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Ted and Zachary Leonsis at a 2020 Washington Wizards game. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Ted Leonsis, the owner of Washington’s NBA, NHL and WNBA franchises, has emerged as a suitor for the Washington Nationals, multiple people familiar with the process said Tuesday.
Leonsis, whose Monumental Sports & Entertainment owns the Wizards, Capitals and Mystics, is among the would-be buyers granted access to the Nationals’ financial data, a key step in preparing a bid for the District’s MLB franchise. The Lerner family, which has owned the Nationals since 2006, announced in April it would explore the possibility of selling the club.
The news of Leonsis’s official interest in the Nationals came on the same day Monumental announced it was purchasing NBC Sports Washington, the regional sports network that broadcasts Wizards and Capitals games. Monumental acquired a one-third stake in NBC Sports Washington from Comcast in 2016.
Asked in an interview Tuesday about his family’s interest in the Nationals, Zach Leonsis — Monumental’s president of media and new enterprises and Ted’s son — said it was “not appropriate to comment.”
It’s unclear whether Ted Leonsis would be able to purchase the Nationals — valued by Forbes at $2 billion, the 12th-highest figure among the 30 MLB teams — on his own, or whether he has enlisted outside investors. Mark Lerner, the Nationals’ managing principal owner and son of family patriarch Ted Lerner, is a minority partner in Monumental.
At least five potential bidders have met with Nationals officials, another key step in addition to examining the team’s finances. Billionaire Michael B. Kim, whose private equity firm manages more than $25 billion in assets, met this summer with team officials at Nationals Park. Mortgage mogul Stanley Middleman has also met with team personnel. It is not known if Leonsis has formally met with Nationals officials.
People familiar with the process believe a sale could be completed by the end of the year, possibly in time for the new group to be approved at baseball’s owners meetings in November. The Lerner family has left open the possibility of retaining ownership or merely bringing on additional partners. Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno announced Tuesday he is also exploring selling his team, which ranks narrowly above the Nationals in the Forbes valuations.
Meanwhile, by acquiring NBC Sports Washington — which owns the broadcast rights for the Wizards and Capitals — the Leonsis family’s sprawling entertainment conglomerate will increase its sway over the D.C. sports market. Monumental Sports also owns the Mystics, the NBA G League’s Go-Go and the NBA 2K League’s Wizards District Gaming.
Ted Leonsis has long had a keen interest in the media side of the sports business. He is a member of the owners’ media committees for the NHL and NBA and is a vocal advocate for legalized sports gambling, opening a sportsbook at Capital One Arena, the first inside a U.S. professional sports arena. The Wizards have experimented with an alternate TV broadcast focused on gambling, and Zach Leonsis said he was interested in more alternate feeds, citing the example of Peyton and Eli Manning on ‘Monday Night Football.’
A Nationals sale could be hindered by the MASN mess — or help solve it
“Fundamentally, we believe in the value of our live local rights,” Zach Leonsis said. “A lot has been made of the [regional sports network] ecosystem, but we are strong believers that the value of the rights continues to increase. It’s strategic to own our own destiny as we seek to innovate.”
He said Monumental, which also owns a streaming platform that broadcast the bulk of the Mystics schedule this season, was interested in exploring direct-to-consumer streaming options for Wizards and Capitals games that could give fans without a cable subscription access to them.
The deal with Comcast is expected to close in roughly 30 days. Comcast will remain a strategic partner, helping with distribution of the network for at least the next year.
NBC Sports Washington has always had programming gaps during the summer months without live basketball and hockey, and there has been interest from fans and media executives in getting the Capitals, Wizards, Nationals and Orioles on the same network. Roughly a decade ago, Comcast had discussions with the Orioles and Nationals about buying MASN, but a deal was never completed. | 2022-08-23T22:10:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ted Leonsis emerges as potential Washington Nationals buyer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/ted-leonsis-washington-nationals-nbc-sports-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/ted-leonsis-washington-nationals-nbc-sports-washington/ |
Vladyslav Mitin, a worker at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, was killed in on Aug. 22 after Russian shelling. This video contains graphic content. (Video: Obtained by The Washington Post)
KYIV, Ukraine — An employee at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and his driver were killed in a mortar explosion outside the facility, underscoring the perilous situation at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, the president of Ukraine’s nuclear power company said Tuesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of a potential catastrophe at the plant and called for international pressure on Russia to withdraw its forces from the area.
“We do not control what is happening there,” Zelensky said at a news conference in Kyiv, adding: “We need to put pressure on Russia, give them an ultimatum from the international community that they should leave, take out equipment, bombs, weapons and people who definitely do not understand what is happening there and have no relation to atomic energy.”
The worker’s death comes as Russia is “stepping up efforts to launch more strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days,” including Ukrainian Independence Day on Wednesday, according to a State Department spokesperson who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the department.
Fears of increased attacks also rose as hundreds of Russians attended a memorial ceremony in Moscow on Tuesday for Daria Dugina, daughter of far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin and a staunch supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine.
Dugin called for “more than just revenge” for his daughter’s killing, which Russia’s FSB security service blamed on Ukraine. Kyiv officials have denied responsibility for the attack, attributing it to internal Russian affairs. But Dugin said his daughter’s “ultimate sacrifice, the highest price we pay, can only be justified by victory” in Ukraine.
Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, also said Tuesday that Ukraine expects the FSB to launch “terrorist attacks” in Russian cities and blame them on Ukraine. He said, without providing evidence, that Dugina’s killing was the first of what would be a series of attacks organized by the FSB to drum up domestic support for the war.
The death of the Zaporizhzhia worker on Monday was the second such killing since Russian forces occupied the area in March. The mortar fire that killed Vladyslav Mitin, a mechanic at the facility, did not appear to have been a direct attack on the nuclear plant itself.
Energoatom President Petro Kotin told The Washington Post in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Kyiv that Russian troops hit Mitin’s taxi as it drove through Energodar, the Russian-occupied city where the plant is located.
The Russian government did not respond to a request for comment.
A video posted by the mayor of Energodar purports to show the vehicle Mitin was riding in on the side of road, riddled with holes and blown out windows.
World powers met at the U.N. Security Council in New York on Tuesday to address the situation at the plant.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador said that “technical details” allowing a visit to the plant by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are under discussion and that “now I think it’s on the way, I hope as early as late August, early September.”
But Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, speaking at the Russian-called meeting, again rejected U.N. calls, backed by the United States and others, for the demilitarization of the facility occupied by Russian forces.
He repeated Moscow’s insistence that escalating artillery attacks on the plant are being launched by Ukrainian forces, which Ukraine denies.
In a separate statement, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in Vienna that “renewed shelling in recent days” have added to the risk of a “severe nuclear accident in Europe.” He said an agency visit to secure the safety and security of the plant “is expected to take place within the next few days if ongoing negotiations succeed.”
The U.N. meeting was the second in less than two weeks in which Russia and Ukraine traded accusations on responsibility for the shelling of the facility, which has been under Russian occupation for months.
Both sides have generally agreed to an IAEA visit, but among the remaining questions is whether it should be approached from Ukrainian-controlled territory to the north or Russian-controlled territory to the south. Russia refuses to cede control of the facility, while Ukraine does not want to recognize its control.
“I wish we had been gathered here by Russia to hear the only thing that the entire world wants to hear, and that is a statement that Russia demilitarizes ZNPP, withdraws its troops and hands it over to the government of Ukraine,” Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the council.
Instead, he said, Russia has “once again has the audacity to convene a United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss its own provocation, its own terror at the ZNPP.”
Nebenzya said Russia has no heavy artillery at the facility and has not fired from there, which he said could be confirmed by satellite date.
“Today, once again, we heard the old record saying Russia is the guilty party, guilty for everything.” Anything Ukraine does is “whitewashed” by the West, he said, calling on the United States and others to “stop covering up what your Kyiv proteges are doing and compel them to stop attacking.”
Richard Mills, the deputy U.S. ambassador, said that “the entire international community are living under the threat of a nuclear catastrophe.”
Russia is using the nuclear plant “as a staging ground for war,” he said, but he did not directly address the question of which side is shelling the area. “Russia created this risk — and only Russia can defuse it … Russia must end its unprovoked, unjustified war and withdraw its troops,” Mills said.
Though the plant is under Russian control, it is run by about 1,000 Ukrainian workers, which is less than 10 percent of its usual workforce.
Kotin said Russian forces have tortured and beaten plant workers and detained up to 200 suspected of opposing Moscow’s occupation of the facility. But he said the plant’s workers are unlikely to divulge information that is critical of Russia to the IAEA for fear of the reprisals.
“It is a very big danger for them,” Kotin said. “They would just say, ‘I will not say anything.’ ”
On Wednesday, there will be a second U.N. Security Council meeting pertaining to Ukraine in which U.N. Secretary General António Guterres will brief members on his recent trip to Ukraine, a U.N. official said.
Guterres said Monday that the world is at a “maximum moment of danger” and called for countries to work together to put an end to “nuclear saber-rattling” and “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
In a speech Tuesday, Zelensky insisted that Ukraine would ultimately reclaim the Russian-controlled Crimean Peninsula and that Europe would be safer as a result.
“Ukraine’s restoration of control over the Crimean peninsula will be a historic antiwar step in Europe,” Zelensky said.
In recent weeks, Russian military sites in Crimea have been damaged in attacks widely believed to have been carried out by Ukraine’s special forces and local clandestine allies.
“For Ukraine, Crimea is not just some territory, not a chip in the geopolitical game,” Zelensky said. “For Ukraine, Crimea is a part of our people, our society … Crimea was and is Ukraine, and after de-occupation, along with our entire state, it will become part of the European Union.”
DeYoung reported from Washington. Rick Noack in Paris contributed to this report. | 2022-08-23T22:40:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine nuclear plant worker killed by mortar fire as tensions rise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/23/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-death-tentions-rising/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/23/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-death-tentions-rising/ |
Legend Wheeler died from an ‘apparent accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound’ from his father’s firearm, police said
A Northeast Washington man was arrested in the November death of his 1-year-old son, D.C. police announced Tuesday evening.
Police said Legend Wheeler died from an “apparent accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound” from his father’s firearm, which authorities said was “unsecured.” JD Wheeler, 23, is facing second-degree murder charges. His family could not be immediately reached.
Legend was shot in the head Nov. 24 inside a residence on the 2300 block of Chester Street SE, according to authorities. He died at a hospital.
Police previously said it was “possible” that the child shot himself. Legend was days away from his second birthday. | 2022-08-23T23:02:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Father arrested, ‘unsecured’ gun blamed in death of 1-year-old - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/23/infant-unsecured-gun-father-arrested/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/23/infant-unsecured-gun-father-arrested/ |
NEW YORK — From what you buy online, to how you remember tasks, to when you monitor your doorstep, Amazon is seemingly everywhere. And it appears the company doesn’t want to halt its reach anytime soon. In recent weeks, Amazon has said it will spend billions of dollars in two gigantic acquisitions that, if approved, will broaden its ever growing presence in the lives of consumers. The company is targeting two areas: health care, through its $3.9 billion buyout of the primary care company One Medical, and the “smart home,” where it plans to expand its already mighty presence through a $1.7 billion merger with iRobot, the maker of the popular robotic Roomba vacuum.
NEW YORK — Unlike its cars, Tesla shares are about to get less expensive. Tesla is splitting its stock 3 for 1, so after the close of trading Tuesday, investors will receive two additional Tesla shares for every one they owned as of Aug. 17. In theory, that should drop Tesla’s share price by about two-thirds before trading starts on Wednesday to around $290. Stock splits don’t make a company more valuable or more profitable, but the hope is the stock looks affordable to more investors. Tesla joins stock market heavyweights Amazon and Google parent Alphabet in splitting their high-priced shares this year.
SAN FRANCISCO — A former head of security at Twitter alleged that the company misled regulators about its poor cybersecurity defenses and its negligence in attempting to root out fake accounts that spread disinformation, according to a whistleblower complaint filed with U.S. officials. Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s security chief until he was fired early this year, filed the complaints last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. A whistleblower group said Zatko exhausted all attempts to get his concerns resolved inside the company. Several members of Congress are calling for an investigation.
NEW YORK — Stocks drifted to modest losses on Wall Street, as steadying Treasury yields helped calm the market following its worst tumble in months. The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% Tuesday. The edge lower follows up on Monday’s sharp 2.1% drop, which came on the heels of its first losing week in the last five. Volatility has returned to Wall Street following what had been a strong summer as worries rise about how aggressively the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. Recent comments from Fed officials have cooled hopes for a less forceful Fed. Yields were mixed Tuesday following some weaker-than-forecast readings on the economy.
WASHINGTON — A new tax credit for U.S. buyers of qualifying electric vehicles made in North America in the Inflation Reduction Act has prompted unfair trade practice allegations overseas. The climate change and health care bill was signed into law last week. It includes a tax credit of up to $7,500 that could be used to defray the cost of purchasing an electric vehicle. The vehicle must contain a battery built in North America with 40% of the metals mined or recycled on the continent. The European Commission says the new tax credit discriminates against foreign producers and calls the credits a “new, potential, trans-Atlantic trade barrier.” And the rules on the battery tighten over time, with only a few American manufacturers able to produce vehicles that would qualify.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is forecasting that this year’s budget deficit will be nearly $400 billion lower than it estimated back in March, due in part to stronger than expected revenues, reduced spending, and an economy that has recovered all of the jobs lost during the multi-year pandemic.In full, this year’s deficit will decline by $1.7 trillion, representing the single largest nominal decline in the federal deficit in American history, the Office of Management and Budget says.Despite the gains, the administration said Tuesday that it is forecasting a deficit of $1.03 trillion for the budget year that ends Sept. 30. That number signifies a movement away from the record deficit in 2020, which reached $3.13 trillion.
NEW YORK — Nordstrom has joined Macy’s in cutting its annual outlook for profit and sales despite second-quarter results that topped Wall Street forecasts. Both retailers are suffering from an affliction plaguing most of their competitors: A glut of unsold inventory that they’re resorting to pricing at deep discounts to move. Almost every major retailers has said in recent weeks that shoppers are making fewer trips to the store and when they do, they’re looking for deals. Some are trading down to cheaper alternatives. Kohl’s last week slashed its sales and profit expectations for the year, a result of its stepped up price cutting to shed unwanted merchandise. Both Target and Walmart also said last week that shoppers are cutting back and sticking to essentials.
SAN FRANCISCO — The online reviews site Yelp said Tuesday it is rolling out a new feature to protect users seeking abortions from being misled about anti-abortion pregnancy centers listed on its platform. Such centers are typically religiously affiliated and deter clients from having an abortion. On Tuesday, Yelp said it will place a consumer notice on the listings informing users that the centers “typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.” In 2018, moderators for the San Francisco-based company began recategorizing listings for such organizations as “crisis pregnancy centers” or “faith-based crisis pregnancy centers.” The organizations had previously categorized themselves as reproductive health services and medical centers, among others. | 2022-08-23T23:15:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Amazon's data trove, Tesla stock split - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-amazons-data-trove-tesla-stock-split/2022/08/23/e1905498-232f-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-amazons-data-trove-tesla-stock-split/2022/08/23/e1905498-232f-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
DeSantis fighter jet ad conjures 1988 Dukakis tank debacle
LEFT: Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis gets a ride in a new battle tank at the Michigan plant where it was being manufactured in 1988. (AP Photo/Michael Samojeden) RIGHT: A video still of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his new “Top Gov” political ad. (Ron DeSantis, Republican, For Governor)
Clearly, what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was going for was a comparison to Tom Cruise.
Hence the “Top Gov” label at the beginning of his latest political ad, which resembles that of Cruise’s “Top Gun” movies, and the slo-mo shots of the Republican governor zipping up a flight suit over an energetic guitar music track. DeSantis “briefs” an out-of-view team — presumably Florida voters — about the “rules of engagement” for “dogfighting” with the “corporate media.” At one point, he sits in the cockpit of what appears to be a fighter jet, flight helmet on, and says, “Alright, ladies and gentlemen.”
What are DeSantis and his team getting instead? Comparisons to Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor who made one of the most-mocked campaign photo ops in modern political history while running for president in 1988.
It was Sept. 13, 1988, less than two months before Americans would go to the polls and select Dukakis, a Democrat, or his GOP rival, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, to lead the free world. Dukakis had enjoyed a huge lead over the summer, but the Bush campaign’s attack ads on Dukakis’s crime policies had done damage. Now the Bush campaign was saying Dukakis wanted to cut military spending.
Bush, a decorated pilot in World War II, joked at a campaign stop that Dukakis “thinks a naval exercise is something you find in Jane Fonda’s workout book.”
For George H.W. Bush, Pearl Harbor changed everything, and World War II made him a hero
It was true that Dukakis was against the so-called Star Wars program, an expensive missile defense system to protect the United States from nuclear attack. He predicted — rightly, it turned out — that future wars would be fought in deserts and the U.S. military should instead invest in tanks and helicopters, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor, speaking in a 2016 PBS documentary about the campaign.
So, seeking to bolster his national security chops, Dukakis gave a speech at an M1 Abrams tank manufacturing plant in Sterling Heights, Mich.
“Somebody had the not great idea of putting my dad in a tank,” said John Dukakis, the candidate’s son, in the documentary. “With a helmet, of course, because you can’t ride a tank without a helmet.”
The footage of the not-so-tough politician popping out of a tank, smiling in military gear, his name taped to the top of the helmet, went what we would now call “viral.” Reporters can be heard laughing hysterically. ABC News legend Sam Donaldson — who a Dukakis aide told Politico was doubled over laughing — can be heard jovially shouting, “Come out! Put 'em up!”
“We saw it on the nightly news and knew it was a bad look,” John Dukakis remembered.
“He looks like Mickey Mouse,” Jamieson said. “It doesn’t look like something a presidential candidate would do.”
The Bush campaign took advantage, airing a devastating campaign ad playing the footage while a narrator says, “Michael Dukakis is opposed to virtually every defense system we’ve developed ... and now he wants to be our commander in chief. America can’t afford that risk.”
Soon, a poll found that 25 percent of voters said they were less likely to vote for Dukakis because of tank photo, according to Politico. Worse still, Dukakis refused to “get in the sandbox” or “throw mudpies,” as he called it, by fighting back against the Bush campaign, a decision he later said he regretted. His campaign went into a free fall.
In the end, he won only 10 states. Bush beat him handily — though, it should be noted, Dukakis still performed better than his immediate predecessors, 1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale, and in 1980, then-President Jimmy Carter.
So what to make of DeSantis — who is widely believed to have presidential aspirations of his own — seeming to emulate one of the biggest backfires in politics, right down to the “Top Gov” sticker smacked across the governor’s helmet?
Joke tweets, of course.
What is he doin? 🥴🤣🤣 #DeSantis #Dukakis pic.twitter.com/wzbd9b5vyC
— pissed off voter (@POedVoter) August 23, 2022
First as tragedy, then as farce pic.twitter.com/cXxLN8BLES
— Kevin Gannon (@TheTattooedProf) August 23, 2022
In DeSantis’s defense, the ad does seem to be aiming for comedy, where Dukakis definitely was not. Plus, DeSantis served in the military and is still in the Navy Reserve, though he serves as a military lawyer, not a fighter pilot. And in small type at the end of the ad reads the notice: “The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute DOD endorsement.”
Still, Dukakis served in the military, too, though not as a tank operator, and that didn’t matter in the end.
Now retired and probably making turkey stock at his home in Brookline, Mass., Dukakis has been followed by the tank gaffe for decades. In 2008, he told U.S. News & World Report that when he arrives any place, people still ask him if he got there by tank.
“I always respond by saying, ‘No, and I’ve never thrown up all over the Japanese prime minister,’” he said, taking a dig at one of Bush’s more vulnerable moments.
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated DeSantis was a judge advocate general. He is a military lawyer for the Navy Reserve Judge Advocate General Corps. | 2022-08-23T23:15:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeSantis Top Gov ad compared to Michael Dukakis tank footage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/23/desantis-dukakis-fighter-jet-tank/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/23/desantis-dukakis-fighter-jet-tank/ |
CHESTERFIELD, Va. — A site in central Virginia that used to house a business that dismantled batteries is being removed from the federal list of Superfund sites, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday.
“Following a final inspection and detailed review of site data, EPA’s clean-up goals have been deemed complete for all groundwater, surface water, sediment and soil, which includes the establishment of institutional controls to prevent future contamination,” the news release said. The James River wetlands, an area about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) downstream and typically used for recreational purposes, also were determined to be free of site contaminants, the release said.
EPA proposed removing the suburban Richmond site from the Superfund National Priorities List, an inventory of the nation’s most contaminated hazardous waste sites, in March. It received no “adverse” feedback during a public comment period, according to the release. | 2022-08-23T23:17:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia site taken off EPA's Superfund list after cleanup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/virginia-site-taken-off-epas-superfund-list-after-cleanup/2022/08/23/3cf7a410-2332-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/virginia-site-taken-off-epas-superfund-list-after-cleanup/2022/08/23/3cf7a410-2332-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Commanders safety Darrick Forrest, a special teams ace in 2021, is looking for a more consistent role on Washington's defense this season. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Darrick Forrest was 10 yards deep before punter Tress Way booted the ball downfield. Twenty, 30, 35, and then it happened.
Roughly four minutes remained in the Commanders’ loss in Kansas City Saturday when Forrest sprinted in punt protection and not only collided with Chiefs returner Skyy Moore but bear-hugged him and flipped him 90 degrees in the air before he landed on his side. Forrest’s tackle prevented Moore from gaining more than a yard on the return and ensured the Chiefs started their drive on their own 19.
“The thing about Darrick that you like is that he is a high impact guy,” Coach Ron Rivera said. “He runs around. He runs into things. He is physical by nature, and he’s got tremendous athleticism.”
Forrest, a second-year safety with the Commanders, played only 28 defensive snaps last year and was deemed more of a special teams ace, a role he still holds. He was a rookie in development who could maybe land more.
But in OTAs and training camp this year, Forrest has emerged as a playmaker and even a leader on a defense still in transition. Washington has tweaked its scheme, but it has been running more match-zone principles on the back end and has a base that’s now 4-2-5, with four linemen, two linebackers and five defensive backs.
The job of the secondary in Jack Del Rio’s defense is complicated, requiring on-point communication and a strong knowledge of responsibilities. Forrest can play strong and free safety in addition to his work on special teams. But he has been in the mix this summer for the fifth defensive back spot, typically the team’s big — or “Buffalo” — nickel, who is more of a hybrid linebacker/safety and can drop down in the box or fall back into coverage.
The player needs to be able to cover. He needs speed. (Forrest ran an unofficial 4.38 40-yard dash at his pro day at Cincinnati.) And he has to want to hit.
Many players can hit. Not all want to.
Forrest loves it.
“It’s an energy thing,” he said. “If I come up to somebody … I’m going to try to make the big hit. It’s going to bring energy to the team, and momentum is everything.”
Last year, while playing limited snaps, Forrest’s growth was dependent primarily on film study and observation. Though he has the frame to be the versatile athlete Washington needs at Buffalo nickel, his growth has come in his understanding of the game, the scheme and his role within it.
“It's been my mind, my mental game,” he said. “I'm going out there, I can look at the formation, I can look at the personnel, and I can know what's going to happen. So it starts with preparation. So I feel like I'm more prepared this year.”
Much of that stems from film study. It was in high school when he first started to watch game tape, though looking back his notion of studying then is a far cry from what it is now.
“My defensive coordinator in high school was always on me,” Forrest recalled. “Like, ‘Oh, you watching film?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ And then he checks the iPad and [is] like, ‘Oh, you watch a little bit, but you weren’t really watching film.’ ”
In college at Cincinnati, Forrest learned the nuances of what he was watching. At the pro level, his study habits have become even more detailed to grasp the concepts and further understand why he’s asked to do what he does.
And after an offseason regimen that focused less on weightlifting and more on on-field work, Forrest said he has dropped a bit of weight, but not enough to be noticeable.
“I’m still going to boom every time,” he added.
That has all combined to help him discover a place of comfort with the Commanders, where the things that slowed him down in the past are now second nature.
From 2021: Washington rookie Darrick Forrest bet on his NFL future. He’s waiting for his sister to pay up.
At 23, Forrest has heeded the advice of the veterans in the room, including safeties Bobby McCain and Kam Curl and cornerback Kendall Fuller. Landon Collins was a notable resource last year, too; he played more linebacker late in the season but was the team’s primary Buffalo nickel.
“Everybody’s always just giving me bits and pieces that can help me,” Forrest said. “[Collins] was a guy that made sure that you can’t do nothing wrong because you have a standard. And once you [set] that standard, everybody has to play to that standard.”
Now, Forrest has a bigger voice. A voice earned with perhaps a bigger role and the comfort that shows in his play. In camp, he was often the one with Fuller, flying around in coverage and snagging interceptions that brought the defense off the sideline in cheers.
The overthinking and hesitance that often slows rookies has seemingly faded.
“I’m way more comfortable this year, so it allows me to play my game the way I can in this scheme,” he said. “I’m playing a little bit faster right now, so I feel like I just got to keep making plays.”
In the first two preseason games, Forrest played 48 total snaps and started in Kansas City as Washington’s big nickel. He has also taken snaps on the line, in the box, at free safety, with both the kick and punt coverage teams, on kick returns and with the field goal team.
When the Commanders pare their roster to 53, Forrest hopes to contribute even more. To lay more of those big hits on special teams, but to also have a consistent impact on defense.
“He took a big step from last year,” Rivera said. “He’s a guy that has an opportunity to contribute to the every-down defense or in situations. … We feel very comfortable with him.” | 2022-08-23T23:17:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hard-hitting safety Darrick Forrest ready for bigger role with Commanders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/darrick-forrest-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/darrick-forrest-commanders/ |
Fernando Tatis Jr. spoke with reporters Tuesday, days after his 80-game suspension from baseball. (Derrick Tuskan/AP Photo)
Eleven days after he accepted his 80-game suspension for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, Fernando Tatis Jr. spoke. He spoke to his San Diego Padres teammates. He spoke to reporters.
He hadn’t done either of those things since news that he had tested positive for a banned substance stunned the sport a week and a half ago — unless you count his widely ridiculed statement blaming ringworm treatment for introducing Clostebol into his system.
Padres General Manager A.J. Preller had talked about it. He was disappointed. Tatis’s teammates had been asked about it. They were disappointed, too. Even his father, former big leaguer Fernando Tatis Sr., had given an interview in which he blamed a haircut for giving his son a fungal infection that led to the positive test, and railed against MLB for what he said was “destroying the image of a player over something as minor as that.”
But not until Tuesday did Tatis, in street clothes because he is not able to work out with the team while suspended, slide in front of a circle of waiting cameras and microphones to answer for himself.
“I’m really sorry. I’ve let so many people down,” Tatis said Tuesday. “I’ve lost so much love from people. I’ve failed. I’ve failed to the front office, the San Diego Padres, [chairman] Peter Seidler, A.J. Preller. I have failed every fan of the city. I have failed ... my country.
“I have failed my family, my parents. I’m really sorry for my mistakes. I’ve seen how my dreams turned into my worst nightmares in a couple days, couple months. But there’s no other one to blame but myself.”
Since Tatis burst on to the scene and grew into one of the most hyped young stars in the sport, he has stumbled into ignominious company. When a shoulder injury threatened his 2021 season, he opted against surgery to stick out the rest of the season but never looked the same. When he reported to spring training after the MLB lockout in March, he did so with a broken wrist suffered in one of what Tatis indicated were multiple offseason motorcycle crashes — something he had not been able to tell the team about according to lockout rules, and which cost him the first four months of this season.
“I haven’t made the right decisions this past week, month. Even starting at the beginning of the year. I have made a mistake and I regret every single step I have taken in these days,” Tatis said, according to ESPN and other outlets in attendance. “There’s a long way going forward.”
Tatis has never been able to hide his feelings quite as well as some of his colleagues, so much so that when he and the Padres slumped as he battled a shoulder injury in 2021, his dour demeanor led to questions about morale — his and that of his clubhouse. The team changed managers in the offseason in the hopes that veteran Bob Melvin could help a star-studded roster turn into a winner with Tatis at the heart of it. But while Tatis has, at times, seemed flippant in his approach to his profession, his body language suggested he was shaken by what has happened this month.
“I’m going to remember how this feels. And I am going to make sure I am never in this position ever again,” Tatis said. “I know I have a lot of love I have to gain back. I have a lot of work to do. It’s going to be a very long process to gain everybody’s trust again, to gain the love back that I have stabbed straight through the heart of every baseball fan.”
Perhaps, given the fact that his career path has now been altered dramatically, given that his 2022 season is over, being shaken is to be expected. But the time will not be wasted entirely: Preller and Tatis confirmed he will undergo surgery on that balky shoulder he has been taping together for a year or so now and spend much of his offseason rehabbing in San Diego. Tatis’s suspension will end in May.
“I’m going to do everything in my power, everything in my strength, everything I can do on the field, out of the field to be a better teammate. The distraction I have been is just something unacceptable, something I have no excuse, something that needs to be redeemed right now in the moment,” Tatis said. “I know there’s been a lot of talk out there, but it’s with actions. It’s actions that I’m going to start beginning doing and actions that are going to speak for myself in the future.”
Starting pitcher Joe Musgrove told San Diego reporters, including 97.3 FM, that Tatis Jr. showed “remorse” and offered clarity about what happened in a players-only meeting Tuesday, and Musgrove said the young star received “tough love.”
“But people make mistakes, man. It’s something we’re definitely not going to hold over his head for the rest of his career,” Musgrove said. “I know there’s fans out there that will and people will feel how they want to feel, but something I stressed to him is the most important people are the people in this room.”
Fortunately for the Padres, one of the people in that room is Juan Soto, a 23-year-old star the team traded for before it knew Tatis would be out for the rest of the season. Even with Soto, the Padres are clinging to a playoff spot, not cruising. They were set to take the field Tuesday night a game and a half ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers for the final National League playoff spot. | 2022-08-24T00:16:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fernando Tatis Jr. apologizes after PED ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/fernando-tatis-jr-ped-ban-apology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/fernando-tatis-jr-ped-ban-apology/ |
The Mystics reset their culture in 2022 with hopes for a brighter 2023
The Washington Mystics returned to the playoffs in 2022 after a disastrous 2021 campaign. (Lindsey Wasson/AP)
Player after player sat down at a table inside the Entertainment and Sports Arena on Tuesday and struggled to fully form their thoughts on the Washington Mystics’ season. Alysha Clark said she hasn’t processed much. Natasha Cloud said it hadn’t hit her yet and that she’s still in “frustrated-competitor mode.” Elena Delle Donne said she needed time to get the emotions out before evaluating.
There is no one simple way to look at the 2022 season that ended with a first-round sweep in Seattle on Sunday. This was a team with Delle Donne returning from a pair of back surgeries and having an extensive load-management program after playing just three games since 2019. A team getting Clark on the floor for the first time after she missed all of 2021 with a Lisfranc injury. A team unexpectedly starting rookie Shakira Austin at center, with Myisha Hines-Allen trying to fit in a new role and backup point guard Rui Machida playing in the WNBA for the first time. Considering all the uncertainty, a 22-14 record and a trip back to the playoffs was a success.
But there’s also a feeling the team could have accomplished more. Washington had the No. 1 defense in the league and was one regular season victory away from hosting the Storm in the first round of the playoffs. The offense was inconsistent throughout the season and ranked eighth in points per game, which is out of character for a group led by Coach Mike Thibault. Clark never regained her shooting touch, Hines-Allen never seemed fully comfortable and free agent acquisitions Elizabeth Williams and Machida had only sporadic success.
“There’s no shame in losing to the team that we lost to, the way they played,” Thibault said. “Are we satisfied? No. But did we get beat by a team that played great? Yes.”
There is plenty of optimism about the future as the core of Delle Donne, Cloud, Ariel Atkins, Austin and Hines-Allen are all under contract. Thibault could have money to spend in free agency depending on how he prioritizes in-house free agents. The Mystics also have the right to flip their first-round pick for the Los Angeles Sparks’ — a lottery pick — via the trade with the Dream for the 2021 No. 1 overall pick. This 2022 season could be the transition year from being shorthanded and out of the playoffs to truly competing for a championship in 2023.
“It can be [a foundation for the future], but I don’t think it can be the same identical group,” Thibault said. “I think the same identical group will have some of the same flaws. I think we have to do a couple things differently.”
The biggest difference has to start on the offensive end. A 43.9 shooting percentage ranked seventh in the league and a 33.8 three-point percentage was 10th. Thibault, who wants his team to take and make more triples, said the offense never found a rhythm and that the Mystics need to rank in the top four or five in shooting percentage. He’d like more athleticism on the roster and someone on the perimeter who can penetrate and draw extra defenders. Thibault added that he would like that improved three-point shooting to come from both within the current roster and outside of it.
“We need people that can make shots,” Thibault said. “Now as to how we go about it, I’m not sharing that right now. I have some ideas. But we’ve got ways.”
The biggest question of the offseason is the future of Clark. She had a huge leadership role the last two seasons and helped turn the Mystics into an elite defense. Clark, however, is 35 years old and just posted the third-lowest field goal percentage (46.4) and second-lowest three-point percentage (30.3) of her career. She is an unrestricted free agent.
Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, Williams, Tianna Hawkins and Machida are all free agents, too.
“I’m approaching this offseason the way I’ve approached the offseason my last 10 years, in just I want to come back better than I was this year,” Clark said. “And whatever way that looks, however that looks, whatever that means I have to work on, I’m going to figure that out during the offseason. But my goal every year hasn’t changed.
“[Free agency] is the last thing on my mind right now. When it comes time to have to start making those decisions, I will. But I’m not thinking about that right now.”
The best news for the franchise is that Delle Donne, the two-time MVP, made it through the season without any issues with her back. She played 25 out of 36 games with off days built in while sticking to a strict pre- and postgame routine. Delle Donne said she was proud just to be playing basketball and getting through milestones such as playing back-to-back games.
Brewer: This Mystics team had flaws, but it also offers plenty of promise
“Now that I can build strength this offseason, I won't need as much pre- and postgame,” Delle Donne said. “Hopefully I won't need as much treatment and through this offseason by being able to get a lot of lifts and putting the weight room first and the movement first before on court stuff.
“So now the priority will be weight room and gaining there. … Right now, it’s all about building strength.”
The prevailing feeling throughout the roster is that 2022 was a significant step forward. The 2021 season — during which the Mystics went 12-20 — was a disaster because of injuries and a jagged roster. Cloud and Delle Donne said the chemistry had eroded.
“I don’t think people really put into perspective where we were last year at this time,” Cloud said. “Our culture had been just completely reversed from the year prior. We were in a really scary place. … So the fact that we were able to grab hold of our culture and our environment this year and rebuild it and bring it back to what it was to kind of reset.
“I don’t think people realize the strides that we took forward after taking what I felt like was, like, 10 steps backward last season. So I’m extremely proud. I do think that we had more to give.” | 2022-08-24T00:16:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics will bring back core, hope to upgrade offense - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/mystics-season-wrapup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/23/mystics-season-wrapup/ |
An aerial view of Mar-a-Lago, former president Donald Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Fla. (Steve Helber/AP)
Donald Trump’s lawyers received ominous news in an April 12 email from the National Archives: The FBI would soon examine sensitive documents the former president had reluctantly returned to the government from his Florida club three months earlier.
The communication, which has been reviewed by The Washington Post, was a crucial pivot point in the probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents that led to the dramatic search of his Mar-a-Lago Club earlier this month.
Within weeks, Trump would have new lawyers to deal with the documents, and the FBI’s attention would shift from top-secret material Trump returned to the Archives to classified items they believed he had kept in Florida. One lawyer who received the email, former White House deputy counsel Pat Philbin, would be interviewed by FBI agents who considered him a witness in the rapidly expanding investigation.
Some of Trump’s allies have blamed the rushed and haphazard packing process during Trump’s final days in office for the presence of documents the FBI found in Trump’s bedroom, office and a first-floor storage room at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. But the key events that led to the FBI search took place only this year, after months of slow-rolling conflict between the former president and law enforcement agencies.
Trump's secrets: How a records dispute led the FBI to search to Mar-a-Lago
This account of Trump’s effort to keep the FBI from reviewing the classified material is drawn from newly released correspondence and court filings, as well the recollections of multiple people with direct knowledge of the investigation or who were briefed on events. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the ongoing criminal probe.
In a May 10 letter to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran that was released Tuesday, acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall outlined weeks of resistance that followed the April 12 email. Trump tried to delay and thwart the FBI’s review of the records he had turned over to the Archives in January, Steidel Wall wrote, despite a finding by the Justice Department that the records included 100 classified documents comprising 700 pages of material, some of it extraordinarily sensitive information related to secret operations and programs with very limited access, on a need-to-know basis.
“It has now been four weeks since we first informed you of our intent to provide the FBI access to the boxes so that it and others in the Intelligence Community can conduct their reviews,” Steidel Wall wrote, adding that Trump’s lawyers had asked for more time to determine if the records included documents they considered protected by executive privilege.
Judge signals he may be willing to unseal some of Mar-a-Lago affidavit
The May 10 letter said government lawyers had concluded that executive privilege is held by the current president, not a former one, and that President Biden had delegated to Steidel Wall the decision as to whether the FBI should be allowed to view the records. “I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” she wrote, indicating she would allow the FBI to begin viewing the records in two days. Before it was released publicly, the letter was published by John Solomon, a Trump ally who runs a news website.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich did not respond to specific questions for this article. In an email, he said Trump “will defeat this massive abuse of government just like every one before by exposing the lies and championing the truth.”
Protecting presidential records
Under the Presidential Records Act, a 1970s-era statute passed in the wake of the abuses of Richard M. Nixon’s White House, documents prepared for the president are considered public property, overseen by the National Archives after a president leaves office.
After Trump’s term ended in January 2021, Archives officials identified various high-profile items that had not been sent to their collection and requested they been located and turned over. What followed was a tortured standoff among Trump; some of his own advisers, who urged the return of documents; and the bureaucrats charged by the law with maintaining and protecting presidential records. Trump only agreed to return some of the documents after a National Archives official asked a Trump adviser for help, saying they may have to soon refer the matter to Congress or the Justice Department.
Instead, when Archives employees began opening up and sifting through the material, they noticed an immediate problem. The boxes arrived without any kind of logs or inventories to describe their content, according to person familiar with the recovery. Instead, they contained a hodgepodge of documents, including some that didn’t even come from Trump’s time in the White House.
By early February, the Archives had referred the matter to the FBI. Congressional Democrats also learned of the issue and vowed to investigate. People close to Trump say he was livid, particularly at pledges from House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to probe the issue.
It could not be determined who was involved with packing the boxes at Mar-a-Lago or why some White House documents were not sent to the Archives, though people familiar with the episode said Trump oversaw the process himself — and did so with great secrecy, declining to show some items even to top aides. Philbin and another adviser who was contacted by the Archives in April have told others that they had not been involved with the process and were surprised by the discovery of classified records.
As it began its investigation in February and March, the FBI interviewed several Archives officials about the returned classified documents and their interactions with Trump’s team, people familiar with the investigation said.
By April, the FBI was ready to come look at the documents. Under the terms of the Presidential Records Act, the formal request for such a review had to come from the current president — meaning officials in Biden’s White House. And Trump was required to be allowed to review the same documents.
On April 12, an Archives official emailed Philbin and John Eisenberg, another former deputy White House counsel, to tell them the Justice Department, via the Biden White House, had made the request. The email offered the lawyers the opportunity to view the documents as well, but said the documents were too sensitive to be removed from the agency’s secure facility.
A Trump official with proper national security clearance would have to travel to the Archives facility in Washington to read them.
Both Philbin and Eisenberg had the clearances that would allow them to make the trip. Trump allies tried to get Philbin, and then Eisenberg, to agree to do so, a person familiar with the record dispute said. But neither man had been involved with the original packing of the documents. Nor did they know what had gone into the boxes. Eager not to become more involved in the investigation, they begged off, this person said. The FBI sought to interview Philbin about Trump’s handling of classified material, making him a potential witness in the probe.
Once their involvement ended, Archives officials appear to have begun corresponding with Corcoran, a former assistant U.S. attorney who was representing former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon in a separate criminal case. Corcoran agreed to join Trump’s team in April. According to Steidel Wall’s letter, he sent a series of requests to the Archives this spring asking the agency to delay giving the FBI access.
“There was no vetting done by the president,” the person said of Corcoran, adding that other lawyers had declined the job already. “The president got on the call, asked him his name, and if he wanted to do this work, and he said yes.”
Trump is rushing to hire seasoned lawyers -- but he keeps hearing 'No'
By May 10, Trump’s team still had not reviewed the documents, and Steidel Wall was ready to move ahead, telling Trump’s representatives that the government had given them nearly a month. She said Biden had left up to her the decision of whether executive privilege should apply.
“The question in this case is not a close one,” Steidel Wall wrote. “The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’ ”
As the fight with the Archives came to an uneasy conclusion, the FBI proceeded with interviews with others in Trump’s orbit, including valets and former White House staffers, people familiar with the interviews said.
A day after Steidel Wall’s letter to Corcoran, Trump’s lawyer accepted a grand jury subpoena seeking any records with classified markings at Mar-a-Lago.
Lawyers for Trump described the subpoena in their court filing on Monday, which claimed the FBI search was overbroad and unfair. They wrote that in response to the subpoena, Trump directed that “a search for documents bearing classification markings should be conducted — even if the marked documents had been declassified.”
Trump’s lawyers do not appear to have argued to Steidel Wall that Trump had declassified the documents that bore classified markings before he left office. While presidents have widespread authority to declassify documents, there is a process for doing so, and even declassified documents are required by the Presidential Records Act to remain in Archives custody.
Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Trump, has said that Corcoran led the review of documents held at Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s team received the May 14 subpoena.
On June 3, Bobb and Corcoran met with a senior Justice Department official and three FBI agents, turning over the records they had gathered. “We turned over everything that we found,” Bobb told Fox News host Laura Ingraham earlier this month.
Around that time, Corcoran and Bobb together provided the Justice Department with a written assurance about Trump having returned classified materials, a person familiar with the matter said. The person did not provide the specific wording of the letter, which was signed by Bobb, as first reported by New York Times.
Trump’s lawyers said in their court filing that following the June 3 meeting, the FBI conducted another round of interviews with personal and household staff to Trump.
Devlin Barrett, Ellen Nakashima and Perry Stein contributed to this report. | 2022-08-24T00:33:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search followed months of resistance, delay by Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/23/trump-records-mar-a-lago-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/23/trump-records-mar-a-lago-fbi/ |
Fauci carried all our angst and anger with patience and decency
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the White House, was lionized and demonized. Now he’s retiring. (André Chung for The Washington Post)
When Anthony S. Fauci speaks, his voice has a hint of a rasp, a lot of Brooklyn swagger and a reassuring glimmer of optimism. That combination has meant that throughout the coronavirus pandemic, as the renowned infectious-disease expert has offered information and advice to a jittery and beleaguered public, he’s also communicated fatigue, toughness and the fundamental belief that science will hash out a path through the darkness and toward the light.
For that well-calibrated delivery and his deeply human manner, this nation has both lionized and demonized him. Give him a medal; throw him in prison. We are a nation of extremes. So this is what we do.
Fauci, who has been the face of the country’s pandemic response, announced that he will retire in December. He will leave his position as chief medical adviser to President Biden and he will step down from his job of the last 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He plans, he said, to teach and write and mentor the next generation of scientists.
For the last three years, this trim, gray-haired doctor with the wire-rimmed glasses has been the vessel into which the country has poured all its fears and frustrations. He is hero and tormentor. Truth-teller and unreliable narrator. He has borne our angst. And through it all, he’s shown the public nothing but patience and decency — and only the occasional flares of angry exasperation mostly reserved for a senator named Rand Paul (R-Ky.) whose preferred response to the pandemic might be summed up as do-as-little-as-possible.
Fauci’s admirers greeted his retirement announcement with a flurry of adulation for his lifetime of public service and his steady hand during historically turbulent times. Biden praised his sweeping impact not just on Americans but on people around the world. “As he leaves his position in the U.S. government, I know the American people and the entire world will continue to benefit from Dr. Fauci’s expertise in whatever he does next. Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work.”
And former president Barack Obama expressed thanks not only for what Fauci has done but also eager anticipation for the impact that Fauci will have in the future. “I will always be grateful that we had a once-in-a-century public health leader to guide us through a once-in-a-century pandemic. Few people have touched more lives than Dr. Fauci — and I’m glad he’s not done yet.”
But if his political critics, particularly those Republicans in Congress, have their way, Fauci will spend a significant portion of his retirement testifying before one investigative panel after another. They blame Fauci for everything from the coronavirus itself to mascne. The disdain has brought threats. The doctor needs security.
And yet he has carried on. That has been the most remarkable thing of all. He could have retired long ago. He could have silenced the angry mob by going on his way. Fauci’s critics were so childish that they mocked Fauci’s bad arm when he threw out baseball’s ceremonial opening pitch in 2020 and it missed the mark. President Donald Trump mocked Fauci. And still, the doctor patiently offered the country his most informed advice.
Fauci endured. During regular briefings to the public, he stood unmoved behind Trump while the former president leaned into the microphones and cameras hoping to magically wish away the pandemic. Fauci with his head resting in his hands. Fauci rubbing his forehead. Fauci staring off into the middle distance. Fauci with this hands gripped into a fist. Fauci stepping to the lectern to publicly contradict Trump while Trump looked on.
Fauci is a man who is publicly at ease with contradictions at a time when people want absolutes. What politicians call flip-flopping and voters call mistakes, he calls science. In science, there’s a difference between a hypothesis and a theory. The former is an educated guess; the latter is an assessment based on data. It takes a while to get to the answers, to settle on a theory. But we know that. We learned that in middle school science. Trial and error. The sludge test. Our forgetfulness has been willful.
But Fauci just kept telling the public what he knew, where things stood, what he hypothesized at any given moment as he awaited the data. He was calm even as his voice got raspier and he looked ever more tired. It was terrifying knowing that we were living in a real horror movie and there was no guarantee that a hero would come along to save the day. So some people turned Fauci into the hero and started making posters bearing his name and dolls bearing his face. We (hearted) him and Brad Pitt portrayed him on “Saturday Night Live.” Yet in the midst of all of that adoration was an overworked scientist who had been at his job since the start of the AIDS crisis when he’d watched every single one of his patients die and there wasn’t anything he could do, no matter how much those patients believed that just maybe some hypothesis would save them. Fauci kept going.
We placed all our burdens on Fauci. He’s carried our anger and our hope. We rushed to embrace every sliver of optimism and then became enraged when it proved to be a mirage. We didn’t want to be inconvenienced, but we wanted to be saved. And when it looked like we were saved, we accused him of putting us in danger in the first place. Fauci was lionized and demonized. Because that’s what we do. We continue to demand certainty in uncertain times. | 2022-08-24T00:38:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fauci carried all our angst and anger with patience and decency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/23/dr-fauci-carried-all-our-angst-anger-with-patience-decency/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/23/dr-fauci-carried-all-our-angst-anger-with-patience-decency/ |
Najib Razak, Malaysia’s former prime minister, center, arrives at Malaysia’s Court of Appeal and Federal Court, in Putrajaya, Malaysia, on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. Najib, who is out on bail pending the hearing in the Federal Court, faces 12 years in jail and 210 million ringgit in fines if he fails in his final appeal. (Bloomberg)
Let’s hear it for Malaysia. Something unimaginable just a few years ago has transpired. A former prime minister, the scion of a prominent political dynasty who retained a strong grassroots following as a top lawmaker, has been sentenced to prison. His fall is a tonic, however brief, for a country whose politics in recent years have been marred by rancor, cynicism and a revolving door of weak governments.
Najib Razak, who served as premier for almost a decade before being defeated in the 2018 general election, lost his final appeal against corruption convictions for his role in the 1MDB scandal. He will serve a sentence of 12 years — unless the country’s king grants Najib a pardon — over his role involving the transfer of 42 million ringgit ($9.4 million) belonging to SRC International, which was a subsidiary of 1MDB, to his personal bank account.
That the nation appears to have moved on from the outrage over pillage of the state investment fund — the intervening years have seen Covid, a deep recession and now rising inflation — doesn’t dim the message of Najib’s downfall. It shows you can climb to the apex of political power in a strategically vital and once booming economy, but your misdeeds can still bring you down. It isn’t the end of corruption. Nevertheless, Malaysians can no longer just roll their eyes, shrug and mumble that nothing will come of it. That’s a big change.
Najib was no run of the mill leader churned out by a machine that long dominated politics in the important Southeast Asian country with a once-flourishing economy that was a role model for the developing world. His father was Malaysia’s second prime minister and the clan has strong ties to the aristocratic families that held on to influence after independence from the UK in 1957. Even after leading his party, the United Malays National Organization, to defeat for the first time, Najib remained formidable. He campaigned heavily in recent state elections and was credited with helping the ruling bloc win key contests. He cast himself as a downtrodden, regular Malay guy, being bullied by urban elites who had it in for him and, by extension, his voters. Sound familiar?
And 1MDB was no ordinary money-politics saga. The scandal enmeshed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Hollywood. The political upheaval that followed united the opposition, unexpectedly propelling them to office. The revolution was short-lived, though; the new cabinet collapsed less than halfway through its five-year term, largely because its two leaders, Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim, couldn’t bury decades of rivalry. UMNO found itself back in power as part of a new coalition. But the Mahathir-Anwar team was in power long enough to preside over the arrest and charging of Najib with an array of offenses.
Najib’s exit is a double-edged sword for the current prime minister, Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who is contemplating calling a national election this year. Incarceration removes a high-profile party legislator who could have challenged Ismail for the leadership. While the opposition may be happy to see the back of Najib, economic concerns dominate the contemporary landscape. Malaysia suffered a wrenching slump, thanks to Covid. While growth surged last quarter, inflation is on the way up and interest rates are moving higher. When I visited an electoral battlefield outside Kuala Lumpur early this year, constituents were more worried about roads and bridges. 1MDB was seen as an obsession of urbanites.
It would be unwise to bet heavily against a pardon. Mahathir, once a mentor but lately a tormenter of Najib, put the chance of a pardon at 50-50 during an interview with Bloomberg News on Monday. Clemency or not, a resounding point has been made. Najib will always be that guy who rose to the highest political office in the land, only to be dispatched to a cell. Malaysia has risen to the occasion, no matter how fleeting it may become.
• Who Cares About 1MDB When Bridges Are Collapsing?: Daniel Moss
• Malaysia Didn’t Go Back to Future for Najib Verdict: Daniel Moss
• Goldman’s 1MDB Settlement Is Worth the Price: Gopalan & Moss | 2022-08-24T00:47:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jailing Najib Is a Win for Malaysia, While It Lasts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jailing-najib-is-a-win-for-malaysia-while-it-lasts/2022/08/23/82fd6798-2340-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jailing-najib-is-a-win-for-malaysia-while-it-lasts/2022/08/23/82fd6798-2340-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Courier for Mexican cartel pleads guilty to money laundering
The 35-year-old was unknowingly giving money to an undercover law enforcement officer, according to court documents
Police officers inspect the burned wreckage of a bus that was set alight by members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel after the detention of one of its leaders by Mexican federal forces. (Fernando Carranza/Reuters)
A courier working in Virginia for one of the most violent drug cartels in Mexico pleaded guilty to a money-laundering charge on Tuesday.
Jorge Orozco-Sandoval, 35, admitted in federal court in Alexandria that he dropped off nearly $320,000 in three separate installments at a Target store in Front Royal, Va., expecting the funds to be sent to Mexico to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). But he actually handed the bags of money to an undercover law enforcement officer, according to documents filed with his guilty plea.
An undercover law enforcement officer “was in contact with a money broker who purported to work for” the CJNG, according to Orozco-Sandoval’s plea documents. The broker told the undercover officer that a courier would drop off drug proceeds in northwestern Virginia, and that the officer needed “to arrange to deposit the proceeds into a bank account to send them back to the suppliers in Mexico.”
U.S. arrests hundreds in show of force against Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation cartel
“This, in turn, would facilitate the ongoing drug trafficking enterprise,” the documents say.
Orozco-Sandoval dropped off $129,100 in June 2021 to a second undercover officer, $94,500 in July 2021 and $96,240 in September 2021, he admitted in the documents. Orozco-Sandoval also distributed cocaine in Virginia, according to a statement of facts filed with his plea.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia had charged him and four others in May with conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Orozco-Sandoval previously served a prison sentence in Maryland for possessing drugs with intent to distribute and was deported to Mexico in 2010.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema scheduled Orozco-Sandoval's sentencing for Nov. 29. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
“Despite the fact that CJNG is one of the youngest cartels in Mexico it is considered to be one of, if not, the most powerful and violent cartel in Mexico today,” according to researchers at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. They say the cartel is believed to have more than $20 billion in assets.
Since its formal founding in 2011, the CJNG has been known for its quasi-military tactics, its use of drones and high-powered weapons to attack enemy cartels for control of parts of Mexico, and its propaganda on social media. The Justice Department says it is “one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world, responsible for trafficking many tons of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl-laced heroin into the United States, as well as for violence and significant loss of life in Mexico.”
The organization’s founder and leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho,” is one of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted fugitives. The DEA is offering $10 million for information leading to his capture. His son, Rubén Oseguera González, was extradited to the United States in 2020 to face international drug-trafficking charges and is awaiting trial in federal court in D.C.
Is the New Generation becoming the most powerful cartel in Mexico?
In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced 15 indictments of the cartel’s leaders, financiers, transporters and suppliers.
Orozco-Sandoval’s attorney, Adam M. Krischer, said after the hearing that Orozco-Sandoval pleaded guilty only to a money-laundering charge filed Tuesday. Brinkema said from the bench that Orozco-Sandoval’s admission as part of the plea that he also distributed cocaine in Virginia could lengthen his prison term. | 2022-08-24T00:47:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Courier for Mexican cartel CJNG pleads guilty to money-laundering - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/23/cjng-money-laundering-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/23/cjng-money-laundering-virginia/ |
The Trailer: What to watch tonight in Florida, New York and Oklahoma
In this edition: Primary day in New York and Florida, lessons from Netroots Nation, and an interview with DCCC chairman Sean Patrick Maloney as he fights for his own nomination.
This newsletter will take next week off, and return on September 6. In the meantime, if you have questions about the fall campaign, or anything else we cover, send an email to david.weigel@washpost.com with “Trailer Q&A” somewhere in the subject.
Oh, that reminds us: This is The Trailer.
Today's primary candidates in Florida and New York have something in common: Six months ago, none of them knew where they were running. After some back and forth with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Florida Republicans signed off on a dream of a map, reducing the number of Democratic-leaning and competitive seats and creating new conservative-leaning districts they might hold for a decade. New York Democrats tried to draw an even more ideal map for their candidates — but they were stymied by the state's highest court, where a moderate justice appointed by disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ripped up the new map and let a special master make a more competitive one.
A decent amount of chaos came from that, but it'll be over tonight, as will the runoff elections in Oklahoma. Here are the questions to ask before the votes come in:
Has Dobbs thrown Democrats a political lifeline? There are two special elections in New York tonight, and Republicans saw one of them — the race for the 19th Congressional District, vacated this summer by Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado — as a launchpad toward the November election. Just two months after winning a Texas seat narrowly won by Biden, Republicans saw a grand opportunity for Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro to flip another Democratic seat, one Biden carried by under 2 points.
Democrats seemed to agree, spending nearly nothing at first to help Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan win the special. But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Ryan built his campaign around abortion rights specifically and “freedom” more generally, a dry run for the strategy Democrats are gearing up to use all year in swing seats — especially ones with large numbers of college-educated White liberals. Over the weekend, Democrats released internal polling that found a tied race, and Republicans are nervous about turnout in a court-ordered pre-Labor Day election, when independents have less incentive to show up. (Voters who do show up, or get mail ballots, will get one for the special and one, if they're registered with a party, for one of today's primaries.)
The last set of special elections, in Nebraska and Minnesota, found Democrats losing by single digits in places Donald Trump had carried easily, giving Democrats hope that the landscape has shifted toward them in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. On abortion, Molinaro opposes any congressional action on abortion, and stresses that his party has no chance of winning total control of Albany and limiting abortion statewide.
A Republican win of any size here will flip a Democratic seat, reducing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's margin of error for the last few months of 2022. But of the National Republican Congressional Committee's 74 midterm targets, 60 had bigger Biden win margins in 2020, and several have weaker GOP nominees than Molinaro.
Which MAGA candidates will win safe red seats? In most of today's Republican primaries, the choice isn't between a moderate and an “America First” candidate — it's between conservatives running to the right in seats they're almost guaranteed to win.
That's the scene in Oklahoma's runoffs, where Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) faces former state House Speaker T.W. Shannon for the GOP's U.S. Senate nomination. Shannon, who ran and lost another Senate primary with national conservative endorsements eight years ago, returned this year as an outsider with some fresh experience in the private sector.
But Mullin secured Trump's endorsement on July 10, after nearly winning the June 28 primary outright, running as a reliable conservative vote in Congress. Shannon hasn't raised the kind of money he did for the 2014 race, and has closed out with a focus on his personal story as a Black conservative and Chickasaw Nation member who made his own way in politics. (Either candidate would make history as the second Native American U.S. senator in history. Mullin is a member of the Cherokee Nation.)
The runoff for Mullin's 2nd Congressional District pits state Rep. Avery Frix against former state Sen. Josh Brecheen, who's been helped by ad spending from the Club for Growth. The winner is the favorite to win a once-Democratic part of Oklahoma that Trump won by a 3-1 margin.
In Florida, DeSantis-approved maps transformed three Democratic-held districts into seats Republicans are favored to win: The 4th, 7th, and 13th Congressional Districts. The nomination in first seat, one of several carved out of the Jacksonville area to eliminate a majority-Black district, may have been decided when long-shot candidate Erick Aguilar was exposed for raising money with appeals that seemed to be fundraising for DeSantis and Trump. State Sen. President Pro Tem Aaron Bean, already the favorite before that scandal, benefited from the exposé.
The other races haven't broken down so clearly. Veterans Brady Duke and Cory Mills, who've never run for office before, have spent a combined $4 million; Tallahassee Republicans would prefer either over state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, a far-right populist who mocks less conservative members of the party on Twitter and has been endorsed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Mills, who's picked fewer fights online, got early attention for turning an investigation into his riot-control gear business into an ad highlighting the left-wing protests his products helped quash.
In the 13th District, which covers Pinellas County, 2020 nominee Anna Paulina Luna has been endorsed by Trump for what's now a Republican-leaning seat. Former prosecutor Kevin Hayslett has questioned her MAGA loyalty, running ads that show Luna, before becoming a candidate, praising the Obama administration's immigration policies.
A few Republicans are defending their turf in re-shaped districts. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who's spent his third term under FBI investigation, has a challenge from former FedEx executive Mark Lombardo in his 1st Congressional District. In the 11th Congressional District, which contains The Villages retirement community, anti-Islam activist Laura Loomer has outraised Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), and deployed two consistent attacks: He misses too many votes, and he betrayed conservatives by missing the vote to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Loomer won the 2020 nomination for a different, safely Democratic seat; a win in this primary would give her a direct path to Congress.
In New York's 23rd Congressional District, the MAGA right has another chance at capturing a safe seat: Carl Paladino, a Buffalo-area businessman who has a history of making inflammatory and racist comments, is facing Nick Langworthy, the chair of the state Republican Party, for the right to succeed Rep. Tom Reed. (There's a special election for Reed's current seat, which backed Trump by 11 points and hasn't seen the same spending as the 19th District.) Among the comments Paladino has made in the past: a joke suggesting that Michelle Obama “return to being a male” and be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe.”
Where can the left still win? Four years after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) beat a member of her party's leadership in a primary, the establishment has been striking back. Enemies of the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing have spent heavily to help Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in his race for the 17th Congressional District, where he's facing state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi. Ocasio-Cortez was outspent in her race, too, but after 18 months of being blamed for hurting the party's brand — many Democrats have taken issue with her calls to “defund the police” — the left is being outspent all over the place.
The pileup in New York's 3rd Congressional District is another study in well-funded moderate backlash politics. What looked a few months ago like a potential left-wing gain, a chance to replace Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.) with someone less likely to sign a No Labels pledge, has become a race between three liberals — Jon Kaiman, Rob Zimmerman, and Working Families Party-endorsed Melanie D'Arrigo — and Nassau County legislator Josh Lafazan, who inherited Suozzi's endorsement and his “common sense Democrat” slogan.
In the 10th Congressional District, a New York Times endorsement for attorney Dan Goldman inspired a panic among more left-leaning candidates, but no strategy for stopping him. After the Times endorsement, two pairs of candidates — Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) and state Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, as well as then-city councilwoman Carlina Rivera and ex-Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman held news conferences where they urged a united front against Goldman. They didn't explain who, exactly, anti-Goldman voters should consolidate behind. Several of the liberal groups that endorsed Jones in 2020 race, when he united the left in a Westchester County district have abandoned him here in favor of Niou.
The left is battling the rest of the party in races for the 11th District and the new 19th District, too. In the first, ex-Rep. Max Rose and fellow veteran Brittany Ramos DeBarros kept running even after the court threw out the initial, friendlier Democratic map and drew a seat that makes Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) safer. In the second, farmer Jamie Cheney has focused her own campaign on abortion rights, while former Hill aide Josh Riley has outpaced her with fundraising and local Democratic endorsements, including the WFP.
There's not much of an ideological battle in New York's 12th Congressional District. The fight there is between two elderly Manhattan Democrats, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who have similar voting records and chair powerful committees — House Judiciary and House Oversight. Lawyer Suraj Patel, who faced Maloney twice and nearly beat her in 2020, has run on generational change, and got a gift when both rivals mumbled their way through an easy debate question about whether the president should run again. But Nadler picked up steam in the race's final stretch, and Maloney seemed to show it by suggesting that her colleague might be “senile.”
Will diamond hands grab a seat in Congress? The cryptocurrency industry has invested tens of millions of dollars in campaigns this cycle, and it could elect a candidate from its ranks — Michelle Bond, the CEO of a crypto industry association and a Republican candidate in New York's 1st Congressional District. She's gotten $1.3 million worth of help from Crypto Innovation PAC, which gets funding from the Club for Growth; GMI PAC, a pro-crypto group co-founded by Bond's partner Ryan Salame, has put in another $100,000.
Salame, the co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, pumped another $500,000 into the Stand for New York Committee, which has targeted Nick LaLota, the Suffolk County legislature's chief of staff. Anthony Figliola, a political consultant, has run as a pro-Trump outsider, but most local Republicans who've weighed in have endorsed LaLota. He's gone after Bond for her past as a government regulator, and for skipping debates, but for much of the summer he was being outspent 10-1.
That's just one of five races today where crypto PACs have taken a side. Protect Our Future, a PAC funded by Samale's FTX colleague Sam Bankman-Fried, has spent nearly $1 million in Florida's 10th Congressional District on behalf of Maxwell Alejandro Frost, an activist for myriad liberal causes who could be the first member of Generation Z to serve in Congress. (Frost calls his the “mass shootings generation.”) Even without the PAC, Frost had outraised state Sen. Randolph Bracy, the early favorite in polling for the seat, whose status in the Florida House minority gave him little to run on, and Rev. Terence Gray, who was endorsed by Orlando's Democratic Mayor Buddy Dyer.
But in the race's final weeks, Frost focused more on former Rep. Alan Grayson. His political career and status as an unapologetic left-wing advocate seemed over after his 2016 defeat in a U.S. Senate primary, following accusations from his ex-wife of domestic abuse. Grayson denied that, and in this race he's denied responsibility for untraceable text messages attacking Frost and accusing him of sexual misconduct, which Frost denies. (This is at least the third race this cycle, after two primaries in Texas, where voters received attack messaging that no one took responsibility for.)
Who will face Gov. Ron DeSantis? Here is the state of the Florida Democratic Party: The candidate running on electability lost his last two statewide campaigns. Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) plunged into the Democratic primary as a compassionate moderate, one steadily moving left, who had won big before and could defeat DeSantis. State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried announced her own bid a few weeks later, needling Crist for leaving his swing seat in the House majority and calling DeSantis's governing “authoritarian.”
Since last summer, Crist moved ahead of Fried in money, endorsements, and polling, while DeSantis raised more money from donors than any candidate for governor ever has — more than $140 million. Crist has positioned himself as a calm, results-focused alternative to DeSantis, much like President Biden did with Trump two years ago. Fried has offered Democrats a more aggressive campaign, and relentlessly attacked Crist for the antiabortion views, now abandoned, that he held when serving as governor and appointing judges.
“When women die here in the state of Florida, that is on you,” Fried told Crist last month, in their sole televised debate. “You will have to live with that every single day.”
“As Biden turns toward midterms, he may not be the top surrogate,” by Matt Viser
Who wants to campaign with the president?
“A disunited left clears the field for a moderate in NY-10,” by Ross Barkan
A working-families fued.
“Trump’s dominance in GOP comes into focus, worrying some in the party,” by Hannah Knowles, Josh Dawsey, and David Weigel
The MAGA wins of last week's races.
“A Republican who says Trump lost looks to put Colorado’s Senate race in play,” by Dan Balz
The down-the-middle strategy of Joe O'Dea.
“DeSantis, eyeing 2024, rallies with the Trump-backed far right,” by Trip Gabriel and Patrica Mazzei
On the Turning Point campaign trail.
“Democrats face first test in bid to defeat DeSantis,” by Tim Craig
Looking for a message, and a crowd, in Florida.
“‘Never in a million years’: Arizona Republicans grapple with the rising fringe,” by Hank Stephenson
Twilight of the McCainiacs.
“Meet the first election denier poised to win for secretary of state this year,” by Daniel Nichanian
Chuck Gray, enemy of drop boxes.
“In New York, Democrats clash over identity in bitter primary season," by Colby Itkowitz
Nadler versus Maloney versus Patel.
PITTSBURGH — On Saturday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took his war on wokeness to western Pennsylvania. He campaigned with state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for governor, who promised to censor “critical race theory” and ensure “no more men on the girls’ teams.” He invoked Winston Churchill, pledging to “fight wokeness” wherever he saw it, and calling Florida the place “where woke goes to die.”
The next day, at the closing session of the 17th annual Net roots Nation, former MoveOn political strategist Reggie Hubbard banged a gong, which he’d brought from home, to celebrate liberal wins in the Biden era.
“My pronouns are he/him, and I humbly stand before you today acknowledging that we are on the un-ceded territory of a variety of Native people,” said Hubbard.
One mile away on foot, a million millions apart in how they saw reality. That was the political weekend in Pittsburgh, where DeSantis’s 43-minute appearance (with a candidate who often barred legacy media from his events) attracted significantly more attention than the year’s largest gathering of liberal activists.
Flashing their vaccine cards for credentials, then wearing face masks to attend events inside the convention center, around 2500 attendees listened to after-action reports on elections they’d won (Kansas’s abortion referendum) and lost (last year’s races in Virginia). They strategized about how to win back Latino voters who’d drifted right, and Black men who they worried would follow them.
Also, if they chose to, they could slap stickers on their badges identifying their pronouns, and stick pins on their lanyards that explained what level of post-pandemic interaction made them comfortable — “space please,” “elbows okay,” or “hugs okay.”
Net roots had gone virtual in 2020 and 2021, the in-person crowd was smaller this year, and there was some reckoning with how the way liberals had learned to talk might irritate people. In his address to the conference, as he described what it was like to survive the 2016 mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, LGBT activist Brandon Wolf paused after he used the term “safe space” to describe how his friends had felt there.
“I get that that term comes with its own baggage,” said Wolf. “A safe space is used almost like a bludgeon online; right wing trolls insinuating that if you need a safe space in this world, you must not be tough enough. But for queer people like us, safe spaces are lifelines.”
The mood at the conference was lighter than it might have been one month earlier, before the Biden administration delivered on a number of its stalled campaign goals. The pandemic precautions didn’t last long at post-plenary after-parties, where there was cautiously optimistic chatter about what else Biden might do; Melissa Byrne, a campaigner for student debt forgiveness, slapped “Cancel Student Debt” posters on her clothes.
“Gas prices are coming down. The economy’s still okay,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, as she walked from the convention’s final plenary session to the Italian restaurant where the union was throwing a party. “If we can have a decent school opening, where parents feel like, ‘okay, it’s kind of normal’ — as long as it’s calm by the end of September, it’s going to change things.”
The Net roots conference began in 2006 as a gathering for roughly a thousand bloggers, whose influence at the time was starting to reshape political media and change Democrats’ minds about who they needed to influence. Over the years, the online left welcomed more activist, strategists, and vendors, all trying to mobilize an electorate that they hoped would win the future.
That version of the conference grew less and less hospitable to some Democratic politicians. In 2007, Net roots hosted a presidential candidate forum, where Hillary Clinton was booed for defending lobbyists; in 2015, Clinton skipped the conference, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and then-Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley showed up, and were interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters.
They weren’t the first Net roots speakers to face protests — thrilling and/or cringey interactions, between overly prepared speakers and energetic activists, had happened for years. And plenty of Republican politicians felt unwelcome at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which predated Net roots by a generation and was frequently compared to it.
But the particular kind of left-wing politics that ran through Net roots had rejected factions of the Democratic Party, and some of this weekend’s conference was about winning back working class voters while keeping the old guard out. Politicians who might have gotten called out found somewhere else to be.
Thirteen years earlier, the last time Net roots was in Pittsburgh, Bill Clinton gave a keynote address, predicting that Democrats could rebound before the 2010 election if they passed the Affordable Care Act. (Well.) In 2022, the Biden White House did not send anyone to the conference — it had offered a virtual keynote, which organizers decided not to do.
Attorney Gen. Josh Shapiro, the party’s nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, skipped the conference, leaving running mate and state Rep. Austin Davis to make the case for their ticket. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, whose home was a short drive from the downtown convention center, appeared only in a video shown to participants in the annual pub quiz, where he led a campaign-themed lightning round: “Is it from Pennsylvania, or is it really from New Jersey?”
That was what didn’t happen in Pittsburgh. What did was illustrative of how Democrats would run in 2022, and how they’d reacted to the better-than-expected performances of GOP candidates in 2020 and 2021. The “race class narrative,” a messaging theory that recommends candidates and canvassers emphasize shared values and say that their economic opponents want to divide working people, got a tuneup. Emphasizing “freedom” was the way to go, and telling voters — like the ones who had just demolished an abortion-limiting ballot measure in Kansas — that they needed Democrats to protect their rights from Republicans who wanted to remove them.
“The Republicans love to cloak themselves in the banner of freedom,” said Davis in his speech to attendees. “Well, it doesn't sound like freedom when they tell women what they can and can't do with their own bodies. It doesn't sound like freedom when they say you get to vote, but they get to pick the winners. And it doesn't sound like freedom when they tell our children what they can and can't learn.”
There was some talk about the fight to control the party, though less than there'd been in other years; a big theme of the very first Yearly Kos conference, the Net roots precursor, was how to defeat Sen. Joe Lieberman. One reason was that the left was on the defensive. State Rep. Summer Lee, who narrowly won this summer's primary for Pittsburgh's seat in the House, used her speech to recap how millions were spent against her by groups like the Democratic Majority for Israel.
“We know what game they're playing,” said Lee. “They come and the kick up mud in districts where progressive women of color are running for office.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who had narrowly survived her own primary this month, hinted at that in her own speech to the conference. “It is when you get very comfortable that your opponents strike,” she said, “and I know this very well.”
But with most primaries over, the focus of the conference largely stayed on November. Polling shared with attendees from Democratic strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio informed them that they did not need to make a false choice between “mobilizing” voters who were already committed to the party and “persuading” voters who were skeptical.
There was an opening for “mobisuasion,” she said, using the “freedom frame” that portrayed Democrats as regular Americans trying to keep peoples' rights intact. A poll conducted last July, shown on one convention screen, found that 42 percent of Americans identified “freedom and liberty” as their most important patriotic values, compared to just 8 percent who said “equality.” It was an answer to the DeSantis challenge that didn't give him any new, “woke” targets.
Bond for Congress, “Nancy and Joe.” Cryptocurrency industry candidate Michelle Bond doesn’t get into details about her work in this commercial. She talks about a career spent “fighting for American jobs an innovation,” which broadly covers crypto, as a way to show that she’s not a “career politician.” The only issues mentioned are the ones that GOP voters care the most about, inflation and “get[ting] that border wall up.”
Dan Goldman for New York, “Worth Fighting For.” Goldman’s personal wealth has let him dominate the ad wars in New York’s 10th Congressional District, and hardly a commercial break goes by without a version of this spot; some versions add in his endorsement from the New York Times. Unlike many Democratic candidates, Goldman, who worked on Trump’s impeachment, focuses on Trump and the threat to “democracy” in his spots, before talking about other issues likely to come before Congress.
Mondaire for Congress, “The Choice.” The Times endorsement in the 10th District inspired a panic among the liberal candidates campaigning for the seat — though none of them reacted by dropping out. Even after teaming up at a news conference to denounce the endorsement, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) and state Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou portrayed themselves as the single best Goldman-stopper. In this ad, Jones, who has trailed Niou narrowly in polling, calls the race a choice between “conservative Dan Goldman or progressive Mondaire Jones.”
Lafazan for Congress, “Same Old.” There are more than three Democrats running in New York's 3rd Congressional District, but Josh Lafazan focuses on just two rivals here — the ones with more political experience. (A liberal candidate, running as a pure outsider, isn't mentioned.) “The same old, same old, isn't working anymore,” says a narrator, as images of gas prices, a dollar higher than the current sticker price in Long Island, flash across the screen.
Paladino for Congress, “Our Time.” Carl Paladino's 2010 run for governor in some ways presaged the 2016 Trump campaign, with a filter-free businessman beating a more credentialed candidate then running against a Democrat who portrayed him as crazy. This spot, for Republican voters, highlights that Paladino is still an outsider: Images of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and rival candidate/former state party chair Nick Langworthy stand in for “career politicians.”
Maxwell Alejandro Frost for Congress, “Hear From.” Frost, a 25-year Democrat who's still completing a college degree, has never been elected to office. The experience he touts in this ad, running in both English and Spanish, is confronting DeSantis and being pulled out of the room, as the governor mockingly said that nobody “wants to hear from” him.
The Committee to Elect Alan Grayson, “Lower Tolls, Lower Taxes, Lower Rent.” Grayson hasn't served in Congress since the end of 2016, when his advertising would dramatize the wins he'd gotten in Washington; most memorably, with a group of children chanting “Alan Grayson saved our school.” Grayson's hastily-assembled comeback bid focuses instead on three catchy economic promises, to lower car tolls, eliminate the gas tax (and tax on Social Security), and make rent tax-deductible.
Laura Loomer for Congress, “The Truth About Laura Loomer.” In her second campaign for Congress, Loomer is once again comparing the criticism she gets as an anti-Islam activist to the criticism Trump got — a message to GOP voters that none of this should be taken very seriously.
Cory Mills for Congress, “Control.” The leading GOP candidates in Florida's 7th Congressional District are veterans, and their ads have led with that. Mills directly compares his experience in Afghanistan, fighting tyrants who were “forcing citizens to cover their faces,” with his campaign for freedom at home. “After al-Qaeda and the Taliban, stopping these radicals doesn't scare me one damn bit.”
Marc for Us, “The Record.” One reason that Republicans remain bullish about flipping New York's 19th Congressional District today is Marcus Molinaro, the popular county executive who has kept his campaign focused on inflation and spending as other issues threatened to knock him off course. Molinaro's own spot, which shares TV time with crime-focused ads from the national GOP, hits Democrat Pat Ryan as yet another money-wasting liberal, briefly highlighting his rollout of a “Green New Deal” for Ulster County as the sort of stuff that's created higher costs for everyone.
“Do you favor or oppose Joe Biden running for a second term as President in 2024?” (AIGS/Berkeley, August 9-15, 9254 registered California voters)
The president's approval rating in California is low, for a Democrat: Just 48 percent of voters approve of the job he's doing, and 48 percent disapprove. His long-term problem is that support for a reelection campaign is lower than overall support for his performance in office. While a supermajority of Democrats support Biden, a smaller majority want him to run again; independents, who have turned on Biden, are overwhelmingly opposed to another campaign.
“If the Arizona election for U.S. Senator were today, would you vote for…” (Fox News, August 12-16, 1012 registered Arizona voters)
Mark Kelly (D): 50%
Blake Masters (R): 42%
Kelly held far larger leads than this in 2020, when he won his U.S. Senate seat against a Republican who had been appointed to it after losing the state's other seat in 2018. Masters doesn't have that losing record, but he starts with a disadvantage: Just 37 percent of voters approve of the Supreme Court's conservative majority overturning Roe v. Wade, which he celebrated. The Democratic brand is in bad shape here, and Trump has higher favorable ratings than Biden, but Democrats, for now, have better positioning on an issue that's grown in salience as voters have become slightly less worried about prices.
Party watch
As primary season winds down, some liberal members of the Democratic National Committee are advancing a resolution that would “ban” the use of “dark money” in intraparty contests. It's something that the committee has no real power over — and something that has deepened divisions in the party, after high-profile defeats of left-wing candidates in races where PACs and nonprofits spent millions.
“I realize we're limited, but we wanted to call this out and make sure that people knew where we stood on it,” said Judith Whitmer, the chair of Nevada’s Democratic Party, and the leader of the resolution effort. “We're the party that keeps complaining about Citizens United, and the dark money from the Republicans and against Democratic candidates. We need to be mindful of our own practices.”
The resolution, shared first with the Trailer, calls for the DNC to enforce a ban on secretive campaign spending by tracking it — to “establish procedures for the investigation of ‘dark money’ use by candidate committees as well as possible disciplinary action.” Its rationale comes from the party's own opposition to secret money in the platform it passed two years ago, with a promise to “bring an end to ‘dark money’ by requiring full disclosure of contributors to any group that advocates for or against candidates, and bar 501(c)(4) organizations from spending money on elections.”
Whitmer and other signers of the letter plan to bring it forward at the next DNC meeting on September 10.
PEEKSKILL, N.Y. — Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) took over the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in December 2020, after the party's ambitious plan to target more Republican-held seats that year nearly cost them the majority. He faces his own primary today, in a redrawn district where he called “dibs” as soon as a court imposed it on the state — a decision that angered some colleagues, who hoped that freshman Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) would run there.
Jones ended up running in New York City instead, and Maloney faces state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi today. When Maloney sat for an interview last week, he had just secured the endorsement of the New York Times, and was bullish on how the Democrats' run of legislative wins would help in his race and in November elections. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.
The Trailer: Tell me how the last few weeks have changed the picture for Democrats. How have they affected your primary?
Sean Patrick Maloney: I really believe the last couple of weeks have been a huge turning point, both in terms of the way the midterms are going to end up a couple of months from now, but also in the way Democrats see ourselves.
People were frustrated. They felt that we couldn't use our power to get the results they wanted. And now they see that we've done a lot, and we can do more if we get a few more people in the House and Senate. In my own race, I think it I think it really undercuts the rationale of my challenger, who's arguing that the problem is the Democrats.
Both sides of the equation are moving, and that's unusual. We're doing better passing historic, massive legislation. And the Republicans find a new way to blow themselves up every day, like going after the FBI.
TT: How will the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago affect the midterms? I’ve heard some takes comparing it, as a base mobilizer, to the Dobbs decision. What are you seeing?
SPM: Sure, there’s a kind of perverse sugar high that the MAGA Republicans get any time the cult leader is attacked. But let’s strip away some of the bull----. This is about a federal search warrant for classified materials that, for some reason, Donald Trump has been keeping in the basement. That's extremely serious. We should all take a breath and respect law enforcement; right now, there are Republicans calling to defund the FBI. How's that going to help in the war on terror or the war against organized crime or securing the border or fighting drug trafficking? I think it's pretty despicable rhetoric.
TT: I noticed that when you were on MSNBC the other day, you didn’t like that the first question focused on this.
SPM: Yeah, poor John Heilemann. They were just a little frustrated. I mean, I'm standing 100 feet off the House floor. I can see through the door, from the Will Rogers statue. The speaker's about to gavel it down. There's 220 votes on the board. We've won the vote. And the first question is about Trump. Now, I know it's important. I know it's serious. It's very, very important to talk about this insanity of taking classified materials. But I also know that they've been talking about Trump on cable TV since 6 a.m. and it's 5 p.m., and we've just made history. And I was hoping maybe for one question on that.
Here's our problem as Democrats. We hear from you guys all the time: “Why don't you get your message out?” And it seems like all you want to talk about is Trump. I think it has something to do with Trump being good for ratings and being good for the business model. But we've made a lot of history in the last few days, and I was just trying to say maybe we could spare five minutes for that.
TT: What was your takeaway from the single-digit losses for Democrats in the Nebraska and Minnesota special elections — both in double-digit Trump seats? What are you seeing in New York’s 19th Congressional District?
SPM: I think Pat Ryan’s a great candidate and he's running a very strong race — not just in the fall, but in the special election, which, as you know, nobody thinks we should win. But I think he's got a great chance and he might surprise people.
In Texas, I think that the Republicans spent millions of dollars to win a seat that's going away. And I think the day is coming when they're going to wish they had that money back, because we're going to win when it counts. In Minnesota, you saw us beat the spread, and I think Kevin McCarthy should be worried about that — especially given the a---kicking they took in Kansas, which is a coming attractions preview for the midterms. And we'll see what happens in the special election with Pat Ryan.
TT: The DCCC spent more in Michigan, to help defeat Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), than it spent in those special elections. Biaggi talks about that spending, and you’ve gotten flack for it. Does it come up when you’re campaigning?
SPM: I think it's an insider’s conversation. People talk about it on Twitter, but Twitter is not real life. I understand that people have genuine concerns about it, and I try to be respectful of those. And there will always be a debate about tactics and morality in politics.
But look at the Cook Political Report. It’s now much more likely that a Democrat is going to win that seat. That's the bottom line. The danger didn't start with John Gibbs. I was there on Jan 6. There were 139 of them ready to set aside the election. The danger is not whether one more Republican agrees with them; the danger is whether they control the House of Representatives. And it is far more likely that John Gibbs will lose than it is that Peter Meijer would have lost. Let's be real. We just won a Republican seat for $400,000 and Kevin McCarthy knows it.
TT: Was there any way for Democrats to have avoided the mess they’re in with redistricting in New York?
SPM: It was the Democratic Court of Appeals, our highest court, that blew it up. I'm glad that Chief Justice DiFiore packed her bags and left, and she should hang her head in shame, because it's a disgrace what they did. While Ron DeSantis is running roughshod over the Voting Rights Act, eliminating a [majority] Black district and getting away with it, and when Republicans get their way in in lots of states, a Democratic-controlled court in New York didn't give the Democratic legislature another chance to fix the maps.
And bear in mind what that means. It means that the independent commission now is subject to a veto from either party, which will guarantee that it will go not to the legislature, but to a special master for the rest of time. A hack judge upstate hires a Republican consultant from Pittsburgh to draw maps for 20 million people for ten years with no input. It's a disaster.
TT: Was the die just cast with the court, then? I remember Republicans going through some recriminations in 2018, when their map was struck down, — oh, if only we hadn’t tried to save this one seat, the map might have held up in court.
SPM: Here's a fun fact. The most outrageous gerrymander in these maps was the district Alessandra Biaggi drew to allow her to run for Congress. They did this with this magical connection across the water, from the Bronx to Long Island which is unprecedented.
TT: We talked about Gibbs winning in Michigan; we haven't really been seeing left-wing versions of John Gibbs winning Democratic primaries. What do you see happening now with the left wing of your party?
SPM: I just don't think there's a big appetite right now, among Democrats, to attack other Democrats. I think they understand that the real fight is in November against the MAGA Republicans who will take away our rights, our benefits, our freedoms. And in my own case, I'm the quarterback of that team. I'm leading the effort to keep MAGA Republicans out of power.
TT: What about Republican messaging against the additional IRS funding in the IRA? It’s: The IRS is going to come after you, just like the FBI came after Trump. They're going to sic the government on their political enemies. What's your response to that message?
SPM: My response would be that these knuckleheads voted against cheaper prescription drugs and they're trying to change the subject. They voted against cheaper health insurance premiums under the ACA, and they're trying to distract you with this nonsense. So it's our job to go tell people about these achievements. But make no mistake, these are big, important, popular things.
The bottom line is that the treasury secretary already issued an order on this, that the that the additional audits are supposed to be for people making more than $400,000 a year. There's a lot of people out there cheat on their taxes, and those of us who pay our taxes are getting screwed. This is about making people pay their pay their taxes like the rest of us, especially rich people who find all kinds of creative ways to not pay taxes. Remember, the Republicans also voted against making big corporations pay a minimum tax of 15 percent.
I know that if you crank up the Fox News machine, you can call black white and you can turn night into day. But in the real world, people want big corporations and rich people paying their fair share. They want cheaper prescription drugs. They want cheaper health insurance premiums. They want to do something about climate change. And every Republican voted against all that. | 2022-08-24T00:47:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Trailer: What to watch tonight in Florida, New York and Oklahoma - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/23/trailer-what-watch-tonight-florida-new-york-oklahoma/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/23/trailer-what-watch-tonight-florida-new-york-oklahoma/ |
A former employee at Kinship restaurant has accused chef Eric Ziebold, center, of using a racist phrase multiple times in a conversation with her. (Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post)
For almost a week, a former food runner at Kinship and Métier has been standing outside the Michelin-starred restaurants, trying to warn passersby and potential diners about the James Beard Award-winning chef Eric Ziebold, whom she claims used racist language in her presence.
Klyn Jones, the former food runner, accused Ziebold of using the phrase “stupid n-----” in a conversation between the two about racism in the workplace. Jones has not accused the chef of calling her the phrase directly, but she said he used it at least four times during their May conversation. A video of Jones’s sidewalk protest, taken by a passerby on Saturday, was posted on TikTok and quickly went viral. It has been viewed more than 2.3 million times.
“There is no context that would make the use of a slur in the workplace appropriate or acceptable,” Jones said in a statement to The Washington Post. “It’s hurtful and conveys a deep lack of respect. I hope my protest and statement brings more awareness to these far too common instances of racial harm so they don’t occur in the future.”
In a statement to The Post, Ziebold acknowledged that he repeated the phrase after Jones used it in their conversation. “While addressing the concerns of a team member feeling safe in our restaurant, I was asked a question,” Ziebold said. “While stating I would find the proposed behavior unacceptable, I regretfully repeated their word in my response. I should have been more sensitive while trying to assure our team member that I was committed to an environment where they would feel safe.”
Jones, 25, is Black and a graduate of Howard University. Ziebold, 50, is White and the chef at Métier and Kinship, two of the most decorated fine-dining establishments in the District. He owns both restaurants with his wife/partner, Célia Laurent. Before Kinship/Métier, Ziebold was the chef behind the four-star CityZen inside the Mandarin Oriental, which followed a run as a trusted chef for Thomas Keller at the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., and Per Se in New York.
Neither Jones nor Ziebold would grant interviews to The Post for this story, but neither disputes that they took part in a one-on-one discussion at the restaurant in early May. According to two people with knowledge of the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation, Jones wanted to talk to Ziebold about racist incidents she had previously endured at restaurants, including one in which a diner at Kinship allegedly made a racist joke to her.
Another incident, in Chicago, involved a diner who apparently told Jones she was a “stupid n-----.” Jones wanted to know how Ziebold would handle a similar situation at Kinship/Métier.
Daniel Lobsenz, who was general manager during this incident, said Ziebold didn’t feel like his use of the word was racist. Lobsenz added that Ziebold has never had a racist complaint lodged against him before Jones filed hers.
“Kinship has always operated under a core set of values advocating diversity, equity and a feeling of respect and belonging,” Ziebold said in his statement to The Post. “I apologize to those I’ve hurt and will strive to do better in the future.”
Some have argued, according to a 2017 Washington City Paper report, that Ziebold’s kitchens can be demeaning and bullying environments.
Shortly after her one-on-one discussion with Ziebold in May, Jones told a fellow employee about the incident. The employee, who no longer works at Kinship/Métier, confirmed to The Post that Jones confided that Ziebold had allegedly used the racist phrase multiple times in their conversation.
“According to her, he starts to say, ‘Oh, my God, somebody called you ‘stupid n-----’? I would never call you a ‘stupid n-----,’ ” the former employee said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she still works in the industry and fears retaliation.
“She has to interrupt him and be like, ‘Okay, you don’t have to keep repeating it to me. I understand that you are getting what I’m saying,’ ” the employee continued. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, I don’t understand why you would let something like ‘stupid n-----’ bother you.’ ”
The former employee said that by that point, Jones felt so uncomfortable she broke off the conversation with Ziebold.
Because Kinship/Métier has no human resources department, the job of investigating Jones’s complaint against Ziebold fell to Lobsenz, the former general manager, who took individual statements from both Jones and Ziebold. He also mediated other meetings between the two.
Lobsenz says he learned via multiple interviews with both parties that Jones repeatedly asked Ziebold how he would respond if someone in his restaurants were to describe her using the racist phrase. In his response, Ziebold allegedly told Jones that he would have a problem with a diner using the n-word, Lobsenz said. The chef used the phrase “n-word” and not the racist term itself, Lobsenz learned in his investigation. It was his sense that Jones was inviting Ziebold to say the racist word, “to make it clear that it would be unacceptable,” he said.
Later, during a meeting with Jones, Lobsenz said the former food runner “said the words, ‘I asked [Ziebold] the question until I got the answer I wanted.’ ” Lobsenz says he interpreted the comment to mean Ziebold “was baited into saying it.”
The racial slur, which is freighted with history, is one of the most charged words in the English language. In recent years, White professors have been investigated, suspended and barred from teaching courses for using the n-word in academic settings.
Jonathan Friedland, the former chief communications officer at Netflix, was fired in 2018 after using the word twice around colleagues, once while attempting to explain the words that offend in comedy. A prominent New York Times science and public health reporter resigned under pressure after he said the word during a newspaper-sponsored trip for high school students to Peru.
The consequences to Ziebold and Kinship have been swift. Yelp has disabled Kinship’s page after an influx of negative comments. Diners have canceled reservations or have been subjected to verbal comments on the sidewalk as they enter the restaurants. Kinship/Métier canceled services on Sunday out of concern for the safety of both guests and employees, according to a company spokesperson. (The restaurants plan to reopen on Wednesday if they can assure the safety of everyone.)
“You see two thousands Google reviews in one day,” Lobsenz said. “People posting pictures of, you know, a dead mouse in a soda cup, so people think that this is a dirty restaurant. Obviously, none of these people ate at the restaurant, so they’re just bombing it.”
The accusations against Ziebold have had an impact on employees of Kinship/Métier, both past and present. Some have cut off contact with Jones. Others are supporting Jones, whose last day of work at Kinship/Métier was in early June.
“I want to thank every single person who believed me, stopped to talk to me and chose to patronize another establishment as a result of my protest. I get overwhelmed easily and never wanted to take drastic action,” Jones said in a statement to The Post.
“I was looking for an apology from my former employer for his repeated use of offensive, vulgar and racist language,” Jones added. “Too often these things get swept under the rug in the restaurant industry. My goal was to inform patrons (most specifically Black patrons) of what happened so they could make informed decisions on whether they still wanted to support this business.”
A current captain, who describes himself as a person of color, is struck by one thing: that Jones is on the sidewalk by herself, with no other Kinship/Métier employee supporting her protest.
“If I felt that I was working in a place where there was some sort of racism existing or bias because of color or creed, I would be standing outside with her,” said the captain, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation.
“The fact that there’s no past employees or other employees … that are sharing their own personal experiences of racism within the workplaces, I think it speaks volumes,” he added.
Regardless of who is supporting her, Jones told The Post that she has filed a hostile workplace complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She also said in her statement that, as of Tuesday, she has waited more than 100 days for an apology from Ziebold. Lobsenz told The Post that the chef apologized weeks earlier to Jones.
In a text to The Post, Jones wrote of Ziebold’s earlier apology: “He said, ‘sorry you feel that way’ and ‘sorry I repeated what you said,’ which I felt was a flippant dismissal of my point.” | 2022-08-24T01:47:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Kinship employee alleges Michelin-starred chef used racist language - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/08/23/kinship-chef-racist-language-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/08/23/kinship-chef-racist-language-protest/ |
The GOP media strategist was known for writing and producing commercials during the 2004 presidential race. He also contributed to John McCain’s and Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns.
GOP media strategist Rick Reed in 2018. He was known for working on TV commercials that challenged John F. Kerry's war record. (Tim Hyde)
His daughter Mackey Reed confirmed the death. The precise cause was not yet known, she said, but was believed to be a heart ailment.
A longtime partner at the political ad firm Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, Mr. Reed worked on campaigns for numerous Republican candidates, including senators George Allen and John W. Warner of Virginia, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina and Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois. He also made ads for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 and served as a senior media adviser to Donald Trump in 2016, after launching his own consulting company in Alexandria. By then, he was being hailed by Fox News host Tucker Carlson as “the smartest political consultant I know.”
Mr. Reed remained best known for his work with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of about 200 former Navy officers and enlisted sailors who alleged that Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, had embellished his record during the Vietnam War, when he captained Swift boats in the Mekong Delta and was awarded honors including the Silver Star. Among other claims, they asserted that Kerry received his first of three Purple Hearts for a minor, self-inflicted wound, and said that he was unfit to serve as commander in chief because of his statements as an antiwar activist.
Democrats considered the commercials a smear campaign, with Kerry allies arguing that the ads were an especially low blow given that they benefited a candidate — incumbent President George W. Bush — who had not served in Vietnam. “Swiftboating” entered the political lexicon as a term for targeting candidates with unfair attack ads, and the commercials were also criticized by Republicans including McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, who called the ads “dishonest and dishonorable.” (He still maintained ties with Mr. Reed, whose firm briefly worked on McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.)
Mr. Reed insisted the ads were part of a legitimate effort to offer new insight into Kerry’s career, and stood by the veterans who appeared in them. Like many other political analysts, he also believed the commercials played a role in Kerry’s loss to Bush, who won the popular vote by three percentage points. “We rocked the very foundation of his persona and candidacy by saying John Kerry isn’t who he says he is,” he said in an interview soon after the election with L. Patrick Devlin, then a media and politics scholar at the University of Rhode Island.
As Mr. Reed told it, he got involved with the Swift boat group by chance, attending the veterans’ inaugural news conference in March 2004 simply because his uncle, Adrian Lonsdale, was a retired Coast Guard captain who happened to be a member. Mr. Reed said he was captivated by their message, and was confused why the news conference didn’t get more media attention. Within a few weeks, he met with political strategist Chris LaCivita to coordinate a television campaign.
“The thing that struck me was that these people were not political people. … You could have produced an ad based on the first press conference,” Mr. Reed told Devlin in the interview. “Their inexperience gave them veracity. These people were the real deal. We wanted them to speak for themselves.”
Mr. Reed filmed many of the veterans telling their stories, leading to a 60-second ad called “Any Questions?” The commercial opened with footage of Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, saying, “If you have any question about what he’s made of, just spend three minutes with the men who served with him.” It went on to include testimonials from 13 veterans who said Kerry was dishonest, untrustworthy and unfit to lead.
“He dishonored his country,” said one. “He most certainly did.”
The veterans group, later known as Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, had limited money for an advertising campaign and initially spent $500,000 to air the commercial in a few markets in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin. But over the next several weeks in August, during a typically quiet period between the Democratic and Republican political conventions, the ad drew national media attention, driven by coverage online and on talk radio.
In part, the commercial seemed to take off because national security was already a major issue in the race, with both candidates’ war records under scrutiny. Bush had served stateside and was on the defensive over absences from his National Guard unit during the Vietnam years. Kerry had made his war service and subsequent peace activism a central part of his candidacy; his campaign produced veterans who served with him on the Swift boats, including crewmate Gene Thorson, who dismissed the anti-Kerry claims as “garbage.”
In some quarters, the voices of Thorson and other veterans who defended Kerry’s record were simply drowned out. It took several weeks for Kerry to directly take on Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; by contrast, members of the group were frequently giving interviews, speaking on talk radio hundreds of times and raising $19 million for nine ads that aired on national cable and in 10 battleground states, according to an analysis of the campaign by Devlin.
The controversy surrounding Kerry’s war record was further inflamed by the publication of a best-selling book, “Unfit for Command,” and by the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, which requested a formal review of the candidate’s military decorations. The Navy inspector general found no issues with the awarding of Kerry’s medals, although the claims still resonated with many voters.
Richard Gardner Reed was born in Wakefield, Mass., on May 24, 1953, and grew up on Cape Cod, in the beach town of Chatham. His father was a financial adviser, and his mother was a former physician assistant.
“I almost hated to ask him for advice because he was so quick to think of a good idea,” she added. “I didn’t want to be constantly taking his work as my own, pretending that this was my great line, when it was really my Republican dad.” | 2022-08-24T02:18:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rick Reed, who crafted Swift boat ads attacking John Kerry, dies at 69 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/23/gop-strategist-rick-reed-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/23/gop-strategist-rick-reed-dead/ |
Crist prevails in Florida, will face DeSantis; Nadler defeats Maloney in N.Y.
In one of Tuesday’s marquee races, Charlie Crist, the onetime Republican governor of Florida, won the Democratic primary for his old job
Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida, above, defeated Nikki Fried, the state's agricultural commissioner, in the Democratic primary, setting up a race against Gov. Ron DeSantis in the fall. (Thomas Simonetti/For The Washington Post)
Democratic primary voters on Tuesday nominated established candidates for governor and Congress in several closely watched intraparty contests, choosing well-known officeholders aligned with party leadership over rivals who sought to steer the party in a different direction.
“The stakes could not be any higher for this election. Our fundamental freedoms are literally on the ballot, a woman’s right to choose, democracy is on the ballot, your rights as minorities is on this ballot," Crist said in his victory speech Tuesday night. DeSantis “couldn’t care less about your freedoms," Crist added.
Republican Governors Association Executive Director Dave Rexrode said in a statement that DeSantis “has been a champion for freedom," and he sought to tie Crist to President Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings.
Also in Florida, Democratic Rep. Val Demings clinched her party’s nomination to take on Republican Sen. Marco Rubio in November, the AP projected. The race is expected to be among the most hotly contested Senate contests this fall. Demings, who if she wins in November would be the first Black senator from Florida and only the second woman to represent the state in the Senate, has signaled that she plans to make abortion access a central theme of her campaign.
Tuesday’s voting in Florida, New York and Oklahoma marked the conclusion of some of the year’s final major contests before both parties fully begin the sprint to the Nov. 8 election. That pivot is already underway, with Democrats seeking to tap into anger over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as a means of overcoming voter dissatisfaction with Biden and his party’s leadership in Washington.
Republicans have run heavily on rising prices and crime on Democrats’ watch. They were also deciding intraparty contests Tuesday, many of which featured election deniers and candidates embracing Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric and false claims. Some in the party have voiced worries that the presence of the former president and his polarizing positions could complicate the GOP push to win back control of Congress.
Abortion figured heavily in a special election held in New York’s 19th Congressional District. Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, the Democratic candidate, made abortion rights the cornerstone of his campaign against Republican Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro. Ryan led Molinaro by about 10 points with about 70 percent of the vote counted at 10:30 pm Eastern Time.
“I don’t believe in taking away rights that have been there as a precedent in New York state,” said Mary Louise Sharpe, 70 a retired nurse, who voted for Ryan over Molinaro. “This is how things have been for 50 years. I’m 70. I was 20 when abortion came into effect.”
“You can’t keep printing money and sending it out,” said Wagar, 71, a onetime Democrat, who backed Trump.
At a polling place on the Upper East Side on Manhattan, which Maloney long represented, Dorothy Lang, 100, showed up to vote for Nadler after being conflicted between the two elders. A recent newspaper endorsement sealed her decision. “I think he’s done a lot of good things,” she said, “and when the New York Times picked him, that was good enough for me.”
New York Democrats, who control all of state government, hoped this year’s redistricting would gain them a few extra seats to blunt Republican advantages elsewhere. But a state court struck down the Democratic-drawn map over procedural issues and appointed an independent special master to redraw the lines. In the Democrats’ version, they could have gained as many as three additional seats; now they are at risk of losing as many as five.
The late redrawing of the map also complicated the state’s primary schedule, bifurcating the elections so that primaries for governor and U.S. Senate were held in June and ones for the U.S. House and the state Senate were held in August. One of the greatest challenges for candidates, especially in New York City, was turning out voters in a month when many clear out for vacation.
New York’s redistricting prompted Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones, the first of two openly gay, Black members of Congress, to run in a new district that comprises Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn — neither part of his previous district. That put him in a crowded primary against attorney Dan Goldman, state Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, city councilwoman Carlina Rivera, former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and several others. Jones and others hit Goldman from the left, including over his personal views on abortion. Like Nadler, Goldman was boosted by an endorsement from the New York Times.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, defeated state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, who was backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the young liberal icon who famously ousted a member of the Democratic Party’s leadership in a primary four years ago.
While New York Democrats’ redistricting plans were thwarted, DeSantis successfully shepherded a new map in Florida that created more conservative territory, overcoming a court challenge that argued the lines amounted to an illegal partisan gerrymander. DeSantis’s map reconfigured three Democratic-held districts into GOP-leaning seats — the 4th District around Jacksonville, the 7th District around Orlando, and the 13th District in Pinellas County, which Crist is vacating to run for governor.
With little need to chase swing voters, each race has become a scramble to the right and to embrace Trump and his platform. DeSantis accused one of the losing 4th District candidates, Eric Aguilar, of “fraud” for sending out donor appeals that looked as if they were soliciting donations for the governor, or for Trump. In the 7th District, state Rep. Anthony Sabatini had pledged to impeach Biden as soon as he gets to Congress, while veteran Cory Mills, the projected winner in that primary, ran ads about the tear gas sold by his company and deployed against protesters.
Trump stayed neutral in that race, but endorsed Anna Paulina Luna, who was the projected winner in the GOP primary in the 13th District; she returned the favor by calling this month’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago a “Soviet-style” effort to destroy the former president. The endorsement didn’t dissuade other Republicans from seeking to run as more faithful candidates in Trump’s mold.
Another Republican competition that grabbed the attention of some on the far right was in New York’s 23rd District. There, Carl Paladino, a Buffalo-area businessman who has a history of making inflammatory and racist comments, was facing Nick Langworthy, the chair of the state Republican Party, for the right to succeed former GOP congressman Tom Reed.
There were also two runoffs GOP leaders were watching in Oklahoma on Tuesday, pitting conservative Republicans against one another. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, who was backed by Trump and nearly won the June primary for U.S. Senate outright, prevailed over former state House speaker T.W. Shannon. The race in the conservative-leaning state was for the GOP nomination for retiring Sen. James M. Inhofe’s seat.
The other runoff is for Mullin’s seat, which he vacated to run for the Senate. State Rep. Avery Frix and former state Sen. Josh Brecheen, are the candidates vying for this very Trump-friendly district.
Pelosi praises Maloney after loss, congratulates Nadler | 2022-08-24T03:23:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Voters head to the polls in Florida, New York, Oklahoma - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/23/primaries-florida-new-york-democrats-republicans-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/23/primaries-florida-new-york-democrats-republicans-abortion/ |
Rembert Weakland, former archbishop of Milwaukee, dies at 95
The Benedictine monk was one of the leading liberal voices in the Catholic Church before his resignation in 2002
Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee in 2002. (Tannen Maury/AFP/Getty Images)
Rembert G. Weakland, a Benedictine monk who became a leading liberal voice within the Catholic Church and served for 25 years as archbishop of Milwaukee, resigning his post in 2002 amid revelations of a financial settlement with a man who had been his lover decades earlier, died Aug. 22 at a retirement center in Greenfield, Wis. He was 95.
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced his death but did not cite a cause.
For years, until his embattled final days in office, Archbishop Weakland was one of the most prominent American prelates in the Catholic Church. He was by all accounts a formidable intellect — he spoke six languages and was a musical prodigy who had studied at Juilliard as well as the seminary — and brought to his ministry a compelling personal story.
One of six children raised by their widowed mother during the Depression, he said the Catholic schools he attended in Pennsylvania were “undoubtedly” his “ladder out of poverty.” In the 1960s, he became head of the worldwide Benedictine order and, under Pope Paul VI, received an appointment to help institute the liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council, which sought to modernize the centuries-old practices and positions of the church.
Paul VI also elevated Archbishop Weakland in 1977 to his post in Milwaukee, where he led the archdiocese’s nearly 700,000 Catholics. In that role, he continued to promote the liberalization of the church, at times clashing with the more conservative Pope John Paul II, whose papacy began in 1978. In a church publication, Archbishop Weakland once called on Catholic leaders to “avoid the fanaticism and small-mindedness that has characterized so many periods of the church in its history — tendencies that lead to much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth.”
To make up for the shortfall of priests, Archbishop Weakland supported the ordination of married men, a position rejected by the Vatican. He promoted expanded ecclesiastical roles for women and appeared to challenge the church’s opposition to abortion and contraception by convening “listening sessions” in which he invited women to discuss those and other matters.
He was perhaps most outspoken on social justice and particularly economic justice, helping shepherd a pastoral letter from U.S. bishops in 1986 that described poverty and income disparities in the United States as “a social and moral scandal.” The document, which also decried poverty abroad, implicitly criticized the Reagan administration by calling out the “serious distortion of national economic priorities produced by massive national spending on defense” instead of social programs.
“Every economic decision and institution must be judged in light of whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person,” Archbishop Weakland said when the letter was released.
Despite his disagreements with more conservative prelates, Archbishop Weakland remained a visible and influential force in the church until 2002, when, in accordance with church practice, he offered his resignation to the Vatican at age 75. That occasion, however, coincided with revelations of a relationship that he had had two decades earlier with a theology student at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
The former student, Paul Marcoux, by then in his 50s, appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and accused Archbishop Weakland of committing what he called date rape during their relationship. Archbishop Weakland acknowledged having had an “inappropriate relationship” with Marcoux but vehemently denied having ever committed sexual abuse. In an out-of-court settlement in 1998, the Milwaukee archdiocese had paid Marcoux $450,000 in what Archbishop Weakland conceded might have been perceived as “hush money.”
Archbishop Weakland’s past affair became public just as investigations, sparked by an expose in the Boston Globe, revealed pervasive sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and decades-long efforts by the church hierarchy to cover it up. In a 2009 memoir, “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church,” Archbishop Weakland wrote that as archbishop, with authority over offending priests, he had handled their cases improperly.
“I had accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects [of abuse] on the youngsters,” he wrote. “Either they would not remember or would ‘grow out of it.' ”
On Archbishop Weakland’s request, Pope John Paul II accelerated his retirement process and accepted his resignation shortly after he turned 75.
George Samuel Weakland was born in Patton, Pa., on April 2, 1927. (He took the name Rembert when he became a Benedictine monk.) His father, who ran a hotel that was destroyed in a fire, died of pneumonia when Archbishop Weakland was 5. His siblings at the time ranged in age from 6 months to 8 or 9 years.
Their mother, barely able to provide for her children, moved them to a home with no central heating.
“I just took it for granted all mothers would haul in the coal, and chop the wood,” the future archbishop told The Washington Post years later. “I remember those winters with her sleeping on the couch in the living room and keeping the fires going through the night.”
In the morning, he added, “we would run out of that bed, down, and of course the fires were always going and things were always the way they should be.”
A pastor at the local church noticed Archbishop Weakland’s musical talents and arranged free piano lessons from a nun. He was educated at Saint Vincent College, a Benedictine school in Latrobe, Pa., and was ordained as a priest in 1951. The Benedictine order encouraged his musical studies, sending him to the Juilliard School and eventually to Columbia University, where he received a doctoral degree in music in 2000. He led the Benedictine order from 1967 until his appointment as archbishop in 1977.
Complete survivor information was not immediately available.
Archbishop Weakland wrote extensively in his memoir about his abiding struggle with his sexuality. He realized when he was in his teens that he was gay, he wrote, but “feared even admitting it to myself.” He allowed himself to pursue relationships with men after becoming archbishop, he told the New York Times, because of “loneliness that became very strong.”
He also expressed his regret about the church’s treatment of victims of sexual abuse by priests.
“If I have any sadness, it is that we have made too little progress in understanding and helping victims regain a full life,” he wrote. “Too many seem to be left in anger.” | 2022-08-24T03:45:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rembert Weakland, former archbishop of Milwaukee, dies at 95 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/23/rembert-weakland-archbishop-catholic-church-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/23/rembert-weakland-archbishop-catholic-church-dead/ |
Miss Manners: Was I wrong to use a fake name on a dating site?
Initially introducing oneself under false premises used to be a serious offense; in the context you cite, it is, unfortunately, merely common sense.
If you do not wish to appear greedy or pushy, neither of which would win their loyalty, give them your card and say that you would be most pleased to help them again if there is anything else they need in the future. | 2022-08-24T04:15:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: Was I wrong to use a fake name on a dating site? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/24/miss-manners-fake-name-dating/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/24/miss-manners-fake-name-dating/ |
U.S. says it conducted strikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria
Sarah Dadouch
U.S. Central Command officials at the Tanf base in Syria in June. (Karoun Demirjian/TWP)
The U.S. military said it conducted airstrikes in Syria on Tuesday, targeting infrastructure used by groups with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The airstrikes, in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, were carried out at President Biden’s direction after U.S. forces reported an attack by drone aircraft on one of their remote outposts last week.
“Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” said Col. Joe Buccino, communications director of U.S. Central Command, in a statement. “The United States does not seek conflict, but will continue to take necessary measures to protect and defend our people,” he added. U.S. forces are in Syria fighting the Islamic State.
No casualties or damage were reported in the Aug. 15 attack on the remote Tanf outpost, a strategically located garrison near a Syria-Iraq border crossing. The outpost is near a major land supply route used by Iran to smuggle arms into Syria and to its Hezbollah allies.
A number of past attacks on the outpost have been attributed to Iran, including last October, and in June, Russian aircraft struck a section of the base inhabited by the Syrian opposition fighters — after giving U.S. forces a half-hour’s notice.
Iran is putting down roots in eastern Syria
Iran has been recruiting local Syrians to allied militias in Deir al-Zour, providing services the deeply distrusted government cannot deliver and putting down roots in a strategic province that could further Tehran’s regional interests even after the Syrian civil war eventually ends and Iran’s support for President Bashar al-Assad is no longer as vital.
Buccino said Tuesday’s precision strikes were a “proportionate, deliberate action” designed to limit the risk of escalation and casualties while achieving their goal of “disrupting or deterring attacks by Iran-backed groups.”
There was no immediate reaction from Tehran. Talks to salvage a nuclear deal with Iran, which President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of in 2018, are ongoing. | 2022-08-24T04:28:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. says it conducted strikes in Syria against Iran IRGC-linked target - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/23/us-military-strikes-syria-iran-irgc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/23/us-military-strikes-syria-iran-irgc/ |
On Monday, a technology startup in London did something that most software companies never do: It published the code behind its creation so that anyone could replicate it. Any developer in the world can rebuild the image-generating model made by Stability AI, which can spit out any picture or photo you can imagine from a single text prompt.
Stability AI’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Emad Mostaque says he’s more worried about public access to AI than the harm his software could cause. “I believe control of these models should not be determined by a bunch of self-appointed people in Palo Alto,” he told me in an interview in London last week. “I believe they should be open.” His company will make money by charging for special access to the system, as well as from selling licenses to generate famous characters, he said.
Mostaque’s release is part of a broader push to make AI more freely available, reasoning that it shouldn’t be controlled by a handful of Big Tech firms. It’s a noble sentiment, but one that also comes with risks. For instance, while Adobe Photoshop may be better at faking an embarrassing photo of a politician, Stability AI’s tool requires much less skill to use and is free. Anyone with a keyboard can hit its refresh button over and over until the system, known as Stable Diffusion, spits out something that looks convincing. And Stable Diffusion’s images will look more accurate over time as the model is re-built and re-trained on new sets of data.(1)
Mostaque’s answer is that we are, depressingly, in the midst of an inevitable rise in fake images anyway, and our sensibilities will simply have to adjust. “People will be aware of the fact that anyone can create that image on their phone, in one second… People will be like, ‘Oh it’s probably just created,’” he said. In other words, people will learn to trust the Internet even less than they already do and the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen,” will evolve into “pics don’t prove anything any more.” Even so, he anticipates that 99% of people who use his tool will have good intentions.
Now that Mostaque’s model has been released, social media firms like Snap Inc. and Byte Dance Inc.’s TikTok could replicate it for their own platforms. TikTok, for instance, recently added an AI tool for generating background pictures, but it’s highly stylized and doesn’t do specific images of people or objects. That could change if TikTok decides to use the new model. Mostaque, a former hedge fund manager who studied computer science at Oxford University, said that developers in Russia had already replicated it.
Mostaque’s open-source approach runs counter to how most Big Tech firms have handled AI discoveries, driven as much by intellectual property concerns as public safety. Alphabet Inc.’s Google has a model called Imagen whose creations look even more realistic than OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, but the company won’t release it because of the “potential risks of misuse.” It says it’s “exploring a framework” for a potential future release, which may include some oversight. OpenAI also won’t release details about its tools for anyone to copy. (2)
Monopolistic technology companies shouldn’t be the sole gatekeepers of powerful AI because they’re bound to steer it towards their own agenda, whether that’s in advertising or keeping people hooked on an endless scroll. But I’m also uneasy about the alternative idea of “democratizing AI.” Mostaque himself has used this phrase, an increasingly popular one in tech.(3)
Making a product affordable or even freely available doesn’t really fit the definition. At its heart, democracy relies on governance to work properly, and there’s little evidence of oversight for tools like Stable Diffusion. Mostaque says that he relied on a community of several thousand developers and supporters who deliberated on the chat forum Discord about when it would be safe to release his tool into the wild. So that’s something. But now that Stable Diffusion is out, its use will be largely un-policed.
Mostaque won’t be the last person to release a powerful AI tool to the world and, if Stability AI hadn’t done it, someone else would have. That race to be the first to bring powerful innovation to the masses is partly what’s driving this grey area of software development. When I pointed out the irony of his company name given the disruption it will likely cause, he countered that “the instability and chaos was coming anyway.” The world should brace for an increasingly bumpy ride.
• Who Needs the Government to Explore Deep Space?: Adam Minter
• Robots Are Key to Winning the Productivity War: Thomas Black
• Can India Get Lending-by-App Under Control?: Andy Mukherjee
(1) Releasing the system’s “weights” on Monday means that anyone could fine tune the calibration to make it more accurate in certain areas. For instance, someone with a large cache of images of Donald Trump could retrain the model to conjure much more accurate “photos” of the former U.S. President, or anyone else.
(2) OpenAI started in 2015 as a non-profit organization whose goal was to democratize AI, but running AI systems requires powerful computers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. To solve that, OpenAI took a $1 billion investment from Microsoft Corp. in 2019, in return for giving the tech giant first rights to commercialize any of OpenAI’s discoveries. OpenAI has since released fewer and fewer details about new models such as DALL-E 2, often to the consternation of some computer scientists.
(3) Among the many examples of the trope, Robinhood Markets Inc. wants to “democratize finance” (it makes an app for trading stocks and crypto assets) while the controversial startup Clearview AI wants to “democratize facial recognition.” | 2022-08-24T05:21:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is That Trump Photo Real? Free AI Tools Come With Risks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-that-trump-photo-real-free-ai-tools-comewith-risks/2022/08/24/751f9a54-236a-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-that-trump-photo-real-free-ai-tools-comewith-risks/2022/08/24/751f9a54-236a-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Analysis by Stuart Trow | Bloomberg
Shoppers on a pedestrianised shopping street, near retail units available for lease, in the center of Bradford, UK, on Saturday, July 2, 2022. UK consumers are starting to crumple in the face of soaring prices, according a series of reports that paint a grim picture of the nations cost of living crisis. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
July 8, 2015 was a watershed moment for the UK property market — the significance of which is only now being fully appreciated. In his first summer budget, then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne drew near universal acclaim when he announced a phased reduction in mortgage-interest relief for landlords. Few saw any reason why landlords should continue to benefit from relief that had been withdrawn from owner-occupiers more than 30 years earlier.
And so began a protracted squeeze of the country’s private rental sector, which has culminated in this summer’s rental property drought.
Despite the ongoing policy missteps that have brought us to this point, there are still practical measures that the government can take to ease the strain. But time is short.
In a very literal sense, tenants are paying the price for a succession of policy mistakes. London rents are already 19% higher than pre-pandemic levels, and many would-be tenants across the country are struggling to find a home at any price.
This is largely because many landlords have responded to longtime tax and regulatory nudges by selling up. A survey by industry group Propertymark suggested that the number of properties available to rent declined by 49% between March 2019 and March 2022. It also indicated that 53% of buy-to-let properties sold this March left the private rental sector altogether.
Economists from the Bank of England to the University of York have insisted that such selling should make no difference to rents, because more homeowners would mean fewer tenants. Unfortunately, that math doesn’t quite work out. Rental properties typically house more people than those that are owner-occupied. And while all buyers can rent, not all renters can afford to buy.
Yet further measures to deter landlords quickly followed the 2015 budget. In 2016, a 3% tax surcharge was applied to all residential landlord property purchases. Residential landlords are now also subject to greater rates of capital gains tax (CGT), whereas owner-occupied homes attract no CGT regardless of value. Even cryptocurrency gains are taxed at just 10% for lower-rate income taxpayers and 20% for higher-rate payers. Landlords’ gains, however, are taxed at 18% and 28% respectively.
In June this year, the government published a well-intentioned white paper entitled “a fairer private rented sector,” which among other things, sought to make it more difficult and expensive for landlords to evict tenants. That has proved the final straw for many landlords.
But as is now clear, tenants have been hit far harder than anyone else by these measures.
The fundamental problem, of course, is that both national and local governments have failed to deliver on their supply-side pledges. Interventions such as the various Help to Buy schemes and the aforementioned tax measures against landlords have either increased demand for home ownership or decreased the supply of properties available for rent. Both have conspired to push rents higher.
Reversing these tax increases is unrealistic, however, given that taxing landlords is one of the few issues that unites an otherwise polarized electorate. At the same time, even if there was the will to tackle the shortage of social housing, this would take many years to bear fruit.
A more pragmatic approach would be to consider the issue from a landlord’s perspective. (Here I must declare an interest, as I let properties in London and Sheffield.) As we age, many of us find ourselves with less appetite for financial complexity. With smaller returns and increasingly convoluted administration, landlords are reaching the point of selling sooner than they might otherwise have. And when they sell, with fewer younger landlords to replace them, only a minority of those properties remain available to rent.
One way of preventing this loss of supply would be for local or even national government to assume management of these properties under long-term leases.
The government would pay landlords a rent set with reference to market rates, but reduced somewhat to reflect the fact that local authorities assume most of the responsibility for tenanting and maintaining the property. The tenants would then pay whatever social rent the government chose. This would allow government to quickly control a significant number of properties, without the capital expense of either purchasing or building them. It would also facilitate supply management. Meanwhile, landlords would receive a steady rent and a viable alternative to simply selling, which would ensure a continuity of supply to the social-housing sector in a cost-effective manner.
Optically, this would counter the unhelpful “rogue landlord” narrative and give tenants greater security of tenure, while increasing competition in the rental market as a whole.
This is no pipe dream. Local governments have, on occasion, employed precisely this vehicle, albeit on an ad hoc and low-key basis. The real problem, beyond awareness and appetite, is that national government pressure has caused housing benefits to lag further and further behind market rents. This has rendered such leases financially unviable for many landlords.
Another idea is to modify tax incentives around gifting. There are significant inheritance-tax incentives to leave gifts to charity in your will. A slight modification to these, and the creation of a national social housing charity, might provide aging landlords participating in such long-term leases with a tax-efficient means of gifting properties to the social sector in perpetuity.
What is clear is that many of the assumptions regarding landlord behavior are flawed or just plain wrong. If pushed far enough, landlords leave the sector and this does have an impact on the real world.
As for tenants, many are coming to the uncomfortable realization that the only thing worse than having to rent from private landlords is having no private landlords left to rent from.
• Britain Needs a Better Booster Strategy for Covid: Therese Raphael and Sam Fazeli
• Sterling Markets Are Cruising for a Bruising: Marcus Ashworth
Stuart Trow is co-host of “Money, Money, Money” on Switch Radio and author of “The Bluffer’s Guide to Economics.” Previously, he was a strategist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. | 2022-08-24T05:21:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The UK’s Rental Market Crisis Has Been Years in the Making - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-uks-rental-market-crisis-has-been-years-in-the-making/2022/08/24/73c9fd5c-236a-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-uks-rental-market-crisis-has-been-years-in-the-making/2022/08/24/73c9fd5c-236a-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Howard University dorm ordered evacuated for emergency
Students told to leave at once.
Historically Black colleges and universities including Howard University have been receiving bomb threats. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
An emergency evacuation was ordered late Tuesday night at a Howard University dormitory.
The university’s public safety department said an evacuation order had been issued for Cook Hall. It said everyone in the building “must evacuate immediately.”
At approximately 10:55 p.m., the D.C. police relayed to the university’s Department of Public Safety a report of an anonymous bomb threat made against the residence hall, according to the safety department.
The residence hall, on the main campus, near the football stadium, houses about 200 students, according to the university.
It was unclear early Wednesday why the threat was made specifically against Cook Hall, and D.C. police didn’t indicate whether the person who made the threat cited a reason for making it. | 2022-08-24T05:21:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Howard University orders evacuation of dorm - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/howard-dorm-evacuation-cook-hall/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/howard-dorm-evacuation-cook-hall/ |
Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s chairperson Jung Geun-sik, left, consoles Han Jong-seon, a victim of Brothers Home, during a press conference at the commission’s office in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022. The commission has found the country’s past military governments responsible for atrocities committed at Brothers Home, a state-funded vagrants’ facility where thousands were enslaved and abused from the 1960s to 1980s. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) | 2022-08-24T05:21:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commission: Seoul government responsible for facility abuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/commission-seoul-government-responsible-for-facility-abuse/2022/08/24/823c2ae4-2366-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/commission-seoul-government-responsible-for-facility-abuse/2022/08/24/823c2ae4-2366-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
A Ukrainian soldier walks by a Ukrainian Mriya An-225 plane destroyed in the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces at Antonov Airport in Hostomel. (Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Heidi Levine for The Washington Post; iStock)
A months-long examination by The Washington Post of the Ukrainian military’s successful defense of Kyiv is based on extensive interviews with more than 100 people, including many of the country’s top political and military leaders. Here are some key findings:
1. In the run-up to the war, Ukrainian political officials downplayed the likelihood of a full-scale Russian invasion, but the Ukrainian military was making critical preparations.
The Ukrainian military began preparing weeks in advance, moving equipment and personnel off bases and into the field — a critical move that allowed the force to survive an initial barrage of Russian airstrikes.
Still, some senior leaders in the Ukrainian military, including the commander in charge of the defense of Kyiv, doubted that Russia would launch an all-out invasion, including an assault on the capital, and thought hostilities would probably be confined to Ukraine’s east.
2. Russia directly and through an intermediary tried to get the Ukrainian government to capitulate in the initial hours of the war.
Shortly after the start of the invasion, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, called the head of Zelensky’s administration, Andriy Yermak, and demanded Ukrainian capitulation, according to Yermak. Yermak swore at him and hung up the phone.
The defense minister of Belarus called his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, and presented himself as an emissary of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The Belarusian official offered to negotiate a capitulation to Russia, Reznikov said. Reznikov told him the only capitulation he would negotiate would be Moscow’s.
3. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wasn’t opposed to resigning or leaving Kyiv if it would end the war.
In the initial hours of the war, as Western officials urged him to evacuate, Zelensky told them he would happily leave or resign if it would end the war. He said he wasn’t concerned about losing his position but simply believed his departure would only help the Russians achieve their goal and worsen the situation for Ukrainians.
“I’m not trying to hold on to power,” Zelensky said he explained to the Western officials. “If the question is that I leave, and that will stop the bloodshed, then I am all for it. I will go right now. I didn’t get into politics for that — and I will go whenever you say, if it will stop the war.”
While he believed some Western officials were truly concerned about his personal safety, Zelensky also suspected that some of his foreign interlocutors simply wanted the conflict to end as quickly as possible, with his administration effectively surrendering to Russia.
4. Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, used gruesome photographs of the war to persuade partners.
Yermak said he sent graphic photos of slain civilians and ruined buildings to the personal cellphones of top officials around the world, including Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, and Karen Donfried, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
5. For a few days in the middle of March, Ukrainian forces defending Kyiv almost completely ran out of artillery ammunition.
As they repelled the initial Russian assault on Kyiv, Ukrainian forces began to run low on Soviet-era artillery shells, reaching a crisis moment in mid-March.
Because Washington had assumed Russia would take over Ukraine quickly, U.S. officials had prepared a pipeline of portable weapons such as Stingers and Javelins that could be used by an underground resistance and hadn’t focused on large artillery equipment and ammunition. That caused a scramble after the Ukrainian defense exceeded Washington’s expectations, a senior U.S. defense official said. | 2022-08-24T06:35:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Ukraine saved its capital from Russian invaders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/24/kyiv-battle-ukraine-defense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/24/kyiv-battle-ukraine-defense/ |
Scotland’s Push to Secede From UK Won’t Go Away
Analysis by Liza Tetley | Bloomberg
In a 2014 referendum on whether Scotland should break away to become Europe’s newest nation state, Scots voted to stay in the three-centuries-old union with England and Wales by 55% to 45%. Rather than settling the matter, though, the separatists gathered in strength and numbers. They became key political power brokers by winning most of Scotland’s seats in the UK Parliament. Now they’re laying the ground for another vote, even though the government in London has refused to allow one, and the push for an independent Scotland shows no sign of going away.
1. Why does Scotland want independence?
Scotland and England united to form Great Britain in 1707, but the two nations retain a host of cultural and political differences. With about 5.5 million people, Scotland makes up about 8% of the UK’s population and its economy. Many Scots see rule from London as a fundamental lack of self-determination. The distinctions go beyond kilts and bagpipes: Scotland has its own legal and education systems, soccer league and bank notes. The Scottish National Party, which is spearheading the independence drive, also wants to remove Britain’s nuclear weapons from a deep sea loch in western Scotland.
2. Haven’t we been here before?
Yes. The SNP is a formidable electoral machine, winning 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats at the last general election in 2019. Polling pointed to a possible win for the independence campaign in the run-up to the 2014 referendum, though stark warnings about the economic impact of a split -- and the UK government’s refusal to allow an independent Scotland to continue using the British pound as its currency -- helped swing the electorate. In the eight years after the vote, polls showed Scottish voters still roughly split down the middle, with the younger generation far more likely to vote for independence.
3. So, what’s changed?
Mainly Brexit. While the UK voted as a whole to leave the European Union in 2016, Scottish voters wanted to remain by 62% to 38%. More than a decade of rule by the Conservative Party, along with the privileged, gaffe-prone nature of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson -- who steps down on Sept. 6, 2022 -- have alienated Scots further. The UK’s messy divorce from the bloc has fueled grievances, hitting Scotland’s fishing industry particularly hard. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who runs Scotland’s semi-autonomous government, argues that the break gives her new authority to pose the independence question once again. The separatists believe that independence from the UK could lead to a reestablishment of ties with the EU, though Scotland would need to apply to rejoin the bloc.
4. Where does that leave the SNP?
Sturgeon escalated the conflict in June 2022 by pushing ahead with a plan to hold a referendum on a set date -- Oct. 19, 2023 -- accelerating the process of getting the necessary draft legislation tested by the UK Supreme Court. It’s expected to rule around October and Sturgeon is expected to fail. If the UK continues to refuse to grant Scotland a so-called Section 30 order allowing another referendum, the SNP has vowed to fight the next UK general election on the single issue of independence, though it’s unclear how that would work. Many activists in the SNP have been agitating for Scotland to hold a second referendum regardless of whether London approves one, though Sturgeon says any vote must be lawful. The Scottish leader seems determined not to follow the route taken by Catalan separatists, who held an illegal -- and violent -- vote on leaving Spain in 2017. The Madrid government temporarily seized control of the region and Catalan leaders were later jailed.
5. Is there a path to another referendum?
Not really. The UK government has repeatedly refused to allow another vote, saying the last one was a once-in-a-generation event. The British government can just say “no” for as long as it wants. The next UK general election, which must be held no later than January 2025, could break the deadlock. The SNP is the third-largest party in Westminster and in the event that no party wins a majority of seats in Parliament, it could agree to support a government led by, say, the Labour Party in exchange for a path to another independence vote. A compromise could include the setting of a benchmark for what needs to be achieved for a second referendum to happen, such as opinion polls showing support for independence above 50% for more than 12 months, for instance. The Labour Party, though, also opposes a referendum and agreeing to one would mean gambling with the future integrity of the UK.
6. How would Scottish independence work?
That’s the big question. The last referendum forced politicians on both sides of the border to try to map out what a stand-alone Scotland would look like. The biggest challenge after Brexit is how to address the prospect of a hard frontier between Scotland and England -– with border-control infrastructure and documentary checks -- along with how long it might take for an independent Scotland to rejoin the EU. In June, the Scottish government began to publish a series of policy papers explaining how an independent nation would work. The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, known as Holyrood, was restored in 1999, with the UK government relinquishing oversight of such policy areas as transportation and health. Sturgeon and her allies are seeking full autonomy to control the economy and foreign policy and to rejoin the EU.
7. Can Scotland afford to be independent?
It’s tricky. Public spending per person in Scotland was 11% higher than the UK average in 2020/21, according to government data, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that 67% of day-to-day spending in Scotland is funded by a so-called block grant from England. The Conservative Party claims increases in public spending because of the Covid pandemic strengthen the case for Scotland to remain within the union. That said, the nation benefits both from North Sea oil and gas reserves and vast fishing waters, and has a rich history in innovation and financial services. Scotland is also a magnet for tourism and Scotch whisky is by far the biggest UK food and drink export.
• “What Scotland Thinks” blog from John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University.
• How Scotland is taking its independence fight to the U.K.’s top court.
• A New York Times report on Sturgeon’s referendum plans.
• “How Scots Invented the Modern World,” a book by Arthur Herman, a former professor of history at Georgetown University. | 2022-08-24T06:52:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scotland’s Push to Secede From UK Won’t Go Away - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/scotlands-push-to-secede-from-uk-wont-go-away/2022/08/24/315cde1e-236d-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/scotlands-push-to-secede-from-uk-wont-go-away/2022/08/24/315cde1e-236d-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
How Malaysia’s 1MDB Scandal Shook the Financial World
Analysis by Shamim Adam and Yudith Ho | Bloomberg
The Tun Razak Exchange project in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Photographer: Goh Seng Chong/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Read More: Ex-Malaysia PM Najib Razak Faces Court for Biggest 1MDB Corruption Trial
Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund, 1MDB, was supposed to promote development. Instead, it has spurred investigations around the world into deal-making, election spending and political patronage under former Prime Minister Najib Razak. The figures are mind-boggling: Of the $8 billion that 1MDB raised via bond sales, the U.S. alleges more than half was siphoned off. Angry voters ousted Najib in a 2018 election that ended his party’s 61 years of rule, and four years later he was imprisoned in the first of a series of trials. Goldman Group Inc. has agreed to pay more than $5 billion, including a record $2.3 billion fine in the U.S., and enter its first-ever guilty plea for its role in the scandal.
1. What is 1MDB?
It’s a government investment company -- full name, 1Malaysia Development Bhd -- that took shape in 2009 under Najib, who led its advisory board. Its early initiatives included buying privately owned power plants and planning a new financial district in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. The fund proved better at borrowing -- it accumulated $12 billion in debt -- than at luring large-scale foreign investment.
2. What’s the issue?
Much of the money raised was allegedly embezzled. The U.S. Justice Department says that some $2.7 billion of the $6.5 billion Goldman helped raise for 1MDB was stolen by people connected to Najib and diverted for bribes, a luxury yacht, fine art and even funding for the Martin Scorsese movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.” According to a U.S. indictment, a small coterie of Malaysians, led by businessman Low Taek Jho (known as Jho Low), diverted money from 1MDB into personal accounts disguised to look like legitimate businesses, and kicked back some of those funds to officials. There were questions about a $681 million payment that landed in Najib’s personal bank account (he has said most of the money was returned). Malaysia’s then-attorney general cleared Najib of wrongdoing in 2016. But after losing office, Najib was charged with corruption, breach of trust and money laundering. The first trial involved $10 million deposited in his personal accounts from a former 1MDB unit. Najib was found guilty in 2020 on all seven counts and sentenced to 12 years; an appeals court upheld the conviction in December 2021, as did the country’s highest court on August 2022, which ordered him to serve his jail sentence. He still faces several other trials in relation to 1MDB. Jho Low, a fugitive, has also denied any wrongdoing.
3. Where’s the money?
Scattered, but slowly coming in. Under a July 2020 settlement, Malaysia dropped all criminal charges against Goldman in exchange for a $2.5 billion cash payment and at least $1.4 billion from seized 1MDB assets being returned with the help of U.S. prosecutors and Goldman. (Goldman made $593 million working on three bond sales that raised $6.5 billion for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013 -- far more than what banks typically make from such deals.) The bank’s October 2020 settlement with the U.S. Justice Department included the largest-ever penalty for foreign bribery. Goldman units also paid $350 million to Hong Kong’s financial regulator, $122 million to Singapore’s government and 96.6 million pounds ($126 million at the time) to the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority.
• U.S. prosecutors struck a deal in 2020 with Jho Low to recoup almost $700 million worth of assets, including a Beverly Hills hotel and real estate in New York and London. That’s in addition to $260 million of assets, including a $126 million super yacht, seized earlier on Malaysia’s behalf.
• The U.S. reached a $60 million settlement with the producers of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The production company was co-founded by Riza Aziz, Najib’s stepson and a friend of Jho Low.
• Malaysia moved to seize $340 million in PetroSaudi International’s accounts in London.
• Singapore said it would return S$35 million ($25 million at the time) forfeited by former Goldman banker Roger Ng.
4. What’s happened with the investigation?
The U.S. Justice Department has been at the forefront, focusing on bribery, theft and money laundering. A small Malaysian unit of Goldman pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge. But the parent company avoided a criminal conviction under an agreement that allows the bank to put off any prosecution as long as it cooperates with ongoing U.S. investigations and submits compliance reports. (A conviction might have cost it some institutional clients.) According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some potential witnesses were scared to talk because they feared retaliation. Several other countries also conducted probes. Singapore and Switzerland have fined some banks for lapses in anti-money laundering controls. Malaysia also has said it is looking into allegations that China offered to help fend off probes into 1MDB in the U.S. and elsewhere in exchange for stakes in infrastructure projects in Malaysia. A former Najib aide testified that the ex-premier offered projects to China in return for help resolving 1MDB’s debt.
5. Who else is charged?
• Jho Low, a bon vivant who said he did consulting work for 1MDB, is portrayed by U.S. prosecutors as the central figure who set up shell companies to collect proceeds from the fund and arranged withdrawals for payoffs and for his own lavish spending. He has been charged in absentia in Malaysia and the U.S. with money laundering and other offenses. Malaysian police have bemoaned the lack of help from other jurisdictions in finding him, after saying they had located him and were in talks with a party they suspect of protecting him. Jho Low’s settlement with the U.S. didn’t include an admission of guilt or release him from criminal charges.
• Goldman’s former Southeast Asia Chairman Tim Leissner pleaded guilty to U.S. charges including conspiracy to launder money and admitted to bribing officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates to get bond deals for Goldman. He agreed to forfeit $43.7 million.
• Ng was extradited from Malaysia to the U.S. to face similar charges. He was found guilty in April 2022 for his role in the looting of the Malaysian fund, with Leissner as the prosecution’s star witness. Leissner’s bail terms were changed, allowing him to relocate to Texas for a new job and his sentencing has been delayed until 2023.(The U.S. Federal Reserve has banned both men from the financial industry.)
• Malaysia leveled charges of securities law violations against Leissner, Ng, Jho Low and 1MDB’s former general counsel, Jasmine Loo Ai Swan.
• PetroSaudi International directors Tarek Obaid and Patrick Mahony were charged by Malaysia in absentia in 2020 for allegedly receiving $300 million from 1MDB through unlawful activity.
• Ex-1MDB President Arul Kanda was charged along with Najib for allegedly tampering with a state audit report into the fund. Both men have denied wrongdoing.
• Rosmah Mansor, Najib’s wife, was charged with money laundering and tax evasion. Luxury items and cash seized from properties linked to the former first couple were valued at about 1.1 billion ringgit ($259 million). According to U.S. prosecutors, Jho Low in 2013 allegedly funneled $27.3 million that was looted from 1MDB to a New York jeweler who designed a pink diamond necklace for her.
• A Justice Department employee pleaded guilty to funneling money into the U.S. to pay for a lobbying effort to influence the 1MDB probe, with the filing identifying the fund’s source as Jho Low.
6. Exactly how much money is involved?
In all, 1MDB raised more than $8 billion in bond sales and accumulated billions more in debt through loans and interest payments. Swiss investigators say about $7 billion of 1MDB funds passed into the global financial system from 2009 to 2015. Some 1MDB projects are going ahead under the new government, including the plan for a new financial district and a $34 billion property and transport hub. As for 1MDB, it has been reduced to a shell after the finance ministry took over its assets and debt.
7. Why does it matter?
Authorities in Asia, the U.S. and Europe have been working to coordinate their investigations into the money trail from 1MDB, as well as legal approaches toward Goldman and asset recovery. Their findings could potentially identify, and help close, loopholes in the global financial system that open the way for corruption.
8. Who else is involved?
• The Fed banned ex-Goldman banker Andrea Vella from the financial industry for life, saying the former co-head of investment banking in Asia engaged in “unsafe and unsound practices” by failing to ensure all of Goldman’s internal committees were aware that the 1MDB bond deals involved Jho Low.
• Swiss bank BSI, which was caught up in the scandal, lost its license to do business in Singapore for breaches of money laundering rules.
• Malaysia central bank governor Muhammad Ibrahim resigned in 2018 amid questions over the role the monetary authority played in a land-purchase deal linked to 1MDB. The monetary authority set up a review of the deal.
• UBS Group, DBS Group, Credit Suisse, United Overseas Bank and Standard Chartered are among those that have drawn penalties from the Singapore central bank for anti-money laundering lapses. They said they will strengthen controls in their businesses.
• Singapore has banned at least eight financial professionals in connection with 1MDB. | 2022-08-24T06:52:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Malaysia’s 1MDB Scandal Shook the Financial World - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-malaysias-1mdb-scandal-shook-the-financial-world/2022/08/24/a7b2b5d4-2377-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-malaysias-1mdb-scandal-shook-the-financial-world/2022/08/24/a7b2b5d4-2377-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
In this handout photo provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, rescuers help residents move to safer grounds in Tuguegarao, Cagayan province, northern Philippines on Tuesday Aug. 23, 2022. A tropical storm lashed the northern Philippines with strong wind and rain Tuesday, injuring at least two people and prompting the president to close schools and government offices in the capital and outlying provinces. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP) (Uncredited/Philippine Coast Guard) | 2022-08-24T06:52:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tropical Storm Ma-on headed for southeastern China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tropical-storm-ma-on-headed-for-southeastern-china/2022/08/24/750be0fa-236e-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tropical-storm-ma-on-headed-for-southeastern-china/2022/08/24/750be0fa-236e-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno said he is exploring the possibility of selling the franchise, a move that surprised superstar slugger Mike Trout and was welcomed by Hall of Famer Rod Carew.
LOS ANGELES — Dodgers All-Star pitcher Walker Buehler underwent Tommy John surgery for the second time in his career, leaving Los Angeles to head into the postseason and next year without a key member of the rotation. | 2022-08-24T06:53:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tuesday's Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tuesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/08/24/f6ef5bee-2376-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tuesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/08/24/f6ef5bee-2376-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Pitching for the first time since July 24, Erick Fedde produced five solid innings Tuesday night, allowing just three hits and two runs. But Seattle's Robbie Ray (6 2/3 innings, two hits, two walks) was better. (Alika Jenner/Getty Images)
SEATTLE — What went relatively well in the Washington Nationals’ 4-2 loss to the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night: Erick Fedde made a solid return from the injured list. Joey Meneses homered in the seventh to break up Robbie Ray’s no-hitter and shutout bid with one swing. Cory Abbott retired all six batters he faced to save the bullpen from being taxed.
And that was it. That’s the list.
Ray, a 12th-round pick by the Nationals in 2012 — then the American League Cy Young Award winner last year — dominated for 6⅔ innings. The left-hander’s final line was only stained by two walks, Meneses’s solo shot and an infield single by Lane Thomas. Other than that, he struck out seven, including Meneses twice, outpitching Fedde in the right-hander’s first start since July 24.
Fedde lasted five frames, 81 pitches and was sharp aside from a two-run homer for Mitch Haniger. Behind Fedde, Victor Arano worked a scoreless sixth before the deficit ballooned against reliever Steve Cishek. With none down in the seventh, Cishek threw a middle-middle sinker to Eugenio Suárez, who crushed it 430 feet to left. Cishek faced four batters and did not record an out, yielding a single and walk after Suárez took him deep.
The Nationals (41-83), punchless for most of the game, were quiet against the Mariners’ bullpen until Meneses doubled in the ninth. But Paul Sewald shut the door after Thomas drove in Meneses with a single through the right side. So Fedde, Meneses — and to a lesser extent, Abbott and Thomas — stood as the faint silver linings.
“I felt like that’s a guy I haven’t really gotten to be this year," Fedde said of the overall performance. "Just the sharpness on my off speed and just kind of the aggression is just something I felt really comfortable with and I felt healthy and I was very happy with it.”
“Very pleased,” added Manager Dave Martinez. “We had him penciled in for about 80 to 85 pitches. He threw the ball. We talked after he came out and he said he felt great. Once again, we talk a lot about the 0-2′s, the 2-2′s and 3-2′s. Once we can clear that up, he could pitch six, seven innings.”
Meneses, 30, has 23 hits and six homers since making his major league debut Aug. 2. Fedde, 29, has a spot to keep with a rebuilding team that will eventually start testing more young starters. He is, remarkably, the longest-tenured player on the active roster. But in parts of six seasons, Fedde has had trouble finding consistency, evidenced now by his 4.88 ERA — and evidenced ahead of this season by a 5.25 ERA for his career.
Tuesday was a step forward because there seemed to be no lingering effects from his strained oblique. That doesn’t mean soreness won’t return. But through one appearance, Fedde limited the Mariners and flashed a much better feel for his curveball. After his recent rehab start with the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings, Fedde told reporters his breaking ball felt as good as it had all season. Against Seattle, he pretty evenly split his arsenal with 32 sinkers, 26 cutters and 23 curves, shunning his change-up. His curve accounted for three of his strikeouts — including when Suárez was caught looking and Julio Rodríguez waved at one in the dirt — to cap his outing.
As for why the curve has been so effective, Fedde pointed to a spike in velocity. Before this start, he averaged 78.1 mph with the pitch. That number jumped to 80.3 in the defeat. It topped out at 82.
“I could tell by the swings today that it was late and we had a lot of slow bats to it, maybe seeing heater out of the hand," Fedde said. "And then a lot of chases and I mean, I want to say I probably threw 20 or so today and I feel like none of them were really hit hard.”
A reporter signaled that the total was higher.
“More?” Fedde asked. “Yeah, I think if the hitters show me that it’s all I need to see.”
Can Martinez see a 30-year-old Meneses in the team’s plans? “Hey, you know what? Right now he’s a big part of our future," Martinez said Tuesday night. "I mean, he’s done well and we’re looking for big bats like that. The good thing about it is that he can play first base and both corners of the outfield. So that’s a plus for us. It really is. I love watching him play, I love watching his at-bats.”
How tough was designating reliever Tyler Clippard for assignment? "Very, very tough,” Martinez said Tuesday afternoon. Clippard, 37, is now finished with his second stint in Washington. After spending most of the year in Rochester, he pitched an inning for the Nationals, injured his groin while warming for his next appearance, then returned to struggle in four appearances. Clippard was designated for assignment to make room for Fedde on the 26-man roster.
“I respect Clippard very much, and I respect him for what he actually did this year, which was to go down to AAA, get himself ready, work really hard to get back up here,” Martinez continued. “That’s a testament to who he is. But you know, we had to make a decision. At this point, we got a lot of guys that we really want to see and continue to see. And we wanted to give him an opportunity to maybe get hooked up with another team.” | 2022-08-24T06:53:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Aside from Erick Fedde’s return, Nationals are largely lifeless in Seattle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/erick-fedde-joey-meneses-nationals-mariners/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/erick-fedde-joey-meneses-nationals-mariners/ |
Hiker dies after disappearing during floods at Utah’s Zion National Park
Zion National Park, near Springdale, Utah. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
A 29-year-old hiker has died after she was reported missing Friday evening at Utah’s Zion National Park, the park said Tuesday.
Jetal Agnihotri, a graduate student at the University of Arizona, was discovered Monday in the Virgin River near a grouping of sandstone cliffs known as the Court of the Patriarchs, according to park officials, ending a multiday search that involved 170 responders.
“Our deepest sympathy goes out to the friends and family of Jetal Agnihotri,” Jeff Bradybaugh, superintendent of Zion National Park, said in a news release.
The park could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday night. According to the news release, a medical examiner confirmed Agnihotri’s death.
On Friday evening, park officials received a report that Agnihotri was overdue from a trip to the Narrows, an area about six miles north of where she was later found. The Narrows is the narrowest section of the Zion Canyon, with walls about 1,000 feet tall, and is popular among visitors, according to the park.
Earlier that day, officials received a separate report about hikers “being swept off their feet by a flash flood in the Narrows,” the park said. Park officials rescued one injured hiker swept downstream by rising water and others stranded by flash floods.
Rangers also interviewed visitors exiting the Narrows, and at the time, no one reported anyone missing. Agnihotri had been hiking with school friends before her disappearance, her university newspaper reported.
After receiving the report about Agnihotri, park officials and state and local emergency responders continued to monitor the Virgin River. The park had closed certain trails because of a rainstorm the previous day.
Deadly flash floods can happen with little warning at Zion National Park, which draws millions of visitors each year.
During search operations, seasonal monsoon rains had increased the flow of the Virgin River to a peak of 1,100 cubic feet per second, the park said. One cubic foot of water contains about 7.5 gallons and weighs about 60 pounds. The Virgin River flows at an average of about 100 cubic feet per second. When Agnihotri was found this week, the river had slowed to about 50 cubic feet per second.
They were hiking in the wilderness with no cell service. Then they fell into quicksand.
Zion National Park is known to have heavier summer downpours because of its annual monsoon season, between July and September. The park describes flash floods as unpredictable, deadly and impossible to outrun. They can occur with sunny skies overhead, the park says on its website.
Zion officials advise visitors to plan for flash flood contingencies, avoid areas that are likely to flood and leave an itinerary with someone before heading out. Signs of an impending flash flood include a change in water color and increased debris in the water, the park says on its website. As little as 6 inches of water can knock people down, it adds. | 2022-08-24T08:19:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Missing Zion National Park hiker dies after flash floods in Utah - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/zion-national-park-missing-hiker-found-dead-utah/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/zion-national-park-missing-hiker-found-dead-utah/ |
Receding waters in Poyang Lake in China's Jiangxi province, Aug. 21. The lake has shrunk dramatically in a record-breaking heat wave. (Str/AFP/Getty Images)
Among the many striking images is a pattern left in the mud flats around Poyang Lake, usually the largest body of freshwater in the country, which has shrunk by more than two-thirds. Chinese media dubbed the branchlike patterns carved by trickling waters “Earth tree,” calling its appearance a warning about a dangerous future of intensifying extreme weather.
At 73 days and counting, the relentless heat wave has easily surpassed the previous record of 62 days in 2013. All-time highs are being broken, often only to be rebroken days later. “This heat wave overtakes anything seen previously worldwide,” tweeted climate historian Maximiliano Herrera.
Numerous fires have started across China over the past week amid high heat and drought, with particularly intense blazes near Chongqing, a city along the trickling Yangtze, in central parts of the country. Chongqing recorded low temperatures as high as 95 degrees in recent days, record for daily minimums in August.
Electricity shortages in regions reliant on a vast network of power-generating dams and reservoirs for energy also come as the Chinese government is debating how — and how fast — to transition away from reliance on coal-fired power to renewable sources.
The faltering supply of hydropower, which last year accounted for about 15 percent of China’s total energy supply, has added urgency to government concern about ensuring sufficient power generation to meet rising consumption — a boon for coal power companies that account for about 60 percent of electricity production.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plan for China’s carbon dioxide emissions to peak before 2030 is spurring a massive rollout of wind and solar power. But China’s government has also said that coal — a leading contributor to global greenhouse gases — in the near term will remain the mainstay of national energy production.
China hit by drought, floods, as Yangtze River runs dry
Power shortages create a prime opportunity for China’s fossil fuel giants to secure their place in the nation’s rapidly evolving energy structure, said Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior fellow at National University of Singapore’s Energy Studies Institute.
“After this crisis, the coal lobby will be saying, ‘this is why you need to have more coal mines and more coal-fired power plants,’” he said. “As in Europe, the key is keeping the lights on and keeping the heating and the air conditioning going. That is the short-term priority.”
After Sichuan’s hydropower output fell below half of its normal level, 67 coal-fired power plants in the province were “firing on all cylinders” to generate as much power as possible as part of China’s emergency response to the power shortage, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday.
Long before China was a leading producer and installer of solar and wind power, it prioritized expanded hydropower production with megaprojects like the Three Gorges Dam, as well as hundreds of smaller generators built across China’s major rivers and their tributaries.
The scale of this investment means swaths of southwest China relies on hydropower for as much as than 80 percent of its electricity and transfers excess energy to eastern provinces. Energy-intensive industries have flocked to provinces like Sichuan to take advantage of easy access to cheap, plentiful and renewable power produced by local dams.
The prospect of reduced energy production from the usually wet southwest in future years could undermine the region’s reliance on hydropower as a carbon-free power source. More-frequent droughts make hydropower an uncertain bet, Andrews-Speed said.
Sichuan’s high reliance on hydropower means that it is hard for other energy sources to make up a shortage in power supply when needed, Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Institute for Energy Policy Studies at Xiamen University, wrote in an article.
“If the frequency of extreme weather increases because of climate change, then the government must actively take responsive measures to diversify the energy structure and improve the electricity grid,” he said.
The concern about hydropower’s reliability is a sharp reversal from the situation at the start of the summer when torrential rain filled Chinese dams and raised hydropower generation.
Turmoil in global energy markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added to China’s long-standing concerns about energy security. After power shortages late last year, the Chinese government responded by ordering coal mines to expand output. As the rest of the world has shunned Russian oil and coal, China has imported record amounts of both.
Beijing’s continued embrace of fossil fuels has drawn criticism from climate change activists that the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter is failing to transition away from coal fast enough to meet international ambitions to keep global average temperature rises to within 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
Part of the problem for Chinese state planners is that energy use per capital in China remains below half of that of many industrialized nations, including the United States, and its total primary energy consumption is unlikely to peak for at least another decade.
Yet, the intensity of extreme weather events in recent years has drawn greater attention to the impact of climate change in China. Even though Beijing for many years has recognized the need to slow global warming, public discussion of the issue had been limited until only a couple of years ago.
That is changing. As climate change moved up China’s geopolitical agenda along with Beijing’s desire to be seen as a global leader on the issue, dramatic scenes of flash floods in central China’s Henan province last summer helped to raise awareness after more than 300 people were killed.
Studies have found that heat waves are increasing in intensity and duration in China, as well as delivering warmer temperatures at night because of human-induced climate change. The increase has been observed in both urban and rural locations. Heat waves are also starting earlier and ending later.
Official rhetoric, too, has shifted toward openly connecting extreme weather events to climatic shifts. Earlier this month, Chen Lijuan from the National Climate Center told local media that global warming meant heat waves were set to become a “new normal,” where high temperatures would arrive earlier and last longer — in a trend that will become “ever more obvious in the future.” | 2022-08-24T08:20:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China drought creates hydropower shortage amid record heat wave - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/china-drought-heat-wave-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/china-drought-heat-wave-climate-change/ |
An arcade near Beppu station in Beppu, Oita Prefecture, Japan, on July 27. The country's tourism industry is suffering as pandemic measures continue to deter visitors. (Noriko Hayashi/Bloomberg)
TOKYO — Japan said Wednesday it would end a requirement for vaccinated travelers to have a coronavirus test to enter the country, a gradual step toward reviving a hard-hit tourism industry but which comes as other restrictions continue to deter visitors.
After enacting some of the strictest border measures during the pandemic, Japan has been gradually allowing nonresidents to visit. But tourists are still not allowed in to Japan unless they are a part of an authorized tour group, their every move watched closely by a licensed guide.
Many Asian countries continue to impose quarantine or testing rules for international arrivals, but Japan’s restrictions were out of step with others in the Group of Seven major economies. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday that Japan would continue to ease border control measures in phases, “to enable smooth entry into Japan in a manner similar to other G-7 countries.”
How to navigate Japan's mandatory tours, travel restrictions and coronavirus protocols
Among those steps is raising the cap on daily entrants, currently at 20,000, but Kishida did not give a specific figure. Japanese broadcaster NHK reported Wednesday that the government is considering lifting the requirement that tourists who enter as a part of a group tour be accompanied by a guide at all times.
International students, some business travelers and family members of Japanese residents are allowed to enter the country. At present, anyone headed to Japan must get a coronavirus test within 72 hours before departure to the country, register the result with the government and get a QR code for immigration. Japan requires a nucleic acid amplification test, such as a PCR test, which tends to be less accessible and more expensive than at-home rapid antigen tests.
Beginning Sept. 7, Japan will lift the testing requirement for boosted travelers who have had three shots, Kishida said, speaking from his residence during a remote news conference after he tested positive for the virus.
Tom Cruise in Japan? Okay. Ordinary tourists in Japan? Not okay.
Group tours resumed in June after a trial run, but those visitors are subject to many restrictions, including booking a tour with a guide or company registered with the government and buying travel insurance.
That same month, only 252 tourists entered the country, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. In July, the number rose to about 7,900. But that is a far cry from pre-pandemic levels; Japan welcomed a record 32 million foreign tourists in 2019 and had aimed to reach 40 million in 2020.
For months, business leaders and tourism industry groups have been calling on Japan to fully reopen its borders, arguing that it would bring much-needed revenue to invigorate the economy and that U.S. tourists would be eager to take advantage of the weak yen. Travel-related spending by foreigners plummeted from about $38 billion in 2019 to just under $1 billion in 2021, according to Nikkei Asia.
It remains unclear, however, when a full reopening would take place. | 2022-08-24T08:20:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Japan eases covid test rule but strict travel restrictions remain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/japan-covid-restrictions-travel-tourism-pcr/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/japan-covid-restrictions-travel-tourism-pcr/ |
Cannabis in a grow room at District Growers in Washington, D.C. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Nearly 43 percent of young people said they had used marijuana in the past 12 months, up from 29 percent in 2011 and nearly 34 percent in 2016, according to the Monitoring the Future study by the University of Michigan, which surveyed nearly 5,000 young adults between 19 and 30 years old.
More than 28 percent of young people said they had used marijuana in the past month, and more than 1 in 10 were “daily” consumers, using marijuana 20 times or more in the past 30 days, according to the report. Although the rates were not a “significant” jump from 2020, the report said, they were the “highest levels ever recorded since the indices were first available in 1988.”
Use of hallucinogens other than LSD, sometimes referred to as acid, reached record levels, with more than 6 percent of young people saying they had used them in the past 12 months.
Who Will Benefit From Psychedelic Medicine?
MDMA, sometimes called ecstasy or Molly, was the “exception among hallucinogens,” with 2.6 percent of young adults saying they had used the drug in the past year. That was a sharp drop from 2020, when the figure was 4.5 percent, and from 4.8 percent in 2016. MDMA is often associated with partying — which took a hit during the pandemic — but has shown promising results in treating conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder.
The report noted that “alcohol remains the most used substance among adults in the study.” About 1 in 3 young people reported recently binge drinking — having five or more drinks in a row — which was a rebound to pre-pandemic levels, the report said.
Levels of “high-intensity” drinking, defined by the report as having 10 or more drinks in a row, have risen over the past decade, to 13 percent in 2021, from 11 percent in 2011 and more than 9 percent in 2016. But in the same time frame, the number of young people who said they consumed alcohol in the past year has fallen from nearly 84 percent in 2011 to just under 82 percent in 2021.
The annual survey, which maintains a consistent sample population, allowed researchers to “assess the effects of ‘natural experiments’ like the pandemic,” Megan Patrick, a professor at the University of Michigan and the study’s lead investigator, said in a statement.
Minnesota legalizes cannabis edibles, catching some Republicans off guard
“As the drug landscape shifts over time, this data provides a window into the substances and patterns of use favored by young adults,” Nora Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in a release. “We need to know more about how young adults are using drugs like marijuana and hallucinogens, and the health effects that result from consuming different potencies and forms of these substances.”
Recreational marijuana is legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia, according to MJBizDaily, an industry publication. Four states — New Mexico, Connecticut, New York and Virginia — moved to legalize recreational cannabis last year. Rhode Island did so in May. (In Minnesota, edibles containing small amounts of THC were legalized last month, surprising some Republicans, including at least one of whom said he voted for it unknowingly.) | 2022-08-24T09:03:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marijuana use among young people in U.S. at record high, study says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/24/marijuana-cannabis-psychedelics-drug-study/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/24/marijuana-cannabis-psychedelics-drug-study/ |
Navy’s Kip Frankland honors fallen teammate David Forney by wearing No. 68
Navy offensive tackle and tri-captain Kip Frankland is wearing No. 68 this season in honor of David Forney, who died in 2020. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
As a plebe on the Navy football team in 2019, offensive tackle Kip Frankland often marveled at teammate David Forney, then a senior left guard whose steamrolling of defenders remains the stuff of legend among the offensive linemen who played with him.
For inspiration, Frankland watches film of Forney regularly sending defensive linemen and linebackers to the ground from a game against Tulane that season. The Midshipmen coaching staff, meanwhile, continues to use footage of the 6-foot-3, 305-pound first-team all-American Athletic Conference selection when teaching proper blocking technique in the triple option.
Frankland, now a senior tri-captain, will honor the late Forney this season by wearing his No. 68, considered sacred among members of the offensive line.
Forney, who was found unresponsive in his dormitory room at Bancroft Hall on Feb. 20, 2020, died of sudden cardiac arrest, according to a statement from the state’s medical examiner following an autopsy. The 2015 graduate of Georgetown Prep who grew up in Walkersville, Md., was 22.
‘A big teddy bear’: Navy football mourns lineman David Forney
“It’s so special I get to wear 68 this year,” Frankland said. “I’m so honored. I’m excited about this year just for that. You need to have a chip on your shoulder and an attitude when you wear number 68.”
In 2019, Forney started all 13 games while battling injuries and routine discomfort associated with playing one of the most rugged positions. He anchored an offensive line that helped the Midshipmen amass a single-season school-record 4,687 rushing yards and match the school record for wins (11).
Last year, Frankland exemplified the moxie Forney had demonstrated throughout his career. Despite a torn labrum that required him to wear a shoulder harness, Frankland was the only offensive lineman to start all 12 games, at times enduring considerable pain.
Frankland’s determination, as well as his respect within the locker room and on campus, made him an ideal choice to wear No. 68. Underscoring his leadership qualities was being voted head captain by all the other captains of Navy’s varsity sports teams.
“We’ve got a great group of young guys and older guys that have taken a great leadership role,” Frankland said. “Everyone on the field is a leader in their position group and is a leader on the team, and it’s a great thing to see that we don’t have to be as involved as maybe some captains would elsewhere. The team has a great leadership perspective to it.”
Frankland is the third player to wear the revered No. 68 since Forney’s death. Navy did not issue it again until starting tackle Billy Honaker, then a senior, wore it in the 2020 Army-Navy game in memory of his friend. Starting center-guard Pierce Banbury wore it for the 2021 season.
The Navy coaching staff wanted to be certain Frankland was comfortable wearing No. 68, so running game coordinator and offensive line coach Ashley Ingram, who was Forney’s position coach for four years, checked in with Frankland first.
He did not hesitate, accepting the honor with humility and an appreciation of the responsibility that comes with it. One of the first calls Frankland made afterward was to Forney’s father, Rick, to ensure him he would represent his son properly. He also contacted Banbury to discuss the magnitude of wearing No. 68.
“Dave was a such a special young man, such a big part of the program, on and off the field,” said Midshipmen assistant Danny O’Rourke, who helps coach the offensive line with a focus on the tackles. “His attitude, his competitive spirit, his team leadership, just his want-to.
“He just epitomized everything it was to be a Navy offensive lineman here. It’s a special honor. It’s the highest honor that we hold in our room, and I think Kip was a great choice and one that we’re all proud of.”
Frankland keeps Forney’s memory close at hand by wearing a commemorative bracelet called a Steel Heart with “MIDN 1C David Forney, February 20, 2020” etched onto it. He also makes certain to inform the younger offensive lineman about what Forney meant to the program.
Frankland will be the last player who played with Forney to wear his number. Navy’s season opens Sept. 3 against Delaware at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. The Midshipmen’s AAC opener is Sept. 10 against visiting Memphis, Frankland’s hometown school while growing up in the suburb of Germantown, Tenn.
“It’s kind of the biggest honor you can get, especially in our little room,” said Frankland, whose former No. 66 is going to sophomore tackle Trey Cummings. “It’s a big deal for me. I called my mom and dad right away. I was really excited for it. Definitely this year is going to mean a lot more wearing No. 68, representing Forney and his family and that senior class in total. Hopefully I really do it some justice.” | 2022-08-24T09:20:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy’s Kip Frankland honors David Forney by wearing No. 68 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/navy-kip-frankland-david-forney-68/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/navy-kip-frankland-david-forney-68/ |
What makes Mariners president Catie Griggs special? It’s not her gender.
Mariners President of Business Operations Catie Griggs walks through the tunnel leading to the field at T-Mobile Park in Seattle. (Lindsey Wasson for The Washington Post)
SEATTLE — Catie Griggs walks the T-Mobile Park concourse and picks up trash. She sees a plastic spoon and tosses it in the nearest recycling bin. A napkin. A bottle cap. She is the Seattle Mariners president of business operations, the only woman in Major League Baseball with that lofty title. She could order any of hundreds of stadium workers to clean up quickly after fans. She would rather do her part, no matter how menial the task.
You must spend some time around Griggs to realize this is truly who she is. She isn’t performing for a reporter, presenting herself as ordinary and hospitable. She holds an elite job without an elitist approach. She has the mental agility to wow and intimidate a room, and she is direct as a communicator. But curiosity and servant leadership are the traits that separate her as a boss navigating a nascent era in which women are gaining more power and influence in men’s professional sports.
“I’m not someone who set out as an 18-year-old saying, ‘One day, I’m going to be the president of a Major League Baseball club,’ ” said Griggs, who has been on the job for a year. “And here I am. In all candor, it never would have occurred to me to even aspire to be the president of a Major League Baseball team. I think, from a career trajectory and career-pathing standpoint, it really all ties back to that innate curiosity. I like learning new things. I like putting myself in situations where I’m challenged, where I have certain skills and experiences I can bring to bear, but where I’m missing something that I need to do the job particularly well, and I can build that muscle. I’ve been very fortunate to have others who’ve given me those chances.”
In addition to Griggs, the Florida Marlins employ Caroline O’Connor as their chief operating officer and Kim Ng as their general manager. The New York Mets hired Elizabeth Benn in February to be their director of major league operations, making her the highest-ranking female executive in franchise history. In the NFL, the Las Vegas Raiders named Sandra Douglass Morgan the league’s first Black female team president this summer. In the NBA, there is an abundance of female representation in the middle ranks and near the top of various organizations.
After an embarrassingly slow trek to this point, the opportunity exists now for greater gender inclusivity in male-dominant arenas. It has been more of a point of emphasis everywhere, including the NHL and Major League Soccer. While it’s still hard to predict how close we are to seeing a woman rise to head coach or manager, it’s already downright absurd to think about how long it took for the business side of these multibillion-dollar franchises to embrace female management.
Griggs doesn’t handle the Mariners roster. Jerry Dipoto, the president of baseball operations, is in charge of that. He has spent seven years steering the franchise toward contention on the field, and after finishing 90-72 a year ago and falling short of the playoffs on the season’s final day, the Mariners are in position to earn a wild-card berth as the final quarter of this 2022 run begins. They hope to make the postseason for the first time in 21 years, the longest drought among all teams in the four most celebrated American pro sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL).
In that sense, Griggs arrived at an ideal time after she left her job as the chief business officer of Atlanta United FC and traded soccer for baseball. As the ultimate fan-focused leader, she has a knack for bottling excitement and deepening the connection between a team and its fan base. But she also came to Seattle knowing she had to help repair faith in upper management. Former Mariners president and CEO Kevin Mather resigned in February 2021 after video surfaced of offensive comments he made about players to a local Rotary Club.
Mather had been in the organization for 21 years. He was promoted in 2014 to replace his predecessor, Chuck Armstrong, who spent 28 years in charge. The franchise needed a fresh approach even before Mather’s mouth forced him out. The Mariners were in good financial shape despite the playoff drought, but comfortable profit margins are the expectation for well-established major pro teams. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are functioning properly.
Last August, just before her first day with the Mariners, Griggs plotted with her husband, Justin.
“What am I going to wear?” she asked.
He laughed and asked what she wanted to wear.
“I want to wear jeans and Jordans,” she said. “I don’t know. Am I allowed to?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the boss,” Justin told her.
She wore the outfit and took command in comfort. She’s a 40-year-old wife and mother of two. Although she is polished and intentional, she is approachable, self-deprecating and engaging.
“I’m fully capable of dressing up for the occasion, but that’s who I am,” Griggs said. “I am casual. I’m relaxed. It doesn’t mean I have to have low standards. Those things are not mutually independent.”
Kelsie Whitmore is making history in the Atlantic League
Griggs took an atypical path to becoming a sports executive, but her childhood athletic experiences explain why her career evolved this way. At age 11, she was home-schooled in North Carolina, allowing her to learn at an accelerated pace. She graduated high school and enrolled in classes at North Carolina State at 14. Sports fortified her social and emotional development while she was at home speeding through her education.
She swam. She played tennis, soccer and softball. She rode horses. Sports meant connection to her, and throughout her life she has been fascinated with how games build community.
“Part of the role of sports in my life growing up was not just the athletic pursuit and the joy that sports can bring and the competitiveness of it, although I liked all of that,” Griggs said. “It was also the social element.”
Griggs transferred from N.C. State to Dartmouth, graduated with an international studies degree and later earned a master’s from the college’s Tuck School of Business. She took a job at Turner Sports and rose through the organization while learning the intricacies of media rights deals. She left to help launch Futures Sport and Entertainment and then went to Atlanta United, helping to quickly guide the franchise from its early expansion days to a championship organization setting MLS attendance standards in a city notorious for fan apathy.
She came to the Mariners declaring they would become the “most progressive” franchise in baseball. One year into the job, she’s balancing impatience — which she considers her biggest flaw — with her desire to learn more about the team and city, empower her staff instead of micromanaging and master the pace of baseball.
“When she talked about her approach in her news conference last August, the jury was out for me, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll believe it when I see it,’ ” said Mandy Lincoln, the team’s senior director of experiential marketing. It’s a new role Griggs created and a challenge Lincoln needed after 15 years with the Mariners. “But she just comes with this style where she’s listening, she’s accessible. She looks at it like, ‘I want to know what everybody in this organization does, how I can help them, how it can make things better.’ It’s really refreshing.”
Lincoln has a weekly meeting with Griggs. The boss’s first question is always the same: How are you doing? It’s not a polite, obligatory greeting. She wants honesty, and she responds with empathy.
Griggs listens first during all meetings, but the staff knows that when she speaks she always comes equipped with questions and ideas that will challenge them to think differently. One day, Griggs is thinking about moving concessions to ensure a clear view of the field as spectators circle the concourse. Or she’s asking to study the menus, to streamline the ordering process and make the lines move faster. She’s examining how to save costs for fans on certain items, or how to better customize ticketing and seating options in recognition that fan bases are not monolithic.
“How do we truly understand what people are looking for?” she wondered.
She loves to walk the stadium and observe. She jokes about being angry that she averages only 10,000 steps per game, less than the 20,000-plus she logged wandering about during MLS games. She notes at what direction fans are looking and when. She sees everything, even a glitch on the video board.
What Kim Ng’s hire means to girls who play baseball
After the first game of a rare day-night Seattle doubleheader this season, Griggs put on gloves and helped the workers clean between games. She found a baseball in the center field bleachers. She put it in her pocket, and when the gates opened for Game 2, she saw a boy dressed in full Mariners gear sitting with his family in the 300 level. He looked about 4 years old.
“You a Mariners fan? You play baseball?” Griggs asked him.
“If I threw a ball that one of the players hit, do you think you could catch it?”
She threw it. The boy corralled it and cried.
As Griggs roamed the ballpark that night, she knew she was in the right place. | 2022-08-24T09:24:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mariners president Catie Griggs is part of wave of female sports bosses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/catie-griggs-seattl-mariners-president/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/catie-griggs-seattl-mariners-president/ |
An American parenting rite: Your daughter’s day care is in lockdown
On the unbearably normal fear of knowing that you can’t keep your kid safe from a uniquely American threat
Perspective by Monica Hesse
I was already on my usual route to pick up my 13-month-old daughter when her nursery school director sent a message to the parents: There was suspicious activity at the public building across the street, so the day-care center was on lockdown. Entirely precautionary, she assured us. Safety procedures had been quickly enacted — and you’ll forgive my paranoia, but I’m not going to say more about them here because the world sometimes feels like an orb of manure rotating on a spit, and publicly posting anyone’s lockdown procedures seems daft.
By the time I arrived five minutes later, helicopters were circling overhead and we had a little more information. A man had been fatally shot in the nearby building, occupants had fled in terror, and the gunman was still at large, but it seemed unlikely that he’d return to the area. Outside the nursery school I waited with other parents for the lockdown to end. One, revealing her endless capacity for silver linings, remarked that we were lucky that the day-care center’s neighbor was a medical facility.
The only silver lining I’d been able to think about was something I remembered learning at parent orientation: If worse came to worst, the cribs could roll. The cribs could roll and that is how the babies would escape.
I tweeted about what had happened later that day and watched as I was retweeted or liked by close to 50,000 people — which is, for those of you smart enough or lucky enough not to be on Twitter, a lot of people.
“Stop spreading fear,” read one typical response.
“Phony drama,” read another, from a user who clarified that the drama was phony because, though babies were in lockdown, no babies had died. He added that I’d probably fabricated the whole shooting.
Some people suggested that what had happened wasn’t a big deal: It wasn’t a big deal that there had been a shooting because only one person had been killed. It wasn’t a big deal because more “unborn children” died via abortion than via school shootings, so if I really cared about harmed children I would focus on overturning Roe v. Wade (sir, I have news for you). It wasn’t a big deal that the school had to be prepared for such an event because schools also had to prepare with things like fire drills. Didn’t I want the school to have fire drills?
Several people acknowledged that it was a big deal but suggested it was my fault for not being a stay-at-home-mother. “Resign from your job,” someone directed.
Perspective: The unreasonable expectations of American motherhood
Believe me, I’ve seriously thought about it, as has every working mother I know. But if I pulled my daughter out of day care to keep her safe, did that mean I should also keep her away from supermarkets, schools, churches, restaurants, parades, campgrounds, hospitals, McDonaldses, Airbnb rentals, outdoor concerts, indoor concerts, public transportation, Walmarts, military bases, block parties, festivals, synagogues, yoga studios, pharmacies, gas stations, retirement homes and libraries?
By the end of the day, I’d turned off my mentions. They were exhausting. They were useless. They had strayed far from the original point I was trying to make. | 2022-08-24T09:37:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daycare in lockdown: a new parenting nightmare - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/daycare-lockdown-gun-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/daycare-lockdown-gun-violence/ |
In July, homes sold in a median of 35 days, which is two days faster than in July 2021 and 25 days faster than in July 2019. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)
The number of homes for sale rose in July by 30.7 percent, compared with July 2021, the fastest annual increase since July 2017, according to Realtor.com’s Monthly Housing Market Trends Report. However, listings are still 44.4 percent lower than there were in July 2019. Of the 50 largest metro areas, active listings increased in 45 markets, with the biggest increase in active listings in Phoenix (up 158.7 percent, compared with July 2021), Austin (154.5 percent) and Raleigh (up 137.5 percent). In the Washington, D.C., market, active listings were up 5.4 percent in July, compared with July 2021.
Active listings include all homes on the market, regardless of when they were listed for sale. New listings, which just include those first coming on the market during the month, declined 2.8 percent nationwide in July 2022, compared with July 2021, an indication that economic uncertainty may be keeping sellers out of the market. But in 13 markets, new listings rose, compared with July 2021. For example, new listings were up 37.6 percent in Las Vegas, compared with July 2021, up 37.1 percent in Nashville and up 28.6 percent in Oklahoma City. In Washington, D.C., new listings were down 21.5 percent, compared with July 2021.
The national median listing price for a home remained high at $449,000 in July, although that is $1,000 less than it was in June, when it was a record high $450,000. The national median listing price in July is 16.6 percent higher than the median listing price in July 2021 and 39.5 percent more than the median listing price in July 2019. Typical monthly mortgage payments are 1.5 times higher than they were in July 2021.
Higher prices, especially when borrowers face higher mortgage rates than in the past, makes buying a home a challenge in most markets. That’s one reason Realtor.com gives for the fact that more than half (53 percent) of buyers are looking for a home outside of the market where they live. That’s the highest percentage on record and up from 48 percent in the first quarter of 2022.
Eight of the top 10 markets attracting the most out-of-town buyers have a lower median listing price than the national average. For example, El Paso, where 62.1 percent of listing views were from out of town, had a median listing price of $281,642 in July.
Other towns with a high percentage of buyers looking for property from out of town include Warner Robins, Ga., where 82.2 percent are from out of town; Alexandria, La. (69.1 percent); Midland, Tex., (65.2 percent); Yakima, Wash. (63.6 percent); and Burlington, Vt. (63.5 percent). | 2022-08-24T09:55:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Housing supply and demand are beginning to balance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/24/housing-supply-demand-beginning-balance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/24/housing-supply-demand-beginning-balance/ |
Biden administration requires serial numbers for homemade guns, background checks for dealer sales
President Biden and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speak in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 11 to announce a final version of its ghost guns rule. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
A new Biden administration rule governing “ghost guns,” the kits that had allowed people to assemble homemade firearms without serial numbers, took effect on Wednesday after a federal judge declined to block the measure.
Biden turns to stemming gun crimes as violence rises
On Tuesday, Chief Judge Peter D. Welte of the District of North Dakota denied their requests for a preliminary or permanent injunction, writing that the Biden administration had acted within its authority in laying out the rule. Welte, nominated in 2019 by President Donald Trump, wrote that the new measure “was and remains constitutional under the Second Amendment.”
“Without a doubt, this case presents divisive issues that all parties care about deeply and that are of national concern and importance, as demonstrated by the participation of nearly every state in this country in this action,” he wrote in a 27-page order. “Nevertheless, the court’s role and responsibility remains the same—to apply the law to the facts (and not the arguments or policy) of each case.”
The staggering scope of U.S. gun deaths
The Biden administration rule violates Division 80′s constitutional rights and “will destroy Division 80′s entire business,” the company argued in a federal lawsuit that asks for the rule be blocked or delayed.
The rule, the lawsuit argued, could cost businesses tens or hundreds of million dollars in sales. “Protected Second Amendment activity will grind to a halt, numerous companies will falter or go out of business, and jobs will be lost.”
Baltimore plans to sue ‘ghost gun’ part maker as state law takes effect
A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R), who in July had announced that he was co-leading a group of 17 states joining the North Dakota case, said Brnovich’s office “will continue to defend the 2nd Amendment against overly burdensome regulations.”
“The right to keep and bear arms includes the ability to procure guns, as well as parts and ammunition,” spokesperson Brittni Thomason said in a statement. Lawyers for the other plaintiffs in that case did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department had argued in court filings that the new rule was necessary “to provide clarity to the public and the firearms industry on the proper application of federal law.”
In the North Dakota case, the department wrote that technological advances made it easier to create kits and parts that “allow unlicensed persons to make firearms quickly and easily” — usually without serial numbers, making it hard for law enforcement officials to trace the weapons if they are used in crimes.
The department argued that the rule was “a valid exercise of the authority ATF has been expressly granted by Congress” and pushed back against the idea that the rule created “an unlawful national gun registry.” Instead, the department wrote in court papers, the rule only extended how long certain records already kept must be maintained.
The Justice Department said the rule does not prohibit businesses from selling the products, but instead makes it so that they “must comply with the same regulatory framework that all federally licensed firearms dealers must comply with.”
Granting the requested injunction, the department said in the North Dakota case, “would significantly harm the government’s interests in law enforcement and public safety.”
In his order on Tuesday, Welte wrote: “The rather speculative risk of harm to the plaintiffs, on the one hand, does not outweigh the harm to the ATF’s interest in law enforcement and public safety, on the other.”
Authorities representing a group of cities — including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia — also weighed in to support the federal rule in the North Dakota case.
They wrote in a filing that their cities had experienced “dramatic increases” in ghost guns being used in criminal activity. The new rule, they said, was “absolutely necessary to stop the dangerous proliferation of ghost guns and to promote public safety.” A group of states wrote in a separate filing that the rule would help them as they updated their own gun laws. | 2022-08-24T09:55:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Ghost guns' now need serial numbers, dealer background checks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/24/ghost-guns-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/24/ghost-guns-biden/ |
Sea-themed books are displayed at the Patmos Library. Voters rejected a proposal this month to continue funding the library after residents voiced their concerns over the availability of LGBTQ titles. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Some parents found a copy in the Patmos Library and created a Facebook group called “Jamestown Conservatives” pushing for its removal. One of the organizers, Lauren Nykamp, declined to be interviewed but responded to some of The Washington Post’s questions over text. “This is not about LGBTQ material,” she said. “It is about sexualized material.”
These are books school systems don’t want you to read, and why | 2022-08-24T10:51:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Michigan town voted to defund its library. The fight started with Gender Queer: a Memoir - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/michigan-library-defunded-gender-queer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/michigan-library-defunded-gender-queer/ |
The decision by Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, signals broader industry resistance to the Treasury Department’s sanctioning of Tornado Cash
Jeremy B. Merrill
The U.S. government recently sanctioned Tornado Cash, a service that can be used to obscure stolen digital assets. (Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg News)
The U.S. government’s latest effort to crack down on the illicit use of cryptocurrency by rogue foreign regimes and criminals is running into resistance from the industry itself, including one of its largest and most influential players.
Earlier this month, the Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency service it alleges has allowed North Korean hackers and others to launder billions of dollars’ worth of digital assets stolen in virtual heists. Typically, sanctions target individuals, countries or companies, and U.S. firms comply by ensuring they avoid doing business with them.
But the sanctions aimed at Tornado Cash are novel. Tornado Cash is known as a mixer, obscuring the source of digital assets by pooling them together before users withdraw them. It exists as software code on a decentralized, globe-spanning network of computers, and its authors wrote it in such a way that even they can’t edit it. Crypto industry leaders say they are not sure what they need to do to stay on the right side of the law.
“More than anything else right now, we’re an industry that needs guidance,” said Ari Redbord, a former Treasury official now with TRM Labs, which provides crypto companies with tools to monitor fraud and financial crime.
Tether issues the world’s largest stablecoin, a token pegged to the value of the dollar that helps form the lifeblood of the global crypto economy. Investors use it to buy and sell other digital assets and as collateral for certain trades.
It is not clear whether Tether is legally obligated to fall in line with Treasury’s sanctions. The Hong Kong-based company suggests it is not, because it “does not operate in the United States or onboard U.S. persons as customers,” Ardoino said. But he said the company considers Treasury sanctions “as part of its world-class compliance program.”
At other times, Tether executives have claimed the company is overseen by Treasury since it is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the department that combats illicit finance.
When asked whether Treasury considers Tether to be in violation of Tornado Cash sanctions, the department declined to comment.
Sanctions experts said the matter is debatable. The restrictions “generally apply to all U.S. nationals or corporations, or any person or organization in or doing business in the United States, or any transactions touching the United States,” Scott Anderson, a former State Department adviser now with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, said in an email. “I don’t know whether Tether falls within that scope or not. But if there is a chance that they (or their employees) might, noncompliance could carry real legal risk.”
U.S. hasn’t stopped N. Korean gang from laundering its crypto haul
A former senior official for the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which enforces sanctions, said Tether is treading on dangerous ground.
“It’s never a very good idea to test OFAC. Right now, it’s a particularly bad time for any crypto-related company to do that,” the former official said. “It looks like that’s what they’re doing.”
Tether’s response, and the ambiguity around it, highlights the firestorm Treasury has unleashed with its most recent bid to thwart criminal abuse of digital assets.
Cryptocurrency developers have long been divided on whether they are merely working on an innovative financial technology or are part of an explicitly political attempt to create a shadow financial system beyond the reach of government control.
But crypto executives largely agree that Treasury overstepped with its Aug. 8 announcement against Tornado Cash, which they frame as an unprecedented targeting of computer code, rather than a person or entity typically on the receiving end of sanctions. Some argue the sanctions may be unconstitutional — and could be an attempt to open a wider assault on privacy protections offered by their technology. Many are trying to determine how to comply with and resist the decision.
A Treasury spokesperson pointed to the urgent need for the department to take action, noting in a statement that Tornado Cash “has been used to launder billions of dollars for criminals and other illicit actors.”
The Treasury Department is working with industry representatives “to monitor the effects of this action and issue guidance as needed,” the spokesperson said.
Roman Semenov, a Tornado Cash co-founder, wrote in a direct message on Twitter to The Post that the sanctions “will definitely deter many people” from using the service.
Some Tornado Cash users may innocently deposit legitimately acquired cryptocurrency and withdraw it to make untraceable charitable donations — as ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claimed to have done to contribute to Ukraine’s war effort. Depending on the timing, some users’ transactions may have helped North Korean-affiliated hackers cover their tracks. In June and July, 41 percent of funds that passed through the service were linked to hacks and other thefts, according to TRM Labs, a blockchain analytics firm.
Tether has a history of racking up penalties from regulators. In 2021, it paid $18.5 million to settle charges from the New York attorney general’s office that it lied about the composition of the assets backing its stablecoin, known as USDT. The company paid another $41 million later that year to settle similar allegations from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Hackers hit popular video game, stealing more than $600 million in cryptocurrency
And it has neglected to comply with U.S. sanctions against a crypto program before. A Post analysis in April found Tether continued to allow transactions with accounts allegedly belonging to Chatex, a Moscow-based digital asset exchange that Treasury sanctioned last year. Since Tornado Cash’s sanctioning this month, $5,000 worth of USDT has been deposited with the mixer, according to The Post’s analysis.
Tether’s nearest competitor, Circle Internet Financial, has taken a different approach. The day after the sanctions were announced, the U.S.-based company said it moved to comply by freezing $75,000 worth of its stablecoin, USD Coin, in Tornado Cash wallets and blocking transactions with the blacklisted accounts.
Yet, Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire criticized Treasury’s decision, writing on Twitter that it “crossed a major threshold in the history of the internet.” He said the sanctions raised “extraordinary questions about privacy and security” and would invite “more blunt force enforcement actions if we don’t take action now.”
Coin Center, a crypto think tank and advocacy group, went further. The organization said it is weighing a legal challenge. The decision “potentially violates constitutional rights to due process and free speech,” Coin Center’s Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh wrote in a blog post last week, adding that Treasury “has not adequately acted to mitigate the foreseeable impact its action would have on innocent Americans.” Coin Center declined to comment further.
Tornado Cash is set it up to function automatically, and it cannot be altered or shut down. “It’s like shouting at a vending machine,” said Michael Mosier, a former head of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network who is now general counsel of crypto privacy firm Espresso Systems. “It’s not the way to make a behavior change, so it’s not going to effectuate the national security goals the system was set up to achieve.”
Tornado Cash has already seen a precipitous drop in the crypto it is processing since the sanctions took effect. Daily deposits to the program have fallen from approximately $7 million worth of ethereum in the first week of August to about $2 million since the mixer was sanctioned, according to data from Dune Analytics. As traffic to the mixer dries up, crypto analysts say, the tool becomes less useful to illicit actors, who need a large pool of crypto to effectively obscure the assets they send through it. | 2022-08-24T11:04:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tether, a top crypto company, defies U.S. sanctions on service that hid stolen assets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/24/crypto-sanctions-tether/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/24/crypto-sanctions-tether/ |
Members of the bands TOB and TCB perform at the 2019 Go-Go Awards at Ballou High School. Both bands are scheduled to perform at Moe World Order at the Howard Theatre. (Kyle Gustafson for The Washington Post)
Moe World Order
Go-go is the official sound of the city. It’s the most endangered sound of the city, too. The latest attack on D.C.’s born-and-bred music happened in June at go-go event Moechella, when gunfire erupted afterward and resulted in the death of 15-year old Chase Poole. D.C. police criticized Moechella organizers for lacking a permit, even though city officials were aware of the festival beforehand and a deputy mayor had promoted the event in an interview. On top of that, Moechella lost the rights to its name two months later after a trademark dispute with the popular California festival Coachella. Not to be deterred by the string of bad news, Long Live GoGo is hosting a show at the Howard Theatre that’s meant to be entertaining and healing, featuring go-go locals TCB, TOB, Reaction Band and more. Aug. 26 at 8 p.m. at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. thehowardtheatre.com. $30-$75.
Machine Gun Kelly shedding his rap persona for pop-punk sensibilities is one of the most successful transformations in recent music memory. Can Hoodie Allen follow suit? On the 10-year anniversary of his debut rap EP, “All American,” Steven Adam Markowitz is heading back on tour with a new sound that feels like his most earnest record to date. “All American” was an anticlimactic introduction for Markowitz that earned a lot of internet buzz but had little substance lyrically or musically. After a decade of fine-tuning his sound, the Plainview, N.Y., native released “Call Me Never,” a head-bobbing pop-punk song that takes a page straight from the playbook of New Found Glory and Simple Plan. It’s on this track that everything seems to click for Markowitz, as his melodic vocals shine more crystal-clear than ever. Aug. 26 at 8 p.m. at Union Stage, 740 Water St. SW. unionstage.com. $29.50.
Brooding and theatrical, Amulet earned a Washington Area Music Award nomination and a spot headlining H Street joint Pie Shop with its hard-driving rock ballads. The D.C. duo — bassist MJ Phoenix and vocalist Stephanie Stryker — creates cinematic, melodic and bass-heavy tunes that sound like a feverish dream. At its Pie Shop show, Amulet promises a night of “faerie dancers, tarot reading [and] group rituals,” with three other musical acts that cross the dark side: Talking to Shadows, the Neuro Farm and DJ Johnny Panic. Aug. 27 at 8 p.m. at Pie Shop, 1339 H St. NE. pieshopdc.com. $15-$20.
Recently, Rema has been making buzz not for his music but for a kiss with Selena Gomez, who on Instagram teased a song collaboration with him. Going viral isn’t a new experience for the Nigerian musician. Back in 2018, Rema (real name: Divine Ikubor) gained hundreds of thousands of views for his freestyle of D’Prince’s “Gucci Gang,” which earned him an invitation from D’Prince himself to join his record label. Rema’s new album, “Rave & Roses,” shows him exploring rich electronic productions with Afrobeat sounds. Featuring collaborations with such familiar faces as Chris Brown and 6lack, Rema’s latest effort is a heady blend of breezy tunes made for the summer season. Sept. 1 at 8 p.m. at the Fillmore Silver Spring, 8656 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. fillmoresilverspring.com. Sold out. | 2022-08-24T11:13:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 concerts in D.C. Aug. 26-Sept. 1: Hoodie Allen, Amulet, Rema and more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/24/concerts-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/08/24/concerts-dc/ |
Jerome Powell Is Fighting Inflation — and Winning
Analysis by Karl W. Smith | Bloomberg
When Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell speaks in Jackson Hole later this week, he will have no shortage of critics lying in wait to vivisect his every remark. Their nearly universal theme is that the Fed has done too little, too late to stem rising inflation. Powell, the argument goes, bought into the misguided view that 2021’s inflation would be transitory.
As a result, the Fed continued pressing on the gas when it should have been hitting the brakes, keeping interest rates at zero through 2021. To make up for those mistakes, Powell will have to convince the public that he’s abandoning the Fed’s policy framework and admit that he is prepared to deliver the pain.
The truth is far more sanguine. Yes, Powell does need to strike a solid, credibly anti-inflation tone. But the Fed has been fighting inflation since March — in both word and, more important, deed. And the effort seems to be paying off.
The Chicago Fed’s Adjusted Index of Financial Conditions, for example, measures how difficult it is for consumers and businesses to get loans. A reading below zero represents relatively easy conditions; above zero means they are relatively difficult.
The folksy common-sense nature of that remark might obscure just how hawkish it is. Ever since the Great Depression, mainstream economists have seen the Fed’s role as trying to balance the competing concerns of low unemployment and low inflation.
Powell’s position is that whatever rise in unemployment is necessary to bring inflation down to 2% is worth absorbing in the short term, because it provides long-term labor market stability. From the point of view of statistical economics, that’s not strictly true. It’s entirely possible for a country to accept double-digit inflation rates as the “price” of rapid growth.
From the point of view of US political economy, however, it’s exactly right. There is approximately zero chance that the US political system would accept inflation rates as high as they are now year after year without doing something drastic, and maybe even foolishly destructive.
Still, some economists say Powell hasn’t been nearly strident enough. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, for one, has seized on Powell’s statement that the Fed had nearly reached neutral levels of interest rates. Summers’s logic — that with core inflation at 4% to 5%, interest rates would need to be at least that high to bring “real” after-inflation rates down up to zero — makes superficial sense but is belied by market data.
The US government sells inflation-protected bonds that compensate the buyer for actual inflation over their term. The five-year inflation-protected interest rate rose from -1.6% at the end of last year to 0.3% in August. Like the financial conditions index, that represents significant tightening.
Some bond experts see recently falling yields in the broader fixed-income markets as evidence that investors are questioning Powell’s resolve. But the more plausible explanation is that bonds are rallying because the situation in Europe is deteriorating so rapidly. That’s likely to put downward continued pressure on commodity prices and ease inflation in the US. Inflation-adjusted bond yields have remained strong.
After Powell’s adoption of the transitory inflation hypothesis at last year’s Jackson Hole retreat, bashing him now is the path of least resistance. But his critics are fighting the last war. Powell’s words and actions since the beginning of this year have been right on target.
• The Fed Can’t Take the Easy Way Out: Mohamed A. El-Erian
• How Inflation Can Be Both 0% and 8.5% at the Same Time: Justin Fox | 2022-08-24T11:26:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jerome Powell Is Fighting Inflation — and Winning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jerome-powell-is-fighting-inflation--and-winning/2022/08/24/83df8d0a-2398-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jerome-powell-is-fighting-inflation--and-winning/2022/08/24/83df8d0a-2398-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
New research postulates dramatic events in the Eemian period, around 125,000 years ago -- but several experts say it’s not cause for alarm
Methane hydrates photographed during a 2014 Gulf of Mexico expedition. (NOAA Ocean Explorer)
A group of scientists this week said they have discovered new evidence of how methane deposits stored deep in the seafloor can break free — and they are now trying to figure out what this could mean for our climate future.
The new research published Monday suggests a major destabilization of seafloor methane off the coast of Africa around 125,000 years ago, after a global shift in currents warmed the middle depths of the ocean there by 6.8 degrees Celsius, or 12.2 degrees Fahrenheit — a massive rise.
Several scientists who reviewed the study said they weren’t ready to raise new major alarms about the planet’s ample stores of subsea methane in the form of so-called hydrates. While most experts agree that this methane could cause tremendous warming if it somehow hits the atmosphere, many think that the gas would be unleashed only slowly as the planet warms, and that the ocean itself would protect us by absorbing most methane before it can escape to the air.
Still, the new findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, underscore how little we still know about how the planet will respond to our uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions — and how unpredictable that response may be.
The new sample of sediment unearthed from the seafloor paints a picture of tumultuous events during a period of Earth’s history around 125,000 years ago, called the Eemian. The era has often stirred scientists’ fears about the future, for while the Earth was not much warmer than today, seas were 20 feet or more higher. Some suspect the West Antarctic ice sheet may have collapsed at that time — and a few have even postulated superstorms powerful enough to lift boulders atop cliffs in the Bahamas.
The new research suggests another Eemian climate cascade. It would have begun with large pulses of meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet, which slowed down the circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean — a change that would have reverberated around the globe. As the ocean’s so-called conveyor belt slowed and less cold water made its way into its middle depths, the paper’s authors contend, the continental shelf of the Gulf of Guinea along the coast of Africa was bathed in sudden, strong warmth. This, in turn, destabilized methane that had previously been suspended beneath the seafloor.
The warming of the middle layer of the ocean during the era was “much stronger than previous model studies have assumed,” said Syee Weldeab, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led the research along with colleagues at institutions in Germany, China and Australia.
“And then, the release of methane is strong and persistent over a longer time, to make it basically noticeable through the sediment, through the water column, and potentially, to the atmosphere,” Weldeab added.
Methane is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide for the first 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. And current emissions of methane from fossil fuel leakage, cattle, and landfills, among other sources, are driving a major part of the Earth’s warming.
But there are also enormous quantities of natural methane locked away in the form of hydrates, buried in the mud of the Earth’s continental shelves. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that, at the low end, the amount of methane contained in hydrates around the globe is “more than 4000 times the amount of natural gas consumed in the USA in 2010.” Scientists and policymakers have begun eyeing hydrates not only due to climate change concerns, but also because they might be tapped as a potential energy source.
Hydrates form over long geological periods, largely the result of tiny marine organisms powering their bodies in the absence of oxygen and releasing methane as a byproduct. The methane fuses with water and forms icy deposits, which remain stable as long as there is enough pressure on them from the weight of the water above — and as long as the temperature remains cool enough.
The new study is based on the evidence contained within a core of ocean sediment measuring more than 100 feet long that was extracted in the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of Cameroon. Going deeper into the seafloor mud is the equivalent of going back in time, and scientists can use the shells of tiny organisms that died in those ancient waters and sediment — “microfossils,” Weldeab calls them — to infer the state of the environment in different eras.
But since the study could not directly measure ancient methane, the scientists are inferring its presence based on this “proxy” evidence — Weldeab’s specialty. Still, it all comes down to how you interpret the pattern of carbon atoms contained in shells buried in ancient mud.
The world pledged to cut methane. It's rising instead.
Experts had mixed views of the research — and its implications.
“Carbon isotopes are tricky, there are hundreds of stories told about carbon isotope excursions, and some excursions which no one can even come up with explanations for,” said David Archer, a geoscientist at the University of Chicago who has written in the past that hydrates will likely emit some methane this century but it will not be “catastrophic.”
“Conclusions from data like this are always provisional, [and] become stronger if they are confirmed in multiple proxies,” Archer said.
Carolyn Ruppel, chief scientist of the Gas Hydrates Project at the U.S. Geological Survey, called the new work “a very provocative study” and praised it for containing “very elegant data.”
“This may have truly happened in this place at this time because of weakening of AMOC,” Ruppel said, referring to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a highly sensitive part of the global ocean circulation system.
But “I don’t think that on average, it changes our perspective,” Ruppel continued.
For instance, Ruppel said, scientists believe that some small fraction of the world’s subsea methane hydrates are already breaking down today, in response to the relatively modest ocean warming that we have seen so far. But “very little of that methane is reaching the sea air interface,” Ruppel added.
Wei-Li Hong, a geochemist at Stockholm University, agreed, and said that the microfossil and isotope evidence is difficult to interpret. For instance, he said the speed of the ocean’s currents can influence how much methane can accumulate in a particular spot for these tiny organisms to in turn incorporate it.
“Being a scientist, I think I should be open-minded,” Hong said. “I think everything is possible because I think that the problem with this debate is that no one is able to give definite evidence for one interpretation over the other.”
But Weldeab suggests that, at least 125,000 years ago, much of the methane could have escaped — in part because there was just so much of it.
“We find evidence there is methane release across the water column,” Weldeab said. “Starting from 1,300 meters, going up to the surface.”
“We and our colleagues should go out and see this in other areas to determine whether this was a local or more global event,” Weldeab said.
In the end, the study presents worrying evidence, but also leaves many unresolved questions. And the chain of causes that it posits — Greenland melts, oceans shift, newfound heat reaches the African coast thousands of miles away and suddenly methane is mobile — may not play out in the same way today, even if it did all happen that way in the past. The Eemian is only an analogue — one of the closest we have for where we are now heading, but still imperfect.
Still, the newest theory about how the climate dominoes may fall underscores what Columbia University geoscientist Wallace Broecker said as he studied the global ocean currents’ response to burning fossil fuels: “The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks.” | 2022-08-24T11:27:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Study on underwater methane release raises climate fears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/methane-hydrates-ocean-global-warming/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/methane-hydrates-ocean-global-warming/ |
America’s first homelessness problem: Knowing who is actually homeless
The unhoused are often hidden. Seattle is testing a new method to find them.
Michelle and John Tirado had temporary jobs as security guards and lived in a trailer in a Seattle encampment. Michelle said it's not a home. “It’s a space where we survive,” she said. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
SEATTLE — Handwritten notes were everywhere, taped into car windows or tucked under windshield wipers or scrawled across van doors. They were public announcements and cryptic rants — tiny splashes of individuality amid the anonymity of garbage piles and ripped tarps surrounding the trailers and campers parked near the railroad tracks south of downtown.
“Sick sleeping do NOT wake up,” one on a camper said. “I have narcan spray,” said another. “DO NOT TOW MY HOME!” stated a third.
Toward the end of July, one more sign began appearing at the encampment. “Notice,” the warning from the city said. “Order to remove all personal property.” The area would be cleared July 26.
John and Michelle Tirado’s 17-foot trailer stood near a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The windows inside were blocked so they could sleep for their evening shifts as security guards at an abandoned foundry, both temporary jobs with no benefits. They had been living in the encampment for four months. When they arrived, they were sleeping in their GMC Yukon, an SUV. Later the couple found the trailer on Facebook for $1,700 — better than sleeping in the car, and more affordable than the deposit and first and last month’s rent needed for an apartment. But the Tirados couldn’t help feeling that they were bobbing between bad and slightly better, while still on a general slide into worse.
“Some people would count that as a home, but it’s not,” Michelle, 33, said of the trailer they would soon have to move. “It’s a space where we survive.”
“We are homeless,” John, 32, said. “We hate it.”
Until last year, the federal government did not always include people like the Tirados or the others living in trailers within sight of the sun-polished towers of downtown Seattle in its annual tally of the homeless, a reflection of what advocates, academics and policymakers say, is a flawed methodology that underlies billions in spending on homelessness.
Getting that figure right has gained new urgency as rising housing costs and a persistent shortage of affordable housing mean more people have fewer options when it comes to shelter. Tent cities now sprawl across sidewalks, along overpasses and over green spaces in many major American cities. The visibility of homelessness has triggered a wave of municipal and state laws criminalizing it. Advocates also say violent confrontations between the housed and unhoused appear to have increased.
At the local, state and federal level, governments rely on annual estimates of the homeless population to direct billions of dollars in spending. But few advocates, academics or public officials believe those estimates are accurate. Compiled by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), they are technocratic best-guesses, hammered together using a handful of methods many believe are inadequate.
“It gives Congress a false picture of the true magnitude of the problem,” said Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “We need to have accurate data if we are going to provide accurate solutions.”
For years, advocates have pushed the government to improve the annual count, by broadening the official definition of homelessness and adopting new methods to count unsheltered populations. There are a number of proposals circulating. Until recently they have mostly been theoretical. Then earlier this year in Seattle, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) decided to field test a new method, which combined policy wonks and street organizers to capture populations that had been missed in HUD’s Point-In-Time (PIT) count, a key component of the federal government’s homeless population estimate.
HUD spokeswoman Shantae Goodloe acknowledged the difficulties inherent in the undertaking but defended the agency’s methods.
“Given this monumental task, it is likely that communities do not find every single person experiencing homelessness, but we are confident they identify most people, and this consistent counting effort allows an analysis of trends from year to year that help us gauge whether homelessness is rising or falling across the country,” Goodloe said. “The PIT count data is the only data source that collects data on our unsheltered population across the entire country.”
Goodloe also noted that there are support programs for families regardless of whether they fall into the official definition of homelessness. “Expanding the homeless definition does not resolve the reality that there are simply not enough resources for the high demand for people who live in precarious housing situations,” she said.
For the Tirados, the gap between policy and reality has meant painful choices.
As they spent their last nights at the encampment, they had no idea where they would go next. They did, however, know that they would not be joining their five children and John’s mother and sister at a local homeless shelter. When the family had arrived in Seattle, there were not enough beds for everyone to stay together at the facility. They had been split ever since, and would remain apart until the Tirados found a place big enough that they could afford.
A housing emergency
On a Saturday morning in July, Marvin Futrell, 57, wheeled his car down the narrow lane where the Tirados’ trailer was parked. Around 55 other campers and RVs filled the street. He was doing his own informal count.
“Let’s just say one person lives in each. That’s 55 displaced people and probably more living in each one,” Futrell said as he rolled by the encampment. “But the system doesn’t recognize folks living in RVs as homeless.” He then glanced back at the image of the RV encampment shrinking in his rearview mirror. “The response that we have now isn’t enough.”
Futrell kept a map in his head of Seattle and King County, a shifting picture of where people without homes tended to gather. Some were places he’d spent the night himself during his years living on the streets. Other were floating communities he had come to know as an organizer, camps and tiny house villages he had helped avoid police sweeps or wage legal battles with the city. Those experiences had now landed Futrell a position with the county’s homelessness response.
“We’re not treating an emergency like an emergency,” he said. “My work is to start treating this housing emergency like an emergency.”
He sees a more accurate count of the city’s unhoused as vital to any solution, but for more than a decade governments have relied in part on HUD’s Point-In-Time count, an annual tally of homeless people each year during one night in the last week of January. Volunteers and outreach workers walk the streets and count the number of unsheltered homeless individuals they spot. The results are combined with the total population of a region’s homeless shelters, as well as data from a region’s homeless management information system, a database that tracks services delivered to individuals experiencing homelessness. Other government agencies, such as the U.S. Census Bureau and the Education Department, also track homelessness, but HUD’s data is considered authoritative.
Congress approves and funnels out the majority of the country’s financial response to homelessness on the basis of these numbers. The PIT count was inaugurated in 2007 in part to see whether the federal government’s money was making an impact.
Over time, however, academics and advocates have criticized HUD’s approach. “The HUD data is just catching a fraction of the people,” said Samuel Carlson, the manager of research and outreach at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
“It’s not the best measure, because it’s a count on one night only. But also communities end up doing it all different ways; there is not a standardized way,” said Jack Tsai, a professor and dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health in San Antonio, who has written on the topic. “We don’t even look at the per capita or proportion of the total community that is unsheltered. But this is the main benchmark we use every year.”
Some of the most pointed criticism about HUD’s methodology comes from a 2021 review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which knocked the department for not providing local entities with examples of how to properly use data to supplement the PIT count. A 2020 GAO report found HUD does not “closely examine” the methodologies local entities are using to produce their counts, leading to confusion and inconsistencies between various agencies and general “questions about data accuracy.”
Since the GAO report, “HUD has published resources to assist communities with their sampling efforts and is in the process of working on additional resources to help communities conduct more accurate counts,” Goodloe said.
King County officials realized they were missing thousands of homeless individuals in their region when they began an overhaul of countywide data in 2018. They found a substantial gap between traditional homeless counts and the number of people who identified themselves as homeless when entering either the local homeless health-care network or the county’s Behavioral Health and Recovery Division.
By comparing various databases, they found that 40,800 of the county’s total 2.2 million residents experienced homelessness at some point in 2020. Before the new analysis, the county had estimated that figure to be 33,500 based on data from its Homeless Management Information System. The PIT count total for 2020 was 11,751.
The report also determined that 7,300 people in the county who were experiencing homelessness had accessed county behavioral health or homeless healthcare systems but were left out of the other databases.
Finding the people the survey missed became the mission of the KCRHA, which began operating in mid-2021 as a regional solution to what had long been a contentious local issue. The upheaval of the pandemic opened a door for a new approach, said Marc Dones, the authority’s chief executive.
“There are real methods. There are real ways to do this,” Dones said. “Asking people to go out on a night in January and be like, ‘I thought I saw a person in a tent’ is not a method.”
‘Soon we’ll be back together’
Michelle Tirado sat on the ground twisting a jack that was propping the trailer up. She and her husband were preparing to leave the encampment ahead of the July 26 sweep. She strained against the metal, her red-dyed hair flashing in the dull sun. The couple would need to move soon, and the encampment was chaotic as others prepared to do the same.
The Tirados had arrived in Seattle in spring after living on a relative’s property in a nearby county. The family included the five kids — ages 3 to 11 years old — John’s mother and his grown sister, who is disabled. Once the relative passed away, all nine headed to Seattle to find work. When they couldn’t immediately secure housing, the children and John’s mother and sister went to a local shelter, and John and Michelle Tirado hit the streets. Even after landing jobs working security at $15.50 an hour, they couldn’t put together the needed funds for rent.
“We’re trying everything we can to move forward, but it’s so tough with a family of nine,” John Tirado said. “The thing that I hate the most is that we put in a lot of hours at work so we can afford to get a place, so we will be able to afford rent. But you have to make like three times the rent, and have first and last deposit. It’s hard.”
By the end of July, being separated from their children was beginning to wear them down.
“I’m used to doing the mom thing, I’m used to cooking the kids’ meals,” Michelle Tirado said. The most difficult part was trying to explain the situation to them without letting on how desperate the circumstances were. “We say that it’s a journey that we’re all on and that soon we’ll be back together,” she said.
Their plan to move the RV away from the encampment ran aground when, as they were moving it, the axle snapped, rendering the vehicle essentially useless.
Rather than return to sleeping in the car, John and Michelle moved in with a friend until they decided what to do next.
‘Where are you sleeping?’
The key challenge with counting the members of a homeless population is that it is a community that often prefers not to be noticed.
The method Dones and the team set out to create aimed to be both a head count and a megaphone, quantitative numeration fused with an opportunity to record testimonies from the homeless community.
Their Maryland apartments were deteriorating. Then the rent went up.
The KCRHA’s team settled on a plan to set up 10 hubs at locations across the region, from libraries to food banks to health clinics. A handful of volunteers at each hub would be responsible for taking subjects through a series of questions about their experiences with homelessness:
Where are you sleeping?
During this time, what things or people have been helpful to you?
During this time, what things or people have not been helpful — or may have been harmful — to you?
Dones wanted the findings to be bulletproof to any criticism. The team estimated it needed at least 500 interviews from members of “historically marginalized communities who are not believed.”
Futrell sat in on the early planning meetings for the new count. He suggested where the hubs could go to best capture the rhythms of homelessness in the area. And he had a further suggestion that would help make or break the experiment: staff the hubs not with just any volunteers, but people also experiencing homelessness.
More determined than hopeful
In March, the KCRHA team began conducting the new surveys across the county.
“Where are you sleeping?” they asked at a public library.
“How has your health affected your living situation?” they asked at a food bank. “How has your living situation affected your health?”
“How do you earn money now?” they asked at a young adult shelter.
Alex Finch, 31, was staffing one of the hubs near the airport. He had been homeless for a handful of years, living in tent encampments and now in a Seattle tiny house village. He volunteered as part of the KCRHA’s new homeless count because “I wanted to be one of the people keeping them honest,” he said.
But even Finch was surprised by what he was told. “Most of the complaints that I heard were attacks by people who were housed,” he said. “I talked with someone who had their RV assaulted with urine bottles. Another was the victim of attempted arson.”
Finch also said that it was clear many people he interviewed had not been counted in earlier PIT estimates. It was a realization shared by many who helped run the survey. They found that the new methodology helped coax people out of hiding.
“I interviewed people who actually lived in the woods,” said Owen Kajfasz, the KCRHA’s deputy chief community impact officer. “We were able to count people who literally were telling me, ‘I’ve never talked with anybody who works in homeless services before.’ ”
The volunteers also found that many people they interviewed were experiencing homelessness for the first time, including seniors who had maxed out their savings and could not pay Seattle’s spiking housing costs. Others were eager for the opportunity to record their stories.
“What the method told us alone is that there are a lot more people who want to be seen and be heard than the previous methodology allowed for,” Dones said.
Using the data collected from the surveys, the KCRHA was able to submit a number to HUD for its homelessness count — 13,368, compared with 11,751, the Point-In-Time count total for 2020.
Dones is confident the new methodology not only produces a more accurate numerical understanding of the homeless community, but also a vast bank of stories attesting to the experience of homelessness. The KCRHA will release a detailed analysis this fall.
No method is perfect, though. And two testimonies that will be missing from that new store of knowledge are those of John and Michelle Tirado.
The couple never made it to a hub to be interviewed and soon will be quitting King County altogether. They plan on pushing east, over the mountains cupping the Seattle area, to look for work.
“I wouldn’t say we’re hopeful. It’s more that we are determined,” John Tirado said. “If we haven’t failed yet, we refuse to start now.”
The goal is to get jobs, save money for housing, then bring the five kids and John’s mother and sister to wherever they land, be a family again. Until then, the couple will be living in a tent.
Story editing by Annys Shin. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Copy editing by Susan Doyle. Design by J.C. Reed. | 2022-08-24T11:27:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Homeless statistics are flawed. Will Seattle’s new way to count help? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/homeless-seattle-hud-statistics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/homeless-seattle-hud-statistics/ |
Lawns: Why?
An American dream meets a changing landscape
(Fabio Consoli/Illustration for The Washington Post)
Lawns: burned out, blond and dead, in the air fryer of August. Lawns: emerald green — no, alien green — and kept that way by maniacal vigilance and an elaborate system of pipes and potions, organic and otherwise, in defiance of ecology. And for what? To have, in this chaos, dominion over something? (Lawn and order?) To drape a veil of verdancy over a world gone to seed? To feel equal or superior to Ron, across the street, whose lawn always looks like the 18th at Pebble Beach?
We’ve been sweeping our anxieties under these green comfort blankets for quite some time. A “smooth, closely shaven surface of grass is by far the most essential element of beauty on the grounds of a suburban home,” wrote Frank J. Scott in 1870, around the time of the first lawn mower patent, in a book titled “The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent” (Chapter XIII: The Lawn).
“For ‘setting off’ both the house and the landscape, planting a good lawn is of vital importance,” declared a caption in the New York Times in 1937.
Around that time, during the Great Depression, the Mattei family in Cincinnati did not have a lawn. They had a yard, and the yard was functional. It was for the chickens and tomato plants. It was not for grass. One of the Matteis, Vic, used the GI Bill to get to graduate school and become a research scientist. He made a family of his own in the Philadelphia suburb of Cinnaminson, N.J., in a subdivision that paved over Quaker farmland to accommodate Americans who were tinkering with the Aegis radar system for the nearby RCA Corp. Everyone in the subdivision had a lawn, of course. What was the American Dream, in the 20th century, if it wasn’t aproned by a quarter acre of Kentucky bluegrass or tall fescue, which is good for recreation and admiration and not much else?
Vic had some token vegetable plants on the property, but the yard was not for survival. The yard was for lawn, and the lawn was for mowing.
“He was mowing the lawn every Saturday,” says Vic’s daughter, Edamarie Mattei. “And that was success: Having the lawn. Mowing the lawn.”
That was the 1970s.
It is now a half-century later. Specifically Friday, Aug. 12, 2022. Mattei, a landscape designer, is standing on a lawn in a leafy crook of Bethesda, Md. She is talking to the owner of the lawn about getting rid of it.
“It contributes nothing,” says M.J. Veverka about her lawn, which she’s watered and weeded and mowed for 31 years — and for what? The lawn is static, nonfunctional, tedious. Last year Veverka filled in her backyard pool, removed the surrounding lawn and enlisted Mattei’s company to turn the space into an oasis of native plants, a “homegrown national park,” in the words of a grass-roots movement for regenerating biodiversity. Veverka so loves the backyard — which is now an evolving work of horticultural art and a functioning component of the surrounding ecosystem — that she wants to do the same thing with her front yard.
Step one: Get thee gone, lawn.
Mattei used to spend more time educating clients about the benefits of turf removal and native plantings; in the past two years, for whatever reason, new clients have started coming to her with those very ideas. Maybe quarantine amplified the sameness of lawns. Maybe, in this climate-conscious era, we are thinking outside the strict geometry of the lawn, which Mattei describes as “ecologically dead” — a “monoculture” in a world that needs biodiversity.
Over a century, from around the 1870s to the 1970s, Americans slowly fell in love with lawns. Lawns were a sign of taste, calm, power, privilege, order, discipline, especially in the aftermath of World War II.
“On the American front lawn men use power machinery and chemicals, the tools of war, to engage in a battle for supremacy with Mother Nature,” writes Virginia Scott Jenkins in her book “The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession.”
Over the past 50 years, we’ve slowly fallen out of love with lawns. They began to signal waste, disregard, disharmony, homogeneity, gentrification, zombie Boomerism.
“Wasn’t there something a bit decadent about millions of Americans applying millions of pounds of fertilizer and pouring millions of gallons of water on the ground to grow something you couldn’t eat unless you were a Jersey cow?” columnist Ellen Goodman wrote in the Boston Globe all the way back in 1977. “Wasn’t there something bizarre about their spending millions of gallons to cut it off?”
“I think we’re growing up as a country,” Mattei says. “For a lot of American history, it seemed like we had boundless access to land, and we kept extracting from it and building on it. I see a real change from looking at land as a demonstration of power or success to looking at land as a precious resource.”
She adds: “When we are lawn people, we are one thing. When we are not lawn people, we are another thing.”
We are still, largely, lawn people. The biggest crop, by area, in the United States? Not corn, or soybean, but lawn. Unproductive, ornamental lawn: around 40 million acres of it, or 2 percent of the land area of the Lower 48, according to multiple estimates cited by Garik Gutman, program manager for NASA’s Land-Cover/Land-Use Change Program.
Forty million acres: The entire state of Georgia couldn’t contain America’s total lawnage. And we pour 9 billion gallons of water on landscaping every day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile the Southwest United States is enduring a megadrought; the past two decades constitute its driest period since the year 800. California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought state of emergency in October. In a world thirsty for water, lawns are a sneaky siphon.
These days we have “No Mow May,” where neighbors test each other’s tolerance for nonconformity. We have Twitter users sharing before-and-after photos of their “war on lawns,” which turn flat slabs of sickly green into colorful kingdoms of billowing flora. We have a channel on Reddit called NoLawns and TikTok hashtags such as #antilawn, which might direct you to a performance of a profane anti-lawn song by a 27-year-old Nashville musician named Mel Bryant.
“At the time, all of my neighbors were obsessed with their lawns,” says Bryant, who wrote the song on Earth Day 2020. “Everyone was mowing constantly, every day. At any point in time you’d hear lawn mowers going. And it drove me fricking insane. I still have this one neighbor who, I swear, on the Fourth of July he was mowing at 7:30 p.m. What are you doing, dude? This can wait.”
Bryant’s song racked up tens of thousands of views, spreading through TikTok’s #cottagecore hashtag, where younger people advertise their cozy, quaint, sustainable, back-to-nature ethos.
“Everyone’s got the perfect lawn,” Bryant says of her street, in the Rosebank area of Nashville. “They seed their lawns. They have sprinklers and s---. I think it’s attached to a more old-school, boomer generation of the idea of what an American life is. And our lawn …” Well, Bryant has let it grow wild. “I do think it’s pretty generational. I’ve definitely noticed in the past few years that so many people around my age are getting into gardening, and taking their lawns and turning them into gardens.”
Walt Whitman wrote of grass in 1855: “I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful greenstuff woven.”
Said Hank Hill, fictional Texas propane salesman, in 1997: “Look, some people hoist a flag to show they love our country. Well, my lawn is my flag.”
But lawn has become a liability — or in some cases an asset, on the condition of its removal. California’s main water utility is paying customers between $2 and $5 for each square foot of living turf that they remove. Last year Nevada outlawed certain types of lawn; rather, the state legislature prohibited the use of water from the dribbling Colorado River to feed certain types of “nonfunctional turf,” which in southern Nevada slurps up to 12 billion gallons of water every year (more than 10 percent of the state’s usage of the river). The law created a committee to sort “functional” turf from “nonfunctional”; discussions were had about how to categorize “pet relief” areas and “wedding lawns at golf courses.”
Before the law passed, Sun City Anthem, an active-adult community in Henderson, Nev., had already removed almost 40,000 square feet of grass, which nearly halved its water bill. Larry Fossan, facility manager and landscape supervisor, replaced the lawn with xeriscaping: native plants like lantana, cactuses, Mexican feathergrass. Last year on the property Fossan saw something he’d never seen before in Nevada: monarch butterflies, about 25 of them, migrating through.
“There’s flowers, color, butterflies, hummingbirds,” Fossan says of lawnless living. “Different parts of the day you see different things. We have boulders so people can sit and be part of the landscape. When we had grass, people just walked into the building, but now they’ll stop and ‘ooh’ and ‘ah.’ Landscaping is meant to be interactive. It’s meant to be part of your life.”
Lawns, of course, are part of your life. You throw a football on them, you picnic on them, you lean and loaf on them. Some years ago Dave Marciniak penned a polite defense of lawns on his landscape company’s blog: “Why the anti-lawn movement bugs me a little.” Turf serves a purpose, he wrote. It’s soft and durable for recreation. It provides visual relief for the eye, and contrast for landscaping.
Marciniak welcomes changing landscaping tastes, but notes that they are changing slowly.
“As much as Americans like to call themselves rugged individuals, there’s a lot of looking around to see what other people are doing,” says Marciniak, who lives in Culpeper, Va. “I explain to people advocating anti-lawn: Look, it’s not going to happen overnight. If you want to get people away from lawns, we have to show them it can be beautiful, it can be desirable.” And perhaps, most importantly: “It can make the neighbors jealous.” | 2022-08-24T11:27:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawns: Are they worth it anymore? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/lawns-and-replacement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/lawns-and-replacement/ |
Could cooperative housing solve today’s affordability crisis?
Co-Op City in the Bronx offers a model going forward — and a cautionary tale
Perspective by Annemarie Sammartino
Annemarie Sammartino is professor of history and chair of the history department at Oberlin College. She is author of "The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914-1922" (Cornell University Press, 2010) and "Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York" (Three Hills/Cornell University Press, 2022).
Apartment buildings within Co-op City sit along the banks of the Hutchinson River in the Bronx. (Seth Wenig/AP)
There is an affordable-housing crisis across America. As of June, the median sale price of a home in the United States was nearly $400,000. In large cities, the cost of homeownership is significantly higher. The median apartment in Manhattan sells for well over $1 million. Renting provides no relief. The average apartment in Manhattan rents for an eye-popping $5,058 a month, and the median is $4,050, an increase of $800 in the past year alone. Washington, D.C., metro rents have soared 15.7 percent, and similar rising housing costs can be found in other American cities large and small.
There is a huge exception to this problem: Co-op City.
Co-op City, in the northeast Bronx in New York, is the largest housing cooperative in the United States, containing 15,372 apartments in 35 high-rises and seven low-rise townhouse clusters. Today, residents of the smallest three-room apartments pay an equity deposit of $22,500 to buy into the cooperative and thereafter $751 in monthly carrying charges, which include utilities. Even the residents of the largest 6.5-room apartments pay less than $1,700/month. Co-op City’s raison d’etre has always been affordability. It may provide both a model and a cautionary tale for communities facing crises of housing affordability across the country.
Today’s crisis of housing availability and affordability has a historical precedent in the post-World War II era that ultimately led to the construction of Co-op City. After World War II, returning service members increased pressure on the housing supply. In most of the country, this was met with growing numbers of single-family houses, mainly in fast-growing suburbs.
In New York state, the Mitchell Lama Program sought to increase the supply of urban housing for the middle and working classes. The program, which began in 1955, provided low-cost loans, tax abatements and a fixed rate of return to developers in exchange for their agreement to charge residents an affordable monthly rate. Both for-profit rental housing and nonprofit cooperative housing were eligible for the program. Between 1955 and the suspension of the program in 1974, over 100,000 affordable apartments were built under the auspices of Mitchell Lama. The largest nonprofit developer was the United Housing Foundation (UHF), which built over 30,000 apartments. Co-op City was the UHF’s biggest and final development.
Like other UHF projects, Co-op City was designed as a “limited equity” cooperative. When residents moved in, they “bought in” to the cooperative as a whole, rather than owning their individual apartments. As part of the cooperative, residents (or cooperators) paid monthly carrying charges, consisting of maintenance, utilities, operating expenses and the mortgage on the property. They participated equally in the management of the cooperative through an elected resident board. When residents left, they sold their share back to the cooperative and recouped their equity deposit.
At its 1966 ceremonial groundbreaking, Co-op City was heralded as the future of affordable housing. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a congratulatory telegram saying that it represented “a significant development in the efforts to improve the quality of our national life.” Meanwhile, tens of thousands of potential residents flocked to Co-op City’s application office. These were not the city’s poorest residents; in fact they represented the broad socioeconomic middle swath of New York. Co-op City’s residents earned on average the median income for New York City as well as the nation as a whole; they were also about 75 percent White, similar to the racial demographics of the city at that time.
Despite the misgivings of critics who were concerned that Co-op City’s high-rise towers would be depressing incubators of anomie, the development’s new residents were enthusiastic about their community. In her memoir, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recounted that when she moved into Co-op City in 1970, “a much wider world was opening up to me … The differences [in this multicultural development] were plain enough, and yet I saw that they were as nothing compared with what we had in common.”
Yet neither the Mitchell Lama Program’s subsidies nor its cooperative model nor the enthusiasm of its residents were enough to guarantee stability or affordability.
During Co-op City’s construction phase, costs ballooned from the $235 million mortgage planned for in 1965 to over $390 million by the time construction ended in 1972. This rise was due to a combination of factors, including inflation, rising interest rates and corruption. Co-op City’s residents’ carrying charges soared in response, from the $22/room that was projected during the planning phase in the mid-1960s to a proposed $53/room in 1975.
Protests against carrying charge increases culminated in the largest rent strike in American history, in 1975-76, in which approximately 80 percent of Co-op City’s more than 50,000 residents withheld their carrying charge payments from the state. Charles Rosen, the leader of the rent strike, said, “I would suggest that the ultimate in cooperation is the manner in which the vast majority of our residents are working together to save our home.” The rent strike destroyed the UHF, nearly led to the bankruptcy of the New York State Housing Finance Agency and ultimately won residents direct control of the development. Impressive as this achievement was, it did not produce immediate financial stability.
The discovery of massive construction defects — including the need to replace the entire plumbing system — and ongoing inflation, along with state hostility to providing subsidies, meant that Co-op City residents faced cost increases through the mid-1980s. The rent strike and the continued financial and infrastructural problems that Co-op City faced in the 1970s and 1980s led many critics to see the development as an expensive boondoggle.
However, in the late 1980s that began to change. As housing costs began to rise in the years after New York City’s near bankruptcy, state and city officials began to recognize the importance of Co-op City’s 15,000 units of affordable housing. The state agreed to grant greater funds to repair construction defects. State officials also worked with Co-op City’s resident leadership to combat an early 1990s vacancy crisis in the cooperative.
Since 1991, resident carrying charges have risen a cumulative 80 percent, barely keeping pace with inflation — and well under the growth in housing costs elsewhere in New York. Meanwhile, according to census data, the median household in Co-op City remains near the median for both national and New York City incomes, as has been the case since the development was first occupied 50 years ago. In the early 2000s, residents decisively rejected a proposal to privatize the development, which would have meant abandoning its cooperative structure so that residents had the opportunity to buy their individual apartments.
Today, Co-op City is often lauded as a success story. At its 50th anniversary celebration in 2018, then-Mayor Bill DeBlasio said the development was “a vital ally in my administration’s efforts to expand access to affordable housing,” and Bronx borough president Rubén Diaz, Jr. referred to it as “one of the city’s true gems.” Since that time, housing costs have climbed even further into the stratosphere, making Co-op City appear even more exemplary, especially as politicians and activists across America call for a renewed government effort to build affordable housing.
In this context, it is worth paying attention to the lessons that Co-op City has to offer. First, large-scale affordable housing requires significant state investment. This kind of development could only be built in the context of a large state program like Mitchell Lama.
Furthermore, Co-op City’s cooperative model has also played an important role in its success. Because resident owners cannot realize profits from selling their individual apartments, turnover in Co-op City is low, and it has avoided gentrification, valuable qualities in today’s New York. The development’s affordability and stability are also due to the ongoing activism of residents. The advocacy of cooperators was most spectacularly demonstrated during the rent strike, but quieter militancy in the decades before and after helped put pressure on state officials to keep charges low.
When I spoke with Bill Eimicke, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s “housing czar” in 2019, he explained that the memory of Co-op City’s rent strike and the near bankruptcy of the State Housing Finance Agency continued to haunt state officials in their ongoing negotiations with cooperative: “You didn’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure out that it was important that [Co-op City] be handled in a way that didn’t lead to a large, public escalating threat.”
Finally, it was only once the state agreed to work in tandem with Co-op City’s leadership and invest ongoing resources in its maintenance that the carrying charges finally stabilized.
Co-op City’s history suggests that cooperative housing represents a possible path to more equitable and affordable housing. That same history suggests that realizing this goal will require both sustained government investment and ongoing community vigilance. | 2022-08-24T11:27:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Bronx's Co-op City could be a model for affordable housing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/24/could-cooperative-housing-solve-todays-affordability-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/24/could-cooperative-housing-solve-todays-affordability-crisis/ |
Women have always been key to the labor movement
Solidarity between male and female workers is crucial to advancing the cause in America
Perspective by Amy Mackin
Amy Mackin is a writer and public historian who currently serves as manager of communications and outreach in the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University.
Fired Starbucks employees in Memphis celebrate the result of a vote to unionize one of the company’s stores.
Workers have been forming unions in a historic wave of labor organizing over the past year. Much of this activity has been in retail stores, cafes and museums, where most front-line employees are women. Indeed, women and nonbinary people have been playing a key role in these efforts.
While men dominated labor organizing through much of the 20th century, women have long been foundational to the labor rights movement. In fact, the largest labor demonstration in the United States before the Civil War took place in Lynn, Mass., during the winter of 1860, and it wouldn’t have happened without female workers. This early milestone of the labor movement should have been a first step in steady progress toward workplace equality. Instead, it marked the first in a series of setbacks and missed opportunities.
By 1850, Lynn was on its way to becoming the shoe capital of the world, and its labor force consisted of two-thirds female workers. Eighty percent of wage-earning women in Lynn and the surrounding Essex County were working in the shoe industry, with many working part time from their homes in a system known as “outwork.” This system allowed women to support their husbands’ or fathers’ trade through piecework rather than earning separate income outside the home. Male artisans endorsed this system because it allowed women to contribute to the household income and continue to perform expected domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning and child-rearing.
Shoemaking became more mechanized and modernized over the next decade, and the gender ratio equalized. Both male and female shoe workers met regularly to discuss labor issues. But these organizations were separated by gender — men, as well as some women, viewed women’s participation in the industry as a temporary situation that would end when they married and became mothers. When a men’s strike committee was formed, the members rejected a proposal to include an alliance of women outworkers and female factory workers in their effort.
Three thousand Lynn shoe workers walked off the job in February 1860 to protect their wages and improve working conditions. Strikers from across New England soon joined them, insisting that manufacturers agree on a universal “bill of prices” that would prevent competition between workers in different towns and ensure shoe manufacturers from other areas could not have undue influence in the market.
The Great Shoemakers Strike made national news. Even then-presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln chimed in, saying, “I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to, where they are not obliged to labor whether you pay them or not.” Lincoln spoke in Hartford, where he decried the conditions under which nearly 4 million enslaved Black people worked on Southern plantations. But he was also wary of spiraling conditions for factory laborers in the North.
The extraordinary support that Lynn shoe workers experienced as they began their strike quickly evaporated as orderly marching erupted into chaos. The strikers and sympathizers hollered “Scabs!” and “Kick them out!” at the managers who continued working in their shoe shops. Many spectators along the route were drinking heavily and became violent. A strikebreaker who was spotted walking home with outwork from one manufacturer was attacked by an angry mob. The strike committee had initially vowed not to interfere with the transport of goods and materials during the strike, but crowds of people ignored this promise and attacked wagons and their drivers, destroying packages and blocking shipments. Police from neighboring areas were called in to help secure the safety of transports, and the mayor of Lynn swore in dozens of special police officers to restore order. The once-amicable relationship between city officials and shoe workers had deteriorated in a matter of days.
This anarchy was devastating to a movement rooted in a moral code of artisanal craftsmanship, where success depended on the unequivocal approval of other area shoe towns. Earlier, smaller demonstrations that were more akin to family-friendly holiday parades and focused on early-Republic ideas of class equity and opportunity for all had bolstered community support. The goal had been a respectful and mutually beneficial arrangement between manufacturers and laborers — not antagonistic competition. One local newspaper summed up public sentiment by noting: “the lawlessness of a portion of the strikers has deprived the whole movement of a great part of its moral force and turned public sympathies against it.”
An emergency meeting of the strike committee was called and its leader, Alonzo Draper, proposed including local working women in their movement. Doing so would bring the movement back to a moral high ground, mitigate harmful images of violence and anarchy, and promote the strike as a defense of “traditional New England families” and their values.
Soon Draper addressed a meeting of hundreds of female shoe workers. He made his case for why they should strike on behalf of the men. His argument was categorically focused on the needs of male laborers, even reminding the younger women in the audience that if men didn’t make a decent wage, they wouldn’t be able to marry and support wives and children.
The women interjected with their own grievances and wage demands, countering the assumption that women’s only interest in labor advocacy was bolstering family income. Though outworkers, who outnumbered female shop workers, were very much aligned with the idea of a family wage and thereby accepted their work as subordinate to men’s, self-supporting female factory workers were not. After much spirited debate, they ultimately agreed to join the strike with the goal of raising wages for both men and women.
In early March, 1,000 female shoe workers joined 5,000 men in a procession down the streets of Lynn amid a Nor’easter that created blizzard-like conditions. Women marched wearing traditional long dresses with stiff crinoline skirts and ruffled bonnets, holding parasols in one hand and pro-labor signs in the other.
Draper’s scheme was a success. Major newspapers around the country covered the event, and a long piece in the Chicago Tribune noted, “The most interesting part of the whole affair has been the movement among the women. … Are these girls the independent, free and clear-minded women of whom we hear so much?” An article in the New York Daily Herald asserted “what was most needed now was a canvassing or rallying committee to go among the boot and shoemakers of Boston, of both branches of the work, men’s and women’s, and use their influence toward having a large meeting to aide their friends at Lynn.”
Ten days later, 10,000 striking workers — men and women — marched through Lynn in what was the greatest labor demonstration of its time. The labor stoppage and reduced inventory it created raised the wholesale price of shoes, and Massachusetts shoe bosses agreed to increase men’s wages.
However, manufacturers refused to sign a universal price agreement that would protect against recruitment of lower-paid migrant workers or the hiring of strikebreakers, and there was no formal recognition of the union. When men began returning to their jobs at the end of the month, the women who went on strike in solidarity were appalled and angry at being directed to return to work without signed wage agreements or agreed-upon price lists for themselves.
When religious leaders and residents questioned the morality of single women working in Lynn and congregating at local lecture halls, restaurants and recreation areas, female workers defended themselves. They made their arguments in public meetings and in the editorial pages of popular newspapers and magazines. But it was too little, too late.
Draper and his strike committee had successfully manipulated female workers to raise men’s wages, but they had done so by exploiting cultural questions around women’s place as breadwinners. This reinforced a gender hierarchy that diminished women’s power in labor advocacy. Women would continue to advocate for themselves through the 19th century, even creating the first all-women labor union, but they would never again dominate the U.S. shoe industry in numbers.
The chance to secure a future for working women on equal footing with men had been lost. And the impact of that profound loss is still felt today well beyond the shoe industry. | 2022-08-24T11:27:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women have always been key to the labor movement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/24/women-have-always-been-key-labor-movement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/24/women-have-always-been-key-labor-movement/ |
Biden’s policies have been good. But they are nowhere near enough.
President Biden shakes hands with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) following signing into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 at the White House on Aug. 16. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Prominent Democrats and even some in the news media are describing President Biden’s policy accomplishments as extensive and groundbreaking after the passage of a string of bills over the past two months. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called the president “a bit of a superhero.” But let’s keep it real. Biden’s policies are notable but still fairly limited. He and his aides’ hints during the campaign and early last year that Biden could transform the nation as much as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did aren’t close to panning out so far.
In assessing the record of Biden and Democrats, it’s worth going through the administration’s record in detail. Here are the policies Biden aides and other Democrats tend to tout the most, in order of their adoption:
The American Rescue Plan. The big economic stimulus at the start of Biden’s term was not a clear-cut success. It contributed to the great job growth over the last two years, but also to very high inflation. Because the U.S. government had pumped so much money into the economy and the nation was recovering from the pandemic by the time Biden entered office, it’s likely that job growth and inflation would have been heightened regardless of whether the rescue plan was passed.
There was a great policy in this legislation: the universal child tax credit. But it was not renewed, largely because of Sen. Joe Manchin III’s (D-W.Va.) objections.
The bipartisan infrastructure package. Building roads, getting broadband access to more Americans and other provisions in this bill are good. But infrastructure was not one of the top five or even top 10 issues that the United States needed to address in 2021.
The real promise of this provision was electoral — that passing the rescue plan, infrastructure bill and other economic-focused legislation would help Biden and Democrats appeal to moderate and conservative voters without college degrees and ensure Democratic success in the midterm elections and beyond.
Perhaps because of inflation, this hope didn’t pan out. Biden’s poll numbers are dismal outside of the core Democratic base.
The Afghanistan withdrawal. Even though its execution was poorly executed, this was a laudable decision by the president. That said, the United States had already largely pulled out from Afghanistan — there were only about 3,500 troops there before the withdrawal.
The appointments of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and dozens of other left-leaning jurists to federal judgeships. I’m thrilled we have a Black woman on the Supreme Court. It’s also great the Biden administration has tapped fewer corporate lawyers for judgeships and instead chosen more attorneys with backgrounds like serving as public defenders.
These judges could end up pushing U.S. law in a more equitable direction. But with six GOP appointees on the Supreme Court, they are for now slated to have their views ignored or overruled for years, if not decades.
The Inflation Reduction Act. The climate portion of this law, if it actually reduces emissions as Democrats hope, could be the best policy adopted by a U.S. president since Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Climate policy is that important. The $2,000 cap on prescription drug spending for seniors in the act is the kind of policy that will meaningfully improve some Americans’ day-to-day lives, even if it doesn’t fully kick in until 2025.
Many of the other policies in it are fairly incremental. For example, Biden campaigned on creating a public health insurance option for all Americans, not what the law does: increasing subsidies for the small fraction getting insurance through Obamacare.
Even though Democrats don’t talk about this as much, there is one policy area beyond these five achievements where I think the Biden administration is making changes that could be truly transformative: reining in corporate power.
Biden chose a fairly progressive slate of officials to run agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These appointees are still in the early stages of their work, but if they have a full four or eight years we could see big changes: many more Americans in labor unions; fewer mergers that create virtual monopolies in major industries; companies that behave better because they are wary of the federal government suing or fining them.
There are many other policies Democrats are trumpeting, particularly the recently passed bipartisan bills to make it easier to manufacture microchips in the United States, provide additional health care to soldiers exposed to burn pits and reduce gun violence. But the gun control legislation is largely toothless, which is why Republicans were willing to let it pass. The microchips and burn pits provisions are useful policies but not broad, sweeping legislation.
Biden and his allies seem to think passing any bipartisan bill is a huge success. But bipartisan legislation on smaller-scale legislation happened even under presidents like Barack Obama and Donald Trump, who were hated by the opposition party.
What the United States really needs is for the parties to come together on big issues such as climate change — and that’s not happening under Biden, just as it didn’t happen under his predecessors. Nor are the bipartisan policies he actually is passing gaining him much good will from Republican voters and thereby boosting Democratic hopes in the midterms.
The huge problem is many issues haven’t been meaningfully addressed over the past two years: democracy concerns such as voting rights, election subversion and gerrymandering; abortion rights; substantive gun policy changes; major initiatives to reduce income and racial inequality; legislation to lower the costs of child care, housing and higher education; measures that really rein in the power of corporations and the rich; anything to combat a Supreme Court that increasingly just executes the goals of the Republican Party. On so many of the issues that dominated the Democratic primary debates in 2019 and 2020 or were very prominent in the news over the past two years, Biden and Democrats haven’t been able to do much.
Before the midterms, Biden and Democrats in Congress might revise the presidential election certification process to prevent the kind of maneuvers Trump and his allies tried in 2020. The president is expected to announce this week forgiveness of some students loans. But those policies are also more incremental changes than fixing the underlying challenges of higher education affordability and threats to democracy.
It’s mostly not Biden’s fault that not enough has passed. Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), among others, have balked at some policies. They also won’t change the filibuster rules to ease the passage of many policies they claim to support.
Even if Biden’s policy record isn’t as great as I would have hoped, he has one huge, historic accomplishment: getting elected in the first place. That victory prevented a second term for a terrible president and ensured normal U.S. governance again, which was particularly important because of the covid-19 pandemic. By far the best reason to vote for the Democrats this November is that the Republicans, even without Trump in office, remain a much worse alternative.
The positive case for the Democrats is more complicated. Biden and the Democrats have passed many bills. They haven’t passed enough bills or the right bills, considering the nation’s problems.
Biden so far isn’t the next FDR. Perhaps neither he nor anyone else should have been suggesting that, especially considering the Democrats’ tiny majorities in Congress. | 2022-08-24T11:27:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What Joe Biden has, and has not, accomplished - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/biden-agenda-is-not-fdr-new-deal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/biden-agenda-is-not-fdr-new-deal/ |
Kerstin Ade stands next to her camper during a semiannual trip for former East Germany residents in Leipzig, Germany. (Kerstin Sopke/AP)
Soup and sausages might not seem like the usual stuff of public controversy. In Germany, however, even such humble household staples can trigger deep-seated national anxieties. In the east of the country, several big supermarket chains have revived food products that hark back to the region’s socialist past during the Cold War. Now, they stand accused of “trivializing the injustice of communist dictatorship.”
The controversial items back on east German shelves include dishes such as solyanka. This thick, meat-based soup has its origins in Russia and Ukraine but became popular across the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. In socialist East Germany, it was a regular item on restaurant menus and in school canteens. Shops sold a canned version. Former chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in the East (formally known as the German Democratic Republic or GDR), has admitted that she too still is “particularly fond of solyanka.”
Most East Germans consider the return of old-fashioned foods to be harmless enough. Yet the return of socialist soups has “stunned” the head of the government-funded Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany. Director Anna Kaminsky describes the revival of East German food products as a “scandal,” and accuses the companies involved of “trivializing the injustice of communist dictatorship.”
More than three decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Yet political, social, cultural and economic differences between the former East and West Germany remain: East Germans have more positive feelings toward Russia than their Western compatriots. They tend to become parents at a younger age. They shake hands with people almost twice as often. And they still earn roughly a quarter less for their work in some industries.
Looking to cash in on the nostalgia of 13 million East Germans, a company that produces the old childhood favorite “pasta with tomato and sausage sauce” recently decided to put the GDR’s state emblem — a hammer and a compass surrounded by a ring of rye — on the label. Children smile from the can, wearing the blue neckerchief of the Young Pioneers, the former socialist mass organization for students aged 6-10.
Another company has reintroduced “NVA Soup,” named after the East German military, the National People’s Army. Males were conscripted for at least 18 months of service, and the NVA maintained close contact with workplaces, schools and youth organizations. Their events often featured field kitchens serving a thick stew made with yellow peas, pork belly and sausages. The new version features an image of these field kitchens on the label.
Such reminders of East German socialism go too far for Kaminsky and the state-funded foundation she runs. Writing to Rewe, Germany’s second-largest grocery chain, she accused the company of “shirking its responsibilities” to contribute to the “consensus of memory culture of the united Germany.”
Ironically, this insistence that East Germans should give up their acquired food tastes is coming from a state-funded organization whose explicit purpose is to “guide the process of German unification.” Kaminsky’s foundation, established in 1998 by an act of parliament, is supposed to “anchor the peaceful revolutions of the year 1989” in “the German and European history of democracy,” thus supposedly “overcoming” the “division of Germany and Europe.” The memories of millions of East Germans seem to fall largely in the latter category — something to be “overcome” in the name of German unity.
The sort of “consensus” promoted by Kaminsky seems to allow for only one national memory: West Germany’s. This isn’t the first time that food has reflected these lingering tensions. Focus, one of Germany’s most popular weekly magazines, argued in 2016 that the very existence of former East German products such as the chocolate spread Nudossi could lead to “desires to recreate the political conditions of the GDR era.” Similarly, a GDR-themed ice cream vendor by the Berlin Wall drew the ire of the deputy director of the Stasi memorial in Berlin, who worried that food nostalgia could become a tool in the hands of those who want to glorify past dictatorships.
This approach is neither realistic nor helpful. For better or worse, the East German experience between 1949 and 1990 left a legacy that has survived the disappearance of the state. Reunified Germany will need to come to terms with this history rather than trying to efface it. The government should not be in the business of defining which memories its citizens may maintain and how they choose to do so.
If former East Germans such as Merkel have retained a penchant for solyanka, or remember what it was like to eat pasta as Young Pioneers, this hardly means they will seek to reestablish socialism on German soil. But making an entire region feel as though its experiences and memories are at best worthless, at worst dangerous, is precisely the way to breed contempt and disaffection — the same kind that has led to some of the worrying voting patterns we have seen in East Germany in recent years.
Germany must learn to live with its divided past before it can move on to a more united future. | 2022-08-24T11:27:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A German food fight about a divided past - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/east-germany-food-cold-war-nostalgia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/east-germany-food-cold-war-nostalgia/ |
My teen told me a troubling secret about her boyfriend. What do I do?
Q: How do I help my daughter’s friend who is hearing voices? My daughter is 14 and has her first boyfriend, and he is very attached. They have known each other since sixth grade and started spending time outside of school with each other this summer.
She recently told me that he confided in her that he sometimes hears voices. He has been concerned enough to research it online and thinks he may have schizophrenia. I cannot betray her trust and tell his parents. I thought about telling the school counselor, but I keep encouraging her to tell him to talk to his mom. Should I do anything else?
A: Thank you for writing in. This is a difficult situation, made harder by the fact that you are hearing everything secondhand. It’s good news that the young man has started his own research, but it can be terrifying to believe you have schizophrenia and to hold on to this secret.
Let’s look at schizophrenia a bit. The onset for this mental illness is younger for men than it is for women, with the youngest being diagnosed around age 13. Symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, cognitive issues and flat affect. The earliest symptoms tend to be hallucinations, so it makes sense that this young man searched his symptoms and came up with schizophrenia as a diagnosis.
But here’s why loving adults, pediatricians and psychologists need to be involved: Hallucinations can also be brought about by the use of drugs, such as methamphetamines and marijuana, or by a serious and chronic use of psychedelics. The voices could also be a sign of other mental illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, major depression or even obsessive-compulsive disorder. Voices can also be related to trauma or everyday stress.
The point is that there are many reasons this young man could be hearing voices, and the sooner he gets support, the more likely he is to receive the proper diagnosis and treatment. (By the way, many people live full lives with schizophrenia, even though it is not curable.)
As a parent, you of course want to keep your child’s confidence whenever possible. But there is also a time to sit with your daughter and let her know that it is your obligation as a parent and an adult to help this young man. This is really a values discussion with your child. You value keeping your word, but a greater value is the physical safety of a minor. This is life. (Just as most of us value nonviolence, we will fight back to protect ourselves from assault.)
From there, create a list of solutions and their possible outcomes. Just as keeping his secret may have a consequence, so will telling his secret. So what are the different ways you can help your daughter? Discussions like this are crucial, because your daughter will inevitably run into and be friends with people who are being abused, abusing substances or having mental health problems, and you want her to feel empowered — and not afraid — to come to you.
Sit down with your daughter, begin a values discussion and talk about the importance of getting clarity around these symptoms for his well-being. Don’t sugarcoat that this will be easy; just keep the discussion focused on safety and his well-being. If you focus on finding a cooperative solution, even if it isn’t your first choice, it will be a good step forward.
The caveat to all of this is: If the young man shows any suicidal ideation or violence toward himself or others, please contact his parents immediately.
Trust your intuition, but please don’t leave your young teen to deal with this on her own. People are built to rely on each other, and by finding a solution, you are helping to release the stigma associated with mental illness. Good luck. | 2022-08-24T11:28:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | My teen told me a troubling secret about her boyfriend. What do I do? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/24/teen-secret-mom-advice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/24/teen-secret-mom-advice/ |
45 Vine Street from Sept. 29, 2017, to March 7 in Jackson, Wyo. (Ryan Dorgan)
Photographer shows the loss of charm in a Jackson Hole town
Gentrification. That’s a term that first entered my conscious when I lived in Chicago as a freelance photojournalist in the early 2000s. I was searching for stories to immerse myself in and heard a radio piece about how the city’s infamous Cabrini-Green was being “cleaned up.” That turned out to be shorthand for “making the area more attractive to developers and potential homeowners.”
That was all in the early part of my adult life. The term has since followed me around doggedly ever since. Every city I have lived in has dealt with the clash between new development and the preservation of what was already there.
Here’s one tiny example: I met a friend for a drink a couple of years ago on New York’s Lower East Side. We met near the Bowery, a place once known for being a refuge for the city’s down and out. When I got off the subway, I was shocked to see that it looked very similar to the D.C. suburb I live in — all new brick, glass and steel buildings, bereft of the soul and flavor the previous structures gave to the area.
You’d expect this to happen in big cities, though, wouldn’t you? But what about smaller, more out-of-the-way areas? Well, it seems as though gentrification has spread its wings wide and far. Photographer Ryan Dorgan’s project, “The Wasting Sickness of Jackson Funk,” is a prime example.
For years, Dorgan has been documenting the last vestiges of an era defined by independence in Jackson, a town in Wyoming’s Jackson Hole valley. He has been making photos of the remains of the structures that popped up at the hands of homesteaders and pioneers who made their way to Jackson before commercial developers descended, making versions of the steel, glass and brick “luxury” homes you see cropping up all across the country.
Writer Richard Anderson describes the original homes and structures that Dorgan has been recording in an essay that first appeared in Jackson Hole Magazine:
“Personal, makeshift, whimsical, a hodgepodge of styles and elements, with additions and subtractions, edits and repurposings evident, even intentionally conspicuous, and with that feeling that the structure self-assembled from whatever materials had been lying about. Those traits developed naturally in early Jackson Hole architecture. The hands of the homesteaders and pioneers can be seen in every cope and corner. Clever improvisation was a requirement of getting through another season. Back then, funk was not aesthetic; it was pragmatic.”
Change, as they say, is inevitable. It can also be painful, an erasure of the past and the people who populated it. As corporations and people seek to extend their profits by any means necessary, gentrification has pushed its tendrils into more nooks and crannies than ever before.
As newer and fancier building go up, so, too, do prices. The people who once made a place what it is get forced out. All the personality and quirks built up in the years before gentrification give way to chain restaurants and the shuttering of mom-and-pop businesses. Dorgan’s photos are a poignant, if not sad, reminder of the relentless march of “progress.” | 2022-08-24T11:28:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photographer shows the loss of charm in a Jackson Hole town - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/24/photographer-shows-loss-jacksons-charm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/24/photographer-shows-loss-jacksons-charm/ |
Perspective by Joe Davidson
Former president Donald Trump speaks during the America First Policy Institute's America First Agenda Summit in July. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
The threat to democracy metastasizing from former president Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat stretches beyond elections and into federal agencies and their employees.
Vitriol by GOP members of Congress — including comparing the federal government to “the Gestapo” of Nazi Germany and proposing to “defund the FBI” — is just the latest example of boiling aggression that extends across the government. Trump fanned that flame when he shared on social media an article titled “The Fascist Bureau of Investigation” — an incredible act by a former president.
A NBC News poll released this week suggests voters are waking up. The survey found “threats to democracy” is their top issue — more than the economy and other hot-button concerns.
Elections are a foundation of democracy, but “Republicans have convinced a large number of people that election results can’t be trusted,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said in an interview, “which, of course, means that decisions by those elected officials are illegitimate.”
Asked for comment, the Republican National Committee (RNC) deflected. “Dangerous rhetoric from the left led to an assassination attempt on a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, a shooting at a Congressional baseball practice, Molotov cocktails at pregnancy centers, rampant crime in major cities, and an open border,” RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn said by email. “Call out the left on their threatening hyperbole, then we will talk.” Trump’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“To drain the swamp and root out the deep state, we need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy,” he told the America First Agenda Summit, “or at a minimum just want to keep their jobs.”
Comparing nonpolitical civil servants to swamp dwellers, as he also did during his first presidential campaign, set the stage for a Trump executive order that would have stripped workplace protections from thousands of civil servants by allowing them to be fired at will. President Biden quickly rescinded Trump’s order, which would have created a “Schedule F” employment category, but Trump and his people don’t want it to die. Axios recently reported that a Trump ally estimated 50,000 workers could be lumped into the category if he takes office again.
The civil service is designed to protect not just public servants, but also the public from a politicized bureaucracy that plays partisan favorites. “Imagine if scientific reports, food safety inspection results or common financial reporting regulations could be swept aside because they were politically inconvenient,” said Teresa W. Gerton, president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration, a congressionally chartered nonpartisan think tank. “How much further would trust fall?”
Trump elevated state and local culture wars to the federal level when he proposed killing the Education Department. “We need to implement strict prohibitions on teaching inappropriate racial, sexual and political material to America’s schoolchildren in any form whatsoever,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, “and if federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education.”
Conservatives have previously called for abolishing the department based on long-standing Republican concerns about the size and role of government, but not on specific education issues feds don’t control. At one point last year — but no longer — the Education Department did reference specific, incisive anti-racist writings in a request for comment on history and civic education proposals. That, apparently, is enough for Trump to abolish the department and rage against “federal bureaucrats.”
It’s a derisive but popular term among government complainers. “That is the equivalent of calling a doctor a quack or a lawyer, an ambulance chaser,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, which studies the federal government. He cited polling data that indicates a 50-point decline in support for federal employees when they are called “federal bureaucrats.”
Lamenting “an assault on government’s capacity,” Donald F. Kettl, professor emeritus and former public policy dean at the University of Maryland, said that “every private-sector leader would quickly tell us that their businesses can never be successful if they spent their time running down the very people in charge of producing results.”
To produce better tax collection results, the new Inflation Reduction Act strengthens the short-staffed Internal Revenue Service, long the target of Republican criticism. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) responded by suggesting IRS agents could become something akin to stormtroopers.
“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person in Iowa?” Grassley wondered on “Fox & Friends.”
For conservative analyst Bill Kristol, an organizer of Republicans for the Rule of Law who held high political positions in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, comments like Grassley’s mean “there’s a big market out there on the right for attacks on the federal government, which are different from just saying we should have small government or we should reform parts of the government. It’s really, ‘They’re out to get you. There’s a conspiracy to get you,’” he said in an interview. “That’s the only way those attacks on the IRS make sense.”
But the attacks on the IRS, other agencies and federal employees make sense if delegitimatizing government is the point.
“I do think that both the policies and rhetoric that took hold during the Trump presidency led many people to question the legitimacy of government,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “They delegitimized everything from the Constitution to elections to Congress to law enforcement to the missions of our agencies … So, he did succeed in delegitimizing government and people’s trust in our institutions of democracy.” | 2022-08-24T11:28:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republican attacks on FBI, IRS point to larger move to delegitimize federal government - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/gop-attacks-fbi-doj-government-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/gop-attacks-fbi-doj-government-trump/ |
Here’s what a 130-foot superyacht sinking off the Italian coast looks like
A superyacht sank off the coast of Southern Italy on Aug. 22. All the passengers and crew members aboard were rescued. (Video: Storyful)
A superyacht sank off the southern coast of Italy over the weekend in a spectacular capsizing captured on video and shared on Twitter by the Italian coast guard.
The video compilation shows the My Saga, a roughly 130-foot vessel, struggling against the waves before slowly sinking into the water.
The yacht was sailing from Gallipoli to Milazzo, Sicily, on Saturday, local news outlets reported, when it began to take on water and eventually sank some hours later about nine nautical miles off the port of Catanzaro.
All crew members and passengers were rescued and uninjured, the coast guard said on Twitter. It said it launched an investigation to determine what happened.
The My Saga first reported a problem after setting sail from Gallipoli on Saturday, according to Italy’s National Associated Press Agency (ANSA). Patrol boats from the Italian coast guard in Crotone and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) were dispatched to the scene.
When they arrived, they found the ship taking on water from its stern. Five people — four passengers and a member of the crew — were initially rescued on a Romanian patrol boat acting on behalf of Frontex. They were then transferred to the coast guard boat and taken to the port of Catanzaro, ANSA reported.
Meanwhile, a towing company was contracted to attempt to rescue the ship. A tugboat arrived and took the four remaining crew members — including the captain — on board before beginning to tow the ship toward Crotone. But, according to ANSA, bad weather made the process difficult, as did the position of the yacht, which was tilted into the water.
Eventually, the tug boat abandoned the yacht, and it sank into the Gulf of Squillace. The coast guard took the remaining crew members to Catanzaro.
It’s not the first time a sinking yacht has captured the Internet’s attention. In May, rapper Cardi B posted footage on social media of a yacht sinking near her hotel while she was on vacation in an unknown location. The artist could be heard screaming as she asked if there wasn’t a “big boat that could save it.” Eventually, she said “bye-bye” as it disappeared into the water. She later clarified that no one was on board.
The same month, passersby watched as another multimillion-dollar yacht, the “Rendevous,” sank in Torquay Harbor, a marina in southwestern England, after a fire broke out onboard. Authorities warned of potential air and water pollution as the yacht carried about nine metric tons of diesel.
And earlier this month, the 145-foot “Aria SF” caught fire off the Balearic island of Formentera in Spain in an incident that was also captured on camera and shared widely on social media. Those on board were evacuated, and no one was hurt, the Guardian reported. The roughly $23 million yacht had reportedly just been delivered to its owner. | 2022-08-24T11:29:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Video captures superyacht sinking off the coast of Italy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/superyacht-sinking-italy-video/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/superyacht-sinking-italy-video/ |
A giant slide unexpectedly sent kids flying – and inspired a viral rap
Gmac Cash raps that the $1 ride is ‘like jumping off a roof’ — and you can even ‘lose a tooth’
The Belle Isle Park giant slide was temporarily shut down after kids slid down at unusually high speeds. (Michigan Department of Natural Resources )
When a giant slide reopened in Detroit last week after a two-year hiatus, videos of children cascading down the 40-foot structure at high speeds generated both laughter and genuine concern.
The six-lane slide was open for only about half the day before park officials closed it over safety issues. But the clips went viral — as did one local rapper’s rhythmic public-service announcement.
“You can break your back, on the giant slide,” Gmac Cash raps in his newest release. “You can even break your neck, on the giant slide. You can even bump your head, on the giant slide.”
Gmac adds that the $1 ride is “like jumping off a roof” — and “you can lose a tooth, on the giant slide.”
Fans placed the song over clips of kids flying off the slide’s slopes in potato sacks. One video racked up more than 750,000 views by early Wednesday. Actor Lamorne Morris, who guest-hosted Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” featured a clip of the song on the show, saying: “I am so sorry, Beyoncé. That is the jam of the summer.”
Gmac, 29, is a Detroit native who’s gone viral for other songs based on news events, including “Coronavirus,” which has more than 4 million views on YouTube.
“I’m like the voice of Detroit,” he told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “Because anything that happens in the city, I’ll do a song about it.”
He had not planned to do a song about the giant slide, but the requests kept pouring in.
He relented, he said, and laid down the track in a matter of minutes. And “it just went crazy,” he said.
The song is also based on his personal experiences with the slide. As a kid, he estimates he rode down the giant slide “over 100 times,” though he remembers a less intimidating structure back then.
“It was real pretty, really yellow and blue,” he said. “But now it just looks like a rusty building or something.”
First erected in 1967 in Detroit’s Belle Isle Park, the slide was replaced years later with a similar structure, the Detroit Free Press reported at the time.
The slide closed in 2020 when the pandemic started. But when it reopened last weekend, it quickly became clear something was amiss. Children were coming down the slide at unusually high speeds and getting tossed into the air on each slope, causing some to crash hard onto the metal structure. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources, which runs the park, said in a statement to news outlets last week that there were no injuries.
The riders might have been accelerated by a fresh coat of wax on the slide, the Free Press reported. Park officials said in a Facebook post on Sunday that they “scrubbed down the surface and started to spray a little water on the slide between rides to help control the speed.”
The slide will reopen Friday, the officials said in a statement that included a video on how to slide down properly. Riders must be at least 4 feet tall, fit their whole bodies into a potato sack and then lean forward the whole way down the slide, the post says.
Gmac says he plans to go down the slide this weekend. He has no fear.
“You got to stay focused and leaning forward,” he said, adding that it’s “just like riding a bike.” | 2022-08-24T12:10:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gmac Cash raps song about Detroit’s giant slide after viral videos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/giant-slide-detroit-rapper-gmac/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/giant-slide-detroit-rapper-gmac/ |
The British photographer was wounded four times while covering the war and inspired Dennis Hopper’s character in “Apocalypse Now”
By Matt Schudel
British photographer Tim Page surrounded by children at a coffee stand in Cambodia, in 1991. (JEFF WIDENER/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
“I’d heard about him even before I came to Vietnam (‘Look him up. If he’s still alive’),” journalist Michael Herr wrote in “Dispatches,” his powerful 1977 book about the Vietnam War. “I’d heard so much about him that I might have felt that I knew him if so many people hadn’t warned me, ‘There’s just no way to describe him for you. Really, no way.’”
Herr was writing about Tim Page, a renegade British photojournalist who was known for getting so close to the action that he was wounded four times. Once, after a U.S. patrol boat he was aboard was attacked — by U.S. planes and by both South Vietnamese soldiers and North Vietnamese-allied Viet Cong guerrillas — Mr. Page was evacuated to a hospital, where more than 300 pieces of shrapnel were removed from his body.
Vietnam War reporter Michael Herr, who helped write ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ dies at 76
Mr. Page, who published his photographs and recollections in several books and sought to keep alive the legacy of colleagues who never came back, died Aug. 24 his home in Bellingen, Australia. He was 78 and the cause was pancreatic cancer, said his friend and fellow photographer, Stephen Dupont.
In Vietnam, Mr. Page rode his motorcycle to the front lines and climbed aboard helicopters to take photographs that showed the dust flying beneath the rotors, the desolation of dispossessed Vietnamese villagers, the gurneys laden with fallen soldiers. His pictures were featured in Life magazine, Time, Paris Match and other journals.
When he returned from the battlefield, his house in old Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) was the headquarters for nonstop parties, fueled by huge amounts of marijuana, LSD and opium, as rock albums blared at high volume.
If Mr. Page was “crazy and ambitious,” in Herr’s words, he was also a quick-learning, self-taught photographer with a deep-seated desire to portray the sorrow and futility of war.
Irreverent and cynical, Mr. Page could be annoying to U.S. military officials, but he earned the respect of the grunts on the ground because he was close to their age and walked every muddy step alongside them.
“I have no feeling about it,” he told Vice magazine. “I should have feeling. It was just a really bad night. I had no choice. … I’ve never had to use a weapon again.”
In 1966, after a grenade exploded near Mr. Page, he was taken to a hospital by his closest friend in Vietnam, photographer Sean Flynn, the son of movie star Errol Flynn. Fragments of the grenade were pulled from Mr. Page’s face. The next year, after the patrol boat was sunk beneath him and its captain was killed, Mr. Page left Vietnam to recuperate. After his wounds had healed, he covered the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War before returning to Vietnam in 1968.
In April 1969, while on assignment for Time and Life, Mr. Page was aboard a helicopter that landed to rescue wounded U.S. soldiers. He followed a sergeant out of the chopper to pick up the wounded. The sergeant stepped on a land mine and lost both legs.
He reached a field hospital, where a piece of plastic was placed in his skull. He lost a portion of his brain the size of an orange. He spent time at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington as one of its few civilian (and foreign) patients, then was transferred to a rehabilitation facility in New York for months.
“I used to sit and scratch off my own blood and brains from the interstices of the Leicas,” Mr. Page wrote in a 1988 autobiography, “Page After Page,” “though they never looked really clean again.''
In April 1970, while still recovering from his wounds, Mr. Page learned that Flynn and another U.S. photographer, Dana Stone, had been captured in Cambodia. They were never seen again.
Mr. Page spent the 1970s in a fog of drugs — LSD, in particular — while living in the United States. He moved back to his native England in 1979 and later received a $125,000 settlement from Time-Life, for which he was freelancing when he was nearly killed.
Pictures from “Requiem” have been exhibited in museums in the United States, Europe and Vietnam, and the book won a George Polk Award for journalism. It also received the Robert Capa Gold Medal, presented by the Overseas Press Club of America in honor of the renowned war photographer who said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” (Capa died when he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam while covering the First Indochina War, also known as the French Indochina War.)
“I sat in the hotel in New York the night we got the Capa” award, Mr. Page told the Sydney Herald in 2005, “and I burst into … tears. What an honor. Capa was killed on my 10th birthday in 1954.”
At 17, Mr. Page left a note telling his parents that he was “leaving home for Europe and perhaps navy and hence the world.” He made his way from Europe to Pakistan and eventually Thailand, working in a brewery, as a cook and as a smuggler of hashish and cigarettes. He taught English and sold encyclopedias and lightbulbs.
In “Page After Page” — one of more than 10 books he published — Mr. Page said he could arrange drug deals in multiple languages by the time he was 18.
He was working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Laos and taking pictures on the side when his photos of an attempted Laotian coup were published. He received a call from United Press International’s Vietnam bureau chief, asking, “Hey kid, would you like a job?” Forty-eight hours later, Mr. Page was in Saigon.
He was married at least three times and had a son, but a complete list of survivors could not be confirmed immediately.
In recent years, Mr. Page taught at Australia’s Griffith University and often led photography seminars in Southeast Asia. His archives contained at least 750,000 images he had shot through the years, including in Vietnam and during conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
In the end, he told the British newspaper the Observer in 2001, war is “about the wastage of the human race. … Sure, you can make it look like a movie — you can make a tableau vivant out of it — but then you turn your camera, no matter how many degrees, and all you see is pure suffering. Who are the victims? Everybody who’s in a war is a victim.” | 2022-08-24T12:18:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tim Page, Vietnam War photographer, dies at 78 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/24/vietnam-war-photographer-tim-page-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/24/vietnam-war-photographer-tim-page-dies/ |
N.C. attorney general can’t be charged with crime over campaign ad — yet
A federal appeals court blocked an investigation into the state attorney general over a negative campaign ad in which he is accused of lying
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein. (Hannah Schoenbaum/AP)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has temporarily blocked an investigation into North Carolina’s attorney general over a negative campaign ad, saying the state law he’s accused of violating is likely unconstitutional.
Stein’s opponent, Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill, protested that police are responsible for processing rape kits — not prosecutors. He complained to the State Board of Elections, which found there was too much “ambiguity” to recommend charges. But the office of Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced plans to propose an indictment to a grand jury this summer, according to the court filings, prompting Stein’s campaign to file a federal lawsuit to stop her.
Freeman, a Democrat, recused herself from the investigation but has defended it, telling one reporter “the system needs to apply to all, and without bias.”
Stein maintained in court that the line from the ad — “O’Neill left 1,500 rape kits on a shelf” — was accurate, because prosecutors can encourage and assist police in clearing their evidence backlogs. (O’Neill had previously blamed the statewide backlog on Stein, who first became attorney general in 2017).
Even if the ad was false, Stein argued, it would be protected under current First Amendment doctrine. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 struck down a law criminalizing false claims of military honors, saying “falsity alone may not suffice to bring the speech outside the First Amendment.”
A federal-district court judge ruled against him earlier this month, saying “the statute advances compelling state interests in protecting against fraud and libel in elections and is narrowly tailored to serve those interests.”
The appeals panel did not conclude whether or not the First Amendment would protect a law banning false and defamatory campaign advertising. But it ruled that the North Carolina law appears to unconstitutionally sweep in political attacks that are derogatory but factual.
“The First Amendment does not permit a State to criminalize ‘true statements,’ even those made with ‘actual malice,’ ” the court wrote.
Similar laws in Minnesota and Ohio have been struck down by appellate courts.
The ruling is an injunction pending appeal; the judges are scheduled to hear arguments on the case in December. Two judges, Obama appointee Albert Diaz and Biden appointee Toby J. Heytens, endorsed the injunction. In dissent, Trump appointee Allison Jones Rushing said she would let “North Carolina’s courts construe this untested statute in the normal course if it is actually enforced.”
An attorney for the plaintiffs, who also include the consultants who made the ad and the woman who starred in it, celebrated the ruling.
“We’re gratified that the court saw the merit in hitting the pause button ... so that they can consider the First Amendment implications of permitting criminal prosecutions for speech concerning important public issues,” attorney Pressly Millen said in an email.
An attorney for Freeman did not immediately return a request for comment. | 2022-08-24T12:40:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fourth Circuit blocks enforcement of N.C. law against A.G. Josh Stein - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/nc-stein-fourth-circuit-ad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/nc-stein-fourth-circuit-ad/ |
Len Dawson, quarterback who led Chiefs to Super Bowl IV win, dies at 87
Len Dawson takes part in passing drills with Kansas City Chiefs teammates in January 1970 before Super Bowl IV in New Orleans. (Anonymous/AP)
Len Dawson, a Hall of Fame quarterback who picked apart defenses with relentless accuracy for 19 seasons and led the Kansas City Chiefs to an upset victory over the powerful Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV in 1970, died Aug. 24 at 87.
The family announced the death in a statement. Mr. Dawson, who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, entered hospice care earlier this month in Kansas City, Mo.
Mr. Dawson’s career statistics — 28,711 yards and 239 touchdowns — place him among the all-time elite quarterbacks and part of a founding generation of golden-armed passers that helped change the game. Mr. Dawson and his rivals over the years, including Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Joe Namath and Sonny Jurgensen, built pass-oriented offenses that were embraced by many fans and made big-yardage throws and acrobatic catches staples of highlight reels.
Mr. Dawson’s controlled style on the field earned him the nickname “Lenny the Cool” — nearly always appearing poised under pressure and throwing on the run even while dodging tacklers. His No. 16 jersey was retired by the Chiefs in 1987 and remains popular among the team’s fans. A hoodie worn in 2018 by Chiefs superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes had a classic photo from Super Bowl I in 1967, showing Mr. Dawson taking a deep drag of a cigarette with a green bottle of Fresca at his feet during halftime.
The Green Bay Packers led the Chiefs, 14-10, at halftime. Few expected it to be that close.
Len Dawson smoked his way through the first Super Bowl. The photos are priceless.
Mr. Dawson and the Chiefs were representing the upstart American Football League, which was formed in 1960 as a competitor to the decades-old National Football League. The AFL had siphoned away fans, lured away some NFL stars and brought football to new places such as Kansas City. A truce was reached in 1966 to merge in 1970.
In the meantime, the champions of each league would play for bragging rights. That first title game, held Jan. 15, 1967, in Los Angeles, was widely expected to be a rout by the Packers. The Chiefs kept it close for two quarters — including a seven-yard touchdown pass by Mr. Dawson — to gain some grudging respect from those who considered the AFL a lower brand of football with castoff players.
In the third quarter, Mr. Dawson made a costly error. A wobbly pass was picked off and returned 50 yards by future Hall of Fame defensive back Willie Wood, setting up a Packers touchdown en route to a 35-10 win.
After the loss, Mr. Dawson made few remarks to reporters, saying only that the Chiefs could do better.
Before Super Bowl III in January 1969, Namath boldly predicted his New York Jets from the AFL would beat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts. The Jets did just that in a 16-7 upset. A year later, after missing several games with a knee injury, Mr. Dawson returned to action to lead Kansas City to Super Bowl IV against the Minnesota Vikings. He and the Chiefs wanted to show that the Jets’ victory wasn’t a fluke and that the AFL teams could compete on equal terms in a combined league.
Adding to the drama was a federal probe that briefly touched Mr. Dawson. A week before the game, leaks to the media said Mr. Dawson’s name and phone number were found with Detroit gambling figure Donald “Dice” Dawson (no relation), who had been arrested by IRS agents investigating possible fraudulent tax returns. Namath and several players on other teams were also linked to the gambler.
In a packed news conference on the Tuesday before the game, Mr. Dawson said Dice Dawson was only a “casual acquaintance.” They had chatted by phone, Mr. Dawson said, to discuss the quarterback’s knee injury earlier in the season and the death of Mr. Dawson’s father in 1969. “Gentlemen, this is all I have to say,” Mr. Dawson concluded. “I have told you everything I know.”
Coach Hank Stram then kept Mr. Dawson stashed away from the media.
Investigators never asked Mr. Dawson to testify and no further action was taken. Dice Dawson pleaded guilty to illegal gambling charges and served jail time. Dice Dawson, who died in 2012, told author Dan Moldea for his 1989 book “Interference — How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football” that he was involved in NFL point-shaving schemes, but there was no mention of Mr. Dawson.
It was rainy and 61 degrees in New Orleans at kickoff for Super Bowl IV on Jan. 11, 1970. The weather appeared to favor a running game and give an added edge to Minnesota with its stingy defense known as the “Purple People Eaters.” The Vikings’s starting quarterback, Joe Kapp, also was known for his ability to barrel down the field for rushing yards.
The Chiefs got on the board first with a 48-yard field goal by Jan Stenerud — a Super Bowl distance record that would stand for 24 years — and led 16-0 at halftime.
The Vikings came back to make it 16-7 in the third quarter. Then Mr. Dawson led an 82-yard drive that put the game away.
“Come on, Lenny,” shouted Stram from the sideline. “Pump it in there, baby. Just keep matriculatin’ the ball down the field, boys!”
With the ball near midfield, Mr. Dawson flicked a short pass to his favorite target, receiver Otis Taylor, at the Minnesota 41-yard line. Taylor broke a tackle and sprinted down the sideline for a 46-yard touchdown.
“That’s it, boys,” yelled Stram.
Mr. Dawson was named the game’s most valuable player. Sports Illustrated wrote: “Between Stram and Dawson, the Chiefs showed Minnesota everything but mercy in this performance.”
“You don’t get up here by yourself. You don’t do it alone,” Mr. Dawson said as he was inducted in 1987 to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. “You need an awful lot of help.”
‘Seventh Son’
Leonard Ray Dawson was born in Alliance, Ohio, on June 20, 1935, and was a star three-sport athlete — football, track and basketball — in high school. He often liked to say he had luck as the “seventh son of a seventh son.”
He chose to play college ball for Purdue, in West Lafayette, Ind., partly because of the recruiting bonds built with Stram, who was then an assistant coach for the Boilermakers. As a sophomore in 1954, Mr. Dawson led the NCAA in pass efficiency and gained national attention as Purdue upset Notre Dame to end its 13-game winning streak.
After graduating in 1957, he was the No. 5 overall draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers but was traded to the Cleveland Browns in 1959, never getting much playing time with either team. In 1962, he was reunited with Stram, who was head coach of the Dallas Texans in the AFL. The team moved to Kansas City in 1963 to become the Chiefs.
Mr. Dawson led the Texans and Chiefs to three league championships, in 1962, 1966 and 1969 before the merger with the NFL.
Mr. Dawson’s wife of 24 years, Jacqueline Puzder, died in 1978. Survivors include his wife of 37 years, Linda Johnson, and two children from his first marriage, Lisa Anne Dawson and Len Dawson Jr. Complete information about survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. Dawson retired after the 1975 season, at age 40. He headed to the broadcast booth in a variety of roles including as an analyst for NBC Sports from 1977 to 1982 and with the Chiefs radio broadcast team from 1985 to 2017. He had already moonlighted since 1966 as sports director at KMBC-TV in Kansas City, often anchoring the sports news. He stepped down in 2009, but still did some reporting and fill-in anchoring.
In 2012, Mr. Dawson was honored with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award for his longtime contributions as a sports broadcaster, including 24 years as co-host for HBO’s “Inside the NFL.” The Chiefs named their broadcast booth in Mr. Dawson’s honor.
Mr. Dawson’s single-season Chiefs record of 30 passing touchdowns in 1964 stood until it was broken by Mahomes in 2018.
On Christmas Day 1971, Mr. Dawson became part of NFL lore in the “longest game,” a double-overtime marathon, 82 minutes and 40 seconds of play, between the Chiefs and Miami Dolphins in an AFC divisional playoff game. The Dolphins won, 27-24, on a 37-yard field goal by Garo Yepremian.
Miami’s Bob Griese threw for 263 yards. Mr. Dawson had 246. On the field were 10 other future Hall of Famers, including Miami linebacker Nick Buoniconti, who became a longtime co-host with Mr. Dawson on “Inside the NFL.” He always made a point of needling Mr. Dawson each holiday season.
“Believe me,” said Mr. Dawson in 2018, “I hear about it every [year] about what happened in that ballgame.” | 2022-08-24T12:45:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Len Dawson, Hall of Fame quarterback with Kansas City Chiefs, dies at XX - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/24/len-dawson-quarterback-chiefs-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/24/len-dawson-quarterback-chiefs-dies/ |
Teen pilot on track to set around-the-world record
Mack Rutherford would be the youngest person to fly solo around the world upon landing Wednesday in Bulgaria.
Mack Rutherford, 17, talks with the media after landing in Belgium on Tuesday near the end of his around-the-world trip. Rutherford plans to land in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Wednesday to set a Guinness World Record as the youngest person to the fly around the world solo in a small plane. (Virginia Mayo/AP)
A Belgian-British teenage pilot was on track Tuesday to become the youngest person to fly around the world solo in a small plane as he landed in southern Belgium ahead of the second-to-last leg of his global odyssey.
Mack Rutherford, who turned 17 during the journey, touched down at Buzet Airstrip near the city of Charleroi (pronounced SHAR-luh-rah), where he originally learned to fly. He’s due to land in Bulgaria on Wednesday. His aim: to displace Travis Ludlow of Britain, who was 18 when he set the record in 2021.
Rutherford is flying a Shark, one of the fastest ultralight aircraft in the world with a cruising speed reaching 186 miles per hour, which has been customized for the long journey. It’s normally a two-seater, but an extra fuel tank has been installed next to the young pilot.
It’s the same kind of aircraft used by his sister, Zara Rutherford, who was 19 when she set the world record on January 20 for the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.
“It was supposed to take between two to three months, and it’s been five months now,” he told the Associated Press. Administrative formalities in Crete and Dubai “because of paperwork issues, visas, permits, things like that,” caused the delay.
The flight took him through Africa and the Persian Gulf region — where he faced periods of extreme heat — then to India, China, South Korea and Japan. From there, he headed to Alaska and down the United States’ West Coast to Mexico. The teen then headed north again along the U.S. East Coast to Canada, across the Atlantic via Iceland, to Britain and Belgium.
Their dad, Sam Rutherford, said his two children have set a shining example.
“They have got around the world safely, effectively, professionally,” he said. “And they’ve shown to other youngsters that you don’t have to be 18 even, and certainly not 30, to make a difference and do something and follow your dreams.” | 2022-08-24T12:58:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teen pilot on track to set around-the-world record - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/24/teen-pilot-around-the-world/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/08/24/teen-pilot-around-the-world/ |
Mayor’s live-streamed toppling of Confederate marker prompts investigation
A still image from video shot by Mayor Mondale Robinson on Aug. 21, 2022, showing a tractor driver as he knocks over a Confederate monument in Enfield, N.C. (Courtesy of Mondale Robinson)
As the Confederate monument in a North Carolina town crashed to the ground Sunday evening, Mayor Mondale Robinson remembered learning its unspoken message as a boy and thinking about it every time he walked past the marble column: You are supposed to be owned by a White person.
And he thought about his mother being forbidden from using the Whites-only drinking fountain that was built into that monument, driving home the message of the Confederate flag etched into the marble.
A generation later, Robinson — who was elected mayor of Enfield, N.C., in May — was overseeing the destruction of that monument and live-streaming it on Facebook.
“Yes sirs!” he hollered as a man driving a tractor pushed over the main column of the 10-foot monument made of Georgia marble and bronze. “Death to the Confederacy around here!”
Six days earlier, the town’s board of commissioners voted 4-1 to remove the memorial from Randolph Park. On Sunday, Robinson decided to execute the decision himself, a move that might have violated a state law outlining procedures for such monuments to be torn down. The irregular removal has thrust the town into the ongoing debate about the proper place of Confederate statues and memorials in American life.
Mondale Robinson, the mayor of Enfield, N.C., live-streamed a wheel loader pushing over a Confederate monument in the town’s Randolph Park on Aug. 21. (Video: Mondale Robinson/Facebook)
The town’s police chief, James Ayers, told the mayor that he had asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to investigate, according to Robinson. Ayers told The Washington Post that the bureau is looking into what happened to the monument but declined to say whether he requested that investigation. The state bureau did not respond to a request for comment from The Post on Tuesday, but confirmed to WNCN that an investigation is underway.
Robinson told WNCN that, even with the specter of a state investigation, he has “no regrets” about toppling the monument.
The monument, built in 1928 to honor service members who died in the Civil War and World War I, was sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which helped erect similar markers across the south.
A North Carolina law enacted in 2015 prohibits the removal or destruction of state-owned Confederate monuments or another such “object of remembrance” if it’s located on public property. It allows for several exceptions, including when monuments are privately owned or “a building inspector or similar official has determined [an object of remembrance] poses a threat to public safety because of an unsafe or dangerous condition.”
Enfield’s monument posed just such a threat, Robinson said. It could attract White nationalists, especially during one of the events celebrating the town’s role in the Underground Railroad, he said. And as a reminder of slavery and the Jim Crow South, it was a daily torment for the majority-Black city of roughly 1,850 residents that he leads.
“You cannot believe in a Constitution that says we are all equal and also believe in the Confederate constitution,” Robinson told The Post.
Confederate statues: In 2020, a renewed battle in America’s enduring Civil War
A renewed effort to remove Confederate statues, monuments and memorials flared up after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. That push followed similar efforts in the wake of a 2015 mass murder at a Black church in Charleston, S.C., and in 2017 following a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.
More than 100 Confederate memorials came down after the massacre in Charleston, The Post reported. Then, several Southern states added or tightened restrictions. South Carolina required a two-thirds supermajority of its legislature to okay a Confederate monument’s removal, a bar that the state’s Supreme Court overturned last year, the Associated Press reported. Virginia’s legislature initially made it illegal to “disturb” war monuments until Democrats won control and passed legislation that let cities and towns decide what to do with them.
Defenders of Confederate statues and monuments claim they honor Southern heritage and the soldiers who died fighting in the Civil War. Those pushing for their destruction or relocation note that most of the statues and memorials weren’t built right after the Civil War but some 50 years later in the early 20th century.
“The White Southerners will always say this is about heritage, and the Black Southerners will always say that the monuments are an insult,” Karen Cox, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who wrote a book about Confederate monuments, told The Post in 2020.
Robinson is clear about where he stands. He said the Confederate flag is “the same as the Nazi flag is to the Jewish home.”
“I don't understand how some of my White neighbors are trying to tell me the Confederate flag is about Southern heritage. That is a recreation of history. That is someone being as creative as ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or Walt Disney,” he said.
As Enfield’s statue came down, Robinson said, he recalled its past but also considered its future — or lack thereof.
“I’m also thinking about, ‘Now I can walk out my front door. Now, little Black kids could come in this park and not have that conversation about the Confederate flag ever again,’” he said. | 2022-08-24T12:58:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black N.C. mayor live-streams removal of Confederate monument - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/mayor-livestream-removal-confederate-monument/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/mayor-livestream-removal-confederate-monument/ |
5 things to know about the suspension of U.S.-China climate talks
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we're reading about how dinosaur tracks from 113 million years ago were discovered in Texas after extreme drought conditions dried up a river. 🦖 But first:
The United States and China, the world's two biggest economies and greenhouse gas emitters, are no longer talking about their mutual efforts to slow the Earth's catastrophic warming.
Beijing halted climate cooperation with Washington on Aug. 5, as it announced a raft of measures in retaliation for the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan.
Experts on international climate diplomacy are still parsing the practical implications of the pause in talks, which comes less than 100 days before the next United Nations climate summit in Egypt.
Here are answers to five pressing questions about the move, according to those experts:
1. Is competition better than cooperation?
The short answer: It might be.
The long answer: While global cooperation on climate change is still imperative, a little healthy competition between the two superpowers might actually benefit the planet.
In particular, China is expected to double down on efforts to dominate the supply chain for electric vehicles, solar panels and other green technologies after President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which seeks to displace China as a key supplier of clean tech.
“If someone said to me, 'You can have lots of interaction between the United States and China but no IRA, or you can have the IRA but less dialogue and collaboration, I would absolutely pick No. 2,” said Todd Stern, who led U.S. climate negotiations under President Barack Obama.
“The more China sees the U.S. charging in the direction of the clean energy transformation, the better that is,” Stern added.
2. Will John Kerry keep meeting with his Chinese counterpart?
The long answer: At the COP26 climate talks in Scotland last year, the U.S. and China issued a joint pledge to take “enhanced climate actions” to meet the more ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris agreement — limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
Since then, U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry has held several virtual and in-person meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua. The most recent in-person meetings occurred in Berlin in May and in Stockholm in June, according to a State Department spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Unless China changes its stance, the pair are not expected to meet again before the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November. However, Kerry's team had not yet scheduled the next meeting when Beijing suspended the talks, so they did not have to cancel or change any plans, the spokesperson said.
3. Will China still slash its methane emissions?
The short answer: Probably.
The long answer: As part of their joint pledge last year, the United States and China agreed to slash their emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas whose climate-warming power is more than 80 times that of carbon dioxide during the first 20 years in the atmosphere.
However, China has not signed on to the Global Methane Pledge, a commitment by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030.
Still, Beijing has made clear that its goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 depends on cutting all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide, said Joanna Lewis, a professor of energy and environment at Georgetown University.
“Methane is already very much on China's domestic agenda,” Lewis said.
4. Will the United States and China still launch a climate working group?
The short answer: Probably not.
The long answer: During the Obama administration, the United States and China convened a working group on climate change that was made up of policymakers and technical experts.
Although the working group was disbanded under President Donald Trump, several experts had been lobbying to reincarnate it under Biden, including Thom Woodroofe, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former climate diplomat.
The suspension of talks “almost certainly means that the climate working group that was about to be launched will not be launched,” Woodroofe said.
5. What does this mean for COP27?
The short answer: It doesn't bode well.
The long answer: COP27 is already set to occur against the backdrop of Russia's war in Ukraine, which has heightened geopolitical tensions and increased global energy prices.
The pause in U.S.-China talks could make the summit even more fractious than experts already expected, said Li Shuo, a senior adviser at Greenpeace East Asia based in Beijing.
“Restoring U.S.-China climate exchanges ahead of COP27,” he said, “is a matter of urgency.”
While Democrats and many environmental groups celebrate the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, some Indigenous and Appalachian community members are protesting a side deal that would overhaul the nation’s process for approving new energy projects, The Washington Post's Ellie Silverman reports.
To secure the support of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Democratic leadership agreed to pursue separate legislation this fall to reform the permitting process for new energy infrastructure, including fossil fuel and clean energy projects. The measure would also seek to expedite the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would transport Appalachian shale gas about 300 miles from West Virginia to Virginia.
The White House has said that disadvantaged communities were crucial in developing the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains a historic $60 billion investment in environmental justice and will help cut U.S. emissions 40 percent by 2030. But a group of Indigenous, Black and Appalachian community members are planning a rally in D.C. on Sept. 8 to protest the side deal, saying it comes at their expense.
“We’ve got to stand up. We’ve got to do something,” said Crystal Cavalier-Keck, an enrolled citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in North Carolina who has been fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline for years.
Law could lower costs of climate effects by up to $1.9 trillion, OMB says
The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law this month, could lower the costs associated with planet-warming pollution by up to $1.9 trillion by 2050, according to an analysis published Tuesday by the White House Office of Management and Budget, Andrew Freedman reports for Axios.
The analysis relied on three sets of modeling conducted by the energy research firm Rhodium Group, the climate think tank Energy Innovation and a group of Princeton University researchers.
To study the bill's potential impact after 2030, the OMB used the social cost of carbon, a key metric for assessing the harm caused by releasing 1 ton of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The OMB found that the law would contribute to savings in the form of less property damage from climate disasters, fewer negative health effects and lower energy costs.
Ancient deep-sea methane burst raises questions for our climate future
Methane stored deep in the seafloor off the coast of Africa broke free about 125,000 years ago after the ocean warmed by 12.2. degrees Fahrenheit during the Eemian period, according to research published Monday, leaving scientists scrambling to figure out what this could mean for our climate future, The Washington Post’s Chris Mooney reports.
Several scientists who reviewed the study, which was published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, said that they are not prepared to sound any major new alarms about the planet’s stores of subsea methane, but the finding underscores how little we know about how the Earth will react to global warming.
If it reaches the atmosphere, methane currently stored in the ocean could cause tremendous warming, since methane is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide for the first 20 years after it is released into the air. But it remains unclear whether the gas would be able to travel upward through the protective layer of the ocean, and whether the ancient event took place all over the world or only within the isolated area.
In the past five weeks, five instances of 1,000-year rain events have inundated parts of the United States, creating a sense of whiplash for areas that have experienced the extreme flooding after being parched by prolonged drought conditions, Matthew Cappucci reports for The Post.
The different precipitation extremes are linked to human-caused global warming, which has made the rare events more frequent and severe. For every degree Fahrenheit the planet warms, the air can hold roughly 4 percent more water, bringing higher humidity and heat indexes as well heavier instantaneous downpours. Meanwhile, droughts can also make flooding worse by killing plants, reducing soil absorption and hardening topsoil.
Although the effects of a changing climate — such as a 2-millimeter rise in sea levels annually — may seem distant or far away, these extreme weather events make clear that global warming is influencing the conditions that many Americans regularly face.
China’s summer heat wave is breaking all records — Christian Shepherd and Ian Livingston for The Post
After decades in GOP, Colo. state senator switches parties, citing climate — Jonathan Edwards for The Post
Climate change in China hikes price of rare mushroom, a delicacy in Asia — Lyric Li for The Post
What would happen if Category 5 Hurricane Andrew hit Florida today — Bob Henson for The Post
Top EU climate official Mauro Petriccione dies — Karl Mathiesen for Politico
Everyone should know that this animal exists. It's a viscacha. I feel you buddy. pic.twitter.com/AyMclCC80q
The latest: Fetterman’s stroke, Oz’s medical credentials at issue in Pa. Senate race | 2022-08-24T12:58:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 5 things to know about the suspension of U.S.-China climate talks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/5-things-know-about-suspension-us-china-climate-talks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/5-things-know-about-suspension-us-china-climate-talks/ |
This May 2, 2022, photo provided by Xingu + Network shows an illegal road inside a protected area called Terra do Meio (Middle Earth) Ecological Station in Para state, in the Brazilian Amazon. The dirt road is now just a few miles shy of connecting two of the worst areas of deforestation in the region. (Xingu + Network via AP) (Uncredited/Xingu + Network) | 2022-08-24T12:59:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crucial illegal road threatens Amazon rainforest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/crucial-illegal-road-threatens-amazon-rainforest/2022/08/24/2a498f4a-23a5-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/crucial-illegal-road-threatens-amazon-rainforest/2022/08/24/2a498f4a-23a5-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
At Northern High School, quarterback T.J. Lattimore is stepping in for a star who graduated. And that requires plenty of preparation with a thick playbook. (Craig Hudson/For the Washington Post)
Todd Lattimore Jr. remembers receiving his team’s playbook — particularly the weight of it in his hands.
It was the spring of his freshman year at Northern High School in Southern Maryland. The school had just hired Rich Holzer, and the new football coach employed the run-and-shoot offense, a rare and complex scheme for the high school level.
So on the first day of practice ahead of seven-on-seven season, Holzer gave his quarterbacks a thick packet of plays, maybe 50 in all.
“I was like ‘How am I going to remember all of this,’ ” Lattimore recalled. “I went home and told my dad and he said ‘Well, let’s get started.’… I started on Page 1 and went page by page, every moment I could.”
So began an important but overlooked task in sports: a quarterback memorizing his playbook. It’s part of what makes the role so much more than just athletic ability, and it has become a much-discussed topic after news leaked last month that the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals put a clause in Kyler Murray’s contract — and later removed it — saying their Pro Bowl QB must study four hours per week.
Increasingly, studies are being conducted and articles written about how modern teens lack the focus and commitment necessary to excel in long-term commitments, such as athletics; they are more interested in social media, video games and the like. Across the D.C. area, however, studious signal callers beg to differ.
“Sure, when everything is at your fingertips, and it takes you 20 seconds to pull up anything in the world, it can be distracting,” Mount Vernon quarterback Nate Keast said. “And these distractions, for some people, they outweigh their goals. It’s easy to get on TikTok and get that instant satisfaction. It’s a lot harder to study film, but you have to believe it will be worth it.”
When he transferred from Lewis High to the Fairfax County school last August, Keast was got a crash course of the Majors’ playbook. Different quarterbacks have different ways of memorizing concepts, and for Keast it’s all about drawing. When he can draw out a play and list his reads, he knows it will stick.
If he ever wants to see a play in action, all he needs to do is pull up his team’s Hudl page. For every distraction the internet might taunt, it also provides a valuable tool.
“When I was in high school, my coach had to drive hours to meet another high school coach to trade VHS tapes,” Mount Vernon Coach Monty Fritts, 36, said. “My kids can go online and watch every play I’ve ever coached in seven years at Mount Vernon. They can type in ‘G right’ and they can see every time we’ve ever run that play.”
Walter Johnson quarterback Charlie Blessing has a similar approach to Keast. During the season, the junior carries a notebook at all times, and with any free minute he gets he pulls it out to draw plays.
“The goal is to set yourself up so you don’t have to think,” Blessing said. “A lot of quarterback play in the moment is quickly reacting to stuff. It’s not thinking.”
At Northern, Lattimore is set to take over an offense that lit up much of the region last season. Led by senior quarterback Zach Crounse, the run and shoot gave defenses fits, and the Patriots rode it to their first Maryland 3A championship.
The program’s hopes for a title defense this season rest in part on the transition to Lattimore under center. When it comes to studying, the team has a Google Classroom set up for all of its players, and it features a multidimensional breakdown of every play in the offense.
For every play there is a written description, coach’s notes, film of Northern running it in past seasons and film of a professional or college team running it as well. Sometimes there is even video of a well-known run-and-shoot employer, such as former Hawaii and SMU coach June Jones or longtime assistant Mouse Davis, explaining the concept.
“I tell the kids that there’s no reason for them not to understand the assignment,” Holzer said. “Are you going to be perfect at the technique? No, and that’s our job to refine that. But the knowledge portion of it … you should have that once we go into fall training camp.”
Mostly, it’s about effort. Keiland Cooper, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine, said the biggest key to memorizing something such as a playbook is time spent. While the attention span of a young person today faces more stressors than ever before, Cooper says the idea it is shrinking is likely not true.
“It’s about practice, like anything else,” said Cooper, who works at the school’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. “Just like you spend a lot of time in the gym working on those muscles, you have to spend a lot of time with that playbook.”
Lattimore spends the most time with his playbook in the late spring and early summer, once his lacrosse season ends. Seven-on-seven exhibitions, which take place around that time, have become an integral part of installing scheme. In that period, Lattimore spends about 90 minutes to two hours a day working on his playbook.
“It’s made me a better studier, and probably a better person all around,” he said. “It teaches you about time, dedication and putting the work in.”
As a backup quarterback last season, he spent time at defensive end and was struck by the differences in position. Defense required homework, too, but during the game it called for a much more simplistic, almost primal approach. Keast has also noted how singular the role of high school quarterback can be, and the strange transition that comes at the end of every fall.
“It has to be the most stress-relieving feeling: When it comes to track season I just go to practice and go home,” Keast said. “With football, you have to cram all this stuff into your head because the smallest mistake can and will cost you the game.”
But in those moments when all that extra homework pays off — when a quarterback and his teammates know a play front to back and then run it to perfection on a Friday night — the reward is ultimate gratification.
“It’s the most satisfying thing of all time,” Keast said. “People talk about the most satisfying feelings in the world, but most of them have never thrown a perfect post route in a high school football game before.” | 2022-08-24T12:59:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For high school QBs, learning playbook is a new form of summer school - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/high-school-qbs-learning-playbook-is-new-form-summer-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/high-school-qbs-learning-playbook-is-new-form-summer-school/ |
7 CIRCE (Back Bay, $16.99). By Madeline Miller. This follow-up to “The Song of Achilles” is about the goddess who turns Odysseus’s men to swine.
9 NOVEMBER 9 (Atria, $16.99). By Colleen Hoover. A novelist and his muse meet once every year, leaving her to question whether his motives are for love or commercial success.
10 BEACH READ (Berkley, $16). By Emily Henry. Two writers who are summer neighbors challenge each other to write novels in each other’s genres.
7 FOX AND I (Spiegel & Grau, $18). By Catherine Raven. A memoir by a woman who follows the life of a wild fox that visits her property every afternoon.
8 HOW TO FOCUS (Parallax Press, $9.95). By Thich Nhat Hanh, with illustrations by Jason DeAntonis. Meditations for mindfulness to enhance the power of concentration.
9 TALKING TO STRANGERS (Back Bay, $18.99). By Malcolm Gladwell. An examination of why humans are so bad at recognizing liars and lies.
10 THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE (Crown, $20). By Erik Larson. A look at how Winston Churchill led Britain through World War II that explores his political gamesmanship and his family dynamics.
3 WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Putnam, $9.99). By Delia Owens. A young outcast finds herself at the center of a local murder trial
5 THE WAY OF KINGS (Tor, $9.99). By Brandon Sanderson. The first volume in the Stormlight Archive series.
7 SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (Laurel Leaf, $7.99). By Kurt Vonnegut. The classic anti-war novel that centers around the firebombing of Dresden
10 THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (Del Rey, $7.99). By Douglas Adams. Just as Earth is demolished, mild-mannered Arthur Dent escapes to the galactic freeway. | 2022-08-24T13:37:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Post paperback bestsellers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-paperback-bestsellers/2022/08/23/d58ac700-2307-11ed-87c7-c807d6645a61_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-paperback-bestsellers/2022/08/23/d58ac700-2307-11ed-87c7-c807d6645a61_story.html |
'I definitely saw a different Dwayne in Pittsburgh,' said wide receiver Steven Sims, who also played with Haskins in Washington. (Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
PITTSBURGH — For a moment, Mike Sullivan’s voice goes soft. The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterbacks coach is sitting on a bench beside the team’s practice fields when the randomness and strangeness and unfairness of Dwayne Haskins’s death suddenly hits him. His eyes water. He grasps for words.
“Everything was coming in place for him,” he finally says, “and then it tragically ends.”
When the Steelers signed Haskins in January 2021, Sullivan had heard the stories. He knew how in two years Haskins had gone from being Washington’s first-round pick in the 2019 NFL draft to getting released after wasting several chances to be the team’s starting quarterback. He had heard Haskins was unreliable, rarely studying or preparing for games. And yet, for the 15 months Haskins was in Pittsburgh, he had been everything a coach could want: driven, diligent and enthusiastic, a candidate to replace the recently retired Ben Roethlisberger.
“He was zeroing in on the chance to start,” Sullivan says.
Then, in the early morning hours of April 9, Haskins was hit by a dump truck and killed while trying to cross Interstate 595 near the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport. He had been working with teammates in Florida for a few days, but months later, some of those players still struggle to make sense of what happened.
The Florida Highway Patrol is expected to release a full report on Haskins’s death soon. For now, the only clues come from a Broward County medical examiner’s report with the blunt and gruesome description of “Dump Truck vs. Pedestrian”: a night out at a club, a rental car with an empty gas tank, an apparent search for fuel while a woman was left waiting in the car. Haskins’s blood alcohol content was 2.5 times the legal limit in Florida, and a urine test showed the drug Ketamine was in his system.
Left behind is the memory of a player who seemed poised to change the trajectory of his career.
“I definitely saw a different Dwayne in Pittsburgh,” says wide receiver Steven Sims, who played with Haskins in Washington before coming to the Steelers last season.
Haskins could have been one of the great stories of this NFL season, the first-round washout intent on seizing his second chance. Instead, Sullivan smiles sadly as he talks about the quarterback who regularly visited his office with a laugh, a story and a long list of questions about a game he finally wanted to learn the right way.
A short drive away from the Steelers’ facility, Haskins’s wife of barely more than a year, Kalabrya, talks on the phone from the house they got together high on the hill above the downtown towers and the football stadium. On the walls around her are the framed motivational quotes Dwayne had put up to inspire himself. Before her are the self-help books he had been reading before his death.
“He believed in second chances,” she says. “He believed in redemption, and he wanted to show everyone that.”
Haskins had started for only one season at Ohio State before entering the draft, and many worried he wasn’t ready for the NFL. Partly for this reason, then-Washington coach Jay Gruden did not want to choose him with the 15th overall pick but was overruled by owner Daniel Snyder, many familiar with the decision said, because Snyder liked the fact that Haskins, who went to the Bullis School in Potomac, Md., could be a local star.
Granted the No. 7 jersey, the same number worn by Joe Theismann, the franchise’s career passing leader, Haskins stumbled through 13 starts in parts of two seasons, showing glimpses of promise offset by mistakes that perplexed coaches and teammates. He famously wasn’t available to take the last snap of his first victory as a starter because he was taking a selfie with fans in the stands.
Few knew what to make of his blithe, almost silly demeanor, sometimes interpreting his easy smile and constant laughs as a lack of caring. At times, he seemed awed by the NFL. Friends who played the Madden video game with him say he insisted on choosing new teams every day, surrounding himself with stars from around the league, almost as if he couldn’t believe he was playing with them.
He had an obsession with Tom Brady, agonizing to his friend Joey White about what he would say to Brady when Washington played the Patriots his rookie season. “I don’t want to be a fanboy,” he told White. Later, Haskins had a mural painted on the wall of his home gym of he and Brady shaking hands after that game. He told people he dreamed of having a career like Brady’s.
But Haskins’s passion for football never revealed itself in Washington. Ron Rivera replaced Gruden, and the new coaches became equally annoyed with what they perceived a lack of commitment. A week before the end of the 2020 season, Rivera released him.
Some around Haskins wondered if he was distracted by friends and family in Washington. He was very close to his parents and sister, but many speculated that his father, Dwayne Sr., had too strong of an influence — a suspicion fueled by the Bible verses and messages Haskins Sr. regularly would send to reporters and others around Haskins, which often seemed tailored to comment on whatever controversy surrounded the younger Haskins at the time. Dwayne Haskins Sr. did not respond to a request to talk about his son for this story
Former Washington cornerback Shawn Springs, who befriended the Haskinses when Dwayne was in middle school and helped the family move to Maryland so Haskins could attend Bullis, says Haskins’s childhood was different from a lot of pro football players’ and that Haskins sometimes felt “like an awkward prep school kid,” when around the team.
“His personality may have been misunderstood at times because [his journey was] not always the normal path you think a cool kid should have,” Springs says.
Away from football, Haskins was warm, open and consumed with a desire to help others, even as his NFL career was falling apart. One of his closest recent friends was White, a high school student from Connecticut when they first met, who sells shoes and athletic gear to athletes and musicians. White had reached out to Haskins before the 2019 draft, the way he does to many rising professionals, and Haskins responded not only by purchasing a jacket but by buying more and more clothes and cultivating a relationship.
White came to see Haskins as “a father figure,” who tried to help White’s business grow, messaging NFL players he barely knew to tell them about White’s shoes and filming a video in which he picked out a game day outfit during his rookie season.
Var Turner, an acquaintance of White’s, shot that video, and Haskins later befriended Turner too, having him shoot photos and videos of Haskins’s pandemic workouts and inviting him to his Virginia home, where they sat on couches, played video games and talked about life. He commissioned Turner to be a sort of personal photographer and videographer, upgrading his lenses and urging him to quit a job he hated to pursue photography full-time.
“He changed my life,” says Turner, who landed a part-time job shooting game day social media video for the NFL not long after Haskins got him the lenses. “He gave me an opportunity; he gave me hope. I was at the lowest point of my life before I met him.”
Kalabrya and Dwayne met through mutual friends on March 26, 2020, just days into the pandemic. A former Michigan State basketball player, she didn’t follow football and had no idea who Haskins was. She asked him what he did. He told her he was “God’s prophet.” Something about his answer entranced her. He smiled a lot. His words were kind.
He told her that the moment he saw her it was “love at first sight.” She said she felt the same way about him. She went to his home not far from Washington’s practice facility in Ashburn, Va., and hung out all summer. With the world shut down around them, they talked “15 hours a day.” Their first out-of-the-house date came five months later.
“It was very poetic, and it was beautiful on so many levels,” Kalabrya said of those early weeks together. “We liked spending time so much with each other. I never felt like that with anyone before in my life. It was awesome.”
She wonders why no one around Washington could see the Haskins she saw.
“I feel he was misunderstood because he didn’t bother to explain himself,” she said. “He never cared to clear it up. It wasn’t important to him what the media thought about him.
“Dwayne didn’t have time for misery or negativity.”
Finding focus
Haskins idolized Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin. Even when he was still on Washington’s roster, Haskins would tell Kalabrya he wished he was playing for Tomlin instead. He was excited when Pittsburgh called in January 2021 and seemed in a better place mentally.
A few months after Haskins signed with the Steelers, he and Kalabrya quietly got married. His social circle tightened. According to several people, Haskins and his father stopped speaking regularly around the time he went to Pittsburgh — a rift that apparently lingered, given that Kalabrya and Dwayne’s parents held separate funerals for him.
No one would say what led to the split between father and son. Kalabrya’s attorney wouldn’t let her answer questions about Dwayne’s parents. The best hint comes from a statement put out by Dwayne’s parents explaining they wouldn’t attend his Pittsburgh funeral because they “have never met or spoken to the wife and didn’t want our son’s funeral service to be the place we met her for the first time.”
Whatever the reason, Haskins appeared to be engaged when he showed up to the Steelers’ practice facility in the early spring of 2021.
“Once I met him it was like ‘Wow, this guy, he’s got something,’” Sullivan said. “He really comes across as sincere and recognizing his shortcomings and some of the things he wished he had done differently in Washington. Early on, it was clear to me that he was focused on being the best player and the best man that he can be.
“He was very forthcoming. There was never a sense of him [saying], ‘Hey, I got it figured out, Coach.’ He told me: ‘I’m ready to be molded. I’m ready to be led and be the best player I can be … [and] he lived it.”
Sullivan’s office at the Steelers’ facility also serves as the quarterbacks’ meeting room, and Haskins visited almost every day during the two offseasons he spent in Pittsburgh. Sometimes he watched film. Sometimes he studied offenses. Sometimes the two men just talked, not about football but about things going on in Haskins’s life, the books he was reading, the mindfulness apps he had put on his phone.
Haskins confessed he had made mistakes in Washington, admitting that he didn’t prepare and neglected to do the extra work required of quarterbacks.
“He admitted that there were some corners cut, and hindsight being 20-20, he would have done differently,” Sullivan said.
Haskins appeared to enjoy the chance to reset his career, learning behind Ben Roethlisberger while not having the pressure of being the starter before understanding all a quarterback needs to do. He was activated for only one game during the 2021 season, but Roethlisberger’s retirement in January of this year created an opening that Haskins seemed determined to seize, even after the team signed former Chicago Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky. After a short vacation with Kalabrya at season’s end, Haskins returned to Sullivan’s office quietly studying film and typing into his phone and tablet.
One day, Sullivan’s phone buzzed with a text from Haskins. Attached was a long notes file in which Haskins had analyzed, in extensive detail, every pass he had thrown in the NFL — every preseason and regular season game in Washington and in the previous preseason in Pittsburgh. Sullivan had not asked for this. Haskins had broken down the plays on his own.
But what amazed Sullivan was the detail.
“Bad footwork here,” Sullivan said, running through some of Haskins’s comments. “This was a bad decision. I can’t be greedy. I got to go ahead and not lock my hip with my targets. I got to open my hip up. …”
“It was amazing,” Sullivan concluded.
Mystery and lament
The Steelers’ informal passing camp in Boca Raton, Fla., not far from Trubisky’s home, was intended to be a casual bonding session before Pittsburgh’s offseason practices began, with workouts during the day and chances to hang out at night.
The night of April 8, with the final workout the next day, several Steelers went out in Miami. According to the medical examiner’s report, Haskins went to a club “possibly in Miami” with a friend identified only as “Joey” (two people with knowledge of the situation said this “Joey” is not Joey White). The two, the report says, “drank heavily” then got into an altercation “before separating.”
Sometime around 6:30 the next morning, a nurse on her way to work driving west on Interstate 595, close to where the highway passes over Interstate 95, saw a man stumbling on the side of the highway, nearly bumping into her car.
“Something seemed terribly wrong,” the woman says in a telephone interview, requesting anonymity because the memory remains traumatic. “He was kind of swaying around in the road.”
The woman pulled over, got out of her car and turned around to look for the man. She found him moments later, lying in the road, dressed in black pants and a black T-shirt. The autopsy report said he had a women’s black and white jacket under his left arm. Two other motorists had stopped traffic, and she knelt and felt for a pulse. She couldn’t find one. She sensed a crowd gathering. Highway patrol officers quickly appeared.
At 6:47 a.m., the officers pronounced Haskins dead. He was 24, less than a month from his 25th birthday.
She remembers looking down at him, prone on the pavement, stunned by how young he seemed.
“Just a baby,” she thought.
Kalabrya does not talk about the accident; it’s another subject her attorney won’t let her address. But she placed a 911 call from Pittsburgh around the time Haskins was hit, telling the dispatcher Dwayne had called her from his car to say he had run out of gas and was going to look for a station. He promised to call her after he got back to the car but hadn’t. Her subsequent calls to him went unanswered.
She also told the dispatcher that Haskins’s phone gave a location of Marina Mile Blvd. and Southwest 19th Terrace, which meant he had walked more than a mile along the off-ramps connecting the two freeways or wandered through several blocks of a residential neighborhood before climbing onto the roadway.
The medical examiner’s report does not say where officers found Haskins’s car, but it says when they arrived, they found a woman inside. According to the report, the woman told the officers she had been with Haskins since 7 the previous night. Haskins’s friends and teammates say they don’t know who she is or how she came to be in the car.
While the medical examiner’s report quotes a Steelers security official as saying Haskins would drink heavily on occasion, several people who knew him at different times in his adult life say they rarely saw him drink anything at all.
“That wasn’t his style,” Sims says.
Later that morning, as news of Haskins’s death spread, the Steelers who were in Florida gathered at Trubisky’s house, trying to grasp what happened.
In Pittsburgh, Tomlin told his assistant coaches.
“It was very hard to deal with,” Sullivan said. “For the longest time, it was an unbelievable sense of shock and sadness.”
Offseason workouts came, and the Steelers gave Haskins’s locker to another player. All tangible signs of him soon dissipated. Left was only the memory of a player who appeared on the verge of salvaging a broken career — and the tormenting question of how it all ended on a Florida highway. | 2022-08-24T13:54:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dwayne Haskins was on the road back with Steelers before a tragic turn - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/dwayne-haskins-death-steelers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/dwayne-haskins-death-steelers/ |
Hi Jules: Is parenting “easier” in today’s age of devices, gaming systems, etc.? At what point does the exposure become detrimental?
My cousin has two boys (8 and 11) who are dependent on some kind of screen in front of them almost at all times. At the dinner table (in public or at home), at family gatherings, etc. I don't remember having that kind of dependency for entertainment at that age, but I know they have a lot more targeted content at their disposal whether that's games, YouTube videos, movies, etc.
Part of it, I think, is their parents enabling that behavior. It’s sad to watch, but it’s not anyone’s place to tell someone how to raise their kids. Although, there has to be some advocating for not sticking to one type of “electronic pacifier.” The only thing I can do is live and learn from it when I become a parent. I think keeping screens 100 percent away from young kids is impossible, but it has to come down to the parent’s moderation for what they want their kids exposed to, right?
— Jake
Jake: Neither of us come from a place of experience, so I want to make that clear upfront. But I don’t believe that parenting is “easier” in today’s age of devices. These devices provide kids with distraction and take pressure off parents for a moment in time, but there’s still a lot that we don’t know about the long-term effects of our increasingly indulgent relationship with them.
For example: The rise of social media coincides with the rise in mental health issues among teens over the past decade. This certainly isn’t easy for parents.
You’re right that it isn’t realistic to keep this next generation away from screens completely. These are tools that have an increasing role in our social lives, education and careers. It’s not bizarre for your cousin to allow their kids to use them.
Simultaneously, there’s a strong possibility that these kids will remember nothing but an extreme relationship with these devices, which becomes very detrimental in helping them create a healthy balance between real-life and digital. Today’s platforms are wired to hold people’s attention for as long as possible, and in turn, get them hooked so that they’re itching to come back for more — no matter the age.
It’s important for parents to be intentional about this reality and create memorable experiences that are device-free for their kids. This can be for a certain amount of time before bed, during Saturday morning walks, or even throughout an annual vacation. These moments will become personal points of reference that allow their kids to evaluate how and why time separate from devices is valuable.
You’re right that it’s not your place to tell your cousin how to raise their kids, but I do think that you play a role in modeling good behavior. Whether it be prompting conversation at the dinner table about the kids’ interests, or joining them in physical activity and traditional games at family gatherings — you hold responsibility as an adult figure in the family.
Pushing the kids out of their comfort zone might create a negative connotation toward you in the short term, but it will be something they learn to deeply appreciate in the long term.
There is only so much that you can do in this situation. It is not your fault if you’re putting in the effort and they’re just not receptive. As you stated, the only thing you can do is live and learn from it if you become a parent. | 2022-08-24T13:54:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Jules: I think my cousin's kids spend too much time on screens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/24/ask-jules-terpak-screentime-parenting-advice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/24/ask-jules-terpak-screentime-parenting-advice/ |
Their PMS mood swings were terrible. It was actually PMDD.
The Post heard from dozens of people who said it was a long journey to learn more about the disorder
By Natalie Bettendorf
(María Alconada Brooks/Washington Post illustration)
In January 2021, Michele Petersen, then 25, began to not feel like herself.
She had recently started dating her boyfriend long-distance, but suddenly she was feeling impatient and easily irritated when they talked. Little things he said or did would annoy her; she felt he was being “childish” or “dumb.” It felt out of character, Petersen, now 26, of Southern California, recalled.
These unexpected emotions bled into other aspects of her life. She teared up at work while telling her boss about something she was passionate about, for example.
Then she started noticing something, she said: These states of heightened emotions came around the beginning of the month. So she made a calendar and drew a little “X” when she was annoyed at her boyfriend, and a check mark if she felt fine.
It took a couple of months, but it began making sense to her.
“I can’t remember when I started connecting it to my menstrual cycle,” Petersen said. “But when I finally did, it just clicked for me.”
Petersen would later learn that she is one of an estimated 5.5 percent of menstruating people who have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, a much more severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). People with PMDD have a sensitivity to the normal fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone in their menstrual cycle, which can trigger mood symptoms, including depression, anxiety, irritability, sensitivity to social rejection and hypersensitivity to their environment. Similarly to PMS, these symptoms start during the luteal phase and fade when their period ends.
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The Washington Post heard from more than 70 people who said they have PMDD. Many said it was a long journey to learn more about the disorder, in no small part because of the stigmatization of reproductive health and menstruation specifically. The symptoms they described include depression, anxiety, dark thoughts and suicidal ideation in the days and weeks before their periods. Some said it feels like they become a totally different person during their “bad weeks”: They feel impatient and irritable, they said, picking fights with people close to them when they otherwise wouldn’t. And in the more extreme cases, some said they had mistakenly believed they had or been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.
“People with PMDD can expect anywhere from two to three days to a whole 14 days of symptoms each month,” said Tory Eisenlohr-Moul, a clinical psychologist and scientist specializing in how the menstrual cycle influences emotions and behaviors in people with hormone sensitivities.
Eisenlohr-Moul said the biggest differentiating factor between PMS and PMDD comes down to the emotional symptoms. PMS generally encompasses physical symptoms, such as bloating and fatigue. But when emotional symptoms are distressing or impairing your daily life, it’s a signal that PMDD might be at play, Eisenlohr-Moul added.
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According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), patients must have at least five symptoms — one of which must be “marked” affective lability, irritability or anger, a depressed mood, or anxiety — during most menstrual cycles in the past year to meet criteria for a PMDD diagnosis. Eisenlohr-Moul also pointed out that chronic mental health conditions may be connected to PMDD: Research has found that women with PMDD may be at greater risk of having or developing other mental health disorders.
The impacts of PMDD can be severe: A study from this year, co-authored by Eisenlohr-Moul, found that 34 percent of people with PMDD attempt suicide. The study also found that, on average, patients waited 12 years and saw at least 6 providers before they received an accurate diagnosis of PMDD. (Individuals who self-reported PMDD symptoms were invited to take the survey, and of the 2,689 self-selecting survey takers, 23 percent reported a clinical PMDD diagnosis — these analyses were based on those 23 percent of respondents.)
In terms of treatments for PMDD, a psychiatrist may prescribe a patient SSRIs or hormonal birth control to help with symptoms. But mental health is complex — there is no one-size-fits-all solution, doctors say. And many of the people with PMDD who wrote to The Post expressed exhausting processes of seeing different doctors, trial-and-error with medications, and negotiating with health insurance.
For Nikki Wertheim, a 34-year-old living in Long Island, N.Y., it took sessions with a therapist back in 2016 to start connecting the dots.
“We noticed that I would get really, really suicidal for like a week or two, and then it would vanish,” they said. “But then there was one session we had where I was like, this is happening in conjunction with my cycle.”
Others who reached out to The Post had not yet been diagnosed by a medical professional. Instead, they said they self-diagnosed after recognizing the general relief they’d feel after their periods arrived. Many described feeling hopeless or experiencing panic and sensory overload leading up to their periods.
That’s what would happen to Morgan Chesley, a 26-year-old living in Washington state. For eight to 10 days every month, her luteal phase would be “terrifying,” she said: She felt out of control and impulsive, and suffered from panic attacks and suicidal thoughts.
“Then I’d start bleeding. Instant relief,” she said. “It’s crazy that the heavy, painful periods I experienced became such a refuge. I grew to almost love the physical discomfort of my period, because it meant I had my life back.”
For many people The Post heard from — regardless of whether they self-diagnosed or were medically diagnosed with PMDD — their experiences highlighted the stigmatization inherent in women’s health, and particularly menstruation.
PMDD was officially recognized as a psychiatric disorder in 2013. But as Eisenlohr-Moul describes, there was a drawn-out fight over whether to include it in the DSM-5, largely from psychiatrists who were concerned that acknowledging the disorder would further stigmatize women and their functionality around and on their periods.
That debate is part of a long legacy of some feminists worrying that highlighting PMS ultimately hurts women.
“On the one hand, feminists acknowledge the importance of women’s complaints receiving medical attention so that women’s reported discomforts are seen as legitimate and not as a product of their imagination,” academic Susan Markens wrote in her 1996 report “The Problematic of ‘Experience’: A Political and Cultural Critique of PMS.” “On the other hand, there is fear that if the syndrome gains legitimacy, women will be seen as emotional, irrational, and unreliable, victims of their own biology, and once again will be reduced to their ‘raging hormones.’ ”
Stigma comes into play in other ways, too. For Wertheim, the patient who figured out they had PMDD with their therapist, being transgender and nonbinary has only complicated how they navigate their menstrual disorder.
As they put it: “PMDD is so feminized.” When it comes to gender-affirming medical care, some doctors might avoid talking about periods and menstrual cycles so as to not “trigger” nonbinary patients. “[But] I can’t not talk about it because it’s been such a huge part of my life and my mental health journey,” Wertheim said. “It’s hard to not feel isolated in something that is already very isolating.”
Heaven Berhane, a 33-year-old living in New York City, started figuring out she was experiencing PMDD on her own: After an especially emotionally destructive episode, she said, she started tracking her periods and acquainting herself with her emotional patterns. It’s also been a lonely experience for her, self-diagnosing and trying to advocate for herself in the doctor’s office.
“There’s this trope of the strong Black woman,” Berhane said. “At one point I was like, am I weird? Am I the only Black girl out here who has [PMDD]?”
It can also be an agonizing journey for people whose loved ones have PMDD. As with many mental health disorders, family members and friends can feel helpless and desperate for some kind of solution.
That was the case for Marybeth Bohn, the mother of Christina Bohn Rudd, who suffered from PMDD-induced psychosis, depression and anxiety.
“Two weeks out of the month, she’d feel good about herself and then two weeks out of the month, it was like, where did she go? Where’s our daughter?” Bohn said.
After Christina died by suicide in November 2021 at 33, Bohn made it her mission to raise awareness about the disorder. She designed what she calls “Christina’s Questions” — three questions that she wishes doctors would always ask their menstruating patients.
“When was your last period? When are you expecting the next period? And what is PMS like for you? [These questions] could save lives,” Bohn said. “They could trim the time. They could shave off years of suffering and get right down to it.” | 2022-08-24T13:54:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Their PMS mood swings were terrible. It was actually PMDD. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/pmdd-mood-swings-pms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/pmdd-mood-swings-pms/ |
Vodou in Photos: How Followers of an Ancient Faith Are Battling Stereotypes
By Dieu-Nalio Chery
Followers outside a rented space that served as a temporary vodou temple in Brooklyn in March.
Vodou is a religion freighted with mischaracterizations, down to its very name, which is frequently styled incorrectly as “voodoo.” Among practitioners, the word is considered a pejorative. (Indeed, 10 years ago, after a petition by Vodou scholars and leaders, the Library of Congress adapted the spelling to Vodou.) The ancient, nature-based religion also has suffered from untrue stereotypes in popular culture involving zombies and dangerous spells. For centuries Haitians have practiced Vodou as a holistic way of life, brought to Haiti from West Africa by enslaved people. Vodou is at the core of Haitian identity.
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In 2003 the Haitian government, under president and former Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, officially recognized Vodou as a religion and gave it equal standing with Catholicism (which is also highly influential in Haiti). In recent months, Vodou believers have started candlelight processions at night on sidewalks in their neighborhoods, where they prayed for their country as political unrest and violence escalated. And once again, as they have for decades, refugees are fleeing Haiti for sanctuary in the United States.
After 10 years working as an Associated Press photographer in Haiti, I had to flee my homeland with my wife and children in 2021 because of a work-related death threat from a drug gang. While learning to navigate my new home in New York, I have been documenting my fellow Haitians. I was hoping to dispel prejudices about Vodou and help practitioners to gain greater acceptance in the United States. (I am not a practitioner.)
Many Vodou believers have settled in New York, which has the second-largest Haitian population in the United States after Miami. They’ve often practiced their religion in secret in basement temples. Now, Vodou priests and priestesses in New York are seeking to establish community temples where they can practice their faith openly. Such temples, they say, could help lead to public acceptance.
In every ceremony, drumming is central — and beckons ancestral spirits to be present. These spirits take over participants’ bodies as the priest (ougan) or priestess (mambo) leads the ceremony. These events usually last all night (at least five hours), ending with a communal meal. Animal sacrifices also are made to the spirits, but the animals have already been butchered and blessed before entering the temple. The sacrifices include chickens, goats and cows.
Hundreds of Vodou priests and priestesses have small temples in their basements in the New York area, according to Florence Jean-Joseph, a mambo in Queens who represents the National Confederation of Haitian Vodou in New York. While the religion’s leaders are working to organize public temples, they are having difficulty because of soaring rents, real estate values and misperceptions about Vodou, Jean-Joseph told me. Nevertheless, she says, “we have to do it because we have an obligation to honor the spirits.”
For Jean Saurel Francillon, a former journalist for Haiti’s national radio station who has been a Vodou priest for 30 years, fostering a better understanding of Vodou is critical to increasing public acceptance. He is promoting interfaith dialogue to spread Vodou’s message of living in harmony with the world at large. “Vodou is nature,” Francillon says. “Vodou is life.”
Dieu-Nalio Chery is a photojournalist based in Detroit. | 2022-08-24T14:16:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vodou followers battle stereotypes about their religion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/08/24/vodou-religion-misunderstood/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/08/24/vodou-religion-misunderstood/ |
D.C. police investigating homicides in Southeast, Northwest Washington
A D.C. police vehicle. (Peter Hermann/TWP)
Two men were killed in separate shootings Tuesday night and early Wednesday in Southeast and Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police.
The first shooting occurred about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday in the 2300 block of Minnesota Avenue SE, in the Fairlawn neighborhood. Police said a man found at that location died.
In the second shooting, officers responded shortly before 2:10 a.m. in the 200 block of Florida Avenue NW, along the border with Truxton Circle and Bloomingdale, and found two gunshot victims, police said. A man at that location died, and a woman was treated at a hospital for gunshot injuries. Police said she is expected to survive.
The names of the victims were not available Wednesday morning and police released no other details. | 2022-08-24T14:16:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. police investigating homicides in Southeast, Northwest Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/police-homicides-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/police-homicides-washington/ |
A pair of photo shows with eyes on both the past and the present
Exhibitions of Iranian and Arab photographers at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Middle East Institute make good companion pieces
By Vanessa H. Larson
A boy, eyes closed, stands on the back of a graffiti-covered ambulance in January 1979, during the Iranian Revolution, in a photo taken by Bahman Jalali in Tehran. (Bahman Jalali/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery/Gift of Rana Javadi)
The exhibition “Living in Two Times” opens with a striking photomontage: A century-old black-and-white portrait of an Iranian woman conjures the past; overlaying it, a close-up of a bright, red-and-orange flower represents the present. Fragments of both have been scraped away, revealing a mirror underneath, in which the real-life viewer is reflected.
The piece encapsulates many of the preoccupations of the late Iranian photographer Bahman Jalali, who, along with his wife, Rana Javadi, is the subject of a wide-ranging show at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. It makes for a nice companion piece to “More Than Your Eyes Can See,” a showcase of 15 Arab photographers at the Middle East Institute Art Gallery, most of whom are also likely to be largely unfamiliar to a U.S. audience.
Jalali, who died in 2010, is not well known to American museum-goers despite a decades-long career and renown in his home country. “Living in Two Times,” featuring roughly 70 works, is his first U.S. retrospective, as well as the first to also examine the work of his wife, an artist and photography advocate who, with her husband, co-founded the photography journal Aksnameh.
Jalali is often described as the father of modern Iranian photography, according to curator Carol Huh, and his many students include Shadi Ghadirian, one of six female Iranian photographers featured in the previous Sackler exhibition “My Iran.”
A large section of the show looks at the period leading up to and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which the couple photographed extensively. Some images — huge crowds of demonstrators, people pouring into Tehran’s Ferdowsi Square the day the shah left Iran — are reminiscent of news coverage from the time. Others are more intimate, such as one photo of a boy, eyes closed as if catching a moment of rest, standing on the back of a graffiti-covered ambulance, or women and a child sitting on the front hood of a car, calling out as people hold signs behind them.
Particularly disquieting are photographs that Jalali shot in two cities in western Iran that were on the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War: a ravaged shoreline, strewn with dead trees, wrecked buildings and debris; the inside of a ruined cinema; barren land with makeshift graves of war dead. Jalali, who worked independently of state media through almost his entire career, often showed the human and environmental devastation of the eight-year conflict. (Government-approved photojournalists would have been expected to deliver something closer to propaganda, Huh notes.)
In more recent decades, as Jalali and Javadi helped establish Iran’s first photography museum and were deeply involved in salvaging and preserving 19th- and early-20th-century photo archives from around the country, they also explored montage. Several examples from Jalali’s “Image of Imagination” series feature archival photographs that are superimposed on or juxtaposed with splashes of color, as in the piece that opens the show.
Javadi incorporates similar techniques, collaging swaths of colorfully patterned fabric with black-and-white archival images of elegantly dressed, bareheaded women. The title of the series, “When You Were Dying,” refers to a time and a way of life in Iran that Javadi felt had been lost.
At the MEI show, organized in partnership with Tribe, a magazine and platform focusing on photography, film and video from the Arab world, about half the artists are women, and almost all were born in the 1980s or 1990s; a significant number have roots in North Africa.
According to curator Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, speaking in a video walk-through of “More Than Your Eyes Can See,” the title of the show is meant to suggest “the various social, political, environmental and very personal perspectives” these photographers provide. Their work, she says, invites viewers to “really think and question what they know about the region.”
The captivating opening work, “Guardians of the Oasis” by Mohammad Alfaraj, shows a scarecrow-like figure in a traditional ankle-length robe and kaffiyeh headdress, sporting a black gas mask and winglike branches and standing amid a field of grain against an apocalyptic-looking orange sky.
Alfaraj, who hails from the Al-Ahsa oasis in eastern Saudi Arabia, addresses a theme found in the works of several of this new generation of artists: climate change that threatens both ecosystems and traditional ways of life, particularly in oasis areas.
An image by Seif Kousmate of a man burning palm leaves in a Moroccan oasis is almost surreal, with what appear to be burning orange orbs floating around the scene. Kousmate often incorporates organic elements from locations he photographs, such as dates, palm skins, fire and acid, to physically alter his prints.
Zied Ben Romdhane’s far starker black-and-white scenes show Tunisian villages where sand dunes are encroaching on homes amid desertification, while Imane Djamil’s dreamlike, pastel-hued compositions highlight a neglected stretch of coastal Morocco where desertification and a lack of cultural heritage protection are leading people to abandon the area.
Ukraine-born Moroccan artist M’hammed Kilito vibrantly captures human life in the oasis, including boys playing at a water hole, as well as a poignant portrait of an older man standing next to an empty suitcase in a crumbling home.
“This generation of photographers is really developing a new kind of visual language,” says the curator, Jadallah. “They’re able to speak very sensitively to the issues that are personal to them and to where they’re from, and also have it connect to broader audiences.”
Other works explore social dynamics, such as Fethi Sahraoui’s “Stadiumphilia” series. Some of the shots of fervent young men and boys outside Algerian soccer matches could almost be mistaken for protests; the wall text notes that sports stadiums are some of the only places in the country aside from religious services where large crowds are permitted to gather publicly.
One piece by East Jerusalem-born Palestinian Rula Halawani — the most established artist in the show — echoes some of Jalali’s and Javadi’s works. At first glance, it appears to be merely a wide-angle view of Jerusalem, showing the separation wall in the foreground and landmarks such as the Dome of the Rock in the distance, seen from just inside the West Bank. But floating eerily in the clouds is a faint, superimposed gray-tone image of a family of six — an archival photo of Palestinians who lived there before 1948.
For some of these photographers, it seems, evoking the past may be the best way to speak to the present.
Living in Two Times: Photography by Bahman Jalali and Rana Javadi
National Museum of Asian Art’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1050 Independence Ave. SW. asia.si.edu.
Dates: Through Jan. 8.
More Than Your Eyes Can See: Contemporary Photography From the Arab World
Middle East Institute Art Gallery, 1763 N St. NW. mei.edu/arts-and-culture-center.
Dates: Through Oct. 21.
Admission: Free. Online timed-entry reservations are recommended, but walk-ins are welcome. | 2022-08-24T14:29:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arab and Iranian photographers in 'Living in Two Times' and 'More Than Your Eyes Can See' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/24/sackler-gallery-and-middle-east-institute-photo-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/24/sackler-gallery-and-middle-east-institute-photo-review/ |
Florida Democratic congressional candidate Maxwell Frost. (Maxwell Alejandro Frost for Congress)
Maxwell Frost sounds a lot like others of the Gen Z generation — he’s 25, drives an Uber for extra cash and recently quit his job to pursue a more promising opportunity.
His latest gig? Winning a crowded primary in Florida’s heavily Democratic 10th Congressional District on Tuesday night, giving him a strong chance of becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Frost prevailed over more experienced Democrats, including former members of Congress Corrine Brown and Alan Grayson, and state Sen. Randolph Bracy, to secure the nomination. He will be the favorite in November in the reconfigured Orlando-area district.
“I knew going into this thing that we’d be counted out because of my age,” Frost told The Washington Post in an interview Tuesday. “And I’ve been counted out a lot of my life because of my age. But I knew that if we stuck to our message, and if we kept doing the work, and we built the movement, we would win.”
He is among the new class of mold-breaking Democratic candidates this year with working-class roots. On his campaign website, he highlights the difficulties faced by his biological mother who gave him up for adoption amid what he describes as “a cycle of drugs, crime, and violence.”
Full Washington Post Elections Coverage
Frost campaigned on support for Medicare-for-all, demilitarizing the police, legalizing prostitution and recreational marijuana, expunging all marijuana convictions, and restoring voting rights to the incarcerated.
He was backed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Polls leading up to the primary showed Frost with the lead in the 10-candidate race, but he said his campaign team was working as hard on Election Day as it has all summer, hitting the streets at 4 a.m. to drop off campaign literature at voters’ houses.
Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), who is the first Gen Z candidate to win a congressional primary, discusses his plan to engage young people in the upcoming election. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Maxwell Alejandro Frost for Congress/The Washington Post)
The minimum age to hold a seat in Congress is 25. Frost has never run for public office, but he doesn’t consider himself a political newcomer. He started working in politics when he was 15, protesting gun violence after the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.
He went on to become the national organizing director for March for Our Lives, the group organized by students who survived another deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. He also worked for the ACLU in Florida, supporting voting rights for formerly incarcerated citizens.
Frost refers to his as the “mass shootings generation.”
He gained national attention four months ago when he confronted Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) at an event in Orlando, shortly after the school shootings in Uvalde, Tex. In a video that circulated widely on social media, Frost is seen telling DeSantis he needs to do something about gun violence. DeSantis answered, “Nobody wants to hear from you,” and Frost is being seen escorted out.
Frost said he thinks voters angry at DeSantis will help propel him to Congress.
“Our positive message about the world we deserve to live in is what really resonates with folks, despite what’s coming out of the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee,” Frost said.
He argued that DeSantis’s policies have motivated voters.
“Our message has resonated at this time in spite of what the governor’s doing to queer folks being scapegoated, in spite of Black people and their rights to vote being taken away by the governor, in spite of our LGBTQ plus community and Latinos and Black folks and disabled folks being scapegoated by this governor for every issue under the sun,” he said.
Frost was the top fundraiser in the race for an open seat currently held by Rep. Val Demings (D), who won the nomination for Senate Tuesday night and will challenge Sen. Marco Rubio (R). | 2022-08-24T14:30:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Maxwell Frost, the Gen Z Democratic nominee in Florida? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/florida-elections-genz-maxwell-frost/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/florida-elections-genz-maxwell-frost/ |
The iconic “watchtower” sign is seen in Brooklyn in 2015, on the rooftop of what was then the Jehovah's Witnesses world headquarters. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Jehovah’s Witnesses reopened their houses of worship in April. Now, after more than two pandemic years without their trademark door-to-door preaching, adherents are returning next week to neighborhoods, too.
Robert Hendriks, a U.S. spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses, said the decision, announced earlier this month, was the “next logical step in this ‘living with covid’ phase.” The Sept. 1 return of door knocking will join other outreach efforts the group has maintained over the past couple of years.
“Even though we have had a very productive two and a half years — letter writing, virtual Bible study, telephone witnessing — we recognize that the primary way that we reach our neighbors is by going to their door,” Hendriks said in an interview. “And when we do that, we have meaningful conversations and meaningful follow-up conversations, which is much more difficult in other aspects of our ministry.”
Door knocking has been not only a physical mainstay for Jehovah’s Witnesses but also a practice they have fought for in courtrooms. Most notably, they recently marked the 20th anniversary of the 8-to-1 Supreme Court decision Watchtower v. Village of Stratton, in which they — and other groups that stand on strangers’ stoops — were victorious in protecting the right to continue door knocking without governmental permission.
The faith group’s decision to return to people’s doorsteps is a global one, but the way conversations will take place will depend on the people having the interaction, said Hendriks, whose branch is based in the Hudson River Valley town of Wallkill, N.Y.
Will people be masked? Will they be socially distant? Will they be invited in?
“It’s really going to be a very individual decision based not only on the feeling of the congregant, but also on the feeling of the householder,” he said.
The return to door knocking comes at the same time that Jehovah’s Witnesses are launching a global campaign about an interactive Bible study program that was developed during the pandemic and involves an instructor and a student. Bible studies can be held in person as of Sept. 1 as well, Hendriks said.
While congregants gathered online for two years before April, the faith group said there were more than 400,000 newly baptized Witnesses who joined some of the 120,000 congregations across the world.
Like other faith groups that had to resort to new ways of conducting baptisms, Jehovah’s Witnesses found alternatives to the rituals that usually occurred at their conventions, where hundreds were baptized in a facility.
“Our baptisms for the last three years have all been done at private locations, following covid protocols, at outside pools” and other sites, Hendriks said. “Some have happened in lakes. Some have happened in bathtubs.” Sometimes they were live-streamed to a local congregation.
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Hendriks said Witnesses hope baptisms will soon return to the convention setting. Such large events are expected to restart in 2023.
The faith group claims 8.6 million adherents in its congregations, known as Kingdom Halls, across 239 countries. Hendriks said there are 1.3 million adherents attending about 12,800 Kingdom Halls in the United States, usually twice a week for midweek and weekend gatherings.
Ahead of the door-knocking decision, on May 31, Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders restarted the “cart witnessing” ministry, in which people stand on corners and offer the faith’s magazines or answer questions posed by passersby.
Hendriks called the door-to-door visits the most courageous form of ministry in his faith — and one that now, “in a very different world,” will be even more so.
“There’s no doubt that this mixture of excitement and a level of anxiety is there for all of us, and we’re looking forward to getting back in our communities and seeing the reaction of our neighbors and being able to meet them once again,” he said. “Once the first few months happen, I think the anxiety will kind of abate a bit and we’ll be back in our normal routine.”
— Religion News | 2022-08-24T14:30:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jehovah’s Witnesses return to door knocking after 2 pandemic years off - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/24/jehovahs-witnesses-door-knocking-coronavirus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/24/jehovahs-witnesses-door-knocking-coronavirus/ |
Experts are concerned that fire ants are harming their population
Researchers are working to learn more about eastern kingsnakes in Virginia. (Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources)
It’s a black and white snake that’s common to see in Virginia but often overlooked because it’s not what snake experts consider “venomous sexy” — the eastern kingsnake.
But researchers with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources launched an effort this summer to start better tracking and learning more about the eastern kingsnake, known as Lampropeltis getula. It’s one of the first undertakings and an attempt to get a better sense of the eastern kingsnake’s population in the Commonwealth.
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“It’s one of those snakes that’s fairly common, but we’re trying to get some baseline information on them,” said J.D. Kleopfer, the state’s herpetologist with the Department of Wildlife Resources. Because the snakes are relatively common in Virginia, they often get ignored or overlooked.
Kleopfer and his team tagged 17 of them this summer in the Chesapeake area of Virginia. His team captures the eastern kingsnakes, takes measurements and tags them with a small metal tracking device that’s injected under their skin to follow them and watch for changes in their population.
“Over time we can tell their growth rates, get an estimate of their population size and see a lot of trends with them over time that way,” he said.
Experts said there’s concern that fire ants, which have spread into parts of southeastern Virginia, are harming the population of eastern kingsnakes. In Alabama and Georgia, Kleopfer said it’s believed fire ants have contributed to the decline of eastern kingsnakes, as they may destroy their eggs and vulnerable young.
Eastern kingsnakes will eat “pretty much anything they catch,” including lizards, rodents and turtle eggs. But they’re somewhat unique in that they are quite capable of killing and eating other snakes. They can even handle the bite from venomous snakes such as cottonmouths, timber rattlesnakes and copperheads.
They can subdue and eat other snakes that are 20 percent larger than they are because they have twice the constricting strength of a ratsnake and have muscles in their throat that essentially fold the prey as it is swallowed.
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In Virginia, eastern kingsnakes are found mainly in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont regions and in the Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains. They live in forests, fields and swamps and can also be found on farms and in suburban areas.
Kleopfer said eastern kingsnakes are quite docile and seldom bite when handled but will typically just vibrate their tail. He said there are also problems with people poaching them from the wild in parts of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina and selling them at pet trade shows, which is illegal.
He said his team plans to continue to tag and monitor the snakes for the next several years. | 2022-08-24T15:13:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia researchers work to track and learn about eastern kingsnake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/eastern-kingsnake-research-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/eastern-kingsnake-research-virginia/ |
Fighting erupts near Tigray border, dashing hopes of peace in Ethiopia
The renewed violence comes amid a worsening humanitarian situation in Africa’s second-most-populous country
Farmers pass a tank that allegedly belonged to the Eritrean army on a road southwest of the Tigrayan capital, Mekele, in June 2021. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)
NAIROBI — Fighting erupted Wednesday near the border of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, ending a months-long cease-fire and launching a new phase in a civil war that has had devastating humanitarian consequences.
The Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which had both appeared ready for peace talks earlier this summer, confirmed in separate statements that fighting had resumed. Each side accused the other of starting the violence. According to the TPLF, the government began an “extensive offensive” at 5 a.m., after five days of repositioning its forces. The government countered that the TPLF had ignored peaceful alternatives and launched an attack that “officially violated the cease-fire.”
Ethiopia, which is Africa’s second-most-populous country and was long heralded as a beacon of stability in its region, has been ravaged for nearly two years by civil war. The government declared a humanitarian truce in March, allowing more aid to reach the northern region of Tigray, but the situation for civilians there remains dire. Thousands have been killed and millions displaced.
A report this month by the World Food Program found that nearly half of Tigray’s 5.5 million residents were in “severe” need of food, with malnutrition rates expected to increase until the October harvest. The number of people needing food aid in Tigray and the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara has increased by 44 percent since January, the report said. Communication and banking services have been cut in Tigray for more than a year, and access for journalists has been restricted, making it difficult to assess the scale of the crisis.
Last week, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, described the situation as “the worst disaster on Earth” and criticized world leaders for their silence about the conflict.
“I haven’t heard in the last few months any head of state talking about the Tigray situation anywhere in the developed world. Anywhere. Why?” asked Tedros, who is an ethnic Tigrayan.
They fled hundreds of miles to escape war in Ethiopia. But they fear it wasn’t far enough.
The war started in the fall of 2020 after Tigrayans held their own elections in defiance of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The TPLF, a regional political party, had ruled the country for three decades before Abiy came to power in 2018. When TPLF forces attacked an Ethiopian military base in Tigray, Abiy, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, launched a military offensive.
Last November, thousands of TPLF troops advanced to within 200 miles of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, prompting Abiy to say he would lead government forces from the front line. The rebels, who were pushed back in December, returned to Tigray.
The war has been marked by accusations of atrocities on both sides. A report by the United Nations last year found that both had “committed violations of international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law, some of which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
In a statement Wednesday, the TPLF called the government’s current actions part of a “genocidal assault on the people of Tigray.”
“Tigray’s Army is reliably ready to repulse this offensive,” the statement said, “and transition into a counteroffensive to liberate occupied sovereign Tigrayan territory and return our displaced people to their homes.”
A government statement that followed accused the TPLF, which the government has labeled a “terrorist organization,” of ignoring attempts to establish peace and launching an attack Wednesday morning near the towns of Bisober, Zobel, and Tekulesh.
“They have committed attacks and are crying out with the false propaganda that they have already mastered,” the government statement said. “As the Amharic proverb goes, ‘a lash whips itself and screams.’” | 2022-08-24T15:17:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fighting erupts in Tigray, ending months-long ceasefire in Ethiopia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/ethiopia-fighting-tplf-war-tigray/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/ethiopia-fighting-tplf-war-tigray/ |
Team Canada’s Sarah Nurse makes history as first woman on EA NHL cover
By Mike Hume
Canadian hockey star Sarah Nurse will be the first woman to grace the cover of the EA Sports’ NHL video game franchise, Electronic Arts announced Wednesday. Also for the first time, EA Sports will be adding the International Ice Hockey Federation’s women’s national team rosters to the game.
Nurse led all players with an Olympic-record 18 points to help Team Canada to a gold medal over the United States at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. She will be joined on the cover by 21-year-old Anaheim Ducks star Trevor Zegras, who has electrified NHL crowds with an array of impressive stickhandling and lacrosse-style goals.
You probably know someone who just got into Formula One. That’s a good problem for the F1 video games.
The decision to put Nurse on the cover of the long-running hockey sim comes as women fight for pay equality and to establish a sustainable professional league in North America. The NHL has also seen a recent influx of women installed into prominent positions with the league’s organizations. In July, the New Jersey Devils hired Kate Madigan to the role of assistant general manager and the Los Angeles Kings added former Team Canada star goalie Manon Rhéaume as a hockey operations adviser with a focus on prospect development. Rhéaume was the first woman to ever play in an NHL game, tending the net for the Tampa Bay Lightning during a 1992 preseason game.
EA Sports added the rosters to women’s International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) teams to the previous installment of the annualized hockey sim, “NHL 22.” It also recently added women’s soccer club team rosters from the top leagues in England and France to its FIFA franchise for its upcoming installment, “FIFA 23,” which releases Sept. 30. Chelsea standout Sam Kerr will be featured on one version of that game’s cover; another will feature French forward Kylian Mbappé. The company had previously featured U.S. Women’s National Team striker Alex Morgan on the cover of “FIFA 16” alongside Argentine phenom Lionel Messi. | 2022-08-24T15:39:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NHL 23 cover features first woman, Canada's Sarah Nurse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/24/nhl-23-women-sarah-nurse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/24/nhl-23-women-sarah-nurse/ |
Reviving a landmark agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program could pave the way for the US to lift sanctions and allow Iranian energy exports back onto world markets. The talks have been hampered by a lack of trust as well as Iranian demands that Washington guarantee economic returns from a new accord, and that international monitors curtail an investigation into Tehran’s past nuclear activities.
In 2018, former President Donald Trump’s administration unilaterally left the deal that had been agreed in 2015 and reimposed sanctions that severely reduced Iran’s oil exports. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told diplomats and defense officials at the Munich Security Conference in February that the world powers at the negotiating table must provide assurances that Iranians won’t be tricked into limiting their nuclear activities only to be trapped again under sanctions. Of the previous deal, he said, “It was the Americans who ruined it. It is now up to the Americans to resuscitate it.”
US officials have scoffed at the idea that they can guarantee a future president won’t again leave the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Already, there is considerable opposition to reviving it in the US. More than 100 Republican members of Congress have pledged to oppose any sanctions relief for Iran by the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat. A bipartisan bill introduced in July would compel the US government to assess the dangers posed by a nuclear Iran every quarter. Division over the accord within the US has forced negotiators to try to come up with creative solutions that satisfy Iran’s requirements within Washington’s system of checks and balances. Recently, officials said the parties have made progress on specific indemnities that would guarantee Iran economic returns, even if a new US administration or act of Congress overturned the deal again.
3. Where are Washington’s other red lines?
Iran stopped demanding that sanctions be lifted against its elite militia group, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, after US negotiators insisted on retaining designations punishing the country for malign activities not linked to its nuclear program. The White House also needs to ensure that it doesn’t give Iran any concessions that fundamentally change the original deal. Doing so would invite a new round of Congressional scrutiny from skeptical legislators, who have vowed to invoke a 2015 law that requires the president to subject any new agreement with Iran for review.
In the absence of full guarantees, Iran wants to leave its centrifuge advancements intact so that it can swiftly reverse course should the US again leave the accord. On this point, the US opened the door to compromise in February by waiving sanctions on civil nuclear cooperation with Iran. That paves the way for the Persian Gulf country to potentially ship the nuclear fuel and centrifuges to a friendly third country, with guarantees that the property would be returned should the agreement again be violated. Russia and Kazakhstan have emerged as potential facilitators, with the latter designated in the original agreement as a potential way station for Iranian nuclear fuel. However, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council suggested that Iran’s best course might be to keep the centrifuges sealed but intact, rather than dismantling them altogether. | 2022-08-24T16:00:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Sticky Issues Holding Up a New Iran Nuclear Deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-sticky-issues-holding-up-a-new-iran-nuclear-deal/2022/08/24/cd63939e-23bc-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-sticky-issues-holding-up-a-new-iran-nuclear-deal/2022/08/24/cd63939e-23bc-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Cie Financiere Richemont SA is finally exiting Yoox Net-a-Porter, but the price of ridding itself of the loss-making online luxury business is a hefty one.
On Wednesday, the Cartier owner said it would sell a 47.5% stake in YNAP to online marketplace Farfetch Ltd. and a further 3.2% to investor Mohamed Alabbar, developer of the massive Dubai Mall. The deal leaves Richemont with a minority stake in YNAP. There are also options for a second-stage of the transaction that would see Farfetch acquire the whole of YNAP.
The business will no longer be on Richemont’s balance sheet, ridding it of YNAP’s losses, which have depressed its earnings and valuation. In the year to March 31, 2022, Richemont’s online distributors, led by YNAP, lost 210 million euros ($208.4 million).
In return for the stake in YNAP, Richemont will receive 12%-13% of Farfetch’s issued share capital, implying a value for the whole of YNAP of about $1 billion, based on Farfetch’s closing share price on Tuesday. Even with the as much as 20% rise in Farfetch shares in pre-market trading on Wednesday, and another $250 million payment in five years, this is far below the about $5 billion valuation Yoox Net-a-Porter had in early 2018 when Richemont agreed to take full control of the digital business.
Consequently, Richemont will take a non-cash writedown of about $2.7 billion.
Johann Rupert, Richemont’s chairman, said on Wednesday that the luxury group had learned a lot from its ownership of YNAP. The Swiss company went on to acquire second-hand watch platform Watchfinder and also struck a deal with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. four years ago, gaining more clout in China and making it look briefly like an online luxury powerhouse.
But these benefits can’t disguise the fact that Richemont’s frequent U-turns on Net-a-Porter — first striking a deal with Yoox Group SpA and then buying the combined company — were not its finest decisions, strategically or financially.
That may explain why Farfetch looks like the real winner from Richemont’s retrenchment. It gets a sales boost, particularly in watches and jewelry, just as online growth is slowing and luxury buyers return to stores. Most of Richemont’s brands, including Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, will join the Farfetch marketplace.
In May, Farfetch, which listed in New York in September 2018, cut its outlook after it was hurt by exiting Russia and lockdowns in China. Richemont will also provide it with a $450 million credit facility. Fortunately, the Swiss company will be able to benefit from any upside through its holding in Farfetch.
Rupert usually takes a long-term view. But when it came to online retail, Richemont’s investors had a much shorter time horizon. The shares had slipped recently on concerns that it would not be able to finalize an agreement with Farfetch before its annual meeting next month. Richemont is also facing a campaign from activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners Ltd. to shake up its governance structure. The shares rose about 3% on Wednesday.
At least the deal with Farfetch draws a line under Richemont’s rare strategic flip-flopping over online, and should enable its watch and jewelry businesses to shine. That could be a blessing if the bling bubble bursts later this year.
• The UK’s Rental Market Crisis Has Been Years in the Making: Stuart Trow | 2022-08-24T16:00:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Richemont Comes to Its Senses on Net-a-Porter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/richemont-comes-to-its-senses-on-net-a-porter/2022/08/24/fc403d48-23b7-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/richemont-comes-to-its-senses-on-net-a-porter/2022/08/24/fc403d48-23b7-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
A surprising amount of dry lightning strikes California, study says
Lightning-caused fires are more prevalent in the northern half of the state, particularly over mountainous terrain
By Mike Branom
The Walbridge Fire, part of the LNU Lightning Complex, burns on Aug. 20 in Sonoma County, Calif. (Stuart W. Palley for The Washington Post)
Lightning strikes in Northern and Central California are rare, so infrequent as to be overlooked by science.
But the subject has been of urgent interest since August 2020, when a massive complex of thunderstorms thrashed its way across the state, dropping not rain but thousands of bolts of “dry lightning”: cloud-to-ground strikes without accompanying rainfall exceeding one-tenth of an inch (2.5 millimeters). The effects were predictable, immediate and immense: wildfires, 650 in total, burning upward of 2 million acres.
The first in-depth look at the region’s dry lightning events was published this month, prompted by that historic event. For a sunbaked land now deep into a drought, the top line findings are ominous: There may be more of these strikes than realized.
“Our team knew dry lightning happens in California during the summer,” said the paper’s author, Dmitri Kalashnikov of Washington State University at Vancouver. “But we didn’t know that it would be almost half (46 percent) of all lightning strikes in 34 years that were dry.”
Here’s what to know about dry thunderstorms and how they increase wildfire risk
Previous studies have shown that while Southern California sees more human-caused wildfires, lightning-caused fires are more prevalent in the northern section of the state, particularly over mountainous terrain.
There’s currently one active lightning-sparked wildfire in California: the Six Rivers Lightning Complex, about 30 miles east-northeast of Eureka. It has burned more than 27,000 acres as of Tuesday morning and is about 80 percent contained. It began the evening of Aug. 5, when thunderstorms touched off 11 separate blazes.
However, Kalashnikov said the amount of lightning activity throughout a summer does not increase the probability of a mega-event.
“It just takes a one- or two-day outbreak … to really set off a very costly and destructive wildfire season,” Kalashnikov said. He added that 2020 was a slow fire season overall — “but that didn’t matter.”
When the smoke from the fires that year cleared, Kalashnikov discovered the topic of dry lightning in California was ripe for examination.
“Lightning is just so uncommon … west of the Sierra Nevada and Cascades; a number of studies into lightning in the Western U.S. actually gray out that area because of not enough of a sample size,” Kalashnikov told The Washington Post. “Consequently, there hasn’t actually been sort of a comprehensive climatology of dry lightning in these lowland areas.”
For example, where the Six Rivers Lightning Complex is burning, the average square kilometer receives cloud-to-ground lightning perhaps three times every century. Yet the monsoon bull’s eye of eastern Arizona, an area of similar size, averages five strikes a year.
Six Rivers National Forest, namesake to the fire, measures 957,590 acres and gets an annual average of 0.03 lightning strikes per square kilometer — or about 100 bolts striking within its boundaries every year.
Kalashnikov’s team learned that not only does elevated terrain (above 2,000 meters) get more strikes from dry lightning than lower elevations (below 1,000 meters), but also their months of peak activity are different. That’s based on an assessment of data from the National Lightning Detection Network and of precipitation totals found in the high-resolution gridMET data set.
“The higher elevations, like the Sierra Nevada, they get most of their dry lightning strikes in July and August, sort of during the monsoon season, and then by September and October their dry lightning mostly goes away,” Kalashnikov said. “Whereas, in contrast in the lower elevations … it’s kind of an ongoing dry lightning season. So, whether you’re in June or July or August or September, you get about the same amount of dry lightning strikes as the other months.”
A rare lightning barrage jarred California with 66,000 strikes
Kalashnikov also looked for large-scale atmospheric patterns on days with widespread dry lightning. Applying a clustering technique to the 124 largest outbreaks, he found four patterns — and in all, there was mid-tropospheric high-pressure ridging centered over different portions of western North America. Additionally, three of the four have some kind of troughing features.
“One of the takeaways is that, yes, the type of large-scale weather pattern that sets up affects the risk or the likelihood of dry lightning in different parts of California,” Kalashnikov said.
Kalashnikov said the next step in his research would be to develop forecasts and climate model projections.
“Somebody could take these patterns we’ve identified that we know can produce dry lightning in this part of California,” Kalashnikov said, “and they can look at climate models and see if these patterns increasing in frequency or are they decreasing.”
Kalashnikov plans to expand the scope of his study across the western United States, as well as look at the precipitation amounts occurring when lightning starts a fire.
“There’s this commonly accepted threshold for dry lightning, which we use in this paper, of 0.1 inches or less of rainfall — but that varies,” Kalashnikov said. “We know it varies based on the kind of vegetation and how dry the vegetation is where the fire happens.”
That’s something he would like to quantify. | 2022-08-24T16:01:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dry lightning, which can spark fires, is common in Northern California, study shows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/california-lightning-dry-fire-study/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/california-lightning-dry-fire-study/ |
In this image taken from police body camera video released by the East Lansing Police, DeAnthony VanAtten lays on the ground after being shot by East Lansing, Mich., police on April 25, 2022, while responding to a call about a shopper with a gun. Police released video of the incident Thursday, May 5, 2022. State police are investigating the shooting. DeAnthony VanAtten’s injuries were not life-threatening. (East Lansing Police via AP) (Uncredited/East Lansing Police) | 2022-08-24T16:01:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No charges for Michigan police who shot armed man at store - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/no-charges-for-michigan-police-who-shot-armed-man-at-store/2022/08/24/f2091d12-23c2-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/no-charges-for-michigan-police-who-shot-armed-man-at-store/2022/08/24/f2091d12-23c2-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Fetterman criticizes Oz campaign’s eat-your-vegetables health advice
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the state's U.S. Senate seat during a rally in Erie, Pa., on, Aug. 12. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who, by his account, “almost died” after he suffered a stroke in May, is taking exception to health advice from the campaign of his Senate rival, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.
Rachel Tripp, Oz’s senior communications adviser, said in a statement Tuesday: “If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.” The statement was first reported by Insider.
As he has slowly made his way back to the campaign trail, saying that he is “grateful” to be alive, Fetterman (D) said Wednesday that the comment from Republican foe, who hosted a reality show dispensing medical advice, has pulled the race to a new rhetorical low.
“I had a stroke. I survived it,” Fetterman said in a statement. “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could never imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”
In addition to that statement, Fetterman’s campaign on Wednesday also released a letter from more than 100 physicians in the state criticizing Oz for what they said is his history of “promoting unproven, ill-advised, and at times potentially dangerous treatments.”
“As a TV celebrity doctor, Mehmet Oz has displayed a shameful disregard for medical science and the well-being of his audience,” the doctors wrote in the letter.
Oz has promoted dubious weight-loss cures and in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic suggested chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatment for covid-19.
In a report released Wednesday, the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis said White House officials and outside allies such as Oz also pressed federal officials in 2020 to authorize hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment.
The latest clash between Fetterman and Oz comes as Democrats seek to hold onto their razor-thin control of the Senate in the midterm elections, which historically have seen loses for the party that controls the White House. Oz narrowly won the Republican nomination thanks in part to his personal fortune and an endorsement from former president Donald Trump.
The candidates have traded barbs in public statements and through social media. Fetterman’s team has sought to portray Oz as a rich carpetbagger from New Jersey; Team Oz is depicting Fetterman as a soft-on-crime, sanctuary-city supporting socialist.
The memes of the race have, at times, produced unintentionally hilarious moments, and has helped boost the perception that momentum is with Fetterman. In April, Oz released a video where, in an attempt to discuss inflation, purchased vegetables at a supermarket. “That’s $20 for crudite!” Oz said in the video.
The video later went viral after viewers noted Oz said he had been shopping in a “Wegner’s,” which doesn’t exist but sounded like a combination of supermarkets Redner’s and Wegman’s, and that most people would call what he was putting together, simply, as a vegetable tray.
The Oz campaign, in its criticism of Fetterman’s eating habits on Tuesday, has kept the issue alive for more than a week. Fetterman, meanwhile, has capitalized on it, saying his campaign has raised half a million dollars over the video, including $65,000 from a sticker with the words: “Wegners: Let them eat Crudite.”
Fetterman also mocked Oz after the Daily Beast revealed he owns 10 properties, instead of the two he had publicly acknowledged.
The two are vying for the seat held by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who is retiring at the end of his term.
This just in: House panel says Trump sought to pressure FDA on covid vaccines, treatment | 2022-08-24T16:02:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fetterman bristles at Oz's eat-your-vegetables health advice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/fetterman-oz-stroke-vegetables/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/fetterman-oz-stroke-vegetables/ |
Workers begin to demolish a Soviet-era monument to the Red Army, in Brzeg, Poland, on Wednesday Aug. 24, 2022. Poland on Wednesday began demolishing a memorial to the Soviet Red Army soldiers, an unwanted reminder of the power Moscow once held over Poland whose presence became even more objectionable after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (IPN Wroclaw via AP) (Uncredited/IPN Wroclaw) | 2022-08-24T16:02:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Poland begins to dismantle Soviet-era monument - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poland-begins-to-dismantle-soviet-era-monument/2022/08/24/471a3652-23c2-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poland-begins-to-dismantle-soviet-era-monument/2022/08/24/471a3652-23c2-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
‘Pentiment’ is a video game by art history buffs for art history buffs
(Washington Post illustration; Xbox Game Studios)
Microsoft’s Xbox shared more details Wednesday around its upcoming 16th century narrative art history game “Pentiment.” A departure for both Xbox and the game developer, Obsidian, “Pentiment” claims to be easy on the game mechanics, and heavy on the historical accuracy and entry points for art history buffs.
Obsidian and Xbox revealed the new narrative adventure game would come to Xbox Game Pass Nov. 15. Inspired by illuminated manuscripts, woodcut printing and books like the “Nuremberg Chronicle,” the art is highly stylized and has a Renaissance-like quality to it. It’s set in sixteenth century Bavaria, in Germany, and comes to Xbox consoles, PC and cloud gaming in November for $19.99.
The protagonist, Andreas Maler, is an artist working during a time of societal upheaval, who ends up getting involved in investigating a series of murders. As the player, you must scrutinize nuns, nobles, peasants, thieves and saints to solve crime. Maler’s work includes examining the murder victim’s body and questioning villagers’ motivations, or sometimes just helping them around the house.
“Pentiment” is not a role-playing game, developer Obsidian Entertainment’s usual fare. The studio is known for role-playing games like “The Outer Worlds” and the crowdfunded “Pillars of Eternity,” and licensed titles like “Fallout: New Vegas.” Instead, the main character, Maler, already exists with set characteristics that the player can’t customize, though dialogue choices do affect the story’s outcome. Obsidian credits Xbox with allowing the smaller-scale, historical, narrative-driven game to happen. Xbox announced its acquisition of Obsidian in 2018.
“I thought that Microsoft would just be more willing to allow us to try something unusual and experimental,” said “Pentiment” game director Josh Sawyer during a late August preview of the game. “If we had tried to fund this through traditional publisher methods, I don’t think that would have worked very well at all. Maybe we could have crowdfunded something like this, possibly. But as far as traditional publisher-developer relationship, I really do believe that whatever ideas I had about me possibly doing something like this, they didn’t really seem achievable until Microsoft was going to acquire us and Game Pass was a clear platform for it.”
The biggest competition for PlayStation Plus isn’t Xbox Game Pass
The name of the game comes from an art term, referring to an element within a painting resurfacing after an artist painted over it.
Both Sawyer and art director Hannah Kennedy had an interest and fascination with art history and history more broadly, which seeped into “Pentiment’s” design.
“Art history had a huge impact on the creation of this game, in part because it is a history game.” Kennedy said. “At its core, this is a story about the experience of working artists at the time. So there was a lot to learn from art history, to inform that character and how they exist within this world about also inform how the space looks. It was fun to get to directly reference different art pieces within the story, make little nods to that because we feel that our audience will share a lot of interest with those same things that we find interesting.”
Kennedy said her background attending a Western art school informed her knowledge of how artists in that time period worked, and added that given that there were no cameras back then, developers based their historical depiction on era-appropriate paintings.
“The main draw that we feel this game presents to players is a very unique art style,” Sawyer said.
Are games art? We asked three developers. Here’s how they answered.
The developers said they designed accessibility options and tried to keep gameplay simple and straightforward so it could reach the widest possible audience. For instance, the historical fonts and scripts in the game can be swapped out within the game’s settings for better readability.
“While we do have a number of minigames throughout the game, they’re designed more for vibes and immersion rather than a challenge,” Sawyer said. “We’re not trying to give the player very complicated things to solve. We’re not trying to give the player precision tests or reflex tests.” | 2022-08-24T17:10:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pentiment is a Game Pass title by art history buffs for art history buffs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/24/pentiment-game-pass-art-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/24/pentiment-game-pass-art-history/ |
Fears for independent media in India as tycoon eyes major news channel
NEW DELHI — Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest man and a close ally of prime minister Narendra Modi’s, owns some of India’s busiest airports and seaports, coal mines and power plants. This week, Adani made a foray into a new field — television — in a move that could reshape India’s media landscape.
The billionaire on Tuesday announced the acquisition of a 29 percent stake in New Delhi Television (NDTV) and a proposal to buy an additional 26 percent from public shareholders, signaling his intent to control one of the few remaining television networks in India that are seen as independent. It is even boldly critical, by today’s standards, of Modi and his governing party.
It is not clear when Adani, who overtook Warren Buffett this year to become the world’s fourth-richest man, would amass a majority stake in NDTV and take control. But the move by a business mogul who famously lent his private jet to the prime minister-elect after Modi’s 2014 election triumph stunned India’s liberal elite, threw the broadcaster’s staff into upheaval and surprised even NDTV’s founders.
In a statement, NDTV said that Adani acquired his stake via a third party without informing the company’s founders, the former journalist Radhika Roy and her economist husband Prannoy Roy, and that the deal was done “without discussion, consent or notice.”
“NDTV has never compromised on the heart of its operations — its journalism,” the company said pointedly. “We continue to proudly stand by that journalism.”
While a struggle for NDTV could be lengthy, observers believe it is only a matter of time before the Roys, who still hold a 32 percent stake, relinquish control to a businessman with starkly different politics. Since the 2000s, Adani has supported Modi, and the Gujarati billionaire’s business fortunes have mirrored the rise of the Gujarati politician.
“Their political proximity is well known,” said Deepak Shenoy, the chief executive of Capitalmind, an investment research firm in Bangalore. NDTV was attractive to Adani not because of its profit margin, which is thin, but because of its ability to shape national discourse, Shenoy said.
“It’s less economically motivated and more something that’s done for overarching influence,” he said.
Executives from Adani Media Networks, a subsidiary of the mogul’s, called the deal a “significant milestone” in its mission to become a major player in media. Earlier this year, Adani purchased a stake in the online news site Quint, adding to a sprawling business empire that also includes energy and drone manufacturing.
“With its leading position in news and its strong and diverse reach across genres and geographies, NDTV is the most suitable broadcast and digital platform to deliver on our vision,” said Sanjay Pugalia, the head of Adani’s media arm.
Indian media companies, which rely heavily on advertising revenue, have long been susceptible to pressure from the government and private corporations. But media observers say that broadcasters have hewed especially closely to the official line of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party since its election victory in 2014, a testament to the governing party’s influence over the news media.
In that environment, NDTV has stood out, giving extensive coverage to the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and the nationwide farmers’ protests. That posture has led to clashes with government officials, who have ordered a blackout on NDTV because of coverage the government deemed harmful to national security.
“All mainstream news channels have the same script, same formula, like they have been handed a memo from the powers that be,” said Manisha Pande, a media critic and the executive editor of the Newslaundry website. “NDTV would question the administration, creating a bit of deterrence. With that resistance gone, there will be no shame.”
Pande said NDTV’s losing its editorial independence would affect Indian society profoundly. “Democracy is elections but also credible information reaching the public,” she said. “If you rig [the media], you can effectively rig democracy.”
The Roys launched NDTV in 1988 and first attracted Indian viewers in droves with their live, wall-to-wall elections coverage and on-the-ground reports from correspondents around the country. But by the late 2000s, the Roys were saddled with ballooning debt. Facing a margin call during the global financial crisis, the couple took out a loan of $50 million in exchange for stock warrants that could be converted into NDTV shares. This week, Adani acquired those shares from a holding company.
In recent years, the company’s channels have lost viewers and money, a dramatic reversal from the early 2000s when star anchors were chauffeured to the office and were served croissants by waiters in white gloves, said Krishn Kaushik, a former journalist for Caravan Magazine who reported on NDTV’s inner workings.
“They were not going after the sensationalism, the loud performative debates where you have people shouting at each other, the Hindu-Muslim issues that other channels were doing for eyeballs,” Kaushik said. “They were doing everything right, but that doesn’t bring in money. That’s not what the market wanted.”
Although the company’s market share has waned, its legal perils have grown under the BJP government. In 2017, federal investigators raided NDTV’s offices and the Roys’ residence to probe their past borrowing. In 2019, the couple was barred from leaving the country because of the ongoing financial probe. The network is also being investigated for suspected money laundering.
NDTV employees were caught by surprise Tuesday as word about the Adani deal spread. In NDTV’s South Delhi office tower, employees first thought the news was fake. By Tuesday night, the mood in the newsroom had turned into apprehension about job security and the channel’s editorial independence.
“No one had any idea. There was a sense of disbelief,” said a newsroom employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to comment. “It’s still sinking in.”
By Wednesday morning, the NDTV deal was front-page news in Indian newspapers. On social media, users circulated a meme that NDTV would now stand for Narendra Damodardas Television — a reference to the prime minister’s name. On the Indian right wing, many gleefully predicted who might be the first high-profile journalist to be forced out after an Adani takeover. They settled on Ravish Kumar, an award-winning anchor who frequently criticizes the Modi government.
A defiant Kumar took to Twitter to address speculation about his possible exit.
“The talk about my resignation,” he said wryly, “is just like the rumor that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has agreed to give me an interview.” | 2022-08-24T17:19:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gautam Adani, Modi ally, makes hostile bid for Indian news channel NDTV - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/india-ndtv-adani-media-takover/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/24/india-ndtv-adani-media-takover/ |
‘Don’t say trans’: Texas school board’s new policies spark an outcry
The Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District policies include a total ban on all classroom discussion of “gender fluidity”
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, after a “marathon” school board session featuring four hours of debate from parents, students and community members, the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in North Texas narrowly passed a sweeping set of policies that includes a total ban on all classroom discussion of “gender fluidity.”
The new rules also impose more limits on how race, gender and sexuality is taught; restrict which bathrooms transgender youth can use; and give greater power to the school board to determine which books are available in school libraries.
Last year, state lawmakers passed a law limiting how race, slavery and history are taught in public schools. The district made national headlines then, too, after a Black principal was put on leave after being accused of teaching “critical race theory.”
A Black principal was accused of embracing critical race theory in the classroom. He’s now out of a job.
The new rules — which passed in a 4-3 vote — are indicative of how school boards have become the “epicenter” of efforts to push anti-inclusive policies, LGBTQ and civil rights advocates say. GCISD is among a “cluster” of districts moving to further restrict education in this way, according to Kate Huddleston, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.
The policies also go “far beyond” Texas law, Huddleston said: “As far as I know, this is the most extreme policy, particularly in terms of classroom censorship ... of any district in Texas.”
On Monday, GCISD board president Casey Ford said that the policies “are a reflection of Texas law and community values,” according to the Dallas Morning News. Ford said the changes came from “input from several groups,” including the board — which added two new conservative members in May — district lawyers, school administrators, community members and lawmakers, the outlet reported.
The proposals were made available to the public only 72 hours before being voted on, according to the Texas Observer.
Rachel Hill, government affairs director for Equality Texas, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, called the new policies “a grab-bag of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and censorship policies.”
“They took a lot of the policies that were floating out there in the national district and combined them all in one place,” Hill said. “Not only are these policies harmful individually, but kids are facing the full brunt of all of them together.”
The recent school board changes signal how anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation, which have spiked across the country in the last couple of years, are winding their way into various communities, “impacting people’s everyday lives,” Hill added. “It’s important to remember that this could happen anywhere, even if you feel like your state policies are more affirming of LGBTQ people.”
Since 2021, conservative lawmakers have introduced hundreds of bills restricting the rights of LGBTQ people, with much of their attention focused on trans youth. Of this surge in legislation, only a fraction have been enacted into law. But those that have succeeded have seized national attention — alarming LGBTQ communities and advocates and spurring copycat proposals in other places.
One of the most notable examples is Florida’s Parental Rights in Education policy, referred to by its critics as the “don’t say gay” law. The bill, enacted this summer, bans “instruction” of gender and sexual identity until the third grade, and adds further restrictions through grade 12 for material that is not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” Parents are able to sue schools if they believe the schools have violated these guidelines. (Last month, Florida’s largest school district, Miami-Dade County, narrowly rejected a previously approved sex-education textbook for middle and high schools on the grounds that it violated the law.)
Miami-Dade rejects sex-ed textbook in test of state’s anti-LGBTQ law
GCISD’s new policies echo the Florida law, barring discussion of gender and sexual identity until the sixth grade and enacting a total ban on talking about “gender fluidity” — which the district defines in part as any theory that “espouses the view that an individual’s biological sex should be changed to ‘match’ a self-believed gender that is different from the person’s biological sex.”
Critics of this policy have referred to it as the “Don’t Say Trans” rule.
The policies also state that multiple-occupancy bathrooms or changing facilities “shall be designated for and used only by persons based on the person’s biological sex,” though it does allow schools to provide “reasonable accommodations upon request,” the Dallas Morning News reported.
In addition, the school board gave itself a larger role in selecting books and barred “equity audits” — which collect data on schools’ cultural, socioeconomic and racial dynamics.
Teachers are also no longer required to use the pronouns used by trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming children, even if a parent or guardians have asked them to do so.
Hill, of Equality Texas, called this part of the new rules particularly hypocritical: “This isn’t about respecting all students or respecting all parents and families. It’s about one particular parent voice. ... It’s about anti-LGBTQ policies.”
A passionate debate preceded the vote and featured almost 200 speakers, each of whom had been given a time limit of 60 seconds, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“We have seen the overt, nefarious infiltration of social and cultural propaganda in the curriculum, none more damaging to young minds and bodies than the madness of so-called gender fluidity ideology,” said GCISD board member Tammy Nakamura, in a video shared by a local NBC News station.
Julie McCarty, chief executive of the True Texas Project, a right-wing advocacy group that has touted extremist messaging, said the policy gave parents a voice in their children’s education, and that parents in other districts in the state were taking note of the board’s actions, per the Star-Telegram.
Opponents of the new policies told the trustees the policies would erase LGBTQ people — and may even endanger students’ lives.
“You can talk about Santa Claus, but you can’t talk about gay people to fifth-graders,” said Mike Sexton, whose children go to GCISD schools, according to the Texas Tribune. “This is incredible — you’re acting like people don’t exist.”
“Are you ready to be responsible for even one child taking their life?” a former GCISD high school student asked. “With these new policies you will alienate them even more from getting help, so they feel that suicide is their only escape.”
The student, who identifies as LGBTQ, transferred to another district this year due to “the culture of fear” school officials have created, the Texas Observer reported.
A recent survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nearly half of gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they contemplated suicide during the pandemic, compared with 14 percent of their straight, cisgender peers. Research suggests that number is even higher for young trans people.
Huddleston, the ACLU of Texas attorney, said the new policies violate students’ First Amendment rights, as well as federal anti-discrimination laws.
“All options are on the table” when it comes to challenging the policies, said Huddleston: “We are extremely concerned and evaluating the policy as passed.”
The high-profile battle over the new policies highlights how much political energy — and money — have shifted toward small, hyperlocal venues like school boards.
GCISD is a relatively small district — covering 21 schools and around 14,000 students, half of whom are racial minorities. Still, its recent school board election, which resulted in two new conservative board members, attracted a spike in political donations, according to NBC News.
Among the donors was the Patriot Mobile, which bills itself as “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider.” (According to multiple reports, Patriot Mobile was a prominent presence at this week’s board meeting and had set up tents for the overflow of attendees.)
“This is all political,” said Jorge Rodríguez, a trustee who voted against the policies. “These board meetings have just become headquarters for political campaigns instead of focusing on what we are here to do, which is to help students succeed.” | 2022-08-24T17:28:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Don’t say trans’: North Texas school board passes sweeping policies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/texas-school-dont-say-trans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/texas-school-dont-say-trans/ |
Charlie Crist, Democratic gubernatorial candidate of Florida, speaks during a primary night party in Saint Petersburg, Fla., on Aug. 23. (Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg)
Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) obliterated opponent Nikki Fried in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Florida governor. And now Crist, himself a former Republican governor of the state, goes up against the current Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who has visions of the Oval Office dancing in his head. Just as Lawton Chiles did with his 1994 defeat of Jeb Bush for the same office, Crist has a rare opportunity to knock a would-be presidential candidate off track. And it looks like he has every intention of doing so.
Crist, a mild-mannered moderate on the trail, came out swinging at DeSantis in his victory remarks: “Our fundamental freedoms are literally on the ballot. … A woman’s right to choose, on the ballot. Democracy, on the ballot. Your rights as minorities are on this ballot.” He told the crowd that DeSantis wants to be president, but if Crist wins, “that show is over.”
Crist went on to call his race “the most consequential … in the history of the state,” saying he hardly recognized today’s “extremist” Republicans, who “want to turn back the clock on our freedom.”
Crist made clear that he’s going to run as a uniter, while DeSantis schemes to reduce access to the voting booth. Crist vowed to make it easier to vote (saying Election Day should be a holiday), as well as to sign an executive order protecting abortion rights and reinstating Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, whom DeSantis suspended for declaring he would not prosecute women seeking an abortion. Crist also went after DeSantis for refusing to call out GOP Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez for suggesting Cubans “illegally” in the state should be bused to Delaware.
Crist’s attacks on DeSantis were unsparing: “He’s abusive. He is a bully. … He’s dangerous.” Crist accused the governor of imitating the worst political authoritarians around the globe, and bashed him for refusing to call out his flag-waving neo-Nazi supporters.
Crist might consider bringing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) into the state, or at least running an ad featuring her slam against DeSantis. (“DeSantis is somebody who is, right now, campaigning for election deniers,” she said in a recent ABC interview. “That is something that I think people have got to have real pause about. … Either you fundamentally believe in and will support our constitutional structure, or you don’t.”)
Crist sounds as though he is running against former president Donald Trump — and in a sense, he is. He’s battling a mini-Trump who adopts the same inflammatory slogans (“woke” seems to be his favorite word), and who also refuses to unequivocally denounce white nationalists. Like Trump, DeSantis uses critical race theory to crank up White resentment, even signing into law a litigation behemoth for suing teachers who dare to accurately teach American history. To all that, Crist declares: “Enough!”
Florida remains a red-trending state. DeSantis has a boatload of money. But this does not mean DeSantis will waltz to victory. In making DeSantis’s bullying and violations of freedom the central issue, Crist is trying out a playbook that may be useful against any MAGA Republican nominee in 2024. If Crist pulls an upset, or even comes close, Republicans might decide DeSantis is not a good bet for 2024. | 2022-08-24T17:33:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Charlie Crist could derail DeSantis's 2024 presidential hopes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/charlie-crist-derail-desantis-president/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/charlie-crist-derail-desantis-president/ |
Golfer Rory McIlroy helped lead a players-only meeting last week that shored up support for the PGA Tour. (Cliff Hawkins/Getty)
In its most aggressive response yet to the growing threat posed by the LIV Golf Invitational Series, the PGA Tour announced several measures Wednesday aimed at making tour events more compelling for its fans and more financially rewarding for its golfers.
The tour has lost some of its biggest names to its deep-pocketed Saudi-backed competitor, and the new measures will make the tour more lucrative for the tour’s top players while also providing more stability for younger golfers.
The tour’s top 20 players will commit to playing in at least 20 events, including the four majors and the FedEx Cup playoffs, which PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said will ensure competitive fields and a better product.
“With the best interests of the collective in mind, those players rallied together to strengthen the tour platform, recognizing that if fans are going to invest in the PGA Tour, it means a hell of a lot more if they know the players are investing right back,” Monahan said at a news conference in Atlanta, site of this week’s Tour Championship.
That commitment was in part a result of a players-only meeting held last week in which stars like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy shored up player support and sought buy-in from the game’s best players as LIV continues to poach from their ranks with lucrative contract offers.
“When I tune into a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, I expect to see Tom Brady throw a football,” McIlroy told reporters Wednesday. “When I tune into a Formula 1 race, I expect to see Lewis Hamilton in a car. Sometimes what’s happened on the PGA Tour is we all sort of act independently and we sort of have our own schedules. And that means we never really get together all that often.
“I think what came out of the meeting … we’ve all made a commitment to get together more often, to make the product more compelling,” he continued.
The tour has boosted the prize money to further incentivize players. Beginning next season, the tour will elevate four non-major tournaments, offering $20 million in prize money at each, which will add approximately $46 million in total available prize money.
The tour is also expanding its Player Impact Program, a bonus system introduced last year as a way to reward players who help promote the game, and will now reward 20 players, rather than 10. The total pool of money will double to $100 million and the top player will pocket $15 million.
The tour has also established a guaranteed minimum of $500,000 per player, money that rookies will receive upfront. Nonexempt players will now receive $5,000 for missed cuts and subsidized travel.
A chief complaint from some stars who jumped to LIV Golf, including Phil Mickelson, is that the PGA Tour hasn’t done enough to empower and reward players. LIV Golf has staged three events and has signed several of the PGA Tour’s most recognizable names, prompting several changes from the PGA Tour in response.
“As much as I probably don’t want to give Phil any sort of credit at all, yeah, there are certain points that he was trying to make, but there’s a way to go about them,” McIlroy said Wednesday. “There’s a way to collaborate and there’s a way — you get all the top players in the world together and you get them on the same page. You then go to the tour and you suggest ideas and you work together. You know, this is pure collaboration. This isn’t some sort of renegade group trying to take some sort of power grab of the PGA Tour.”
“Some of his ideas, did they have merit? Of course they did,” he continued. “But he just didn't approach it the right way.”
McIroy also announced a new venture that will bear at least some resemblance to the LIV product, which includes a team format and is targeting a younger audience. McIlroy and Woods this week launched TMRW Sports, which will partner with the PGA Tour on a series of team matches that will be held on Monday nights beginning in January 2024. The events will closer resemble golf simulator competitions than traditional golf, with a promise of 18 holes completed in two hours.
“It’s a great opportunity for PGA Tour players to show a different side of themselves,” McIlroy said. “Prime time on Monday nights, I think, it’s great for brand exposure to try to engage a different audience. We’ve all heard about the fact of how old the golf audience is, trying to get younger eyeballs on to it. And I just think it’s going to be a really, really cool concept.”
Published reports suggest that as many as seven more players, including British Open winner Cameron Smith, could defect for LIV after this weekend’s Tour Championship, and it remains to be seen if any will be swayed by the new measures. McIlroy said he reached out to Smith two days after the British Open to make sure he was aware of some of the pending changes.
“I’ve always said this, guys can do whatever they want,” McIlroy said. “Guys can make a decision that they feel is best for themselves and for their families. But I just love guys to make decisions based on all of the facts. And sometimes I don’t think some guys made those decisions based on having all the facts in front of them.”
Monahan was asked if any LIV players would be allowed to return to the tour and compete under the new measures next season, and he responded bluntly, “No.”
“As I've been clear throughout, every player has a choice, and I respect their choice, but they've made it,” he said. “We've made ours. We're going to continue to focus on the things that we control and get stronger and stronger.”
Citing the antitrust lawsuit that 11 LIV players filed against the PGA Tour, Monahan declined to discuss whether any LIV players would be welcomed back further down the road. | 2022-08-24T17:34:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PGA Tour changes are aimed at curbing LIV Golf threat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/pga-tour-changes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/24/pga-tour-changes/ |
‘Three Minutes: A Lengthening’ is a work of ruminative grace and power
Holocaust documentary meticulously examines a three-minute clip of archival film footage from Poland in 1938
Townspeople of the predominantly Jewish village of Nasielsk, Poland, in 1938 as seen in the documentary “Three Minutes: A Lengthening.” (Family Affair Films/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum/Super Ltd.)
The first thing that greets you in “Three Minutes: A Lengthening” is a sound: the familiar clacking of film going through a projector. Then, the images: brief, alternately vivid and indistinct portraits of street life and domestic scenes; moments that, from the grain and scratches on the film, were obviously captured long ago. The montage lasts three minutes. And then it plays again.
We learn that this home movie was taken by David Kurtz, who had emigrated from Poland to the United States as a child and returned to his native country in 1938, as part of a “grand tour” of Europe. Like so many tourists, he brought his trusty 16mm home movie camera along; what he captured in those fleeting moments of people laughing and mugging and scolding and simply living life was the last visual record of the Jewish community of Nasielsk, which would be decimated the following year.
Working from the book “Three Minutes in Poland,” by Kurtz’s grandson Glenn Kurtz, filmmaker Bianca Stigter uses the elder Kurtz’s original footage to mesmerizing effect: Rather than intercut the frames with the usual talking heads offering explanation and interpretation, she focuses intently on the images, slowing them down, replaying them, zooming in, stopping them to examine an otherwise forgettable detail. “Three Minutes: A Lengthening” begins as a mystery story, when Glenn Kurtz, speaking off camera, explains how he came to discover his grandfather’s film, which was on the verge of being permanently unusable when he found it in 2008. We learn how his detective work led him to his ancestor’s hometown of Nasielsk, then he and Stigter go deeper, gleaning data from archives, costume historians, even the Polish Meteorological Institute, the better to understand more precisely the day of Aug. 4, 1938, and what the Jewish inhabitants might have been wearing and doing and celebrating.
Of course, the bitter irony is that, in their giddiness at being captured on camera, in their everyday teasing and wary curiosity, they have no idea that in a little more than a year, Germany would invade Poland and their lives would be torn apart. The shattering climax of “Three Minutes: A Lengthening” is a slow zoom into Nasielsk’s public square, set to the testimony of witnesses to the deportation of 1,600 Jews in December 1939.
That testimony, as well as the film’s narration, is read by Helena Bonham Carter in an exquisite vocal performance. Her dulcet tones and sensitive line interpretations draw us into a world that, in the film’s relatively brief running time, feels utterly immersive, even life-changing. So does the voice of Maurice Chandler, a Nasielsk native and Holocaust survivor whose appearance in the footage was discovered when the material was made available on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website.
The museum’s restorative work was both literal and figurative, in bringing the celluloid back from near-extinction and in connecting the present to the past in a way that’s both mournful and triumphant. “Three Minutes: A Lengthening” winds up being a fascinatingly contradictory film, exemplifying both loss and the resuscitative work of memory, and the permanence and fragility of film as a material object. Formally, it’s both audacious and bracingly simple: Stigter eschews the conventions of documentary film while judiciously reducing them down to their finest, most potent elements. “Three Minutes: A Lengthening” unspools like a not-so-minor miracle. It’s a work of poetry, power and ruminative grace.
PG. At Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema. Contains mature thematic elements involving the Holocaust. 72 minutes. | 2022-08-24T18:37:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Three Minutes: A Lengthening’ is a work of ruminative grace and power - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/24/three-minutes-a-lengthening-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/24/three-minutes-a-lengthening-movie-review/ |
D.C. police respond to reports of multiple people shot in the Truxton Circle area of Northwest Washington on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022. (Emily Davies/TWP)
Two people were killed and others were injured Wednesday afternoon in a shooting in the Truxton Circle neighborhood of Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police and an official with the mayor’s office.
Dora Taylor-Lowe, a spokeswoman for the deputy mayor for public safety, confirmed the fatalities.
The shooting occurred near O and North Capitol streets in Northwest.
Police crowded along the sidewalk in front of a residential building for seniors, where a black tent used to shroud homicide scenes had been placed.
Olliebelle Green, 54, said in a telephone interview from a hospital that her son, 35-year-old Levon Williams, was among the wounded. She said he was shot in the side and was “coherent.”
The area is near a fatal shooting that occurred hours earlier, on Florida Avenue NW.
The earlier shooting occurred shortly before 2:10 a.m. in the 200 block of Florida Avenue NW. Police said Ahmad Clark, 25, of Bristow, Va., was pronounced dead at the scene, and a woman was taken to a hospital for gunshot injuries. Police said she is expected to survive.
Police could not immediately say if there was any connection between the two shootings.
Before the fatal shootings on O Street, police said 136 people had been killed in the District this year, a 4 percent increase over this time in 2021. There have been at least three previous homicides in the Truxton Circle area this year. | 2022-08-24T18:51:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two killed, others injured in Truxton Circle area shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/truxton-circle-multiple-people-shot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/truxton-circle-multiple-people-shot/ |
How do I explain my lack of dating experience? Carolyn Hax readers give advice.
Dear Carolyn: I’m a 33-year-old woman living in Los Angeles, and I’ve never had sex. I’ve never been on a date, and I don’t even know how to kiss — I’ve been kissed (with my permission) literally twice, at parties.
I want romance, sex, a relationship, etc., I’ve just always had severe body image issues (I believe “dysmorphia” would be the right word), and spending 20 years with undiagnosed social anxiety didn’t help. I’m working on all of that, but one big worry is, once I manage to get a date with a guy I’m into, how/when do I explain my total lack of experience in a way that isn’t insanely awkward? And should I anticipate that a lot of guys will have a negative reaction to this, or no?
Anonymous: Speaking as a late-dater-due-to-body-issues: When someone calls you attractive, they mean it! They wouldn’t say it if they weren’t into you.
For kissing, just let it be awkward. For sex and a relationship, once it looks to be moving that way — he’s inviting you to his place or you’re on a third date or whenever — just tell ’em. “Hey, I haven’t done [sex, boyfriend] before. I hadn’t felt ready, but I like you and where this is going, so I want to do it with you. But I wanted you to know.” There’s nothing wrong with hearing “Not yet” as a response (which you can always say too, of course) — maybe he wasn’t ready for that step, or wants to make sure you’re comfortable. Guys who react negatively — bullet dodged!
It’s easy to think all bad dates or rejections are your fault, but the world of relationships and sex is HUGE and nobody’s experienced in all of it. The guys are still looking, learning and hoping just as much as you are, or they wouldn’t be on dates. People who’ve been on a million dates and slept in a hundred beds still get rejected, still encounter new sexual or romantic hurdles, and still get insanely awkward. It takes practice to hear rejection not as “What did I do wrong?” but as “Good, that means he wasn’t as right as I felt, glad I found out quickly.” That practice, and that experience, matters most.
— Fellow Late-Starter
Anonymous: I was in a similar situation some years ago and this is the advice I wish someone had given me:
Sex is such a bizarrely loaded topic that it might help to think of this in terms of another human endeavor with less baggage. Imagine we’re talking about water skiing instead of sex.
You’ve never water skied before and you start dating someone who loves water skiing. If you don’t ever want to ski, he should know early so he can decide if he’s willing to pursue this interest by himself or if he should find a partner who shares this hobby. If you do want to learn to water ski and you find yourself discussing skiing with him or if he’s inviting you on an impromptu lake trip, maybe tell him this is new for you just so he knows not to drive the boat too fast. There’s no reason to be embarrassed that you haven’t done such an arbitrary activity before. Lots of people don’t water ski; maybe they don’t happen to be in good lake country, or it doesn’t sound fun, or their culture frowns upon it. It would be unfair and weird for him to be upset that water skiing hadn’t come up before for you. And you’d never feel compelled to explain or justify not having done it. He doesn’t need a history or a justification, it just hasn’t come up for you before. Your only responsibility is to decide your level of interest in this hobby, find someone who has a similar level of interest, and make sure you take proper safety precautions.
This strategy of thinking of sex as an arbitrary shared interest really removed a lot of the pressure for me, as well as a lot of the weird cultural gunk surrounding sex and sexuality.
Anonymous: Before going out, decide for yourself what you are comfortable doing/not doing. The first time or two someone asks you out (or you ask them — and yes, you can), suggest that you meet for coffee in a public place and in the afternoon so you can chat for a limited time before parting company. This helps you avoid the whole “will we, won’t we” kiss/make out/have sex dilemma until you get more comfortable with each other. I always invited people to go to the zoo for an afternoon, on the grounds that anyone who doesn’t like the zoo isn’t right for me anyway. What sort of thing would work for you in that way? And do watch out for anyone who wants to take advantage of your lack of experience/confidence. Sadly, they do exist. If your gut goes “ick!” listen to it.
Anonymous: I was in your shoes, albeit a couple of years older, just a year ago. I met someone who had been in a few previous relationships so I knew was more experienced than I was. I was honest about my lack of relationship experience, using the casual but true, “It just never really happened for me,” and saved the, “just so you know, if we do this it will be my first time,” for when it was a more imminently pressing issue. Like you, I was anxious about disclosing the latter, but I felt like I should for both our sakes, and it was fine! For him, a nonissue, other than to make sure I was comfortable. I don’t know what you’re looking for in a relationship, and maybe I was lucky, but I think if you find someone kind who genuinely cares about you that will carry over into potentially awkward conversations about sexual history (or lack thereof). Good luck!
— Been There too | 2022-08-24T19:04:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: How do I explain my lack of dating experience? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/24/carolyn-hax-explain-lack-dating-experience/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/24/carolyn-hax-explain-lack-dating-experience/ |
Biden Shouldn’t Ignore Republicans on Iran Nuclear Deal
In the spring of 2015, amid reports that the US and other world powers were about to sign a nuclear pact with Iran, a group of 47 Republican senators signed an open letter, nominally addressed to the regime in Tehran but meant for President Barack Obama. Their message: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal was known, wouldn’t long be worth the paper it was written on.
The letter, drafted by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Mitch McConnell, who was majority leader at the time, said: “[We] will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
Obama ignored the warning and made the deal, but the senators were right: Three years later, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal on the grounds that it didn’t do enough to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons or restrain its other destabilizing activities in the Middle East. He then imposed economic sanctions against Iran.
Iran’s leaders, along with the other signatories to the deal and former Obama administration officials, professed to be shocked and dismayed by Trump’s unilateral withdrawal. But they had been warned.
It may be time for another letter. The Biden administration is signaling that it is in the home stretch of a long campaign to revive the deal. Officials in Washington say Iran has agreed to drop some key demands that had been unacceptable to the US. Tehran claims that it is the US that has backed down. It appears that both sides are preparing their respective domestic audiences for an imminent announcement.
A revival of the deal would be accompanied by the lifting of sanctions, giving Iran a windfall in unfrozen assets and fresh revenue from exports of oil and other goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars. While committing to a freeze on nuclear enrichment for a few years, Tehran would be free to ramp up military spending, especially on its development of the missiles and drones it uses to menace its neighbors and vital international sea lanes. Its regionwide network of Shiite militias and terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas, would, if history is any guide, also receive a bonanza.
Like Obama in 2015, Biden has ignored repeated, bipartisan demands from Congress that lawmakers be consulted before an agreement is reached and sanctions are lifted. Administration officials have dismissed any Washington opposition to the revival as being motivated by petty politics, not principle.
This is the attitude the Obama administration adopted in response to the Cotton-McConnell letter in 2015. In the hyper-partisan atmosphere of Washington, their reaction was denounced by the White House and Democrats, who placed it somewhere on the spectrum of shame between lèse-majesté and outright treason. Republicans, it was suggested, were acting out of spite to try to deny President Obama a huge foreign-policy victory. Biden, the vice president at the time, declared the letter “beneath the dignity of an institution I revere.”
There is no denying that the Republicans dedicated themselves to blocking any and all of Obama’s initiatives, but critics of the Cotton-McConnell letter overlooked its most important point: The president was about to commit the US to its most consequential foreign policy in decades without so much as consulting the institution Biden claimed to hold in such high esteem.
Now it looks as if Biden is about to repeat that mistake. Again, Republicans are demanding that Congress be given a say in the matter before the president invokes his executive powers. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has written to Biden, saying Congress must be allowed to review the terms under which the US returns to the deal.
McCaul is unlikely to persuade Biden. The president regards the revival of the JCPOA as a key foreign-policy goal and has tolerated increasingly hostile and reckless behavior by Iran — including plots to assassinate top Trump administration officials on US soil — to achieve it.
But if Congress can’t stop Biden from making the deal, it can remind all parties of just how pointless it will be without legislative buy-in. As the Cotton-McConnell letter noted, it will take a mere “stroke of a pen” from the next Republican president to reduce the JCPOA to a dead letter.
The Iranians know this from bitter experience. Tehran’s calculation is that if it can get sanctions relief for even the two years before a Republican has a shot at the White House, the country will be able to replenish its coffers with tens of billions of dollars.
But if predictions of GOP gains in the November midterm elections are borne out, the party can use its influence in Congress to slow-roll the lifting of existing sanctions and even impose new ones in response to Iranian activities that Biden has been reluctant to punish — those assassination plots, for instance.
Getting that message out now would cool the enthusiasm of companies that might be interested in doing business with Iran. And it would provide a modicum of reassurance to America’s friends in the Mideast that Iran won’t have free rein to darken their skies.
Iran’s Return Would Fill a Russia-Shaped Hole in Oil Supplies: Julian Lee
Rushdie Attack’s Roots Lie in India, Not Iran: Mihir Sharma
Rushdie Attack Shows the Hard Truths of Iran’s Soft Power: Bobby Ghosh | 2022-08-24T19:04:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden Shouldn’t Ignore Republicans on Iran Nuclear Deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/biden-shouldnt-ignore-republicans-on-iran-nuclear-deal/2022/08/24/fb343f92-23dc-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/biden-shouldnt-ignore-republicans-on-iran-nuclear-deal/2022/08/24/fb343f92-23dc-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Everything You Need to Know About Biden’s Plan for Student Debt Forgiveness
Analysis by Janet Lorin | Bloomberg
President Joe Biden is using executive action to forgive some government student loans. It’s news many former students have been longing to hear. The move will help alleviate the weight on borrowers of $1.6 trillion in federal education debt, a figure that has more than tripled in the last 15 years.
1. Who would Biden’s plan help?
The package is limited to those with annual incomes of less than $125,000 for individuals or $250,000 for households. It provides as much as $10,000 in debt relief for most borrowers and more -- as much as $20,000 -- for those who received Pell grants, federal awards to undergraduates who display exceptional financial need. As many as 43 million borrowers are eligible to benefit from the plan, according to the White House, which said the relief would cancel the remaining balances for almost half of them.
2. Who would be left out?
According to Education Department data, 27 million borrowers have debt of between $10,000 and $100,000, though some of them are Pell Grant recipients and therefore eligible for up to $20,000 in relief. Only 3.3 million owe more than that, including about 900,000 who have debt exceeding $200,000, a group that likely includes many current or former graduate students. It was unclear whether forgiveness would extend to parents who borrowed for their children.
3. What else has Biden done?
On his first day in office, he directed the Department of Education to extend a freeze on federal student-loan payments and to keep the interest rate at 0%, which means no accumulation of interest during the freeze. In addition to the debt relief plan announced Aug. 24, Biden extended the moratorium on repaying student loans for four months through Dec. 31. The payments were first suspended in 2020 as part of the pandemic relief effort, but do not apply to private loans. Biden’s administration has already been forgiving targeted amounts. That includes most recently the $5.8 billion in debt for students who the government said were defrauded by the defunct Corinthian Colleges Inc., a for-profit college chain. The June announcement said loans held by 560,000 borrowers was the largest discharge in the Education Department’s history.
4. What’s the argument in favor of the debt-canceling plan?
When the idea was first floated during the 2020 campaign, part of the rationale for both debt cancellation and the payments pause was to support a pandemic-weakened economy. That seems less apt now, as the US is confronting the steepest inflation in decades. Some forgiveness could help keep struggling borrowers from defaulting, which can scar credit reports. Some advocates see the issue as generational fairness, saying no previous cohort had to enter adulthood with such a debt burden. There’s also a racial equity element: Forgiving $10,000 in debt to all borrowers regardless of income would have zeroed out loan balances for 2 million Black borrowers and reduced the Black-White gap in the share of individuals with student debt from 9 to 6 percentage points, according to data Senator Elizabeth Warren cited from the University of California Merced and Princeton University. Also, according to the White House, Black borrowers are twice as likely to have received Pell Grants than White ones.
5. What do critics say?
That the plan would be unfair to those who have already paid back student loans or who worked their way through college to avoid debt. Some progressive activists, like Warren, have called for forgiving up to $50,000 in loans, while others have pressed for deeper relief for targeted groups, like students who didn’t finish their degrees. Some student loan advocates stress the importance of making forgiveness automatic, or at least lowering the bureaucratic hurdles that have plagued other student loan repayment programs to help struggling borrowers. And people on all sides of the issue point out that forgiving debt does nothing to alter the economics of education that produced the borrowing in the first place -- the rising price tag for higher education. | 2022-08-24T19:04:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Everything You Need to Know About Biden’s Plan for Student Debt Forgiveness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/everything-you-need-to-know-aboutbidens-plan-for-student-debtforgiveness/2022/08/24/5ba45aa2-23d7-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/everything-you-need-to-know-aboutbidens-plan-for-student-debtforgiveness/2022/08/24/5ba45aa2-23d7-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
FILE — Susan Newman, left, and Nell Newman arrive at the SeriousFun Children’s Network event at the Dolby Theatre, May 14, 2015, in Los Angeles. A new lawsuit filed Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022, has exposed a deep rift between two of Paul Newman’s daughters and the late actor’s charitable foundation, over how it gives away some of the millions of dollars it makes off the Newman’s Own line of food and drink products. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-08-24T19:04:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Newman's daughters sue late actor's charity foundation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/paul-newmans-daughters-sue-late-actors-charity-foundation/2022/08/24/b2572608-23d8-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/paul-newmans-daughters-sue-late-actors-charity-foundation/2022/08/24/b2572608-23d8-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Warmer and drier conditions globally are allowing fires to grow out of control, burning 3 million more hectares than in 2001, according to a recent analysis
The McKinney Fire consumes trees in the Klamath National Forest in California on July 30, 2022. (Noah Berger/AP)
Forest fires are burning nearly twice as many trees as they did just two decades ago, according to a study from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) laboratory.
Researchers found that a typical forest fire season burns 3 million more hectares (7.4 million acres) than in 2001. Forest fires accounted for a quarter of global tree loss in the past 20 years, according to a summation of the data produced by the World Resources Institute.
In the United States this year alone, several large wildfires in California have burned nearly 200,000 acres and killed at least four people, according to data from CalFire. One notable blaze threatened the country’s oldest trees, in Yosemite National Park, while the largest fire, on the California-Oregon border, killed at least four and burned more than 60,000 acres.
In Europe, large wildfires have affected at least a dozen countries, burning across 600,000 hectares of land, according to reporting by Reuters. Fed by a dry summer and temperatures that pushed above the century mark, large fires darkened skies in Portugal and France this summer.
Wildfires in the largely untamed wilderness of Russia’s Siberian and Far East regions have scorched upward of 3.2 million hectares of forest this year, according to the Moscow Times, blanketing several towns in toxic smoke. Elsewhere in Asia, parts of China are battling numerous wildfires in the midst of the country’s worst heat wave since 1961.
Rising temperatures caused by human activity are an important driver of worsening wildfire conditions globally. As the atmosphere becomes warmer, typically lush forests dry out and become more vulnerable to fires.
A surprising amount of dry lightning hits California, fueling fire risk
Dried-out forests can act like tinderboxes, allowing fires to spiral out of control. Vast blazes release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to further warming of the planet. The World Resources Institute refers to this cycle as the fire-climate feedback loop, and little can be done to slow it outside of dramatically lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
A changing climate has caused boreal forests to ignite as never before. About 70 percent of all fire-driven tree loss over the past 20 years has occurred in these forests, which are in northern areas of the planet, which are warming at higher rates than other parts of the globe.
In 2021 alone, 6.67 million hectares of tree cover were lost in boreal forests, compared with just 1.16 million hectares lost in tropical forests such as the Amazon, according to UMD’s GLAD laboratory. In both cases, though, the loss of these trees and the thawing of permafrost threatens to release ancient stores of carbon, converting vast forests from climate-healthy carbon sinks into accidental polluters.
Although the analysis shows that fire-related tree loss in Brazil spiked in 2016 and has shrunk since, the number of trees lost to wildfires in the past five years is still many times higher than in the early years of the 21st century.
The threat from wildfires is expected only to grow globally, as the climate is all but guaranteed to continue to warm. Still, mitigation efforts can be implemented.
5 takeaways from the latest United Nations climate change report
The 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that each increment of additional warming will lead to more devastation and death from a variety of climate hazards, meaning that keeping temperatures even a tenth of one degree Celsius cooler could have a substantial impact.
For boreal forests, restricting warming to under 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) is critical. Scientists with the IPCC say that some of the worst-case warming scenarios would lead to 15 years of greenhouse gas emissions being released from the massive stores of carbon in these regions, something that could be curbed if the planet’s temperature increase is kept below the threshold of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Humans also can change how they interact with forests — ending deforestation and limiting agricultural techniques such as slash and burn can help improve forest resilience, especially in the tropics. When conditions are hot and dry, experts say, people should also avoid activity that can spark fires near forests, as even a small blaze can quickly grow out of control.
How to protect your home from wildfires
Anatomy of a wildfire: How the Dixie Fire became the largest blaze of a devastating summer
Wildfires need fuel to burn. A key way to get rid of that fuel is to set it ablaze, very carefully. | 2022-08-24T19:04:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Forest fires burn twice as many trees today than two decades ago - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/forest-fires-trees-burn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/forest-fires-trees-burn/ |
The Interior Department’s inspector general detailed Zinke’s and his chief of staff’s attempts to mislead federal officials
In this Jan. 17, 2017, photo, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for interior secretary, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), appears before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Former interior secretary Ryan Zinke, the leading contender to win a new House seat representing Montana this fall, lied to investigators several times about conversations he had with federal officials, lawmakers and lobbyists about a petition by two Indian tribes to operate a casino in New England, the department’s watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.
Investigators found that Zinke and his chief of staff “made statements to OIG investigators with the overall intent to mislead them.”
A letter from Zinke’s attorney’s office included in the report pushed back on its substance, calling the report “distorted and misleading” and questioning the timing of its release. Zinke’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The watchdog began its investigation in 2017 to determine whether Zinke had been improperly influenced by Nevada Republicans and MGM Resorts International,which opposed the casino planned by competitors. The Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes wanted to open a gambling facility in East Windsor, Conn., a request that required federal approval. Zinke neither granted nor denied the petition; instead, he sent it back to the tribes. His action became the subject of intense scrutiny at Interior and the White House during President Donald Trump’s first months in office.
Over the course of the investigation, the inspector general’s office shifted its focus from the decision in the casino case to the truthfulness of Zinke’s and his chief of staff’s statements.
When told that his account was contradicted by the evidence, Zinke doubled down, the report said. He claimed that while he may have met socially with then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) about the casino project, he did not recall any conversation.
Investigators interviewed Zinke and his chief of staff twice in 2018 before Zinke announced his resignation as secretary in late that year under a cloud of ethics investigations that included the casino case.
In a harsh rebuttal included in the report’s appendix, Zinke blamed the inspector general’s office for releasing its findings so close to the November midterm elections. He argued it should be released after the election. Zinke is the Republican nominee for a new U.S. House seat representing western Montana, a race he is favored to win.
“Given the unnecessary delay in completing the report, we find the timing of the release of this report disturbing and improper,” an attorney for the former secretary wrote.
Zinke’s attorney also attacked the report on its substance, writing, “There was no basis to even conduct such a review of Secretary Zinke, but it is crystal clear that Secretary Zinke acted lawfully and ethically in carrying out his duties.”
But the Trump administration’s own Justice Department, after receiving a criminal referral from the inspector general in late 2018 for potential criminal violations in the casino matter, took 2½ years to review it. The delay effectively tied the inspector general’s hands in completing its administrative case, which the Biden administration reviewed for six months before formally declining the case. Wednesday’s report was issued a year later.
The inspector general’s report comes six months after the same office accused Zinke of also lying about his role in negotiations over a land deal in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont. That investigation found that Zinke had violated his duty of candor when he told a federal ethics official that his involvement in the deal was minimal. He had claimed his meeting with the project’s developers at Interior headquarters was “purely social.” | 2022-08-24T19:04:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ryan Zinke, former interior secretary, lied to investigators in casino case, watchdog finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/ryan-zinke-misled-investigators-watchdog-report/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/24/ryan-zinke-misled-investigators-watchdog-report/ |
The major climate regulation to be proposed by the car-loving state could have far-reaching effects on the auto industry.
Traffic on Interstate 80 in Crockett, Calif. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg_ (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
California is set to move closer to banning the sale of new cars running only on gasoline by 2035, a major step in the car-loving state’s fight against climate change.
The expected embrace of the policy by the state’s Air Resources Board during a meeting scheduled for Thursday comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) set a target in 2020 for cleaning up California’s auto fleet.
The proposed regulation would set strict deadlines for meeting that goal, forcing automakers to step up production of cleaner vehicles considerably, starting in 2026. The requirements would only speed forward from there, until only zero-emission passenger cars, pickup trucks and SUVs as well as a limited number of plug-in hybrids are allowed to be sold in the state by 2035.
The state’s move does not ban the sale of any used vehicles. And owners of old-fashioned gas-guzzlers will still be able to drive California’s roadways.
“This will help to accelerate the transition and give a signal that customers and states are ready for this transition to occur rapidly,” said Kathy Harris, clean vehicles and fuels advocate at Natural Resources Defense Council. “This is a really exciting announcement.”
Famous (or infamous) for driving culture and clogged freeways, California has considerable sway over the entire auto industry. A federal waiver under the Clean Air Act allows the state to impose stricter tailgate emission standards than the federal Environmental Protection Agency requires, with more than a dozen other states having opted to use the same standards set by California in the past.
The waiver emerged as a considerable source of tension between the state and Donald Trump. His deputies at the EPA stripped California of its right to set its own climate tailpipe standards only for the Biden administration to restore it earlier this year.
The state agency will send the proposed rule to the EPA for final approval. For its part, the Biden administration issued stricter nationwide tailpipe rules last year for new cars and SUVs made through 2026.
California’s aggressive timeline comes soon after Biden signed a climate package that spends tens of billions of dollars to speed up the transition to electric vehicles through generous tax credits for buyers of the vehicles and incentives for carmakers to move their production lines to the U.S. and expand operations.
But the state’s regulations could prove even more impactful. They send a clear signal to the auto industry that much of the nation’s car market will be closed to many kinds of gasoline-powered vehicles in relative short order. As the industry announces plans for battery factories and assembly plants and new electric models in the U.S., the state’s move encourages carmakers to step things up even more.
“It is a big deal,” said Scott Hochberg, transportation attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. But he cautioned that the state could still be moving faster, and that “we would have liked to see the rule got much further.”
Among its shortcomings, Hochberg said, are a lack of incentives for low-income communities and too-lax standards for cleaning up emissions from internal-combustion engines sold before the fleet goes all-electric. “The rule needed to react to the urgency of the moment, but it fell short.”
California has a long legacy of forcing automakers to step up their efficiency, as selling one fleet of vehicles in the Golden State and others aligned with its regulations and another fleet elsewhere is logistically and financially prohibitive for automakers. | 2022-08-24T19:04:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California moves toward banning new cars running only on gas by 2035 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/08/24/california-climate-cars/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/08/24/california-climate-cars/ |
Police identify 25-year-old man who was fatally shot in Manassas
Authorities have identified a 25-year-old man who was fatally shot Friday in Prince William County.
Prince William County police said Dalton Jakob Moore of no fixed address and another man were shot at about 8:30 p.m. after they were approached by a man near Sudley Manor Drive and Williamson Boulevard in Manassas. Moore died at the scene, and the other man was taken to a hospital.
Police said the alleged gunman fled in a light-colored sedan. They had no further details about the gunman or the vehicle. | 2022-08-24T19:04:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police: Man fatally shot in Manassas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/man-fatally-shot-manassas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/24/man-fatally-shot-manassas/ |
This combination of photos shows the Saturn V Rocket with the Apollo 12 spacecraft aboard on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in 1969, left, and the Artemis rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 18, 2022. Liftoff for Artemis is set for Monday, Aug. 29, 2022. Years late and billions over budget, NASA’s new moon rocket makes its debut in a high-stakes test flight before astronauts get on top. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-08-24T19:04:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: NASA tests new moon rocket, 50 years after Apollo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/explainer-nasa-tests-new-moon-rocket-50-years-after-apollo/2022/08/24/3d34b998-23d9-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/explainer-nasa-tests-new-moon-rocket-50-years-after-apollo/2022/08/24/3d34b998-23d9-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a double amputee, is seen at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., on Aug. 4. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
From a guard tower overlooking Kabul’s airport, two U.S. Marines spotted a man matching the description of a suspected suicide bomber. They radioed their commanders: “Do we have permission to engage?”
Request denied, one of the Marines, Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, recalled being told. Too many civilians nearby.
The man vanished from view among a crush of people clamoring outside the airport’s Abbey Gate, he said. It was Aug. 26, 2021. Hours later, an explosion ripped through the crowd, killing an estimated 170 Afghans along with 13 U.S. troops.
Vargas-Andrews contends that “unfortunately, a lot of people died” because he was directed to stand down. “That’s a hard thing to deal with,” he said. “You know, that’s something that, honestly, eats at me every single day.”
The 24-year-old, from Folsom, Calif., climbed down from the tower a short time before the explosion went off and suffered catastrophic wounds in the blast. He has undergone 43 surgeries since, losing his right arm, left leg, left kidney, and parts of his intestines and colon. At least 15 metal fragments remain embedded in his body, he said, silent reminders of the day he almost died.
It’s unclear if the bombing at Abbey Gate could have been averted. The event was a low point in the United States’ exit from Afghanistan and the treacherous operation that began when Taliban foot soldiers swept into the capital 11 days prior. For the American military personnel involved, much of their experience throughout those two weeks is still coming into focus now, a year later, as they process the suffering they witnessed, and cope with lasting feelings of anger, guilt and grief.
As part of this project, The Washington Post produced a companion episode of its podcast, “Post Reports,” where listeners will hear directly from the U.S. troops who shared their recollections of these events. In blunt, often visceral detail, those who survived the final days of America’s longest war made clear that what endures is an incalculable sense of loss.
The commander, Marine Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, said that he, too, continues to process what occurred, and regrets both the Abbey Gate bombing and a drone strike U.S. forces carried out three days later near the airport, killing 10 civilians. U.S. troops involved mistakenly believed they were targeting another suicide bomber, the Pentagon later concluded.
“We all feel bitterly what happened at the end,” the general said.
Heart-pounding and heartbreaking
Nearly 6,000 U.S. service members were dispatched to Afghanistan as Kabul fell, in what would be the greatest test of the Pentagon’s emergency-evacuation planning since the Vietnam War’s devastating conclusion decades earlier. Nearly 125,000 people were rescued over 17 days. But tens of thousands more were stranded, many with no clear path to be reunited with family in the United States.
For many of the troops rushed to Hamid Karzai International Airport — named for Afghanistan’s first leader after U.S. forces ousted the Taliban from power as vengeance for quartering the terrorist group responsible for 9/11 — it was their first taste of a war that, after nearly 20 years, already was lost.
The sudden crisis undercut President Biden’s promise of a “safe and orderly” withdrawal, and prompted McKenzie to cut a deal with the Taliban in which coalition troops controlled Kabul’s airport while America’s longtime battlefield adversary pledged to maintain order outside.
U.S. personnel involved in the mission said the arrangement was exasperating, with militants beating and executing Afghans as they approached the airport. McKenzie described it as a strained but transactional relationship that provided U.S. troops with a measure of security from the Islamic State, which also is in conflict with the Taliban.
A Defense Department review of the operation, first detailed by The Post in February, exposed sharp disagreements within the U.S. government over how to carry out the withdrawal. State Department officials wanted to keep the U.S. Embassy in Kabul open as long as possible, frustrating the military brass who wanted to begin the evacuation of American citizens and Afghan allies sooner.
Top commanders, including McKenzie, had advised Biden against withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, preferring to keep a force of about 2,500 in place that would be reinforced by a similar number of coalition troops and backed by air power. But when the president announced in April 2021 that he wanted the military out by that September, the Pentagon began preparing for an evacuation.
A few hundred soldiers from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division were positioned at the airport in spring of 2021 to maintain security in Kabul. They were intended to be a safety net as the administration, leery of Taliban gains elsewhere, had hoped to retain a diplomatic presence after the military withdrawal was complete.
Afghans and foreigners rushed to the Kabul airport on Aug. 16,2021 in hopes of leaving the country as the Taliban declared victory. (Video: John Farrell/The Washington Post)
The Afghan government’s collapse on Aug. 15 triggered mass panic, leading tens of thousands of Afghans, many of them American allies who aided the war effort, to rush the airport. First Sgt. Andrew Kelly, of the 10th Mountain Division, said his unit tried but failed to prevent the chaos that unfolded as people, desperate to flee, swarmed the flight line and attempted to reach any aircraft they could find.
In the hysteria, Kelly and other U.S. soldiers responded to a report of gunshots at a traffic circle outside the airport’s commercial terminal. As civilians scrambled for cover, a firefight broke out when gunmen brandished weapons at the Americans. U.S. soldiers killed three of them and wounded a fourth.
The small contingent of U.S. troops, linked arm-in-arm at times, attempted to hold back the masses. But the determined civilians broke through, with some boarding parked C-17 cargo planes without permission, and others climbing onto the outside of aircraft before takeoff only to fall to their death moments later.
“That’s how desperate they were to get out of there,” said Army 1st Lt. Timothy Williams. “It was one of those defining moments, I think, for everybody where it was just like, ‘Wow, this is terrible.’ ”
As C-17s carrying American reinforcements touched down, Marines and soldiers were assigned to secure the airport’s gates, and to assess, search and admit evacuees. It was heart-pounding, often heartbreaking work.
Among the units instructed to reopen Abbey Gate was the 1st Platoon of Ghost Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. Comprising less than 45 troops, it had been in Jordan serving as part of a crisis-response force when commanders ordered their departure for Kabul. The group was tightknit and had been training for months, said Gunnery Sgt. Jonathan Eby, the platoon sergeant.
Eby, a 17-year Marine with previous experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, said they formed a line and surged toward the crowd trying to move people backward. There was a writhing, anxious energy, he said, likening the crowd to a mosh pit.
“I would compare it to whatever Leonidas and his Spartans felt like trying to hold back all those people,” Eby said, referring to the ancient Greek king and his warriors, who were vastly outnumbered in a famous battle depicted in the movie “300.”
In the ensuing days, the Marines maintained a barricade at the gate, adjacent to a fetid drainage canal along the facility’s southeastern edge. Many Afghans figured out that wading through the filth was the easiest way to bypass the crowd. Those flashing the requisite paperwork were hoisted to safety. U.S. troops carried out similar work at other entry points.
Teams of U.S. service women, formed on the fly in preparation for the evacuation, supplemented the mission by searching women and assisting children, hundreds of whom had reached the airport without any parent or guardian, or wound up separated along the way.
Warrant Officer Sasha Savage, who led a team of eight women, said the effort never truly found a rhythm, but they assisted who they could. Photographs of her teammates caring for babies went viral online. It was clear that the evacuees were “going through the hardest time of their life,” arriving dehydrated, bloody or scared because their families had been separated in the mayhem, she said.
“It feels like you’re making impact at that point,” Savage said.
To get around the airport, U.S. troops hot-wired baggage carts, forklifts and other vehicles. They pilfered tools found in shipping containers, figuring they might prove useful. Vargas-Andrews grabbed a pair of 18-inch bolt cutters.
At Abbey Gate, he and his scout-sniper teammates took turns scanning the crowd from the guard tower. Several times, he said, Marines interfacing with those hoping to flee retreated into the base of the tower to cry. The Taliban were posted at checkpoints just yards away, and watching them act so ruthlessly made it difficult to maintain restraint.
Vargas-Andrews recalled that after a few days of observing Taliban abuses, he crept closer to their checkpoints to photograph corpses nearby — people the militants had killed, he surmised. He relayed the images to commanders, he said, but understood there would be no recourse.
“If we start firing at them, they’re going to start firing at us. Do we want to get in that scenario?” he said. “I get it. But it’s a hard thing.”
A flash and then ‘Boom’
Fire from the explosion swallowed the tightly packed corridor outside Abbey Gate, ejecting ball bearings that cut down those closest to the epicenter and left a gruesome path of carnage. U.S. personnel manning the gate had been warned that a suicide bomber was likely to be nearby, but they had not received orders to suspend operations.
Asked about Vargas-Andrews’s contention that the bomber could have been killed before the explosion, McKenzie said that no request to do so reached his level or surfaced during a military investigation of the incident that included testimony from more than 100 U.S. personnel. Vargas-Andrews said he was never interviewed as part of that inquiry as he underwent numerous surgeries.
Eby, who also was at Abbey Gate when the bomb exploded, said that there was a “known threat” in the area, but he was unaware of any service member identifying the bomber. “All that was ever said was, ‘Look for a black bag,’ ” Eby said.
Shortly before the blast, Vargas-Andrews had climbed down from the tower to help people into the airport. He recalls seeing a flash. And then, “Boom — this massive wave of pressure just hit me,” he said.
“The next time I opened my eyes, I’m on the ground,” Vargas-Andrews recalled. To his left, a sea of people were down and lifeless.
Video analyzed by the Department of Defense shows the Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2021. (Video: Department of Defense)
The military investigation, released earlier this year, determined the loss of life from the bombing was from a single catastrophic explosion. Some dispute that, though. Multiple personnel posted at Abbey Gate said they heard gunfire as well — and that they shot back.
Vargas-Andrews and others with him at the time remain convinced the bombing was part of a complex attack. As he lay in the dirt, his arm and leg shredded, the sound of gunfire crackling overhead urged him to seek cover, he said. There was a hole in the fence line about 70 yards away, but his wounds made it impossible to drag himself there.
Investigators concluded that gunfire was sporadic, and that those believing otherwise may have been disorientated by the explosion.
Those unharmed — or not incapacitated — scrambled to save as many lives as possible.
Among them was Marine Sgt. Wyatt Wilson, who sustained grievous shrapnel wounds in the blast and was thrown off his feet by its force. Despite his injuries, he tried to drag another severely wounded Marine to safety, but he had lost too much blood. The woman Wilson tried to help, Cpl. Kelsee Lainhart, was left paralyzed by the explosion.
Teammates of Vargas-Andrews knew he was in trouble after the blast. Sgt. Charles Schilling, a close friend, raced to him, screaming Vargas-Andrews’s name repeatedly. Using the bolt cutters his friend had commandeered, Schilling ripped open a hole in the fence to shorten the distance they’d need to traverse for medical care. The injured were whisked away on any vehicle available.
“Patients kept coming in five, six at a time,” said Capt. Carlos Mendoza, an Air Force flight nurse who was working at the airport’s hospital a few miles from the blast site. “It just didn’t stop.”
The wounded were splayed out on the floor waiting for care as doctors triaged them. Mendoza recalled encountering one service member who had died and another who was mortally wounded. Chaplains arrived and administered last rites.
A doctor split open the chest of one Marine using a pair of scissors as they searched for interior bleeding and then rushed him to surgery, Mendoza said.
“I heard that he survived,” he added, though he is unsure.
Thirty-seven Marines were awarded Purple Hearts for injuries sustained in the attack, said Maj. Jordan Cochran, a spokesman. More than 300 received ribbons stipulating that they engaged in direct combat over the course of the evacuation.
In the Army, at least four soldiers have received Purple Hearts for injuries suffered in the evacuation, said Maj. Jackie Wren, a service spokeswoman. Nearly 330 soldiers were recognized for experiencing combat during those weeks.
About 45 U.S. troops were wounded in the bombing and survived, the Pentagon said. The Americans killed:
Marine Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, 20.
Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23.
Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, 31.
Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23.
Marine Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22.
Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, 20.
Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20.
Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, 20.
Marine Cpl. Daegan Page, 23.
Marine Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25.
Marine Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, 22.
Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20.
Navy Hospitalman Maxton Soviak, 22.
McKenzie, the commanding general, retired in April. He marvels at the courage and professionalism rank-and-file troops showed during the evacuation, and said his greatest fear was a bomber sneaking onto a plane and detonating in the air, killing hundreds of people.
Service members reflecting on the operation should “decouple their actions and their enormous courage on the ground” from decisions made by more senior U.S. officials that put them there, he said.
“If you’re going to bring people in, you have to search them,” he said. “You’ve got to be confident that you’re not going to let someone with an explosive device get on an airplane because that is the point of greatest vulnerability.”
Eby, the platoon sergeant, lost nine men in his unit, all 23 or younger. During an interview last month at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, he paused several times to regain composure while recounting stories about the fallen. He considers the surviving members of the platoon to be family.
“We are inseparable,” he said. “I still get called ‘Dad’ by most of them.”
Savage, who led a female search team, wears a black metal bracelet engraved with Gee’s name. The weightlifting enthusiast had been meritoriously promoted, and was among the Marines pictured caring for Afghan children.
“She had a certain light and happiness about her that would make things positive no matter the situation,” Savage said.
Vargas-Andrews said he hopes the military enhances its recognition of those who saved his life and the lives of others. He singled out Schilling, who tore open the fence, and Hospitalman 3rd Class Jorge Mayo, who raced among the blast victims and treated Vargas-Andrews.
A memory from a few days before the explosion sticks with the Marine, as he continues physical therapy at Walter Reed National Military Medical outside Washington. In the crowd at Abbey Gate, he spotted a sobbing girl in tattered clothes, maybe 8 years old. She held an infant in one arm and the hand of a boy about 4 years old in her other hand. The baby wasn’t breathing.
Vargas-Andrews said he hustled the infant, who was turning blue, to an Air Force medic, and they resuscitated the baby. But the girl continued to cry.
He scrambled to a higher perch on top of a vehicle, and spotted a man with his head in his hands. It was the children’s father. The man had paperwork needed to evacuate but had been separated from his children in the melee. Their family was reunited moments later.
Vargas-Andrews said the moment was “huge for me,” his voice thickening with emotion as he recalled it.
“I look at my injuries every day,” he said. “And that one family, they have a life now. And that’s something that won’t be taken away from them.”
He shifted his weight in his chair, a prosthetic leg beneath him.
“You know,” he said, “there were a lot of moments like that out there, and it makes it worth it. It makes all this worth it.” | 2022-08-24T19:05:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kabul airport bombing: For U.S. troops who survived grief endures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/24/kabul-airport-bombing-afghanistan-evacuation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/24/kabul-airport-bombing-afghanistan-evacuation/ |
Adam Fox’s date is Dec. 12, while Barry Croft Jr. will return to court on Dec. 28, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said.
Kaleb Franks, who pleaded guilty, still has not been sentenced. Ty Garbin quickly cooperated with the government and also pleaded guilty. He’s serving a six-year sentence but could get a reduction. | 2022-08-24T19:05:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge sets December sentencing dates in Gov. Whitmer plot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-sets-december-sentencing-dates-in-gov-whitmer-plot/2022/08/24/361e0e66-23d4-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-sets-december-sentencing-dates-in-gov-whitmer-plot/2022/08/24/361e0e66-23d4-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Student loan borrowers take part in a demonstration near the White House on July 27. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images)
All borrowers earning under $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for couples, will have $10,000 of their loans forgiven.
Recipients of Pell Grants, which go to students from low-income families, will be eligible for $20,000 in forgiveness.
The pause on loan payments and interest accumulation instituted as part of pandemic relief will be extended one final time, to the end of the year.
Monthly payments for undergraduate loans would be capped at 5 percent of a borrower’s discretionary income.
That being said, there’s a bigger issue here. As my Post colleague Helaine Olen has argued, a loan forgiveness program like this one, for all the help it will give people in the short run, doesn’t get at the more fundamental problem, which is the high cost of a college education. | 2022-08-24T19:05:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden's student loan forgiveness is a good start - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-good-start/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/24/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-good-start/ |
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