text stringlengths 237 126k | date_download stringdate 2022-01-01 00:32:20 2023-01-01 00:02:37 ⌀ | source_domain stringclasses 60 values | title stringlengths 4 31.5k ⌀ | url stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ | id stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Surprisingly massive distant galaxies raise questions about early galaxy formation
By Joel Achenbach
This enormous mosaic from July is the James Webb Space Telescope's largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the moon's diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe. (NASA/Getty Images)
The Cartwheel Galaxy: A strikingly beautiful and rare “ring” galaxy about 500 million light-years away. Its unusual structure is due to a collision with another galaxy. This had been one of the first images processed by the Webb team to showcase what the telescope can do.
M16, the Eagle Nebula: This is a “planetary nebula” within our own galaxy that is famously the home of a structure nicknamed the “Pillars of Creation” that was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. It became one of the most famous Hubble images, showing three towering pillars of dust illuminated by hot, young stars outside the frame of the image, all of it oriented by NASA to produce what to the human eye looks like a terrestrial landscape. The Webb will presumably produce a similarly framed image but with new resolution and details, thanks to the ability to gather light in the infrared wavelengths inaccessible to the Hubble.
Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon: It’s the largest moon in the solar system and is bigger even than the planet Mercury. Scientists believe it has a subsurface ocean with more water than all the oceans on Earth. Webb project scientist Klaus Pontopiddan said the telescope will be looking for plumes — geysers akin to what have been spotted on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
C/2017 K2 comet: Discovered in 2017, this is an unusually large comet with a tail 500,000 miles long, heading toward the sun.
The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy: Officially “NGC-1365,″ this is a classic, gorgeous “barred” galaxy — a spiral with a central bar of stars that links two prominent, curving arms. It’s about 56 million light-years away.
Trappist-1 planetary system: Seven planets orbit this star, and several are in the “habitable zone,” meaning they are at a distance from the star where water could be liquid at the surface. Astronomers want to know if these planets have atmospheres.
Draco and Sculptor: These are dwarf spheroidal galaxies close to the Milky Way. By studying their motion over a long period of time, astronomers hope to learn more about the presence of dark matter — which is invisible but has a gravitational signature. | 2022-08-26T10:43:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Webb telescope brings early galaxies, Jupiter into sharp focus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/08/26/webb-telescope-space-jupiter-galaxy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/08/26/webb-telescope-space-jupiter-galaxy/ |
What to watch with your kids: ‘Samaritan’ and more
Hamster & Gretel (TV-Y7)
Grade-schooler and pet get superpowers in comedy series.
“Hamster & Gretel” is an animated action comedy series from the creators of “Phineas and Ferb,” with a similar animation style. The show’s storyline, about grade-schooler Gretel Grant-Gomez (voice of Melissa Povenmire) and her pet, Hamster (Beck Bennett), has parallels to other Disney originals like “Hannah Montana” or “Ultra Violet and Black Scorpion” in that the main character is famous but must conceal her true identity from the world. Friendship and the importance of working together as a team are major themes of the show. Mild peril and violence, including crashes and fires, are used for humorous effect. (Five 23-minute episodes)
Available on Disney Plus.
Surfside Girls (TV-G)
Adventure and magic mix in fun show for tweens.
“Surfside Girls” is a kid-friendly mystery set in a fictional California town where tweens and teens work with a ghost to save their home from destruction. Perilous moments aren’t too scary but do add a little urgency to the plot. Families are shown as being proud of their cultures — Spanish is sprinkled throughout the show — and parents are engaged with their kids. The main characters are smart, curious problem solvers who have theories that they test and solve. (10 roughly 25-minute episodes)
Available on Apple TV Plus.
Samaritan (PG-13)
Stallone’s gritty superhero actioner has violence, swearing.
“Samaritan” is a gritty superhero story produced by and starring Sylvester Stallone. It’s definitely different from the Marvel and DC films many young audiences are used to. It feels more like the teen/tween-targeted version of Stallone’s “The Expendables,” in that it’s full of action violence like fiery explosions, heavy gunfire and a character getting run over. Thirteen-year-old main character Sam (Javon “Wanna” Walton) is often in deep peril and takes a beating. There’s also frequent swearing, including “s---,” “b----” and one “f---.” The story explores what makes someone become a “bad guy” or a “good guy.” Things get underway when Sam joins a gang to help his hard-working mother pay the bills, making the active choice to participate in theft. But the ultimate message is that everyone has the potential to be good or bad. It’s up to them to make the right choice. (101 minutes)
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (TV-14)
Quirky MCU series has violence, language, drinking.
“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” is a superhero show in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that centers on Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), a 30-something attorney. After a cross-contamination accident involving her cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Jennifer reluctantly gains the very green persona She-Hulk. She must navigate her legal career, her 30s and her relationships alongside her unwanted and unnatural powers. Expect lots of fighting, superhero-style violence and peril. There’s also more strong language than usual for a Disney Plus series, including “s---,” “bulls---” and a near utterance of “f---.” Characters talk about sex and virginity, and there’s drinking, sometimes to excess. (Nine roughly 45-minute episodes) | 2022-08-26T11:16:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common Sense Media’s weekly recommendations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/26/common-sense-media-august-26/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/08/26/common-sense-media-august-26/ |
D.C. police officer shoots at armed man in Southeast Washington
Police say the gunman also fired; no injuries were reported.
A D.C. police officer fired several times at a man armed with a gun but did not strike him during a confrontation Thursday night in Southeast Washington’s Congress Heights neighborhood, according to a department official.
The armed man fired his gun at least once, and did not hit the officer, said Wilfredo Manlapaz, an assistant police chief overseeing the Internal Affairs Bureau.
The incident occurred about 8:30 p.m. in the 3500 block of 6th Street SE.
Manlapaz, at a news briefing at the scene posted on the D.C. police Twitter account, said several people called 911 to report a man with a gun on 6th Street in Southeast.
He said that when officers arrived, they saw a man forcing his way into an occupied vehicle. Manlapaz said the people got out of the vehicle and an officer ordered the man “to drop the gun numerous times.” He said the man “did not comply.”
Manlapaz said the officer fired “numerous times” at the man who got into the vehicle and fired his gun at least one time. Manlapaz did not say if that shot was directed at the officer.
Police took the man into custody and Manlapaz said he was taken to a hospital for observation. No officers were injured.
He said the man had been armed with a semi-automatic handgun. Manlapaz did not discuss charges against the man.
The assistant chief said the officer who fired his gun has been placed on administrative leave during the investigation.
A police vehicle with four officers inside crashed with another vehicle while responding to the call. Those officers and the occupants of the other vehicle were treated at hospitals for injuries not believed to be life-threatening, police said.
That crash occurred at Alabama Avenue and Hartford Street in Southeast. Video from television news casts show the police cruiser on its side. | 2022-08-26T11:55:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. police officer shoots at armed man in Southeast Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/police-shooting-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/police-shooting-washington/ |
Inside the ‘wild, wild west’ of Virginia’s marijuana market
THC-infused pies, Tupperwares of bud: businesses are making it work in the unregulated gray market
Demetrius Robinson smokes cannabis with his brothers during a Coastal Cannabis Club event in Chesapeake, Va. (Parker Michels-Boyce for The Washington Post)
Sitting on a party bus next to his son and a vacant stripper pole, Erik Jorgensen, 62, ran his thumb along a hand-carved pipe and passed it to a woman sitting next to him.
“Trust me,” he said over blaring music. “Every hit you get off this will blow your mind.”
A longtime woodworker, Jorgensen for years carved jewelry boxes and back scratchers. He’d stopped smoking pot when his sons were born, to set a good example. But now the Jorgensen kids are grown and married, and Virginia’s laws have changed.
So on a muggy Friday evening in July, he bounced along the back roads of Chesapeake, Va., on his way to a ‘Cannaversary’ event marking a year since Virginia became the first state in the South to legalize possession. When the bus stopped, he carried his art down the stairs and into a wooded clearing where vendors lined tables with THC-infused pies and Tupperware containers full of bud for sale and show.
“It’s like the wild, wild west,” Jorgensen said.
While having marijuana is legal in Virginia, recreational sales are not, leaving people eager to smoke with few legal options to get their hands on bud and entrepreneurs eager to operate within the law increasingly weary of working in the shadows. For budding cannabis businesses around the state, navigating Virginia’s gray area has required creativity and a brash willingness to push boundaries while they watched lawmakers spar this year over how to best establish the framework for a legal market.
That means pop-up events, growing classes, clothing products and creating memorable brands with eccentric logos that customers are already familiar with once there’s a legal route to sales.
“We’ve succeeded in determining what the word is for a cannabis company in Virginia,” said Liam Perkins, owner of CCC Events, the ‘Cannaversary’ host, “when they’re not really supposed to have cannabis companies in Virginia.”
The tension over how to operate a legal market for a substance once reviled as a gateway drug to heroin is not new. A decade after Colorado and Washington became the first to legalize recreational marijuana, debates over how to develop and regulate selling something that’s readily available in the shadows persist. Even states with legal markets have struggled to eliminate the influence of unlicensed sellers. In California, the illicit market is so vast and taxes are so high that legal operators struggle to compete.
But the conflict of wanting to get into that market — and the hurdles to doing it legally — echo nationally as more states move to legalize recreational pot.
Perkins would love a shot at a license once lawmakers in Richmond establish a framework for legal dispensaries.
In the meantime, there’s money to be made.
When Virginia legalized pot last summer, Perkins, 32, decided to celebrate with his first big party. He invited vendors and a DJ. Smoke filled the air as a couple hundred people celebrated legalization. He thought he could make a business out of it — a members-only social club for cannabis consumers to connect and enjoy the newly legalized plant together.
Perkins, who used to work in media and marketing, feels confident that his business is compliant. He advertises publicly on social media and he’s adamant that he’s operating completely within the confines of the law. Everything the club does is private. Everyone is an adult.
Perkins knows there are other pop-up events and vendors around Virginia Beach with less regard for the rules. He could go rogue and just hope the police have other things to worry about, but he also knows that distributing more than one ounce of marijuana, but less than 5 pounds, is a Class 5 felony in the commonwealth.
Virginia Beach Police Special Investigations Bureau Captain Reo Hatfield said the department is aware of pop-up markets and businesses like Perkins’ and that while some are not in compliance with the law, police are not seeking out sellers. They mainly work off complaints, and aim to first educate people about the complex laws.
“It is definitely difficult because it’s ‘if this, then that, if this, then that,’ ” Hatfield said. “It’s not just that this is blanket illegal.”
In many states, recreational legalization and commercialization happened at the same time, opening the door to the lucrative new market. Like the gold miners who surged out west more than 150 years ago for a shot at finding fortune, “green rush” entrepreneurs fled to early legalization states on the West Coast, hoping for a slice of the new market.
For now, Virginia has only authorized personal possession of up to one ounce of cannabis and cultivation of up to four plants.
The Virginia State General Assembly passed legalization in 2021 as a bill originally intended to go into effect in 2024. Then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D) expedited and signed the bill, fully legalizing the plant on July 1, 2021. But sales were still not to begin until 2024, giving the legislature time to develop a regulatory framework for the new market.
After Democrats, who championed legalization, lost control of the state Senate and Governor’s mansion last fall, legalization became one of the most anticipated debates during this year’s legislative session. Advocates argued over who should get first access to the billion-dollar industry; lobbyists pleaded with lawmakers to establish a licensing framework and speed up the timeline for legal sales to start this year. Nothing passed, and Virginia’s marijuana market remains in limbo.
“Without a legal marketplace Virginians interested in using legal cannabis are at risk of unsafe, unregulated products,” said Sen. Adam P. Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who sponsored this year’s main legalization bill and was frustrated by the legislature’s inaction.
Entrepreneurs trying to interpret the rules are often left with more questions than answers, Perkins said. What can he say? What should he avoid?
The answer is to keep hustling, said vendor Richard Anderson, who uses the nickname ‘Fez’.
Fez, who said he’s sold pot for nearly 25 years, now appears at about four pop-up events per week, his table covered in pre-rolled joints, plastic containers filled with flower and small jars of rosin — a dense cannabis concentrate often smoked by connoisseurs and sold for $120 a container.
“Man, those pre-rolls are fine,” he said to a couple browsing his table at an event earlier this summer. “They’re made in Virginia, too.”
Fez, 46, said he’s not worried about law enforcement. He’s been arrested before.
“Scared money don’t make no money,” he said, leaning behind his table, taking drags of a cigarette.
There’s a lot of money to be made for those who do get in the legal market. Legal cannabis sales reached $19 billion in 2020, and are expected to balloon to $41 billion by 2025, according to the Wall Street research firm Cowen.
But how Virginia sets up its legal market — and how long it takes to decide — will shape who stands to benefit.
“Prior to regulation and even now, most people when they buy it are probably buying it from a Black or Brown person,” said Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of Marijuana Justice, which advocates for an equitable cannabis industry in Virginia.
Higgs Wise is pushing for Virginia to implement social equity programs and licensing practices that would prioritize communities historically harmed by the War on Drugs. According to the ACLU, Black people are more than three times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as White people.
Sitting in a coffee shop in D.C., wearing earrings with the words “legalize it right” curved around each side, Higgs Wise urged people to remember that there are two sides to the legacy market — people who sell and people who buy.
“If they’re still in business, that means there’s still a demand for them,” Higgs Wise said. “We have to understand that legalization is also a cultural movement. People aren’t just going to switch to a legal dispensary because the law changed.”
When legalization came to his home state, Nick Austin, owner and founder of Royal Family Cannabis Co. in Virginia, saw an opportunity to bring his business back home after working in and out of the pot industry since 1998, bouncing from state to state.
Though, instead of hosting events like Perkins, Austin found success in the gray market by teaching growing techniques and building a brand.
“I’m just really trying to force my way into the market one way or another,” said Austin.
At the Cannaversary, he proudly held up a sheet printed with all the strains of pot he’s grown to show to a member. He unscrewed a Mason jar with nuggets of flower and inhaled through his nose — smelling the synthesized scent of cherry lime soda.
“I’m tired of being hidden in a closet,” Austin said. “I'm tired of lying about what I do.”
But even with an operating legal market in Virginia, Austin recognizes it will likely be difficult to get a legal license. When the state launched its medical program, it only awarded five licenses to serve the whole state, many of which were awarded to out-of-state companies.
“It’s an industry where you want to feel safe, but are only safe if you go pay $10,000 to get a license,” said one vendor who asked not to be named. “It’s really unfair because that may get to the point where people that’s lower on the totem pole already can’t get a chance. Even if they’re good.”
Even in states with a path to legal recreational sales, the illicit market still thrives because high tax rates, limited licenses and oversaturation make it difficult to compete. Other parts of the country have seen a similar gray market emerge like the one in Virginia. After New York legalized last year, an unlicensed, gray market emerged in the city while lawmakers set up a framework for legal dispensaries.
Even just outside Virginia, in the nation’s capital, the gray market is thriving. District of Columbia voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2014, but Congress, which has federal oversight in D.C., stymied regulatory plans and pot remains illegal to sell. Instead businesses profit off the relaxed enforcement by opening “gifting” stores where, through a legal loophole, customers can buy a $40 lighter, mask or motivational speech, and receive a free “gift” of weed with their purchase.
But, this year, city leaders attempted to address the gifting loophole, as the shops operate mostly unregulated and take business from medical dispensaries.
Perkins has hosted dozens of events since that first one. He welcomed more than 200 members to the club in its first year. The club hosts events like “puff and paint” and “wine and weed” nights for people to come together and enjoy the newly legalized substance.
At the Cannaversary, Jaynie, a 57-year-old who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used, sat under the tent eating tacos. A club member for more than a year, she’s smoked weed for more than 30.
“We love them,” Jaynie said about the events. “I mean, look around. It’s a really nice, calm, cool crowd.”
Behind her, the event started to wind down. The band still blared, but the crowd of about 150 started to wane as the sun set.
Jaynie said she has a medical card in Virginia, but that she prefers to get her weed from events and underground vendors she trusts.
They were there for her decades before legalization. And they will be long after. | 2022-08-26T11:55:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia's marijuana gray market is thriving - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/virginia-marijuana-gray-market/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/virginia-marijuana-gray-market/ |
Dungeons and Dragons: How the company behind the iconic game lost its away
In ‘Slaying the Dragon,’ Ben Riggs chronicles the ups and downs of the granddaddy of role-playing games
Review by Elizabeth Hand
(St. Martin's Press; Tara Monnink)
In 1970, Gary Gygax, a high school dropout, was fired from his job as an insurance underwriter. He took up shoe repair as his family — a wife and six kids — struggled. Devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, they went door to door peddling their faith in Lake Geneva, Wis. Gygax spent weekends with a group of friends in basements creating and playing strategic war games, a hobby that led to what we now know as Dungeons and Dragons.
The first commercial version of D&D — “Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures” — sold for 10 bucks a piece in 1974, a small fortune for a wood-grain cardboard box containing three stapled pamphlets and a few reference sheets. The games, all 1,000 assembled in Gygax’s house, sold out in less than a year and quickly went into a second printing. At the time, Gygax was working with game creator Dave Arneson and another friend, who had teamed up to found the company Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR. Arneson left TSR in 1976 after a dispute over credit and royalties, and TSR moved from Gygax’s basement to the former Hotel Clair, a dump in downtown Lake Geneva, where its staff grew.
At its height, Ben Riggs writes in his new book, “Slaying the Dragon,” TSR had gross sales of more than $40 million. It was “the grand old dragon of role-playing game companies. It founded the industry and published the game that dominated the field.” The early days have the feel of a Silicon Valley start-up, with an even more nerdy, low-budget vibe. “At its offices in Lake Geneva, dozens and dozens of genius geeks gathered to create games, novels, and art that flooded game stores and malls across the world,” Riggs writes.
All dressed up with nowhere to go: Cosplaying in the pandemic
In its first incarnations, D&D’s guides were published with apostrophes absent from their titles, because apostrophes were considered ugly and uncool. Employees would jump from beam to beam in the derelict hotel’s upper floors, crashing through into the offices below. Visiting bankers and potential investors found themselves caught in the crossfire of water pistol and Nerf gun battles between editors and game designers, or confronted by hallways full of windup toys run amok. The FBI paid a visit when notes for a spy role-playing game (RPG) were found in the trash and interpreted as part of an assassination plot.
Things got even weirder in 1979, when a 16-year-old D&D enthusiast and prodigy attending Michigan State disappeared. The PI hired by the boy’s uncle theorized that he’d fled into the campus steam tunnels in “some sort of game fugue.” When the teen killed himself, a year after he was found alive, news accounts depicted D&D as a satanic cult. The lurid media attention made D&D a household name. Gygax said the satanic panic “did things for sales you wouldn’t believe.”
“Playing RPGs made life better,” Riggs states, and certainly fattened Gygax’s bank account. Still, by 1985, D&D’s sales had collapsed, with a 79 percent drop in sales of boxed sets and rule books. Tie-in novels and expansion sets sold well, but the company’s central products had fallen victim to market saturation. D&D’s rules were complex and took time to master. The company focused on products geared toward existing players, rather than trying to bring new players into the fold. An attempt to reach a younger generation with a D&D children’s board game and accompanying video failed miserably.
Instead of tightening the Belt of Dwarvenkind, TSR went on a hiring spree. More confoundingly, the company invested in doomed-to-fail ventures that included a needlepoint company and an effort to raise a shipwreck from Geneva Lake. In 1983, the company employed more than 300 people, but rounds of layoffs eventually reduced the staff to fewer than 100. Profits from TSR’s D&D tie-in novels kept the company afloat, even as the RPG department was reduced to a skeleton crew.
Riggs’s book, a compelling adventure in itself, features interviews with many of the key players, narrated by a superfan. (Riggs is host of the podcast “Plotpoints,” an exhaustive look at role-playing games.) “TSR’s failure is a tale of misfortune and mistakes kept secret for decades, here given up to the light,” he writes. “It is the story of an unemployed insurance underwriter, an heiress, a preacher’s son, and a game like no other.”
In October 1985, Gygax was ousted. Lorraine Williams became TSR’s CEO — one of the era’s few female CEOs and the only one to helm a company with a predominantly male staff and fan base. A “grown-up” who could “talk to banks,” Williams dragged TSR from the precipice. Staff owed back pay finally received it, with interest. During her tenure, the company produced gorgeously designed boxed sets and accompanying CDs, best-selling tie-in novels and a second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Williams was vilified by male D&D fans, many of then outraged by Gygax’s departure from the company he’d helped found. Riggs laments that Williams refused to speak with him when he was researching his book: “I could not help but wonder what role misogyny might play in her villainization.” TSR employed indispensable women, including Margaret Weis, Jean Black and Mary Kirchoff, and while Riggs acknowledges their contributions, one longs for a firsthand account of what it was like for these trailblazers, outliers in a man’s world. (In the book’s last few pages, Riggs mentions “credible claims of sexual harassment” at TSR.)
By the early 1990s, rival companies like White Wolf, FASA and Wizards of the Coast were wooing gamers with products more character-driven than classic D&D. Wizards of the Coast’s massively popular collectible card game Magic: The Gathering changed the field much as D&D had, shipping a hundred million cards a month. TSR’s attempts to compete grew increasingly desperate as the company flooded the market with new products — beautiful game settings so expensively produced and packaged that they lost money as they left the warehouse. Attempts to establish a West Coast office — to cash in on the booming comics market, TV and film — tanked. So did an attempt to license a Middle-earth RPG.
A distribution deal with Random House turned out to be the fatal blow. To keep afloat, TSR had taken out huge loans from the publishing powerhouse. Mass firings took place in the days before Christmas 1996. Bags of unshipped products filled the office. Worst of all, Riggs reports, TSR had used the copyrights of dozens of its works as collateral with the bank and Random House.
Late in 1997, two employees drove a pickup to a storage facility in Racine, Wis. TSR had defaulted on its rent. The pair had one hour to save what they could of the meticulously crafted dioramas, boxes of miniatures and other materials that were a result of thousands of hours of work by TSR’s artisans and artists. “Like as not,” Riggs says, the remaining works were “crushed in a landfill.”
Yet there was one more fateful roll of the many-sided die. In spring 1997, Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR, minus Lorraine Williams. Wired Magazine reported, “Disaffected Fans Cheer D&D Buyout.” With Wizards of the Coast’s president, Peter Adkison, now in charge, former TSR employees were rehired. Arneson, who’d created D&D with Gygax, finally received a sizable check for his intellectual property, as did Gygax’s widow. In 2020, Wizards of the Coast reported that over 50 million people played D&D worldwide.
Riggs undermines his fascinating story with fanboy gushing, often confusing chronology and portentous pronouncements that include a chapter epigraph from “Mrs. Dalloway.” Such grandiose flourishes are unnecessary. RPG culture has influenced our world to a degree that Gary Gygax might only have dreamed of in his Wisconsin basement all those years ago. D&D opened a portal for video and computer gaming, an industry now worth tens of billions of dollars, mass conventions such as Gen Con (founded by Gygax), numerous books, films and TV shows, and immersive experiences like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. For those who long to return to the source, The Griffin and Gargoyle, a D&D amusement center, is slated to open on the shores of Lake Geneva in 2024. Role-playing games may not make life better, but they sure make it a lot more fun.
Elizabeth Hand’s most recent novel is “Hokuloa Road.”
A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons
By Ben Riggs
St. Martin’s Press. 304 pp. $29.99 | 2022-08-26T12:12:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Slaying the Dragon, by Ben Riggs book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/26/dungeons-and-dragons-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/26/dungeons-and-dragons-book/ |
Some students looking to take advantage of the promised forgiveness have already signed up for more loans. That could land them in even more debt.
Student loan forgiveness advocates rally to celebrate the announcement to forgive partial student debt. (Shawn Thew/Shutterstock)
The Biden administration has established an expectation that future administrations won’t or can’t meet: forgiveness of additional student loan debt.
The White House said nearly one-third of borrowers have education debt but no degree. I worry about setting a precedent that broad-based loan forgiveness will be available again. It is paramount we manage borrowers’ expectations.
“There are people who are applying for loans for this semester or more loans than they had originally applied for because they assume they’re going to be forgiven,” said Mayotte, who works closely with student and parent borrowers.
Calculate how much of your student loan debt can be forgiven here
Only current borrowers are eligible for forgiveness of loans fully disbursed by June 30, Mayotte said in an interview. “We’ve opened Pandora’s box,” she said.
In the last five years, Mayotte said she’s seen a trend of borrowers assuming they won’t have to pay back their loans.
Mayotte said she received an email from a woman in her mid-70s who decided to return to college to get a master’s degree, racking up $100,000 in education debt.
“She said, ‘I want to know how I can get forgiveness because I’m old,’” Mayotte said. “It would never occur to somebody that their car loans would be forgiven. It would never occur to somebody that their credit card debt would be forgiven other than through bankruptcy.”
Opinion: The student loan announcement is an expensive mistake
Biden’s announcement this past week could lure families sending their kids off to college into taking on too much debt. And it doesn’t deal with the underlying issue: the high cost of college.
Many families don’t shop for college as they do for other major expenditures, Mayotte said. This is something I’ve observed as well. The college choice becomes emotional, with parents and students willing to take on an uncomfortable amount of debt.
As a parent who has been stung many times by overpromising something to my children, here’s a warning: Don’t take on future student loan debt you can’t afford in anticipation that it will be wiped out.
This has to be said given the euphoria of people desperate to find out when they might get some, if not all, of their student loans forgiven. Outstanding student loan debt stood at nearly $1.6 trillion in the second quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data.
Who qualifies for the new plan to cancel $10,000 in student debt?
The news of the debt cancellation understandably crashed the federal government’s studentaid.gov website. Millions of folks have been hoping for this relief. When I tried to access the site, I was put in an online waiting room with a notice that said, “StudentAid.gov is experiencing high volumes of visitors. You will be able to proceed to the site momentarily. Thanks for your patience!”
Live your life like this is the last time student loans will ever be forgiven. Just look at the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which was established under the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. There’s no better proof of the government’s ineptness at loan cancellation than PSLF in which the remaining balance of a borrower’s debt is forgiven after 120 qualifying monthly payments.
What kinds of people have student loan debt in the United States?
Here’s what happened, however. Borrowers were either misled or not properly informed on how to qualify for the PSLF program. Only federal direct loans are eligible for PSLF. You must pay off the debt under a certain income-based repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer. Many borrowers found out after making what they thought were qualifying payments that they weren’t on track to get rid of their debt.
“Student loans were never meant to be a life sentence, but it’s certainly felt that way for borrowers locked out of debt relief they’re eligible for,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in announcing remedies to PSLF. | 2022-08-26T12:12:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Student loan debt forgiveness is not an excusive to borrow more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/26/biden-student-debt-forgiveness-expectations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/26/biden-student-debt-forgiveness-expectations/ |
What LNG Can and Can’t Do to Replace Europe’s Imports of Russian Gas
Analysis by Sergio Chapa and Anna Shiryaevskaya | Bloomberg
<p> </p> (Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg)
A crucial part of the European Union’s plan to wean itself off Russian energy is to greatly increase purchases of liquefied natural gas from other producers. But the EU isn’t yet equipped to receive enough of the fuel to replace Russian gas entirely. What’s more, there’s only so much LNG for sale on the global market, leaving European countries battling with big Asian buyers such as Japan and South Korea to secure the supplies they need to get through the colder winter months.
1. Why liquefy gas?
The places where natural gas is found are often hundreds or thousands of miles away from where it’s used in power plants, factories, refineries and homes. It can be moved relatively cheaply by land through pipelines, but only to fixed points. Over the past six decades, a multibillion-dollar industry has developed to cool the gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius), at which point it changes into a liquid that can be loaded aboard refrigerated ships and sent across the globe. At the other end, it must be received at a specially built terminal where the fluid is converted back to gas.
2. What’s available for Europe to buy?
Global LNG production -- led by the US, Qatar and Australia -- is expected to total 455 million tons in 2022, figures from Bloomberg Intelligence show. Roughly 70% of cargoes on the water are reserved for customers holding long-term contracts, while the remaining 30% are sold on the global spot market. That means roughly 136 million tons of LNG this year will go to the highest bidder. In theory, there’s enough LNG on the market to cover the EU’s gas imports from Russia, the equivalent of 118 million tons of LNG. However, the two dozen import terminals in Europe have spare capacity to take in only about half that.
3. What’s Europe doing?
Germany, the biggest buyer of Russian gas in the EU, is building several LNG import facilities, its first, despite its goal of abandoning fossil-fueled power by 2035. It usually takes several years to obtain the permits and billions of euros in financing necessary to construct such terminals. Germany temporarily authorized an acceleration of the approval process and expects the first two to be up and running this winter. Both are ship-borne floating terminals that can be put into operation in a matter of months. The Netherlands was also expanding its import capacity, with plans to add two floating units in September. To move gas from the coastal import terminals to demand centers elsewhere, new pipelines are being laid.
4. Why can’t supply easily expand?
Although a new gas well can be brought into production within weeks, the process of approving and financing a plant that liquefies the fuel takes years. So, for the immediate future, the world is limited to about four dozen LNG facilities around the world, along with some 600 specialized tankers that can ferry cargoes. A fire at a Texas LNG plant temporarily knocked out almost a fifth of US exports in June. Plans to restart the facility following repairs were delayed until November, exacerbating the global supply shortage. Substantial new volumes won’t arrive onto the world market until the mid-2020s, once Qatar and the US have built more plants.
5. How do increased EU purchases affect other importers?
The tug of war between Europe and the biggest buyers in North Asia caused the price of LNG to soar, and contributed to a quadrupling of European benchmark gas prices between the start of 2022 and late August. Thailand paid twice as much for LNG supplies in June as it had a year before. For some buyers, prices were out of reach. Emerging economies in South Asia such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were having to turn more to fuel oil, which is more carbon-intensive, to produce electricity, intensifying pollution and compromising efforts to contain global warming. Pakistan’s government triggered rolling blackouts and boosted power bills, while shops in Bangladesh were closing earlier as part of energy austerity measures. | 2022-08-26T12:12:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What LNG Can and Can’t Do to Replace Europe’s Imports of Russian Gas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-lng-can-and-cant-do-to-replace-europes-imports-of-russian-gas/2022/08/26/b21d8a56-2536-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-lng-can-and-cant-do-to-replace-europes-imports-of-russian-gas/2022/08/26/b21d8a56-2536-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, center, and First Lady Michele Bolsonaro attend the National Convention to formalize his candidacy for a second term, at Maracanazinho Gymnasium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Sunday, July 24, 2022. Bolsonaro officially kicked off his re-election campaign on Sunday, rallying thousands of his followers to Rio de Janeiro, after intensifying his attempts to discredit Brazil’s voting system. (Bloomberg)
The opinion polls, I suggested to a senior evangelical lawmaker on a visit to Brasilia earlier this year, did not look good for President Jair Bolsonaro. What could still close the yawning gap with his main opponent before October’s race? He responded immediately, sitting back in his office chair. “Of course. Michelle.”
Relatively young at 40 to the president’s 67, Michelle Bolsonaro is easier on the eye, traditional, evangelical. Glossing over his economic missteps and his misogynistic, homophobic and racist comments, she smooths her husband’s rough edges and keeps the conversation on apolitical issues like family and religion.
Last month, at the launch of Bolsonaro’s re-election campaign in Rio de Janeiro, she showed what she could do. Encouraged to address the crowd, in between the religious invocations, she gave voters a glimpse of life in the Bolsonaro household. He sleeps poorly, she told them, worrying for the nation. She prays in his chair when he is gone, asking for courage and strength for the president. He is — she confided in the audience, flag-green outfit swishing — “chosen by God.” Cue thunderous applause.
The problem she is supposed to fix is obvious. With just over a month to go before the first round of votes in early October, Bolsonaro still lags former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, particularly with younger women, who reject him in significant numbers. No great surprise, perhaps, for a candidate who once told a rival lawmaker she was too ugly to rape.
He also needs to improve his fortunes with evangelical voters, and here again, Michelle is key. Evangelicals make up roughly a third of the Brazilian population and their community leaders have made the most of their political clout. Lacking a ready-made political support base, Bolsonaro has long courted the more conservative elements, including influential figures like televangelist Silas Malafaia. Though nominally Catholic, the president was baptized in the river Jordan. He appointed a pastor to serve as education minister (until corruption allegations hit) and another to the Supreme Court. Abortion, gender identity and home-schooling have been brought into political discourse — divisive issues that say more about the president’s efforts to portray himself as a defender of traditional values than about voters’ concerns.
In Rio, at a “March for Jesus” event, the first lady of this secular state, attending with her husband, wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the Brazilian flag and the words “Pray for Brazil.” Bolsonaro activists, meanwhile, circulated false rumors about Lula planning to close churches.
Meanwhile, Simone Tebet, the most credible female candidate in this oxygen-sucking, clash-of-the-titans presidential race polls in low single digits. People of color fare even worse.
Whatever happens in October, Brazil seems likely to emerge more divided and polarized. Fixing that will require coming up with more creative, if not radical, solutions. | 2022-08-26T12:13:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Search of Political Salvation, Bolsonaro Deploys Wife and Her Prayers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/in-search-of-political-salvation-bolsonaro-deployswife-and-her-prayers/2022/08/26/0ccd3f80-252f-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/in-search-of-political-salvation-bolsonaro-deployswife-and-her-prayers/2022/08/26/0ccd3f80-252f-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Black pastor arrested while watering a neighbor’s flowers, video shows
Michael Jennings said he’s considering a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the Alabama police department that arrested him
Michael Jennings discusses with WVTM how he was arrested on May 22 while watering flowers for his neighbor who was out of town. (Courtesy WVTM)
“I’m supposed to be here. I’m Pastor Jennings. I live across the street,” he told the officer during the May 22 exchange in his neighbor’s driveway in Childersburg, Ala.
The Childersburg Police Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post late Thursday. Jennings told ABC News he cooperated with police even though he was agitated because he feared being shot.
“To be shackled and to have your freedom taken away from you, it’s something else. It’s dehumanizing, and I thought, ‘Why would they be doing this?’ It’s something that — it gives you nightmares,” he said during the interview. Jennings, 56, has been a pastor at the Vision of Abundant Life Church for more than 30 years.
Jennings’s account echoes similar events in recent years in which police have been called on Black people doing everyday activities — barbecuing, swimming at a pool, viewing a home with a real estate agent, birdwatching or trying to get into their own apartment building. In one 2018 incident, a White woman in San Francisco threatened to call police about an 8-year-old girl selling bottled water without a permit. Such incidents led people to create the hashtag #LivingWhileBlack.
‘You know why the lady called the police’: Black people face 911 calls for innocuous acts
The chain of events that ended in Jennings’s arrest started when one of his neighbors, not recognizing him, called 911 to report a suspicious person outside her neighbors’ house. The couple living there had gone out of town.
The body-camera video shows that, when the first officer arrived, he greeted Jennings with a “Howdy," and Jennings replied by saying, “Hey man, how’s it going?” It devolved from there.
The officer told Jennings that someone had called police to report a strange man around the house who was “not supposed to be here.” Jennings identified himself as “Pastor Jennings” and said he lived across the street. When the officer asked for an ID to prove that, Jennings balked, saying he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“You want to lock me up, lock me up. I’m not showing y’all anything,” Jennings said. “I’m going to continue watering these flowers. I don’t care who called y’all. Lock me up and see what happens.”
Alabama law allows law enforcement to demand someone in a public space identify themselves, give their address and explain their actions if the officer “reasonably suspects” that person has committed or is about to commit a felony or other public offense.
In their statement, Jennings’s lawyers said that their client didn’t have to provide police an identification because “he was not in a public place.”
A Black couple says an appraiser lowballed them. So, they ‘whitewashed’ their home and say the value shot up.
A few minutes later, after Jennings was handcuffed and in the back of the cruiser, the woman who called police came outside to speak with officers at their request, the video shows. She told police she did know Jennings, that he lived close by and that she wouldn’t have been surprised if her neighbors had asked him to water their flowers while they were away.
“They are friends, and they went out of town today. He may be watering their flowers. It would be completely normal,” she said, adding “This is probably my fault.”
Jennings’s attorneys said that the body-cam footage revealed evidence that cleared “the way for legal action against the officers.”
“This video makes it clear that these officers decided they were going to arrest Pastor Jennings less than five minutes after pulling up and then tried to rewrite history claiming he hadn’t identified himself when that was the first thing he did,” Daniels said. “This was not only an unlawful arrest. It’s kidnapping. It’s irrational, irresponsible and illegal.”
Jennings told ABC News he’s considering filing a racial-discrimination lawsuit against the department. Regardless, he wants to do something that prevents someone else from going through what he’s had to endure.
“It’s been exhausting,” he told NBC News, “and I just really hope there’ll be some change.” | 2022-08-26T12:13:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black pastor arrested while watering a neighbor’s flowers, video shows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/26/alabama-pastor-arrested-watering-flowers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/26/alabama-pastor-arrested-watering-flowers/ |
Helping farmers is key to easing the Colorado River crisis
Water from the Colorado River diverted through the Central Arizona Project fills an irrigation canal in Maricopa, Ariz., on Aug. 18. (Matt York/AP)
The Rev. William Dodd was not above making the occasional fraudulent loan application, which is how he wound up in London’s Tyburn Prison in 1777 under sentence of death. An unusually eloquent plea for mercy, supposedly of his own composition, failed to save his life. Later, the great English writer Samuel Johnson, who had secretly written the appeal, tried to insist that Dodd was capable of such elegant prose. After all, Johnson reasoned, “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
By the same logic, I optimistically predict a great leap forward in water conservation strategies arising from the parched American West. Such metropolitan areas as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas, along with some of the world’s most productive farmlands, face strangulation at the end of an empty water hose.
The seven states watered by the mighty Colorado River long ago overtaxed the channel’s annual supply. Years of runaway growth, persistent drought and wasteful misuse of water have relentlessly drawn down the reservoirs that store the region’s lifeblood and power its electricity generating stations.
Now is the moment for concentrated minds. The water crisis predicted for decades in the booming West has arrived. Despite past efforts at conservation, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, built at opposite ends of the Grand Canyon, are at their lowest levels since they were originally filled in the 1930s and 1960s, respectively. They are perilously close to becoming “dead pools” — a term used in the hydropower business to describe reservoirs too empty to push water through the turbines.
Hard as it is to imagine Las Vegas without lights, that’s nothing compared with imagining Phoenix without air conditioning. The river that fills the reservoirs that power the dams that electrify the Southwest cannot be allowed to go dead.
So the Interior Department has stepped in to focus some thinking. The Colorado River states must reduce overall water use by as much as 4.1 million acre-feet per year. That’s enough to submerge the state of Connecticut under 15 inches of water. Interior immediately began closing the tap for Arizona, Nevada and the nation of Mexico. Arizona will lose an astonishing, and painful, 21 percent of its water allocation under the new regulations.
People can argue about how much of this disaster is caused by climate change and how much stems from a long-ago miscalculation of the average flow of the Colorado River. But no one can look at the lakes draining away like bathtubs with the plugs pulled and deny that more water is leaving for downstream uses than arriving from the alpine snows that feed the Colorado headwaters.
Will the prospect of disaster concentrate minds on solutions?
I see reasons to be hopeful. Between the bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year and the climate change initiative passed this year, some $12 billion in new federal funds has been targeted at the Colorado River water crisis. Careful use of that money can spur a lot of experiments in water conservation.
With concentrated minds, the United States could race ahead of the world in terms of smart water use. We should aim to outdo Singapore on water recycling, outdo Israel on desalination and outdo China on water conservation.
But the future of America’s water cannot be won without changing America’s farms. Decades of explosive population growth in the Colorado River states has not changed the basic fact that most of the water goes to agriculture. The region’s farmers deliver magnificent crops to feed and clothe the nation. But they waste a lot of water doing it.
How much? Wrap your brain around this: All the millions of people filling water bottles and flushing toilets and watering lawns in the booming Southwest; all their golf courses and city parks and flower beds and carwashes — all these add up to about 10 percent of water use in the region. Agriculture amounts to 80 percent.
Robert Glennon of the University of Arizona shows what a concentrated mind can do under the threat of demise. In a July essay for Governing.com, the professor urges direct investment by cities in more efficient farms. Glennon recognizes that “drip irrigation” systems save huge amounts of water, but small farmers can’t afford the upfront costs. Farmers who could save water don’t save water — for want of investment.
Glennon suggests that water-starved cities pay to install drip systems. In exchange, the cities would get the water that is saved. Under the threat of dead pools, expect a lot of good thinking like that.
California’s plan to ban new gas-powered cars is misguided | 2022-08-26T12:13:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Colorado River crisis can't be solved without helping farmers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/colorado-river-crisis-cities-help-farmers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/colorado-river-crisis-cities-help-farmers/ |
President Biden participates in a rally for the Democratic National Committee at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md., on Aug. 25. (Yuri Gripas/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The White House is sending a letter to the nation’s governors and convening a meeting with state and local leaders about protecting access to abortion, as the Biden administration seeks to highlight its work on protecting reproductive rights on Women’s Equality Day.
But Friday’s efforts don’t amount to any major policy announcements, which could frustrate some abortion rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers who have urged the administration to push the boundaries of what’s allowed. The efforts come as roughly 20.9 million women have lost access to nearly all elective abortions in their home states, representing a massive shift in the two months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The meeting at the White House will include Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D); Mayor Elaine M. O’Neal (D) of Durham, N.C.; and Alexander S. Mackler, Delaware’s chief deputy attorney general. Biden administration officials plan to discuss how states can protect access to abortion and how the federal government can offer its assistance, according to senior administration officials who spoke to reporters Thursday on the condition of anonymity because of guidelines set by the administration.
Additionally, the Department of Health and Human Services will release a report outlining an action plan and will send a letter to the nation’s governors focused on Medicaid, as well as stressing that abortions must be performed during medical emergencies.
Last month, HHS issued updated guidance to a decades-old federal emergency medical law reminding doctors they must terminate a pregnancy if doing so is necessary to stabilize a patient. Not complying carries steep penalties: Providers could face fines or be booted from the Medicare program.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration persuaded a federal judge to block a portion of an Idaho law that would criminalize performing an abortion on a woman to protect her health. It was the first legal victory for President Biden since the Supreme Court overturned Roe’s decades-old protections, and the Justice Department centered the lawsuit around its interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).
“Where a state purports to prohibit providers from offering the emergency care that EMTALA requires, HHS will not hesitate to refer the matter to the Department of Justice to take appropriate legal action,” the letter from HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said.
The letter also will invite states to develop and apply for waivers to allow their Medicaid programs to provide increased access to care to help patients traveling out of state for abortions.
Biden this month directed his health secretary to consider actions to assist patients traveling out of state for abortions, such as by potentially having them apply to make changes to their Medicaid programs. | 2022-08-26T12:13:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden to present plans to state, local leaders to protect abortion access - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/biden-present-plans-state-local-leaders-improve-abortion-access/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/biden-present-plans-state-local-leaders-improve-abortion-access/ |
If Trump wins again, he wants to be able to fire civil servants
That’s still a bad idea. Research suggests that merit-based systems are better for the economy and for democracy.
Analysis by Ryan Saylor
Supporters of Donald Trump rally in New York on Aug. 9. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
Former president Donald Trump’s aides want to overhaul the federal civil service, should Trump have a second term in the Oval Office, according to reporting. The goal: Give the president more discretion in hiring and firing federal employees, instead of evaluating them strictly on merit-based standards originally designed to reduce political patronage and protect workers from shifting political winds.
In October 2020, Trump briefly put into place a similar plan — called “Schedule F” — via Executive Order 13597, which President Biden rescinded in January 2021. Last month, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) introduced a bill to fulfill Trump’s aim, making civil servants “at will” employees, with the goal of getting the government to operate more like a private business. Democrats railed against Schedule F when it was introduced and oppose its revival, arguing that civil servants deserve legal buffers from politicians.
Which is better — a civil service protected from politics by strict merit-based standards, or a civil service that answers only to the president? When social scientists research this question, they find that meritocratic government bureaucracies help protect against corruption, deliver economic results for their nations, and contribute to democratic stability.
What is a politicized bureaucracy?
Scholars distinguish between two basic types of bureaucracies. In one system, codified rules define an official’s duties, subjecting those officials to rules and regulations that discourage and punish bribes and corruption. People are usually hired and fired according to merit, as defined by technical qualifications. They enjoy stable career paths, regardless of their individual political beliefs. The German sociologist Max Weber called these systems “rational-legal” bureaucracies. The United States moved in this direction with the Pendleton Act in 1883, which ordered that government employees be hired based on competitive exams and made it unlawful to fire or demote them for political reasons. By 1920, a merit-based federal bureaucracy had largely solidified.
The U.S. civil service is unusual. Most countries — such as Brazil, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia — feature what Weber called “patrimonial” states. They are also known as patronage systems. To get and keep a job, people need a personal connection to a patron, such as a political party leader. These bureaucrats must show that they’re loyal to their patron and carry out their wishes on the job. As a result, the patron’s personal whims may guide a bureaucrat’s actions more than the need to execute the job’s responsibilities. Public administration becomes infused with politics.
Trump wanted to slash the federal government. But federal agencies are doing just fine.
Patronage systems can unleash corruption
Social scientists find a variety of problems in patronage systems. Because patrimonial officials are less restrained by impersonal law, corruption can flourish. For example, before civil service reform in the United States, many bureaucrats were expected to give a 2 percent kickback of their salaries to fund their patrons’ political campaigns.
As the United States moved toward merit-based standards, corruption lessened. Researchers have found an inverse relationship between meritocracy and corruption in countries throughout the world. The association remains even after weighing other factors that might affect corruption, such as a country’s wealth and level of democracy.
Civil service protections help insulate bureaucrats from political pressures, which facilitates what we think of as good governance: less wasteful spending, better management and more efficient services such as mail delivery.
When politicians erode these merit-based standards, they risk harming essential government functions and provoking effective administrators to flee to the private sector. Over time, people may come to regard government not as something that provides public goods but that distributes personal favors — shifting elections from debates over government policies to competitions over who will distribute and receive patronage.
Biden inherited a broken government. Attracting a new generation of civil servants won't be easy.
The upsides of merit-based bureaucracies
Because a meritocratic government operates according to clear and calculable rules, Weber believed that it enabled capitalism. Indeed, in the late 19th century, U.S. business groups pushed for civil service reform for just this reason. Scholars have linked rational-legal institutions to higher economic growth in developing countries as well.
Further, merit-based administration assists the rule of law, a cornerstone of democracy. Writing here at TMC last year, Walter Shaub argued that the federal civil service — more than Congress or executive branch investigators — helped prevent undemocratic actions when Trump behaved lawlessly.
As with any big topic, researchers continue to probe these relationships. For instance, some are exploring whether a merit-based civil service’s positive effect on economic growth may be confined to certain historical eras. Others are investigating whether economic development causes good institutions, not the other way around. Still others are working on creating better measurements to refine our knowledge.
Yet overall, we have credible explanations for why meritocratic bureaucracies have better results than politicized systems. When thinking about reorganizing the civil service, consider that the U.S. government already has about 4,000 political appointees in the federal bureaucracy. Approximately one-third of them require Senate approval. A variety of research suggests the strong downsides of adding even more partisans to those political ranks.
Ryan Saylor is an associate professor of political science at the University of Tulsa, researching how creditors pressed for meritocratic bureaucracies in Europe historically, and author of “State Building in Boom Times: Commodities and Coalitions in Latin America and Africa” (Oxford University Press, 2014). | 2022-08-26T12:14:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump wants civil servants to be 'at will' employees. That's a bad idea. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/schedule-f-federal-bureaucrats-reorganization/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/schedule-f-federal-bureaucrats-reorganization/ |
Post Politics Now Noon deadline looms for release of Mar-a-Lago affidavit
The latest: Back on campaign trail, Biden says GOP has turned toward ‘semi-fascism’
On our radar: Redacted Mar-a-Lago search affidavit to be released by noon Friday
Noted: North Dakota judge blocks abortion ban from taking effect Friday
President-elect Donald Trump listens to members of the media after a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Dec. 21, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Today, the Justice Department has until noon under a court order to make public a redacted version of the affidavit underpinning the FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home. The affidavit is likely to contain key information about the investigation into classified documents that were kept at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence after he left office, including the reasons that the FBI suspects crimes may have been committed. However, it remains to be seen how much will be revealed, given the redactions.
At the White House, President Biden plans to drop by a meeting of state and local elected officials to discuss reproductive health care before heading to Delaware for the weekend. On Thursday, Biden participated in a pair of political events in Montgomery County, Md., including one in which he accused Republicans of turning toward “semi-facism.”
8 a.m. Mountain time (10 a.m. Eastern): Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell delivers remarks on the economy from Jackson Hole, Wyo. Watch live here.
11 a.m. Eastern: Biden drops by a meeting with state and local elected officials on Women’s Equality Day.
The Post’s Rachel Siegel reports that policymakers, financial markets and people around the United States — and the world — are eager for any hints about the Fed’s upcoming interest rate hikes and its broader outlook for the economy. Per Rachel:
Powell’s remarks, to be given Friday morning at the annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, will be key to the public’s understanding of how the Fed can rid the economy of its largest problem while preserving signs of strength, notably the still-churning job market.
In Washington state’s Senate race, Republican Tiffany Smiley is denying claims by her opponent, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), that she would push for a national abortion ban.
“Patty Murray has spent millions to paint me as an extremist,” Smiley says in a 30-second television ad, speaking directly to the camera. “I’m pro-life, but I oppose a federal abortion ban.”
Among other things, Smiley objects to a Murray ad that shows Smiley standing alongside former president Donald Trump but doesn’t show a picture (which Smiley does) of Smiley standing alongside Murray.
President Biden plans to join a meeting Friday at the White House of state and local leaders who, according to a White House statement, have been “on the frontlines of protecting reproductive rights, helping their communities navigate the growing challenges surrounding access to reproductive health care” in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The meeting, the White House said, is part of a “Day of Action on Reproductive Rights,” which is being coordinated with allies on Capitol Hill.
On Friday morning, the White House released a list of attendees, including Alexander Mackler, chief deputy attorney general in Delaware; Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott; Durham, N.C., Mayor Elaine O’Neal; Mount Vernon, N.Y., Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard; Harris County, Tex., Judge Lina Hidalgo; and Dinah Sykes, minority leader of the Kansas state Senate.
In advance of the meeting, the White House also released a polling memo that seeks to make the case that “abortion messaging increases support for Democrats and diminishes support for Republicans.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) met Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday in Taipei, the latest U.S. lawmaker to visit the island at a time of tense relations with China.
The Post’s Eva Dou and Christian Shepherd report that Blackburn’s trip is the third by U.S. lawmakers this month. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip in early August plunged cross-strait relations to recent lows and prompted Beijing to launch large-scale military exercises in the waters around Taiwan. Per our colleagues:
Taiwan has been self-ruled for decades and is one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. However, Beijing claims the island as part of its territory and responds furiously whenever foreign officials or companies appear to treat Taiwan as a country. The United States and most other governments do not diplomatically recognize Taiwan, to maintain official relations with China.
In her visit on Friday, Blackburn called Taiwan a “country” in passing, while saying it was important to support Taiwan in “preserving its freedom.”
“I am looking forward to a wonderful visit. And yes indeed, I do remember my visit fondly in 2008 and the opportunity to get to see some of your country firsthand,” Blackburn told Tsai, according to a video posted on Tsai’s official Facebook account.
President Biden on Thursday night launched a push toward the midterm elections with a fiery speech in Rockville, Md., in which he cast the Republican Party as one that was dangerously consumed with anti-democratic forces that have turned toward “semi-fascism.”
The Post’s Matt Viser reports that it was some of the strongest language used by Biden, a politician long known — and at times criticized for — his willingness to work with members of the opposing party. Per our colleague:
“The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security,” Biden said, referencing former president Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. “They’re a threat to our very democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace — embrace — political violence. They don’t believe in democracy.” …
You can read Matt’s full story here.
A redacted version of the affidavit justifying the FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence must be unsealed in federal court by noon Eastern time on Friday, a judge ordered Thursday afternoon.
The Post’s Perry Stein reports that the order arrived hours after Justice Department lawyers submitted proposed redactions they felt were necessary to avoid jeopardizing witnesses or undermining the high-profile investigation into the handling of classified documents, which the Justice Department has characterized as still in the “early stages.”
Perry writes:
Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart apparently agreed with the government’s proposed redactions and, in response to requests from multiple news organizations, ordered the affidavit to be made available for public view.
The day before a near-total abortion ban would have taken effect in North Dakota, a judge put that law on hold Thursday afternoon, pending the conclusion of a legal challenge being mounted by the state’s former sole abortion clinic.
The Post’s Katie Shepherd reports that Burleigh County District Judge Bruce Romanick granted a preliminary injunction in a legal challenge brought by Red River Women’s Clinic, which was North Dakota’s only abortion clinic until it moved just across state lines earlier this month. Although the trigger ban has been blocked, the state will have no abortion clinic for the foreseeable future.
Katie writes:
The clinic relocated from Fargo to Moorhead, Minn., on Aug. 6 to stay open in the event that the North Dakota trigger ban went into effect. Tammi Kromenaker, the clinic’s director, said Red River Women’s Clinic would probably stay in Moorhead even if it wins its lawsuit and defeats the trigger ban, because Minnesota’s abortion laws are far more permissive. …
Meanwhile, laws passed in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade tightened abortion restrictions in Tennessee, Idaho and Texas on Thursday, banning abortion from conception in Tennessee and Idaho and raising the penalty for abortion providers in Texas.
RELATEDNew restrictions from major abortion funder could further limit access | 2022-08-26T12:14:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Noon deadline looms for release of Mar-a-Lago affidavit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/trump-affidavit-biden-abortion-economy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/trump-affidavit-biden-abortion-economy/ |
The U.S. Open starts Monday. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP/Getty Images)
Tennis’s top players are set to take the hard courts of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York for the U.S. Open, the final Grand Slam on the 2022 calendar. Here’s what you need to know.
When is the U.S. Open?
How can I watch the U.S. Open?
How big are the U.S. Open draws?
Are Russian and Belarusian players allowed to play at the U.S. Open?
Is Serena Williams playing at the U.S. Open?
Is Novak Djokovic allowed to play at the U.S. Open? | 2022-08-26T12:14:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. Open schedule, draw and what you need to know - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/us-open-tennis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/us-open-tennis/ |
Man shot and killed in Temple Hills, police say
A man was shot and killed Thursday evening in Temple Hills, Md., police said.
Just after 6 p.m., officers went to the 5000 block of Beech Place in response to a report of a shooting and found a man with gunshot wounds.
Detectives are trying to identify a suspect and discover a motive. | 2022-08-26T13:31:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man shot and killed in Temple Hills, Md., police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/temple-hills-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/temple-hills-shooting/ |
Inflation’s Winners Need to Help Out the Losers
It’s tough being caught in the middle, especially when it comes to inflation.
The pandemic caused a significant shift in demand toward goods and away from services and shattered the stable supply-demand balance that had spawned two decades of inflation averaging just above 2%. This abrupt change in demand patterns sparked pricing shocks that basically divided companies into winners, survivors and losers on inflation.
The last group will be playing catch-up on price increases, which is why inflation will most likely prove to be more stubborn than many people expect. To help cool inflation faster and return to an economy anchored by balanced supply and demand, some businesses will need to pull back on the price increases they have already passed through to customers.
When the supply-demand imbalance struck, some companies were well-positioned to take advantage with outsized price increases, which widened profit margins. Maritime shipping was the best example. Cosco Shipping Holdings Co. and AP Moller-Maersk A/S raked in the profits during the pandemic because volume surged and capacity was constrained, leaving price as the only mechanism to deal with the crush of goods the US was importing. Consumer packaged-goods companies, vehicle makers and logistics providers also experienced more demand than they could handle and leaned on price to swell their profit margins. (A measure of aggregate profit margins improved in the second quarter to 15.5%, the most since 1950.)
Survivors had some power to push through cost increases, especially if the companies were large. If they fell short of keeping price gains in line with inflation, then cost cuts and improved efficiency helped close the gap. Big retailers like Walmart Inc. come to mind. Even larger manufacturers like Honeywell International Inc. and Eaton Corp. fall in this group. Some used ingenuity, such as designing products that need fewer semiconductors, to keep par with the price-cost equation.
And then there’s the group that ended up on the losing end of inflation. These companies aren’t poor operators, they’re just stuck between large original equipment manufacturers, which don’t readily accept price increases, and the rising costs of the raw materials that they need to make their products. The profit margins of these middle-market companies have been squeezed, and they will eventually need to correct the imbalance in the price-cost equation. The thousands of companies caught in this middle-market squeeze are one reason that inflation will linger well into next year even as the economy begins to lap last year’s elevated commodity prices.
Thomson Plastics Inc. is one of those companies. The company, named after its hometown in Georgia, makes injection-molded parts for autos, lawn mowers and all-terrain vehicles among other customers in three factories. The company pushed through its first price increase of about 7% in January and is planning to boost prices again in October.
“The bottom line is we certainly have to pass these through,” Steve Dyer, the chief executive officer of Thomson, said in an interview about the accumulated costs his company has absorbed. Thomson’s operating margins have tumbled more than 40% even after cutting costs and taking measures to increase productivity, said Dyer, whose company employs about 400 people. “I’ve eaten all I can eat.”
Thomson will need to keep raising prices as the squeeze continues. Dyer said he would have to boost employees’ salaries at the beginning of next year because food, gasoline, rent and almost everything they buy are eroding their wages.
The increase in costs, mostly from commodities, wages and freight, was the biggest issue on the minds of small producers surveyed by the National Association of Manufacturers, said Chad Moutray, chief economist for the trade group. The small companies get pinched the most, Moutray said in an interview.
“They just don’t have the scale and scope to be able to absorb costs the way that some of their larger counterparts are and the ability to pass those on,” he said.
To help inflation unwind, the cycle for raising prices needs to end for some industries that enjoyed margin expansion built on price. Maritime shippers should have a hard argument for raising prices after margins ballooned and container costs remained elevated. AP Moller-Maersk, the Denmark maritime shipping behemoth, increased its operating profit margins 14 percentage points to 41% in the first half of this year from the same period in 2021. Keep in mind that the maritime shipping giant eked out operating margins of only 4.4% in 2019 and less than 1% in 2018.
Those companies that were able to tread water by raising prices at the rate of inflation should now be decelerating those increases and resist the temptation to pad margins with price. The market knows where exactly companies rank on this price-cost equation as executives argue over price, and the pushback should be harder on those industries and companies that are ahead of inflation on price.
The quicker the supply-demand balance is restored the quicker the Federal Reserve can put away the interest-rate club it’s wielding with a force not seen since the 1980s. Until there’s a clear deceleration of inflation, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will lead an indiscriminate destruction of demand by raising the cost and availability of capital that will finally halt the ability of companies to increase prices. It won’t be pretty and could tip the US into recession. Cooling inflation and maintaining economic growth should be in the interest of all industries, and that will be up to companies, especially those that have benefited the most from the pandemic-induced imbalance of supply and demand. | 2022-08-26T13:44:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inflation’s Winners Need to Help Out the Losers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/inflations-winners-need-to-help-out-the-losers/2022/08/26/6bd2dcc6-2537-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/inflations-winners-need-to-help-out-the-losers/2022/08/26/6bd2dcc6-2537-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
The long-awaited move will help clean up two of these omnipresent and dangerous substances. But the move leaves many others unaddressed.
A long-awaited move by the EPA is meant to speed up the cleanup of areas contaminated by these compounds that can persist in the environment for years. (iStock;Washington Post Illustration)
For decades, Sandy Wynn-Stelt looked at the Christmas tree farm across the street from her home in western Michigan with delight. “How idyllic is that,” she said. “That’s about as quintessential Michigan as you could get.”
Only in recent years did she learn of the toxic “time bomb that nobody knew was sitting” on the land underneath those trees.
The long-awaited move from the Environmental Protection Agency is meant to spark the cleanup of scores of sites defiled by industrial compounds and make the public more aware of their presence. Used to make everyday products like nonstick cookware, cosmetics, fabrics and food packaging, these types of chemicals pervade drinking water used by millions of Americans — and they’ve been linked to an array of illnesses, including cardiovascular problems and low birth weights.
“It’s a very significant step,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a phone interview. The proposed rule “requires the polluter to pay for violating the law.”
“Transparency and disclosure are critical in this process,” Regan said. “And so, this rule will do that.”
The EPA decision is “an expensive, ineffective and unworkable means to achieve remediation for these chemicals,” the American Chemistry Council, a trade group representing chemical makers, said in a statement.
But that resilience proved dangerous. The fluorinated substances break down slowly, allowing them to build up in water, soil and people’s bodies. Even some rainwater is tainted with PFAS at dangerously high levels, according to one recent study. When contamination is found, the sturdy chemicals are difficult to remove and destroy. Some have dubbed them “forever chemicals.”
Among the most contaminated sites are areas outside military bases where airmen used flame retardants to quench jet-fuel fires. Under the EPA’s proposal, the military would need to take into account state laws when cleaning up PFOA and PFOS waste.
In Michigan, the footwear maker Wolverine Worldwide dumped waste on the property eventually used to grow Christmas trees, said Wynn-Stelt, a psychologist who began advocating on the issue of PFAS after learning about the contamination near her home. Forever chemicals turned up in the drinking water from her private well and, eventually, her blood. She worries the exposure may have contributed to her husband’s death from liver cancer in 2016 as well as to her own diagnosis with thyroid cancer four years later.
But Wynn-Stelt worries the plan isn’t enough, and would still like to see the federal government step in. “Our state is going to go broke if it has to clean up PFOA and PFOS by itself,” she said.
After decades, some of America’s most toxic sites will finally get cleaned up
Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization, called the EPA’s move Friday “very significant” but cautioned that the rule alone won’t keep PFAS out of the manufacturing process.
“Just naming something as a hazardous substance doesn’t really affect use,” she said.
Friday’s announcement is the latest effort from an administration contending with widespread contamination from these chemicals.
And two laws signed by President Biden — the bipartisan infrastructure law as well as Democrats’ climate and health-care package — reinstated long-lapsed taxes on chemical and oil companies to supercharge cleanups.
“This is one of these issues that isn’t Republican or Democrat,” Regan said. “This is a bipartisan issue that many members on both sides of the aisle at all levels of government have asked EPA to step in and take a leadership role.” | 2022-08-26T13:45:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EPA finally declares toxic ‘forever chemicals’ as hazardous - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/26/forever-chemicals-epa-cleanup-rule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/26/forever-chemicals-epa-cleanup-rule/ |
Brink’s guard slept as thieves stole millions in jewels, lawsuit says
This undated photo provided by the FBI shows a display case with some of the jewelry that was taken during a robbery. Authorities are investigating a jewelry heist in Southern California in which thieves stole millions of dollars worth of jewelry and gemstones on July 11. (FBI/AP) (Federal Bureau of Investigation /AP)
Parked at a truck stop in Southern California in early July, a Brink’s truck had it all: gold, gemstones, Rolex watches — and a guard, sound asleep. Thieves broke into the truck and made off with 22 bags of the jewelry, according to two lawsuits.
The owners of jewelry say they lost tens of millions of dollars in the heist, and law enforcement officials are searching for the thieves. In the meantime, the armored-truck company and the jewelry owners are arguing in dueling lawsuits about how much money Brink’s must repay.
More than a dozen jewelers filed their suit this week against Brink’s, which uses armored trucks to transport and deliver valuables such as cash and jewelry. The jewelers are accusing Brink’s of mishandling the expensive property and then leaving the truck susceptible. They say their businesses are in ruin, and they’re suing for hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Everyone in our group has been emotionally and financially destroyed,” the plaintiffs said in a statement to the Associated Press. “We are lost and do not know what comes next in our lives. Whatever plans we all have for the future for our businesses and our families has evaporated in an instant.”
Brink’s disputes the total loss, alleging in its lawsuit that the jewelers understated the value of their items in declarations before the company began transporting the valuables to Los Angeles. The total “declared value” of the stolen items, the Brink’s lawsuit claims, is $8.7 million.
The company, which operates more than 16,000 vehicles in 100 countries, revealed in its lawsuit that one of its guards was sleeping as the heist took place. Both lawsuits detail the truck’s journey from a San Francisco Bay area gem show to a truck stop north of Los Angeles, where it was broken into.
On the evening of July 10, more than 70 bags of jewelry were loaded into the Brink’s truck at the close of the International Gem and Jewelry Show in San Mateo, about 20 minutes south of San Francisco, according to the lawsuits. The truck took off around midnight and began its journey toward a Brink’s storage yard in Los Angeles, with one armed guard driving and the other sleeping in a designated area.
A couple of hours later, the guard pulled into the Flying J truck stop in Lebec, about an hour north of Los Angeles. The driver went into the restaurant for food, leaving his fellow guard to sleep. But when the driver returned about a half-hour later, he noticed that the truck’s rear lock had been “cut away,” the lawsuit states.
The guard, who had been sleeping in the back, “said that he did not see or hear anything unusual,” the lawsuit states.
But after taking stock of the items with law enforcement, it was determined that 22 bags of jewelry were missing, according to the Brink’s lawsuit. An investigation by the FBI and the Los Angeles County Sheriff is ongoing, and investigators told the Los Angeles Times this week that they’ve obtained video relating to the incident.
Sgt. Michael Mileski, an investigator with the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office, told the Times last month that he believed multiple thieves got through the truck’s locking mechanism, which he said would not be hard to do.
“We are talking multimillions here,” Mileski told the paper. “It is a huge amount of money.”
The jewelers’ lawsuit says the bags contained “tens of millions of dollars’ worth [of] jewelry and gemstones.” They allege that the truck was parked in a poorly lit area with the rear door facing away from the restaurant and out of the view of surveillance cameras, according to the Times.
Lawyers for Brink’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday, and Brink’s has not yet filed a response to the jewelers’ lawsuit.
Brink’s says in its lawsuit that it’s only liable for the $8.7 million “declared value” of the items stolen.
“This was an absolutely huge crime,” Arnold Duke, the president of the International Gem and Jewelry Show, in which the jewelers displayed their items, told the Times in July. “We are talking gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds and loads of luxury watches.” | 2022-08-26T13:45:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brink's guard slept as thieves stole millions in jewels, lawsuit says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/26/brinks-lawsuit-driver-asleep-jewelry-heist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/26/brinks-lawsuit-driver-asleep-jewelry-heist/ |
While many are upbeat about new accomplishments in the face of Republican attacks, they are also clear-eyed about the potential difficulties that lie ahead this fall.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) speaks with reporters as veterans, military family members and advocates rally outside the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo)
PHOENIX — Sen. Mark Kelly took his place at a table inside an AARP office, where he touted a recently enacted law that aims to bring down prescription drug costs for elderly Americans. “Finally,” Kelly declared, we are “going to lower the cost so seniors can afford their medication.”
But when he answered questions from reporters after the event, the Democratic senator acknowledged that the gradual introduction of benefits could blunt some of the immediate political benefits. The state’s seniors will feel the cost reductions “eventually,” he said in the appearance this month, “when it impacts them.” Asked if the timeline is too sluggish to meaningfully help Democrats on the ballot in November, the former astronaut was candid, saying: “Yeah, I suppose.”
Kelly, one of the year’s most vulnerable senators up for reelection, is one of many Democrats across the country running on a sweeping initiative to tackle health-care and fight global warming that is part of President Biden’s resurrected legislative agenda. Now that Biden has signed it into law, Democrats across the country are searching for ways to translate the 273 pages of legislative text into support at the ballot box.
While many are upbeat they have something new to run on in the face of Republican attacks, they are also clear-eyed about the potential difficulties that lie ahead this fall. Some of the law’s signature benefits for seniors do not take effect until 2023 to 2026, while the high price of food, housing and fuel are stretching budgets across age groups right now.
Other benefits, including some climate provisions, took effect upon enactment. But Democrats, who struggled to win lasting political credit for stimulus checks sent to many Americans as part of a pandemic relief bill last year, as well as an expanded child tax credit, have their work cut out for them on the Inflation Reduction Act, some party strategists said.
“A lot of voters don’t know about it,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “It really needs to have a full-court press pushing out what’s happened.”
Democratic leaders have begun mobilizing efforts to sell the law. Groups including the Democratic Governors Association, AARP and Building Back Together, an outside group supporting Biden, are launching ad campaigns or have made plans to do so soon. Candidates in marquee Senate races began adjusting their campaign messages and events to highlight the law.
In New Hampshire, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan visited a health center to spotlight the prescription drug benefits. Speaking at a Miami medical center, Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) boasted that the new law will “lower out-of-pocket costs for seniors.”
With Republicans aggressively trying to appeal for votes by pointing to price hikes on the watch of Biden and congressional Democrats, the ability of his party to show it is addressing the crunch that many Americans are feeling is a key variable looming over the fall campaigns. Suddenly armed with accomplishments they have championed for years, congressional Democrats are shifting into sales mode after struggling to promote previous domestic accomplishments.
Republicans are running against the new law, labeling it as a vehicle for anti-competitive price caps that will stymie innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. They’re also focusing on a different part of the legislation: a roughly $80 billion provision toward expanding the roster of IRS employees over the next decade, calling it an example of government overreach. And they argue it will worsen inflation rather than fight it.
The stakes of the competing arguments are especially high here in Arizona, which is among the states experiencing the highest inflation rates and where seniors make up a higher percentage of the population than most states. While the Biden administration is seeking to raise awareness here, officials acknowledge it will take work, and the sales job is in its nascent form.
“It hasn’t sunk in,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told The Washington Post in Phoenix before an event designed to pitch the new law. “Because it’s just too good to be true. When you tell them $35 for insulin a month — it hasn’t connected.”
An NBC News poll showed that 42 percent of respondents called the measure a good idea, while 31 percent said it was a bad idea. When it came to how the law would impact them personally, based on what they knew about it, 35 percent said it would make things worse, 26 percent said it would make things better and 36 percent said it would not make a difference.
Biden administration cabinet officials have flung themselves across the country pitching the new law. At the White House, where Biden already held one signing ceremony, plans are in place for another event celebrating the new law after Labor Day, when more voters may be paying attention.
The health-care parts of the law include a measure that caps insulin costs for seniors on Medicare at $35 a month starting in 2023. It creates a $2,000 annual cap on the amount seniors pay for prescription drugs starting in 2025. And it allows Medicare to begin using its purchasing power to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies by 2026.
No congressional Republicans voted for the bill — a point that Biden and Democratic candidates are repeatedly stressing to voters. In North Carolina, Democratic Senate nominee Cheri Beasley highlights that her GOP opponent, Rep. Ted Budd, voted against the legislation in the House. “Any member of Congress who is serious about lowering costs would have supported this law,” Beasley said in a brief interview with The Post.
In Arizona, where one of the year’s biggest Senate races is ramping up, Kelly predicted that he, too, will be focusing on the law. “Obviously, we’ve got to talk about what we accomplished,” said Kelly. “And this is a big deal.”
Some voters who do know about the law said they don’t know what to make of it yet.
In Scottsdale, Ariz., Linda Greenleaf, 68, described herself as a liberal who has been following the debate in Washington. “I’m all for it — if it does what they say it does,” she said, clutching a bag of prescription medications that she had just purchased at CVS. “It is a good thing as long as it goes through and really works.”
Still, just the fact that Congress acted was pleasing to her. “It’s a bright spot showing that things can get better,” she said.
Blake Masters, the Republican nominee against Kelly, criticized Kelly and the Democrats for elements of the bill that they discussed but ultimately left out. “The Democrats’ ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ dropped childcare subsidies, pre-K, paid leave, and a child tax credit,” Masters said on social media. “Democrats have abandoned families. Republicans are the pro-family party now.”
Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said the Border Patrol has been “begging” for more staff and questioning why Kelly would instead support more tax collectors.
Lake, the pollster, has conducted focus groups on elements of the law and said that Democrats can use the health-care portions as a data point showing that they will stand up to special interests. Women over 50, a key swing demographic in the midterms, are particularly attuned to the health-care provisions, she said.
Becerra said the details of the law can come across as incremental. “I believe we have to do universal health-care coverage. But we’re getting there. And so every move that we make, that gets us a little further along,” Becerra said. “At the end of the day, it’s like a football game. You may not be the most rousing team, but if you get your three yards every down and go — that’s what counts, and that’s what we’re doing.”
The political dynamics have echoes of 2003, when then-President George W. Bush signed into law an expansion of prescription drug benefits under Medicare in what was then a big change to the program.
Bush traveled the country highlighting discount cards that provided savings for older Americans on most prescriptions, staging events in pharmacies and amid thankful seniors. It helped, and Bush was reelected in 2004.
But then, unlike now, seniors felt the savings from the law when they cast their ballots. “It passed much earlier in the cycle; we had more time,” said Jon Seaton, a political consultant who previously worked for George W. Bush.
Seaton said the Bush White House was “hyper focused” on local media coverage. “There was excellent, excellent message discipline, and they were using all the levers they had,” he said. But the world was different in 2004, and there was less content competing for voters’ attention.
Biden and his party have proven to be less adept at selling legislative accomplishments. The president received no durable polling bump after enacting a sweeping infrastructure bill.
But Democratic strategists noted that the sales job will be spread out among more Democrats because of the midterm elections.
“It’s going to be picked up by all kinds of candidates,” said Lake. She predicted that large sums will be spent on TV and digital ads focused on the law between now and November.
Scott Clement in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-08-26T13:45:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats selling their 'season of substance' have little for voters right now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/kelly-democrats-prescription-drugs-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/kelly-democrats-prescription-drugs-climate/ |
(Stock image) (iStock)
“Over the past six months, two women have been trying to extort millions of dollars each from me and my family,” Foreman said. “They are falsely claiming that I sexually abused them over 45 years ago in the 1970s. I adamantly and categorically deny these allegations. The pride I take in my reputation means as much to me as my sports accomplishments, and I will not be intimidated by baseless threats and lies.”
Foreman said he would work with his lawyers to “fully and truthfully expose my accusers’ scheme” in court.
“I don’t pick fights, but I don’t run away from them either,” Foreman said in the statement.
Foreman won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City before compiling a 76-5 record with 68 knockouts during his professional career. He lost the world heavyweight title to Muhammad Ali in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire in 1974. At the age of 45 in 1994, Foreman defeated 26-year-old Michael Moorer to become the oldest heavyweight champion in boxing history. | 2022-08-26T14:49:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Foreman accused of sexual abuse in lawsuits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/george-foreman-lawsuits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/george-foreman-lawsuits/ |
In this photo released by the Lebanese Army official Twitter page, shows the boat that sank carrying about 80 Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians trying to migrate by sea to Italy, following a confrontation with the Lebanese navy, which found by Pisces VI submarine on some 459 meters (about 1,505 feet), in Tripoli, north Lebanon, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022. The Lebanese navy and a submarine crew on Friday, Aug. 26, announced that they found the remains of at least seven of the approximately 30 drowned migrants in a sunken ship off the coast of Tripoli. (Lebanese Army Website via AP) (Uncredited/Lebanese Army Website) | 2022-08-26T15:15:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lebanese submarine finds 7 bodies from April migrant sinking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/lebanese-submarine-finds-7-bodies-from-april-migrant-sinking/2022/08/26/5b244b1c-254b-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/lebanese-submarine-finds-7-bodies-from-april-migrant-sinking/2022/08/26/5b244b1c-254b-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
By Yuripzy Morgan
Anti-abortion supporters celebrate June 24 outside the Supreme Court as the court issued a ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Yuripzy Morgan, a lawyer and former WBAL radio host, is the Republican candidate for Congress in Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District.
“Are you pro-life or pro-choice?” Everyone wants an answer, but not enough want an explanation.
The 2017 Women’s March was held on Jan. 21, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. It was almost four weeks before the birth of my second child. I planned to go to the march to support all women. If I’m being honest, I was also hoping the long walk would induce labor. I was ready to have the baby.
However, I didn’t go because pro-life women’s groups were uninvited. That night, I tucked my 2-year-old into bed. I remember she was holding a red Lightning McQueen toy car. Later, I thought about her little hand holding that car. I saw her unborn sister’s hand balled into a tiny fist on a sonogram. I loved them both equally.
This summer, as expected, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The residents of each state, in pure democratic form, will now decide for themselves whether to allow abortion if they haven’t already done so. Each state will determine under what restrictions an abortion can be carried out. Kansas, a reliably red state that Trump carried by almost 15 points in the 2020 election, voted in early August to not restrict abortion.
The headlines lead people to believe that this was, at worst, a major liberal victory and, at best, an indicator that Republicans will struggle to explain their position on abortion in the coming November elections.
I don’t agree.
When I look at the residents of Kansas and their voting history, and then I look at the results from this referendum, I see the next iteration of a broken debate we have been having for decades.
The question “Are you pro-life or pro-choice?” ignores the complicated decisions made by women all over the country. Most adult Americans understand that life is complex. We rationalize our decisions and tend to reject extremes. This is why most Americans do not favor completely banning abortions, nor do they favor late-term abortions.
Because of this, I believe the conversation must leave the courtroom. As a lawyer, I have seen how the adversarial setting of a courtroom can bring out the worst in people. The longer we fight this battle in court, the less time we have to focus on solutions that support women and lessen the number of abortions. If we can put a man on the moon, we can put safe, effective and affordable birth control on our store shelves. We must improve sex education, and the sooner we fix the costly adoption process and improve the broken foster care system, the sooner they can be seen as real solutions to an unplanned pregnancy.
I want to be perfectly clear on this point: I do not believe abortion to be the answer. I do have real concerns about efforts to downplay the weight of this decision and the health risks of the practice. I’m the mother of two beautiful girls. I’m a Christian. These are permanent, immutable pieces of who I am. They are the things that define me as a person.
The thing that defines me as a Republican and a conservative, and the passion that drives me toward public service, is the unshakable belief we should be free from government involvement in our day-to-day lives and that we must uphold our Constitution. So, let’s break free from the broken debate. Kansas showed us that we can hold personal beliefs while staying committed to the work of limited-government overreach.
This position might not make me popular with the national Republican Party, nor with the far left wing of the Democrat Party. The truth is, both parties are broken, but my position more accurately represents the will of the people of Maryland.
I know the value of a growing human life. I’ve felt its kicks and hiccups and watched its heartbeat at 12 weeks. The struggle to save them is not in the courts. The struggle is finding a way to comfort the heart of a woman who sees that positive test result but cannot see a way forward. The struggle is helping everyone understand that different women face different situations and obstacles and have different beliefs.
I did not choose abortion, and I never will. But I will not make that decision for another woman, nor do I think the government should do it for her. I will, however, support her and love her no matter what decision she makes.
If, after reading all this, you are still looking for a simple label for a very complex position, then call me pro-women. | 2022-08-26T15:16:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | I’m a Republican woman running for Congress. We’re asking the wrong question on abortion. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/abortion-debate-maryland-kansas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/abortion-debate-maryland-kansas/ |
D.C. school test results are coming. Here’s what we should do with them.
By Jessica Sutter
Teacher Faven Habte talks with Principal Sah Brown at Eastern High School in D.C. on Jan. 22, 2021, as schools were preparing to welcome students back to the classroom. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Jessica Sutter is the president of the D.C. State Board of Education.
The calendar says a new school year is about to begin. But looking at the data, it is clear that the challenges our students, schools and families have faced over the past two years remain the same.
Learning, social engagement and development and the joy of developing and pursuing passions, were all affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Because of the pandemic, D.C. kept nearly all students out of school for most of 2021 and passed on the opportunity to assess our students that year. As a result, we have yet to get a full accounting of the academic fallout.
But that accounting is on its way. Soon, D.C. will release the results from the spring 2022 administration of the PARCC exam, the statewide assessment given annually (until the coronavirus interruption) to understand the state of achievement and opportunity gaps. Based on new research from EmpowerK12, the results are likely to paint a grim picture. The EmpowerK12 data shows and the forthcoming PARCC scores are likely to confirm big declines in grade-level performance with Black, Latino, low-income and students with disabilities losing the most progress over the past two years. On average, students might be as much as 11 instructional months behind the progress they would have made otherwise, according to the EmpowerK12 analysis.
In light of this stark reality, some will argue against the continued administration of these assessments. Others will contend that this pandemic-driven slide is reason to abandon the educational improvement strategies that have yielded higher achievement, great opportunity and growing enrollment in our public schools. These arguments are simply wrong. What’s more, they are frequently made in bad faith — the latest in a long line of efforts to turn the clock back on the hard work of D.C. educators, leaders, students and communities.
Contrary to the arguments made by critics of D.C.'s education improvement strategies, the interrupted learning and social disconnection experienced by students (and staff) are not excuses to end such assessments of student learning. Rather, they are the precise reasons we must continue to assess all students.
We have an obligation to know what is happening with student learning overall and the state of opportunity gaps specifically. To address a problem, you must measure and understand it first. Doing otherwise would be to take a head-in-the-sand approach, jettisoning the evidence-based, research-proven strategies for better student outcomes.
What do we do with what we know? And what do we do once the PARCC scores are released?
First, we work to serve students, not point fingers or find someone to blame. The pandemic has been a prolonged trauma for all of us — children, families, educators, school leaders. We need to work together to identify what our families, schools and communities need and then collectively deliver those resources and supports.
Second, we need to embrace what we learned during the pandemic about how we can support students in new and uniquely responsive ways. Despite the fact that schools responded rapidly to the widely divergent experiences and resources of their diverse student bodies during the pandemic — providing computers, tablets, hotspots, etc. — too many students returned to classrooms with a one-size-fits-all approach to learning. Some schools have embraced the lessons of the past two years, including the critical importance of differentiated support for learning needs and traumatic experiences. We should look at these standout schools, study their effective practices and provide the support for both D.C. Public Schools and public charter schools to adapt them to their contexts.
Third, we must listen to what students, families and educators are telling us they need. On a school level, staff are still stretched thin dealing with the new challenges wrought by the coronavirus. We’ll need to continue to fund our schools at levels that allow them to respond to the additional needs of students. Parents are clear that they need more information and clearer communication about how their children are doing in school.
Fourth, students and families are also clear that we need more high-quality mental health support, clinicians and services in our schools. Again, here, too, we have made progress that can be built on. D.C.'s planned study of school-based mental health services next year will be vital to building the future of that system. But we need to ensure that parents are made aware of what specific mental health supports are available at their children’s schools and how to connect with them. A system is only as good as how those it intends to serve can access it.
And finally, we know that reliable transportation continues to be a challenge for students, too many of whom continue to miss days or even weeks of school because of problems with transportation. Whether by expanding bus routes, ensuring more reliable Metro service or creating and supporting new ways for students to arrive safely at the schoolhouse door, we need leadership from the top of government to get our kids back in the classroom and learning.
These are just a few steps we can take today to sustain and strengthen the nascent recovery of our students. But we need to take them together, with a spirit of collaboration and conviction that the young people of our city deserve the very best of our combined efforts and know-how. | 2022-08-26T15:16:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | D.C. school test results are coming. Here’s what we should do with them. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/dc-schools-pandemic-learning-test-results/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/dc-schools-pandemic-learning-test-results/ |
By Kay Coles James
Kay Coles James is the Virginia secretary of the commonwealth.
When the vice president of the Chesterfield County NAACP invited me to speak at the organization’s Aug. 20 Freedom Fund Banquet, I welcomed the opportunity to share my perspective as a longtime Black conservative leader in Virginia and a member of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) Cabinet. I looked forward to talking about how the NAACP and the Youngkin administration could work together to improve the lives of people in Chesterfield and throughout Virginia. But the Democratic Party seemingly has an unwritten veto power over the NAACP’s speakers, especially conservative voices.
After finding out that I had been invited to speak, members of the Chesterfield County Democratic Party apparently were so alarmed by the prospect of a Black conservative participating in the event that they contacted the state NAACP to protest my inclusion and demanded that the Chesterfield affiliate disinvite me or cancel the dinner.
Oh, the intolerance of the self-appointed guardians of tolerance.
Being attacked is not new for me. As a Black, conservative, pro-life, evangelical woman, I have spent most of my life being denounced by the left for my beliefs.
But the party didn’t just attempt to quiet me. When Chesterfield County NAACP Vice President Tavorise K. Marks, chair of the Freedom Fund Committee, refused to cut me and other speakers from the program, the state NAACP called off the event and asked Marks to step down from the committee.
The Freedom Fund Banquet is the major fundraising event for local NAACP branches. It allows them to offer scholarships and fund activities for young people and adults as well as the broader community.
In essence, the Democratic Party defunded the local NAACP and opportunities for young people.
I’m a 73-year-old woman who fought against segregation in Richmond in the 1960s as a young girl. I am representative of those who not only were a part of Black history but those who have come from poverty, those who fight for improving education for our young people and those who promote stronger families in our communities. My history of fighting racism and helping others was lost because I am also a conservative, a commonwealth Cabinet member and a Republican.
When you can’t get more than 68 percent of Black students in Chesterfield County to pass state proficiency tests in reading, writing, science and history pre-coronavirus, and their pass rates are the lowest of all racial groups, how do we have any excuse not to work together?
When there is still a gap in health-care outcomes for many members of the Black community, how do we have any excuse not to work together?
When we still have kids getting into drugs in alarming numbers and young Black men who turn to a life of crime because they think they have no future, how do we have any excuse not to work together?
The NAACP should not turn its back on an opportunity to work together or put politics over progress for the Black community.
Black people come with all sorts of opinions and in all ideologies, but we all care about our community, and the NAACP should be for all of us. The organization’s shortsightedness and inability to work with the Youngkin administration hurt the very community it claims it wants to help.
Uncivil discourse is an illness in the United States. We can do better — and here in Virginia, we must strive to be a place where people of different viewpoints are willing to engage with one another. From those conversations come a deeper understanding, better solutions and a better society for all of us. Working together, there’s no limit to the good we can do. | 2022-08-26T15:17:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Kay Coles James: NAACP missed an opportunity by canceling my appearance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/kay-cole-james-naacp-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/kay-cole-james-naacp-virginia/ |
By Brandi Hurley
Flood sediment and water damage on July 15 at the Bethany Church in Buchanan County, Va. (Jason Lappa for The Washington Post)
Brandi Hurley is a Buchanan County, Va., native.
I grew up in Buchanan County, a rural community in far Southwest Virginia. As a kid I used to spend hours climbing in the holler behind my family’s house, traipsing through streams and running back and forth along the bridge that separated my front yard from the road. As an adult, I left Buchanan to raise my family nearby in Russell County. But I’ve gone home to the hills and to the house my parents have lived in for more than 30 years.
Today, my hometown is unrecognizable. Last month, Buchanan County was devastated by extreme flooding. Storms dropped more than four inches of rain in about two hours, causing flash floods and landslides that damaged more than 100 homes, washed out roads and bridges and left dozens of people unaccounted for overnight. I consider it a miracle that no one died. As the tragedy across the border in Kentucky makes clear, flooding can kill.
After the water subsided, I was glad to see Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and other state officials come to Buchanan to tour the damage. Until you see the results of a major flood firsthand, it can be difficult to comprehend its devastation.
In the governor’s case, I sincerely hope it made an impression. Because despite pledging his full support for the flood victims, Youngkin is actively working to gut flood protection for my neighbors and others like them.
According to a recent study, nearly 240,000 homes and almost 60,000 miles of roads have operational flood risk today, and those numbers are expected to increase. But it wasn’t until state legislators decided to enter into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) two years ago that the state began to put significant funding toward flood protection. The RGGI is a multistate program that works by selling allowances to utilities for the carbon they release. Virginia brought in nearly $228 million in revenue in its first year in the program — much of which goes to help Virginians avoid costly flood damage. In fact, Buchanan County was among the first localities in the commonwealth to receive a portion of this funding for flood prevention and planning to become more resilient to future flooding. When did Noah build the ark? Before the flood. It’s a lesson the governor should heed.
Since taking office, however, Youngkin has been fixated on removing Virginia from the RGGI. Ending Virginia’s participation in this program was among Youngkin’s first policy proposals after winning the election last year. And despite ongoing legal questions, his administration could start the process — and begin to gut flood funding — as early as this fall.
His timing couldn’t be worse. Though the hollers in Southwest Virginia have always been affected by heavy rainfall, nothing compares with the severity and frequency of flooding in recent years. Last September, extreme floods and landslides in Buchanan County were so devastating that they knocked 20 houses off their foundations and left one person dead.
Unfortunately, it’s only going to get more dangerous. Rainfall in Buchanan County this year has already exceeded estimates by nearly 20 percent. It’s not just Southwest Virginia, either — across the commonwealth, we’re seeing more frequent and more intense rainfall. Every year, more Virginians lose everything to flooding.
Floods aren’t partisan. They don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican. That’s why, in the midst of increasingly extreme flooding across the country, members of both parties have embraced the RGGI.
I’m sure it’s easier to be sympathetic when you’re in front of flood victims. But since his brief visit to Buchanan County, the governor has doubled down on leaving the RGGI. And with a massive budget surplus, he has offered no clarification on how or when families might get his promised relief.
I doubt that anyone can understand what it’s like to lose everything. But for the people I’ve grown up with, this isn’t theoretical. These are humble people who have worked their entire lives. Many of them are lifelong Republicans who voted for Youngkin. And some have nothing left.
Mr. Youngkin, the far Southwest is sick and tired of being overlooked by folks in Richmond. We deserve more than empty words. I urge you to do the right thing by us. Please reconsider your position on the RGGI and throw the full force of your office behind flood-relief efforts now as well as future flood preparedness. The people in Buchanan County — and so many others across our commonwealth — are counting on you to do the job for which you were elected. | 2022-08-26T15:17:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Youngkin must reconsider his attempts to gut flood protection - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/youngkin-must-reconsider-his-attempts-gut-flood-protection/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/youngkin-must-reconsider-his-attempts-gut-flood-protection/ |
A small fishing village is nestled next to Bonne Bay, near Gros Morne National Park. The author and his family spent daylight hours hiking the park’s numerous trails. (Photos by Pat Nicklin for The Washington Post)
“Here you go, my darlin’,” she said, handing me a menu. It was the first time I could remember anyone — even my wife — calling me “darling.” But Pam, waitress/cook/proprietor all in one, wasn’t flirting, and I wasn’t special. All her customers at this cozy cafe on the outskirts of Gros Morne National Park were also “darlings” — a warm familiarity characteristic of the genuine friendliness for which Newfoundlanders are known.
It was also the first time I ever ate a mooseburger. But it would not be my last culinary adventure with the largest member of the deer species, as my wife, Pat, and 25-year-old son, Thomas, ordered a moose pie to take back to our cottage. “Just out of the oven,” Pam said.
Lots of firsts, like these, would mark our experience spending two summer weeks on the island of Newfoundland. Though referred to as the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, neither place was officially part of Canada until 1949, I was surprised to learn. Often called “The Rock,” Newfoundland felt more like a faraway country, a place apart, than a northern neighbor. English might be the shared language, but accents and expressions, even vocabulary, took some getting used to. The funny but lovely sounding word “tuckamore,” for example, named stunted evergreen trees on Newfoundland’s windswept shores. Time itself seemed peculiar, exactly a half-hour off from most other time zones.
I was stranded in Newfoundland on Sept. 11. Here’s my ‘Come From Away’ story.
From Nova Scotia, we (and our car) arrived by ferry in Channel-Port aux Basques, on Newfoundland’s southwestern tip. Traveling across the Cabot Strait, which links the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the North Atlantic, the Marine Atlantic’s MV Blue Puttees took about seven hours. The other ferry option was to a southeastern port near St. John’s, the island’s capital and largest city (population about 112,000), but that took about 16 hours — and all sleeping berths had already been booked, both coming and going.
Newfoundland’s geographic size is enormous (about 43,000 square miles) in relation to its relatively small population (around 520,000). Trying to see it all within two weeks would be impossible, so we narrowed our focus to the UNESCO World Heritage site of Gros Morne on the west coast and the Bonavista Peninsula on the east, both known for their spectacular beauty. Still, our visit would entail lots of driving, from one coast to the next, then back again to the Port aux Basques ferry.
But driving was never monotonous; we were told by just about every Newfoundlander we met to be always alert for adventure: “Watch out for potholes and moose!” It was never spoken as a dire warning; rather, it was always a lighthearted but accurate observation generously offered to a CFA like me.
CFA is short for “come from away.” A long-running, award-wining Broadway musical with that title showcases Newfoundlanders’ extraordinary hospitality when 38 commercial aircraft were diverted to Gander International Airport after the 9/11 attacks. More than 6,500 passengers from all over the world were treated not as strangers but as welcome guests, invited into Newfoundlanders’ homes, where they were not only given fresh clothes to wear and plenty to eat, but were also given the keys to residents’ cars.
From this secluded spot, carved out of a dense evergreen forest, we traveled east on Highway 1 toward the Bonavista Peninsula. There we had booked a week’s stay in a historical hip-roof saltbox right next to an Atlantic inlet. While at the wheel driving for hours through an uncluttered, wild landscape with vast vistas, I allowed my mind to wander: Maybe the reason for Newfoundlanders’ remarkable friendliness was precisely because it was uncrowded — few interactions with fellow humans. But my mind couldn’t wander too much, for even on a major thoroughfare (the Newfoundland segment of the Trans-Canada Highway system) there was the odd pothole to be swerved around.
St. Pierre and Miquelon, the last remnant of France’s once-vast colonial empire in North America, are barely 16 miles off Newfoundland's coastline
The thing about an extended stay in one place: You get to know it, and you can pretend you’re not a tourist. Our house was in a row of similar houses lining the half-mile waterfront, some vacant. Neighbors invited us to join their morning get-togethers for coffee and baked goods. Unincorporated, it was a true community; the unofficial mayor collected about $75 annually from each household to pay for emergency services and trash pickup. Recyclables were collected by two brothers, who grew up here and cashed in on the return deposits. On a hill overlooking the harbor was a small cemetery, with a good many of the surnames on the tombstones the same as current residents.
Commercial fishing vessels sat idle, obeying official regulations to restore depleted fisheries. But early on specified mornings, motorized dories and skiffs headed out to sea, fishing for the local quota of cod allowed for personal consumption. Coiled near the wharf was the biggest rope I had ever seen, as thick as my thigh, used to lasso chunks of icebergs for a brewery in St. John’s. The melted water from icebergs, formed tens of thousands of years ago from compacted snow, gave the golden beer a special, very light taste.
For Newfoundlanders, icebergs in the spring and early summer were a familiar sight. The iceberg that sank the Titanic in April 1912 probably first floated on the Labrador Current along these shores, known as “Iceberg Alley.” We hoped to catch a glimpse of at least one iceberg but worried we had arrived too late in the season.
Then, suddenly, just a few yards off starboard: “Thar she blows!” Next, as if aware of an audience, the humpback rolled on its side and flapped a pectoral fin to splash the water. Minutes later, the whale’s whole body sprung upward into the air, breaching the rolling water. Meanwhile, on the Zodiac’s port side, a fin whale appeared; soon after that, a school of dolphins began to play around the boat. Shrieks of delight rose from the Zodiac. Even as dusk closed in, shivering from the cold was easy to ignore.
Staying on solid land with our car the following days, we made ever farther forays to sample the Bonavista Peninsula: its rocky coastline carved into arches, caves and sea stacks; hundreds of puffins, those cutest of birds, at the Cape Bonavista Lighthouse; captivating art galleries and charming eateries in the town of Bonavista itself, thought to be explorer John Cabot’s first North American landing site in 1497.
There was so much more to experience, but our week in this part of Newfoundland was up, and it was time to drive back across the island toward the ferry that would take us home. Back again in Gros Morne National Park, we booked a cottage for a few days on Norris Point. Daylight hours were spent hiking the park’s numerous trails through boreal forests and exploring the park’s geological wonders.
Over the distinctive red landscape of the Tablelands, we walked on Earth’s exposed mantle, thrust up by the collision of tectonic plates millions of years ago. At the sedimentary cliffs of Green Point, we saw fossils from the ancient Iapetus Ocean.
The next day, walking the shoreline at Port aux Basques, Pat and I spotted a fuzzy white shape slowly drifting along the distant horizon. An iceberg? Finally! As it moved into focus, however, the vague outline of a ship became clear. Closer still, it was the ferry — our ferry home. But what if we wanted to stay?
Artisan Inn
57 High St., Trinity, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador
bit.ly/artisan-inn
A pioneer in the concept of the “diffused hotel,” the Artisan Inn is not confined to a single designated building, but instead occupies a collection of restored buildings woven into the fabric of the town of Trinity on the Bonavista Peninsula. Open May to October. Rooms from about $125 per night.
Upper Humber Settlement
186 Veterans Dr., Deer Lake
upperhumbersettlement.ca
A modern chalet set on a working six-acre farmstead surrounded by forest. Four bedrooms. Includes breakfast from farm-grown ingredients. In the community of Cormack, near Gros Morne National Park. Full-course farm-to-table dinners are sometimes available. Rooms from about $109 per night.
Chanterelles Restaurant
115-129 Main St., Norris Point
sugarhillinn.ca/cuisine
In the heart of Gros Morne National Park, this restaurant in the Sugar Hill Inn offers fine dining with a Mediterranean flair that features fresh local ingredients. It specializes in seafood, including halibut, cod and salmon. Extensive wine selection. Open daily, 5 to 8:30 p.m., mid-May to early October, depending on staffing; call to confirm. Reservations strongly recommended. Entrees from about $25.
Mifflin’s Tea Room
21 Church St., Bonavista
mifflinstearoom.com
An eatery known for traditional Newfoundland dishes, Mifflin’s Tea Room serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Its specialties include regional staples such as the Fisherman’s Brewis, which includes cooked hard bread and codfish mixed with fried onions and pork scrunchions. Open daily, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., June through September; dinner served 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Dinner entrees from about $16.
newfoundlandlabrador.com | 2022-08-26T15:18:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to do in Newfoundland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/26/newfoundland-travel-vacation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/26/newfoundland-travel-vacation/ |
Jacqueline Quillen's home in Northwest D.C. (Paul Schwartzman/TWP)
The son of a deceased Georgetown socialite has settled a lawsuit he filed against his mother’s romantic partner, whom he accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and other valuables from her and then selling them off.
The settlement appears to end a costly 20-month legal fight pitting the family of Jacqueline Quillen, a wine expert who was 77 when she died in 2020, against her boyfriend, Lawrence E. Gray, 78, a retired political science professor.
Although the dispute was between Quillen’s heirs and Gray, it drew the attention of the wealthy social network in Washington, New York and Rhode Island in which the couple traveled.
Missing jewels and art: A lawsuit against a retired professor is ruffling the well-to-do from Georgetown to Newport, R.I.
The two sides disclosed the settlement in D.C. Superior Court in early August, according to court records. However, the settlement’s terms are not included in the records.
Parker Quillen, Jacqueline Quillen’s son, described the settlement as “acceptable, if not satisfactory” in a brief telephone interview, but declined to elaborate because he said the agreement’s terms are confidential.
In a subsequent text, Parker Quillen wrote that his role as the trustee of his mother’s estate was to “reclaim and liquidate the trust’s assets.”
“Having accomplished that, continuing to privately fund what should have been law enforcement’s job, protecting private property and prosecuting crime — that’s what taxes are for — became financially burdensome and untenable.”
Gray did not respond to emails seeking comment. Jonathan C. Windle, who has represented Gray in the case, referred questions about the settlement to another attorney, Suzanne M. Tsintolas, who did not respond to email and telephone messages seeking comment.
In a separate matter, Gray is facing a charge that he stole a diamond and sapphire brooch valued at $32,000 from a friend’s Newport, R.I., home, where he and Jacqueline Quillen stayed in 2016. Police allege that Gray consigned the brooch to Doyle Auctions, which paid him $19,871 after selling it.
Gray pleaded not guilty in November. Kevin Hagan, Gray’s attorney, declined to comment on the case. The next pretrial hearing in that case is scheduled for Sept. 28.
Gray, who taught at John Cabot University in Rome, and Quillen met in D.C. in 2004, according to an account of their relationship in a countercomplaint Gray filed.
Quillen came from a prestigious family. Her grandfather, Alfred Lee Loomis, after earning a fortune on Wall Street, founded a laboratory that helped develop radar technology. Loomis’s associates included Albert Einstein.
Quillen, a divorcée with three children, started a wine department for Christie’s Auction House and was known for hosting well-attended dinner parties at her home, into which Gray eventually moved.
A claim in the D.C. lawsuit filed by Parker Quillen in January 2021 was that Gray was still residing in the Northwest townhouse owned by Jacqueline Quillen’s estate despite the family’s objections. After Gray moved out in January 2022, the estate sold the house for $1.975 million, according to property records.
Parker Quillen’s lawsuit also alleged that Gray stole a cache of valuables from Jacqueline Quillen, including a $17,000 diamond ring, $4,700 diamond earrings and a $10,000 Patek Philippe watch. The lawsuit accused Gray of selling some of Quillen’s art, clothing and other possessions to an antique dealer and a high-end consignment shop in Georgetown. The lawsuit also claimed Gray consigned other valuables to an auction house.
Windle, in a court filing, described Parker Quillen’s lawsuit as “hyperbolic fiction.” In his countercomplaint, Gray claimed that Quillen had taken a $160,000 engagement ring that Gray bought for Jacqueline — an accusation that Quillen has denied.
As part of the settlement, according to a court filing submitted jointly by lawyers for Quillen and Gray, the agreement was reached “without any admission as to fault, liability or wrongdoing.” | 2022-08-26T16:07:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgetown socialite’s son settles lawsuit over alleged theft of her valuables - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/georgetown-socialite-dc-lawsuit-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/georgetown-socialite-dc-lawsuit-settlement/ |
In Colorado, this Republican offers something appealing, not appalling
Joe O'Dea, Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Michael Bennet, speaks during a primary election night watch party in Denver, on June 28. (David Zalubowski/AP)
DENVER — Late on election night, the nation’s eyes might be on Colorado, with control of the U.S. Senate in 2023 hanging in the balance. And even if that Republican aspiration has been put out of reach by the party’s selection of intellectually down-market Senate candidates in a slew of states, the GOP nominee here, Joe O’Dea, might have discovered the template for being an appealing Republican even while much of the party grovels to someone appalling.
Bennet’s father, whose family arrived on the Mayflower, was a diplomat, senior State Department official for presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and — you will murmur “of course” — president of National Public Radio. Bennet’s mother survived the Holocaust, as did her parents. Bennet himself attended Washington’s toney St. Albans School and moved to Colorado after Yale Law School and a stint at a premier Washington law firm (Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr). In Denver, he became wealthy working for billionaire investor Philip Anschutz, was appointed city schools superintendent, then in 2009 was appointed to complete the term of a senator who joined President Barack Obama’s Cabinet.
O’Dea, a fourth-generation Coloradan married to the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, was adopted at birth into a Denver police officer’s family. To help pay his Catholic-school tuition, O’Dea washed dishes at a pizza restaurant until he was promoted to kneading the dough, which required him to rise, like the dough, at 2:30 a.m. Impatient to start a business — installing attic fans in houses without air conditioning — from his basement, he left Colorado State University three credits short of graduation. His construction company now has 300 employees, 80 percent of them Hispanics, and specializes in large civil engineering projects. He has prospered enough to sink $2 million in his Senate campaign.
The Democrats’ attempt to stampede conservatives into supporting a weak general-election candidate backfired. Colorado has open primaries, and unaffiliated voters, who are 45 percent of Colorado’s electorate, stampeded toward O’Dea. Now Democrats, having tried to stigmatize O’Dea as a moderate, must pivot to claiming he is MAGA extremist.
Inconveniently, O’Dea says he hopes Donald Trump does not run again. (“I don’t want to see him as president.”) He speaks reluctantly about social issues. Regarding abortion, he is about where a plurality of Americans seem to be: Allow the procedure early in pregnancy (92.7 percent now occur in the first 12 weeks), no elective late-term abortions, no public funding, require parental consent for minors’ abortions. And he says that if he had been a senator in 2010, he would have voted to confirm Elena Kagan, Obama’s last successful Supreme Court nominee. O’Dea was the only one of eight candidates in the Republican primary to clearly say Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
In the Senate, Bennet has consistently sought occasions for bipartisanship, and has occasionally been heterodox (e.g., he voted to override Obama’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline). He has, however, been orthodox on the highest-stakes votes: He opposed confirmation to the Supreme Court of Coloradan Neil M. Gorsuch, as well as Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Bennet’s intractable problem is Coloradans’ 56 percent disapproval of Joe Biden, and their 80 percent agreement — up from 60 percent last summer — with the proposition that the nation is on the wrong track. Based on nationwide hemorrhaging of Hispanic support for Democrats, O’Dea hopes to get the support of 60 percent of the 22.3 percent (the seventh-largest percentage among the states) of Coloradans who are Hispanics. | 2022-08-26T16:07:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In Colorado, Republican Joe O’Dea offers something appealing, not appalling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/joe-odea-colorado-republican-senate-challenger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/joe-odea-colorado-republican-senate-challenger/ |
Readers critique The Post: Freya’s death was not a mercy killing
I was surprised and disappointed to see the Aug. 16 news headline, “Freya the walrus, who charmed crowds in Norway, is euthanized.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines euthanasia as “The act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (such as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy.” According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, euthanasia is “the practice of killing without pain a person or animal who is suffering from a disease that cannot be cured.”
No reports suggested that Freya was at all ill, let alone incurably so. She appeared to be happy. Her death at human hands, for the crime of being too widely adored, was a disgrace. Though the word “murder” might be one The Post reserves, rightly or wrongly, for humans, “euthanize” is inaccurate and offensive to those of us, perhaps in the millions, who are ashamed for our species and do not wish to have the act euphemized.
This was not a mercy killing.
Karen Dawn, Santa Barbara
The writer is executive director of DawnWatch, an advocacy media-watch nonprofit.
Dispatching the condemned
Saudi Arabia is notorious for its use of decapitation as a method of execution, even in the 21st century.
I found it odd to read an in-depth report about the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, “Saudi executions already at nearly twice the toll of 2021” [news, Aug. 16], that went into much detail about specifics of various cases and statistics concerning recent executions, yet never once mentioned the specific method used.
Are these people still having their heads cut off with a sword, or have the Saudis largely moved on to more familiar methods of dispatching the condemned?
Onam Emmet, Arlington
A dreadful error
In the Aug. 17 Style article “The media quandary over Anne Heche story,” an editor let stand the statement that “Heche was, by all accounts, in grave condition on Friday morning.”
This was not the time or place for such a poor turn of phrase in describing the tragic end of a well-regarded actress. Mortally wounded, the deliberately humorous Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet had a wonderful pun: “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.” Unlike Mercutio, The Post, careless and thoughtless, has no excuse for this dreadful, unconscious gag.
Denis Cotter, Middleburg
The Aug. 17 Style article “The media quandary over Anne Heche story” was problematic. Instead of clarifying the timing of Anne Heche’s tragic death, it confused the editorial choice of announcing death with the actual medical practice of pronouncing death.
Rather than seeking input from a recognized medical expert, The Post cited obituaries editor Adam Bernstein, who suggested that if a body remains on mechanical support, then death has not occurred, and that brain death is at times “partial.” These statements are completely wrong. Brain death is pronounced at the time a qualified medical expert determines all functions of the brain are irreversibly lost. Brain death is death and is never partial. The presence of mechanical support, particularly in the setting of organ donation, does not change time of death.
This article was a missed opportunity to clarify when death actually occurs vs. when a media outlet chooses to report it. Unfortunately, it only contributed to misinformation about brain death.
We encourage The Post and other media to align with accepted medical standards and U.S. law on the declaration of death.
Our condolences to Heche’s family for their tragic loss.
Eric Lawson, Atlanta
The writer is a neurocritical care fellow in the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine.
Casey Hall, Atlanta
The writer is medical director of Neuroscience Critical Care at Emory University Hospital Midtown.
We missed this local peg
I enjoyed being reminded of how much Pat Carroll was part of my enjoyment of early comedic television in the Aug. 15 obituary “Comic TV mainstay and ‘Little Mermaid’ villain.” I was sorry to learn of her death. I missed, however, any mention of her connection to the Washington area.
I remember seeing her play a hilarious Sir John Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” directed by Michael Kahn for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in 1990. He brought her back in 1993 as Mother Courage in a production of the antiwar play “Mother Courage and her Children” by Bertolt Brecht. She brought interesting, nuanced, but still jocular presentations to both parts. Washington was lucky to have her with us during that time.
Mary Alexander, Alexandria
A shared connection
I am surprised that the Aug. 15 Style article on the history of the Chautauqua Institution, “A jarring attack in a tranquil N.Y. community,” neglected to include mention of the major local connection: now the Glen Echo Park arts and cultural center, operated by the National Park Service. In the late 1800s, it was a site of summer programs of the National Chautauqua Assembly. The land was sold in 1911 and became a privately owned amusement park, with streetcar service to D.C.
Many of us who were in the Washington area years ago remember the time of racial segregation at Glen Echo, and the civil rights campaign there in the summer of 1960 led by students, many from Howard University, that resulted in the integration of the park the following year.
The park was in the headlines again in 1966 after a cigarette thrown from a roller-coaster rider damaged the tracks and the ride was closed early, without explanation. Some 6,000 angry customers were ejected, which led to subsequent declines in park attendance, closure of the park in 1968 and National Park Service takeover of the property in 1970. Part of the original site was included in the Clara Barton National Historic Site and some in the adjacent George Washington Memorial Parkway. Some of the amusement park’s structures, including the Spanish Ballroom and the carousel, are still in use.
Marilyn Silvey, Ashburn
Flattening great news
I won’t discuss the merits of making former president Donald Trump’s pleading the Fifth the lead article on Aug. 11, “Trump takes Fifth throughout N.Y. deposition,” instead of flat inflation in July, an article that appeared below the fold, “Pace of inflation eases for July, as energy prices settle.” It’s clear to me which affects more people.
I want to focus on the inflation story. Inflation was flat in July, a stunning turnabout. Inflation for the year was up 8.5 percent, less than in some previous months. The article led with the 8.5 percent figure instead of flat inflation. I know the typical story on the monthly inflation number leads with the annual number. But it would have taken three seconds to think about which figure was really different and therefore more newsworthy, and that is the flat monthly figure. It could signal a break in Americans’ biggest concern, but that good news was kind of buried under the big number.
Highlighting flat inflation would require a caveat — that it’s a snapshot of one month. But it’s occurring during the driving season, when currently plummeting gas prices usually rise. And that will filter through the entire economy as transportation costs drop. It’s a big deal economically and politically. It should have received above-the-fold attention.
Stan Crock, Bethesda
Misunderstanding their job description
The Aug. 17 front-page article “Trump short on seasoned legal help,” stated: “Many of the president’s former lawyers, such as Pat Cipollone, Pat Philbin and Justin Clark are not expected to be involved in the investigation’s defense.”
There is a lot wrong with the above sentence. First, Donald Trump is a former president. Second, the people named were not Trump’s personal lawyers. Cipollone was the White House counsel. Philbin was his deputy. Clark served in the White House and the Trump campaign. None of these roles is that of Trump’s personal lawyer, just like The Post’s general counsel is not Publisher Fred Ryan’s personal counsel.
It is troubling that The Post continues to conflate the roles of White House counsel and a president’s personal counsel. The role of the White House counsel is to advise the office of the presidency; it is not to serve as personal counsel to the person who is the president.
For years, the White House counsel role has been looked at with suspicion and misunderstanding, and it is disappointing that The Post perpetuates fallacies about the role by incorrectly describing it.
S. Mahmud, Chevy Chase
The right oath
I appreciated the reminder of former president Donald Trump’s huge deficit in historical knowledge in the Aug. 16 Retropolis article, “Trump sought ‘loyal’ generals like Hitler’s, who tried to kill him.” But I was surprised the article made no mention of the difference in the oaths sworn by officers in the U.S. military and those sworn by officers in the Wehrmacht.
Swearing an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution is a much more secure barrier to tyranny than the oath to the Führer required under the Third Reich. Also, one must search long and hard to find a group of Americans who match the courage and sense of honor displayed by the soldiers, diplomats and other officials executed for participating in the July 20, 1944, plot against Adolf Hitler — Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld, Ulrich von Hassell, Johannes Popitz, Heinrich Helferich, Erwin Planck and Albrecht Haushofer, to mention but a few.
Greg Thielmann, Arlington
Weighted words
The Aug. 14 front-page headline “Trump’s secrets: How a records dispute escalated to an FBI raid” carelessly used the word “raid,” and if I didn’t know better, I’d think The Post was Fox News.
Please report the truth in forthright, direct and honest terms. What happened on Aug. 8 was that the FBI executed a legally obtained search warrant at the legal residence of a former president. And no, it has never been done before, but that is only because no recent president has dared to remove official documents, let alone classified ones, from the White House.
In the future, please report news accurately and use appropriate words.
Lois A. Carter, Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.
Is that the scientific term?
I had never heard the term “splooting” until I read the Aug. 16 news article “Online, a sprawling linguistic debate over squirrel ‘splooting.’ ”
We have another expression for this behavior. Years ago, when our children were young, parents would occasionally gather in the afternoon in someone’s driveway for some neighborhood chat time. One woman’s small dog would find a patch of shade by her car and stretch out, spread-eagle. She called it “cooling his jewels!”
I’ve been watching the squirrels “cool their jewels,” be they male or female, quite a bit this year, on our flower bed wall, in the shade of the bird feeder, pretty much anywhere. Now I know there’s a more official (?) term for it!
Renee Shields-Doyle, Silver Spring
A black-and-white issue
Benjamin Dreyer’s Aug. 15 op-ed, “Goodbye, Internet. Hello, internet.,” failed to cite a recent, awkward case of style intervention: the requirement at major media outlets (including The Post) that “Black” and “White” be capitalized when referring to people, regardless of where the words appear in a sentence or whether they are nouns or adjectives.
This change not only runs against the stylistic progression from capitalization to non-capitalization; it is the result of a rushed “Do something!” show of solidarity by cultural arbiters to the Black Lives Matter movement, a powerful response to the frequency and rising visibility of violence — including summary executions — of people of African descent by vigilantes and racist police officers.
As a career writer and editor, I can’t think of a style change that is more knee-jerk and flailing. The word-lover in me hates the bombastic, Trump-like impropriety of capitalization untethered to grammar. Even worse, capitalizing “Black” and “White” emphasizes our differences when now, more than ever, we should be seeing each other as fellow human beings.
Stephen Munro, Silver Spring
A reasonable supplies list
I always enjoy the Saturday Drawing Board feature of recent editorial cartoons, but I feel that Al Goodwyn’s Aug. 13 entry could have been more topically improved with a small tweak. The cartoon shows a parent with a shopping cart filled with back-to-school supplies. The parent asks her child, “What else do you need?” The child, seeing a newspaper headline reading “School Staff Shortage,” says “Um … teachers?” What the child should be saying, after seeing a different headline, would be “Um … body armor?”
Leon Weintraub, Washington
Deserving of the limelight
Kudos to Scott Hilburn for bringing color to Lyme disease in his Aug. 14 comic strip “The Argyle Sweater.” Far too little attention is paid to this debilitating disease.
Mary Huisentruit, Silver Spring | 2022-08-26T16:07:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Readers critique The Post: Freya the walrus's death was a disgrace - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/reader-critiques-freya-walrus-death-not-mercy-killing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/reader-critiques-freya-walrus-death-not-mercy-killing/ |
Drought is exposing world relics — from Dinosaur tracks to Nazi ships
Dinosaur tracks from approximately 113 million years ago appear in the dry bed of the Paluxy River in Central Texas. (Dinosaur Valley State Park/AFP) (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)
Previously unseen dinosaur tracks dot a dried up riverbed in Central Texas. Sunken warships poke out from port waters on the Serbia-Romania border. Once-submerged Buddhist statues loom above the Yangtze River banks in Chongqing, China.
As record-breaking drought — fueled by human-caused climate change — parches waterways around the world, hidden relics that would have been difficult or impossible to access in milder years are emerging from below the surface.
The discoveries are a world history windfall, offering a rare peek at lost pieces of humanity’s past and ancient life on Earth.
But their exposure sets off a race against time for researchers, who have only a short window to study them before the rivers roll back.
“We’re amazed at how rapidly things emerge and then disappear in the blink of an eye,” said Vincent Santucci, senior paleontologist at the National Park Service who has excavated fossils from eroding cliffs and shorelines. “When we have low water levels, there are a lot of things that are exposed that we haven’t seen in our lifetime and may have never been documented. We rush to preserve those.”
At Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Tex., weeks of blazing heat have wrung the Paluxy River dry, revealing multiple sets of dinosaur footprints that experts say date back 113 million years.
Some came from a creature called Acrocanthosaurus, a three-toed, bipedal carnivore that looked like a slightly smaller Tyrannosaurus rex, according to Stephanie Garcia, a spokesperson for the park. As an adult, it would have stood about 15 feet tall and weighed about seven tons. Another set of footprints came from a four-legged, long-necked herbivore called Sauroposeidon that stood a towering 60 feet tall and weighed about 44 tons.
While dinosaur tracks themselves aren’t particularly rare, they’re important to researchers because they provide clues about how the animals lived.
“The tracks were made along an ancient, inland sea during the Cretaceous period,” Garcia told The Washington Post. “The dinosaurs stepped in thick mud that held their track shapes well with a lot of the detail.”
With rain in upcoming forecasts, Garcia said the tracks will soon be covered again. Workers have cleaned, mapped, measured and photographed tracks to monitor changes over time. The park is also mulling other solutions that would allow the tracks to survive longer if they’re exposed again, according to Garcia.
“However,” she added, “nothing the park can do can stop the forces of weathering and erosion forever.”
Repeated cycles of exposure and covering up can wear on fossils that would otherwise be protected by silt and sediment. Water flooding back into a dry area can erode rock and shoreline. Loose debris could bury or damage fragile specimens. Other fossils are at risk of being washed out by the advancing current. Intense storms pose similar dangers.
These threats are accelerating as climate change worsens, adding pressure on scientists and field workers to protect their finds before they’re destroyed or swept away, said Santucci, of the National Park Service.
“Given the wild fluctuations in weather and precipitation, we can have these long dry periods exposing things and then catastrophic flooding,” he said. “The high energy nature of those floods can completely wipe out a fossil site.”
In special cases, Santucci said, specimens are collected for safe keeping. More often, scientists inventory what they find, draw maps, take photographs, even draw up 3D models. Then they develop a plan for periodically monitoring the site to see what changes over time. Ultimately, Santucci said, they’re at nature’s mercy.
“We have to come up with schedules to get out there really quickly,” he said, “before they wind up lost forever.”
In the rapidly drying Danube, Europe’s second-longest river, researchers investigating a graveyard of Nazi warships exposed by record-low waters may face similar problems.
The World War II-era vessels uncovered near the Serbian port town of Prahovo in August were part of a German Black Sea fleet that sank in 1944 while retreating from Soviet forces. More than 20 have appeared so far, and others are expected to be uncovered along the banks.
It’s a treasure trove for maritime scholars and military historians. But it’s also riddled with hazards: Serbian officials say there may be thousands of rounds of ammunition and other undetonated explosives inside.
Even if researchers can safely reach the ships, they’ll face a time crunch. In the short term, waters will return, reclaiming the sunken vehicles. In the longer term, rising and falling water levels driven by intensifying drought exposes the metal structures to sunlight, rust-inducing oxygen and potentially volatile river conditions, all of which could affect their longevity.
“Any time we introduce any natural or cultural interference, we’re talking about degradation and thinking about how long those sites are going to be around,” said Jennifer McKinnon, a maritime archaeologist at East Carolina University.
“The flip side is that them being uncovered is an excellent opportunity for outreach, for the global community to understand history and see what only divers might have been able to see,” she said. “There’s going to be some destruction, but you also understand the importance of that public exposure.”
While the Danube is revealing mankind’s destructive side, other waterways have in recent months revealed a host of exhibitions in creativity.
Buddhist statues built during the Ming and Qing dynasties cropped up on an island reef in the Yangtze, which is experiencing record-low water levels. In Spain, archaeologists were recently able to access an ancient monument known as “Spanish Stonehenge” in a Tagus River reservoir; it has seldom been visible since the area was flooded in the 1960s to build a dam. And in Iraq, the remains of 3,400-year-old city came into view in June when drought sapped waters in a reservoir in the country’s north.
The fleeting view of these treasures comes at an enormous ecological cost. Drought ravages crops, strains livestock and native species. It worsens air quality and raises the risk of wildfires, among other environmental ills. As the planet warms, these cycles are all but certain to continue.
“We can look at it as a two-edged sword,” Santucci said. “We can document the adverse impacts of climate change but benefit from finding things that have been exposed due to the same factors.” | 2022-08-26T16:47:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change is exposing history, from Dinosaur tracks to Nazi ships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/26/drought-dinosaur-tracks-nazi-warship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/26/drought-dinosaur-tracks-nazi-warship/ |
Glock Ges.m.b.H. pistols are displayed during the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center, in Houston. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP)
U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman said the Constitution didn’t put an age restriction on the right to bear arms, meaning adults 18 to 20 shouldn’t be prevented from carrying handguns outside the home.
“The issue is whether prohibiting law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a handgun in public for self-defense is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Pittman wrote. “Based on the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes that the Second Amendment protects against this prohibition."
The decision won’t take effect immediately. The judge, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, issued a 30-day stay pending appeal, saying there’s a possibility that a higher court would rule differently.
But if the ruling stands, it would further loosen firearm restrictions in Texas, where lawmakers have expanded gun access in recent years, even as the state has grappled with a spate of deadly mass shootings. It would also mark a setback for gun-reform advocates, who have renewed calls for firearm restrictions in the wake of the massacre in Uvalde, Tex., where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in May.
Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action, called the decision “another example of a radical court operating wildly out of step with the American people and the Constitution.”
“After hearing Uvalde survivors demanding common-sense gun safety measures — including raising the age to buy an assault weapon — a Trump-appointed judge in Texas just issued a dangerous ruling that would allow teenagers to carry handguns in public,” she said in an emailed statement.
State law generally bars 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying those weapons outside the home, with narrow exceptions for military personnel, veterans and people under protective orders.
The plaintiffs argued that the law ran afoul of Supreme Court decisions protecting Second Amendment rights. They acknowledged that their challenge would clash with a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholding a ban on adults 18 to 20 obtaining concealed carry permits, but they said they believed that case was “wrongly decided.”
“This decision is a significant victory for the rights of young adults in Texas and demonstrates for the rest of the nation that similar bans cannot withstand constitutional challenges grounded in history,” Cody J. Wisniewski, a senior attorney with the group, said in a statement.
He said the state had failed to point to a “Founding Era” law supporting the restriction on 18-to-20-year-olds. “Not only did no such law exist, but those individuals are an important reason why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place,” Wisniewski said.
The lawsuit named as defendants Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, and several county officials tasked with enforcing the handgun ban. In court papers, the state contended that the Fifth Circuit’s decision should prevent their suit from moving forward. Public safety officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday morning.
Mass shootings: There have already been more than 300 mass shootings across the nation in 2022. Such events have been on the rise in recent years, and a disproportionate number of shooters in the U.S. are young men.
Visualizing gun violence: These charts help show the the extent to which gun violence impacts people across the country.
Shootings in schools: Since the Columbine shooting in 1999, more than 311,000 children have experienced gun violence at school. Students (and teachers) that survive shootings face a slew of trauma and other challenges.
Regulation and law: Until the bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June, congressional efforts to significantly change gun policies had largely failed for at least a decade. The effectiveness of gun control laws is often debated politically — here’s what research shows. | 2022-08-26T16:47:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge says Texas can’t bar adults under 21 from carrying handguns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/26/texas-handgun-young-adults-judge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/26/texas-handgun-young-adults-judge/ |
By Heather Greene
Christian protesters disrupt WitchsFest USA in New York City's West Village on July 16. (Courtesy of NYC Wiccan Family Temple)
“There were about 30 [evangelists] this year,” said Starr RavenHawk, an elder and priestess of the New York City Wiccan Family Temple and organizer of WitchsFest USA, a street fair held in the city’s West Village in mid-July.
Over the past seven years, barely a half-dozen of these disrupters would show up, RavenHawk said. But the groups that have appeared this year “aren’t just protesting,” she added. “They are collectively at war with us. They made that clear.”
From spellcasting to podcasting: Inside the life of a teenage witch
RavenHawk said the evangelists and street preachers walked through WitchsFest, holding up signs and preaching through amplifiers. By the day’s end, their presence had caused class cancellations and vendor closings.
Without formal networks of houses of worship and often living far from fellow practitioners, American pagans and witches depend heavily on assemblies with names such as Pagan Pride and Between the Worlds to share information and camaraderie. While some are held inside conference centers or in hotel ballrooms, summer events tend to be visible and hard to secure.
In 2016, Nashville Pagan Pride Day was visited by street preachers Quentin Deckard, Marvin Heiman and Tim Baptist, who marched through the event with signs, Bibles and a bullhorn. In 2017, the Keys of David church protested Philadelphia Pagan Pride Day. In 2018, a Christian men’s group encircled a modest crowd at Auburn Pagan Pride Day in Alabama in an attempt to intimidate them.
Indoor events aren’t entirely immune. In 2018 and 2019, members of TFP Student Action, a division of American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, were joined by Catholics in New Orleans to protest HexFest, held annually at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. Religious fliers placed under hotel doors informed attendees they were surrounded. “Your only hope is to accept defeat and surrender your life to One who created you,” read one flier.
On the same weekend as WitchsFest USA, attendees at the Mystic South conference in Atlanta found Christian pamphlets in the lobby and on car windows outside the hotel where it was taking place. In Texas, pastor Kevin Hendrix has encouraged Christians to take a stand against the Polk County Pagan Market, held in October.
Many Pagan events are not held in public spaces for this reason, although that has been changing over the past 10 years as occult practices have found more acceptance in the public eye.
Held in busy Astor Place, a tourist crossroads, the day-long WitchsFest USA is one of the most visible pagan festivals and, therefore, one of the most vulnerable.
“RavenHawk creates this marvelous event every year in the heart of New York City as a public celebration where everyone is welcome as long as they maintain an atmosphere of respect towards others,” said Elhoim Leafar, who was scheduled to lead a workshop at WitchsFest USA and has attended for years.
The Christian group took up a prominent position on one street corner as the festival began at 10 a.m. and began talking to attendees and preaching into amplification devices. Among them, RavenHawk said she recognized members of the NYC chapter of Christ’s Forgiveness Ministries, a Toronto organization that had sent visitors before.
After her security team asked the preachers to leave, RavenHawk called the police as she has done in past years. But, for the first time, the cops did nothing, she said.
“The Christians say nobody is being bothered,” RavenHawk was reportedly told by the officers. In past years, officers would relocate the preachers to the far side of Astor Place, where they would continue without the use of speakers, which require a permit.
This year, the Christian groups were allowed to remain at the festival with their sound amplification. According to RavenHawk, the officers called the preaching “freedom of speech.” It is unclear whether the groups had permits.
One attendee, Soror Da Glorium Deo, said, “When the police had the opportunity to downgrade things by possibly escorting the troublemakers off the area, they chose not to de-escalate.”
The New York Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.
“[The officers] treated us as if we were invading the Christians’ space, as if they had more rights than we do,” RavenHawk said. “[The preachers] were loud, and they were carrying on. Of course it was disruptive.”
When organizers moved the workshop tent away from the corner near the preachers, the Christian groups followed. “At a certain point, the protesters were not only in the surroundings and corners of the event with microphones and banners, but inside it,” said Leafar, whose class was canceled due to the preachers.
“We are not publicly protesting at their churches on a Sunday,” he said.
“It is not correct, moral or ethical to harass any individual in public or in private based on their individual or family beliefs,” Leafar said. He believes that this behavior comes from ignorance and a “contempt for our individual values.”
By the middle of that day, two vendors left, said RavenHawk, telling her that “they didn’t feel safe.”
Tarot cards are having a moment with help from pandemic
RavenHawk said she is tired of “turning the other cheek.” She has called the city’s Street Activity Permit Office, the community board and the NYPD’s 9th Precinct. “I want a paper trail,” she said. “I want to know exactly what my rights are.”
RavenHawk also called Lady Liberty League, a pagan civil rights organization based in Wisconsin, for legal advice and support.
“The United States is founded on religious freedom for all,” said Lady Liberty League co-founder the Rev. Selena Fox in a statement to RNS. “Safe gathering and the right to practice our faith is as much our right as it is anyone else’s,” she said.
Some attendees have suggested that RavenHawk move the event to a less public location, such as a park or hotel.
“We shouldn’t have to move,” she said. “We fought for this location for eight years.” It took that long, according to RavenHawk, for the community board to designate “WitchsFest USA” an “annual” event. Until then she was required to reapply every year, she said, enduring questions such as, “Are you going to burn babies?”
Leafar agrees that it is important to not back down. “If we remain silent in the face of these protesters, those people who are new to our community are going to feel that they do not have the right to express themselves and pursue their individual faith openly.” | 2022-08-26T16:48:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pagan festivals like Wiccans' WitchsFest USA face Christian harassment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/26/christians-pagans-harassment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/26/christians-pagans-harassment/ |
Skywatch: Jupiter stars in September’s cooling nights
By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
September’s cooling nights feature the prominent Jupiter as the planet reaches “opposition” on Sept. 26, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.
Don’t worry. There are no enemy worlds involved: “Opposition” means that Earth is caught between the sun and a planetary object. Consider this concept: We get to watch a “full” Jupiter — much like a full moon.
Early this week, Jupiter rises about 9 p.m. in the eastern sky. By Labor Day weekend, the large, gaseous planet ascends the evening heavens starting around 8:30 p.m. It’s an incredibly bright -2.9 magnitude, spotted between the constellations Pisces (the fish) and Cetus (the whale).
Throughout the month, Jupiter rises earlier. By the date of opposition, Sept. 26, the planet rises at 7 p.m., stays up all night, then sets at daybreak.
Jupiter reaches opposition annually. Last month, it was Saturn’s turn (Aug. 14), and we’ll see a bright Mars at its opposition Dec. 8.
The last time Jupiter was this large and bright — from Earth’s perspective — was Sept. 21, 2010, and Oct. 29, 2011, according to the observatory. Our favorite fifth planet from the sun gets this close again on Aug. 25, 2033, Oct. 2, 2034, and Nov. 8, 2035 — when all three of those oppositions reach -2.9 magnitude, said astronomer Geoff Chester of the Naval Observatory.
The first-quarter moon trots past Saturn (zero magnitude, bright) in the constellation Capricornus on Sept. 7-8, in the southeastern heavens about 9 p.m.
The moon reaches full Sept. 10 and cruises past the dazzling Jupiter the next night, then approaches the fuzzy Pleiades cluster in the Taurus constellation Sept. 14-15.
Later in the evening now, the last-quarter moon scoots past the brightening Mars (also in Taurus, magnitude -0.4, bright enough to see) on Sept. 16-17. While our neighboring Red Planet rises around 11 p.m. in this early part of September, find it in the east-northeast after midnight.
The usually bright Venus is quite close to the sun, hugging the horizon and rising just before daybreak. It becomes hard to see and effectively hangs out near the sun for a few months before returning in December.
Pull your sweaters from storage, and get your yard rakes ready: The Autumnal Equinox — the official astronomical start to fall — occurs Sept. 22 at 9:04 p.m. Eastern time, but on Sept. 23 at 1 a.m. Universal Time, according to the observatory.
Down-to-Earth Events:
* Sept. 3 — Gaze the heavens at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. Telescopes are provided by Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (NOVAC) volunteers. Meet at the bus parking lot, but park at the main visitor lot. 8-10 p.m. GPS: 14390 Air and Space Museum Parkway, Chantilly, Va., 20151. NOVAC: shorturl.at/BCDSY. Museum information: shorturl.at/CGS19.
* Sept. 3 — Enjoy stars and a few evening planets at “Exploring the Sky,” hosted by the National Capital Astronomers at Rock Creek Park, near the Nature Center. 8 p.m. Face masks optional. The program will be canceled if it’s raining or very cloudy. capitalastronomers.org.
* Sept. 9 — “A First Interstellar Probe: Next Step to the Stars,” a lecture by physicist Ralph L. McNutt Jr. of the Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University. He will describe the proposed Interstellar Probe, a possible NASA mission. Hosted by PSW Science. 8 p.m., Powell Auditorium at the Cosmos Club, 2121 Massachusetts Ave. NW. pswscience.org
* Sept. 13 — “Opening the Infrared Treasure Chest with James Webb Space Telescope,” a lecture by Nobel Prize-winning physicist John C. Mather. He will discuss how NASA and its partners built the amazing telescope and will share early discoveries. 8 p.m. Online and at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly. Detail: shorturl.at/kpU03
* Sept. 24 — Appreciate the starry heavens “Astronomy for Everyone” at Sky Meadows State Park in Fauquier County. NASA Jet Propulsion Lab ambassadors provide an astronomy program, while NOVAC members will offer telescopic views. 7-10 p.m. GPS: 11012 Edmonds Lane, Delaplane, Va., 20144. Bring lawn chairs and blankets. NOVAC: Novac.com. Sky Meadows: shorturl.at/DMX09. Park fee: $10.
Blaine Friedlander can be reached at SkyWatchPost@gmail.com. | 2022-08-26T16:48:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Skywatch: Jupiter stars in September’s cooling nights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/08/26/skywatch-jupiter-stars-septembers-cooling-nights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/08/26/skywatch-jupiter-stars-septembers-cooling-nights/ |
Analysis by Noah Davis
Manchester City is the defending champion this EPL season. (Craig Brough/Reuters)
The English Premier League has a top two problem.
At the start of the 2022-23 season on Aug. 5, Caesars Sportsbook listed defending champion Manchester City as a -165 favorite to win the league, implying that Pep Guardiola’s squad had a slightly better than 62 percent chance to finish on top. Liverpool — last year’s runner-up, led by charming extrovert Jurgen Klopp — checked in at +200, or 33.33 percent to win.
Taken together, the sportsbook implied that one of those two teams would win the championship 95.59 percent of the time. Other books offered similar odds. The logical conclusion: of the 20 teams in the EPL, only two had a reasonable shot to win the trophy.
This dynamic isn’t a one-year fluke. Since the beginning of the 2018-19 season, Manchester City and Liverpool have dominated the first and second spots in the league table, finishing in the top two every year except for Liverpool’s third-place finish during the pandemic-altered 2020-21 campaign. More impressively, City averaged 89.5 points over each of the past four seasons, with Liverpool earning 89.25 points. The next closest? Chelsea at 69.75 points, a difference of nearly 20 points or the equivalent of nearly seven more wins across a 38-game season. There’s not exactly parity in the world’s richest league.
The result of this dominant duo is that supporters of other teams are relegated to an altered reality, one where a top-four finish — thus earning a spot in the following season’s lucrative all-European Champions League — marks a win in itself.
"The understanding for the majority of Tottenham fans is that we want to push for Champions League football,” said Eric Kmetz, a member of the club’s DC Spurs supporter group. “What’s our measure of success? If we finished third, we wouldn’t consider it a failure of a season.”
"Top four and winning one of the domestic cup competitions is probably the target,” Brian Wolff, chapter secretary for Chelsea Chicago, said.
Kurtis Powers, president and founder of Arsenal NYC, is even more pragmatic. He and fellow supporters of the 13-time league champion simply want to see progress under Manager Mikel Arteta. “It does appear to be a system coming together and one that I can be excited about,” he said. “Do I think that we’re going to win the league? I would say no.”
The combined wage bill of these three clubs totals more than 400 million pounds, or roughly $501 million, according to FBRef. Add another 209 million pounds for Manchester United, a historically successful squad with little chance to win the title, and that’s more than three quarters of a billion dollars spent by teams realistically battling to finish third or fourth.
Of course, there could be a surprise winner. During the 2015-16 season, Leicester City famously overcame 5,000-1 preseason odds and took home the EPL crown. Additionally, the 2022-23 will be a disjointed affair because of an unprecedented World Cup break in November and December. This pause could have an adverse impact on the top teams by disrupting momentum or opening up star players to the risk of injury at the global event. And, as they say, there’s a reason you play the games. Despite dominating chances and possession, Liverpool tied its first two matches, needing comebacks against Fulham and Crystal Palace, and lost to Manchester United. City won two and drew one, scoring nine and conceding three. So yes, there’s a chance the consensus two best teams do not end up on top of the table when the season concludes in May, though despite these early season slip-ups, they still have the best odds to win with City at -275 and Liverpool at +600.
But the more likely scenario is that the rich continue to get richer for the foreseeable future, literally and figuratively. Television money is a key driver of cash, and the Premier League distributes this money in an unequal way. Fifty percent of domestic television revenue is split equally between Premier League clubs, but 25 percent is determined by final league position and 25 percent is divvied up by the number of times a club is on television, which naturally skews higher for the best and most popular teams. Furthermore, while international broadcast revenue had previously been split evenly, a rule change for the 2019-20 season means that new revenue is awarded based on a formula that rewards placing higher in the table.
“The best teams tend to reinforce their success because they get more revenue for being successful,” sports economist Andrew Zimbalist said. “Because of the absence of revenue sharing as we know it in the United States, wealth tends to reproduce wealth, and success tends to reproduce success.”
And there’s never been a better time to be the best club. Over the next three seasons, the Premier League will rake in 10.5 billion pounds (about $12.4 billion) across its domestic and international television contracts. That’s up 1.3 billion pounds (about $1.5 billion) from the previous contracts, and more than four times what the league earned during the 2013-2016 cycle. The entire EPL is swimming in money, but nowhere more than at the top.
It’s no surprise than that over the past half-decade, City and Liverpool parlayed on-field winning into on-field winning. It’s a cycle that reinforces itself, great teams with great coaching helping to recruit great players. (Great resources help, too. City is funded by the immense wealth of the United Arab Emirates.) While the duopoly isn’t unbreakable — in sports and life, all things must end — it’s a fixture for the near-term.
Still, supporters of other teams will continue to aspire for the top spot.
"I would want the Premier League trophy,” Kmetz said. “I’d want to see Hugo [Lloris, Tottenham’s goalkeeper and captain] and the rest of the team lift the Premier League trophy this year, even if it meant missing out on Champions League football the following year or two or four.”
Chelsea supporter Wolff took a more philosophical stance.
"For us, if you’re not competing for the league, then what are you doing?” he wonders. “Are we just existing?” | 2022-08-26T16:48:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Manchester City and Liverpool's EPL dominance has meant for other teams - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/manchester-city-liverpool-epl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/manchester-city-liverpool-epl/ |
The Ravens’ preseason winning streak means absolutely, positively… something?
Quarterback Lamar Jackson (8) is expected to join Coach John Harbaugh on the sideline again for the Ravens' preseason finale Saturday night against the Commanders in Baltimore. (Rick Scuteri/AP)
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Baltimore Ravens are the NFL’s greatest-ever preseason dynasty. It is an accomplishment, seven years in the making, that is equal parts curious, remarkable and irrelevant.
The Ravens will seek their sixth straight undefeated preseason (not counting 2020, when the NFL played no exhibition games because of the pandemic) Saturday night when they face the Washington Commanders at M&T Bank Stadium. They’ve won 22 straight preseason games, a league record that tops the 19 consecutive preseason victories by the Vince Lombardi-coached Green Bay Packers between 1959 and ’62.
All of which means what, exactly? Perhaps nothing at all, given that the outcomes of these exhibitions are utterly meaningless. But the Ravens, who last lost a preseason game in 2015, take some measure of pride in the streak and what it signifies about their organization.
“It’s one of those things where you know there are a lot more important things that you want,” veteran defensive end Calais Campbell said Thursday at the team’s training facility. “But I think it’s a testament of the way people prepare, the training camp process [and] the kind of guys we bring in here that are trying to fight to make the team.”
There is something to be taken, the Ravens believe, in the effort and performance levels of even those players who won’t see the field much during the regular season — or won’t even be on the roster by then.
“There’s a certain quality of guys that respect the process and go hard,” Campbell said. “And I think that shows in the preseason games. You’ve got your third- and fourth-teamers out there balling, playing good football and executing at a high level. I think that’s a testament to coaches and a testament to the front office for bringing the right kind of guys in.”
The Ravens have a preseason record of 42-12 during John Harbaugh’s head coaching tenure. That hasn’t come because he’s put his front-line players at undue risk to try to win preseason games. Harbaugh announced Thursday that quarterback Lamar Jackson won’t play against the Commanders. Backup Tyler Huntley presumably will make the start.
Harbaugh said he will make determinations about other starters on a case-by-case basis.
“There are some starters that need the work,” Harbaugh said. “Some starters don’t. Probably most starters don’t. And some of those guys are going to play, too. We’re just managing some of those guys. … It’s not one size fits all.”
The Ravens’ summer exploits can be easily dismissed. There are no trophies handed out for August NFL triumphs, after all. There is an argument to be made, especially with a 17-game regular season, that the most sensible approach to the preseason is to keep all key players idle, avoid season-wrecking injuries and treat the first couple games of the regular season as the new-age preseason.
But maybe that is too dismissive. Perhaps there’s something to be said for being intent upon winning whenever the score is kept. Lombardi’s Packers won NFL championships, in the pre-Super Bowl days, in the final two seasons of their preseason winning streak. The Ravens, although they’re coming off an 8-9 season, have been among the league’s most consistent winners; they have two Super Bowl titles this century while ranking fifth among all NFL teams in total victories in the 2000s.
So though Saturday’s outcome won’t mean much when the Ravens open the season against the New York Jets on Sept. 11 at MetLife Stadium, with Jackson in the lineup instead of standing by Harbaugh on the sideline, maybe it will be reflective of an approach that does matter at least a bit.
“I think that’s something you can hang your hat on and say, ‘Okay, we prepare a certain kind of way that allows guys to be successful,’” Campbell said. “It’s something to be proud of. But obviously there’s way more things that are bigger that we want. We’d like a streak of that.” | 2022-08-26T16:48:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Ravens have won 22 straight NFL preseason games. Does it matter? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/ravens-preseason-winning-streak/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/ravens-preseason-winning-streak/ |
Britney Spears, pictured in July 2019, released new music on Friday for the first time since her 13-year conservatorship was terminated. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)
Spears teamed up with Elton John for the new song “Hold Me Closer,” a collaboration marking her first music release since her 13-year conservatorship was terminated late last year.
John has collaborated with a wide range of artists in recent years, including Brandi Carlile, Nicki Minaj and Yo-Yo Ma. “Hold Me Closer” is reminiscent of John’s “Cold Heart (PNAU Remix),” a 2021 duet with Dua Lipa mashing up “Rocket Man,” “Kiss the Bride,” “Sacrifice” and “Where’s the Shoorah?”
In the Guardian interview, John noted that he related to Spears’s journey in particular.
“It’s hard when you’re young,” he said. “Britney was broken. I was broken when I got sober. … Now I’ve got the experience to be able to advise people and help them because I don’t want to see any artists in a dark place.” | 2022-08-26T17:04:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britney Spears joins Elton John for first song since conservatorship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/26/britney-spears-elton-john-song/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/26/britney-spears-elton-john-song/ |
Landover man found dead in apartment building, police say
Scene of the crime. (iStock)
A man was found dead in an apartment building in Landover, Md., on Thursday afternoon, police said.
Just before 4 p.m., officers arrived at the 3200 block of 75th Avenue for a welfare check. On scene, officers found 44-year-old Dameon Broadus of Landover suffering from trauma to the body. Broadus was pronounced dead on the scene.
Detectives are investigating the circumstances behind the homicide and working to identify a suspect and motive. | 2022-08-26T18:05:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Landover man was found dead in an apartment, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/landover-death-md/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/landover-death-md/ |
Police obtain warrant, charge man in fatal shooting at Prince George’s mall
The Mall at Prince George's in Hyattsville, Md. (Jasmine Hilton/The Washington Post)
Prince George’s County police say they have an arrest warrant for a suspect in the fatal shooting that took place at a Hyattsville mall this month.
Officials charged 33-year-old Stephon Edward Jones, of D.C., with murder in the killing of 20-year-old Darrion Herring of Hyattsville.
On Aug. 18, Herring was shot inside the Mall at Prince George’s at about 4 p.m. He was found in the mall’s food court with a gunshot wound, police said, and was pronounced dead there.
Man fatally shot at the Mall at Prince George’s, police say
A preliminary investigation revealed that Jones shot Herring during a dispute, police said.
Attempts to reach Jones’s family were not immediately successful. | 2022-08-26T18:05:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police obtain warrant for man suspected in fatal shooting at Hyattsville mall - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/mall-prince-georges-shooting-suspect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/mall-prince-georges-shooting-suspect/ |
Swedish island holds ‘ugliest lawn’ contest to help conserve water
Judges said the winner was “a really lousy lawn that lives up to all our expectations of Gotland’s ugliest lawn”
The winner of Gotland’s ugly lawn competition stands on his never-watered and dried out lawn.
As a record-setting drought dries lawns across Europe, one Swedish municipality is opting to promote its water conservation efforts and change social norms with an “ugliest lawn” contest.
The Swedish island of Gotland is a popular vacation spot, but the influx of tourists this summer has strained water supplies, according to the Guardian. To help conserve water, the municipality implemented an irrigation ban, preventing residents from watering their lawns.
To help win over the community, the “Gotland’s Ugliest Lawn” competition was launched to make a brown lawn something to be proud of. Competition judge John Mattisson called it a “fun way to change the norm of green lawns in a climate where they’re not natural” in a statement.
Such efforts have apparently worked: Water consumption has dropped enough that the irrigation ban will be lifted on Sept. 1, said competition judge Johan Gustafsson to The Washington Post.
Contest entries were made through Instagram.
“The work of following and finally crowning the ugliest lawn of the year on Gotland has been a fun assignment during the summer months,” Mattisson said in a statement. “No grass and barely a carpet says a lot about this year’s winning entry.”
Out of several truly ugly entries, the eventual winner was Marcus Norström, who was dedicated to preserving water. Norström evidently did not water his lawn the entire summer, turning it into the opposite of what society defines as the picturesque lawn; his lawn is sparsely covered in grass, with the few remaining blades a sickly shade of yellow.
In a statement, the team of judges said the winner was “a really lousy lawn that lives up to all our expectations of Gotland’s ugliest lawn and has good conditions for a more sustainable improvement.”
The competition’s prize was a visit from local gardener Sara Gistedt, who also was a contest judge. She will help Norström plan a drought-resistant garden.
More locals in Gotland may need to consider planning drought-resistant gardens, as a 2022 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED) notes that climate change will only continue to cause water shortages on the already parched island.
“Water availability is projected to decrease by 13.3% for Gotland between 2021-50 compared to 1961-90 and estimates suggest that demand will increase by more than 40% by 2045,” the report reads.
Data from the European Drought Observatory (EDO) shows much of Sweden, including the island of Gotland, is experiencing drought conditions that have caused a soil moisture deficit, meaning that vegetation will struggle to grow.
The dry conditions are hardly localized to Sweden, this summer. Most of Europe is facing some level of drought conditions along with above-average temperatures. Across the continent, rivers are down to their lowest levels in centuries, and farmers are struggling to meet expectations.
Unusually dry conditions in Europe’s potato belt — which includes parts of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium — may lead to the worst-ever potato harvest in the European Union, likely pushing up prices of the staple, according to Reuters.
Wine production is also at risk of being altered. In Italy, Spain and Portugal, intense heat and a stark lack of rain have caused farmers to expect a production decrease of up to 20 percent in some areas, according to the Associated Press. | 2022-08-26T18:18:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sweden island Gotland crowns ugliest lawn in contest to conserve water - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/26/sweden-water-drought-conservation-lawn-contest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/26/sweden-water-drought-conservation-lawn-contest/ |
President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is expected to help up to 43 million borrowers, with recipients of federal Pell Grants set to get the biggest relief.
The plan will forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans for borrowers who had received a Pell, a grant program that has helped millions of low-to-moderate income students attend college. Non-Pell recipients can receive up to $10,000 in forgiveness if they made less than $125,000, or under $250,000 for married couples and households.
In a matter of hours, the Pell Grant became one of the most searched terms online. Here is what to know about the program.
Who is eligible for a Pell Grant?
How many people have Pell Grants? | 2022-08-26T18:18:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Pell Grant federal aid, explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/26/what-is-pell-grant/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/26/what-is-pell-grant/ |
This combination of images shows promotional art for “No-Recipe Road Trip with the Try Guys,” premiering Aug. 31 on Food Network, left, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” a series premiering Sept. 2 on Amazon, center, and “Honk for Jesus: Save Your Soul,” a film streaming on Peacock on Sept. 2. (Food Network/Amazon/Peacock via AP) (Uncredited/Food Network/Amazon/Peacock) | 2022-08-26T18:18:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New this week: 'Lord of the Rings' prequel; 'Honk for Jesus' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/new-this-week-lord-of-the-rings-prequel-honk-for-jesus/2022/08/26/a42d0720-2561-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/new-this-week-lord-of-the-rings-prequel-honk-for-jesus/2022/08/26/a42d0720-2561-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
FILE - Eastern State Hospital Administration building is seen off of Ironbound Road in Williamsburg, Va. on Tuesday, April 19, 2016. A Virginia state trooper has been cleared, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in the fatal shooting death of a man who led police on a chase, rammed a police vehicle with his own and attacked the trooper with a metal pole, according to findings by a local prosecutor. The shooting occurred on Nov. 6 and involved a man from the southeastern Virginia city of Chesapeake who had a documented history of mental illness, drug use and violence. Brian Price, 45, was under the supervision of mental health professionals after being released from a psychiatric ward the previous year. (Aileen Devlin/The Virginian-Pilot via AP, File)
The pursuit was “terminated and re-engaged” because of traffic safety concerns, Hamel wrote. At one point, a police officer pulled along side the vehicle and Grey communicated to him about children being kidnapped. A car chase ensued and Perry, the state trooper, later tried to block Price’s Chevy Cobalt, but Price rammed Perry’s vehicle several times. | 2022-08-26T18:19:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prosecutor: Virginia trooper justified in fatal shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/prosecutor-virginia-trooper-justified-in-fatal-shooting/2022/08/26/ede4a804-2567-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/prosecutor-virginia-trooper-justified-in-fatal-shooting/2022/08/26/ede4a804-2567-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
By Dan Lips
Kayden Curtis asks Panagis Galiatsatos a question about the coronavirus Oct. 29 as the Johns Hopkins pulmonary specialist and public health doctor visits students in an eighth-grade health class at the Baltimore Design School. (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun)
Dan Lips is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity and the author of “Baltimore City’s K-12 Education Crisis” for the Maryland Public Policy Institute.
As Baltimore students head back to school, consider the long odds they face to have a successful year.
A 2019 national test found that more than half of Baltimore City’s eighth-grade students scored below basic in reading or math. Fewer than 1 in 3 Baltimore City public school students scored “proficient” on the last state assessment before the pandemic.
That was before prolonged school closures caused students to fall even further behind.
In 2021, Baltimore City reported that 65 percent of secondary students and half of elementary school students were failing at least one class. And it’s possible that even more students are failing their courses than was reported. In June, the Maryland Inspector General for Education revealed that more than 12,000 failing grades were changed to passing grades from 2016 to 2020.
Adding it all up, a student attending public schools in Baltimore City is more likely to be failing at least one class than to be scoring proficient in math or English.
Is the problem a lack of resources?
Baltimore City spends more than most districts in Maryland and other large school districts across the country. The state government reported that Baltimore City schools received more than $17,000 in revenue per student in 2019. Last year, the Census Bureau reported that Baltimore City schools spent nearly $16,000 per child.
Project Baltimore projects that the city’s schools will spend $21,000 per student this year.
Since the start of the pandemic, BCPS has received nearly $700 million in federal emergency education aid. This funding may increase as Maryland has spent only 22 percent of its federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to date; $2.3 billion remains unspent.
Given the Baltimore City public school district’s track record, it’s time to reconsider whether children would be better off if they had direct access to their share of school funding.
For example, parents could be given their child’s share of $21,000 of annual public school spending to pay for school tuition, tutoring, home schooling expenses or to transfer and pay transportation costs to a better public school. Funding students rather than BCPS would give parents the power to demand a safe and high-quality learning environment for their children. If their child was struggling, they could pay for tutoring and enroll in a different school.
Maryland and Baltimore City could also provide emergency federal education funds directly to Baltimore City Public Schools students who suffered from prolonged school closures. For example, the nearly $700 million that has been awarded to BCPS to date could have funded education savings accounts worth nearly $9,000 per student to pay for tutoring, summer school and academic enrichment to recover learning losses from the pandemic.
Defenders of the status quo would likely argue that the city cannot afford to transfer funding from BCPS’s budget to students and parents. But at this point, can Baltimore City really afford to continue hoping that a school district that has failed generations of children will finally improve?
In 1996, then-Baltimore City Mayor Kurt Schmoke said, “It’s time to give all Baltimore parents the option to pull their children out of poorly run schools and place them in schools where they believe their children will get a better education.”
He was right. Unfortunately, city and state officials ignored the mayor’s recommendation.
A quarter of a century later, one can only imagine how different Baltimore City would be if all children had the power to attend a school of their parents’ choice.
In 2022, children shouldn’t be assigned to attend schools in a district where they must beat the odds to succeed. Baltimore City children deserve better. They deserve a chance to control their share of education funding to get a high-quality education. | 2022-08-26T18:19:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Baltimore City students deserve better education opportunities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/baltimore-city-students-deserve-better-education-opportunities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/baltimore-city-students-deserve-better-education-opportunities/ |
Trump golf course in New York to host Saudi-backed tournament
Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx, a course managed by the Trump Organization, will be the site of a Saudi-funded women's golf tournament in October. (John Minchillo/AP)
A women’s golf tournament backed by the government of Saudi Arabia is scheduled for October at a New York course managed by former president Donald Trump’s company, city officials confirmed Friday.
The Aramco Team Series is funded by the Saudi government, which has been accused of using its wealth in a campaign to refresh the country’s image on the global stage. A LIV Golf tournament, also Saudi-funded, was held in July at a New Jersey golf course owned and managed by Trump. That event took place despite public criticism he was doing business with a government that Trump himself once said was linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and also a government that intelligence officials say was behind the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist.
The Aramco Team Series, first reported by the New York Times on Friday, is expected to tee off at the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, located in the Bronx, from Oct. 13 to 15, according to the tournament’s website.
Trump wades into golf’s civil war, further inflaming the biggest controversy in sports
In statements to The Washington Post on Friday, New York City officials said they disagreed with the decision by the Trump Organization to host the event but are powerless to prevent it.
Fabien Levy, press secretary for Mayor Eric Adams (D), said in a statement, “While we disagree with the values of the Trump Organization, we cannot legally block their application.”
A spokesman for New York City’s Law Department, Nicholas Paolucci, said in a statement: “The city is obligated to follow the terms of the Trump Ferry license agreement and cannot unreasonably withhold approval of this tournament.”
In July, families of people killed on Sept. 11, 2001, urged Trump not to host the LIV Golf tournament. A group representing those families, 9/11 Justice, wrote a letter to Trump asking him to cancel the New Jersey event, and noted that he told Fox News in February 2016: “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis. It was Saudi. Take a look at Saudi Arabia.”
Trump brushed aside their request and held the event, later telling ESPN, “Nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately” and, referring to the tournament: the “money’s going to charity.” | 2022-08-26T18:20:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump golf course in New York to host Saudi-backed golf tournament - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/trump-saudi-arabia-golf-new-york/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/trump-saudi-arabia-golf-new-york/ |
Commanders receivers coach Drew Terrell works with his position group at Washington's training camp before the 2022 season. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
“When you bring in examples like that … it changes their humility,” Terrell explained. “They’re locked in, like, ‘Yeah, that’s some real s---.’ … How do you get guys to understand what they do? Be appreciative of what they do? Just give them examples of things that they can use in situations like that, when there’s chaos around.”
Terrell, 31, is one of the youngest position coaches in the NFL. He’s closer in age to his star players — Terry McLaurin, Curtis Samuel and Jahan Dotson — than his peers. His youth is occasionally apparent on the field, like when he challenges his players to games of hot potato or when he celebrates their big plays with phrases like “You’re him!” or “Got ’em!”
“I preach this to the guys all the time: … You have to take respect from people,” Terrell said. “The potential and the hype and the excitement? Sure, it is what it is. But it could all be over quick if we don't go do what we're supposed to do.”
For years, the idea of being a coach irked Terrell. He’d starred at Hamilton High School in Chandler, Ariz., and dreamed of playing on Sundays. But at Stanford, even as Terrell studied and trained and carved out a role as a depth receiver and punt returner, coaches saw his passion exceeded his ability. They teased him by calling him “Coach.”
“He knew everything,” said Eagles receivers’ coach Aaron Moorehead, who coached Terrell in college. “He understood where the ball was supposed to go versus certain coverages. He knew the running back’s [responsibilities], where the ball was supposed to hit, what gaps. … He was a quarterback in the receivers’ room.”
Quickly, Terrell scaled the ladder. In 2015, he joined his former head coach, John Harbaugh, at Michigan, and two years later, he met Commanders offensive coordinator Scott Turner, then a Wolverines offensive analyst. In 2018, Turner and Terrell left for the Carolina Panthers, and in 2020, after the Rivera regime fell apart in Charlotte, Terrell traveled with most of the staff up to Washington, where he became an assistant receiver’s coach.
Over the summer, he’d read “Think Like a Monk,” which included the story of Biosphere 2, an earth science research facility in Oracle, Ariz. One discovery the scientists made was that, when trees reached a certain height in the facility, they simply fell over. The trees hadn’t experienced enough natural wind, so the roots had never grown strong. Terrell, who never wanted to be a coach, now couldn’t stop thinking like a coach: He made a PowerPoint about Biosphere 2, highlighting the importance of adversity.
Wide receivers’ stock has risen. This NFL draft could show how high.
“We can change that narrative every Sunday,” Terrell said. “Whatever the perception is … I want to see you guys go do it and prove it for yourselves.” | 2022-08-26T18:21:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Drew Terrell is a Renaissance man in the Commanders’ receivers room - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/commanders-drew-terrell-receivers-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/commanders-drew-terrell-receivers-coach/ |
Public health experts report ongoing challenges with the White House’s vaccine strategy
A patient receives the monkeypox vaccine during a vaccination clinic at the OASIS Wellness Center on Aug. 19 in New York. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
After three months of surging monkeypox cases, the worldwide outbreak may have peaked, amid evidence that gay men are curbing risky sexual behaviors and more people are getting vaccinated against a virus that spreads by close contact.
New U.S. cases of monkeypox have fallen by about 25 percent in the past two weeks, from 444 cases a day on Aug. 10 to 337 on Aug. 24, according to The Washington Post’s rolling seven-day average. Nearly 17,000 Americans have being diagnosed with monkeypox since the virus first emerged in mid-May, with cases overwhelmingly concentrated among men who have sex with men.
Globally, new cases fell by 21 percent from last week, the World Health Organization reported Thursday.
Even as public health experts cheered the slowdown in new infections, they cautioned that the virus continues to pose a risk — especially in smaller communities outside U.S. urban centers and in developing countries amid vaccine shortages, limited surveillance and insufficient testing — and could increasingly spill beyond the gay and bisexual community. Epidemiologists and health officials also report ongoing challenges with the White House’s new vaccine strategy to stretch the number of doses available.
“There are signs that the outbreak is slowing in Europe, where a combination of effective public health measures, behavior change and vaccination are helping to prevent transmission,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. But he warned that new cases are continuing to increase in places such as Latin America, where there is less awareness of the virus and limited vaccine access.
Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles who has studied the monkeypox outbreak, said a drop in cases is expected after growing awareness and a push for vaccinations. "Whether or not that’s going to be sustained, we just don’t know,” she said. "It’s premature to declare any kind of victory.”
Biden administration officials said they remain concerned about local trends, as new virus cases in some regions are outpacing urban centers. Monkeypox cases in Georgia climbed 66 percent between Aug. 10 and 24, a two-week period when cases climbed just 41 percent in New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, according to state and local health department data.
New York City health commissioner Ashwin Vasan said officials are “cautiously optimistic” that the virus is on the retreat, after nearly 2,900 New Yorkers were infected in the past three months. About 40 new cases per day were diagnosed in New York City last week, compared with more than 70 cases per day earlier this month.
“In recent days, we have seen cases begin to fall and transmission slow,” Vasan testified in front of the New York City Council on Wednesday, crediting the rise in vaccinations and change in sexual behaviors. “All of this is clearly taking hold and having a positive effect in slowing this outbreak.” Officials in cities like San Francisco and Chicago have echoed similar messages this week.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week that gay men have modified risky sexual behaviors because of the outbreak, citing an online survey that about half of men who have sex with men said they have reduced one-time sexual encounters as well as reduced sex with partners met on dating apps or at sex venues. Experts say the U.S. outbreak was likely accelerated by a flurry of dance parties and casual sex during June’s Pride Month activities.
“Behavior change, along with vaccination, can help slow the spread and end the monkeypox outbreak,” CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said in a statement. She noted that U.S. data contains information from many jurisdictions, “some of which continue to have accelerating case counts, and continued vigilance and action remains important.”
State and local health officials are pressing for the Biden administration to provide more support for the response, saying they need additional funding to raise public awareness about the virus, hire extra staff to conduct testing and perform contact tracing, and make further investments to strengthen health departments that have been worn down by two years fighting the coronavirus.
“We appreciate federal agencies’ efforts to provide maximum flexibility to use COVID-19 supplemental funding to address this public health emergency,” Michael Fraser, chief executive of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, wrote the White House in a letter shared with The Washington Post. “However, given the scope and scale of the outbreak… it is clear that this short-term solution is not viable for the long term.”
Fraser told The Post that an additional $500 million to $1 billion would be needed to fund the state and local monkeypox response for the next 12 months. He suggested that the Biden administration craft an emergency funding package with Congress or make more funding available through CDC’s Infectious Disease Rapid Response Reserve Fund.
Experts also continue to voice concerns about the Biden administration’s vaccine strategy to extend limited supply by splitting each single-use vial into five doses through a different injection method. The plan, rapidly finalized on Aug. 9, has been cheered by some local officials as an innovative way to meet surging demand. But many state and local officials are encountering logistical problems implementing it.
“I have now heard multiple reports from my state and local colleagues that it is very difficult to extract five doses from a single vaccine vial,” Caitlin Rivers, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, wrote in a post on her Substack page last week, criticizing the abrupt strategy shift. “Taken together, state and local health authorities now have up to one-third fewer doses for use in their communities than they were before the move to intradermal administration.”
The chair of the Senate’s health panel also urged the Department of Health and Human Services to close “alarming” supply gaps in vaccines, both for the present monkeypox response as well as future outbreaks.
“The Administration must do more to address existing, unacceptable shortages in vaccine supply, institute comprehensive distribution and communication strategies, and develop long-term procurement plans,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote in a letter Tuesday to Dawn O’Connell, the assistant HHS secretary who oversees the vaccine stockpile.
[Inside America’s monkeypox crisis — and the mistakes that made it worse]
The White House has defended its vaccination strategy, saying that about 75 percent of jurisdictions around the country have already adopted the new approach. Splitting the doses into fifths will allow the United States to provide more than 3 million total doses of vaccine, “meaning we are very well-positioned and supplied to meet the demand of the at-risk population,” according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing policy and internal conversations. CDC officials have previously estimated that at least 3.2 million doses of vaccine would be needed to cover the gay and bisexual men who officials consider at highest risk.
Administration officials also say that despite weeks of complaints of limited vaccine availability, many local officials have yet to fully use their vaccine supply. As of Wednesday, only 11 of the 67 jurisdictions around the country have attested to using at least 85 percent of their vaccine supply, according to the White House official.
Biden officials highlighted their work to avert possible outbreaks, such as a recent incident in which a day-care worker in Illinois tested positive for monkeypox, potentially exposing about 60 people, including several dozen children. The worker also served as a home health aide for one elderly person.
The situation alarmed the White House, and Biden administration officials, fearing an outbreak among children, rushed dozens of vaccines to the people who were potentially exposed. Three weeks later, there have been no additional infections linked to the day care worker, Julie Pryde, administrator of the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, told The Post.
Lena H. Sun contributed to this report. | 2022-08-26T19:49:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Falling monkeypox cases have health officials ‘cautiously optimistic’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/26/monkeypox-cases-falling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/26/monkeypox-cases-falling/ |
How the redacted FBI affidavit reveals depth of Trump’s legal peril
Pages from the affidavit by the FBI in support of obtaining a search warrant for former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, as seen on Aug. 26. (Jon Elswick/AP)
1There were a LOT of documents
2The claim of declassification is evidence against Trump
3We don’t know how the government knew Trump still had more documents
4Trump had no right to keep top-secret documents in an unsecured location
5We don’t know what actions might have violated the obstruction statute (Section 1519) and the mutilation statute (Section 2071)
The redacted FBI affidavit released on Friday regarding the Aug. 8 search of the defeated former president’s Florida estate reveals many things about Donald Trump’s legal peril. It confirmed, for example, that the government is “conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records.” To state it more plainly: The defeated former president is being investigated for potential violation of several statutes pertaining to his illegal retention and storage of official documents containing sensitive secrets.
Brookings Institution scholar Norman Ornstein points out that we quickly learned from the redacted affidavit that there was no lock on Trump’s storage area. Beyond that, Ornstein says, “There is no revelation here beyond what we knew — which is just devastating to Trump.” The former president had “documents, including the most sensitive national security secrets, handled in a slapdash fashion, kept in multiple unsecured locations, intermixed with photos and family stuff.” Ornstein observes the plethora of “lies about what had and had not been returned [and] laughable assertions about Trump’s ability to declassify unilaterally.” He concludes, “It reinforces how dangerous Trump is to the nation, and that is without any information yet about what malign reasons he had for grabbing these documents.”
Here are five takeaways from the redacted affidavit:
There were a LOT of documents
Of the 15 boxes Trump staffers returned to government possession in January, 14 contained super-secret information. “A preliminary triage of the documents with classification markings revealed the following approximate numbers: 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET.” The preliminary review, conducted in May, found additional markings such as “HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI.” These notations relate to national security secrets — one, HCS, indicates a category of highly classified government information; another refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — including human and signals intelligence.
Trump had no right to retain these documents, the affidavit asserts, because “Classified information of any designation may be shared only with persons determined by an appropriate United States Government official to be eligible for access, and who possess a ‘need to know.’ ” These were government documents, not Trump’s personal papers.
In citing 18 USC 793(e), the government asserts that Trump had no right to refuse to return any document “relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” He was no longer authorized to receive or retain such documents. Hence, his legal liability is acute.
The claim of declassification is evidence against Trump
It is telling that the government wants to highlight the argument from Trump’s team, raised in particular by Kash Patel, that Trump had a standing order to declassify the materials. (“FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 asked DOJ to consider a few ‘principles,’ which include FPOTUS COUNSEL 1′s claim that a President has absolute authority to declassify documents.” This is nonsense both factually and legally. It is also irrelevant to the retention of any government documents. There are no such principles that would help Trump here.
In a damning footnote, the government points out that “18 U.S.C. § 793(e) does not use the term ‘classified information,’ but rather criminalizes the unlawful retention of ‘information relating to the national defense.’ ” In other words, the notion that Trump could declassify documents at will is a fantasy. Classification is beside the point.
We don’t know how the government knew Trump still had more documents
This portion of the affidavit is redacted, a necessary (and expected) measure to protect the investigation and identity of witnesses. If the Trump brain trust thought they were going to get the name of a “mole,” they really are living in fantasy land.
Trump had no right to keep top-secret documents in an unsecured location
Quoting from a June 8 letter the Justice Department sent to Trump’s lawyer, the affidavit states, “As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information. As such, it appears that since the time classified documents [redacted] were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location.” That’s damning evidence of Trump’s violations of statutes. (The affidavit notes: “Pursuant to Executive Order 13526, classified information contained on automated information systems, including networks and telecommunications systems, that collect, create, communicate, compute, disseminate, process, or store classified information must be maintained in a manner that: (1) prevents access by unauthorized persons; and (2) ensures the integrity of the information.”)
We don’t know what actions might have violated the obstruction statute (Section 1519) and the mutilation statute (Section 2071)
The latter subjects to criminal punishment “Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing ...”). We know from news reports that certain documents were torn. But we do not know whether Trump attempted to destroy or alter other documents. (His handwriting was found on some.) The New York Times previously reported that subpoenaed surveillance “footage showed that, after one instance in which Justice Department officials were in contact with Mr. Trump’s team, boxes were moved in and out of the room.”
In sum, Trump is in heap of trouble. “The chilling reality is setting in,” constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me. "In seeking this search warrant, the government had obviously exhausted every less intrusive way of protecting national defense information and other extremely sensitive top-secret material from those who illegally removed it to Mar-a-Lago, lied to government agencies about its being there, and kept it there for reasons that cannot have been entirely innocent and might have been unimaginably dangerous to our nation.”
Tribe adds: “Mr. Trump must regret having bragged that this search was baseless rather than coming up with some less easily refuted account of what he had been up to, because no rational person, after reading the affidavit even with its redactions, could doubt that there was more than just probable cause to believe that federal crimes of the most serious kind ... had been committed and, in some instances, were still being committed at the Mar-a-Lago premises.” In other words: The government caught Trump with top-secret documents and appears to have found that he hadn’t turned over all of them as his lawyer represented. Trump’s apologists might want to disentangle themselves from him before they thoroughly embarrass themselves. | 2022-08-26T19:50:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Affidavit reveals Trump retained a host of highly sensitive documents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/fbi-affidavit-trump-search-takeaways/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/fbi-affidavit-trump-search-takeaways/ |
Father’s arrest in toddler’s death raises ongoing D.C. gun issues
Legend Wheeler was shot and killed on accident after police say his father, JD Wheeler, left a gun unsecured on Nov. 24. (Image from Criminal Complaint filed Superior Court of the District of Columbia) (Image from Criminal Complaint filed Superior Court of the District of Columbia)
“It broke our hearts to lose you but you did not go alone. A part of us went with you, the day God called you home.” — from the funeral program for Legend King Wheeler.
I don’t pretend to fully understand God’s will. But according to the city’s deputy medical examiner, 23-month-old Legend King Wheeler died from a gunshot wound to the head on the day before Thanksgiving 2021.
His death was both shocking and sad. It was more mystifying and disturbing, however, when, several weeks later, police still could not say whether the toddler shot himself, if someone else pulled the trigger or even where the gun was.
When I asked D.C. police for details nearly a month after the tragedy, they still had not received formal statements from relatives who were in the home when the shooting took place. Simply put, family members who were near enough to know something about how Legend sustained a gunshot wound to the face had lawyered up.
Meanwhile, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) continued her denunciation of guns. In a Dec. 10 letter to Washingtonians, she wrote, “One thing is true: that precious baby boy would be alive today if that gun wasn’t in his home.” So true.
But what was also true then is also true now: Little Legend would be alive today if some person had not brought that deadly weapon into his home.
This week we learned what police believe happened.
On Tuesday, Legend’s father, 23-year-old JD Wheeler, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Police said he left a loaded firearm in the home, which caused the child’s death from an “apparent accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The Post reported that documents showed, on the day of the shooting, Wheeler was in court for hearings related to two previous firearms-related charges. His lawyer, the story said, could not be reached for comment.
Let me relate what I’ve found in other court documents.
On May 19, 2021, six months before Legend’s death, Wheeler was stopped by D.C. police, while driving a vehicle that turned out to have counterfeit tags, in the 4600 block of Benning Road S.E. A fully loaded 9mm Glock firearm was found on the driver’s side floorboard. Record checks showed that the firearm was not registered, that Wheeler did not have a license to carry a pistol and did not have a valid driver’s license. Wheeler was placed under arrest and charged with carrying a pistol without a license, possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition, misuse of tags, and no permit.
Last Feb. 2, as Legend’s death was still under investigation, that Glock case came to trial. Wheeler pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court to carrying a pistol without a license and pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of ammunition.
Wheeler’s case was handled under the city’s Youth Rehabilitation Act, which allows a judge who determines that a youth offender 15 to 24 years of age would be better served by probation instead of confinement to suspend sentencing and place the youth offender on probation.
So, 10 weeks after his son’s death by gunshot, Wheeler was sentenced to 180 days incarceration for carrying an unlicensed gun and 90 days for unlawful possession of ammunition — and the judge suspended both sentences, instead placing him under probation for 18 months and ordering him to pay $150 in fines.
Another note from the court files: According to an affidavit supporting Wheeler’s arrest this week, a witness told police investigating Legend’s death that one or two months after his May 2021 arrest, Wheeler had “a new firearm that had an extended clip as well as a flashlight and laser.” The witness said he didn’t know the caliber but thought it was “a little bigger” than Wheeler’s prior gun.
Our streets have guns galore. And people who carry them. Who don’t worry about a thing if the gun is lost or taken away. No problem getting another one.
With little if any accountability. For instance, from Aug. 1 through Aug. 8 — one week — D.C. detectives and officers recovered 62 firearms in the District of Columbia.
As for the folks toting guns? Don’t ask. Unless you get caught shooting and hitting — or nearly missing — someone, or your gun takes a life, rest assured that in this town, there’s another gun out there waiting for you. Maybe it will end up in the wrong hands and put a bullet in a child’s head. But please, don’t blame any of our mayhem on God. | 2022-08-26T19:50:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Father's arrest in D.C. toddler's death raises old gun issues - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/legend-wheeler-death-father/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/legend-wheeler-death-father/ |
The reckless rage of the lawless
By William S. Cohen
William H. Webster
Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Oct. 27, 2021, on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The Justice Department’s decision to execute a search warrant of former president Donald Trump‘s Florida home was unprecedented in our nation’s history.
We are confident that Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, both honest and honorable men, gave careful consideration before authorizing a search of Trump’s residence, knowing the historical significance and potential for political backlash.
Sadly, the task of rescuing the banner of conservatism has been left to Republican Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Peter Meijer (Mich.) and others who have been willing to fulfill their Pledge of Allegiance to our flag and Constitution. They have been noble exceptions to those who clutch their titles and sacrifice their honor; these heroes will likely be replaced with sycophants rather than serious legislators.
In November 2021, nearly 100 former national security officials, both civilians and military officers of both parties signed a letter decrying the threats that the Trump presidency created for the United States internationally. “The insurrection on January 6th,” the letter stated, “has left other countries to wonder if the American Experiment is failing and if American democracy is the best path forward.”
Our allies are rightly worried about the possibility of a resurgence of Trump and his hyper-nationalist methods of governance. Foreign adversaries who believe that we are in a state of moral and social decline see the deepening racial, ethnic and cultural divisions in our society as target-rich opportunities for exploitation in an age of cyber and social media propaganda. They recognize Abraham Lincoln’s insight that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and are working to turn those sage words into our reality.
Not long ago, we thought that with the collapse of the Soviet empire, the march of freedom and democracy was in unstoppable ascendancy. Today, the tide is moving in the opposite direction. Autocracies are surfacing even among members of NATO, such as Hungary and Turkey. Similar anti-democratic forces are gaining strength in France and Italy. Without America’s sustainable pro-democratic leadership, this trend is bound to accelerate.
Garland’s actions upholding the principle that no one is above the law reaches well beyond our borders. Surely, he is not eager to be the first person to initiate criminal proceedings against a former president. To do so will establish a woeful, even if justified precedent, and possibly will set off a level of civil strife we have not witnessed in more than 150 years. | 2022-08-26T19:50:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | William Cohen and William Webster: The GOP is now a cult for a man of greed and ambition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/mar-a-lago-fbi-attacks-lawless-gop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/mar-a-lago-fbi-attacks-lawless-gop/ |
Giuliani had ‘no fear gene.’ That led to his predicament.
Fearlessness has a flip side, which is recklessness. It may have consequences for America’s Mayor.
Perspective by Andrew Kirtzman
Andrew Kirtzman is the author of “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” which will be published Sept. 13. It is his second biography of the former New York City mayor.
Rudy Giuliani arrives at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta on Aug. 17 to testify before a grand jury investigating possible efforts to interfere with Georgia's vote in the 2020 election. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg News)
On Aug. 17, Rudy Giuliani stepped out of a black SUV outside the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta and pushed his way through a mass of reporters shouting the same question: What did he plan to tell a grand jury about his efforts to sabotage the 2020 election results on behalf of Donald Trump? Would he take the Fifth? “They ask the questions and we’ll see,” he said. When he made it to the front door it was locked — he’d arrived before business hours. For 30 awkward seconds, he was cornered, laughing nervously as he waited for someone to open the door.
For anyone who has followed his long career, Giuliani’s courthouse appearance was a riveting spectacle. For much of the 1980s and ’90s, the prosecutor-turned-mayor swept into government buildings like this with an almost cinematic boldness, the most feared man in town heading into the next big battle with his entourage of dark-suited aides and plainclothes detectives. Now he is a diminished figure, angling to persuade jurors and prosecutors to keep him off the path to prison. Even if he escapes indictment in Georgia, there are two Justice Department inquiries he must survive.
It is a moment of reckoning for a man whose gleeful flirtation with danger over the decades has led him to this crucible. Perhaps none of his troubles would have emerged if he had never met Trump. Or maybe his character flaws made them inevitable.
From the start of his career, Giuliani thrived on risk-taking, the more dangerous the better. His lifelong best friend, Peter Powers, who died in 2016, liked to say that the former mayor was born without a “fear gene.” His audacity often served the public well: He was fearless in prosecuting mobsters as a U.S. attorney; fearless in fighting special interests as a New York mayor; fearless in leading the city after a terrorist attack.
But fearlessness has a flip side, and that is recklessness. Where fearlessness propelled Giuliani to his biggest accomplishments, recklessness loosed his destructive impulses.
His mayoral years were a dizzying tableau of heroism and heedlessness. To the city’s civil liberties and homeless advocacy groups, Giuliani’s order upon taking office in 1994 that police rid the streets of vagrants urinating or sleeping on sidewalks and in the subways was considered almost heresy. So grateful was the public, though, for the restoration of sanity in their neighborhoods that by the end of his first term, few, if any, elected Democrats would dare vow to undo his policies.
But Giuliani’s obsession with control led to a series of wildly reckless acts. He grew to resent the credit the media was giving to William Bratton, his hugely effective police commissioner, and forced him out in 1996. He then turned up the pressure on Bratton’s successors to reduce crime further, triggering a wave of police harassment of young men in Black neighborhoods. When innocent people from those communities were killed by the police, Giuliani refused to acknowledge the problem or even meet with the city’s Black elected officials. “Maybe it isn’t an altar boy,” he famously remarked of Patrick Dorismond, killed outside a Midtown bar by officers who mistook him for a drug dealer.
Three months after Bratton’s resignation, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed off the coast of Long Island after taking off from JFK airport, killing all 230 people on board. Giuliani raced to the side of terrified relatives and unleashed his fury at TWA — including its chairman — for its meager efforts to get information to them. He made it a virtual crusade against the airline, which buckled to his demands. He was widely lauded for standing up for his citizens.
The same man was cheating on his wife, carrying on at least one extramarital affair while married to Donna Hanover, who was still living in the mayoral mansion. When the city’s tabloids uncovered the relationship in 2000, the revelation blew up into a scandal that tainted his reputation for decades.
The events of Sept. 11, 2001, all but wiped the slate clean on his pernicious behavior in the public’s eye. As a political reporter for the television news channel NY1 covering the mayor, I ran with Giuliani and his aides from the implosion of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. In a situation so desperate that his group didn’t have as much as a car, he rose to the occasion magnificently, proceeding to calm a terrified public with his steady leadership in the hours, days and months ahead.
Any effort to understand how this brilliant, accomplished figure could careen wildly from fearlessness to recklessness, and how the pattern led to his undoing, must begin with his view of himself as a crusader for justice, and the contortions he employs to justify his actions. Seven years after the 9/11 attacks, he ran for president and failed spectacularly, earning just one delegate for his efforts. In his concession speech in January 2008, he used a line often attributed to Teddy Roosevelt. “Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords,” he said.
At the start of reporting for my biography of Giuliani, he and I engaged in discussions over texts about the possibility of his cooperating with my efforts (he ultimately declined). In the course of those exchanges, I brought up how his view of morality had shaped his career. “My moral compass has always been clear to me,” he responded. “Sometimes I act in a politically correct way and I am lionized, and sometimes the same me comes to a different conclusion in good faith than the Democratic Regime of Thought and I am demonized.
“And sometimes you really threaten to uncover their underlying corruption and they try to destroy you.”
One idea has shaped Giuliani’s whole career: Everyone is wrong but me
But he did not acknowledge how his moral compass has led him to do terrible things. In 2016, with his reputation as an American hero fading, Giuliani gambled his credibility on Trump’s presidential candidacy to revive his career. His victory produced enormous benefits for Giuliani — a return to the front pages and unlimited access to the Oval Office on behalf of his clients. The amoral new leader’s ascension gave Giuliani license to engage in the most reckless acts of his career, with incalculable damage to himself and the country.
In 2018, Trump was under siege from Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Furious at his attorneys for playing softball with the special counsel, the president summoned Giuliani to represent him as his personal lawyer because he knew he relished a brawl.
Most presidential attorneys recognize the enormous sensitivity of the job and try to act with discretion. Giuliani, by contrast, found that the more outrageous his actions were, the more his boss approved.
He embarked on a bizarre effort in Ukraine to discredit the investigation, and with it the career of Joe Biden. Fueled with a zeal to prove that Biden had engaged in a corrupt scheme with Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, to enrich his family, he made common cause with a group of shadowy figures.
In January 2019, Giuliani played host to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, at his Manhattan office. For three days, sitting inside a glass conference room, Giuliani tried every which way to pry loose a pretext to open a Ukrainian investigation into Biden and Burisma, and to justify the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, the American ambassador in Ukraine, whom Trump saw as undermining the effort.
Lutsenko shot down each idea as impractical. It left Giuliani dejected. Six weeks after their meeting, he confided to Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian sidekick, that he was at a loss to prove his conspiracy theory. “I’ve got nothing,” he texted him.
He remained undaunted, however, even as his actions helped get Trump into huge trouble. On the day in December 2019 that the House Intelligence Committee released its report on the scandal, laying the groundwork for Trump’s impeachment, Giuliani was in Budapest, meeting with yet more Ukrainians offering up dirt on Biden — with Trump’s blessing.
Few people in Giuliani’s position would have dared tempt fate like that. But he had no such compunctions — he took a crew from the right-wing One America News network with him and conducted on-camera interviews with his Ukrainian allies. One companion on his trip whom I interviewed for the book told me that Giuliani was so excited in his exploits one morning that he turned up the music on his iPad and sang “God Bless America” as he drove through the Hungarian countryside.
Unable to prove his case against Biden, he launched a harrowing campaign of character assassination. “You little slimeball, and miserable father. Hard thing is going to be not to spit in your face, the way you treat your kid, Joe,” Giuliani said on his radio show in November 2020, referring to Hunter’s addiction problems. “Instead of letting him live a life that was simple, [Joe] started to use him as a bag man to collect bribes for him,” he told RT television the same day.
By Election Day 2020, Giuliani’s fate was tied more closely than ever to Trump’s. His consulting work had dried up, his reputation as America’s Mayor was long since destroyed, and the people around him were growing nervous about his potential liability in the various scandals he helped spark (his companion Maria Ryan tried to secure him a presidential pardon). As his feelings of persecution grew, so did his fanaticism over the so-called stolen election. He became less a lawyer than a zealot.
Giuliani risks it all for Trump. Why? They share a lifeboat.
He set out to prove the case for election fraud by any means — the final, most malignant act of his career. A man once celebrated for his rectitude and incorruptibility spewed one lie after another. At a Georgia Senate hearing, Giuliani testified that there was “more than ample evidence to conclude that this election was a sham” and took aim at two low-level election workers, accusing a mother and daughter of hiding suitcases filled with fake ballots and trading USB drives like “vials of heroin or cocaine.” The allegations were absurd (the “drives” turned out to be ginger mints). The two women were forced to flee their homes because of the death threats against them.
Behind closed doors, he was admitting just the opposite about his election claims. “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,” Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) quoted him as saying.
The recklessness had gained a stranglehold on the fearlessness. And the consequences may land him in prison. | 2022-08-26T19:50:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Giuliani had ‘no fear gene.’ That led to his predicament. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/26/rudy-giuliani-biography-fearless-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/26/rudy-giuliani-biography-fearless-ukraine/ |
Former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
In the Mar-a-Lago saga, Donald Trump has offered several big defenses. First, he has reportedly insisted to aides that he primarily took from the White House documents that were “mine.” Second, he has suggested he always intended to do the right thing and turn over government documents in his possession. Third, he has said in many ways that the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of his Florida estate amounted to illegitimate jackbooted tyranny.
Now that the Justice Department has released a redacted version of the affidavit the FBI filed before getting a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, those arguments look even shakier.
The affidavit was released Friday after federal Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart ordered the Justice Department to produce a redacted version, and then approved those redactions as reasonable to protect the investigation and the identities of witnesses. Here are three things the affidavit tells us.
Trump improperly hoarded a large amount of documents, including ones potentially identifying human intelligence sources.
The affidavit describes in detail what the FBI found when it reviewed 15 boxes of documents that Trump provided to the National Archives in January, after archives officials had sounded the alarm about missing materials. (The Archives subsequently referred the matter to the Justice Department.)
Those included 184 documents that were marked as classified, including some as highly classified. The affidavit suggests these contained classified National Defense Information, or potentially very sensitive top-secret information relevant to national security. Some appeared to bear Trump’s “handwritten notes.”
The affidavit also says markings on the documents included “HCS,” or human intelligence sources. Experts tell me it’s not clear whether this refers to information about people who are intelligence sources or information provided by such sources. Either way, they said, failure to secure such documents could compromise the identities of people providing the United States with important information from sensitive positions.
This badly undermines the notion that Trump merely kept a bunch of documents for sentimental reasons, such as his letter from the North Korean leader, because they were “mine.”
Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman says the government typically treats documents about confidential national security sources as “among its most valuable and protected secrets.”
“Because they involve references to confidential sources, particularly in the national security area, they are not the type of things anyone can maintain as souvenirs of service,” Richman told me.
Remember, it’s been reported that Trump’s own aides tried to get this information handed over to the National Archives but that Trump resisted. We now have a clearer picture of what he did not want to give back.
This could get much bigger.
At one point, the affidavit requests that a judge keep the document sealed because it could compromise the ongoing investigation and because “the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates.”
Obviously the document has been unsealed, with redactions. But that passage strongly suggests that the investigation could broaden out to more criminal suspects.
We don’t know if Trump or anyone around him will be charged with any crimes. But we do know that in approving this warrant, a federal judge concluded that evidence presented amounted to “probable cause” to conclude three statutes may have been violated.
Those statutes are the Espionage Act, a law against destroying or concealing documents with intent to obstruct an investigation or administration of other U.S. government matters, and a third involving mistreatment of government documents.
We now know the pool of potential suspects for these crimes could grow. As Moss told me: “The full scope of what this could result in is not yet defined.”
Trump’s conspiracy-theorizing is baloney.
Trump is already seizing on the redactions to imply that more illegitimate law enforcement targeting of him is being covered up. He raged on Truth Social: “Affidavit heavily redacted!!!”
But what was disclosed in the affidavit has already confirmed that Trump had enormous piles of highly sensitive documents in his possession long after the National Archives wanted them back.
The affidavit also reveals that as late as June 8, the Justice Department sent a letter to Trump’s counsel suggesting that classified documents were still at Mar-a-Lago and still not being secured. The fact that the subsequent search found a large number of highly sensitive documents confirms that the department was right to suspect that.
“Over and over, the concerns about Trump’s conduct have been substantiated,” Moss told me.
And remember, a judge read these redactions and agreed that they were essential to preserve the integrity of the investigation.
“We don’t know what’s under the redactions,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. “But the judge thought they were appropriate.” | 2022-08-26T20:07:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | 3 big things we learned from the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/trump-3-things-revealed-mar-a-lago-search-warrant-affidavit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/trump-3-things-revealed-mar-a-lago-search-warrant-affidavit/ |
Water levels at Lake Mead stand at 27 percent of capacity, its lowest level since being filled in the 1930s following construction of the Hoover Dam. The lake's water levels have fallen an estimated 175 feet since 2000. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
After 22 straight years of drought, the Colorado River is no stranger to crisis. But even by its standards, the outlook this summer is bleak. The nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are nearly three-quarters empty. Satellite images show the river’s topography has changed dramatically since 2017, and scenes on the ground are no less shocking: stranded houseboats, dead plants and cracked lake beds.
None of this should be a surprise. Scientists have warned for years that drought, fueled by climate change, and consistent overuse of the waterway would result in dangerous lows. This has devastating implications for the seven states and 30 tribes that rely on the river — and not just for water. Hundreds of hydropower dams in the river basin generate electricity for millions of customers in the southwestern United States. Low water levels have already led to diminished production.
It is clear drastic cuts in water use are needed — soon. Yet reaching an agreement on reductions has proved challenging. Water sharing between states is governed by a century-old compact. A 1944 treaty also requires the United States to send a certain amount of water to Mexico annually. These arrangements were based on optimistic projections of the river’s flow. With the river under strain, there simply is not enough water to distribute, according to historical quotas or even more recent guidelines.
Some cuts came into effect this month for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico, per a 2019 contingency plan. But federal officials believe the system needs to conserve an additional 2 million to 4 million acre-feet in the next year to remain operational. The Bureau of Reclamation set an Aug. 16 deadline for states and tribal nations to come to a voluntary agreement, threatening federal intervention if they failed. Though that deadline passed without a deal, negotiations are continuing.
Unilaterally imposing cuts would be politically tricky for any administration. A voluntary agreement, on the other hand, would guarantee buy-in from locals and be more likely to reflect their needs and expertise. But every day without an agreement is another in which too much water is drained. The Interior Department should prepare to step in if negotiations continue to produce nothing.
Some states and localities have already started reimagining their water usage: Las Vegas, for example, has outlawed decorative turf, cut swimming pool sizes, invested in water recycling and curbed water budgets for golf courses. More cities must follow suit, while farmers will have to improve irrigation efficiency.
The federal government has its own tools. The Interior Department could factor evaporation into water-sharing guidelines and mandate stricter conservation practices for farms receiving federally delivered water. Congress also allocated $4 billion for drought relief in the Inflation Reduction Act. This could be used to compensate people for voluntary cuts and restore drought-affected environments. The bipartisan infrastructure package, moreover, included $8.3 billion for water programs, which should be invested in making the system more efficient — and finding alternatives to the old ways of supplying water to thirsty Americans, including water recycling and desalination.
There are no simple, painless solutions. But by making some sacrifices now, parched states can avoid more difficult ones in the future — and ensure the Colorado River continues to sustain life and livelihoods across the western United States for decades to come. | 2022-08-26T20:50:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Colorado River crisis means Southwestern states must conserve more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/colorado-river-drought-conserve-southwest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/colorado-river-drought-conserve-southwest/ |
The economics of student debt relief
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), center, appears alongside other Democratic members of Congress at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Feb. 4, 2021. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Regarding the Aug. 25 front-page article “Biden announces long-debated debt relief for students”:
The president has decided to forgive up to $20,000 in student loans for some borrowers. What about the people who never went to college who work in a trade? Why should they be excluded? By giving loan forgiveness to one class of people (those attending college) and not another, we are segregating our country by education. Are not the electricians, plumbers, retail workers, etc., as important? Are they not financially struggling, too? Let’s now work to forgive up to $20,000 of their credit card or car loan debt. Fair is fair.
Eric J. Miller, Reston
Much of the coverage of the executive order on federal student loans ponders its moral hazards, one of which is the disincentive for universities to make tuition affordable. The coverage often states that tuition has greatly outpaced inflation. These arguments and “facts” only consider the full tuition, not the actual cost of attendance, which is often reduced by significant scholarships.
Most universities are not-for-profit institutions that long ago learned that the most effective form of fundraising is for scholarship funds. The average private university advertises that its average student receives a scholarship covering roughly 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost of attendance, excluding food and housing. Has the actual cost of attendance even kept pace with inflation over the past half-century? I would venture that it has not. And that is why so many universities have increased the percentage of courses taught by adjunct professors for very low pay while holding faculty salaries below the amount of inflation.
If education is to be taken as seriously as it should be, we must do a better job analyzing and explaining its true economics.
Michael Steele, Wynnewood, Pa.
The writer is a retired certified public accountant and professor. | 2022-08-26T20:51:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The economics of student debt relief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/economics-student-debt-relief/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/economics-student-debt-relief/ |
Making a critical problem even worse
A truck with road salt and a snow plow is parked by the Deanwood Metro station before snow begins to fall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 28. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
The Aug. 16 Metro article on the increasing salinization of our region’s water, “Salt in water sources becoming worrisome in D.C. region, experts warn,” was on the mark. This issue has evolved over time as residential and industrial developments have largely replaced rural areas. My Prince William County neighborhood — Heritage Hunt — was singled out in the article as a contributor to the problem based largely on winter road treatments, but it is only one of many across the region that are also a factor.
Of greater concern locally are recent proposals to rezone about 2,200 local acres and allow massive data centers in environmentally sensitive areas adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park. If approved, existing forests and grasslands will be replaced by enormous concrete structures and paved parking lots. This major loss of natural acreage — which helps filter and control water runoff pollutants (including salt) — will lead to even further contamination of our regional water.
Many citizens have voiced concerns, and experts and organizations, such as the Fairfax County Water Authority, have recommended formal environmental studies before decisions are made. Regardless, the majority of our county board of supervisors seems determined to proceed with rezoning, deferring any studies until some future date. This hardly seems like responsible governance.
I encourage The Post to continue investigating this issue. Maybe then we would know why some local officials support making a critical problem even worse.
Margaret L. Gill, Gainesville | 2022-08-26T20:51:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Making a critical problem even worse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/making-critical-problem-even-worse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/making-critical-problem-even-worse/ |
Migrants need help, not the military
Migrants walk toward D.C.'s Union Station after a July bus ride from Texas. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
After volunteering to be part of the welcoming committee at St. Peter’s Church for a migrant bus from Arizona, I am even more perplexed than before as to why D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) insists on bringing in the National Guard to help. This is a complex humanitarian crisis exacerbated by governors who insist on trying to score cheap political points by using human beings as pawns.
Instead of supporting the volunteers and organizations, such as the SAMU Foundation, that are working overtime to support the migrants, the mayor is using the same page out of the political playbook as the governors by calling for the military.
Migrants come here thanks to a free bus trip and false promises that all of their needs will be taken care of in D.C. Volunteers don’t want the military here — and neither do migrants. They need real, tangible support from the city instead of the military and false promises.
Jason L. Miller, Washington | 2022-08-26T20:51:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Migrants need help, not the military - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/migrants-need-help-not-military/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/migrants-need-help-not-military/ |
The heavily redacted version of an affidavit submitted to a federal judge by the FBI in its records case against former president Donald Trump. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
The heavily redacted affidavit in which the FBI requested court permission to search Donald Trump’s home, released Friday, is more tantalizing than it is revealing. But what is visible, despite pages of blacked-out text, makes the Justice Department appear thoughtful and deliberate — and the former president quite the opposite.
On the orders of a federal magistrate judge, the DOJ unsealed the document claiming to establish probable cause for entering Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to seize suspected sensitive materials improperly transported from the White House. The most important information — the specific pieces of evidence that persuaded the court to permit the FBI search — were obscured to protect the probe and the witnesses who have assisted it. But the text that remained visible still contained some useful information. This includes a closer look at the Trump camp’s back and forth with the National Archives and Records Administration and the FBI before the search, a granular list of the classification markings on the materials in question, and a mention of the possibility that “evidence of obstruction will be found.”
The National Archives initially asked for the documents allegedly in Mr. Trump’s possession, which needed to be archived per the Presidential Records Act, in May of last year — and continued asking for more than seven months, at which point the Trump team provided 15 boxes. Next, when the archives discovered classified markings on some documents, Mr. Trump resisted the FBI’s efforts to review the material, The Post has reported, and refused to hand over any additional classified information despite a grand jury subpoena.
Trump defenders have slammed the FBI’s search as aggressive and unwarranted. What has come out since, including on Friday, suggests the search was hardly capricious. Instead, all available evidence suggests it was a thoughtful choice made after other options had been exhausted. Along the way, the affidavit showed that the Justice Department considered the dubious defense from Mr. Trump’s allies that all the documents were declassified and that keeping them at Mar-a-Lago was therefore legal.
The catalogue of markings on the 184 classified documents agents reviewed before asking to search Mar-a-Lago also explains the DOJ’s determination to learn more. Acronyms such as SI, HCS, FISA and NOFORN might seem like collections of random letters to the layman, but they signify extraordinarily sensitive information: intelligence derived from clandestine human sources, for example, or from surveillance of foreign spies. That material in these categories was allegedly mixed in with other random papers as well as a mishmash of items reportedly including golf balls, a raincoat and a razor, is alarming — even absent intent to use them maliciously.
Read together, these facts should help assuage concerns that Attorney General Merrick Garland embarked on an ill-considered prosecutorial frolic when he sought to search Mar-a-Lago — though this reality is unlikely to stop the flow of reckless rhetoric from Trump acolytes. Meanwhile, those taking a more levelheaded approach should continue to do what they’ve done so far: wait. There was much we didn’t know before this affidavit was unsealed. There’s much we still don’t know now. | 2022-08-26T20:52:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Trump affidavit shows the Mar-a-Lago search was hardly capricious - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/trump-affadavit-mar-a-lago-evidence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/trump-affadavit-mar-a-lago-evidence/ |
Father, stepmother of 5 year-old-girl charged with child abuse in her death
Police have charged the father and stepmother of 5-year-old Pradeline Delinois with child abuse and neglect after the girl died of injuries related to blunt force trauma, officials announced Friday.
The girl’s abuse took place while in the “care and custody” of her father, 44-year-old Pradel Delinois, and stepmother, 42-year-old Ornelie Charles, according to Prince George’s County police.
Both live in a home in the 5100 block of Cumberland Street in Capitol Heights, a town on the border of Maryland and the District.
Delinois is charged with child abuse resulting in the death and neglect of a minor. Charles is charged with child abuse resulting in the death, assault and neglect of a minor.
Officers with the Capitol Heights Police Department found Pradeline in the Cumberland Street home on Aug. 18 after they received a report of an unresponsive child. Officials rushed her to a hospital in the District, police said, where she was pronounced dead.
Prince George’s County police is leading the investigating, as it does for all homicides in Capitol Heights.
Online court records did not list an attorney for Delinois or Charles. Attempts to reach them following the announcement of Pradeline’s death were unsuccessful. | 2022-08-26T21:08:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 5-year-old Pradeline Delinois's father, stepmother, charged in her death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/pradeline-delinois-killed-arrest-father-stepmother/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/pradeline-delinois-killed-arrest-father-stepmother/ |
Marc Fisher, a senior editor, writes about most anything. He has been The Washington Post’s enterprise editor, local columnist and Berlin bureau chief, and he has covered politics, education, pop culture and much else in three decades on the Metro, Style, National and Foreign desks.
John W. Tomac for The Washington Post
“We are living in a country where disinformation, conspiracy thinking and lies have resulted in deadly attacks,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. “It’s not exactly kumbaya in this society. But we have been going through this for a long time now, and I don’t see people coming together in the more coherent organizing we saw prior to Jan. 6.”
Contrast that perspective with that of Stephen Marche, author of “The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future,” who posits that as extremists’ threats have become more lurid and specific, their rhetoric has leached into the mainstream — leading, for example, the Texas state government to spell out instances in which it would defy federal authority and the Texas Republican Party to declare President Biden the “acting president” and seek a voter referendum on seceding from the United States.
When he sees small groups of armed men training for combat against government agents, Marche, a Canadian novelist, wants to ring warning bells. “The alarm is getting much more serious, and it’s accelerating very quickly,” he said. “The kind of chaos I’m describing is like internet rage: You could take it as playacting or it could be deadly serious. It could be weekend fun or actual military preparation.” He, along with some other analysts on the left, right and in between, thinks the current noise is a strong indicator that a hot civil war — one likely to feature bombings, assassinations and other assaults on federal institutions and officials — may be imminent.
This split over how seriously to take the threat of civil war is not just another example of America’s deep divisions: It has the great benefit of existing on a foundation of shared facts. Both sets of analysts — those who say we’re heading toward civil strife and those who say the threat matrix is largely limited to lone rangers and small, disorganized groups whose dangerous but scattered acts don’t constitute a civil war — agree there is little chance of an organized, violent attack on the government, or of local or state authorities taking up arms against their federal counterparts. But there remains a sharp divide over whether a mounting series of individual and small-group attacks could add up to a warlike conflict that destabilizes the country.
What both sides in the civil war debate do agree on is that a more disturbing trend — at this point more dangerous than the sporadic bursts of violence in recent years — is the pervasive loss of trust, hope and sense of belonging in a severely damaged society.
And both sides agree we have been here before.
A quarter-century ago, after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, I interviewed William Pierce, the physics professor turned neo-Nazi organizer whose novel “The Turner Diaries” had been taken by the bomber, Timothy McVeigh, as a planning document for launching civil war. In the book, white supremacists conspire to bomb FBI headquarters and spark a wider war against the government. McVeigh had excerpts from the book in his getaway car when he killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.
Pierce, a provocateur who took great pride in his book’s popularity among white supremacists and other extremists, told me that his aim — and that of those he hoped would read his book — was to overthrow the government and rid the country of Jews and Blacks.
“People don’t use the book as a blueprint, but as inspiration,” Pierce told me. “I don’t have the time to write just for entertainment. It’s to explain things to people. I’d like to see North America become a white continent.” He wrote that “if we don’t destroy the System before it destroys us — if we don’t cut this cancer out of our living flesh — our whole race will die.”
Pierce, who died in 2002, told me he expected individual violent acts inspired by his book to become more frequent. “Terrorism only makes sense if it can be sustained,” he said. “One day, there will be real, organized terrorism done according to plan, aimed at bringing down the government.”
For several decades, “The Turner Diaries” has remained a go-to text for violent extremists, showing up frequently in online chatter by participants in and supporters of the Jan. 6 attack. In the meantime, the internet has blossomed into a far more insidiously efficient tool for those who seek to foment discord and terrorism. Yet although Pierce’s work still inspires single actors and small groups, his wider war has never come close to fruition.
Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection. It was vigilantism. And more is coming.
Today, “civil war” is a rallying cry that some Americans wear on T-shirts and others openly train for with assault weapons. Since the Mar-a-Lago search on Aug. 8, “lock and load” and “civil war” have trended on pro-Trump social media such as Gab and Telegram.
Belligerent rhetoric has also become part of everyday campaigning among some Republicans. A GOP candidate in Florida’s 11th House District, Laura Loomer, who narrowly lost her primary Tuesday, wrote on Telegram on Aug. 8 that it’s “time to take the gloves off. … If you’re a freedom loving American, you must remove the Words decorum and civility from your vocabulary. This is a WAR!” Conservative YouTuber and podcaster Steven Crowder tweeted on the day of the FBI’s descent on Mar-a-Lago that “tomorrow is war.” “It’s time to fight for every square inch,” he reiterated the next day. “It’s time to fight fire with fire.” The pro-Trump Gateway Pundit site wrote “This. Means. War.” On various pro-Trump social media platforms, people talked about buying ammunition and drilling for confrontation with federal agents. “Civil war! Pick up arms, people,” one agitated person tweeted.
Such talk has been a mainstay of the Trump years. Last summer, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), an election denier, alleged that U.S. election systems are “rigged,” which he said would “lead to one place, and that’s bloodshed.”
In a new book, “We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America,” conservative writer Kurt Schlichter games out a civil war and concludes that blue states face a challenge. “It’s nice to hold cities, but if you do not also hold all the rural territory between the cities, as well as the routes to the places where you are getting your food and fuel,” he wrote, “you have a real problem.”
Trump himself, speaking against the teaching of critical race theory at a South Carolina rally this spring, said America’s fate “ultimately depends upon the willingness of its citizens to lay down — and they must do this — lay down their very lives to defend their country.”
One of Trump’s leading critics in his own party, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), said early this year on ABC’s “The View” that civil war could erupt. “We have to warn and talk about it so that we can recognize that and fight hard against it,” said Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks.
But Kinzinger has also warned against embracing civil war rhetoric, tweeting in May: “How bout we stop the ‘civil war’ lust. Buy some GI Joes or something.”
In a nation where firearms purchases have almost doubled since the start of the pandemic — driven mainly by fears of rising crime, political unrest and the insecurity of life in the age of covid-19 — appeals like Kinzinger’s have fallen all too flat.
When the Rev. Sun Myung Moon sought to win Americans to his political and spiritual cause, the Unification Church, in the 1970s, he recruited people to sell flowers and ginseng door-to-door. Now, his son Hyung Jin Moon seeks to win followers for his Rod of Iron Ministries by sponsoring training sessions at his compounds in Texas and Pennsylvania — practice, he says, for a coming “patriots’” war against the “deep state.”
The Moons’ churches are both fringe groups, but Hyung Jin’s organization has hosted Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and current Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano at its “Freedom Festival” events.
Moon’s group is one of the many radical organizations that are increasingly open about their plans. A Brookings Institution study tracked several hundred private militia groups that use anti-government rhetoric to attract Americans worried “about changing demographics, stagnating wages, and how the shift to a multi-racial and multi-ethnic America will affect them.”
But such groups remain disparate and disjointed.
Many activists who have called for confrontation with the government now claim they meant no such thing; they have flipped the accusation, saying leftists or government agents are out to smash conservative opposition by kindling fear of a civil war launched by right-wingers. Crowder, the YouTube host, called media reports about his tweets an intentional smear.
“Decrying the weaponization of a once-professional FBI, and the scandals among its wayward Washington hierarchy is not insurrectionary,” Victor Davis Hanson, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, wrote in American Greatness, an online journal generally supportive of Trump. “Those who warn most of some mythical civil war are those most likely to incite one.”
Does all the noise add up only to vigorous opposition to the government, or is it evidence of concerted preparation for open warfare? The answer depends in part on what you think modern civil war would look like: Would large militias attack government institutions, or would a war be limited to haphazard acts by individuals and small guerrilla factions?
A new book imagines a looming civil war over the very meaning of America
Some say a war of sorts has begun: “The second American civil war is already occurring,” Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, declared in the Guardian. “But it is less of a war than a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.”
Reich foresees not a violent division of the country but rather something “analogous to Brexit — a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights).”
Still, many Americans believe that a true, violent civil war is coming. About half of those surveyed this spring by the University of California at Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program said they expected civil war in the next few years. Another poll, by the Survey Center on American Life, a nonpartisan project affiliated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, found more than one-third of Americans agreeing that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”
Groups seeking to battle the government have popped up regularly throughout American history.
To determine when such movements around the world have exploded into real civil wars, Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego and the author of “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” points to two predictive factors: Countries stuck in an unstable zone between democracy and autocracy are more susceptible to armed conflict. And countries with weakened governments and a population deeply divided by identity — by race, ethnicity or religion — can fall into civil war. Walter sees the Republican Party embracing an “almost white supremacist strategy” that attracts far-right activists eager to fight the federal government.
But other scholars look at the same evidence and see the potential for violence stabilizing or diminishing. Juliette Kayyem, who heads the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, argues that violent movements either grow or shrink. As Trump increasingly looks to his supporters like a loser, she sees them wandering away. The “ideology is not defeated; it simply stops motivating people to action,” she wrote in the Atlantic this month.
The rhetoric of war is vastly more common than war itself. Violent and dark language has been at the core of Trump’s appeal for many years. Trump’s choice for governor of Arizona, former TV news anchor Kari Lake, for instance, tells crowds that the government is “rotten to the core,” meaning “America is dead.”
That kind of end-times speech strikes some disturbed or radicalized people as an invitation to uprising. But historians and security analysts who’ve studied the latest evidence of civil war planning mainly foresee the kinds of scattered terrorism that the country experienced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, not anything like the buildup to 1860.
Marche has dug into prepper conferences, far-right gatherings and the darkest of online rabbit holes, trying to discern whether their war plans are “weekend fun or actual military preparations. It’s hard to distinguish the fantasists from the people who actually are going to do it,” he said in an interview. In the end, he pronounces himself “really scared.”
No one would call the strife of the 1960s civil war, but “there was enormous violence in that time,” Marche said. “One hundred and forty cities burned, and that’s in a time when you still had a level of institutional trust that could mitigate the violence.”
Now, however, collapsed trust in institutions such as the police, news media, churches and government makes the country more vulnerable to internal attack, he argues. Add this year’s Supreme Court decision on abortion rights, and “you now have another situation like in 1860 where you have two legal statuses of people in different parts of the country, and it just can’t hold,” he said.
Still, Marche notes that “America changes all the time. Reinvention is in the absolute DNA of the country.”
Segal, who tracks extremism for the ADL, sees this month’s burst of war threats as one more sign that “the system is ripe for targeting,” with the FBI now the focus of violent rhetoric and attacks, like school boards, election workers and medical professionals before it. This may not trigger a wider rash of violence, but the danger has not passed. “Based on what happens in the November elections, extremists will adjust and find a boogeyman,” he said.
Segal retains hope that holding the Jan. 6 perpetrators to account and investigating Trump’s role in fomenting that attack “will somehow round the edges of the situation.”
It’s hard to see a civil war emerging from the current mess, but as Segal said, “I’m more concerned about what we can’t see.” | 2022-08-26T21:22:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is the United States headed for civil war? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/26/civil-war-mar-a-lago-violent-extremism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/08/26/civil-war-mar-a-lago-violent-extremism/ |
Elizabeth von Oehsen/The Washington Post
Washington Post culture writer Helena Andrews-Dyer talks about her latest book “The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race from Moms Not Like Me.”
The book is a memoir of Andrews-Dyer’s personal experience of what it was like to be the only Black woman in her neighborhood’s mom group. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to join at first.
“I think for me as a Black mother, immediately just instantly the image that comes up in your head is White women,” Andrews-Dyer said. “It's like strollers taking over the local cafe, going to baby yoga, baby music class in their yoga pants. It's just like all of these images and stereotypes pop into your head and you immediately think, as a Black woman and woman of color, ‘Oh, that's not for me.’”
But in some ways, Andrews-Dyer writes, “I needed this space as much as they did.” Andrews-Dyer is a middle-class, Black professional woman living in a rapidly gentrified neighborhood in Washington, D.C., with two little girls and a husband.
But she “had not seen a story about motherhood that looked like me. … And so I had to tell it.”
“The Mamas” was released by Crown Publishing this week. | 2022-08-26T21:22:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Mamas' and the cult of mom groups - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-mamas-and-the-cult-of-mom-groups/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-mamas-and-the-cult-of-mom-groups/ |
Travelers were most irate about flight cancellations, delays, or other schedule changes
It wasn’t just you: Flying was miserable for a lot of people this summer.
Consumers filed more than 5,800 complaints about airlines in June, according to numbers released by the Department of Transportation Friday. That’s an increase of nearly 270 percent compared to June 2019 and 40 percent compared with last year. The department got more complaints in the first six months of this year — 28,550 —than in all of 2019.
Travelers were most irate about flight problems: cancellations, delays or other schedule changes. Those issues made up nearly 29 percent of the complaints. That’s not surprising, considering the widespread issues passengers faced over the long holiday weekend that included Juneteenth and Father’s Day, when more than 3,000 flights were canceled and over 19,000 were delayed. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was among those whose flights were axed.
The Transportation Department said in a news release that its office of aviation consumer protection “routinely contacts airlines with widespread cancellations or delays to make clear their obligation to promptly refund passengers who choose not to accept the alternative offered for a canceled or significantly changed flight.”
Refunds were also high on the list of traveler concerns, with those issues making up more than 24 percent of complaints.
Flight cancellations stressing weary travelers
Airlines canceled just over 3 percent of their scheduled domestic flights, higher than the cancellation rate of 1.6 percent a year earlier and 2.1 percent in 2019. On-time arrival was actually slightly better than before the pandemic, with 73.5 percent of flights arriving on time this June compared to 73.3 percent in 2019. That performance was worse than May of this year, when 77.2 percent of flights were on time.
Carriers mishandled more than 300,000 bags in June out of 43 million checked. That made the mishandled baggage rate .71 percent, higher than May but on par with June 2019.
The number of lost or damaged wheelchairs and scooters continued to increase, with airlines mishandling 1,145 out of more than 68,000 — a rate of 1.68 percent — in June. That’s higher than the rate of 1.54 percent in 2019. Travelers with disabilities have told The Washington Post that they experienced more issues with wheelchair damage and long waits for assistance this summer amid labor shortages. Those experiences are reflected in the data: the Transportation Department got 177 complaints related to disability in June, an increase from 158 in May and 70 in June of 2019. | 2022-08-26T21:23:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Air travel complaints soared 270 percent in June compared to 2019 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/26/air-travel-complaints-refunds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/08/26/air-travel-complaints-refunds/ |
Thin-blue-line masks on deputies in court means a new trial for one man
The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the masks, required by a county sheriff, were “inherently prejudicial”
A man carries a thin-blue-line flag in Kenosha, Wis., on Aug. 30, 2020. (Morry Gash/AP)
The sheriff of Kent County, Md., ordered his deputies to wear masks in court adorned with a thin blue line. That edict has now led to a convicted man getting a new trial.
In 2019, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) barred the flag from county buildings, prompting a rebuke from Gov. Larry Hogan (R). In 2021, the Chief Judge of the District Court of Maryland banned the Blue Lives Matter symbol in courts under his jurisdiction.
Even if the sheriff’s office meant only to indicate support for fellow law enforcement, as suggested by an attorney for the state, Hall said “the intent of the wearer is irrelevant” with a symbol that has such potent “potential meanings.” Smith is Black.
Smith’s attorney objected to the mask at the start of his trial, according to the court record, saying that the masks “are not a choice that the bailiffs have” but “have been ordered by the elected sheriff of this county to be as part of their uniform.” The trial judge found that even if the sheriff was making “some sort of political statement” with the requirement, “it’s protected by the First Amendment.”
A lower appeals court ruled last year that “a prohibition on the wearing of ‘thin blue line’ symbols by courthouse staff may be a prudent prophylactic measure,” and would not violate their First Amendment rights. But that court found that the symbol’s “wide range of inferences” meant it was not inherently prejudicial.
As of March, masks are no longer required in Maryland courthouses. The Kent County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately return a request for comment. | 2022-08-26T22:13:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland Court of appeals grants new trial to man - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/thin-blue-line-mask-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/thin-blue-line-mask-court/ |
This administration’s tweets, long bland, have become punchy and even viral as the president has shown more willingness to go after Republicans
The White House Twitter account under President Biden has not been the most exciting corner of the internet. After four years of unpredictable, headline-grabbing tweets from @realDonaldTrump, the White House account has been quiet and unassuming, largely regurgitating press releases and explaining Biden’s policies.
Sure, there are still the tweets touting Biden’s policies and how they’ll help people. But the White House account this week decided to hit back in uncharacteristically feisty — and personal — fashion after a number of Republicans hammered Biden’s decision to wipe out up to $20,000 in student debt for many borrowers.
When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) criticized the loan forgiveness, the White House tweeted a clip of Greene slamming the decision and added, “Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven,” referring to the covid-era Paycheck Protection Program, which made loans to businesses.
It didn’t stop there. In a series of five more tweets, the White House targeted other Republicans who had criticized the decision with the same template: Reminding Americans those same lawmakers had hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars worth of loans forgiven under the Paycheck Protection Program, while attaching video clips or tweets from the lawmakers.
But the White House tweets have succeeded in changing the conversation, and they did not go unnoticed. Democrats responded with enthusiasm, with nearly 200,000 people retweeting the thread and more than 700,000 liking it as of Friday afternoon, making it one of the White House’s highest engagement tweets ever. The White House account gained more than 49,000 followers Thursday and more than 71,000 on Friday, far more than the couple thousand it generally gains per day, according to data from Social Blade.
“Hey, WH staff, just so you know, if you’re going to continue to drag these hypocrites with clear and hard-hitting messaging, you run a serious risk of surging enthusiasm, electoral success, and continued improvements to the lives of millions of Americans,” author Scott Lynch wrote in response to the tweet.
The GOP has also sought to adopt the punchy one-liners that can fare so well on social media. The Republican National Committee recently tweeted, “Someone needs to tell Joe Biden he can’t always be on vacation,” along with a photo of Biden on a bike ride and a “Time Off Request Form” with “Denied” stamped in red letters.
But for the White House, the newly punchy tone seems to be part of a revamped strategy leading up to November’s midterm elections, with Biden increasingly attacking Republicans directly and sometimes by name. On Thursday, Biden accused the GOP of “semi-fascism” and said he could not work with “MAGA Republicans.”
“We’ve never hesitated to call out hypocrisy, and we’re not going to stop now," said White House spokeswoman Alexandra LaManna.
delete ur account https://t.co/Gms5DxTv4t
— New Jersey (@NJGov) April 1, 2021
It was unclear whether she was behind Thursday’s tweets, but on her Twitter account Thursday she shared a screenshot showing “The White House” was a top trending topic on Twitter with a smiley face.
And Pennsylvania’s Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is running against Republican Mehmet Oz for a U.S. Senate seat, has used memes about Oz’s wealth and the number of houses he owns to such effect that the hard-fought race has drifted in Fetterman’s favor. Fetterman’s team has also shown proficiency with social media trends.
In one particularly popular tweet, Fetterman employed Snooki, the “Jersey Shore” star, to troll Oz about purportedly having more ties to New Jersey than Pennsylvania, a frequent theme of the Fetterman campaign.
Democratic strategists said they welcomed the fiery new approach to the White House’s Twitter account.
“For a really long time now, so many activists within the Democratic Party have wanted to see Democrats — and obviously the president — in terms of just tone and directness, start fighting fire with fire,” said Kurt Bardella, a former Republican who now consults for Democrats.
The White House account, Bardella added, “is showing a certain personality that we haven’t seen yet from this administration, and it was incredibly effective. We saw it had a very galvanizing impact in terms of how the Democratic apparatus responded to it. There was an enthusiasm there that also matches the moment that we’re in right now.”
Drew Harwell contributed reporting. | 2022-08-26T22:26:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Biden White House gets feisty on Twitter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/white-house-twitter-megan-coyne/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/white-house-twitter-megan-coyne/ |
Shootings near Gallery Place rile a neighborhood on edge over crime
Three people were shot, one fatally, in two separate incidents near the busy tourist hub, where residents have complained about crime
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and D.C. police Chief Robert J. Contee III at a news conference in June.
Three people were shot, one fatally, in two separate incidents Thursday night near Gallery Place in Chinatown, a spasm of violence in one of downtown Washington’s busiest neighborhoods that adds to the city’s mounting death toll.
The shootings come a month after community leaders and residents from Chinatown and Penn Quarter discussed their concerns with police about crime and suspected drug dealing on blocks brimming with residents, commuters, tourists and shoppers.
“Residents are scared,” said Michael D. Shankle, chair of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission in the area of Thursday’s shootings. “They are angry that this is an ongoing issue that has been escalating for over a year now, and we feel like we don’t have enough support.”
The night’s first shooting happened about 8:15 p.m. in the 800 block of 7th Street NW, near the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station. Police said Juwaan Henry, 21, of Silver Spring, Md., was wounded and died later a hospital.
Police provided no details of the circumstances of the shooting. A woman who identified herself as Henry’s mother, reached at her home in Charlotte, said only that her son had not been in the D.C. area for long. She said she knew nothing about the shooting.
About 10:40 p.m., police said a man and a woman were shot in the 700 block of 7th Street NW, near a small park. A police report says one victim was shot in the abdomen and another was shot in the left arm while walking out of a store. A bullet hit the store window, the report says. Police did not provide any other details about a possible motive.
No arrest has been made in either shooting.
On Wednesday, a dozen people were shot throughout the District, including eight in two shootings in Truxton Circle in Northwest and Eckington in Northeast. Police believe those incidents are connected. After five were shot, two of them fatally, in Truxton Circle, police believe others set out to retaliate, shooting and wounding three in Eckington.
Several more shootings occurred Thursday in D.C., and a person was fatally stabbed in Southeast early Friday. As of Friday, 140 people had been killed in the District this year, a 7 percent increase from this time in 2021.
The administration of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has been trying to hire more police, and has pumped $50 million into alternative justice programs designed to explore crime’s root causes and find solutions that don’t involve police and jail. At a graduation ceremony Thursday for outreach workers who try to mediate disputes to stop shootings, Bowser acknowledged challenges ahead.
At the July Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting in the Chinatown area, held over Zoom, Shankle pressed a police lieutenant on so-called quality of life crimes — petty and not-so petty infractions that residents say can mushroom into more serious violence.
Shankle singled out an alley between 5th and 6th streets that he said has essentially been transformed into an outdoor “bathroom,” and he urged the lieutenant to “send officers through there.” He said he and others have witnessed money being exchanged for what he believes are drugs, with addicts being found sprawled out on steps of shops or on the sidewalk.
“Can anything be done about this?” Shankle asked.
Lt. Phillip McHugh said he doesn’t “have a lot of tools on my belt other than a pair of handcuffs,” and he’s reluctant to arrest people suffering from alcoholism or substance abuse problems, or people drinking in public. He said “we need to find some balance” between relying on police, and turning to other city agencies that deal with health and homelessness.
McHugh said there had been an uptick in robberies in Chinatown, and he got permission to pay additional overtime for more officers. He said more crime was occurring later at night, rather than in the early evening when commuters and shoppers were out.
Police said that late one night on July 6 in front of a hotel at 7th and F streets NW, someone attempted to carjack a vehicle, then opened fire when the driver sped off. McHugh said the gunman fired 14 shots up the street, striking the driver’s side door eight times, but leaving the driver uninjured. Five days later, McHugh said two women exchanged gunfire two blocks from Gallery Place. One was injured.
In an interview after the latest shootings Thursday night, Shankle said the city “really has to do a better job of getting these guns off the streets.” He said he and others are frustrated by the lack of follow-through on arrests the police do make, but also by what he said was a challenge getting other city services to step up and help.
“We have become very frustrated by the lack of interest of some city agencies in really trying to address the problems that are occurring,” Shankle said.
Wayne Turnage, the deputy D.C. mayor for Health and Human Services, said in a statement the city works “aggressively to deal with people in crisis, and spends millions to deliver social safety net services.” | 2022-08-26T22:39:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gallery Place-Chinatown shootings rile residents on edge over crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/gallery-place-shooting-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/gallery-place-shooting-violence/ |
Marcus Fleming leaves Maryland football program, faces assault charge
Marcus Fleming has not been practicing with the Maryland team this month. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Maryland football wide receiver Marcus Fleming has entered the transfer portal as he faces a second-degree assault charge stemming from an incident in June.
Before entering the transfer portal, Fleming had been away from the team and not participating in preseason training camp activities, a team spokesman said. The school did not directly comment on Fleming’s arrest.
The charge, shown on the state’s public judiciary logs, lists Ariana Wright, a sophomore on Maryland’s track and field team, as the complainant.
Fleming also has filed a second-degree assault complaint against Wright. The trial for that case is set for Oct. 20, according to the state’s judiciary logs. Wright remains on the Maryland roster, and the track and field team has not started practice yet, a spokesman said.
The Baltimore Sun first reported that Fleming had been charged with second-degree assault, also noting that a first-degree assault charge against Fleming was dropped Thursday in Prince George’s County Circuit Court.
Fleming transferred to the Maryland program from Nebraska after the 2020 season. The Miami native appeared in eight games with three starts last season, recording 18 receptions for 197 yards. | 2022-08-26T22:52:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marcus Fleming leaves Maryland football program, faces assault charge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/marcus-fleming-maryland-transfer-portal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/marcus-fleming-maryland-transfer-portal/ |
Terrence Williams pleads guilty in scheme to defraud NBA’s health plan
Terrence Williams pleaded guilty to orchestrating a scheme that defrauded the league's health insurance plan of at least $5 million, New York prosecutors announced Friday. (Mike Clarke/AFP)
Former NBA player Terrence Williams, the ringleader of a scheme to defraud the NBA’s health plan, pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
Conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Williams’s one count of aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison. As part of his guilty plea, the former Louisville standout agreed to pay $2,500,000 in restitution to the NBA Players’ Health and Welfare Benefit Plan. Williams, who will also forfeit $653,672.55, is scheduled for sentencing in January.
Federal authorities in October charged 18 former NBA players with defrauding the league’s health-care plan out of at least $5 million. From 2017 through 2020, according to the indictment, the players submitted phony invoices to the NBA’s health benefit plan for reimbursements for services they never received from a chiropractor’s office, two dental offices and a “wellness office” that specialized in “sexual health, anti-aging, and general well-being.”
Williams, 35, was a 2009 lottery draft pick who spent four years in the NBA before an extended career overseas. Working with a dentist in California and a doctor in Washington state, Williams created fake invoices and fabricated doctor’s letters he circulated to the other former players in exchange for kickbacks, according to the indictment. The Justice Department said administrators of the health care plan and federal law enforcement caught several red flags, including doctor’s letters containing grammatical errors and misspelled patient names. Some of the players in the scheme submitted invoices for treatment they claimed they received when they were out of state or even out of the country, the indictment said.
Williams recruited several players, including Sebastian Telfair, 37, a former player with the Portland Trail Blazers and seven other teams from 2004 to 2013, and Glen “Big Baby” Davis, 36, who led LSU to the Final Four in 2006 before an NBA career with the Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Clippers.
Williams was also found to have impersonated others, as he did on one occasion when he created an email account designed to resemble that of a health plan administrative manager, according to the indictment. Through the account, Williams allegedly tried “to frighten” a co-defendant into paying him a kickback.
While on pretrial release earlier this year, Williams was remanded for texting threats to a witness. | 2022-08-26T22:52:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Terrence Williams pleads guilty in scheme to defraud NBA’s health plan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/terrence-williams-guilty-defraud-nba/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/terrence-williams-guilty-defraud-nba/ |
Energy Dept. warns refiners it may take ‘extraordinary measures’ on fuel exports
U.S. warns refiners on gas and diesel exports
While East Coast gasoline and diesel inventories are well below normal, exports of U.S. refined products are at an all-time high, the Energy Department wrote in a letter last week to refiners that included ExxonMobil, Valero Energy, and Phillips 66.
“It is our hope that companies will proactively address this need,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm wrote in the letter, which was also sent to BP America, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum and Shell. “If that is not the case, the administration will need to consider additional federal requirements or other emergency measures.”
The Biden administration is effectively asking refiners to prioritize American consumers over maximizing their profits by supplying fuel-starved Europe, which is facing an unprecedented energy crunch after the invasion of Ukraine triggered U.S. sanctions on Russian oil supply.
U.S. government officials said the administration isn’t actively considering export controls and the letter shouldn’t be construed as a direct threat to limit shipments abroad. An Energy Department official said emergency measures being taken included tapping a little-used emergency diesel fuel reserve, the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve.
U.S., China strike deal on auditing companies
Beijing and Washington have reached a preliminary agreement to allow American officials to review audit documents of Chinese businesses that trade in the United States, a first step toward avoiding the delisting of about 200 firms from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
As part of the deal, China will allow Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspectors to access audit work papers and personnel, according to statements by U.S. and Chinese regulators on Friday. They added that American inspectors plan to be on the ground by mid-September.
The agreement marks a breakthrough in resolving a decades-long standoff between the two superpowers over access to audit documents. The long-simmering dispute over accounting has become a major sticking point since a U.S. law passed in 2020 said firms whose work papers can’t be inspected face being kicked off American stock exchanges.
China and Hong Kong are the lone two jurisdictions worldwide that haven’t allowed the PCAOB inspections, with officials there claiming national security and confidentiality concerns. The agreement announced on Friday represents a rare compromise from Beijing, which has repeatedly vowed to bolster market confidence while balancing national security concerns with the needs of businesses.
The agreement is just the first step. The PCAOB will need to get a large number of its inspectors on the ground, and audit checks on selected firms could take months before a determination on compliance is made.
U.S. air travel service complaints jumped 35 percent in June over May as airlines canceled or delayed thousands of flights, the Transportation Department said Friday. The DOT said complaints are up nearly 270 percent over pre-pandemic levels — even though carriers in June flew only 86 percent of flights versus June 2019 levels. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week urged the 10 largest U.S. airlines to do more to help stranded and delayed passengers, saying that the level of disruption travelers have faced this summer is "unacceptable."
Vegans with a hankering for chocolate-covered wafers can at last get their hands on a KitKat. Nestlé, the Swiss food giant, is launching KitKat V, a plant-based version of one of the world's most popular chocolate bars, on Friday with a rollout planned across 15 European countries including the U.K. Unlike the classic KitKat, the vegan version uses a rice-based formula as a milk substitute. It's one of the biggest launches of a vegan alternative from a major confectionery brand and took two years to develop. | 2022-08-26T22:53:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Energy Dept. warns refiners it may take ‘extraordinary measures’ on fuel exports - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/energy-dept-warns-refiners-it-may-take-extraordinary-measures-on-fuel-exports/2022/08/26/b9feabfc-252b-11ed-ae94-b5afe3c5886e_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/energy-dept-warns-refiners-it-may-take-extraordinary-measures-on-fuel-exports/2022/08/26/b9feabfc-252b-11ed-ae94-b5afe3c5886e_story.html |
In this aerial image from video provided by Fox 11 Los Angeles is a washed out section of Interstate 10 near Desert Center, Calif., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022. Officials say the main highway from Los Angeles to Phoenix has been damaged by a flash flood that washed out lanes on the eastbound side of Interstate 10 in the Southern California desert near the Arizona state line. Heavy rain from monsoonal thunderstorms Wednesday evening caused the latest round of flooding and also impacted other desert highways. (Fox 11 Los Angeles via AP) (Uncredited/Fox 11 Los Angeles) | 2022-08-26T22:53:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Officials hope to reopen flood-damaged LA to Phoenix highway - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/officials-hope-to-reopen-flood-damaged-la-to-phoenix-highway/2022/08/26/3565aa34-2590-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/officials-hope-to-reopen-flood-damaged-la-to-phoenix-highway/2022/08/26/3565aa34-2590-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Ferry carrying 82 burns; 73 rescued
A Philippine ferry carrying 82 passengers and crew members caught fire as it was approaching a port south of Manila on Friday, and at least 73 of those aboard were rescued, including many who jumped into the water, the coast guard and survivors said.
Search-and-rescue efforts were continuing after nightfall for the passengers and crew of the M/V Asia Philippines, an inter-island cargo and passenger vessel that came from nearby Calapan city in Oriental Mindoro province, the coast guard said.
Video released by the coast guard showed flames and black smoke billowing from the ferry, which was near other ships about a mile from the Batangas port’s anchorage area, coast guard officials said.
Government entities hit by cyberattack
Government digital infrastructure in Montenegro was hit by an “unprecedented” cyberattack, and measures have been taken to mitigate its impact, authorities said Friday.
Public Administration Minister Maras Dukaj said on Twitter that the attack, which began Thursday night, resembled several others in the past few years in the Adriatic republic, and that Montenegro — a member of NATO — had informed its allies about it.
The U.S. Embassy in Podgorica warned that the attack could affect travel and advised U.S. citizens to limit their movement.
Airstrike kills 7 in capital of Ethiopia's Tigray region: An airstrike killed at least seven people in Mekele, the capital of Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, medical officials there said, in the first such attack after a four-month cease-fire collapsed this week. The officials said three children were among the dead, but a federal government spokesman denied that any civilian casualties had occurred. The airstrike took place two days after fighting broke out again between the federal government and Tigrayan forces on the border of the Tigray and Amhara regions.
Explosion in Baghdad targets Australian diplomats: A small homemade explosive detonated near Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone as an Australian diplomatic convoy made its way into the area, two security officials said. No injuries were reported. The blast occurred amid efforts by the Australian diplomatic mission in Iraq to mediate between Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and an Iran-backed faction of rival Shiite parties to end one of Iraq's worst political crises in recent years.
Waste workers strike fills Scotland's streets with garbage: A strike by Scottish refuse workers over pay is spreading to more cities, with garbage from unattended bins overflowing onto Edinburgh's streets, raising a stink during the city's international arts and Fringe festivals. Pay talks between local authorities and union leaders have been ongoing, but Edinburgh's bin strikes, which began Aug. 18, are set to continue until Tuesday, the day after the Fringe festival ends. Similar strikes have begun in over a dozen other regions, including Aberdeen and Scotland's largest city, Glasgow. The Unite trade union said a local government body had made clear that no additional funds would be allocated after a rejected 5 percent offer. | 2022-08-26T22:54:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: Aug. 26, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-26-2022/2022/08/26/e1bf936c-254f-11ed-87c7-c807d6645a61_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-aug-26-2022/2022/08/26/e1bf936c-254f-11ed-87c7-c807d6645a61_story.html |
Court orders Beltway sniper Lee Boyd Malvo resentenced in Maryland killings
It is unlikely that Malvo would ever be released from custody because he is also serving separate life sentences for murders in Virginia.
Lee Boyd Malvo is escorted from court after a preliminary hearing in Fairfax, Va., on Jan. 14, 2003. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Maryland’s highest court on Friday ordered that the younger of the two Beltway snipers be resentenced for several fatal shootings he committed, saying a review of Lee Boyd Malvo’s punishments was appropriate given new constitutional protections for juveniles convicted of crimes.
The court said, however, it is highly unlikely that Malvo would ever be released from custody as he is also serving separate life sentences for the murders in Virginia.
Malvo, now 37, was long-ago convicted along with his partner, John Allen Muhammad, in the killings of six people in Maryland and four people in Virginia in 2002. He was 17 at the time of their rampage that terrorized the Washington region.
In the years since, a series of court rulings and new laws have reflected society’s evolving views on juvenile justice. A juvenile can no longer be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, as the Maryland court wrote Friday, if the crime reflected “transient immaturity” rather than “permanent incorrigibility.”
Supreme Court rules against juvenile sentenced to life without parole
By a 4-3 majority, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that when Malvo received that harshest punishment possible in Maryland — six terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole — the Montgomery County sentencing judge never explicitly made a finding that his crimes reflected “irreparable corruption.”
The court ordered Malvo to go back before a Montgomery County judge to be resentenced.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said Friday he will seek the maximum sentences he can for Malvo.
“I don’t know if he will ever get out of Virginia, if we will ever see him,” McCarthy said. “But we will seek sentences that would keep him locked up in Maryland for life if he ever did make it here.”
The court acknowledged that its ruling may make no difference in the amount of time Malvo will stay behind bars and said debate over Malvo’s original sentencing in Maryland “may be an academic question” because of his murder convictions in Virginia.
“He would first have to be granted parole in Virginia before his consecutive life sentences in Maryland even begin,” Judge Robert N. McDonald wrote for the majority. “Ultimately, it is not for this Court to decide the appropriate sentence for Mr. Malvo or whether he should ever be released from his Maryland sentences. We hold only that the Eighth Amendment requires that he receive a new sentencing hearing at which the sentencing court, now cognizant of the principles elucidated by the Supreme Court, is able to consider whether or not he is constitutionally eligible for life without parole under those decisions.”
The court noted that when Malvo was sentenced in Maryland, the judge reflected on both Malvo’s apparent change for the better since his arrest and the heinous nature of his crimes.
Supreme Court debates what judges must find before sentencing juveniles to life without parole
“After you met John Allen Muhammad and became influenced by him, your chances for a successful life became worse than they already were,” the judge said at the time. “You could have been somebody different. You could have been better. What you are, however, is a convicted murderer ... You knowingly, willingly, and voluntarily participated in the cowardly murders of innocent, defenseless human beings.”
McDonald was joined in the majority by Judges Brynja M. Booth, Jonathan Biran and Joseph M. Getty. Judges Shirley M. Watts, Michele D. Hotten and Steven B. Gould dissented.
The sentencing court “took Mr. Malvo’s status as a juvenile into account. ... His youth and its attendant characteristics were considered,” Watts wrote.
“Any alleged finding of ‘corrigibility’ did not render petitioner’s sentences unconstitutionally disproportionate as applied,” Hotten wrote. “Rather the proportionality of petitioner’s sentences must be weighed against the severity of his crimes. Petitioner committed some of the worst crimes in the history of the state.”
Malvo is at Red Onion State Prison, a supermax facility in Virginia. | 2022-08-26T23:45:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Beltway sniper Lee Boyd Malvo to be resentenced in Maryland killings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/beltway-sniper-malvo-resentencing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/26/beltway-sniper-malvo-resentencing/ |
With sharp attacks on the GOP and individual Republicans, Biden and the White House signal they will not rely solely on touting the president’s accomplishments during the midterm campaign
President Biden reiterated his more aggressive tone toward Republicans when he met with the press during his walk to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
For much of his presidency, Joe Biden has been careful with his rhetoric, often avoiding any deep discussion of his predecessor — whom he initially would not even call by name, referring to him as “the former guy” — and generally skirting around the kinds of broad denunciations of the Republican Party that other Democrats gladly participated in.
But that Joe Biden has faded.
It all amounted to a clear sign that Biden and the Democrats will not rely solely on a message of touting his legislation and other accomplishments, as some Democrats feared he would do, but will directly accuse Republicans of fascism and violence in an attempt to raise the stakes of the midterms to the survival of democracy itself.
“It’s not hyperbole,” Biden said. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again.”
To a constellation of Democrats who have urged Biden to use the full powers of the presidential bully pulpit, it was a welcome shift, and one that Biden advisers said voters would see more of.
“There are two Joe Bidens: There’s governing Joe Biden, and there’s campaigning Joe Biden,” said Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster who worked for his 2020 presidential campaign. “One of the things he is realizing is that to be effective in governing, you have to show some of the strength and set up the choice for voters.”
She said that in numerous focus groups, even those who voted for Biden had questioned whether he had the vigor to advance priorities that they cared about. “They have thought they weren’t seeing the strong fighter, the person they elected, and they attributed it to age and to weakness,” she said. “I hope we can anticipate more of this. People have been craving it.”
The shift also comes at a time when former president Donald Trump is facing increasing scrutiny in a way that often creates an odd split-screen of American politics. As the ex-president has faced investigations over his businesses, an FBI search of his home and congressional hearings into his actions, Biden has focused elsewhere. He has often received far less attention, but his allies hope that it shows he’s attempting to implement policies impacting large swaths of the country even as Trump garners cable news attention.
As an affidavit was released on Friday revealing that 184 classified files were found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., in January, for example, Biden’s White House brought Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council, into the press briefing room to explain details of the student debt forgiveness plan.
But it was also clear that Biden’s more combative approach was no aberration.
As he was boarding Marine One outside the White House, reporters asked about claims that Trump had a standing order that all documents that he removed from the White House were automatically declassified.
Biden took on a sarcastic voice as he impersonated Trump. “ ‘I’ve declassified everything in the world. I’m president. I can do it all!’ ” he said. “C’mon!”
Biden has previously been willing to criticize Republicans, and his 2020 presidential campaign was largely about defeating Trump, who he argued was a unique threat to American values. But as president, he has often avoided taking on his GOP adversaries directly or personally.
That changed on Thursday, when Biden differentiated between Republicans he viewed as reasonable and those he did not. “I respect conservative Republicans,” he said. “I don’t respect these MAGA Republicans.”
Republicans criticized Biden for some of his rhetoric, calling it “despicable” and saying it was out of line. Pointing to the large number of Americans who voted for Trump, they suggested that Biden’s dismissing the Republican philosophy as “like semi-fascism” was similar to Hillary Clinton’s aside in 2016 that half of Trump’s supporters were a “basket of deplorables.”
But it was clear that Biden’s comments — a portion of which were made at a fundraiser where reporters were present, but TV cameras were not on — were delivered as intended. The White House defended the remarks Friday, including the line that much of the GOP has descended into “semi-fascism.”
“You look at the definition of fascism and you think about what they’re doing in attacking our democracy, what they’re doing and taking away our freedoms, wanting to take away our rights, our voting rights ― I mean, that is what that is,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “It is very clear.”
Biden himself, asked Friday what he had meant by “semi-fascism,” smiled broadly. “You know what I mean,” he said.
Biden advisers saw the events of Thursday night — which included a fundraiser that brought in $1 million and a rally that attracted 4,000 people, about double what they planned for — as the kickoff to the midterm campaign season. The president plans to visit Wilkes-Barre, Pa., next Tuesday to talk about gun crime, and advisers say he intends to travel a couple of times per week.
But while his approval ratings have ticked up recently, many candidates in the country’s most competitive races have avoided having Biden come to their states and districts. Still, they are hoping he can raise money and help frame the national debate.
That means more denunciation of Republicans, as well as proclaiming his own accomplishments. “You are going to just see a lot more of the same, because it is running on what he has gotten done, his vision and what he is fighting for,” said a Biden adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preview strategy.
Biden has long had a reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker and has boasted of working with staunch Republicans of yore, even those who are anathema to other Democrats, from Jesse Helms to Strom Thurmond. Many Democrats who ran against him in 2020 questioned his ability to directly take on a newer, more scorched-earth version of the Republican Party.
But throughout his career, Biden has also relished the partisan warfare that comes every two years. It was one reason that President Barack Obama chose him as his running mate.
“Policy debates in the senate floor are one thing, but policy debates become political debates in November every two years, and that is his time to shine,” said Scott Mulhauser, a longtime Democratic consultant who served as Biden’s deputy chief of staff during the 2012 Obama-Biden campaign. “There is no one who loves throwing and landing a haymaker more than he does for a cause he believes in.”
And if Biden may at times court Republicans, there are other moments when he goes on the attack.
“We’ve pivoted,” Mulhauser said, “from the season of legislating to the season of politics and elections.”
Biden still touts his bipartisan legislation — including infrastructure spending, a law to aid veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and an effort to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing — but his attempts to deal with Republicans in the current Congress have largely faded.
The president once predicted there would be an “epiphany” and an “altar call” among Republicans when Trump departed the scene, making them again open to bipartisanship. But on Thursday he declared, “This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is a different deal.”
And Trump has not gone anywhere. “There’s been this great civil war in the Republican Party that’s played out, and it seems clear Trump won that civil war,” said Ben LaBolt, a strategist who worked in the Obama administration and has advised Biden’s team.
He added, “We’re approaching Election Day, that contrast is coming into view and the White House is saying: ‘We’re not going to pretend that this is on the level anymore.’ ”
Michael Scherer contributed to this report. | 2022-08-26T23:45:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | "Semi-fascism": Rhetoric signals newly aggressive Biden strategy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/biden-midterms-rhetoric-strategy-campaign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/26/biden-midterms-rhetoric-strategy-campaign/ |
Steven Hoffenberg, brash swindler behind massive Ponzi scheme, dies at 77
Steven Hoffenberg in 2019. (Melissa Bunni Elian/For The Washington Post)
Steven Hoffenberg, a financial swindler who was behind one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history, defrauding investors of more than $450 million, was found dead Aug. 23 at his home in Derby, Conn. He was 77.
On Aug. 26, Derby Police Lt. Justin Stanko confirmed the death, saying dental records from the body matched those of Mr. Hoffenberg, who had died about a week earlier. Stanko said the body showed no signs of trauma. Police were awaiting a toxicology report.
Mr. Hoffenberg may not have carried the infamous name recognition of major financial fraudsters such as Bernie Madoff or the rise-and-fall arbitragers like Ivan Boesky. But, for a time in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Mr. Hoffenberg was as big and brash as any in New York’s wild-ride years.
Mr. Hoffenberg’s operation was an array of interconnected companies falsely portrayed as a deep-pocket corporate parent and used to lure investors with promises of high returns. The inner circle included Mr. Hoffenberg’s main partner Jeffery Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking decades later before an apparent jail cell suicide in 2019.
For years, the money flowed. Mr. Hoffenberg traveled by private jet, had a Long Island mansion and a townhouse on Manhattan’s posh Sutton Place with a chauffeured limousine on standby.
He made an unsuccessful play to buy now-defunct Pan American World Airways in 1987, was briefly owner of the New York Post in 1993 after saving it from bankruptcy and launched a women’s focused newspaper, Her New York, that folded in early 1994 even as the Securities and Exchange Commission was closing in.
“Whatever money could buy, Steven Hoffenberg had,” a New York Times profile observed at the time.
It all unraveled quickly in 1994. Mr. Hoffenberg was charged by U.S. prosecutors in connection with “one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history” — a tally of more than 200,000 victims stretching from Midwestern pensioners to a Catholic church in his native Brooklyn. Mr. Hoffenberg pleaded guilty and in 1997 was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Mr. Hoffenberg decided not to directly implicate Epstein in the proceedings. But after Mr. Hoffenberg’s release from prison in 2013, he took aim at his former protege. In a 2016 lawsuit that was later dropped, Mr. Hoffenberg called Epstein the “architect” of the scheme and argued that he should help repay some of the court-ordered $463 million in restitution.
How Hoffenberg and Epstein build an empire of deceit
Epstein was found hanged in his cell in 2019 at a Manhattan detention facility after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, including allegedly abusing teenage girls. He had pleaded not guilty. In June, Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of helping Epstein groom and abuse the girls.
Mr. Hoffenberg, meanwhile, had tried to rebuild his post-prison life as a purported born-again Christian, sometimes offering to help victims of his scheme try to pry money from Epstein.
“There’s so much going through my mind about me and Epstein,” he told NPR in 2019. “It’s a lifetime of errors. How do you correct a lifetime of errors?”
Building a Ponzi
Steven Jude Hoffenberg was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 12, 1945, with twin brother Martin. By Mr. Hoffenberg’s own admission, he grew up with an eye for a quick buck. He enrolled in City College of New York but dropped out before getting a degree.
He reportedly pleaded guilty in 1971 to attempted second-degree larceny for trying to steal a diamond ring in New York. Mr. Hoffenberg at first denied the media reports but later testified in a civil trial that he once been “involved in a theft.” He liked to call his early run-ins with the law “my little blemishes.”
According to Mr. Hoffenberg’s accounts, he started out with $2,000 to create a business that plied the ragged edges of New York retail. He gained a reputation in the “bust-out” trade, taking over a failing business and buying goods on credit to sell for cash — leaving the suppliers unpaid.
In the early 1970s, he founded Towers Financial Corp., a debt-collection agency that bought — at pennies to the dollar — outstanding bills owned to hospitals, banks and other companies. It would become the center of a business web built for the Ponzi scheme, a shell game that draws in investors with false promises of big returns.
It began in 1987 when Towers acquired the parent of two insurance companies, Associated Life Insurance and United Fire. It gave Mr. Hoffenberg cash flow — and the opportunity to begin inflating the financial health of Towers as a health-care conglomerate.
About this time, Mr. Hoffenberg said he was introduced to the former Bear Sterns trader Epstein through British arms dealer Douglas Leese. “The guy’s a genius” at selling securities, Hoffenberg said Leese told him. But Leese warned: “He has no moral compass.”
Beginning in 1988, Towers began selling more than $270 million worth of promissory notes, offering returns of up to 16 percent. The target was often investors of modest means: retirees, people with disabilities or on fixed incomes. Also scammed was a “significant portion of the population” of Cape Verde, an archipelago off the African mainland, according to a 2013 court petition.
Mr. Hoffenberg and Epstein used the business as personal cash machines, pulling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for themselves, court documents showed. Mr. Hoffenberg wrote checks to pay expenses on his private plane and monthly $25,000 checks to Epstein.
The looting of the two insurers left 4,000 Illinois customers out $9 million that had been set aside to cover medical bills. In Ohio, 2,200 customers lost about $1.8 million, prosecutors said.
“[Epstein] was my guy, my wingman,” Mr. Hoffenberg told CBS News in 2019.
They failed in a hostile takeover of Pan Am, one of the world’s premier airlines before it shut down in 1991. The pair also fell short in a bid to acquire Emery Air Freight in 1988.
In 1993, Mr. Hoffenberg pulled the New York Post from bankruptcy, taking control of everything but the paper’s real estate. He wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the front-page New York Post headline “Hoffenberg saves the Post” when he surrendered to the FBI in 1996.
“I’m here for the glory,” he told New York Post columnist Mike McAlary after gaining control of the newspaper. “I want to have a voice in New York City. I’ve made millions. Now I want to have some excitement.”
It came apart after just three months amid a staff revolt over layoffs and Mr. Hoffenberg’s mismanagement. The paper went to real estate magnate Abe Hirschfeld before being reacquired by Rupert Murdoch.
Mr. Hoffenberg wasn’t done with the New York newspaper world, though. In late 1993, he launched Her New York, a newspaper intended to appeal to professional women. It folded after four months and five editors.
At the time, Mr. Hoffenberg’s personal assets were frozen by a court after the SEC opened investigations into allegations that Towers Financial was cheating investors through “grossly exaggerated” financial statements.
One investor, Anthony Mattos of Hanford, Calif., told the New York Times that he gave Towers Financial $43,000 of his retirement savings from 24 years at a tire company. “I thought I would have more time when I retired,” he said, “but I guess not.”
Mr. Hoffenberg is survived by a daughter, Haley Hasho, with former fiancee Mary Hasho. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
In recent years, Mr. Hoffenberg portrayed himself as pained about the scams and bringing along Epstein.
“I deeply regret that I met Jeffrey Epstein who is somebody that has haunted me for over 30 years,” he said in the 2020 documentary “Filthy Rich.” “Without me, he wouldn’t be the billionaire he is today and these poor girls would not be raped.” | 2022-08-27T00:06:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Steven Hoffenberg, Ponzi swindler and Jeffrey Epstein mentor, dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/26/hoffenberg-ponzi-epstein-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/26/hoffenberg-ponzi-epstein-dies/ |
A U.S. AH-64 Apache attack helicopter flies over Bradley Fighting Vehicles on patrol in the countryside of the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province on April 20, 2022. (Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)
Clashes between U.S. troops and Iran-backed militias in Syria this month have prompted new scrutiny of the Pentagon’s mission in Syria, as tit-for-tat strikes threaten to escalate tensions in the region.
The U.S. decision to target facilities in eastern Syria on Tuesday — which officials say had been used to launch attacks against U.S. forces by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — threatens to heighten tensions with Iran as the two countries try to reach a deal to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
“Iran’s malign activities are increasing on a number of fronts right now,” said William Wechsler, director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council and a former high-ranking Pentagon official. “And to the degree that there’s anyone in the IRGC that thinks that as they increase the amount of malign activities that they’re doing in the region, that an appropriate thing on the list is to also target Americans, they need to be dissuaded.”
The United States has long maintained an unofficial policy that when provocations put American lives at risk, they demand a response. In recent months, as the attacks escalated however, the Biden administration has wrestled with when to respond and how to avoid sparking a wider conflict, according to officials and analysts.
President Biden’s order to strike targets belonging to Iranian-backed groups reflects a decision to act — “to protect and defend the safety of our personnel, to degrade and disrupt the ongoing series of attacks against the United States and our partners, and to deter the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iran-backed militia groups from conducting or supporting further attacks on United States personnel and facilities,” the president said in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Since Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla took over U.S. Central Command in April, there has been a push to ensure that Iran cannot carry out attacks against U.S. forces and assets with impunity, according to a person familiar with planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The sense is that doing nothing will lead to more attacks, the person said, posing risks to U.S. forces that outweighs any danger of potential escalation.
The U.S. strikes drew an almost immediate response from the militias, which fired rockets into Green Village and a Conoco gas field in Deir el-Zour in northeastern Syria, injuring three U.S. troops. The United States responded with a barrage of counterfire, using heavy artillery, gunships and attack helicopters to destroy rocket launchers. Four Iranian-backed fighters were killed, the Pentagon said.
Officially, the United States is in northeastern Syria to counter the Islamic State, a holdover of the multiyear campaign to destroy the terrorist group. The current mission is considered to be “noncombat,” but U.S. forces often come in to conflict with other forces — including the militias aligned with Iran.
That can pose complications and risks, said Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, who previously served as a staff member at the Pentagon and in Congress.
“Just because it’s a noncombat mission doesn’t mean that those forces aren’t somehow at risk,” Lord said.
That reality has prompted fresh concerns from some lawmakers, who worry that a new, more aggressive approach to Iran — while justifiable under the president’s constitutional powers as commander in chief — could lead to further fighting.
“It is past time for a rethink about the wisdom of having so many Americans so thinly spread across the region,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a statement Thursday, noting that while Biden’s actions this week were commendable, “I remain concerned about any decision to undertake unauthorized military action when the Constitution and the War Powers Act require the President to come to Congress to obtain that authority.”
The decision to strike Iran drew criticism this week not just from Democrats concerned about escalation on the battlefield, but also from Republicans, who saw Iran’s actions this week as reason to abandon nuclear negotiations.
“These attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. servicemembers show why we CANNOT cut a bad nuclear deal with #Iran,” Rep. Michael McCaul (Tex.), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote in a Twitter post this week. “The Biden administration must walk away from this bad deal that will fuel Iran’s terrorist attacks on U.S. soldiers and civilians.”
Others in the GOP also raised recent attacks and plots against Iranian dissidents and critics in the United States — attempts on the lives of former national security adviser John Bolton and women’s rights activists Masih Alinejad — to argue against a nuclear deal.
“Iran’s attempts to assassinate American officials and dissidents on American soil should immediately disqualify them from any sanctions relief from the United States,” said Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Ala.), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.
Pentagon officials said the clashes in Syria and nuclear negotiations are separate issues.
“Separate from the JCPOA, we will defend our people no matter where they’re attacked or when they’re attacked, so the two really are not interrelated,” said Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, referring to the Iran nuclear deal by an acronym for its official title, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “My hope would be that these groups would have received the message loud and clear, and that we will not see similar behavior in the future.”
Lord said it is unlikely the attacks this month in Syria are related to the nuclear negotiations. Iranian officials, he said, are “just not that well coordinated,” especially since the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
“Some of the things that we’re seeing may or may not be directly ordered by Iran, because these guys have some independent agency, as well,” Lord said of the militias. | 2022-08-27T00:24:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fighting between U.S. troops and militias draws scrutiny to Syria role - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/26/us-iran-militias-syria-fighting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/26/us-iran-militias-syria-fighting/ |
HARTLY, Del. — A woman who died in a two-car collision this week at a Delaware intersection was a former General Assembly candidate.
Delaware State Police announced on Friday that Catherine Samardza, 67, of Hartly, died from Wednesday’s accident after she was taken to a local hospital. Samardza ran unsuccessfully for a state Senate seat in 2012 as an independent candidate, The News Journal of Wilmington reported.
Police said their investigation determined that Samardza initially stopped at a stop sign before for “unknown reasons” she left and drove into the truck’s path.
Samardza’s passenger was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, while the pickup truck driver was treated at the scene for minor injuries, according to police. | 2022-08-27T00:24:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-legislative candidate dies in Delaware crash this week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ex-legislative-candidate-dies-in-delaware-crash-this-week/2022/08/26/290406da-2592-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ex-legislative-candidate-dies-in-delaware-crash-this-week/2022/08/26/290406da-2592-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Bills rookie punter Matt Araiza stands on the field before a previous preseason game this month. (Adrian Kraus/AP Photo)
CHARLOTTE — The Buffalo Bills withheld rookie punter Matt Araiza from their preseason game Friday night in Charlotte against the Carolina Panthers, one day after he and two of his former teammates on San Diego State University’s football team were accused in a civil lawsuit of participating in a gang rape of a minor during a party last year at an off-campus residence.
Araiza traveled with the team to Charlotte and was seen at Bank of America Stadium before the game. But a person familiar with the situation said before the game that Araiza would not play. According to that person, the Bills had no plans, as of about an hour before the scheduled 7 p.m. kickoff, to immediately release Araiza on Friday, as the team continued to gather information about the allegations.
Araiza was not available to comment, and his agent, Joe Linta, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit, dated Thursday, was filed in California Superior Court in San Diego County. It identifies the plaintiff as Jane Doe and says she was a 17-year-old minor on Oct. 17, at the time of alleged incident. The lawsuit says Araiza, then 21, and then-teammates Zavier Leonard and Nowlin (Pa’a) Ewaliko “gang-raped Doe … inside the Residence during a Halloween party.”
The plaintiff attended the party, held at Araiza’s residence, with three of her female friends, according to the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff “was observably intoxicated upon arrival.” Araiza handed her a drink in the home’s backyard, the lawsuit says, adding that “this drink not only contained alcohol, but other intoxicating substances.” The plaintiff told Araiza which high school she attended, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that Araiza “led Doe over to the side yard of the house where he told her to perform oral sex on him.” She complied, according to the lawsuit, which says that Araiza “pulled her up from the ground, turned her around facing away from the party, and used his penis to penetrate her vagina from behind.”
Araiza allegedly led the plaintiff to a bedroom inside the house with at least three other men, including Leonard and Ewaliko, present. According the lawsuit, the plaintiff “went in and out of consciousness while she was being raped.” The lawsuit says the plaintiff immediately informed her friends that she had been raped, and she reported the allegations to the police the following day.
According to the lawsuit, Araiza “confirmed having sex with Doe” during an Oct. 28 “pretext call” with her, during which she received instructions from detectives, and he told her to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases because he’d tested positive for chlamydia. When Doe asked Araiza, on direction by the detectives, whether they’d had “actual sex,” according to the lawsuit, Araizia “changed his tone” and said, “This is Matt Araiza. I don’t remember anything that happened that night.”
Araiza’s attorney, Kerry Armstrong, has denied the rape allegations, telling the Los Angeles Times that the accusations are “a shakedown.” The Times reported that the district attorney’s office is weighing evidence submitted by detectives to determine whether to file criminal charges.
The NFL declined to comment Friday through a spokesman. The league’s personal conduct policy would not apply to Araiza in this case, even if the accusations are substantiated, because the alleged incident occurred before the Bills choosing him in the sixth round of this year’s NFL draft. The policy does say that a player who violates it while he’s in the league would be subject to enhanced or expedited discipline if there is a prior history of misconduct, including before he enters the NFL.
Bills LS Reid Ferguson is punter-less during warmups. pic.twitter.com/urDnIc1p6l
“We are aware of the matter but will decline further comment at this time,” the league said in a statement Thursday.
The Bills released veteran punter Matt Haack on Monday, seemingly giving the job to Araiza. But their decision to withhold him from Friday’s game put his status with the team in doubt. Quarterback Matt Barkley handled the Bills’ first punt against the Panthers.
“We were recently made aware of a civil complaint involving Matt from October 2021,” the Bills said in a statement Thursday. “Due to the serious nature of the complaint, we conducted a thorough examination of this matter. As this is an ongoing civil case, we will have no other comment at this point.”
Jhabvala reported from Charlotte. Maske reported from Washington. | 2022-08-27T00:25:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bills punter Matt Araiza withheld from preseason game after rape accusation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/matt-araiza-bills-rape-accusation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/matt-araiza-bills-rape-accusation/ |
Gonzaga, eager to forget about last year, begins 2022 emphatically
Eagles 37, Lions 14
Gonzaga's Brendan Lee returns the opening kickoff for a touchdown Friday in his team's home game against Carroll. (Tommy Gilligan/For The Washington Post)
With the roars of cheers surrounding him, Gonzaga wide receiver Brendan Lee caught the opening kickoff near the 15-yard line Friday night. The senior ran to his left, and when he crossed midfield, only the home turf separated him from the end zone.
After scoring 15 seconds into the season opener, Lee sprinted to the sideline and chest-bumped Gonzaga students, who could hardly contain their excitement before the game started and now were downright bonkers.
The most recent memory for Gonzaga, coming off its worst season in over a decade, was losing four of its final five games. Lee set a new tone to start this fall. The No. 8 Eagles, in the first game of the season for both teams, never let up in their 37-14 win over No. 11 Archbishop Carroll in Northwest Washington.
“It’s a feeling like nothing in the world,” Lee said. “When you’re playing, you kind of black out. Then you realize what happened after.”
Friday’s matchup featured a history that extends decades. Carroll won 13 Washington Catholic Athletic Conference titles — still the second-most in league history — between 1960 and 1988 under Coach Maurice “Maus” Collins. After retiring, Collins began coaching Gonzaga in 1991 and built the Eagles into a powerhouse.
When 1991 Carroll graduate Robert Harris returned as the Lions’ coach in 2015, he struggled to accept a new reality. Gonzaga has developed into one of the D.C. area’s elite teams; Carroll is in the WCAC’s second division. In Gonzaga’s previous seven wins over Carroll in the past decade, the Eagles won by at least three touchdowns.
Carroll and Gonzaga scrimmaged the past two seasons, but this fall both teams had an open slot to begin the year. Carroll was coming off its best campaign in recent history, finishing 13-1 and with a D.C. State Athletic Association championship. Gonzaga suffered its first losing season since 2008 last year after quarterback Caleb Williams, now USC’s starter, graduated.
Gonzaga proved the gap between the teams remains large. The Eagles led 25-0 at halftime Friday.
“I couldn’t be happier with how we played,” offensive lineman Evan Link said. “The atmosphere in this place is amazing. It’s a different feeling.”
The play that began Gonzaga’s spurt was in the works all week. Gonzaga coaches pinpointed the left side of the field as Carroll’s weakness on kickoffs. Before the kick, Lee told his teammates the Eagles would return it for a touchdown. Lee has always been fast, but he enhanced his speed in the offseason, hoping to move past last season’s disappointment.
Lee later caught a 19-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter to clinch the win, allowing Gonzaga players to celebrate joyously with their fans for the first time since last October.
“We’re ready to keep doing it,” Lee said. “We’re confident. We’re excited to play the rest of our schedule.” | 2022-08-27T02:39:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gonzaga football tops Archbishop Carroll to start 2022 football season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/gonzaga-carroll-football-wcac/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/gonzaga-carroll-football-wcac/ |
Nationals Manager Dave Martinez gives rookie Cade Cavalli a pat on the shoulder following the right-hander's debut Friday night. Cavalli was lifted in the fifth inning of a 7-3 loss to the Reds, yielding all seven runs. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
In the ideal version of Cade Cavalli’s major league debut, maybe Luke Voit knocks down a bouncing throw from shortstop CJ Abrams in the first inning, keeping a run from crossing home. Maybe, then, Cavalli carries a small groove into the second, because maybe TJ Friedl’s RBI double never happens and he walks to the dugout unscathed.
Maybe he doesn’t throw another curveball that plunks a batter. Maybe, just maybe, the Cincinnati Reds don’t pound back-to-back doubles in the third inning, tilting the scoreboard in the wrong direction.
Maybe Cavalli, the Washington Nationals’ top pitching prospect, leads his team to a win.
But on Friday, in front of a big crowd by this year’s standards, Cavalli began his career with some bad and good in a 7-3 loss to the Reds. Abrams’s throw, a throw that could have ended the first, skipped past Voit and a run came in. Cavalli’s curve, the secondary pitch he used most, was erratic early, leading to two free passes and a spiked pitch count that finished at 99 in 4⅓ innings. The third inning brought those doubles from Kyle Farmer and Donovan Solano, batting second and third in a mostly unrecognizable Reds order.
On Cavalli’s final line: 13 outs, six hits, three hit batters, two walks and seven earned runs, the last three scoring after he left the bases loaded for Erasmo Ramírez in the fifth. The highlights: Six strikeouts, a one-two-three fourth and a nimble play when Voit bounced a flip to Cavalli at first. From here, Cavalli, 24, has a month to sharpen his command. And that he’ll do that in Washington is no small deal, especially for a rebuilding club that has him penciled in as a cornerstone.
“You can’t really judge a kid’s first outing, because I know that regardless of what they tell you, the nerves are there, right?” Manager Dave Martinez said. “He wants to impress. He wants to show that he belongs here. So baby steps, but I thought the stuff was really good.”
The liftoff was not smooth. But it came on a night with a 24-year-old Keibert Ruiz catching, a 21-year-old Abrams at shortstop and Luis García, 22, returning from the injured list to play second.
To make room for Cavalli, the Nationals optioned right-hander Cory Abbott to the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings. To clear space for García, they released third baseman Maikel Franco on his 30th birthday. Washington (42-84) is trying to build its next contender straight up the middle. Cavalli figures to be a large part of that, even if he couldn’t limit the Reds (49-75) and an offense that entered 23rd in the majors in on-base-plus slugging percentage.
The Nationals, ranked 24th in that category, managed two runs in seven frames against Mike Minor, who shaved his ERA to 6.10. But whatever the bats did, all eyes were on Cavalli and how he’d look after dominating for Rochester since early July. His four-seam fastball topped out at 97.8 mph. His change-up, a developing pitch, accounted for a pair of strikeouts. For their doubles, Farmer and Solano crushed fastballs. Friedl, a left-handed batter, lifted a curveball that got too much of the plate. Throughout, Cavalli appeared to battle grip issues caused by the D.C. humidity, often reaching for the rosin bag or rubbing his right hand in the dirt.
“I felt very comfy … at home,” said Cavalli, who was cheered on by a big group of family, friends and most of the staff that coached him at Oklahoma University. “I really thought I was going to be more nervous and I liked how I felt, I liked my mental space up there. There was no panic, I felt composed. But I got to execute more. It comes down to that.
“You have to execute pitches and I didn’t do that tonight and I didn’t put my team in position to win a ballgame. I got to be better.”
The Nationals have not had a pitcher earn a win in 42 games and counting. They have not had a starter win his debut since Stephen Strasburg’s historic arrival in 2010. In sum, in so many ways, Cavalli is like his organization, growing from the ground up.
So bumps were expected for a righty who needed 109 pitches to complete five innings for Rochester in his previous start. He is not fully refined. He’s not supposed to be as a rookie with one mixed bag of an outing to his name. If his defense is a bit sturdier, the numbers would look better. And if the numbers looked better, that wouldn’t change how little a single game matters in the long run.
“I thought the fastball played well tonight and the change-up, as well. I was very pleased with the change-up,” Cavalli said. “Slider, I just got to work on a little bit and my curveball has always been there. So I’m not worried about it and I’m very excited for this next start.”
Since 2017, the Nationals have drafted four pitchers in the first round: Seth Romero, Mason Denaburg, Jackson Rutledge and Cavalli. Yet as of 7:05 p.m. on Friday, once Cavalli began his night with a 97-mph heater, he was the only one of the four to make a start for Washington. Romero, picked in 2017, logged three relief appearances during the pandemic season and has otherwise struggled to stay healthy. Denaburg, picked in 2018, has thrown 55 ⅔ innings — 35 ⅓ of them this year — because of repeated injuries. Then Rutledge, picked in 2019, is just clicking with the low-Class A Fredericksburg Nationals due to his own health issues.
Any prospect, first-rounder or otherwise, is liable to hit or miss. What teams can do, though, is minimize the risks through scouting and player development, two areas the Nationals have struggled in in recent years. But with Cavalli, with a pitcher picked in 2020 who climbed the system in two years, there’s hope that a spot atop their future rotations will be filled.
When he exited after plunking Friedl in the fifth, a crowd not used to cheering stood for a loud ovation. Cavalli will have another chance against the Oakland Athletics in six days.— | 2022-08-27T03:27:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals' Cade Cavalli makes MLB debut vs. Reds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/cade-cavalli-mlb-debut-nationals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/26/cade-cavalli-mlb-debut-nationals/ |
Dear Carolyn: My girlfriend “Gina” and I might have slightly rushed moving in together because of covid. We’d only been dating for about five months at the time things shut down, but I didn’t want to stay in an apartment with a rowdy roommate — long story — and she didn’t want to be alone so we took the plunge. We’re not kids — I’m 32 and she’s 38 — and we were already talking about moving in together, so it felt right. And it has been great, we are so right for each other in so many ways, except one little thing: She’s kind of a neat freak, in my opinion.
When we were dating, I appreciated how well she cleaned up before I came over. Now I know she’s like that all the time: no clutter, no dust, everything always spotless. After she uses the bathroom or kitchen, she immediately cleans up so well you can’t tell she was even in there. She vacuums and dusts every day, she even wipes her dog’s paws after walks and empties the cat’s litter box after every use.
She never nags me about leaving a mess, but if I don’t immediately clean up, she’s always right behind me doing it for me, so I feel compelled to try to be as neat as her. I’m far from a slob but I’m definitely not like her.
I thought she would relax after we got used to living together, but she’s the same as when I moved in. I’m not sure how to approach the subject because I don’t even have a legitimate complaint. What am I going to say? Please don’t clean up after me? I don’t want to live in a house this clean?
In a way that’s true, though. I like a place that’s more “lived in.” One of us is outside the norm. It’s her, isn’t it?
— Living With a Neat Freak
Living With a Neat Freak: That’s about a 5- or 6-to-0 ratio of internal dialogue to communication with Gina. Most of it rationalizing everything away before you have to say it, so you can avoid the whole thing.
That is as far “outside the norm” as any of Gina’s cleanliness tactics.
So let’s start at the end and work backward: “I like a place that’s more ‘lived in.’” There you go! Perfectly fair thing to say. And Gina likes a place that’s spotless. Why can’t you start there with the premise that you’re both fine, just different?
“I’m not sure how to approach … because I don’t even have a legitimate complaint.” For one thing, yes, you do: You’re not comfortable with her cleaning up behind you if you let a moment pass before doing it yourself. That too is fair and it’s important to say, because right now Gina has no idea she’s bugging you, which is not fair to Gina.
And, for another thing, claiming you have nothing to complain about is either disingenuous or self-erasing. Let’s say for argument’s sake (and consistency, since “you’re both fine, just different”) your concern isn’t even a complaint, per se. It’s still something true about you that affects how you feel with her. Therefore, it’s valid.
Recognize that. Then say something, because not doing so is a lie of omission. “I’ve been trying to live by your cleanliness standards, because I love and appreciate you, but it’s not comfortable for me. I’m wondering if there are ways we can compromise.” If there aren’t, there aren’t, but at least it’ll be on the table. (Just don’t leave it there.) | 2022-08-27T04:06:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Girlfriend's tidiness feels like pressure to keep up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/27/carolyn-hax-girlfriend-chores-pressure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/27/carolyn-hax-girlfriend-chores-pressure/ |
About 200 Chinese companies whose shares trade in the US, including JD.com Inc. and Baidu Inc., are facing the prospect of being delisted from New York exchanges if American regulators continue to be blocked from fully reviewing their audit documents. The companies say Chinese national security law prohibits them from turning over the work papers. A preliminary agreement between Beijing and Washington could lead to a resolution of the decades-long dispute over access.
The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted after the Enron Corp. accounting scandal, requires that publicly traded companies make their audit work papers available for inspection by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, more than 50 jurisdictions work with the board to allow the reviews while only two -- China and Hong Kong -- don’t. The discrepancy drew attention when Chinese chain Luckin Coffee Inc., which was listed on Nasdaq, was found to have intentionally fabricated a chunk of its 2019 revenue. In 2020, Congress passed the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA), which says companies can’t trade on US exchanges if American inspectors can’t review their audits for three consecutive years.
In March, the SEC started publishing its “provisional list” of companies identified as running afoul of the requirements. By the end of July the list had grown to more than 100 companies, including Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo Inc. and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. In all, the PCAOB said that in the 13-month period ending Dec. 31, 2021, 15 audit firms it oversees signed audit reports for 192 businesses based in China or Hong Kong -- none of which can be reviewed by the regulator.
In what could be a significant breakthrough, US and Chinese regulators announced on Aug. 26 that they had reached a preliminary agreement to allow PCAOB inspectors to access audit work papers and personnel. While the deal was heralded as a significant step, American officials are unlikely to declare whether they are satisfied with the access until December 2022. Ahead of the deal, several of China’s largest state-owned businesses announced plans to delist from the US, and tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said it would seek a primary listing in Hong Kong, a signal that it could be preparing to exit US markets.
Critics say Chinese companies enjoy the trading privileges of a market economy -- including access to US stock exchanges -- while receiving government support and operating in an opaque system. In addition to inspecting audits, the HFCAA requires foreign companies to disclose if they’re controlled by a government. The SEC is also demanding that investors receive more information about the structure and risks associated with shell companies -- known as variable interest entities, or VIEs -- that Chinese companies use to list shares in New York. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has said that more than 250 companies already trading will face similar requirements.
They are attracted by the much bigger and less volatile pool of capital, which can potentially be tapped much faster. China’s own markets, while giant, remain relatively underdeveloped. Dozens of firms pulled planned initial public offerings in 2021 after Chinese regulators tightened listing requirements to protect the retail investors who dominate stock trading, as opposed to the institutional investors and mutual-fund base active in the US. And until recently, the Hong Kong exchange had a ban on dual-class shares, which are often used by tech entrepreneurs to keep control of their startups after going public in the US. It was relaxed in 2018, prompting big listings from Alibaba, Meituan and Xiaomi Corp. | 2022-08-27T04:58:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What’s Driving US-China Spat Over Audits, Delistings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-driving-us-china-spat-over-audits-delistings/2022/08/27/cd193e28-25bc-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-driving-us-china-spat-over-audits-delistings/2022/08/27/cd193e28-25bc-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
OAKLAND, Calif. — Gerrit Cole struck out 11 on the way to his first win since July 17, Aaron Judge hit a three-run homer in the fifth for No. 49 on the season and New York beat Oakland.
MIAMI — Mookie Betts homered twice and hit a go-ahead double in Los Angeles’ five-run 10th inning.
TORONTO — Mike Trout hit a two-run home run to become the highest-scoring player in Angels history, Reid Detmers and four relievers combined on a six-hitter, and Los Angeles halted a six-game losing streak. | 2022-08-27T04:58:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canha, Alonso rally Mets to 7-6 win over Rockies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/canha-alonso-rally-mets-to-7-6-win-over-rockies/2022/08/26/a54bc9b2-25ba-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/canha-alonso-rally-mets-to-7-6-win-over-rockies/2022/08/26/a54bc9b2-25ba-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
“He had a great slider tonight... (and got) a lot of bad swings on it against a really, really good club,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “What an impressive performance, going eight shutout on the road against the Houston Astros — pretty special.”
“Just showcasing my ability against the best team... means a lot,” he said. “But it doesn’t really matter who’s across the diamond, I’m going to go out there and try to do my thing every time.” | 2022-08-27T04:59:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rookie Bradish spins gem as Orioles blank Astros 2-0 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/rookie-bradish-spins-gem-as-orioles-blank-astros-2-0/2022/08/26/766056ca-25b7-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/rookie-bradish-spins-gem-as-orioles-blank-astros-2-0/2022/08/26/766056ca-25b7-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
A decade after Fukushima disaster, foes of nuclear power reconsider
Michelle Ye Hee Lee
Water vapor rises from the cooling tower of nuclear power plant of Neckarwestheim in Neckarwestheim, Germany on Aug. 22, 2022. (Michael Probst)
The war in Ukraine is reviving global interest in nuclear power, since gas and oil shortages have reshaped energy markets and driven up fossil fuel prices.
From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones. The shift is especially notable in Japan and Germany, where both turned decisively against nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. And it comes even as fears mount about another potential nuclear disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
Atomic regulators are warily eying Zaporizhzhia, which lies on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. Russian forces have held the power plant there since March. The situation there is increasingly dangerous, nuclear experts say. In recent days, the plant has bounced on and off the grid, and has gone into backup power for cooling its nuclear reactors.
For now, the threat of disaster in Ukraine is not playing a major role in the German or Japanese discussions, even though it has reinforced nuclear skeptics’ concerns over the technology.
The global reevaluation shows the extraordinary degree to which the war in Ukraine is reshaping long-held positions about nuclear power. Europe is bracing for a winter of energy shortages in which it may run out of natural gas supplies, potentially forcing it to shut down factories and leave citizens shivering. Worldwide, prices for fossil fuels have skyrocketed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, with Europe, the United States and a few other countries around the world significantly scaling back their purchases of cheap Russian oil and gas.
This week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that his government is considering constructing next-generation nuclear power plants with the goal of making them commercially operational in the 2030s. The government may also extend the operational life of its current nuclear power plants.
German policymakers, meanwhile, are considering prolonging the life of three final nuclear power plants that had been scheduled to go offline at the end of the year. The reprieve would be temporary — just a year or two to get through the current energy crisis — but it would still mark a significant policy reversal that has been a major focus of Germany political life for the last decade.
“As much as I think it is wrong to go into nuclear power, I have to ask myself this question,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said this weekend at an open government day in Berlin. “It is complex.”
Any decision in Germany would have to be approved by Habeck and his Green party — which was founded decades ago to focus on abolishing nuclear power. It remains a core policy position of the party — but so is opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine and a desire to be as strong as possible against the Kremlin.
“We are in really special times,” said Dennis Tänzler, a director of Adelphi, a Berlin-based climate think tank. “The bottom line is that German climate and energy policy has been shaped since Fukushima by a cross-party consensus that overall the technological risks, the security risks, are just too great.”
Natural gas in Europe is 10 times more expensive than it was a year ago, and the continent is now competing with Japan and other global buyers for supplies of liquified natural gas, driving up prices even more.
Electricity supplies are also especially low in Europe right now, because much of France’s nuclear power fleet is offline awaiting safety certifications. Although unrelated to the war in Ukraine, it has exacerbated the overall energy crisis.
Even some prominent nuclear critics appear open to keeping existing plants online for longer, though they oppose building any new ones.
“There’s no connection between building nuclear power plants and dealing with the price spike caused by the loss of Russian gas,” since they take at least a decade to construct, said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, a London-based climate think tank.
But, he said, extending the life of existing reactors could make sense. “If you can do it safely, and it’s worthwhile economically to do it, I don’t see any good reason not to extend the life of nuclear reactors,” he said.
Germany has come under intense pressure from its neighbors to keep its nuclear plants operating. Doing so is meant to address overall shortfalls in energy supplies expected as a result of the halt in purchasing of Russian fossil fuels.
But critics of a possible extension of the life of the German nuclear plants say that keeping them online would not actually solve the needs of the current crisis.
Germany generates about 15 percent of its electricity from natural gas-fired power plants, but most of those also are used to generate heat, meaning nuclear plants can’t fully substitute for them. And given the limits of the transmission grid between Germany and France, critics say, France might not be able to tap all of the excess electricity from the German nuclear plants. An analysis earlier this year by Simon Müller, the director for Germany at Agora Energiewende, a Berlin-based climate think tank, found that extending the life of the nuclear plants would address only 1 percent of the predicted energy shortfall.
“If we look at an extension of a couple months, you still have the safety issue and there still is the question of proportionality,” Müller said. “From a gas perspective, there really is a fairly robust view that this isn’t the big thing in the gas system. The discussion really is in the electricity side.”
Unlike in Germany, where the focus is on short-term plans to overcome the crisis, leaders in Japan are opening the door to new, long-term investments in nuclear power. Japan is confronting a fuel shortage following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and working to meet its climate goals with carbon-free energy.
After the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami that triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the Japanese government had decided against building new nuclear plants. It also limited how long nuclear reactors would be in operation in an effort to reduce risks from aging reactors more prone to accidents. Japan, which is regularly hit by earthquakes, had feared a repeat of the Fukushima disaster, which displaced forced 165,000 people from their homes, mainly due to radiation exposure.
But the country’s leaders are now taking nuclear energy more seriously than at any time since the disaster.
In 2019, nuclear power generation accounted for 6 percent of Japan’s electricity supply, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Japan will now aim to increase that to 20 to 22 percent. By the summer of 2023, Kishida hopes that the 17 nuclear power plants that have passed the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s safety screening will be back online. Kishida has directed nine of them to prepare for electricity shortages this winter. So far, six of the 17 are being used.
Kishida has instructed the government to come up with a detailed plan by the end of the year, with the goal of stabilizing the country’s energy supply and “gaining the understanding of the public” on the role of nuclear power in developing a sustainable source of energy. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is now studying how to safely build next-generation nuclear power plants.
Japan, the world’s third largest economy, is heavily dependent on imports for resources — including liquefied natural gas. It has struggled with electricity shortage as it shuts coal-fired plants and decommissions nuclear plants, and has increasingly faced challenges with soaring liquified natural gas prices as Europe buys up global supplies to substitute for gas that is no longer flowing from Russia.
There are signs that a shift in nuclear strategy may now be more palatable to the Japanese public, especially after harsh winter temperatures and a summer heat wave spurred government pleas for residents to conserve energy.
In March, the Japanese government issued its first “electricity shortage alert” after an earthquake in Fukushima hit six thermal plants, and knocked out power for millions of homes, including in Tokyo. The government issued warnings of blackouts and asked households to shut off their power, despite a cold snap that caused temperatures in Tokyo to drop to 35.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Another similar warning came in June.
Some recent polls have shown greater support for bringing nuclear plants back online, especially in an effort to stabilize power sources. According to a recent poll that asked about reviving nuclear reactors that have cleared the safety review, 58 percent were in favor while 39 percent opposed. The poll, conducted by Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun and the Waseda University Institute for Advanced Social Sciences, was the first time in five years of public polling by the organizations that supporters outweighed opponents.
Still, nuclear energy remains a divisive and deeply emotional issue in Japan, and the shift is likely to trigger renewed safety concerns. Opponents of Kishida’s strategy have said it is possible to reduce the country’s carbon footprint without depending on nuclear power, yet the country has not fully explored all options for clean energy sources, including solar, wind, hydro and geothermal power.
Opposition parties in Japan will likely seize on the issue, making it politically difficult for local government leaders to reboot nuclear plants. Given the political sensitivities, power companies may also have concerns about investing in new nuclear plants.
“It is extremely important to secure all options for rebuilding a stable energy supply for the future, while ensuring safety, as we have done in the past,” said Hirokazu Matsuno, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary, in a briefing Thursday. “We are aware that there are various opinions on the subject, but we will continue considerations while discussing closely with experts.”
Lee reported from Tokyo. Julia Mio Inuma in Tokyo contributed to this report. | 2022-08-27T08:01:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Germany, Japan rethink nuclear power phaseout after war in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/27/nuclear-germany-japan-ukraine-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/27/nuclear-germany-japan-ukraine-russia/ |
Brittany Alkonis, second from left, with her three children outside the White House in Washington on Aug. 24. (Alkonis family)
Ridge Alkonis is serving a three-year prison term in Japan for a car crash that left a Japanese man and woman dead. As the United States’ efforts to free Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan from Russia make headlines amid the heightened tensions of the war in Ukraine, the Alkonis family hopes their fight will draw attention to detained Americans around the world — not just those held by adversaries, but also allies.
Alkonis has repeatedly expressed sorrow over the deaths of the man and woman. His family, with help from friends, paid $1.65 million to the victims’ relatives as restitution, they said. “They are victims, 100 percent innocent. They are definitely victims,” Brittany Alkonis said in a phone interview this week.
But the family also says Ridge Alkonis received an unusually harsh punishment; 95 percent of Japanese citizens convicted of similar charges are granted suspended jail terms, according to Japanese Ministry of Justice data — meaning they aren’t sent to prison.
In 2019, of the 1,252 people charged with causing death through negligent driving, only 4.6 percent — about 58 people — ended up doing actual prison time, according to a government white paper. The great majority — 95.4 percent, or around 1,194 people — received a suspended sentence.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), whose constituents include the Alkonis family, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) have taken up the naval officer’s cause. In a phone interview this week, Levin accused investigators of violating Alkonis’s rights, saying his initial detainment after the crash involved violations of the status of forces agreement between the United States and Japan.
Julia Mio Inuma in Tokyo contributed to this report. | 2022-08-27T08:01:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy Lt. Ridge Alkonis, jailed in Japan, asks Biden to intervene - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/27/ridge-alkonis-japan-navy-lieutenant-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/27/ridge-alkonis-japan-navy-lieutenant-crash/ |
A trans Harvard student died in Indonesian custody. Now, Peru wants answers.
An Aug. 26 protest in Lima, Peru, to demand justice for Rodrigo Ventosilla, a transgender man and Harvard graduate student who died on the Indonesian island of Bali. (Angela Ponce/Reuters)
The death of a Harvard transgender student in Indonesian custody has caused uproar in his native Peru and the United States, with authorities in Lima pressing for an investigation into the circumstances of his detention and death after the public backlash.
Rodrigo Ventosilla, a 32-year-old public administration graduate student, died on Aug. 11, five days after he was detained on the resort island of Bali for alleged possession of marijuana, Reuters reported.
Ventosilla, a transgender man who was on honeymoon with his partner, died due to “failure of bodily functions” after taking medication that had not been confiscated by authorities, Bali police told Reuters. Ventosilla’s spouse was separately detained but has been released, according to the Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper.
Local law enforcement said that the case is closed, but Ventosilla’s family said in a statement shared by activists that he was a victim of “police violence,” and “racial discrimination and transphobia.” They also claim that he was denied access to legal counsel while in detention and that he had been carrying prescribed mental health medication.
Harvard’s Kennedy School, where Ventosilla was a student, urged an “immediate and thorough investigation” into “very serious questions that deserve clear and accurate answers.”
Balinese police did not immediately return requests for comment on Saturday.
Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim-majority country — has a long history of gender diversity, and the tourism-dependent island of Bali is relatively queer-friendly, said Andreas Harsono, a Jakarta-based researcher at Human Rights Watch. But LGBTQ citizens are accorded limited rights and same-sex partnerships are not legally recognized. In recent years, the LGTBQ community has also been subject to a crackdown under public obscenity and pornography laws as the government courts socially conservative voters.
The Peruvian foreign ministry initially dismissed allegations of law enforcement misconduct, instead echoing Indonesian claims that Ventosilla’s detention was due to alleged illegal drug possession and unrelated to race and gender identity.
Its initial reaction was seen by many Peruvian LGBTQ activists as tone-deaf. Diversidades Trans Masculinas, a transgender advocacy group founded by Ventosilla, launched an online protest to demand justice. (Peru’s left-wing president has said he opposes same-sex marriage and does not regard LGBTQ issues as a priority, according to the Associated Press.)
“His death should not go unpunished,” Diversidades Trans Masculinas wrote in a Facebook post. A small group of demonstrators also gathered outside the foreign ministry in Lima on Friday.
Amid the backlash, Peru’s foreign minister met with Ventosilla’s mother and sister. The government then issued a new statement that praised Ventosilla as a “brilliant student” and activist; it also said it had asked Indonesian authorities to look into the student’s treatment.
Karen Anaya Cortez, a LGBTQ activist and friend of Ventosilla’s, said in an interview that there has been “no clarity” on the case. She said Ventosilla’s family had told her that the couple had been prescribed medical marijuana but that Bali police had ignored their explanation.
Indonesian activists have pushed for the legalization of medical marijuana but a top court recently held that existing prohibitions are constitutional, according to Bloomberg News. The Southeast Asian nation retains capital punishment as an option for certain drug-related crimes.
“Indonesia’s drug laws are extremely strict,” said Harsono, the Human Rights Watch researcher. “Some foreigners can be totally unaware that such restrictions also apply to the owning and consumption of recreational drugs, not just buying and selling.”
Li reported from Andong, South Korea. Marina Lopes in Singapore contributed to this report. | 2022-08-27T08:40:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Peru asks Indonesia to investigate death of Harvard trans student - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/27/transgender-death-rodrigo-ventosilla-indonesia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/27/transgender-death-rodrigo-ventosilla-indonesia/ |
The Artemis I Orion capsule sits atop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Launch Pad 39B as NASA prepares to send Orion to circle the moon. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
After years of setbacks, NASA’s SLS moon rocket gets ready to fly
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—The rocket was late again. The initial launch date, the end of 2016, was long gone. And now in the spring of 2019, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator at the time, was told it’d be another year or more before NASA’s Space Launch System would be ready.
He was furious and threatened to replace the rocket with one built by the fast-growing private space sector, such as SpaceX. But Bridenstine’s attempt to bench NASA’s rocket was quickly rebuffed by the powerful interests, including Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman of the appropriations committee, that have shepherded the SLS through the thickets of controversy that have followed it from its inception more than a decade ago.
Now, after years of cost overruns and delays, a series of damning reports by government watchdogs, and criticisms from space enthusiasts and even parts of NASA’s own leadership, the SLS endures, as only a rocket built by Congress could.
Today it stands on Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, towering at 322 feet, taller than the Statue of Liberty. NASA is scheduled to make its first attempt to launch Monday at 8:33 a.m., a test flight that will propel the Orion crew capsule, without any astronauts on board, into orbit around the moon. A successful launch will mark a major milestone in NASA’s quest to return astronauts to the lunar surface under its Artemis program.
NASA officials have stressed that this is a test, a mission designed to see how the vehicle performs before they load astronauts onboard. That could happen as soon as 2024, when astronauts would orbit, but not land on, the moon. A landing could come in 2025 or 2026.
Some 100,000 people are expected to jam the Florida Space Coast for the launch, excited to watch NASA write a new chapter in the history of human space exploration. But even if all goes as scheduled with Monday’s launch, called Artemis I, NASA officials warned that there could be surprises that force them to go off-script.
“In all of our excitement, I want to remind people this is a test flight,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in an interview. “We're going to stress this thing in a way that we would never do with humans on board. And so I just want to bring everybody back to reality.”
Then again, there is nothing simple about the SLS, a huge, complicated beast that holds 700,000 gallons of supercooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It has four first-stage engines and two solid-fuel side boosters. The core stage avionics computers have 18 miles of cabling and more than 500 sensors. At liftoff, it weighs 5.75 million pounds.
The Artemis I mission is scheduled to last 42 days, 3 hours and 20 minutes, sending the Orion spacecraft on a roundtrip mission that would reach 40,000 miles beyond the moon and travel a total of 1.3 million miles.
But in a way, the odyssey to get to this point has been even more arduous — an at-times painful, torturous path that shows how Washington works, and, ironically, why NASA has been unable to return to the moon since the last of the Apollo missions 50 years ago.
Standing atop its launch pad, the SLS is a glorious sight, but also a contradiction. More powerful than the Saturn V that launched the Apollo astronauts to the moon, the SLS is a symbol of engineering prowess and American might that evokes the 1960s-era exploration nostalgia. But costing more than $23 billion, it also is a monument to parochial congressional interests, stultifying bureaucracy and contractor mismanagement.
As Casey Drier, chief advocate and senior space policy advisor at the Planetary Society, recently asked in an essay, “Given its cost, the existing launch capabilities provided by private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and RocketLab, and the real progress of super heavy-lift private rockets, why does the SLS still exist?”
(BREAK)
The RS-25 engines on the rocket were repurposed from the space shuttle. Combined, they flew in 21 shuttle missions, including one from 1998. They were designed to be reused again and again. But on the SLS they’ll be discarded for good.
Asked about the long-term viability of the SLS, Nelson said that SpaceX’s Starship and other heavy-lift rockets, such as Blue Origin’s New Glenn, are still in development and not yet ready to fly—though Starship appears to be getting close. “What we know is that SLS is the only human-rated rocket that can go into space now,” Nelson said. “And it will go farther, deeper into space than anywhere we have ventured with humans before.”
In his analysis, Dreier noted that every single year since the program began in 2012, the SLS has received additional funding from Congress above what NASA had requested. In all, the SLS has received an additional $335 million, or 22 percent above NASA’s requests.
The next day, Bridenstine reiterated his support for the SLS program in a blog post, saying the agency is “committed to building and flying SLS.” The day after that, he tweeted: “Good news: The @NASA and Boeing teams are working overtime to accelerate the launch schedule of @NASA_SLS.”
Under the Trump administration, the Artemis program was given high priority, especially by Vice President Mike Pence, a space enthusiast who pushed NASA to move with a sense of urgency. President Biden’s administration also has embraced Artemis, meaning the program is the first human deep-space effort to survive subsequent administrations since Apollo.
He said that some challenges that could emerge “that can cause us to come home early, and that's okay. We have contingencies in place.”
NASA rolled the rocket to the pad earlier this month preparing for launch. Set along the Florida cost, it can be seen for miles, a stunning sight on the Space Coast skyline that has generated renewed enthusiasm for America’s space program here. “We are going,” has become the NASA motto for the mission, a slogan ready made for social media and marketing banners.
A few hundred miles away, along the Gulf Coast in Texas, another rocket has been mounted on a launchpad: SpaceX’s Starship booster, which is preparing to go through a series of tests before its own launch attempt, which could come within the next year. SpaceX, it turns out, is going, too. | 2022-08-27T10:20:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA SLS moon rocket readied for first launch as Artemis program begins - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/27/nasa-sls-moon-artemis-human-space/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/27/nasa-sls-moon-artemis-human-space/ |
Founders of the online Friends With Benefits social club hope to change the way people use the blockchain
The Idyllwild Town Crier dubbed FWB Fest the "crypto Woodstock.” (Glen Han)
The crypto world has had a rough summer. Prices of bitcoin and etherium have plunged in recent months. NFT mania has cooled after the market became flooded with low-quality projects and scams. And regulators have begun cracking down on a slew of crypto companies that have allegedly engaged in dubious behavior and potential fraud.
Despite this dim outlook, over 500 people recently took over the campus of Idyllwild Arts Academy, a private arts boarding school in Idyllwild, Calif., for a weekend festival that local media deemed to be the “crypto Woodstock.”
The event was called FWB Fest, and the artists, writers, musicians, software engineers, start-up founders and creatives who gathered were all united through their membership in Friends With Benefits, a crypto-based online social club that you must purchase a token to join.
At FWB Fest, crypto’s downturn was welcomed. “I don’t think this festival would have worked six months ago,” said Alex Zhang, 26, one of Friends With Benefits’s leaders and an event organizer.
The people at FWB Fest weren’t the typical crypto conference attendees who jet between Miami and San Francisco. Many were working artists or creative professionals. They were there because they believe that the blockchain, crypto’s underlying technology, can be used to build a better world through community and decentralization.
“The thing that’s happening on a bigger level,” Yancey Strickler, the former co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter told a room of fellow attendees during a session titled “Beyond Crypto,” “is that we’ve had many decades of extreme and increasing individualism as the primary value, where each of us are expected to stand on our own … but now we’re recognizing the hollowness of that, and the loneliness of that and the grind.”
“I think we’re all getting our sea legs after decades of neoliberal market brain individualism,” said Austin Robey, a Friends With Benefits member and co-founder, along with Strickler, of Metalabel, a platform that offers tools for online collectives.
In Hollywood, a crypto platform that isn’t just a way to lose your savings
While the crypto world’s public image has been largely defined by a brand of hyper-capitalist libertarian individualism, attendees at FWB sought to leverage the crash to usher in a different, more inclusive techno utopia centered on community and creativity.
“Crypto is obviously divisive, and there’s a lot of language and tools that we are comfortable using that don’t translate to the mainstream,” an attendee said. “But how we’re going to have a greater positive impact on more people’s material lives is by building tools on public ledgers that aren’t hyper-financialized.”
A $100 million group chat
In 2020, entrepreneur and artist Trevor McFedries began exploring how to bring a more mainstream audience to crypto. He’d long been at the forefront of art and technology, having built a company that created the first virtual influencer, but after the pandemic hit he began delving into the world of Web3, the broad and somewhat fluid term that serves as shorthand for a new type of internet that’s built on decentralized blockchains. While Web 2.0, the current iteration of the web, is defined by a handful of big tech companies that own and control user content and data, advocates of Web3 see its decentralized systems as leading to more egalitarian ownership.
In a single weekend, McFedries created a specialized cryptocurrency token and sent it around to his friends in the music, art, design, and tech worlds as well as to a few Twitter followers.
The “FWB” token granted them access to a Discord community called Friends With Benefits. The community functions as a DAO, or “decentralized autonomous organization,” which is basically a blockchain-based co-op where each token holder owns a stake in the organization.
In the two years since, Friends With Benefits has taken off. Buoyed by the crypto boom, the group chat grew into a full-fledged online social club, generating media attention and attracting thousands of high-profile members including celebrities and music artists like Erykah Badu and Azealia Banks.
As the organization scaled, the price to purchase a token to gain membership also grew, at one point reaching $175 for a single token. Last year, Friends With Benefits raised $10 million from investors including the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in a funding round that valued it at $100 million.
The group used the funding, in part, to expand offline. It hosted events and parties in Los Angeles, Miami and New York, growing its cultural footprint. At one point the group discussed a futuristic dream of one day taking over a defunct liberal arts college and hosting a festival. When it was discovered that a friend of a friend worked in admissions at the arts academy, after some negotiation with the school and local town officials, FWB organizers landed the venue, and FWB Fest was born.
Crypto utopia in the woods
Throughout the weekend, Idyllwild Arts Academy was transformed into a utopian summer camp where discussion groups and talks during the day on topics like “Social justice and web3” and “Where do NFTs go from here?” gave way to evening performances by musicians including Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from the anarchist feminist group Pussy Riot, experimental electronic music producer Oneohtrix Point Never, and rapper JPEGMAFIA. James Blake played a piano set.
There was a natural wine garden, ambient sound baths where attendees could sip mushroom tea, late-night stargazing and a pool party. Andrea Hernandez, founder of the newsletter Snaxshot, who has become an oracle in the food and beverage world for her ability to spot up-and-coming products before they make it to grocery store shelves, curated a custom snack booth, and NFT marketplace OpenSea collaborated on a gallery of digital art.
Throughout the weekend, directors Adam Faze and Ari Cagan chased down attendees for interviews for an upcoming reality show backed by Mad Realities, a web3-oriented production company, based on the festival.
Outside of the talks, however, the topic of crypto seemed secondary, if it was mentioned at all.
Greg Bresnitz, the cities and events programming lead for FWB, said that was intentional. FWB, he said, was really about “using Web3 as a coordination mechanism for culture.” “For the last two years [crypto] has been at the forefront,” he added, “and now with the crash it folds into the background.”
Other attendees agreed. “There are a lot of people here who are relative novices to web3, but are really into culture and that’s their entry point into FWB,” said Cherie Hu, founder and publisher of Water & Music, an independent newsletter and research DAO focused on music and technology. “I haven’t even heard many buzzwords or people talking about crypto in the corner,” said Patrick McDermott, an artist in Los Angeles.
Because of the serendipitous nature of its founding, Friends With Benefits never started with a mission statement or business plan. “It started as a scene” said Zhang. “Most people who are part of a scene can’t recite the mission statement of a scene.” During one session, on the second day of the festival, members brainstormed on how to expand FWB into new endeavors, whether it was product launches or another festival.
Everything about FWB Fest was organized in conjunction with FWB Discord members. “The community is full of people who work in varied industries, so when we put on events we try to hire from within the community,” said McFedries.
Zhang said he thinks of Friends With Benefits as a city. “New York City, for instance, throws festivals,” he said. “There are also restaurants, museums, parks, etc. FWB feels less like a company and at this stage, and more like a small town that’s got a vibe.”
Despite the recent contraction in the crypto market, everyone at FWB Fest remained steadfast in their dedication to using the blockchain, crypto’s underlying technology, and said they hope that FWB’s success will usher in a new era of web3, built around community and inclusivity.
“We’re trying to build while we can before big awful corporations come and ruin it for everybody,” said Joshua Eustis, a music artist known as Telefon Tel Aviv. “Capitalism is superimposed on our way of life and our financial system and the fact that web3 is currently wildly inadequate to correct for that, is not enough of a reason for us to abdicate our responsibility to shape it in its early condition.”
“If we don’t,” he said, “some a--hole will later and we’ll have to use it.” | 2022-08-27T12:13:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FWB Fest in Idyllwild was crypto's Woodstock - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/27/fwbfest-crypto-artisits-idyllwild/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/27/fwbfest-crypto-artisits-idyllwild/ |
The county executive says he is focused on communicating his agenda which includes affordable housing, transit and health disparities
SILVER SPRING, MD — JUNE 29: County Executive Marc Elrich talks with officials while getting a firsthand look at a shiny new electric bus while checking the progress as Montgomery County nears completion of construction on its microgrid enabled electric bus terminal, in Silver Spring, MD. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, who squeaked past wealthy businessman David Blair to win the Democratic primary in Maryland’s largest county after a recount, had one main takeaway from his razor-thin victory: he has to do a better job communicating.
Elrich, who clinched the Democratic nomination this week by 32 votes, in an interview Friday pledged to redouble efforts waylaid by the pandemic in key areas such as affordable housing, transit and health equity. He blamed the close race with Blair on negative ads and on voters not being fully aware of some of the actions he’s taken over the past four years.
“We need to do a better job of communicating, letting the public know what we’re doing, make sure they understand what we’re doing,” he said.
Elrich, who has been blasted on multiple sides over his stances on development, for not doing enough to lure businesses and being slow to advance climate change and criminal justice initiatives, finds himself where he was in four years ago when he won by 77 votes: without a mandate from voters.
“This is the second very close race. That is unusual in itself,” said former County Executive Isaiah Leggett, who led the county when Elrich served on the county council. Leggett did not endorse in the Democratic primary, which in deep-blue Montgomery typically decides who secures the seat. Elrich faces Republican Reardon Sullivan in November.
Leggett said he thinks Elrich’s reputation as anti-development is overstated and that his position on affordable housing needs to be clarified. Elrich’s wants the county to preserve and create affordable housing for those on the bottom of the income level, not focus so heavily on building housing overall.
In his second term, he wants to pass legislation that would put a 4.4 percent cap on annual rental increases. The bill stalled last year. He also wants to create mental health clinics in the county — a need exasperated by the pandemic, and fund bus rapid transit on Route 586 between Wheaton and Rockville and Route 355 between Rockville and Germantown.
Leggett said Elrich has a lot of work to do in the community and with elected officials, particularly the new council whose support he will need to advance his agenda.
“The bottom line is that the voters did not give him a mandate and that should inspire some humility and reevaluation in his approach, in particular when it comes to affordable housing,” said Adam Jentleson, chairman of Affordable Maryland PAC, which ran two ads against Elrich. “It’s one thing to post about a third of the vote in a divided primary [in 2018], it’s another matter to post such a low share when you are an incumbent. That says a lot. Voters want to see an all-the-above approach to affordable housing and I hope that is something that he will do this time around.”
In his first term, Elrich tangled with Gov. Larry Hogan over pandemic response, investments in transportation projects and the display of a flag associated with the Blue Lives Matter movement. He and some members of the council have had brushes over the pace and type of development in the county and Elrich’s decision to provide hazard pay to county government workers during the pandemic.
Leggett said Elrich should use the changing political landscape, which will come from a new council and new governor coming on board, as a chance to reset.
“You can’t write all of [the slim win] off as someone else has outspent you,” Leggett said of Elrich’s slim victory. “Part of that has do with how people perceive what you are doing and how people view your leadership.”
Dolores Milmoe, a civic activist from Poolesville who has known Elrich for nearly four decades and is part of his fiercely devoted army of supporters, said Elrich has been misunderstood, describing him as a “different kind of politician.”
“He’s not the kind who puts his finger in the air and says where is the wind blowing,” Milmoe said. “He’s more principled than that.”
She doesn’t expect the close race to affect a second term.
But even Milmoe said she does expect to see the veteran politician make some adjustments, including his “overly cautious” nature of avoiding discussing projects he’s working on.
“It’s one of the things he said himself,” she said.
Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Montgomery), an early and ardent supporter of Blair, said Elrich needs to collaborate more effectively with state and local elected officials, community leaders, members of the nonprofit profit sector and others who want to see the county flourish.
“I am hopeful that … this will be a wake-up call for Marc Elrich,” she said. “Marc had a terrible relationship with Gov. Hogan, which hurt Montgomery County. He virtually never collaborated or communicated with the state delegation and always seemed too busy to reach out and partner with county council members … That simply cannot be the way he continues to serve in this next four years.”
Scott Peterson, a spokesman for Elrich, said the “No 1 point of contention” between Hogan and the county executive was the ideological difference they have over the widening of Interstates 495 and 270, which is also a defining issue for the Republican governor. Elrich hired a liaison to work with the council and holds briefings with the county delegation, which has been successful in securing for transit, and the development of the Life Sciences project, he said.
Still, given the razor-thin margin that led to Elrich’s victory, Kagan predicted that Wednesday was the start of the 2026 election cycle.
“Marc clearly does not have a mandate to lead and there will be dozens of potential candidates who are going to think about how to position themselves for 2026,” she said. “I fear that we’re going to have a politically and potentially contentious next four years.”
Council member Will Jawando, who won his primary bid reelection bid last month, said he remains hopeful about Elrich’s second term.
He said Elrich, a liberal Democrat who served 12 years on the county council before running for county executive, was challenged in his first term with a faction on the council who wanted to run for county executive and “they were always trying to find ways to pick a fight. I’m hopeful there will be less of that. We have to work together on behalf of the residents.”
He said Elrich’s close win “underscores the fact that [his second term] is going to need to be collaborative” and said communication will be crucial for Elrich to make inroads — even among the new members.
Gaithersburg council member Laurie-Anne Sayles, who won the Democratic nomination for one of the county’s three at-large seats, said she held a fundraiser in her home for Elrich four years ago. She was part of his transition team and was hopeful about his progressive agenda, but then, she said, “the pandemic happened.”
Now she is looking forward to working closely with Elrich on tackling affordable housing, improving education and addressing climate change.
If elected in November, Sayles would be part of a historic majority group of women serving on the council.
“There’s been a lot of planning and a lot of ideas that just need to be brought to light and I think this is the council that’s going to make that happen,” she said.
Sayles said Elrich appears to be more willing to listen.
“As public servants you have to listen more than you pontificate on your issues,” she said. “He is open to other perspectives. He’s going to have to be. There will be six new perspectives. None of us are wall flowers. We will be very vocal in advancing our visions, our priorities and we have to work together to get things done.”
Karina Elwood contributed to this report. | 2022-08-27T12:22:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery County executive must collaborate, critics and supporters say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/elrich-montgomery-second-term/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/elrich-montgomery-second-term/ |
Here’s How Hedge Funds Are Speculating on Justice
Analysis by Katharine Gemmell | Bloomberg
For much of history, it’s been illegal to turn other people’s legal claims into investments. That changed in the 1990s, when Australia allowed financiers to fund insolvency cases. Litigation finance is now a multibillion-dollar global industry that’s drawing in private equity funds and big institutional investors on the promise of double-digit returns. Critics say this secretive, largely unregulated practice is tipping the scales of justice by showering money on litigants and turning courtrooms into casinos.
1. How does litigation funding work?
A law firm will often shoulder the costs of a case on behalf of its client, then a specialized hedge fund will reduce its financial exposure by making periodic payments to cover expenses. If the case succeeds, the backer typically receives a multiple of the funds invested, or a percentage of the damages, whichever is higher. If the suit fails, the funder loses the money and the litigant doesn’t need to pay them back. Funders most often support commercial cases but can get involved in a range of actions, from environmental suits to personal injury and banking fraud cases and even the divorces of Russian oligarchs. Proponents say the practice allows individuals or firms with fewer resources to pursue valuable claims that might otherwise be abandoned, and means claimants can hire their preferred counsel without being left out of pocket.
2. How much money is in it?
Swiss Re research found there was around $17 billion invested in litigation finance globally in 2020, with more than half of that deployed in the US. In the UK, $2.7 billion was on the balance sheet of the country’s top 15 funding firms last year, almost double the figure three years earlier, according to data from law firm RPC. Some of the biggest specialist funders are Burford Capital LLC and Omni Bridgeway Ltd. Big investment firms including D.E. Shaw & Co., Elliott Management Corp. and TowerBrook Capital Partners have also got involved. The industry has tended to back plaintiffs but is now pushing to fund defendants too.
3. What are the potential returns?
Funders generally receive around 30-40% of damages and costs recovered, said James Popperwell, a lawyer at London-based Macfarlanes. Litigation funders in Australia have been making an average annual return on investment of 400%, with a 96-98% success rate, according to figures cited by the US-based Institute for Legal Reform in April. The industry’s prospects look bright as opportunities for litigation tend to grow during economic downturns, when disputes and insolvency proceedings multiply.
4. What makes a successful investment?
A fund manager will spend a lot of time researching the plaintiff and the legal landscape before getting involved. They will also consider how good the lawyers are and whether the other party has the means to pay out. A good case usually has damage multiples much larger than the case budget.
5. What are the risks for investors?
Investments are difficult to sell out of and cases can take years to resolve. Investors often get nothing back if the case isn’t successful and can end up on the hook for heavy legal costs, sometimes also for the opposing side. Even if a case is won, the amount the court awards can fall below expectations. So funders usually build a portfolio of diversified cases to spread their risk.
6. And for plaintiffs?
As funding agreements are private, judges are often in the dark about how much money the injured party has committed to pay investors if their claim is successful. Sometimes a fund will end up with a bigger slice of the damages than the claimant.
7. Any other problems?
Critics say the vast sums now invested in litigation are distorting the purpose of the judicial system: Rather than being about resolving disputes, cases are now about declaring winners and losers. Ever more marginal, riskier cases are coming to court, sucking commercial defendants into litigation when they should be focused on running their businesses, and leading to frivolous or abusive cases that have only a slim chance of success. In 2015, a long-running litigation campaign against oil giant Chevron Corp., backed by several different funders, was found by a New York court to have devolved into a racketeering conspiracy involving bribery, coercion, and fabricated evidence. Those accusations saw funders pull out of the case.
8. What do regulators say?
Following a run of speculative class-action suits in Australia, the government there is starting to act. Proposed legislation would restrict fees for class-action lawyers and funders to a maximum 30% of any total payout and give courts the power to approve and adjust funding agreements. The US and European Union are also looking to tighten rules around disclosure of third-party litigation funding. | 2022-08-27T12:35:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s How Hedge Funds Are Speculating on Justice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-how-hedge-funds-are-speculating-on-justice/2022/08/27/a4f9dc68-2602-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-how-hedge-funds-are-speculating-on-justice/2022/08/27/a4f9dc68-2602-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
From left, Brandy Smith and Ariel Watson walk through the Prince Hall Village Apartments in Port Arthur, Tex. (Tamir Kalifa for The Washington Post)
PORT ARTHUR, Tex. — On any given day at the Prince Hall apartment complex, the breeze might carry soot and stink of burning tar. Black smoke might billow overhead as excess gas is burned at one of the refineries directly across the road. The fumes make Ariel Watson’s head ache until she can barely think. Jeremy Roy, 9, closes his windows against air that “stinks like farts.”
For the mostly Black and Latino residents of Port Arthur, Tex. — home to three oil refineries, two liquid natural gas terminals and at least 40 other facilities that release toxins into the air — the burning of fossil fuels is a local health hazard as well as a planetary threat. But as Democrats celebrate the passage of a hard-fought climate deal, with historic investments in clean energy as well as concessions to the fossil fuel industry, locals fear that the legislation may leave their community behind.
To secure the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), party leaders committed to auction off more drilling leases and relax permitting requirements for new projects. Experts say the measures may prolong the environmental damage many Americans now face — especially in areas where petroleum products are produced for export. Now, people in Port Arthur and other industrial communities say they must fight to maintain what power they have left: the ability to comment on — and push back against — polluting infrastructure.
“We’re battling for a clean environment, not just for the sake of climate change, but for the sake of the air that we breathe and the water that we drink,” said Hilton Kelley, a Port Arthur native and founder of the Community in Power and Development Association, a local environmental justice group. “We’re battling for our life.”
‘We’re completely surrounded’
Positioned in the far eastern corner of Texas, close to the Gulf and just 13 miles from where the state’s oil was first discovered, Port Arthur has been a hot spot for refining and manufacturing petroleum products for more than a century.
And for just as long, says activist John Beard Jr., the city has been a “sacrifice zone” — one of many low-income communities of color that have borne the cost of the country’s economic growth.
Many residents are descended from Black Louisianans who fled the neighboring state’s brutal Jim Crow laws — people who could be pressed into the lowest-paid and most dangerous jobs in the industry. Though their salaries enabled them to buy homes and build a vibrant community, discriminatory housing practices confined Black residents to the west side of town, squeezed between the railroad tracks and the refinery fence lines.
There, they breathed air that hasn’t always met federal standards for lung-irritating ozone, cancer-causing benzene and other harmful substances. They endured the routine disruptions of flaring, fires and noxious fumes. Hurricanes repeatedly unleashed toxic chemicals, and a 2019 chemical plant explosion forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes. According to filings with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Jefferson County facilities have reported 80 unpermitted chemical releases, known as “emissions events,” in the past year.
“It’s terrible,” said Thomas Hollins, who has had to undergo daily dialysis treatments for nearly a decade. The 70-year-old blames a life of pollution exposure for his illness, and for the deaths of both his parents and three siblings from cancer.
Studies show that cancer risk among Texans rises the closer they get to a refinery. Other research has found that air pollution from oil and gas facilities is associated with chronic kidney disease. The mortality rate from lung cancer in Port Arthur is 29 percent higher than the state average, according to the Texas cancer registry, and 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the proportion of Port Arthur metro area residents reporting chronic kidney disease was 21 percent higher than the Texas average.
Industry representatives and public officials point to the jobs and tax revenue that refineries create.
“The companies themselves are part of the fabric of those communities,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which advocates for offshore oil, gas and wind energy businesses. “It’s an economic base that ... provides funding for schools and hospitals and infrastructure.”
Yet Beard — a former refinery operator who launched the Port Arthur Community Action Network in the wake of destruction caused by Hurricane Harvey — said residents haven’t seen much benefit. Most plants hire workers from outside the city, he said. Downtown is desolate, and the region’s unemployment rate is about twice the Texas average.
Meanwhile, Port Arthur residents are seeing some of the harshest climate consequences of burning fossil fuels. With global average temperatures at least 1.1 degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than in the preindustrial era, the area faces rising sea levels, brutal heat waves and increasingly disastrous storms.
Hollins’s house had to be completely gutted after floodwaters from Harvey devastated the city five years ago. And the storms keep coming: Laura and Delta in 2020, Nicholas in 2021.
He thrust out a clenched fist. “Port Arthur is like this,” he said. “And all the problems are like this” — he circled an index finger around his enclosed hand. “We’re completely surrounded.”
‘A double-edged sword’
On a recent August afternoon, the air thick with mosquitos and humidity, Kelley led two Washington Post reporters down the concrete walkways of the Prince Hall apartment complex, smiling at residents and fist bumping their kids.
The day before, the House of Representatives passed the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act, dedicating an unprecedented $369 billion to clean energy and other climate priorities. The legislation uses tax credits to bring down the cost of technologies like solar panels, electric vehicles and heat pumps, and establishes a program to curb emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that often leaks from fossil fuel infrastructure. Independent analyses suggest it could curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the end of the decade, bringing the country closer to what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate change.
It also dedicates tens of billions to address environmental injustice: $3 billion worth of grants to help communities fight pollution and adapt to climate change; $1 billion for energy upgrades in affordable housing; $3 billion to reduce emissions at ports. Roughly 60 percent of the $27 billion set aside for a national “Green Bank” must be directed toward helping people in disadvantaged areas.
But bundled with these investments was a provision that required the federal government to auction off drilling leases on public lands and waters before it could permit solar and wind projects — tying renewable energy development to fossil fuels.
“To me, it’s kind of like a double-edged sword,” Kelley told Danielle Nelson, a Prince Hall resident. “You know, it’s a good deal in some ways. It’s pouring money back to our state and eventually to our community. But it’s a bad deal they had to give up so much of the regulation that helps protect our health and the environment.”
Nelson nodded. “Right, right.” Her 11-year-old son Damarion has suffered from lung problems since they moved to Prince Hall three years ago. Some days he complains the air feels like fire, each breath he takes a rattling wheeze.
“If they’re sucking up more oil, they’re going to be producing more petroleum products, but yet we’re the ones that have to breathe the mess,” Kelley continued. “Not to mention the potential for spillage in the Gulf.”
“Contaminating the water,” Nelson chimed in. “Crawfish coming out green.”
She remembers when oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill washed up on local beaches and devastated the fishing industry. In the past year, incident data show, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has responded to 34 smaller oil and chemical spills in the Gulf of Mexico, including two well malfunctions near Port Arthur that leaked crude oil into a marsh.
Environmental justice and climate activists had fought for an end to federal leasing as a way to start scaling down U.S. production of polluting fuels. They note that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found the world cannot afford to build new oil wells, gas pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure to have a chance of achieving its climate goals.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government will be required to auction offshore drilling leases in the Gulf for at least 10 years.
It’s impossible to know where companies will choose to drill, what those wells will yield or exactly where the oil will end up going as more leases become available, said Lorne Stockman, research co-director for the environmental advocacy group Oil Change International. But it’s reasonable to anticipate that at least some of it will keep Port Arthur’s refineries churning.
“These communities have dealt for decades with the incredible power of this industry,” Stockman said. “And now, just as they kind of see some light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of a real transition starting to happen, they’re concerned that something like this bill could lock them in for decades more.”
‘The area of least resistance’
Activists are more worried, however, about what comes next.
In exchange for Manchin’s vote on the new law, Senate Democratic leaders promised to support his proposal to streamline the federal permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act, the “Magna Carta” of environmental law. Congress is expected to take up that legislation as soon as it returns from August recess.
A draft version of Manchin’s proposal obtained by The Post suggests that this permitting “side deal” would cut the time period for public comment on projects from three months to two, tighten deadlines for agency environmental reviews and set a 5-month statute of limitations on lawsuits against potentially problematic permits.
“We are already the area of least resistance,” Kelley said, adding that without strong legal protections for public input, “You don’t have the money, you don’t have the power. Basically, you don’t have a voice.”
Oil and Gas Watch, an initiative of the Environmental Integrity Project that tracks fossil fuel development, lists at least two proposed projects requiring federal permits in Port Arthur: A new liquefied natural gas terminal and associated compressor stations, and an expansion of an existing LNG terminal that would allow it to export more fuel.
At these facilities, gas is compressed to 1/600th its initial volume and stored in massive tanks before it is shipped overseas. The turbines that drive the compressors generate formaldehyde, benzene and other pollutants, Beard said. The facilities are also at risk of explosions; a rupture at an LNG terminal in Freeport, Tex., in June, sent a massive fireball into the sky and flooded the air with contaminants.
According to Oil and Gas Watch, the two Port Arthur projects have the potential to generate more than 13,000 tons of air pollution and more than 20 million tons of greenhouse gases each year — ultimately contributing to global warming.
Yet if the proposed permitting changes are implemented, it will be harder for residents to participate in public hearings about the projects or sue if they believe an agency’s environmental review was incomplete.
“Its already difficult to participate, and if you miss important deadlines, then you often don’t have a right to participate going forward,” said Ilan Levin, an Austin-based attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project who has worked with several local groups. “Shortening a deadline by 30 percent would definitely make it impossible for some people to review and comment on projects in their community.”
Environmental groups are rallying against the permitting changes, which Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) aim to pass before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Appalachian activists, concerned about a West Virginia pipeline that would be approved as part of the deal, have planned a demonstration in D.C. next month calling on Democrats to vote against the proposal.
The permitting bill would need at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate to override a filibuster — potentially more if any Democrats refuse to support it.
Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, said he expects Manchin and Schumer to reach an agreement that doesn’t erode environmental protections. “I’m not interested in permitting reform that makes it worse,” he said in an interview. “Having made progress, we don’t want to screw it up now.”
But activists fear that the changes will be attached to must-pass legislation, such as a continuing resolution to fund the government — making it difficult for progressives to oppose.
‘They had to give something to get something’
Kelley knows what it means to compromise, to accept the change that seems achievable rather than the transformation he truly craves. It’s why, in more than 20 years as an activist, he has tried to balance his efforts to curb fossil fuel pollution with the recognition that the industry is too much a part of Port Arthur to be quickly eliminated.
“I get the fact that, you know, they had to give something to get something for that deal,” Kelley said. “But at the same time, it’s off our backs, and the backs of our children.”
Many of the Inflation Reduction Act’s most high-profile benefits are out of reach for his neighbors, he said. A tax credit for electric vehicles isn’t much help when the median income in Port Arthur is well below the average price of an EV. People who don’t own their own homes can’t take advantage of incentives for heat pumps and rooftop solar.
Kelley also worries about whether state agencies would take advantage of federal programs to reduce emissions from transportation and housing that could benefit places like Port Arthur. This spring, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that Texas had discriminated against communities of color in distributing disaster mitigation funding after Hurricane Harvey.
Making the most of the act will require a lot of work from community groups like his, Kelley said — small nonprofits with few support staff often struggle to access federal funds. But ultimately, he said, he aims to embrace the opportunities the law provides: to increase air pollution monitoring and improve public housing, to attract new businesses to Port Arthur’s struggling downtown, and to curb demand for the fuels that threaten his neighborhood and the world.
“I would not have wanted to lose out on that,” Kelley said. “At the end of the day, I probably would have done the same thing.” | 2022-08-27T12:35:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats' climate bill compromises raise environmental justice fears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/27/climate-permitting-sacrifice-zone/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/27/climate-permitting-sacrifice-zone/ |
‘Mutilated by rats,’ burned, trashed: 200 years of presidential papers lost
Before the Presidential Records Act of 1978, presidents owned their papers. Now all presidents, including Donald Trump, must turn them over to the National Archives.
From left: Portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart painted in 1803. (iStock) A photograph made four days before Abraham Lincoln's assassination. (AP Photo) President Donald Trump speaks during a 2020 rally in Valdosta, Ga. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When President George Washington left office in 1797, he took his presidential papers with him. Federal agents never searched his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. The papers belonged to the former president and not to the government.
As former president Donald Trump has discovered, a lot has changed since then. Today, presidential papers are considered public property and are overseen by the National Archives after a president leaves office. This month the FBI seized boxes of documents, including some top-secret papers, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — a search justified by the FBI in court filings unsealed Friday by 184 classified documents he failed to turn over when he first left the White House. Trump reportedly has told friends he considers the documents “mine.”
Affidavit to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago says 184 classified files found in January
On Aug. 22, former president Donald Trump's lawyers asked a federal court to appoint a special master to review the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. (Video: Reuters)
As the nation’s first president, Washington set the precedent. He planned to construct a building at Mount Vernon to store his papers, but he didn’t get it done. On the last day of his life in late 1799, according to Mount Vernon’s historians, Washington told his secretary Tobias Lear, “I find I am going, my breath cannot continue long … arrange & record all my late Military letters & papers — arrange my accounts & settle my books.”
John Tyler's last surviving grandson: A bridge to the nation’s complicated past
Most of the late President Zachary Taylor’s papers were destroyed when Union troops occupied his son’s Louisiana home in 1862. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, his son Robert Todd Lincoln “destroyed many of his father’s papers — those he considered useless — before placing the remainder in the Library of Congress,” the report said. The Lincoln papers weren’t made public until 1947.
Some presidents went to great efforts to preserve their papers. In the early 1900s, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft arranged presidential collections that were passed on to heirs and then provided to the Library of Congress. The Taft papers totaled more than 700,000 documents.
Finally, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the precedent of donating his records to the National Archives and Records Administration. He also established a presidential library. Roosevelt modeled his library after the first presidential library, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, which opened in Fremont, Ohio, in 1916 with papers held in trust after Hayes left office in 1881.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library released on Aug. 1 several films showing scenes from the 32nd president’s private life. (Video: Michael Ruane, Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)
How the Watergate scandal broke to the world: A visual timeline
Nixon eventually relinquished 42 million pages of documents after Congress passed legislation culminating with the Presidential Records Act of 1978 making the papers of presidents and vice presidents government property.
During House debate on the 1978 law, first-term Rep. Dan Quayle (R-Ind.) suggested the preservation requirements also “should apply to congressmen.” Rep. Allen Ertel (D-Pa.) replied, “I might say, Mr. Quayle, there is one thing you have to remember … I cannot imagine a historian being interested in the papers of a freshman Congressman.”
Quayle, of course, later became U.S. vice president under President George H.W. Bush. | 2022-08-27T12:35:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Presidential records from George Washington to Donald Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/27/presidential-records-act-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/27/presidential-records-act-trump/ |
A nurse at a coronavirus testing station on March 13, 2020, in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren/ AP Photo)
After the 9/11 attacks that killed 2,996 Americans, the United States responded with a sense of urgency and purpose, as a nation under siege. Congress and the executive branch created the 9/11 Commission; established the Department of Homeland Security; set up the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; launched a massive, years-long hunt for the perpetrators; and in many other ways, from airport screening to embassy security, redoubled efforts to prevent another terrorist attack. Now the country is suffering another momentous assault, a pandemic that has claimed about 400 U.S. lives every day for months now and has killed more than 1 million Americans. Yet the nation is twiddling its thumbs.
The pandemic’s lessons are plentiful and the threat is real, yet the preparation for next time — the ambitious, can-do spirit of the United States — is almost completely absent. Pandemic preparedness — the action needed to turn the lessons from the nation’s covid-19 response into reality — must be an urgent priority for the White House, Congress and the American people. Preparedness means having everything in place the day before it is needed, and no one knows when that will be.
It isn’t enough to tweak organization charts and polish briefing papers. Rather, what’s needed is a sustained, wide-ranging transformation in how the United States handles public health. Public health refers to “what we as a society do collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy,” the Institute of Medicine wrote in a landmark 1988 report. We have the raw material: scientific knowledge, innovation and wealth. But we need better policies, programs and practices to marshal these assets.
Unless the country changes course, more crises will come, perhaps quickly. Monkeypox, rarely seen outside of Africa, has spread in the United States from almost nothing to more than 16,920 cases in little more than three months, overwhelming public health systems and evading control. Polio virus, largely eliminated from the United States four decades ago, might have been circulating for up to a year, although the public alarm came only when a patient in New York was paralyzed. The first severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, was highly pathogenic and killed 774 people, with a case fatality rate of about 10 percent; the next novel coronavirus, Middle East respiratory syndrome, had a case fatality rate of 36 percent. Neither was shown to be highly transmissible among humans. However, SARS-CoV-2, also known as covid-19, turned out to be highly transmissible and infected more than 500 million people. With a case fatality rate of 1 percent or less, it still led to at least 6 million deaths — and probably many more. What happens next? What if a coronavirus combines some of these characteristics of virulence and transmissibility? Almost every expert is warning: The dangers of another pandemic are real and severe.
The nation’s experience with covid-19 exposed the risks. The pandemic response was badly fragmented among states and localities. The nation broke into warring camps about whether to be open or to adopt restrictions and whether to mandate masks or vaccines, and a checkerboard of jurisdictions fought against each other for diagnostic tests, supplies and therapeutics. Who can forget President Donald Trump’s tweets — “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” — attacking Democratic governors who imposed pandemic restrictions?
The splintering hampered efforts to understand what was happening on the ground — data networks failed to connect with each other; some communities were sending in their reports by fax machine. Mr. Trump predicted the virus would disappear and touted treatments that were useless, and his White House hampered the traditional leadership roles of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Mr. Trump’s deliberate deception sullied one of the most important elements of an effective public health campaign: clear and transparent communications. This led to a loss of public trust. One of the few things the Trump administration got right was Operation Warp Speed, the breakneck vaccination development effort, which shows that concerted government effort can make a difference.
Unfortunately, neither Congress nor Presidents Trump or Biden were willing to create a 9/11-like national commission to diagnose what went wrong. It would have been invaluable. The Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved in March — with bipartisan support — the Prevent Pandemics Act, which would authorize a national commission, and it contains other useful provisions to modernize supply chains and improve data collection, but its prospects are uncertain, and time is running short in this session of Congress.
Many others have recognized the dangers stemming from lack of readiness. Mr. Biden advanced a national pandemic preparedness plan in March; the Rockefeller Foundation created the Pandemic Prevention Institute; the Commonwealth Fund published a report in June looking ahead; the Center for Strategic and International Studies has examined funding for pandemic preparedness; the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Global Health Security Index underscored a lack of preparedness worldwide. The Global Health Security Index in October 2019 was instructive. It rated the United States as the most prepared nation in the world for a pandemic — a wealthy country with advanced health capacity and capabilities. Those advantages were squandered when the pandemic occurred. Plans are not the only key — so is execution.
There are many reforms Congress and the White House should embrace.
The federal government must overcome the fragmentation of the nation’s public health system. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution and many Supreme Court rulings have given state governments primary authority to control the spread of dangerous diseases within their jurisdictions. But the dedicated workers in this patchwork of localities are overburdened and underfunded. The Commonwealth Fund report calls for creating a national public health system that would provide more leadership, resources and direction, perhaps led by a new undersecretary or assistant secretary of Health and Human Services. While it wouldn’t replace the work in states and localities, a national public health system would help ensure state and local health departments gain basic capabilities and resources to protect their communities, however different. The report says that government funding for core public health functions remains “grossly insufficient.”
Every virus or bacteria has a genetic blueprint. With advances in bioinformatics, scientists can use genetic sequencing to identify the variant, spot mutations and chart possible spread among people. This ought to be harnessed into a nationwide — or even global — trip wire for disease among humans, animals and plants. We already rely on early-warning systems to watch for hurricanes and tornadoes; radars and satellites keep watch for ballistic missile threats; prompt warning is critical to intelligence gathering and financial markets. But so far, early-warning systems exist only in fragments for disease. Also, there’s a crying need to build better data-sharing systems to improve the link between genomics (genetic blueprints), health care (what doctors, hospitals and emergency rooms are seeing among people) and epidemiology (the patterns of disease in the population).
The nation’s capabilities to create and manufacture vaccines must be strengthened. Operation Warp Speed showed what can be done. With years of previous research, and a mountain of government money, the mRNA coronavirus vaccines were developed and manufactured in record time and saved millions of lives. But the mRNA vaccines are not a long-term answer; their effectiveness wanes. We need a second massive research and development effort, an Operation Warp Speed 2.0, to overcome many hurdles to a coronavirus vaccine that would work against all variants and for a long duration. It won’t be easy. A universal flu vaccine has been an elusive goal for years. In parallel, we need an organized effort to create platforms for future vaccines with enough science and resources behind them to kick-start development as soon as a pandemic flares — to be ready to deploy shots rapidly.
The recent announcement of an overhaul at the CDC made a point to shift the agency’s culture to be more action-oriented in the face of emergencies. The idea is a good one for more than just the CDC. The emergency side of public health should be organized like the military, with money, staffing, a clear command structure, exercises and a mission of urgency.
Finally, the nation’s public health authorities must rebuild trust. In an emergency, public trust is fragile — when broken, it is extremely difficult to regain. Transparency, promptness and clarity were too often missing during this pandemic, and online disinformation further corroded public confidence. A concerted effort must be made to rebuild public trust in the digital age.
The prospects for wide-scale reform do not look good. Partisan conflict on Capitol Hill has stymied further funding to respond to the current pandemic, not to mention prepare for the next one. Where is the willpower that arose after 9/11? Where is the bipartisan consensus that existed during the Cold War? Clearly, the political scene has been clouded by pandemic fatigue and looming elections. But the need for preparedness is not going away.
A transformation in public health requires a sea change in thinking. We must value this endeavor for our own protection, rather than continue to neglect it. We have been warned. | 2022-08-27T12:35:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | After covid, here is what the U.S. must do to beat the next pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/27/covid-pandemic-lessons-prepare/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/27/covid-pandemic-lessons-prepare/ |
The skyline in Lower Manahttan is seen from a ferry terminal in Jersey City on Aug. 18. (J. David Ake/AP)
My child and I have become expert reconstructors since my husband — my child’s father — died five years ago, 30 days from his cancer diagnosis and nearly 18 years from the day I said “I do,” choosing him and his country over mine, Brazil.
We had been living in Arizona for five years when he got sick, and stayed there after he left us. Staying gave us a sense of stability, though the journalist in me also had her motivations: I wanted to bear witness to what seemed like the state’s coming political transformation, one that I envisioned would make Arizona more tolerant and equitable.
That is one reason why Arizona’s ugly detour to the right in recent years began to weigh heavily on me. Earlier this year, the state legislature passed a bill that banned schools from teaching about sexual orientation unless students had signed permission from a parent or guardian to receive the lesson. The Republican governor, Doug Ducey, vetoed the bill as too broad, but he had no such problem this past spring with bills targeting transgender youths, including barring transgender girls from participating in girls’ high school sports.
In Arizona, though, I felt the pressure they fought against every day to conform to an idea of male and female that just doesn’t mesh with their understanding of gender. In a group chat after sleepaway camp in the idyllic mountains of Central Arizona, fellow campers ganged up on my child, telling them that anyone who is nonbinary would go to hell.
We have lost the fear to make big decisions because we know that there is no moving forward without embracing calculated risk. That is the mind-set that guided us to New York, my child’s birthplace and a city that still feels like home to me, even after our decade in Arizona.
In Arizona, I was also inspired by a federal judge who ruled against a racist sheriff. I saw a community organizer, who was once undocumented, elected to the Phoenix City Council; he is now the city’s vice mayor. And I followed along as young immigrants knocked on doors in Latino-heavy neighborhoods, urging citizens to vote. That is the Arizona that filled me with hope.
The idea of moving crystallized during a trip to New York in April, when we sat at a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen and my child looked at all the rainbow flags flapping in the wind and said, in a mix of confusion and amazement, “It’s not even Pride Month yet.”
“In New York,” I said, “every month is Pride Month.”
I still believe Arizona can get there. I’ll just be watching it from a distance and rooting for all the children who, like mine, yearn for a state — a home — where they can live as who they are. | 2022-08-27T12:35:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why my child and I traded Arizona for a more tolerant New York City - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/29/new-york-gender-tolerance-arizona/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/29/new-york-gender-tolerance-arizona/ |
College football TV schedule: Nebraska-Northwestern kicks things off in Week 0
Coach Scott Frost and Nebraska travel to Ireland to face Northwestern in their season opener. (Nati Harnik/AP)
College football season kicks off Saturday with one of the more peculiar traditions that has taken root in recent years: Week 0, when a smattering of teams open their seasons the weekend before the generally accepted Labor Day weekend start date.
There are two ways for Football Bowl Subdivision teams to play in Week 0: by applying for a waiver to the NCAA or by being a team that has to travel to face Hawaii at some point in the season (the NCAA allows such teams to recoup the costs of traveling to Hawaii by scheduling a 13th game). Vanderbilt, Western Kentucky, Duquesne, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah State and UNLV will travel to face the Rainbow Warriors this season, and all are playing Saturday.
So while there aren’t many marquee teams in action Saturday, Week 0 still will serve to whet our appetites for the coming season.
Western Kentucky vs. Austin Peay
Stephen F. Austin vs. Jacksonville State
UNLV vs. Idaho State
Florida State vs. Duquesne
Howard vs. Alabama State
North Carolina vs. Florida A&M
UTEP vs. North Texas
New Mexico State vs. Nevada
Nebraska and Northwestern travel all the way to Dublin for the season’s first game (and Week 0’s only game) featuring two power-conference teams. The Cornhuskers won only three games for a second straight season in 2021, nearly costing Coach Scott Frost his job — he was forced to take a pay cut and fire four offensive assistants — but the underlying statistics tell the story of a team that may have been just plain unlucky: Nebraska scored 63 more points than its opponents over the course of the season but was 0-8 in games decided by one score. Frost brought in a new offensive coordinator, Mark Whipple, who did wonders for Pittsburgh’s attack. That, plus a wealth of transfers, could lead to brighter days in Lincoln (or at least Frost hopes). The Wildcats, meanwhile, posted a 3-9 record for the second time in three seasons, their season undone by a leaden offense (they had only 124 plays gain at least 10 yards, which ranked 124th out of 130 teams). …
Illinois, which hosts Wyoming, showed progress as Coach Bret Bielema’s first Champaign campaign wore on, winning four of its final seven games in 2021, including that ludicrous nine-overtime road upset of then-No. 7 Penn State. But the Illini lost a whole lot of production from that team and are more or less starting from scratch. The Cowboys are dealing with a similar problem, particularly on offense: They must replace their top two quarterbacks, leading rusher, top two receivers and two all-conference linemen. But considering how bad Wyoming’s offense was last season — the Cowboys failed to reach 20 points in six games last season — that may be a blessing in disguise. …
Hawaii-Vanderbilt is about as “Week 0 Nightcap” as a game can get, especially considering it will be played at the Rainbow Warriors’ 9,300-seat practice field after Aloha Stadium was declared unusable after last season. Allegations of mistreatment by former coach Todd Graham sent many of Hawaii’s best players to the transfer portal, meaning there’s little left from last year’s 6-7 team for new coach Timmy Chang, who put up gaudy numbers as the Rainbow Warriors’ quarterback earlier this century. Vanderbilt’s brief moment of competence — the Commodores went to five bowl games over an eight-season stretch from 2011 to 2018 — appears to be over: Vanderbilt has gone 5-28 over the past three seasons. | 2022-08-27T12:36:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Week Zero college football: Nebraska-Northwestern is one to watch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/college-football-tv-schedule-week-zero/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/college-football-tv-schedule-week-zero/ |
Serena Williams is about to shatter the ceiling for retired female athletes
Serena Williams waves to fans after a loss at the Western & Southern Open near Cincinnati. (Jeff Dean/AP)
Serena Williams, almost 41 years into her eternity, will keep aging well. She will be done playing competitive tennis soon, perhaps within the next few days, but that only means the cultural icon can supersede the player. This is her commencement, not a finale.
If you’ve been in awe of her longevity on the court, just wait and watch and marvel anew. Her profound influence is poised to endure and allow her to break yet another barrier, this one for retired American female athletes. Few superstars, no matter their gender, outlive their playing days. In women’s athletics, the immortals are celebrated for their societal impact and trailblazing importance in an inequitable sports world. But they haven’t also had a cultural magnetism that translates to the economic power that Williams possesses. In that way, she comes as close to Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or LeBron James as any woman has ever gotten.
With sustained excellence and persistent authenticity, Williams has been able to acquire it all: admiration, fame, wealth, power, transcendence. As she leaves tennis, her exit velocity is stirring to observe. She’s not just receiving her flowers. She’s not just assured a legacy that will ripple through all of sports forever. She’s not just cemented in pop culture and primed to become a multifaceted mogul. Williams still has infinite blank pages in her playbook, a pen that won’t run out of ink and the freedom to design the rest of her life however she wants, knowing that she has the leverage to implement those dreams.
“I have never liked the word retirement,” Williams wrote in a Vogue cover story announcing her farewell plans. “It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.”
The most extraordinary athletic lives require distance to fully comprehend. Williams has accomplished and meant so much that she’s impossible to capture in this moment, even though she has been in the public eye for a quarter century. Time will make her tale all the more impressive as perspective catches up with wonderment. But even then, she will still seem like a figure from the future. Her mighty brand will strengthen. Her example will inspire for generations. And her earning potential will remain so high that you’ll think she never stopped playing.
Forbes estimates Williams’s net worth to be $260 million. A year ago, she didn’t play much and earned about $300,000 for her on-court performance. Nevertheless, she grossed another $45 million, mostly from endorsement deals with about a dozen companies ranging from Nike to Gucci to Anheuser-Busch. She launched a clothing line three years ago that continues to be successful. She and her sister Venus have owned a small stake in the Miami Dolphins since 2009. She announced in March that her venture capital fund, Serena Ventures, raised $111 million in its initial round.
Williams is married to Alexis Ohanian, an entrepreneur who co-founded Reddit. Before they fell in love, they bonded while talking business. Williams will stay relevant through financial savvy, celebrity and the idolization of younger stars who will follow her script.
Naomi Osaka has already learned from Williams, and with her own style, she has become the highest paid female athlete in sports. In our male-dominated sports society, there is no women’s sport that stays top of mind for an extended period, which undermines the marketability of even the biggest stars. But there are holes in this misogynistic setup, and because Williams kept at it for so long, she was able to carve out her own space with an approach that can be mimicked and expanded.
At a time when authenticity is gold, Williams epitomizes it. She never changed. She excelled through the skepticism, sexism and racism. Her prolonged greatness forced almost everyone to get on her level or shut the hell up.
“I definitely view her as a role model,” said Aliyah Boston, the South Carolina forward and reigning national player of the year in women’s college basketball. “Powerful and strong women dominating is something that’s important for me to see. I want to follow in her footsteps.”
It always comes back to the image of power that Williams projects. She is defined by her muscular frame and the force with which she plays. Boston is 20 years younger than Williams. She was born just as Williams began to take over tennis. As she grew into a physical 6-foot-5 post player, Boston looked for athletes who could reassure her that dominance fit with femininity. Williams showed Boston that there is beauty in power, and that there is beauty in unapologetic Black women who unleash their power.
In Williams, Boston saw a fashion icon with a 125 mph serve. She saw Williams twerking in a Beyoncé music video and then smashing her racket at the U.S. Open. She saw power — in Williams’s play and personality. But most of all, Boston saw a woman free to be a complete woman.
“When I was younger and playing sports, it was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to look too aggressive and angry,'” said Boston, 20, a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands. “Serena, she’s dominant, but she is who she is. She never changes herself for anyone. To be able to see that was a great vision for me because, stepping on the basketball court as a post player, you never want to get punked. That’s who we are. That’s how we compete. I can embrace that, and off the court, I can embrace my girly side.”
The world tries to convince us that this is the opposite of grace, but after nearly three decades in the spotlight, how can you not see the grace in Williams? If her power once alarmed the gatekeepers of perception, she wore them down with her relentlessness.
Williams mastered the concept of owning your narrative, yet she still comes across as human, vulnerable and real. She will exit tennis as an honest and open mother, as a boss, and in many minds, as the GOAT. And this is just the end of Phase 1.
It is clear you haven’t seen the last of Serena Williams. But what if you haven’t seen the best of her, either? As the icon commences with evolution, the revolutionary tennis star lives on in the athletic successors who will follow her blueprint. The future looks inspiring. | 2022-08-27T13:23:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena Williams's future is exhilarating, even as she leaves tennis behind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/serena-williams-tennis-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/serena-williams-tennis-future/ |
HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ and the Return of Monoculture
Monoculture is back. I refer not to the concept but to the word — specifically, in anything related to HBO’s new series “House of the Dragon.” The wordsmith in me can’t help noticing that in stories about the “Game of Thrones” prequel, the term is everywhere.
The Observer reports that fans were taking to social media to celebrate “the seeming (and amazing!) return of monoculture.” Here’s the Independent: “It’s taken exactly one episode — one scene, really — for ‘House of the Dragon’ to prove it’s as adept as ‘Game of Thrones’ was at dominating the monoculture.”
What these and many more references have in common is a sense that monoculture refers to something desirable. That’s a peculiar notion, given that ever since the word was adopted from the French in the 19th century, its connotation has been uniformly negative. A monoculture has been a condition not to celebrate but to avoid.
The original usage was in agriculture, to describe a harm that was done to the soil by over-reliance on a single crop. Thus a Kansas paper lamented in 1884 that the “monoculture” of planting whatever was most profitable and then moving on “has produced its inevitable results” — the loss of arable land and an epidemic in the bargain. This is the sense in which Fidel Castro used the term in 1965, when the press reported on the Cuban dictator’s promise “to rescue his island from the ‘monoculture’ to which Yankee capitalists had condemned it” — a reference to sugar. The same meaning remains common today.
But by the early 20th century, the word was already being borrowed as a metaphor for a sameness that damaged not farming but life more generally. Thus a 1914 article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts warned about the social problems arising when industries became too powerful in a city or a neighborhood: “[M]onoculture wherever possible should be supplemented by polyculture.” Otherwise the “moral and physical evils” that are brought about by the “herding together of humanity” would prove irresistible.
The British journalist William Beach Thomas had much the same in mind in 1949 when he described a widespread fear that the virtues and pleasures of the traditional English village were dying, “given up to mechanised monoculture.”
The great popularizer of the negative use when applied to culture was the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who saw monoculture as part of the Western cultural “cannibalism” he vigorously opposed. In the 1961 English translation of his book “World on Wane,” the point is put this way:
Humanity has taken to monoculture, once and for all, and is preparing to produce civilization in bulk, as if it were sugar-beet. The same dish will be served to us every day.
This usage swiftly became popular — and not just as a metaphor for cultural flattening. “Monoculture is finished,” declared the new leadership of Volkswagen in 1970, announcing plans to diversify its offerings beyond the ubiquitous Beetle. A few years later, a federal court mentioned in passing that an executive had “expressed his concern in writing” that a particular securities firm “was becoming a ‘monoculture’ dealing almost exclusively in bonds.”
By that time, the negative connotation was everywhere. “[W]e wanted to let people know that Salt Lake City is a multiculture, not a monoculture,” the organizer of a Utah music festival told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. That same year, Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek explained proudly why his city featured more genuine diversity than New York: “People there hope for a monoculture. They expect their children to be part of an American culture. Here an Armenian remains an Armenian forever.”
Soon the word was popular as a description of the dangers of growing digital connectedness. In 1993, the Canadian environmental activist David Suzuki warned that increased availability of video would flatten the world’s cultural diversity: “The electronic highway promises greater homogeneity — in effect, monoculturing the planet.” Five years later, the psychologist Kenneth Keniston of M.I.T. spoke for many when he cautioned that the “information age” was creating a “global monoculture,” which he defined as “the de facto dominance of a single culture across all the important sectors of the world.”
Nor did the meaning change for most of the 21st century. A 2004 essay in the Guardian lamented the British government’s “willingness to allow an English-only monoculture to develop in the public broadcast sphere” — in contrast with the “diversity” of Continental cinema. The New York Times reported in 2018 on the view of the former head of public relations at Google that “many of Silicon Valley’s problems can be laid at the feet of an engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture.”
So how was this perfectly reasonable word for a social negative transformed in recent years into a social positive? Ironically, the answer seems to be … “Game of Thrones.” In a much-discussed 2017 essay in The Ringer, the media critic Alison Herman described the popular series as “the last vestige of the monoculture, a dying and distinct model with its own advantages and blind spots.”
Before “Thrones” (and often after) references to television shows as monoculture were almost always derisive. Since then … well, let’s turn things over to the New Yorker, which in its recent review of “House of the Dragon” called the show’s predecessor “one of the last sparks of American monoculture, a phenomenon that managed to bring millions together, all at once, to eagerly discuss a scene or detail.”
“Game of Thrones” was a remarkable moment in television. Even more remarkable was the way it led us to invert completely the meaning of a familiar word ... and what with all the intrigue and dragons and gore, we didn’t even notice.
• Can ‘House of the Dragon’ Ignite a Media Merger?: Sarah Green Carmichael
• It Will Be Hard to Create ‘Game of Thrones’ Again: Tara Lachapelle
• You Should Probably Record Tonight’s ‘Game of Thrones’: Stephen Carter | 2022-08-27T14:06:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ and the Return of Monoculture - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hbos-house-of-the-dragon-and-the-return-of-monoculture/2022/08/27/fb5f0596-2608-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hbos-house-of-the-dragon-and-the-return-of-monoculture/2022/08/27/fb5f0596-2608-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Ensar Arslan, left, and his father Ekrem Arslan celebrate the grand opening of the new Hollywood Diner in Dover, Del., on Sept. 15, 2022. The diner finally reopened to customers after sitting idle for the past three years. (Mike Finney/Delaware State News via AP)
DOVER, Del. — Most people with roots in the capital city have a memory or two about the Hollywood Diner, an iconic eatery that first opened in the early 1950s.
However, the restaurant, with its bright chrome and red siding right in the heart of the U.S. 13 corridor, has been quiet and void of memories for three years.
That all changed when Ensar Arslan and his father, Ekrem Arslan, reopened its doors after a year-and-a-half of renovations on the 123 N. DuPont Highway building.
The grand opening was a long time coming.
“We bought this place back on Oct. 9, 2020, and ever since then, we’ve just been running into a lot of issues,” Ensar said. “This building is old. The building has a lot of history to it, and what we wanted to do was not to come into Dover and ruin the existing history within this building. … We wanted to add on to it.
“We thought about ideas about reconstruction, but we felt that wouldn’t just fit right because the aesthetics were different — this building, the way it sits, the way it faces the highway, the way it faces the people of the city of Dover, it’s some kind of (different building).”
Ensar said he and his father ran into a lot of blockades during the pandemic. There were supply shortages, and equipment they needed for the renovation just wasn’t readily available.
“There was also an employee shortage, but we managed to put a great team together, and we’re confident in what we can bring for Dover, and I hope that the city of Dover just gives us a chance, and we’ll make it right,” he said. “We want to add on to the diner’s legacy, and we want to make it the best.”
The elder Mr. Arslan formerly owned and operated Sussex County’s Laurel Dutch Inn until he sold it in June 2019. His son will serve as Hollywood Diner’s manager.
Employee Diane Ozturk of Dover was eager to welcome customers into the refurbished diner.
“It’s very exciting to see new customers and old customers from the diner,” she said. “It’s very hard to find a good diner, especially in Dover, and we’re very excited. The customers have been very friendly and very nice, and I hope it lasts for (the Arslans).
“I got here, and the crowd was pretty decent. It’s the first day, so people don’t know if we’re open. We’ve been advertising on Facebook, but everyone has their own thing to do every day.”
Louis Turner can remember many of his frequent visits to the diner.
“It was always a great little place to meet and is centrally located in Dover,” he said. “Heck, there have been plenty of times when you didn’t really even plan on going to the Hollywood, you just kind of ended up there.”
The establishment will be open Sundays through Thursdays from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m.
“We’re offering regular American diner food, which ranges from your breakfast all day, which we’ll be serving,” Ensar said. “We’ll have lunch and dinner — including seafood, pasta and steaks — and we’ll also have your wide range of normal dinner menus, as well ... as subs, steaks, sandwiches and such.”
Ekrem noted that his primary goal is to provide top-quality food and service to make his customers feel at home.
“My family, my staff and I can’t wait to get to know everyone in the community firsthand and to become a big family,” he said.
Most recently, the building was home to the Southern Grille Hollywood Diner of Dover, which was owned by Ronald White, who also runs Southern Grille of Ellendale.
Mr. White purchased the Hollywood Diner in March 2018 and officially reopened its doors that June. But that venture lasted only about a year.
Ensar is just ready to finally get back to business as usual at the new Hollywood Diner.
“We’re definitely planning on keeping its great, 1950s-style charm,” he said. “My father, Ekrem, will be bringing his 25 years of experience in the restaurant industry to the place, as well.
“It’ll be a family-run business, and we’re hoping to turn it into a comfortable place, where all feel welcome to fill their bellies.” | 2022-08-27T14:07:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hollywood homecoming: New owners reopen Dover diner - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/hollywood-homecoming-new-owners-reopen-dover-diner/2022/08/27/6417fe22-2608-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/hollywood-homecoming-new-owners-reopen-dover-diner/2022/08/27/6417fe22-2608-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
In this handout photo provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, Coast guard personnel help in controlling the fire of M/V Asia Philippines, an inter-island cargo and passenger vessel, they were riding caught fire while it was approaching Batangas port, southern Philippines on Friday. Aug. 26, 2022. Philippine coast guard personnel and volunteers have rescued more than 80 passengers and crew of an inter-island ferry that caught fire as it approached a port south of Manila, prompting many to jump into the water as flames spread fast in windy weather, officials said Saturday. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP) (Uncredited/PHILIPPINE COAST GUARD) | 2022-08-27T14:08:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Philippines: All 85 people from burned ferry safely rescued - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/philippines-all-85-people-from-burned-ferry-safely-rescued/2022/08/27/9e14f17a-2608-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/philippines-all-85-people-from-burned-ferry-safely-rescued/2022/08/27/9e14f17a-2608-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Midterms rarely deliver big political surprises, but recent elections have made Democrats more confident. Still, alumni of huge wave elections in 2010 and 2018 know it isn’t that simple.
Voting during the primary election in Brooklyn on Aug. 23, 2022. Voters in New York and Florida chose party nominees for the midterm elections in November. (Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
For Ken Spain, the moment of doubt came just after Labor Day 2010, when a veteran House Democratic chairman remained politically strong despite a barrage of GOP attack ads.
For Meredith Kelly, the moment of fear came in early 2018, just after Republicans passed a massive tax-cut package.
But neither’s fears ended up becoming reality.
Instead, both operatives, who were working for the party trying to flip control of the House, learned that it is hard to turn a political environment around ahead of midterm elections. Recent presidential campaigns have featured big surprises — think of a certain FBI letter in late October 2016 or Wall Street’s collapse in fall 2008 — but midterm campaigns have tended to stay on course once voters get a baked-in view of the party in power.
Spain, the top communications aide for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2010, recalled that the veteran Democrat in question ended up losing, part of the 63-seat gain that propelled Republicans into the majority, despite his seeming resilience in mid-September.
And by spring 2018, GOP campaign committees stopped running ads touting the tax cuts, realizing that they were unpopular and that Democrats were heading for a gain of more than 40 seats in the House.
“We knew we had won that argument,” recalled Kelly, the top communications aide in 2018 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Alumni of those 2010 and 2018 midterm elections now find themselves looking at the 2022 campaign and considering how much things have changed from just a couple months ago when there was bipartisan consensus that Democrats were going to be wiped out in November.
Instead, mass shootings in New York and Texas made gun violence a top issue for voters, followed by a Supreme Court ruling overturning a nearly 50-year precedent on abortion rights and then a late-summer flurry of federal legislation that energized liberals who previously felt let down by the Democratic legislative majority.
All this while gas prices fell by more than $1 a gallon throughout the summer. And then came Tuesday’s upset victory by Democrat Pat Ryan in a congressional swing district in Upstate New York after Republicans had held a big early lead.
“The question now is not whether the environment has shifted,” Kelly said, “but whether it can stay that way for 70 days, an eternity in politics.”
Not so fast, according to Spain. “The political environment does not turn on a dime. It’s like the tide. At the end of the day, inflation is likely to remain the defining issue.”
He takes the long view on issues and thinks history has shown that the only change that occurs is that the environment just keeps getting worse for the majority.
That’s how it has played out in the past four midterm elections, with Democrats twice losing big and Republicans twice losing big. The president’s party defied history in 1998 and 2002 by gaining House seats — the only such outcomes of the past 100 years.
In 1998, the midterm elections had unique moments. President Bill Clinton was widely popular because of a soaring economy, and House Republicans decided to nationalize their campaigns against his sex scandal, a move that backfired politically. In 2002, President George W. Bush remained one of the most popular presidents ever after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Biden does not have a soaring economy and is not a popular wartime president, which makes some operatives think that in the current environment, Ryan’s win Tuesday was a temporary political sugar high.
Kelly’s Republican counterpart in 2018 compared Ryan’s win in New York to a famous scene in “I Love Lucy,” when the lead character tries to eat chocolates coming down a conveyor belt but is quickly overwhelmed — it’s easier to win a single race now than to defend dozens in November.
“You can eat one chocolate, but then there’s six more coming down the conveyor belt,” Matt Gorman, the NRCC’s communications director in 2018, said.
Gorman knows the feeling: He felt a level of relief in June 2017 when Republicans narrowly won a special election outside Atlanta that became the most expensive House race ever, as Democrats test-drove their midterm strategy by targeting formerly GOP leaning suburban districts.
Yes, the race was incredibly close, but his side had won, Gorman said. “We went to war and we won.” Until November.
Jesse Ferguson, who ran the DCCC’s media operation for Southern congressional districts in 2010, recalled a similar misleading feeling of positivity after Democrats won a special election that spring in western Pennsylvania.
Democrats had spent months trying to find the right message as voters grew angry about high unemployment and disenchantment with the Obama administration’s focus on passing the Affordable Care Act. By May 2010, the Democratic candidate focused on accusing Republicans of supporting big corporations that sent jobs offshore.
But, Ferguson said, that issue resonated deeply in western Pennsylvania — a region that had been battered by the steel industry’s decline — but over the next few months, it lost its potency and didn’t resonate in other parts of the nation.
“Sometimes special elections are isolated and sometimes they are indicative of future outcomes,” he said.
Ferguson thinks the Supreme Court’s abortion decision is a sea change of the type that did not emerge in other recent midterm elections; as evidence of the effect of the abortion ruling, he points to four special elections in July and August in which Democrats performed much better than Biden did in those districts in 2020.
Ferguson is quick to note that Democrats still face a tough fight to keep the U.S. House, given that Republicans need a net gain of just five seats and that late legal fights over redistricting broke in the GOP’s favor.
“There’s no longer a gale-force wind in our face,” he said of Democrats’ prospects.
Recent public polling shows that Republicans no longer hold a distinct advantage over Democrats in voter enthusiasm, something that the party in power did not see in 2010 or 2018. Also, the generic ballot question now has voters essentially tied when asked whether they intend to vote for a Democrat or Republican for the House, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
On the eve of the 2010 midterms, Republicans held a more than nine-point edge on that question, while just before the 2018 elections, Democrats held a more than seven-point lead.
Spain thinks Democrats are enjoying a brief uptick because disaffected liberals who were always likely to rally to their candidates have come home earlier than usual.
“Partisan coalescing typically happens post-Labor Day,” a moment that provides a “last gasp of hope” to avert political disaster, he said. “That’s accelerated.”
After Labor Day 2010, Spain couldn’t believe that the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), had withstood weeks of GOP commercials and maintained a lead.
Later that September, Skelton plummeted, as did the standing of Democrats everywhere, reassuring Spain that the political direction had not changed. “You started to see the bottom fall out,” he said.
Gorman also recalled a brief glimmer of hope after Labor Day 2018 as border security became more prominent. Then, by early October, Republicans just could not seal their races.
“It was the opposite,” he said. “Races were coming on line we weren’t expecting.”
Kelly recalled feeling confident of a big win at that same moment, after a crush of advertising played out in races the way Democrats expected. Now, she said, Democrats have to take the lessons from this summer and go full throttle on how a Republican majority would mean less access to abortion and more freedom to carry guns in schools.
Voters need to know, she said, that “their freedoms will be put further at risk.”
Spain contends that even a neutral environment will lead to a GOP majority in the House — and that the Senate can remain in Democratic hands — but he also recalls how things just kept turning his way in 2010.
The day before those midterms, NRCC staffers gathered in his office, making their predictions. Most guessed they would gain about 40 to 50 seats.
They unrolled Spain’s piece of paper to see that he predicted a 61-seat again, prompting laughter at his bold call. He agreed it was outlandish and threw the paper away. He was off by just two seats.
“I wish I kept that paper,” Spain said. | 2022-08-27T15:33:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Has the political environment shifted? Alums of 2010, 2018 wave midterms urge caution. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/has-political-environment-shifted-alums-2010-2018-wave-midterms-urge-caution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/has-political-environment-shifted-alums-2010-2018-wave-midterms-urge-caution/ |
A less common injection method allows a single dose to be split into five
By Aaron Steckelberg
As the monkeypox virus continues to spread in the United States, the Biden administration has adopted a strategy of vaccine-splitting to stretch the nation’s limited supply. A method known as intradermal vaccination allows a single-use vial to be split into five injections.
injection dosing
Bavarian Nordic makes Jynneos, the only monkeypox-specific vaccine approved in the United States. It was initially approved by the Food and Drug Administration for a single 0.5 milliliter subcutaneous injection, followed by a second 0.5 milliliter dose four weeks later.
Here is a look at the difference between a subcutaneous and intradermal injection.
SKIN CROSS SECTION
Dermis
Not to scale
of vaccine
The goal of a subcutaneous injection is to inject the vaccine into the subcutaneous tissue below the dermis layers.
A needle is inserted at a 45-degree angle.
This method is relatively easy to do and does not require much training. Vaccines injected into this layer absorb more slowly than other methods.
In contrast, intradermal vaccinations aim to deliver vaccine into the thin layer of the epidermis near the skin surface.
To get the needle into this tight space, it needs to be angled between five and 15 degrees.
Performing this method requires considerable skill and training and is not easily performed. It is rarely used for vaccinations and more often associated with allergy tests.
One benefit of this approach is that vaccines are absorbed much faster and may elicit a higher immune response, so less vaccine may be needed to get the same result as a subcutaneous injection.
When administered, the injected vaccine leaves a small blister, called a bleb, under the skin. Its presence confirms that the needle was properly inserted. The blister eventually scabs over.
The FDA approved intradermal vaccinations of the monkeypox vaccine citing a research study from 2015 on the method’s effectiveness.
Aaron Steckelberg is a senior graphics reporter who creates maps, charts and diagrams that provide greater depth and context to stories over a wide range of topics. He has worked at the Post since 2016. Twitter Twitter | 2022-08-27T15:38:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the U.S. plans to stretch the Monkeypox vaccine supply - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2022/monkeypox-vaccine-stretch-doses/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2022/monkeypox-vaccine-stretch-doses/ |
Ukrainian self-propelled artillery fires toward Russian forces in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine on July 27, 2022. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP photo)
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. — The Pentagon has expanded its use of maritime shipping to deliver weapons for the war in Ukraine, U.S. defense officials said, after relying heavily on aircraft early in Russia’s invasion to get arms to Kyiv as quickly as possible.
The Defense Department began sending some items by sea a few weeks after the invasion but significantly broadened the effort this spring, as the United States began providing Ukraine with howitzer artillery and other heavy weapons that require a steady flow of large-caliber ammunition, U.S. defense officials said here at the headquarters of U.S. Transportation Command, as Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks visited recently.
“Once we started to provide them howitzers, we knew that we were going to need more ammunition,” said Army Col. Steven Putthoff, the deputy director of operations at U.S. Transportation Command. “So, we could plan ahead a little bit more and then we could start to use more sealift to provide that support and to get it there sometimes even ahead of the request.”
The expansion underscores a new phase in the campaign, after a Russian assault on Kyiv was repelled and Ukraine and its partners settled in for what is expected to be a grinding war that could continue for months more and possibly years. The Biden administration has approved $12.9 billion of military assistance for Ukraine since the Feb. 24 invasion and pledged an additional $2.98 billion of support Wednesday, on Ukraine’s independence day.
U.S. military officials declined to detail specific routes used to get weapons to Ukraine but said that some of the weapons coming from the continental United States find their way directly to the battlefield, while others are being used to replenish American stocks elsewhere in Europe from which U.S. military officials withdrew supplies to arm Ukraine.
While aircraft can reach Europe from the United States much more quickly, ships can hauling vast quantities of cargo that could allow Ukraine to build up a larger arsenal for future campaigns in the war.
The effort comes a year after the United States carried out a harrowing evacuation of more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan, taxing the Pentagon’s fleet of cargo jets. At the height of the operation, a C-17 was landing at Hamid Karzai International Airport at least once per hour. That heavy schedule required the Transportation Command to suspend other operations until the evacuation was completed and then catch up aircraft on maintenance, Putthoff said.
During the evacuation, Putthoff said, “everything else on the world kind of went on hold, what we call ‘broken glass.’ We had to go back in and clean that up the next few months.”
At Transportation Command, Hicks met Aug. 18 with military officials including Air Force Gen. Jackie Van Ovost, the command’s top officer. Van Ovost said that anticipating possible needs and setting routes as quickly as possible is key. Equipment usually moves from a military depot by train or truck to an airport or seaport, and then arrives in a second location from where it often must be moved again.
“We’re not graded on getting it to a location where it’s not being used,” Van Ovost said, speaking to Hicks, the Pentagon’s No. 2 official. “We’re getting graded on end-to-end.”
Van Ovost said that the manual calculations that U.S. military officials had to do in the past to move equipment took days.
“Now we have systems that allow us to perfect it,” she said. “It’s less airplanes, in the right locations, at the right times. And it’s done by the press of a button, and three or four seconds later we have three or four options.”
Hicks credited Transcom officials with carrying out an “impressive ballet” to move everything that is needed. She told reporters after that she wants to make sure that the military has the ability to sustain its fleets and keep them appropriately sized.
“Ukraine, as challenging as it is, does not compare really to the level of lift and mobility and refueling that need to be done in a major conflict,” Hicks said.
Among the weapons that the Pentagon has delivered to Ukraine so far are more than 1,400 antiaircraft Stinger missiles, 8,500 Javelin anti-armor missiles (critical in destroying Russian tanks), 700 Switchblade drones and 142 pieces of howitzer artillery with more than 900,000 rounds.
On Wednesday, senior Pentagon officials said that they expect even more military assistance to flow to Ukraine after the recent $3 billion commitment.
“This may be our largest security assistance package to date, but let me be clear: It will not be our last,” said Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, in a news briefing. “We will continue to closely consult with Ukraine on its near-, mid- and long-term capability needs.” | 2022-08-27T15:38:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pentagon expands use of shipping to deliver weapons for war in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/27/ukraine-weapons-shipping-sea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/27/ukraine-weapons-shipping-sea/ |
The Temperance Fountain, at Seventh Street NW and Indiana Avenue, just off Pennsylvania Avenue, was a gift to D.C. from teetotaling San Francisco dentist Henry D. Cogswell. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
Henry D. Cogswell was one of those guys who got rich then decided the world should notice him. And it did, though perhaps not in the way he intended.
Here in Washington we know the name Cogswell because of the elaborate drinking fountain he forced upon the city in 1884. It stands at Seventh Street NW and Indiana Avenue, just off Pennsylvania Avenue, where it represents, according to the Historic American Buildings Survey, “a rather obvious and expressive symbolic monument to one aspect of social reform.”
That aspect of social reform was the eradication of intoxicating beverages. Among Cogswell’s obsessions was teetotalism. His sculptural gift is known as the Temperance Fountain.
Though it doesn’t quench thirsts today, intertwined bronze stylized dolphins once spewed water from their mouths under a four-sided stone canopy, each side of which was chiseled with a different worthy quality: FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY, TEMPERANCE. The granite canopy is surmounted by a bronze heron, a bird that spends much of its life in the water.
The fountain is symbolic of more than just clean living, however. It represents something that’s common in Washington: a dubious gift — a work of art, a building, a museum, a monument — promoted by a wealthy person. The city didn’t really want it, at least not in the form Cogswell originally intended.
Henry D. Cogswell was a New Englander who frankly had a pretty lousy childhood. His mother died when he was 8. It was decided the family was too large to accommodate Henry. At age 10, he was left in the care of his blind grandfather, who promptly died.
Young Henry then went to work in a cotton mill. Eventually, he became a teacher and then a dentist. In 1849, he headed to California to seek his fortune. This he found not in the earth, but in the mouth. After practicing dentistry in a tent in the gold fields, he opened an office in San Francisco, its location advertised by a huge gold-colored molar that hung outside.
The money Cogswell earned pulling teeth — and through his various dental inventions — was invested in San Francisco real estate. He became a millionaire.
Many millionaires become philanthropists. That’s what Cogswell wanted to become, though according to a lacerating 1900 obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, his “intolerable egotism defeated its own ends.” He was, wrote the paper, determined to “place the perpendicular pronoun first”: that is, the word “I.”
For Cogswell, it was all me, me, me. He would donate money to a cause then demand it back if the stringent conditions he requested were not met. In one case, he wanted to claw back some real estate he’d given to the University of California for a dental school that was to be named after him.
His lawyer was successful in breaking the terms of the donation — then Cogswell allegedly stiffed her on her bill.
Temperance was the cause that most energized Cogswell, and it is for his role as a “fountaineer” that he is most remembered today. Like many others, Cogswell believed drunkenness was a threat to the nation. He decided trading booze for water was a way to save the citizenry.
Cogswell created water fountains of various designs that he offered to cities across the country. They weren’t exactly free. Though Cogswell would provide the fountain itself, he required cities to pay for the fountain’s base, hook it up to the water supply, add gas-powered lights and maintain it.
According to historian Frederick C. Moffatt, writing in the Winterthur Portfolio, about half the roughly 40 cities Cogswell approached agreed to take his fountains. These included New York; Boston, Rochester, N.Y., Pawtucket, R.I., San Francisco and the District.
Washington was among cities that objected to the basic design: a bronze figure of a man proffering a cup. That man appeared to be Cogswell himself. In 1883, the District rejected this as personal advertising.
To refute the accusation, Cogswell submitted several photographs of himself to the city’s commissioners. Wrote The Post: “This, far from refuting the idea, makes it appear more obvious.” (In fact, Cogswell did sit for multiple photographs as a guide for the foundry.)
The design was altered, and the crane-topped fountain was installed in 1884. It is one of the few Cogswell fountains that survive. Some of the others were torn down by crowds offended by their aesthetics or by their hectoring tone.
The D.C. fountain was supposed to provide chilled water, produced by a system that involved packing ice into a tank in the base. This mechanism broke after a few months. The Post joked that as this was a failure, the city would be testing “the feasibility of turning it into a hot coffee tank for cold weather uses.”
Any billionaire want to sponsor that? | 2022-08-27T16:56:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The story behind Washington's elaborate Temperance Fountain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/cogswell-temperance-fountain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/cogswell-temperance-fountain/ |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.