indeed a protected right, but it could be restricted by states as long as an “undue burden” was not imposed on that right.
That consensus was fragile. Some advocates of reproductive choice, like me, felt that Roe and Casey left the door open for states to impose too many restrictions. Many antiabortion activists found circumstances that did not allow states or the federal government to impose a total ban on the procedure to be intolerable.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, joined by four other Republican-appointed justices, gave the most radical opponents of abortion their wish. And now we’re seeing the real-world result.
The Florida girl denied permission to have an abortion, identified in court papers as Jane Doe 22-B, has a guardian, but no parents, in her life. Her abortion was blocked by a judge — who ruled she was not “sufficiently mature” to make the decision — not by a bunch of Republican politicians. She may still be able to have the procedure through further appeal or by getting the written approval of her guardian. But though Florida has high standards for bypass of its parental consent laws, legal experts told The Post that such denials are rare — or used to be, in the Roe era. And now, the 16-year-old has to worry that if she does not get permission for the abortion before her pregnancy crosses the 15-week threshold, she will be forced to bring into the world a child she says she cannot properly care for.
The Texas woman who was having a first-trimester miscarriage, identified by the New York Times only as Amanda, told the newspaper that a hospital refused to do a common procedure called a dilation and curettage and sent her home because she was not bleeding copiously enough. When Amanda had a miscarriage eight months earlier, the same hospital had not hesitated to perform that procedure. But in the interim, the GOP-controlled state legislature passed a law banning almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Amanda had to go home and suffer two days of bleeding and excruciating pain.
And in Nebraska, the teenager’s medication-induced abortion clearly took place after the 20-week deadline specified by state law. There are questions about how she and her mother disposed of the fetus. In the past, however, it was exceedingly rare for a woman to be criminally prosecuted for having an abortion at any point. And the strongest evidence used in charging the teenager and her mother came from exchanges on Facebook Messenger, which they clearly expected to be private, but which the police obtained with a search warrant.
Both the Texas and Nebraska episodes occurred before the Dobbs decision — but well after it had become apparent that Roe was almost sure to be overturned.
Congress could pass legislation to codify the Roe v. Wade guidelines and make abortion policy sane again. But that can only happen if Democrats retain control of the House and grow their majority in the Senate. For every American who might become pregnant or have a miscarriage — and for everyone who loves them — your vote matters. | 2022-08-18T21:24:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The GOP put an abortion dystopia on the ballot for the midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/gop-abortion-dystopia-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/gop-abortion-dystopia-midterms/ |
The Aug. 14 Local Opinions essay by Virginia Education Secretary Aimee Guidera, “Virginia’s education future is now on the right track,” did not mention that a number of teachers in Virginia are leaving the profession, in part because of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) actions. In January, Mr. Youngkin issued his first executive order, which forbids teaching “inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory.” He then set up a tip line for people to report teachers and school administrators for promoting “divisive practices.” Virginia’s education future is definitely not on the right track.
Sharon Kotok, Arlington
Though I live in Maryland, I have two grandsons who were students in Loudoun County, so I have followed the news about the parents disrupting PTA meetings and making demands on the schools to censor the facts that they teach children.
Regarding Aimee Guidera’s Local Opinions essay about Virginia’s education being on the “right track”: Ms. Guidera said that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) “ended the use of any form of discrimination in our classrooms” based on a report that “inherently divisive concepts” were being taught in Virginia’s schools. It should read that “because of the sensitivity of White children, we have ended the teaching of the true history of slavery and racism in our country because that is discriminating against these sensitive White children.” After all, it’s a divisive concept to teach in Virginia that the Civil War was about slavery, that slavery wasn’t good for the enslaved and that the attitude toward the enslaved by enslavers was racist, isn’t it? And let’s not even get into whether teaching children facts about sexual matters is so much worse than lying to them.
Melissa Yorks, Gaithersburg | 2022-08-18T21:24:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Virginia’s education system isn’t on the right track - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/virginias-education-system-isnt-right-track/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/virginias-education-system-isnt-right-track/ |
How strong is the Islamic State in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan?
People gather at a funeral of one of the victims of an attack at a mosque in Kabul on Aug. 18. Among those killed was Abdul Bashir, 45, from the northern province of Takhar. He leaves behind two children and a pregnant wife. (Lorenzo Tugnoli/FTWP)
A bomb blast that killed at least 21 worshipers, including an influential cleric, and injured more than 30 others in Afghanistan’s capital during evening prayers on Wednesday evening, according to Taliban officials and residents, has renewed focus on the threat to the Taliban posed by Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate.
Residents of the Khair Khana area of Kabul told The Washington Post that the prayer leader who was killed, Amir Mohammad Kabuli, was an outspoken preacher unaffiliated with any one faction. No group has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s blast, but it came a week after the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), a rival of the Taliban, claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed Rahimullah Haqqani, a prominent Taliban-linked cleric.
It’s the latest in a string of attacks, many of which have been attributed to ISIS-K, since the Taliban swept to national power in Afghanistan a year ago.
Here’s what to know about the Islamic State’s presence in Afghanistan.
What is ISIS-K?
The Islamic State is most associated with Iraq and Syria, where the brutal extremist group held huge swaths of territory under its self-declared “caliphate” at the group’s peak in late 2014.
Known for its transnational recruitment and appetite for violence, ISIS saw its power decline sharply after a U.S.-coalition drove it from the last of its territory in 2019. But the militant organization and offshoots continue to stage attacks and fuel violence and instability in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
ISIS-K began operating in Afghanistan in 2015. It was started by Pakistani national Hafiz Saeed Khan, who had pledged allegiance to then-Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014. Originally consisting mostly of Pakistani militants and based largely in the eastern Afghan province of Nangahar, it drew some recruits from the Taliban and other extremist groups.
The Islamic State follows a version of Salafism, an ultraconservative movement in Sunni Islam. In Afghanistan, the Hazaras, a Shiite minority group, have been frequent targets of ISIS-K attacks. So have Sufis, who practice a form of Islamic mysticism or asceticism. Kabuli, the cleric killed in Wednesday’s bombing, was reportedly a Sufi leader.
ISIS-K is led by Sanaullah Ghafari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajir, who is reported to be in eastern Afghanistan, according to the United Nations. Its attacks declined after U.S.-led counterterrorism operations in the group’s stronghold in eastern Afghanistan between 2018 and 2020. Still, ISIS-K continued to launch attacks on civilian targets such as schools and weddings.
An Islamic State-claimed attack on Kabul’s international airport during the U.S. withdrawal last year killed 13 U.S. troops and an estimated 170 Afghans.
What is the group’s relationship to the Taliban?
In a word: combative.
The Taliban has a history of close ties with al-Qaeda, a rival to the Islamic State. Though Taliban leaders pledged in a 2020 agreement with the United States to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for terrorist groups, the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul last month seemed to indicate ongoing ties between the groups.
In contrast, the Taliban has clashed with ISIS-K virtually since the Islamic State offshoot first cropped up in Afghanistan. The Taliban mostly adheres to the Deobandi movement within the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, which contributes to religious and political differences between the groups.
How has Taliban rule affected ISIS-K?
In the months after the Taliban seized national control, ISIS-K expanded its reach to nearly all of Afghanistan’s provinces, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said in November. It also stepped up the tempo of its attacks, carrying out suicide bombings, ambushes and assassinations. The group has claimed 224 attacks in Afghanistan since August 2021, 30 of which were considered significant, according to SITE Intelligence Group, a nonprofit that monitors extremist groups. Most targeted Taliban gatherings.
Late last year, the core Islamic State group gave $500,000 in new funding to ISIS-K, according to the U.N. monitoring team. A Taliban intelligence official acknowledged in the fall that his group’s fight to overthrow the U.S.-backed Afghan government allowed many Islamic State prisoners to escape.
ISIS-K attacks declined over the winter — maybe because of winter weather, the United Nations said, or perhaps as a result of a Taliban counterterrorism campaign, aided by Pakistani intelligence.
The Taliban’s approach to counterinsurgency has been brutal: In the fall, local commanders in Jalalabad killed accused Islamic State collaborators and hung their bodies at busy intersections, The Post reported. Hundreds of suspected ISIS-K members disappeared or turned up dead.
Security has improved for most Afghans since the Taliban took power — but recent violence shows the Islamic State remains active. ISIS-K launched a fresh series of attacks in the spring, also claiming to have fired rockets into neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The violence could “produce some cracks in the armor” of the Taliban government, said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center.
“ISIS-K’s strategy is twofold: Target Taliban forces directly to undermine their hold on power, and target civilians to weaken Taliban legitimacy by shattering their core narrative that their takeover restored peace and stability,” he said in an email.
The indiscriminate smaller attacks in urban areas, in lieu of more sophisticated operations, could indicate that ISIS-K is short on “skilled terrorists,” said Antonio Giustozzi, a security expert at King’s College London.
“This strategic shift toward mass-casualty attacks and anti-Taliban media campaigns comes far more from a place of fear than confidence,” Rita Katz, SITE Intelligence Group’s director, wrote in an email.
Experts and intelligence officials warned last summer that a Taliban victory over the U.S.-backed Afghan government could drive Islamist militants from around the world to Afghanistan. ISIS-K rolled out a multilingual media operation over the past year to attract recruits, according to Katz. For the most part, though, Taliban rule hasn’t led yet to the boom in ISIS recruitment that some analysts predicted.
While the dire economic crisis in Afghanistan over the past year has created fertile ground for radicalization, experts said, Islamic State leaders can be strict about vetting their fighters’ ideological commitments.
Some lower-level Taliban commanders, mainly from Tajik and Uzbek communities in the north, have reportedly defected to ISIS-K, according to the United Nations. But the Taliban’s hard-line approach to governance hasn’t incentivized its ultraconservative leaders to jump ship, Kugelman said.
The Taliban last month declared ISIS-K a corrupt “sect” and banned Afghans from having contact with the group. Taliban forces have garnered praise from some Kabul residents for battling ISIS-K fighters who attacked predominantly Shiite neighborhoods.
In Salafi strongholds, though, the Taliban’s heavy-handed counterterrorism strategy could backfire, experts warned.
“They don’t have much capacity to use air power, the main tactic to target ISIS-K before the Taliban took over,” Kugelman said. “The Taliban have used ground offensives instead, but in so doing they’ve used scorched-earth tactics that have alienated local communities more than degraded the ISIS-K threat.”
Susannah George and Haq Nawaz Khan contributed to this report. | 2022-08-18T21:52:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ISIS-K: How strong is the Islamic State in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/faq-islamic-state-khorasan-afghanistan-taliban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/faq-islamic-state-khorasan-afghanistan-taliban/ |
Monkeypox-fueled hate echoes the HIV/AIDS era, even in rainbow cities
People line up for the monkeypox vaccine at a D.C. Health Department clinic on Aug. 12. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
It was a sunny day last week when it finally happened, the thing Jay had left his small, conservative hometown in the south to avoid — hate.
He came here to be his full self. But it was the pink mask and Birkenstock sandals the man singled out as he verbally assaulted the 31-year-old on the yellow line last week, using slurs targeting gay people, ranting about monkeypox and advancing into Jay’s personal space as the train stopped in a tunnel.
It’s "people like you that can’t stop going to orgies getting the rest of us killed’,” the guy screamed into Jay’s face, as Jay balanced his Trader Joe’s grocery bag and tried to keep his composure.
Jay got off at the next stop, and the man who raged at him didn’t follow. But his hatred — and the silence of others in the Metro car and on the platform after he left the scene — is jarring in a nation where same-sex marriage is legal but discrimination against someone based on who they love is not.
Statistics show that incidents like this — and far worse — are on the rise as public health workers already are combating the stigma surrounding monkeypox, a virus shared through close personal contact that can infect anyone but has predominantly hit gay men.
Demonstrations, political violence, and offline anti-LGBTQ propaganda increased by more than four times in the United States from 2020 to 2021 — from 15 incidents to 61, according to the global conflict monitoring group ACLED. This year has already had more attacks than all of last year, the group said.
You can see it on a small level in D.C., too.
In 2015, when the Supreme Court’s decision on Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage across the nation, D.C. police recorded 10 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes.
As hate speech escalated in the following years, attacks in D.C. nearly tripled from 2018 to 2020. We’ve already had 23 attacks in D.C. this year, compared to 17 the same time last year.
A few days after Jay faced his hater, the bile escalated to physical violence in Shaw, when two gay men walked past a group of teens yelling anti-gay slurs and howling about monkeypox before throwing punches, hitting the victims in their faces, breaking eyeglasses and knocking them to the ground, police said.
Police: Assailants used slur and referenced monkey pox in Shaw attack
Jay heard about the violence of the HIV/AIDS era and the 1980s. But he’s part of an LGBTQ generation coming of age and coming out just as the nation legalized same-sex marriage and our culture seemed to begin a real shift away from hysterical homophobia. He spoke on the condition that his last name not be used, to protect his privacy,
You can get a real sense of how far we’ve come if you dive into the Netflix series expanding the story told in the beloved movie about women’s professional baseball during World War II, “A League of their Own.” The series (which our family has binged all week), delivers the dangers — jailing, beating, death — that the queer community faced during the time that so many believed was great in America.
And now, monkeypox. In D.C. — which at 350 cases as of Thursday has more than any state — violence and rancor are back in style.
Health departments have struggled with messaging as ignorance gallops past common sense to embolden another generation of hater.
For five years, Jay lived in a city where he could hold a man’s hand in public, go to a gay bar without fear of arrest, where he could wear pink and not be harassed.
And then, the hate — so much of it spoken hundreds of miles away — escalated.
In Idaho, a pastor told his Boise congregation in May that gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said parents who take their kids to a drag show — even a family-friendly one that set him off in June — should be investigated.
In Texas, a pastor railed against Pride month and said LGBTQ people “should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head.”
Florida passed the “don’t say gay” bill, forbidding teachers to discuss sexual orientation in the classroom.
“When you see the actual repercussions of all this rhetoric,” said Jay, “it brings home how powerful that is.”
And now, extremists are hinting that children diagnosed with monkeypox (there have been nine in the U.S. so far) were victims of sexual abuse.
But sex isn’t the only way to get monkeypox. Health officials said it can spread through any skin-to-skin contact (which includes holding, cuddling and feeding if you’re asking about children) and through towels, bedding, cups and utensils.
Nevertheless, the ignorance continues.
Take this 1986 excerpt from New York Times coverage of a congressional hearing on AIDS: “The homosexual rights groups say that homosexuals have always been victims of violence but that the attacks have become more brutal and more frequent and that the assailants have increasingly referred specifically to acquired immune deficiency syndrome.”
Eventually, much of America figured out that you can’t get HIV/AIDS from sitting at the same desk as someone who has it (as I remember one football player arguing, in a debate we had about it in high school). Being HIV positive is no longer a death sentence.
Medicine eventually caught up. But we as a nation, apparently, have not. | 2022-08-18T21:57:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anti-gay violence inflamed by monkeypox fears is rising, even in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/monkeypox-hiv-hate-stigma-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/monkeypox-hiv-hate-stigma-dc/ |
Nafis Sadik, U.N. champion of women’s reproductive rights, dies at 92
She led the U.N. Population Fund and spent decades confronting government leaders about the importance of elevating the status of women
By Cathleen Miller
Nafis Sadik is flanked by Hillary Clinton, left, and Madeleine Albright at a United Nations gathering in 1995. (Marty Lederhandler/AP)
Nafis Sadik, an obstetrician-gynecologist who in 1987 became the first woman to direct a United Nations agency — the U.N. Population Fund — and was widely regarded as one of the most effective champions of women’s reproductive rights globally, died Aug. 14 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said her son, Omar Sadik.
Dr. Sadik, whose maternal grandmother died in childbirth, spent her early career as a medical corps officer in Pakistan’s armed forces and with the country’s family-planning program. She was horrified by her years encountering women living in squalor and giving birth to as many as 15 children, often endangering their own lives. When she joined the fledgling U.N. Population Fund in 1971, she was tasked with helping poor women all over the world gain access to contraception and health-care educational materials.
She spent decades confronting government leaders about the importance of elevating the status of women more generally, through access to education, jobs and greater rights. “You can’t deal with population and environmental issues until you deal with the individual issues of women,” she told the Houston Chronicle.
U.N. Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar named Dr. Sadik executive director of the Population Fund in 1987. She led the agency — with a staff of around 800 and budget of about $300 million — for the next 13 years amid a period of surging population growth. The agency predicted in 1990 that three new lives were being added to the planet every second.
The watershed moment of her career came in 1994 when she directed the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, a U.N.-sponsored summit to bring together 20,000 global leaders and others to discuss the threat of overpopulation.
She spoke of the urgent need to empower women — a sharp departure from earlier population-control efforts that saw nations imposing quotas on birthrates and in some cases, as in China, severe punishments for those who disobeyed. Dr. Sadik said those actions were a violation of women’s rights.
She elaborated at the time to The Washington Post: “This conference is about choices and responsibilities — for the individual, the community, the nation and the world. Its aim is to widen our freedom of choice — choice in the matter of family size, choice in population policy and programs, choice in development philosophy and practice.”
She said she met Pope John Paul II in a private audience at the Vatican months before the Cairo conference, in the hope he would reverse the Holy See’s ban on contraception, but made no progress and was essentially ushered out quickly. “He was angry about the approach we were taking,” she told journalists Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi in their 1996 papal biography, “His Holiness.” “Why had we taken this new approach to individual rights? And I said, ‘What other kinds of rights are there?’ ”
The pope publicly lambasted the conference as “a United Nations plan to destroy the family.”
During the conference, Dr. Sadik clashed repeatedly with Vatican representatives over what they considered hidden references to abortion access and endorsement of the procedure. She tried to downplay the tension by saying the conference did not declare a fundamental right to abortion — only a desire to protect women from illegal and unsafe procedures.
Dr. Sadik, a devout Muslim, endured death threats from Muslim fundamentalists who feared she was doing the bidding of the United States to bring Western mores into their bedrooms. U.N. security experts warned her that they feared for her life in Cairo, but her response, according to colleague Richard Snyder, was: “If they kill me, then I’ll be a martyr for the cause, and it would undo everything that they want. Either way, I don’t think I can lose this one!”
Dr. Sadik insisted on adding other topics to the platform for debate, issues rarely discussed at an international conference filled with diplomats: rape, incest, fistula and female genital mutilation.
U.N. staffer Stirling Scruggs recalled the reaction: “Nafis brought [female genital mutilation] to the forefront, and she brought it in a vigorous way. A lot of people said, ‘That’s cultural, it’s none of your business.’ And she said, 'Women being harmed is our business.’ ”
Dr. Sadik said she saw a surge of developing countries with U.N.-backed family-planning programs during her tenure, but she was disappointed that more nations had not kept the commitments they made at the Cairo conference.
In 1996, the Times of London ranked Dr. Sadik — who appeared a year earlier in Beijing with first lady Hillary Clinton at the World Conference on Women — as one of the world’s 100 most powerful women. The newspaper called her a “forthright” leader on “policy on improving the status of women in the developing countries while fighting to contain the population explosion.”
‘Two lives at once’
Dr. Sadik was born Iffat Nafis Shoaib in Jaunpur, in British-ruled India, on Aug. 18, 1929, and grew up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then Karachi, where her father became a government finance officer after partition in 1947; he later was Pakistan’s finance minister and a vice president of the World Bank in Washington.
As a young woman, Dr. Sadik excelled in science studies, playing Indian classical music and badminton. She also played tournament bridge.
“I used to tell my mother sometimes I wished I could live two lives at once,” she told the Associated Press. “She used to say, ‘You’re mad. Nobody can live two lives.’ At that time, I wanted to change everything. … I said, I want to do something in which I’ll be known and I’ll contribute to society.' ”
Even after she began attending Dow Medical College in Karachi — graduating in 1951 — she recalled her mother berating her: “I don’t know why you’re doing all this medicine. You’re not going to work. Why don’t you get married, and I’ll give you lots of jewelry and clothes?”
Most problematic, she said, was women constantly getting pregnant until they gave birth to a boy — to please husbands and in-laws. “It started to come home to me that these poor women really had no control over their lives,” she told the AP, adding that she bought condoms to pass out to women and spoke to the village men about family planning in what she described as shocking candor for a woman during those years. She once grew so frustrated, Dr. Sadik recalled, she ordered the men in one community to sign pledges they would give their wives a break from constant pregnancy.
After studying public health at Johns Hopkins University in the mid-1960s, she was tapped to oversee Pakistan’s five-year family-planning program before joining the U.N. Population Fund as an adviser in 1971. She was already developing a reputation as a conspicuous voice on population control, telling the New York Times the next year, “I say with certainty that regardless of country or culture, no woman in the world wants a baby every year.”
Her husband died in 2011, and her daughter Mehreen Sadik died in 2015. Survivors include four children, Ambereen Dar of Manhattan; Omar Sadik of Chappaqua, N.Y.; Wafa Hasan of Boca Raton, Fla., and Ghazala Abedi of Karachi; a sister; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
After stepping down as leader of the Population Fund, Dr. Sadik served several years as the U.N. secretary general’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and past director general of the World Health Organization, noted: “Nafis Sadik was an exceptional agent of change. She had the passion, stamina and courage to make a real difference for humanity.”
Cathleen Miller wrote the 2013 biography “Champion of Choice: The Life & Legacy of Women’s Advocate Nafis Sadik.” | 2022-08-18T22:10:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nafis Sadik, U.N. champion of women’s reproductive rights, dies at 92 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/18/nafis-sadik-un-population-fund-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/18/nafis-sadik-un-population-fund-dead/ |
Jake Freeman had amassed a 6.2 percent stake in the struggling housewares chain before the share price skyrocketed
Bed Bath & Beyond is working on a turnaround. “Our results are not reflective of our capabilities, nor what is expected of us by customers, shareholders and each other,” company chair Harriet Edelman said in July. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg News)
Jake Freeman, a math major, had amassed a 6.2 percent stake in the struggling housewares chain in July. He bought 4.96 million shares at $5.50 each through a Wyoming-based holding company he set up. On Tuesday — a day when the stock spiked above $27 a share before closing at $20.65, up 31 percent — he sold everything.
The Financial Times reported that his holdings were worth more than $130 million at the time, netting him about $110 million.
His timing was impeccable: Within 24 hours, activist investor Ryan Cohen signaled that he intended to sell the 9.8 percent stake acquired though his venture capital firm RC Ventures. It was Cohen’s interest in Bed Bath & Beyond that lit up online message boards like Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets, driving up the share price. So when reports emerged Wednesday afternoon that Cohen had filed a Form 144 with the Securities and Exchange Commission — a notice of intention to sell shares — the stock slid in after-hours trading. It closed Thursday at $18.55, down 19.6 percent, and plunged another 35 percent after hours.
Cohen has a devoted following among small retail investors because of his key role in the GameStop frenzy. In late 2020 and early 2021, traders on Reddit and other online communities snapped up the video game retailer’s shares, intent on capitalizing on a company that many institutional investors had written off. The stock surged from nearly $5 to more than $480 — a stunning rise for a bricks-and-mortar business in decline. The run-up fueled froth and volatility, and the meme stock was born.
Small investors joined forces and went looking for other companies that Wall Street was shorting, or betting against. The strategy outlined on Reddit employed what is known as a short squeeze, in which those betting against a stock — usually hedge funds — are forced to buy shares to close out their position.
Cohen founded the online pet food company Chewy and later became the board chair of GameStop. His plan to revive the video game retailer was buoyed by an unexpected explosion of online enthusiasm for the company last year, sending its stock price vaulting upward and making it the first of many meme stocks. Others included the movie theater chain AMC, smartphone maker BlackBerry and telecom company Nokia.
Freeman attends the University of Southern California, where he’s studying applied mathematics and economics, according to the Financial Times. The report said he raised funds for the initial investment by Freeman Capital from friends and family. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he has interned at the New Jersey-based hedge fund Volaris Capital.
In a July 21 letter to the company’s board, he said Bed Bath & Beyond is “facing an existential crisis for its survival.” He encouraged it to stop burning through cash so quickly, restructure its capital, and raise more funding.
Bed Bath & Beyond has been struggling for years. Its first-quarter sales were 25 percent lower than the previous year as the retailer posted a net loss of $358 million. It also has $1.37 billion in debt.
When the stock soared more than 300 percent as it gathered attention online, Freeman took the opportunity to liquidate his holdings, SEC filings show, selling $130 million worth of stock on Tuesday.
Freeman told the financial news site MarketWatch that he “did not expect the stock to soar as it did,” adding that he now thinks it has too much risk to the downside.
“I did expect that as [Bed Bath & Beyond] better structured its balance sheet for value to be unlocked. I felt at those elevated levels [the stock] was not worth it from a risk/reward standpoint.” | 2022-08-18T22:53:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Student Jake Freeman makes $110 million trading Bed Bath & Beyond meme stock - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/jake-freeman-bed-bath-beyond/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/18/jake-freeman-bed-bath-beyond/ |
LOS ANGELES — The housing market’s comedown from its high-flying days early this year is deepening, with home sales in July falling for the sixth straight month. Sharply higher mortgage rates, surging inflation and prices that remain near all-time highs are making homes less affordable. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that sales fell 20.2% from July last year, reaching the slowest pace since May 2020, near the start of the pandemic. But the slowdown has begun to tip the homebuying equation, if ever so slightly, in favor of house hunters who can afford to stay in the market and away from sellers.
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific has already lost three lawsuits over the way it removes employees with health conditions because of safety concerns, and the prospect of hundreds more lawsuits looms over the railroad. The lawsuits were originally going to be part of a class-action case before a federal appeals court decided the cases must be pursued individually. The first few lawsuits have now been tried with verdicts over $1 million coming in all three cases, but more than 200 more discrimination complaints are still pending with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that are likely to turn into lawsuits. Union Pacific has vigorously defended its policy in court, and the railroad says it is designed to protect its workers and the public from significant injury risks.
MOSCOW — Russian fans of Starbucks coffee shops are getting the chance to see if a homegrown successor can measure up. After the U.S. company left Russia in the wake of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, entrepreneurs who bought the assets are opening shops in former Starbucks locations this week. They have the nearly identical name of Stars Coffee and a logo almost indistinguishable from its predecessor’s. The venture follows the strategy of reviving closed McDonald’s outlets under a new name but with fundamentally the same menu. Russian entrepreneurs saw opportunity in suddenly unoccupied stores after Western companies exited the country.
NEW YORK — Kohl’s has slashed its sales and profit expectations for the year as a result of the department store chain stepping up discounts to get rid of unwanted merchandise. Looking ahead, Kohl’s said it was reducing merchandise orders for the critical holiday period. The announcement Thursday sent Wisconsin-based Kohl’s shares down almost 8% and capped a mixed week for retailers. Kohl’s disappointing forecast is the latest indication shoppers are cutting back on clothing and other discretionary items in the face of high inflation. They’re also shifting spending priorities as they emerge from the pandemic.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A federal judge is ordering Starbucks to reinstate seven employees in Memphis, Tennessee, who were fired earlier this year after leading an effort to unionize their store. In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman agreed with the National Labor Relations Board, which had asked the court to intervene in May. Lipman’s decision requires Starbucks to offer reinstatement to the employees within five days. The case has been among the most closely watched in the unionization effort at Starbucks. More than 220 U.S. Starbucks stores, including the Memphis store, have voted to unionize. Starbucks opposes the unionization effort.
BILLINGS, Mont. — Renewable energy incentives in the climate bill signed by President Joe Biden are expected to drastically reduce overall U.S. emissions. But some analysts say the legislation will also boost oil and gas companies, offsetting at least some of the emissions reductions. The legislation mandates several oil and gas lease sales. It also locks renewables and fossil fuel together for 10 years. So if the Biden administration wants solar and wind, it must first offer new oil and gas leases. Economists project the measure could result in more planet-warming carbon dioxide from U.S.-produced oil and gas by 2030, even as more of that fuel gets exported. | 2022-08-18T22:53:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Falling home sales, Russian coffee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-falling-home-sales-russian-coffee/2022/08/18/cb4bec8e-1f3c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-falling-home-sales-russian-coffee/2022/08/18/cb4bec8e-1f3c-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
Rising global inflation and unstable economic growth spurred Sea in May to trim its full-year revenue forecast for e-commerce, which accounts for around 52% of the company’s total sales, by $400 million to a range of $8.5 billion to $9.1 billion. This month it threw out that guidance entirely.
In our efforts to adapt to increasing macro uncertainties, we are proactively shifting our strategies to further focus on efficiency and optimization for the long-term strength and profitability of the e-commerce business.
Management seems to have realized that buying unprofitable revenue isn’t a sustainable business model, but choosing not to do so makes predicting the future almost impossible.
Sea’s e-commerce expansion over the past few years, while impressive, has been largely false growth. Meanwhile, its digital entertainment business, which comprises 44% of revenue, fell 12% in the second quarter as Covid-driven stay-at-home spending petered out.
In many ways, Sea is a cross between Alibaba and Tencent, which are China’s biggest e-commerce and gaming companies respectively.
Continued lockdowns, a crackdown on internet companies, rising inflation, a brewing mortgage crisis and heightened geopolitical tensions are all weighing on China’s gross domestic product outlook. While the government targets growth of 5.5% this year, the consensus in a Bloomberg survey of economists is for a figure of 3.8%. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nomura Holdings Inc. are the latest to cut their forecasts.
Tencent this week reported a 3% decline in revenue, more than expected, and cut around 5% of its workforce after advertising slumped by a record. Earlier in the month, Alibaba also published a drop in sales. Net income at both companies fell, but at least they remained profitable.
Sea’s outlook is less clear. It’s Shopee service is the top-ranked e-commerce app in Indonesia, Taiwan and Southeast Asia overall, according to the company, yet the economic fortunes of its key markets remain unstable. Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, is enjoying strong growth spurred by an expansion in exports fueled by commodity price increases. Yet inflation leaves open the prospect of interest rate rises that could hamper consumer spending.
Singapore earlier this month cut its GDP forecast by one percentage point while Taiwan, Asia’s sixth-largest economy, has trimmed its growth outlook twice this year because of slowing demand for consumer electronics and lower private consumption. The Asian Development Bank has also reduced its 2022 and 2023 GDP growth forecasts for Thailand and Malaysia.
With little prospect that the broader economy will improve and pressure on consumer spending increasing, Sea’s chances of posting rapid revenue expansion and finally turning profitable look increasingly out of reach. That’s forced management to make some difficult choices, and growth is set to be sacrificed as a result. It’s the kind of fiscal discipline investors ought to cheer, but first they’ll need to accept a more tepid revenue pace.
• In China Tech Earnings, Numbers No Longer Matter: Tim Culpan | 2022-08-18T22:54:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | You Thought China’s Tech Slowdown Was Bad - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/you-thought-chinas-tech-slowdown-was-bad/2022/08/18/ec18a268-1f41-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/you-thought-chinas-tech-slowdown-was-bad/2022/08/18/ec18a268-1f41-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
15-year-old arrested in fatal shooting at ‘Moechella’ event
Police charged the boy with first-degree murder while armed in the killing of Chase Poole, who was also 15
Emergency responders at the intersection of 14th and U streets after a June 19 shooting. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
A 15-year-old boy was arrested and charged Thursday in the killing of another 15-year-old who was fatally shot at a festival in the U Street area in June.
Police did not name the boy who was arrested. He was charged with first-degree murder while armed in the slaying of 15-year-old Chase Poole.
Chase was killed as police were attempting to shut down the “Moechella” festival on Juneteenth. The event was meant to elevate Black culture and protest gentrification of an area once known as “Black Broadway.” A police officer and two other adults were struck and wounded in the shooting, which occurred in the 2000 block of 14th street NW.
Police previously said they did not know what motivated the shooting or whether Chase and the others with him were targeted.
Police said Thursday they did not have an update on the motive. The case is still under investigation. | 2022-08-18T22:54:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 15-year-old arrested in fatal shooting at ‘Moechella’ in U Street area - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/moechella-shooting-arrest-u-street/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/18/moechella-shooting-arrest-u-street/ |
Raymond Damadian, who created first MRI machine, dies at 86
Raymond Damadian with an MRI machine at his office in Melville, N.Y., in 2003. (Neville Elder/Corbis/Getty Images)
Raymond Damadian, who helped revolutionize medical diagnostics by developing the first magnetic resonance imaging machine and who later became so embittered after the Nobel Prize went to two other pioneers in MRI technology that he took out full-page newspaper ads to denounce the decision, died Aug. 3 at his home in Woodbury, N.Y. He was 86.
The death was announced in a statement by Fonar Corp., which Dr. Damadian founded in 1978 after being awarded a patent for the MRI concept of using radio waves from atoms to construct images of soft tissue. No cause was given.
Dr. Damadian is credited with helping build the foundations for one the major advances in the modern medical tool kit, offering the ability to detect potentially cancerous tumors and observe internal organs without invasive procedures or the radiation from X-rays or CT scans. Since MRI experiments in the 1970s, the systems have become an essential part of medical tests around the world.
Dr. Damadian was often at odds with the wider medical community, building a reputation as a zealous self-promoter and go-it-alone eccentric who tried an early MRI test on himself by wriggling into the coils of a prototype machine he dubbed “Indomitable.” A PBS biographical sketch described him as a brilliant innovator but, at times, off-putting with an “abrasive, aggressive personality.”
He battled companies such as Johnson & Johnson over alleged patent infringements and broke from established science to apparently embrace biblical creationism over evolution. In 2015, he co-authored “Gifted Mind: The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story, Inventor of the MRI” that blended his work with his views on faith.
The biggest fissure came after the 2003 Nobel Prize in science was awarded Paul C. Lauterbur of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in Britain for their work in MRI development. He was outraged at being overlooked.
He began a public campaign decrying the Nobel decision and openly lobbying for the award, which he claimed should rightfully include him.
“The shameful wrong that must be righted,” said a full-page ad by Dr. Damadian that appeared in The Washington Post and other major newspapers around the world. At the bottom was a clip-and-mail coupon, addressed to the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, calling for Dr. Damadian to be added to the award. The ad featured an image of the Nobel Prize upside down.
The Nobel Committee did not alter its decision.
“To wake up Monday morning and see that I have been erased from history,” he told the New York Times after the Nobel announcement from Stockholm. “It is a torment that I can neither bear nor live with.”
Lauterbur and Mansfield were foundational in bringing MRI technology into practical use; Lauterbur with conceiving how to turn the radio signals into workable images, and Mansfield with mathematical techniques for interpreting the data. Dr. Damadian’s early work, colleagues said, had an important but more limited focus: exploring how cancer cells produced different radio signatures than normal cells after being tugged by a magnetic field.
It was nonetheless a significant breakthrough, and his appeal for Nobel recognition had some backers among MRI experts. Yet Dr. Damadian’s brusque style may have worked against him, some colleagues said.
“A more likely reason that Dr. Damadian did not win the award has to do with his less-than-subtle self-promoting activities over the past 20 years,” wrote William G. Bradley, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, in a 2004 issue of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. “Because I have known Raymond Damadian for 20 years and consider him a friend, I have always questioned why a brilliant scientist needed to resort to relatively provocative tactics to be appreciated.”
Began with lab rats
Raymond Vahan Damadian was born in Manhattan on March 16, 1936, and raised in Queens. His father, an ethnic Armenian immigrant, was a photoengraver at the New York World-Telegram; his mother was an accountant.
Dr. Damadian took an early interest in music and studied violin with some boyhood classes at the Juilliard School. He decided to shift to medicine after winning a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, graduating in 1956. He received a medical degree in 1960 from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
He began experimenting with nuclear magnetic resonance technology (NMR), a technique discovered in the late 1930s in which a constant magnetic field is used to measure radio waves from atomic nuclei. At the time, it was used on a small scale to identify chemical compositions.
Dr. Damadian, then at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn (now SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University), proposed the idea of a full-body scanner. He postulated that it would pick up different radio signatures between normal tissue and cancerous sites.
“I thought if we could do on a human what we just did on that test tube, maybe we could build a scanner that would go over the body to hunt down cancer.” he told Inc. magazine in 2011. “It was kind of preposterous. But I had hope.”
In June 1970, he packed up some lab rats in his car and drove to an NMR lab in Pittsburgh, publishing the results of cancer detection in Science the following year. With a grant from the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Damadian started to build the first body scanner even before the term MRI was coined. His patent application shows the general structure of the modern machine with magnetic coils surrounding a bed for the patient.
In the summer of 1977, Dr. Damadian was ready to test the 1.5-ton machine (now in the Smithsonian Institution). He shimmied inside, but there were no readings.
“Frankly, I was just too fat for that coil,” he said. He turned to lab assistant Lawrence Minkoff. On July 3, 1977, Dr. Damadian triumphantly announced the first MRI image, a portion of the Minkoff’s chest showing his heart, lungs and other organs.
Yet other battles were beginning.
Some colleagues thought Dr. Damadian was overplaying the moment, including his news release that he had “perfected” cancer detection before there were even any human trials. Dr. Damadian countered that he had used MRI technology to find cancer cells in rats and had studied cancerous tissue removed from humans.
He found trouble getting new grants and looked to private investors, which offered the seed money to found Fonar in Melville, N.Y., an acronym built off Field Focused Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. It produced its first commercial MRI machine, QED 80, in 1980.
At the same time, others were moving into the market using their own variations of the original NMR technology. Dr. Damadian saw it as patent theft.
He lost a claim against Johnson & Johnson in 1986 but, in 1997, a federal appeals court upheld a more than $100 million decision against General Electric for patent infringement. Other companies, including Germany’s Siemens and Japan’s Hitachi, reached out-of-court settlements with Dr. Damadian and Fonar.
The money helped keep Fonar going. The company later introduced innovations such as MRI machines that allow the patient to sit upright. Dr. Damadian also helped develop a pacemaker compatible with MRI technology.
His wife of 60 years, Donna Terry, died in 2020. Survivors include three children, Keira Reinmund, Jevan Damadian and Timothy Damadian, who is Fonar chief executive; a sister; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Despite his anger over the Nobel decision, Dr. Damadian received a stream of awards for his MRI work. At his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989, he used the ceremony in Akron, Ohio, to grouse about his patent fights.
“Patents don’t work,” he said. “I now have to compete against the Japanese in a market that I created with my own invention.” | 2022-08-18T22:55:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Raymond Damadian, created first MRI machine, dies at 86 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/18/damadian-mri-creator-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/18/damadian-mri-creator-dies/ |
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks back to his office after speaking on the Senate floor. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The expectations-setting for the 2022 midterm elections is off to an early start, and this entry is a doozy.
In an appearance back in his home state of Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) downplayed the odds of Republicans reclaiming the Senate — and, by extension, him reclaiming the title of majority leader. In doing so, he suggested that “candidate quality” was a key factor.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said, according to NBC News. “Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
McConnell added: “Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly.”
In one way, this merely acknowledges an emerging reality. The generic ballot has tightened in recent weeks, and polls show Republican candidates struggling in some states — such as Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania — that are key for McConnell’s path back to majority leader. Some prognosticators now have Democrats as favorites to keep their majority.
It’s also convenient for McConnell to set the bar lower in this way, such that an adverse outcome on election night is laid at the feet of those specific candidates (or perhaps someone who endorsed them), and is not seen as a referendum on the broader political strength of his party.
But viewed another way, it’s pretty striking that McConnell’s even in this position — that is, of having to manage expectations. And it’s abundantly clear that he’s not particularly happy with it.
The reason these comments land with some force is that Republicans need to pick up just one seat to regain the majority — and in midterm elections, the vast majority of the time, the party that doesn’t control the White House does gain ground.
(Also, consider President Biden’s approval ratings, which have been low enough to make the political terrain especially favorable to the GOP — though those numbers have ticked up slightly, in recent days).
Over the past century, the opposition party has gained Senate seats in 18 out of 25 midterm elections. The average shift is four seats to the opposition party.
There are, of course, exceptions. But generally they include some unusual factors.
The opposition party lost a seat in the 2002 midterms, but that was when the country was still very united after 9/11.
And it actually happened again just four years ago, in 2018, when Democrats lost two Senate seats in the only midterm under Donald Trump. But that was in large part because the election map overwhelmingly favored the GOP; each of its takeovers came in red states, and on the same day Democrats gained more than 40 seats in the House, winning back that chamber.
The 2022 election does not feature such a lopsided map. Each party has approximately five seats they must worry about defending, with three or four of them in swing states (depending on how you define that).
What it does feature is some underperforming GOP candidates — most of whom were foisted upon the GOP with the help of Donald Trump.
High on that list is Ohio’s J.D. Vance, who has trailed in most polls despite the state being increasingly red. Mehmet Oz (Pennsylvania) and Blake Masters (Arizona) both trail by double digits in the FiveThirtyEight polling average, despite running in swing states. And in Georgia, Herschel Walker trails in most polls after myriad stumbles as a candidate.
These are undoubtedly the races McConnell had in mind when he mentioned “candidate quality.” All were backed by Trump. McConnell ultimately endorsed Walker when it looked like he was a shoo-in for the GOP nod.
Polling can be unreliable, and it’s possible some of these candidates could soon consolidate support from the GOP base after hard-fought primaries. But in all of these races, Republicans should be in a better position than they appear to be — that is, if 2022 is a good midterm year, as is traditional for the opposition party. But it just doesn’t look like one right now. And a McConnell-aligned group pumping $28 million into Ohio, as we learned Thursday, is pretty indicative of where things stand.
And he doesn’t seem particularly happy about it. | 2022-08-18T22:55:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | McConnell sets expectations for Republicans retaking the Senate in 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/mcconnell-expectations-senate-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/mcconnell-expectations-senate-midterms/ |
“He was a tremendous teammate and an even better person who lifted up everyone around him,” Mississippi Coach Lane Kiffin said of Luke Knox (16). (Bruce Newman/Oxford Eagle/AP)
Florida International football player Luke Knox has died at age 22, the university announced Thursday.
Knox, the younger brother of Buffalo Bills tight end Dawson Knox, suffered a “sudden passing,” according to FIU. No cause of death was revealed, but the university said (via the Associated Press) it happened Wednesday evening and that police do not suspect foul play.
“Words cannot express the heartfelt sorrow we feel because of the passing of our teammate and friend, Luke Knox,” FIU Coach Mike MacIntyre said in a statement shared on social media. “I had the honor of coaching Luke at Ole Miss and at FIU. While I admired his passion for football, his genuine love for his family and teammates is what I will always remember.”
A native of Brentwood, Tenn., Knox followed his older brother to Mississippi, where they were teammates on the Rebels in 2018 before Dawson Knox moved on to the NFL. Luke Knox played linebacker there, including a 2019 season with MacIntyre as his defensive coordinator, before switching to tight end in 2021. He transferred to FIU earlier this year, and was studying business.
FIU Athletic Director Scott Carr said Thursday on social media that it was “a devastating day” for the Panthers.
The football program canceled practice, per reports, and the athletic department said it was bringing in support staff for grieving players and others on campus.
Dawson Knox reportedly was not at the Bills’ practice Thursday. A third-round pick by Buffalo in 2019, he is entering his fourth season with the team.
Bills fans have donated more than $400,000 to Lamar Jackson’s favorite charity since Ravens game
Bills fans expressed their support by contributing over $50,000, per Western New York’s WHAM-TV, to a charity associated with Dawson Knox that supports families dealing with pediatric cancer. Many contributions, the station reported, were in increments of $16.88, referring to the jersey numbers worn by the Knox brothers.
“Our hearts go out to Dawson and his family during this time,” Bills Coach Sean McDermott told reporters. “We’re right there with him and supporting him and his family. Just tragic news that I woke up to this morning. We love him and we support him.”
Luke Knox’s former head coach at Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin, said that news of the player’s death resulted in “heavy hearts throughout our football team.”
“I am very grateful for my personal relationship and time spent with Luke,” Kiffin said in a statement. “He was a tremendous teammate and an even better person who lifted up everyone around him.”
“He had a special way of making everyone around him feel comfortable and confident,” said MacIntyre. “Luke’s family is special to me, and they will continually be in my heart and in my prayers during this difficult time.”
FIU opens its season Sept. 1 against Bryant at the Panthers’ Miami area stadium. | 2022-08-18T22:55:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FIU player Luke Knox, brother of Bills’ Dawson Knox, dies at 22 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/luke-knox-dies-dawson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/luke-knox-dies-dawson/ |
FLE - Horse trainer Chad Brown talks to the media after a workout by Kentucky Derby entrant Zandon at Churchill Downs on May 3, 2022, in Louisville, Ky. Brown, a prominent New York-based horse trainer whose Early Voting won this year’s Preakness Stakes, is facing a domestic violence charge for allegedly pushing a woman down a flight of stairs and trying to choke her, authorities said Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File) | 2022-08-18T22:56:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Preakness-winning trainer charged in domestic violence case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/preakness-winning-trainer-charged-in-domestic-violence-case/2022/08/18/3c601030-1f2e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/preakness-winning-trainer-charged-in-domestic-violence-case/2022/08/18/3c601030-1f2e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
China’s Yangtze River is running dry amid scorching temperatures
The dried-up bed of the Jialing River, a Yangtze tributary, in Chongqing, China, on Aug. 18. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
China is suffering its worst drought on record as soaring temperatures dry up key parts of the Yangtze River, damaging crops and limiting drinking-water supplies in some rural communities.
The hardest-hit regions are in China’s central and southern provinces, where a prolonged heat wave has exacerbated drought conditions, authorities said.
Chinese officials this week announced what they said were several new measures to help alleviate the impact, including financial aid, cloud seeding and shutdowns of some energy-intensive industries.
In Hubei, in central China, authorities said they would seed clouds to induce new rainfall after 4.2 million people were found to have been affected by the drought. The southwestern province of Sichuan, which relies heavily on hydropower, also ordered factories in 19 cities and prefectures to halt operations until Saturday to preserve electricity for the public.
The temperature in a neighboring district hit a record 45 degrees Celsius, or 113 Fahrenheit, China’s Meteorological Administration said Thursday. The Finance Ministry also pledged this week to distribute about $44 million in disaster relief to affected communities.
The crisis follows years of expert warnings that China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, would face extreme weather events as a result. Beijing has presented itself as a leading force in tackling climate change but has also continued to build coal-fired power plants that produce carbon dioxide, mercury and other harmful emissions.
Jin Xiandong, a spokesman for the National Development and Reform Commission, said on Tuesday that the lack of hydropower output has increased the country’s reliance on coal.
The Three Gorges Dam, China’s biggest hydropower project, said it would increase water discharges in the coming days to aid downstream basins, Reuters reported.
In Hubei, the province’s emergency department also said this week that nearly 400,000 hectares of crops have already been damaged and that more than 150,000 people now have only limited access to drinking water. The local government will also attempt to seed clouds, a process that involves shooting silver iodide rods into the sky to kick-start fresh rainfall.
But in some regions along the Yangtze, cloud coverage appeared too thin for seeding, CNN reported.
China has practiced weather manipulation in the past, including at the 2008 Beijing Olympics when 21 government-run stations fired rockets at clouds above the open-air Bird’s Nest stadium to stop rainfall during the Opening Ceremonies. | 2022-08-18T22:56:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China’s Yangtze River is running dry amid scorching temperatures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/china-drought-yangtze-river-heat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/china-drought-yangtze-river-heat/ |
Zelensky faces unprecedented criticism over failure to warn of war
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during an interview with The Washington Post at his office in Kyiv on Aug. 8. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
KYIV, Ukraine — Until this week, Ukrainians seemed to see President Volodymyr Zelensky as beyond reproach, a national hero who stayed in Kyiv despite the risk to his personal safety to lead his country against invading Russian troops.
Comments he made to The Washington Post justifying his failure to share with Ukrainians details of repeated U.S. warnings that Russia planned to invade have punctured the bubble, triggering cascade of public criticism unprecedented since the war began.
In the interview with The Washington Post, published Tuesday, Zelensky cited his fears that Ukrainians would panic, flee the country and trigger economic collapse as the reason he chose not to share the stark warnings passed on by U.S. officials regarding Russia’s plans.
“If we had communicated that … then I would have been losing $7 billion a month since last October, and at the moment when the Russians did attack, they would have taken us in three days,” Zelensky said.
He added that subsequent events — with Russian troops failing to reach the capital — suggested he had made the right call.
“That’s what happened when the invasion started — we were as strong as we could be. Some of our people left, but most of them stayed here, they fought for their homes. And as cynical as it may sound, those are the people who stopped everything.”
Many Ukrainians took exception to the implication that Zelensky had prioritized the health of the economy over their well-being, and suggested that many lives might have been saved had the government adequately prepared the population for war.
Sevgil Musaieva, editor in chief of the Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news site, posted on Facebook that she was “personally offended” by Zelensky’s explanation, saying it called into question the intelligence of Ukrainians. She wouldn’t have fled, she said, and the $7 billion a month potential cost to the economy has to be weighed against the lives lost, the swift capture by Russia of parts of southern Ukraine and the fear and intimidation of civilians who unexpectedly found themselves under Russian occupation.
“Honestly, my hair stood on end when I read what [Zelensky] said about evacuation. … How can a person who has Mariupol, Bucha and Kherson on his conscience say that an evacuation would have overwhelmed the country?” wrote journalist Bohdan Butkevich on his Facebook page, referring to places where Russia has committed atrocities.
“He didn’t want to put the country on a military footing because he was afraid of losing power,” Butkevich wrote.
The lack of warning for civilians living in the threatened areas, and especially those with children, the elderly and those with impaired mobility, was “not a glitch, not a mistake, not an unfortunate misunderstanding, not a strategic miscalculation — it is a crime,” said Ukrainian author Kateryna Babkina.
The outpouring also included many defenses of Zelensky. Valerii Pekar, a publicist who teaches at the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, wrote on Facebook that Ukrainians had ample access to media reports about the American warnings.
“Anyone who did not pack his own rucksack after reading the news about American intelligence reports has no right to claim that he was not warned,” he said.
“We all knew, and understood, that war was coming. We just didn’t want to believe it because it’s too terrible to be true,” wrote Olena Gnes, founder of the What is Ukraine project, on her Facebook page. “None of Zelenskyi’s statements would have changed anything significantly.”
The level of outrage is unprecedented in wartime Ukraine, she said, and represents perhaps “the first serious communication crisis” for Zelensky, regarded as a master communicator, and his team.
Even those who said they understood why Zelensky didn’t want to provoke panic said they nonetheless wondered whether there were steps that could have been taken to alleviate the impact of the invasion — from preparing blood banks to digging trenches along the northern border to prevent Russian troops from overrunning many towns and villages before they were halted outside Kyiv.
Such questions had lingered, unspoken, since the ferocity of the invasion stunned the country on Feb. 24, ordinary Ukrainians said. But the consensus has been that Ukrainians need to unite and refrain from criticisms while the country is at war, said Oksana, 30, who was discussing the controversy Thursday in a Kyiv cafe with her partner. She asked that her full name not be used because the subject is sensitive.
Now that some people are raising questions about Zelensky’s choices, many are debating whether more could have been done, she said.
“My biggest question is about the level of atrocities we saw, and I think about whether they could have been prevented,” said Oksana, who did not vote for Zelensky but now supports him wholeheartedly as the leader Ukraine needs to win the war.
“It will damage us to discuss this now,” she said. “Ukraine is winning because of our belief in the president and our armed forces. So I’m ready to wait for the explanation until after we win the war.”
“Then we start asking questions,” she said. “There are questions that need answers because this is the society we are fighting for — a society of accountability.” | 2022-08-18T22:56:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zelensky faces unprecedented criticism over failure to warn of war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/zelensky-ukraine-wapo-interview-warn-of-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/18/zelensky-ukraine-wapo-interview-warn-of-war/ |
SAO PAULO — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro briefly grappled with a heckler and tried to snatch his phone on Thursday, underscoring possible challenges for the sometimes quick-tempered leader to stay disciplined on the campaign trail.
“It was a very bad sequence for the president in electoral terms. It shows a lack of restraint and should be used against him by their opponent’s campaigns,” Lima told The Associated Press in a phone interview. | 2022-08-18T22:56:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil's Bolsonaro grabs at heckler, tries to take phone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/brazils-bolsonaro-grabs-at-heckler-tries-to-take-phone/2022/08/18/5a9e944a-1f2e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/brazils-bolsonaro-grabs-at-heckler-tries-to-take-phone/2022/08/18/5a9e944a-1f2e-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
It’s not too late for Biden to save these Afghan journalists
An Afghan journalist and refugee arrives to Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City on Aug. 25, 2021, as part of a group fleeing the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. (Marco Ugarte/AP)
Among the millions of innocent people who have endured nearly one year of brutal Taliban rule in Afghanistan, those who worked with the United States face the greatest danger — and journalists top the Taliban’s target list. Many of these journalists are still stranded, mostly due to bureaucratic dysfunction, following the U.S. withdrawal last August. They are desperately waiting for the United States to save them before it’s too late.
More than a dozen Afghan employees of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S.-government-funded news organization, are still waiting for Washington to honor its promises to safely evacuate them and their families. The Taliban has killed four RFE/RL journalists since 2016, and in the months since the U.S. withdrawal, the regime has continued hunting, harassing and abusing those who remain. At grave risk, they continue to bravely report on the regression of their society under the Taliban’s cruel rule.
The very least the United States can do is to fulfill President Biden’s promise last August: “The United States stands by its commitment that we’ve made to these people, and it includes other vulnerable Afghans, such as women leaders and journalists.”
Many of the U.S.-sponsored journalists in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were successfully evacuated late last year, but recently, the pace has slowed to a trickle. Two journalists still working for RFE/RL in Afghanistan, whose names I am withholding for their safety, described to me the horrors they have faced over the past year.
The Taliban routinely detains and tortures journalists it deems insufficiently loyal or cooperative. Journalists who are women can no longer show their faces on TV or travel without a male chaperone. Journalists with ties to U.S. or Western media organizations are accused of being spies and could be arrested on false charges at any time.
One RFE/RL journalist in Kabul told me the State Department booked him on an evacuation flight last December, only to cancel his ticket at the last minute with no explanation. He had already sold his possessions and given up his home. Since then, he has been moving locations every month, repeatedly uprooting his wife and five children.
“If we don’t emigrate from the country, they will come after us. And even if they don’t arrest and torture us and force us to work for them, we will always be suspect in their eyes,” he told me. “I don’t see any future for us here if we are left behind.”
Another RFE/RL journalist who reported in the southern part of Afghanistan for years was forced to leave his village after the Taliban took over. He has since moved to another part of the country and moved his family into hiding. His father was arrested and tortured just for being related to him. Because he has been marked by the U.S. government for evacuation, but not actually evacuated, the Taliban is even more suspicious of him, he said.
“Our situation is getting worse and worse. Every second, I don’t feel safe,” he said. “I don’t know when they might jail or kill me. So I’m just waiting.”
Stubbornly and proudly, RFE/RL journalists in Afghanistan continue to do their jobs. Radio Azadi, the RFE/RL news service that broadcasts in local languages, continues to be a primary source of independent news for millions of Afghans. Its work also provides the world with a unique window into the hardships currently endured by Afghans.
At a news conference on Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price touted the administration’s evacuation efforts, called Operation Allies Welcome, which Price said had successfully evacuated, vetted and resettled more than 75,000 Afghans.
But in a private briefing Wednesday, State Department officials told congressional officials there are still over 90,000 applicants for special immigrant visas, earmarked for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government. More than 45,000 other Afghans have been referred for other visas that are meant for those who face threats from the Taliban.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on all governments to accept Afghan journalists and to increase pressure on the Taliban to stop persecuting them. But the U.S. government doesn’t actually need the Taliban’s permission — as it showed recently when it evacuated more than four dozen family members of 10 Afghan civilians killed in a U.S. drone strike last year, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) told me.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Malinowski said.
Of course, the blame for the plight of these journalists falls mostly on the Taliban. But that doesn’t change the fact that they need the U.S. government to evacuate them now, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told me.
“It is unconscionable that so many remain stranded — especially journalists who worked for U.S.-supported media outlets and employees of the State Department,” Cardin said. “The Biden administration must elevate their efforts to bring these people to safety.”
These Afghans believed in the future that we promised for their country, and they took personal risks to help bring that future about. We can’t wash our hands of them. We have a moral obligation and a self-interest in preserving the hope of that future. | 2022-08-19T00:11:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | It’s not too late for Biden to save these Afghan journalists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/us-must-evacuate-afghan-journalists-one-year-after-withdrawal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/18/us-must-evacuate-afghan-journalists-one-year-after-withdrawal/ |
Bloomberg Opinion (via Bloomberg)
Vietnam is buzzing. Global companies from Samsung Electronics Co. to Lego Group are opening mega factories there. Apple Inc. is in talks to make Apple Watches and MacBooks in the Southeast Asian nation for the first time, while the tech giant’s Taiwanese and Chinese suppliers jostle in a bidding war for local talent.
But Vietnam can do a lot better. The government is only aiming for 7% growth this year — meager compared to the double-digit expansions China registered during its export-driven boom in the early 2000s. Even though there have been talks of shifting supply chains, progress in moving mass production of more advanced tech products to Vietnam has been slow.
The bottleneck is poor infrastructure. The nation, shaped as a long and curvy letter “S,” still relies on roads — which can be narrow, congested and bumpy — for three-quarters of freight and 90% of passenger traffic. Meanwhile, not all ports along the coast can be used for the biggest container ships. By comparison, even during Shanghai’s Covid-related lockdown, the nearby Ningbo port was still operating and exporting.
Road modernization, while a national priority, has been slow. A planned North-South Expressway, described as the future transport backbone, has seen long delays, as the government struggles with cost overruns.
The frustration goes beyond exporters, who have to absorb higher transportation costs, to the services sector. Long project delays are the norm even in the financial hub of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). For instance, the city’s first metro line began construction in 2012, was scheduled to start operation in 2018. The grand opening has been pushed to 2023.
It turns out, this metro project’s ballooning price tag had to be re-approved by Vietnam’s parliament, which took its time deliberating, even though the Japanese government was willing to absorb much of the cost. Many other projects in the city, such as the ring roads, were also planned more than a decade ago and delayed many times over.
Amid General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s anti-corruption drive, which he has likened to a “blazing furnace,” bureaucrats have become more cautious with the public purse. In the first seven months of 2022, the government disbursed only 34.5% of what it had planned for the whole year. Currently, about 90% of Vietnam’s infrastructure spending comes from public sources. So when that bureaucracy slows, construction projects stop, too.
As a result, in the newer, eastern part of Ho Chi Minh City, it’s quite common to see modern high-rises soaring out of grasslands, an odd mismatch thanks to efficient private-sector real estate developers and very inefficient government contractors.
Vinhomes JSC’s Grand Park project is beautiful. It boasts a community school, and even big cast-iron burners for ancestral worship. But during the monsoon season’s fierce downpours and floods, residents’ commute to the city center can become impossible. They are eagerly awaiting the metro line.
To be sure, Hanoi is trying. A much-anticipated public-private partnership law, which came into effect in January 2021, is one step forward. But there are many wrinkles to be ironed out. For instance, contractors would insist on risk-sharing agreements with the government, and resist projects that pay up only upon completion. This kind of tension has slowed infrastructure work. As of February 2022, a 50-kilometer (31 miles) section in the central segment of the North-South Expressway, which took in private money, was only 1.5% completed.
Say whatever you will about its debt pile, China has built a lot of roads, rails, airports and metros. Shanghai, which Ho Chi Minh City aspires to be — at least on the real estate front — finished its metro lines on schedule. From geopolitics to female labor-force participation, Vietnam’s got everything to its advantage. What’s holding the country back is Hanoi’s policy inertia, and its failure to build up its infrastructure. | 2022-08-19T00:25:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vietnam Is Growing at 7%. Hanoi Can Do a Lot Better. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/vietnam-is-growing-at-7percent-hanoican-do-alot-better/2022/08/18/4d015c7a-1f4a-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/vietnam-is-growing-at-7percent-hanoican-do-alot-better/2022/08/18/4d015c7a-1f4a-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html |
James “Whitey” Bulger in 2011 after his arrest. (U.S. Marshals Service/AP)
Three men have been indicted in the killing of James “Whitey” Bulger, the notorious Boston gangster who was beaten to death in 2018 while serving a life sentence in a West Virginia prison, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.
Fotios Geas, 55, Paul J. DeCologero, 48, and Sean McKinnon, 36, were each charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, along with several other crimes. The charges come nearly four years after Bulger was found unresponsive and badly bludgeoned at the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, W.Va. He was 89.
Bulger had received consecutive life terms for ordering or carrying out 11 murders and running a criminal network that spanned three decades. He was killed less than a day after he was transferred to Hazelton from another facility, raising questions about why he was moved and whether enough was done to ensure his safety after he was placed in the general population of one of the nation’s most violent prisons.
Geas and DeCologero are accused of repeatedly striking Bulger in the head — the blows that caused his death — and they were also charged with aiding and abetting first-degree murder and assault resulting in serious bodily injury. Gaes is facing a separate charge for murder by a federal inmate serving a life sentence, and McKinnon was charged with making false statements to a federal agent.
Gaes and DeCologero are both still in federal prison, while McKinnon was on supervised release when he was charged, and he was arrested in Florida on Thursday, prosecutors said. | 2022-08-19T00:25:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Three charged in Whitey Bulger killing, federal prosecutors say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/whitey-bulger-death-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/whitey-bulger-death-arrest/ |
Singularly focused, they are credited with laying the groundwork for the shift among Senate Democrats from being climate cautious to climate advocates.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) at a hearing last year. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
He doesn’t do it alone. He and two of his colleagues, Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who is 50, and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who is 66, teamed up over the past decade to craft a new model of persistent activism inside the power corridors of Congress alongside a growing climate-focused advocacy.
And they still work alongside other Democrats who have long prioritized climate, including Sen. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), 76, who spearheaded the failed 2010 cap-and-trade effort and the Green New Deal, and Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), 75, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, and played a role in crafting the Democrats’ $370 billion climate bill.
“ ‘The Three Climateers’ [is what] we have called ourselves at various times to try and cheer ourselves up,” Whitehouse said in an interview.
“We reached the point in this Congress where it was a major issue for the vast majority of the caucus,” Heinrich said. “I think leadership and [Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)], in particular, responded to that. I mean, he saw the activism that was occurring in his home state and then also the way the entire caucus was making that a priority.”
During negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on the Democrats’ climate and health-care bill, the Three Climateers were in constant contact with the White House, Schumer and his staff. They made clear that they wouldn’t kill a deal because of its imperfections. They weren’t in the room but said they trusted Schumer to represent their interests. The senators were also in constant contact with Manchin (as was nearly every other Democratic senator.)
“I met with a group of them and I told them there might have to be things in there that we don’t like to reach an agreement with Manchin. They said get what you can, just make it a good bill,” Schumer said in a statement of Schatz, Whitehouse and Heinrich, as well as Sens. Markey, Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “They had my back. They really did.”
Former senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who was part of a failed effort to pass the cap-and-trade climate bill in 2010, said she got a phone call from an emotional Schatz after the Inflation Reduction Act cleared the Senate.
“He’s part of a new generation of environmentalists, and he’s wonderful,” Boxer said. “He just called to say, ‘Thanks for laying the groundwork.’ ” | 2022-08-19T00:25:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘The Three Climateers’: Meet the new generation of Senate climate hawks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/three-climateers-meet-new-generation-senate-climate-hawks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/three-climateers-meet-new-generation-senate-climate-hawks/ |
Deshaun Watson speaks to the media after details of the settlement of his case were released. (Nick Cammett/Getty Images)
The NFL has a terminal contempt for little people, it specializes in the abuse of the powerless with impunity, and Deshaun Watson’s light suspension and mock penitence, which he couldn’t sustain for even a full sentence, was just another take-us-for-fools offense. Never has the syndrome been more apparent than in Watson’s head-clutching double talk following the announcement he will sit out 11 games and pay a $5 million fine. His non-apology was so sourly cynical and canned, such a combination of bad faith and bad breath, that it made you long for a Listerine rinse.
He’s sorry. No, he isn’t. He’s learned. No, he hasn’t. He takes responsibility. No, he’s doesn’t. Watson’s utterly insincere written apology after allegedly exposing himself and perving on female massage therapists included everything but a dab at the eyes, as he promised to work to become “the best version of myself on and off the field.” Blech. Then he held a news conference and contradicted all of it with a casualness that made it clear it was just hygiene theater.
Asked if he was so innocent then why did he accept an 11-game suspension, he replied, “That was the legal side,” blithely waving it away with his hand. He agreed to it purely to “move on” with his life and his career, after setting “pride aside.”
What was he apologizing for then? Watson responded with all the sincerity of an Animatron: “There was a lot of people that was triggered.” He was saying sorry to “all women” for anything they might have suffered at the hands of someone, only not from him, in any way, because he is so innocent and has so little to really be sorry for.
Why thank you, Deshaun, for that proffer of a verbal box of chocolates to all the ladies out there, except for the nearly two dozen you’ve settled civil claims with for exposing yourself and brushing them with your junk while they were trying to work.
A modest suggestion: Perhaps the NFL has more disciplinary work to do here with the young man before it declares his case closed. “All women” don’t need an apology from Watson, but they do need to see that those on whom he imposed his “predatory” and “egregious” conduct, in the words of disciplinary officer and former U.S. district judge Sue L. Robinson, receive some decent contrition along with reparation. Otherwise, it’s going to be hard to watch NFL football with anything less than a burning coal in the throat.
Among the ways Watson harmed his victims was in making them “fearful” of his ability to “use his status as an NFL player to damage their careers,” Robinson found. He exploited a major power imbalance — it was a dual offense along with the unwanted touching — and his accusers were right to think they could likely suffer more proportional consequences of his nasty behaviors than he ever would.
“The message today to all victims is clear, if you believe you have been sexually assaulted by a powerful person, keep your mouth shut and go away,” victim attorney Tony Buzbee said in a statement.
The NFL has a major problem with misuse of power — all varieties of it. Watson’s case was just one in a larger power-abuse complex, from Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder harboring serial sexual harassment in his franchise with zero real world penalties, to Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross’s slap on the wrist for boldly trying to cheat the audience via tampering and his flirtation with tanking. There lurks in all of these episodes an underlying sneer and chortle of secret understanding: These men are too rich to care, there is no NFL punishment they can’t easily absorb and no reputational damage the league won’t help them cure with stage-managed proceedings to quiet the credulous and inferior rest of us.
Once you place your finger squarely on this, you can’t hear anything said by the league or by Cleveland Browns officials as anything other than a concerto of condescension and connivance. Watson wasn’t alone in his two-faced double talk. The 26-year-old was just emulating his elders. Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam seemed to think that cloaking themselves as human rights activists would somehow drug you into forgetting they wagered three first-round draft picks and the biggest guaranteed contract in NFL history on Watson, even as the line of women accusing him of sexual creepism wrapped around the block.
“We can talk about Deshaun or we can talk about the major issues the country faces and make a difference,” Dee Haslam said. “How can we move forward as a country?” she added, a remark that can’t even be retyped on this page without keening, mascara-smearing laughter.
There was a lot of talk about “counseling” — mandated for Watson as part of the suspension settlement. There was a lot of insistence that Watson is “remorseful” and reminders that he is young. “Is he never supposed to play again?” Jimmy Haslam asked. “Is he never supposed to be a part of society? Does he get no chance to rehabilitate himself? That is what we are going to do.” Ahh, I see. The Browns traded for Watson because they’re Father Flanagans who want to rescue him.
Now look here. Virtually no one suggested that Watson should never get to play again or be shunned forever — and it’s sinuous in the extreme to frame matters that way, as if the world demands too harsh a penalty from him.
Most assuredly Watson deserves a second chance, and nothing anyone does at the age of 26 should be the sum story of their life. But any thinking person must surely doubt whether a partial suspension that allows him to play the final third of the season, a fail-safe $230 million contract left almost untouched by penalty, and a false apology and cleansing second-chance narrative calculated to wrap the story up with a bow, will do the trick for the young man. Yet this was the convenient attitude also copped by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in a statement: “Deshaun has committed to doing the hard work on himself.”
No, no he hasn’t. He hasn’t squarely apologized to, or even recognized, the women he abused. Clearly, they’re too far beneath him. | 2022-08-19T00:26:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Deshaun Watson's non-apology shows how little he's learned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/deshaun-watson-press-conference-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/18/deshaun-watson-press-conference-settlement/ |
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