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The prisoners’ deaths last month have raised questions for relatives and revived discussions about the city’s practice of sending residents to prisons across the country
A page from the Celebration of Life program for Lionel Stoddard, who appears in yellow in the top left photo. (Courtesy of Kimberly Gilliam )
As a Father’s Day gift, Lionel Stoddard was supposed to meet his granddaughter for the first time.
His daughter traveled with her baby girl from the D.C. region to the prison in Louisiana where Stoddard was being held, and she made it inside the facility. Then, family members say, prison officials announced they were canceling visits.
Stoddard wouldn’t get to meet his grandbaby that day, or the next, or ever.
“He never got the chance to hold her or see her in person,” Stoddard’s cousin Kimberly Gilliam said on a recent evening.
Stoddard, who had grown up in Washington, was fatally injured at Pollock federal prison last month. The 39-year-old’s death came weeks after another D.C. man, Mark B. Harris, 55, was found unresponsive at that same prison and pronounced dead at a hospital.
The two deaths have raised questions for family members and advocates. They’ve also revived discussions about the city’s practice of sending residents convicted of crimes to prisons across the country, leaving them far from the people and the programs most invested in their rehabilitation.
“I don’t understand it,” Gilliam, who works as a paralegal, said. “If you call prison a reformatory, and prisoners are either coming home and continuing to get in trouble, or coming home and can’t get a job, or coming home dead in boxes, that to me is not reform.”
She said her family has contacted to lawmakers and filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what happened to Stoddard, but so far, they have been left with more questions than answers.
“We have no death certificate,” she said. “We have nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We still don’t even have his personal belongings yet. All we got was the body.”
Washington-based advocates for prisoners say they also don’t know much about the circumstances of the deaths because of limited communication with prisoners who remain inside the facility. But the dangers and frustrations that D.C. residents face in federal prisons are well known, and those advocates say they hope the deaths will push more people to start paying attention to what’s happening behind those guarded doors.
There are moral reasons, of course, for why we should want to know what happens to a person once they enter the federal prison system. But even if we push those aside, we are left with an important community-based reason: public safety. Many of the people who are sent away will come home.
‘I’m angry & rageful & sad’: A Virginia inmate’s letters show why solitary confinement should concern us all.
“If you’ve been in a facility thousands of miles away from your home, you feel you’re in combat, you’re in war, and then you get released straight out, with no help,” Eric Weaver, who served time in federal prisons and now works with D.C. prisoners, said. “Just imagine your mentality.”
He said he often hears D.C. residents in federal facilities say they “feel abandoned.”
“You can end up being in a situation where you are outnumbered or you lose your life just because you’re from D.C.,” he said. “That’s how it is all over the country. If someone from D.C. gets into it with someone from Florida, they are beefing with the whole South.”
In February, the Public Defender Service for D.C. filed a class-action lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons, alleging unequal treatment of D.C. residents. Because D.C. does not have its own prison, people convicted of local and federal crimes are sent to facilities across the country. The lawsuit argues that because of how the Bureau of Prisons scores criminal history, people charged with crimes in D.C. “are more likely to be incarcerated in high security BOP facilities, where they are subjected to greater violence and offered fewer programming opportunities, and they are denied opportunities to seek release to home confinement that might otherwise be available to them.”
A DCist article about the lawsuit featured a plaintiff who said this about the conditions at Pollock, a high-security facility: “There is more gang violence and there are more rules that I need to follow in order to keep myself from being attacked. Even something as simple as trying to use the phone can become deadly if I do not use it at the right time.”
News releases from the Bureau of Prisons offer basic details about the deaths at Pollock. This is what they say happened:
Harris was found unresponsive on July 12 at about 9 in the morning. Staff members secured the area, initiated lifesaving measures and requested emergency medical services. He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and was pronounced dead.
Less than three weeks later, on July 30, at about 3 p.m., multiple prisoners were seen fighting. Staff secured the area and Stoddard was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. There, he was declared dead. Two other prisoners were treated at the facility and another was also taken to the hospital.
The release describes Harris as sentenced in D.C. to an aggregate life sentence for crimes that include possession of an unregistered firearm, murder while armed and assault with a dangerous weapon. Stoddard is described as sentenced in D.C. to a 732-month aggregate sentence for crimes that include armed bank robbery and conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States. Both men had already served long sentences, but Harris had been at Pollack since Apr. 17, 2014, and Stoddard had been imprisoned there since Feb. 12, 2021.
Advocates say they believe that one of the men was expected to be released soon, but that could not be confirmed.
About a year before their deaths, both Harris and Stoddard signed a letter addressed to D.C. lawmakers that ran on the site “More Than Our Crimes.”
“We are incarcerated District of Columbia residents scattered across the country in the bowels of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (and in the District jail), but very much still a part of this city/soon-to-be-state,” it read. “And when it comes to our future and, in turn, the well-being of our families, we want to have a say.”
The letter called for placing the decision-making power of parole for city residents into the hands of a body accountable to the people of D.C.
“Human lives are at stake,” the letter read. “Show us that you mean it when you say Black Lives Matter.”
On Aug. 16, the family held a celebration of life service for Stoddard. A program for it describes him as a father, a brother and a nephew. A line in it reads: “He understood the hand he was dealt and did not let it change his heart.”
Gilliam said that before his death, Stoddard tried to call relatives each day. During one of their conversations years ago, she asked if she could write down what he said and post it on a Facebook page she created to keep him connected to people.
She recently found herself reading those words. They show he knew he might not make it out of prison, and that if he did, he wouldn’t be the same man who entered the system.
“If I leave here alive, I’ll leave nothing behind,” he said. “They’ll never count me among the broken men. But I can’t say that I am normal either. I’ve been hungry too long. I’ve gotten angry too often. I’ve been lied to and insulted too many times.” | 2022-08-27T16:56:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two D.C. men were killed weeks apart in a Louisiana prison - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/dc-prisoners-killed-louisiana/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/dc-prisoners-killed-louisiana/ |
Republicans could pay a price in November as the former president’s dominance of the party changes the equation for midterm campaigns
Former president Donald Trump departs Trump Tower on Aug. 10 in Manhattan. (Julia Nikhinson/AP)
It’s long been said that midterm elections are all about the current occupant of the White House — a referendum on the incumbent and his party. But do the old rules and assumptions apply as they once did? Because of Donald Trump, they may not this year.
American politics can be divided crudely into two eras: BDT and SDT, or Before Donald Trump and Since Donald Trump. What was true before he came on the scene isn’t necessarily true now. Trump broke rules and assumptions on his way to winning the White House, broke more in office and is still breaking them. And that could haunt the Republicans in November.
Trump has been the energizing force in politics since he announced for president in 2015, mobilizing voters behind his candidacy and once in office triggering an even bigger backlash against him. This November’s election will still be a reckoning for President Biden and the Democrats, given inflationary pressures and disapproval with the incumbent’s job performance. But Republicans cannot escape the reality that Trump and his Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement are also part of the reckoning that will take place.
Since Trump came on the scene, elections are louder and angrier and, notably, they have drawn millions more Americans to the polls. In 2016, about 137 million Americans voted in the presidential election, compared with around 130 million in 2008 and 2012. In 2020, turnout spiked to 158 million. Biden got 15.4 million more votes than Hillary Clinton got in 2016, and Trump drew 11.2 million more in 2020 than he got in his first campaign. The Democrats’ popular vote margin rose from nearly 3 million in 2016 to 7 million in 2020.
The presidential race was not an isolated example of the Trump factor. Just as startling was what happened in 2018. For decades, midterm election turnout, which is always lower than in presidential years, fluctuated within a relatively narrow range: From one midterm election to another, turnout rarely went up or down by more than a few percentage points. Then came 2018, when overall turnout was the biggest in roughly a century, registering an 11-point increase over 2014, according to census data.
This too was the Trump factor — in this case a revolt against him led by women voters that reshaped the contours of an election. By one calculation from the Democratic firm Catalist, Democrats gained 23 million more votes than in 2014 and Republicans added about 11 million. Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but he was the biggest motivating force.
Some people might say that what happened in 2018 was a reflection of long-standing trends in midterm elections, though perhaps on steroids — an unpopular incumbent whose party took a beating. True. For Republicans, that has fed the hope that this November will be the reverse of 2018, another thumping for the party of another president with low approval ratings.
Though no one can predict whether turnout this fall will even come close to what happened in 2018, there are signs all around that this will be another SDT (Since Donald Trump) election and not necessarily one that conforms to what was the norm previously.
Republicans began the year with lofty expectations, built on traditional assumptions: Biden’s approval ratings were deeply underwater and the inflation rate was rising to its highest levels in 40 years, even as the economy continued to add jobs at a healthy clip. Republican leaders talked expansively about playing offense in 70 or more congressional districts.
Those calculations were seen by independent analysts as overly rosy if only because they meant that the GOP would be going after seats in districts Biden had won by comfortable margins in 2020. But it wasn’t foolhardy to think that under traditional rules of engagement in midterms, Republicans had clear advantages. Even many Democrats lamented how bad the climate seemed for their party.
Earlier in the year, White House officials concluded that the “MAGA” label was toxic to many voters and that, if it was broadly and effectively applied to the Republican Party, it could change the midterm election from a pure referendum on Biden to a choice between two philosophies and, presumably, two leaders, both unpopular.
On Thursday, Biden delivered a slashing speech in the Maryland suburbs that highlighted the White House’s plan to employ this strategy over the next two-plus months. He described the Trump-led Republican Party as having taken a turn toward “semi-fascism” and said: “The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security. They’re a threat to our very democracy.”
That message is one half of what White House officials see as the most effective way to wage the midterm campaign. The other will be to focus on Democrats’ recent legislative successes and, if the numbers hold up, to point to a decline in gasoline prices to offset voters’ worries about this year’s high inflation.
Biden alone cannot change the midterm from a referendum on his presidency to a choice election. But he has an unexpected partner in this effort: Trump and the Republicans themselves. Trump remains in the forefront of this election year, continuing his baseless claims about a stolen election, caught up in twin Justice Department investigations over his retention of classified documents and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and demonstrating that the Republican Party is now very much the Trump Party through the power of his endorsements to prop up questionable candidates.
Republican primary voters, guided by Trump’s endorsements, have in a variety of states nominated election deniers as candidates, who, if elected in the fall, will have influence over the 2024 elections. Those nominations have added ammunition to Biden’s and the Democrats’ charge that the Republicans have become a MAGA-dominated political party.
Trump has been under the spotlight, as well, through the public hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The hearings have shown the efforts to which Trump and those close to him went to overturn the results of the 2020 election — and the degree to which the 2024 election could be put at risk if Trump acolytes control the administration of elections.
Meanwhile, the ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Trump’s retention of highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida has kept the former president in the forefront of the news. The search of the premises has touched off what is now a weeks-long story that is likely to continue for weeks more. Trump not only broke rules of politics, he may have broken the law.
The other factor that has changed the landscape — the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade — also has Trump’s fingerprints on it. The three justices he nominated — Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — provided the clear margin for the ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito.
The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has produced a surge in registration among female voters in a number of states and has become a motivating force for many women and men this fall, especially independent voters. The overwhelming vote earlier this month to maintain abortion rights in the Kansas constitution is the clearest sign of the power of the issue.
The Kansas vote was unique and doesn’t translate directly to candidate vs. candidate contests. But the recent Democratic victory in a House special election in New York state, where abortion was a central issue, provided another indication of the power of the issue to redraw assumptions about November and has spooked Republicans.
Biden’s approval ratings have improved in recent weeks but still threaten to be a drag on Democratic candidates. The Post recently reported that most Democratic candidates would prefer to campaign on their own, rather than invite Biden into their states. The president’s campaign rally in deep blue Montgomery County on Thursday may be an exception to that pattern.
But weak approval ratings might not be as definitive an indicator of these midterm elections as those in the past. Democratic strategists have seen approval ratings of some candidates rise,even as Biden’s were falling, suggesting that the candidates’ fates may be somewhat decoupled from the president’s ratings.
This is still a tough year for Democrats. But the polarizing effect of an ever-present and controversial former president means this midterm election may not conform to the norms of the past. | 2022-08-27T17:05:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Midterms are turning from a Biden referendum into a choice over Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/midterms-trump-choice-sundaytake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/midterms-trump-choice-sundaytake/ |
Sean Doolittle and Eireann Dolan are living their D.C. statehood advocacy
Washington Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle, right, his wife Eireann Dolan and their dogs live year-round on Capitol Hill. (Barry Svrluga/The Washington Post)
Sean Doolittle is from New Jersey and Eireann Dolan, his wife, grew up outside Chicago. But don’t get them going about the fact that the 689,000 or so residents of the District of Columbia have no voting representation in Congress.
“It’s a life and death issue,” Dolan said. “I know that sounds dramatic, but …”
“When I talk to my family and friends or whoever about it — people that aren’t from here — it’s like sometimes the voting part doesn’t fully hit, right?” Doolittle said. “Because in their heads, people are like, ‘Okay, what are the consequences of that?’”
This is not manufactured emotion. They’re living it. Doolittle is forever a member of the 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals. But the baseball life is nomadic, and he doesn’t know where he’ll pitch next season after he recovers from the elbow surgery that shut down his 2022.
But this is now about their home city — and a charity event to help support its people, which we’ll get to. Doolittle said all this Friday, sitting on the couch adjacent to Dolan, who folded her feet under herself in a chair in the living room of the Capitol Hill rowhouse they had moved into only earlier that week. Their rescue dogs Fiadh — an Irish word that means wild deer — and Rooney scuttled about, making themselves available for scratches. For most of the Nationals, some of September will be spent packing rented apartments and houses to move back to wherever they call home. Doolittle and Dolan are home, because whatever happens with Sean’s baseball career, they’re homeowners who will spend their offseasons in Washington, D.C., for the foreseeable future.
“We just fell in love with the city,” Doolittle said.
That affection grew before the midseason 2017 trade that made him a National. It evolved during offseason vacation visits here, back when Doolittle was an Oakland Athletic, before he had any idea he would become an all-star for Washington, before he could envision posting a 1.74 ERA over nine appearances in the 2019 postseason, including the four outs that closed out Game 1 of the World Series and the two outs that buttoned up Game 6.
“Any time we did venture outside of the National Mall and the Smithsonian, we were like, ‘This is amazing,’” Dolan said. “It’s one of those things where people visit on their eighth-grade trip or whatever, and they see what we saw, which is the National Mall and the monuments and the Smithsonian museums. But there’s so much more to the city.”
Thus, their decision to sell their place outside Chicago and buy in the District, where they eloped on the Mall on the day after the 2017 season. Because they are civic minded, Dolan and Doolittle have adopted not only the city, but the city’s issues. Statehood — or at least voting representation in Congress — is among the most important. Their interest is not performative. It’s passionate.
“It’s a human rights issue,” Dolan said. “It’s about environmental justice. It’s about racial justice.”
An hour-long conversation covered the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, which placed D.C. under the control of Congress. It covered Washington’s uniqueness among other capitals of democratic countries; the citizens of London, Paris and Brussels all have voting rights, because of course they do. It covered the difficulty of getting people from other states to first understand, and then to care, that nearly 700,000 of their fellow citizens don’t have the same governmental representation as the rest of the country. It covered the idea that it was easier to suppress a city that was, until a decade ago, majority Black.
“For a long time, at least in the past 50, 60 years probably, the demographics of the city were a reason that they were — not thinly veiled — saying, ‘That’s why they’re not getting statehood,’” Doolittle said. “Whether they thought that the Black population and the residents here couldn’t handle running the District, or that they were like, ‘That’s automatically going to be two electoral votes to the Democrats.’
“Whichever way that they wanted to go, the demographics of the city were absolutely a reason — and it’s racism — why they didn’t want to entertain statehood.”
They speak the language. They live the language. And so when DC Vote, an organization that promotes voting representation and statehood for the District, reached out to the Nationals to get in touch with Doolittle, he and Dolan were thrilled. Monday night, they will host an event called “Art Drives Statehood” at the Atlas Theater on H Street NE, supporting both DC Vote and a studio called Art Enables, which provides opportunities for artists with disabilities to make, market and sell their own work. (Tickets are $51. Get it?)
The event is a perfect fit for Doolittle and Dolan not only because it supports statehood, but because Dolan’s older brother is autistic. Drawing — elaborate, intricately detailed portraits of everything from Buddha to a baseball stadium — is therapeutic for him.
“This is such a good connection for us,” Dolan said.
Will D.C. become a state? Explaining the hurdles to statehood.
Anyone from the District, Maryland or Virginia is familiar with D.C.’s license plates, which now are adorned with the slogan “End Taxation without Representation,” an update from the older “Taxation without Representation.” At Monday’s event, artists with disabilities will unveil their interpretations for a new “Statehood” license plate.
“Art is storytelling,” Dolan said. “It’s telling a personal story, a personal history and experience. I think that’s why it’s a very cool opportunity to share the story for the disabled artists of D.C. to tell their story. I think the license plate art will reflect their experience of living here.”
Sean Doolittle’s left arm is still in a brace, and his contributions to the Nationals for the rest of the season will be limited to going in for rehab when the team is home, perhaps sharing some wisdom gained from 11 big league seasons and 463 big league appearances. He turns 36 next month, and whatever the baseball future holds, he certainly has more games behind him than ahead.
But even if his contributions to the Nationals are over, it feels like his contributions to Washington are just beginning.
“We’re trying to humanize it to connect with people so it can be somewhat relatable,” Doolittle said. “You’re not going to sell people by talking about lobbyists. I think the thing that we connected with the city so much is people have so much pride — civic pride — about living in D.C.”
Welcome home, Eireann and Sean. Let’s go get the vote. | 2022-08-27T17:10:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sean Doolittle and Eireann Dolan are activists for D.C. statehood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/sean-doolittle-eireann-dolan-dc-statehood/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/sean-doolittle-eireann-dolan-dc-statehood/ |
In this photo provided by the Serbian Presidential Press Service, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, right, speaks with European Union envoy Miroslav Lajcak in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022. Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo soared anew late last month when Kosovo’s government declared that Serb-issued identity documents and vehicle license plates would no longer be valid in Kosovo’s territory, as Kosovo-issued ones are not valid in Serbia. (Serbian Presidential Press Service via AP) (Uncredited/SERBIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE)
BELGRADE, Serbia — The European Union’s foreign policy chief announced Saturday that Serbia and Kosovo have agreed on how to resolve a dispute over their identity documents, settling one of the problems that have sparked the latest tensions between the former Balkan war foes. | 2022-08-27T18:41:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EU official says Serbia, Kosovo agree on IDs in step forward - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/eu-official-says-serbia-kosovo-agree-on-ids-in-step-forward/2022/08/27/db3f3076-2633-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/eu-official-says-serbia-kosovo-agree-on-ids-in-step-forward/2022/08/27/db3f3076-2633-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Turhan Knight, a Louisville corrections officer, appears in a video mocking city police and the killing of Breonna Taylor. (Screen grab)
A corrections officer in Louisville was fired this week after the surfacing of a video showing him mocking city police and the killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by officers during an errant raid on her apartment in 2020, officials said.
The video appears to parody a Louisville Metro Police Department recruiting advertisement. Turhan Knight, a Louisville Metro Corrections officer since 2018, walks past a row of police vehicles and tells the camera that officers are trying to “repair broken relationships” in the community.
“Be a part of a great, great police department. Never mind what happened to Breonna Taylor,” says a uniformed Knight, who goes on to call Taylor a sexist slur.
“Do you want to kill people and be able to get off for it?” he says. “Join Louisville Metro Police Department and answer the call.”
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) said Knight was fired immediately after officials learned of the video.
“There is zero excuse for his insensitivity. He has brought great shame upon Metro Corrections and all of Louisville metro government,” Fischer said in an emailed statement. “I deeply apologize to the family of Breonna Taylor and all of the hard working and ethical employees of Louisville metro government. One person will not tarnish the good work we attempt to do on behalf of our residents.”
The Washington Post could not immediately reach Knight for comment Saturday. A Louisville-area LinkedIn account with his name appeared to have been deactivated, and calls to several publicly listed phone numbers associated with him went to disconnected lines.
According to the Courier Journal newspaper in Louisville, Knight said that he was planning to soon leave the corrections department and that he was trying to hire a lawyer to represent him. The video was a joke, he told the newspaper, based on his feelings about how “some officers handled past situations.” He said he was “deeply remorseful” and didn’t intend to offend Taylor’s family.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, decried the clip while broadly criticizing local law enforcement.
“I think the video is in very poor taste and am disgusted that he thought a joke about my daughter’s death was a laughable moment,” Palmer said, according to the local news station WDRB. “It continues to show me that LMPD and those who work with them have no regard for their criminal actions against my daughter and continue to disrespect me and my family.”
Daniel Johnson, the head of the union representing Louisville corrections officers, told The Post that the organization wouldn’t appeal Knight’s termination — a firing he called “the right decision.”
Taylor was killed by plainclothes officers serving a drug warrant at her apartment in March 2020. Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, fired a warning shot with his legally owned gun — not realizing, he said, that the people who entered were police. The officers returned fire, killing Taylor in her hallway.
Four current and former officers are facing federal civil rights charges in connection with the shooting, which helped set off months of racial justice protests in Louisville and across the country. Three of them are accused of falsifying a search warrant before and after Taylor was killed. Another is charged with two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law.
This week, former Louisville detective Kelly Goodlett admitted to helping falsify the warrant, then filing a false report in Taylor’s death. Her guilty plea on a federal conspiracy charge could result in a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. | 2022-08-27T19:07:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Video shows Louisville officer mocking police, Breonna Taylor killing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/27/louisville-officer-breonna-taylor-fired/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/27/louisville-officer-breonna-taylor-fired/ |
NEW YORK — Serena Williams rose from her sideline seat after a break during a training session inside Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday, and as she walked to the baseline at the end of the court covered by shade on a steamy morning, a few voices from the stands called out in unison, “Serena, we love you!” | 2022-08-27T20:13:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena draws US Open crowd; Nadal eyes No. 1; Osaka anxious - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/serena-draws-us-open-crowd-nadal-eyes-no-1-osaka-anxious/2022/08/27/339b7ffe-2643-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/serena-draws-us-open-crowd-nadal-eyes-no-1-osaka-anxious/2022/08/27/339b7ffe-2643-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
James O'Keefe, president of Project Veritas Action, at the National Press Club in Washington in 2015. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
In November 2021, FBI agents conducted an early-morning search at the home of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe as part of an investigation into Ashley Biden’s stolen diary. In the intervening months, O’Keefe and his lawyers have criticized the FBI and the Justice Department for allegedly heavy-handed investigative measures.
The Justice Department on Thursday delivered a response of sorts, and the particulars don’t look favorable to Project Veritas, a group popular among conservatives for its undercover “sting” videos seeking to expose liberal bias in the media, government and tech worlds.
The upshot: If the government’s version of events is true — its claims have not been tested in court — Project Veritas appears to have a shaky case that all of its activities in the diary saga are protected by the First Amendment.
According to Thursday’s announcement, two Florida residents — Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander -- pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to transport stolen property, which included a diary purportedly kept by Ashley Biden. “Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. According to a court document filed by prosecutors in connection with the plea, Harris and Kurlander engaged in extensive discussions with an “organization” — known to be Project Veritas — to sell the material.
Herewith a quick summary, based on the document: In June 2020, Harris moved into a Florida house where Ashley Biden previously resided and where she’d left several items, including the diary, for safekeeping. After discovering the items, Harris enlisted Kurlander to sell them. An attempt to peddle them to the Trump campaign failed, so they turned to Project Veritas, which, according to the government, paid for the pair to travel to New York. At a Manhattan hotel, Harris and Kurlander “provided” the items, which included the diary, a digital camera and a drive containing Biden family photos. Harris explained how she’d obtained the materials and noted that there were additional items belonging to Ashley Biden at the Florida residence.
The next part is critical: An employee of Project Veritas, according to the government’s filing, then “asked” Harris and Kurlander to return to the residence “so that they could obtain and provide” more of Ashley Biden’s belongings — a step that the government says Project Veritas took in part to authenticate the diary. Harris and Kurlander complied with this alleged request, and Project Veritas paid them a total of $40,000.
In a November 2021 filing regarding the FBI search, Project Veritas provided its own account, insisting it “had no involvement with how those two individuals acquired the diary.” Instead, it said, “All of Project Veritas’s knowledge about how R.K and A.H. came to possess the diary came from R.K. and A.H. themselves.” Furthermore, the document asserts, the duo indicated that the material was “abandoned” at the house and that both of them had “reaffirmed that they had come to possess the diary lawfully.” After failing to authenticate the diary “to the degree they required to satisfy their journalistic ethics,” Project Veritas’s lawyers wrote, Project Veritas declined to publish it, but attempted to return it to Ashley Biden, and ultimately handed it over to local law enforcement in Florida.
There is little detail in that filing about the specifics of group’s communications with Harris and Kurlander, and no suggestion that they directed the pair to gather additional items from Ashley Biden.
The disclosures in Thursday’s plea documents bear on the legal arguments that Project Veritas asserted at the time of the O’Keefe raid. Back then, lawyers for the organization maintained that O’Keefe & Co. were practicing journalism — and the feds were overreaching. “What the DOJ has done in this case … they have blown federal law, they’ve blown the Constitution, they’ve blown due process and civil rights. … So this is a scandal of epic proportions,” attorney Harmeet Dhillon told host Tucker Carlson at the time. “Every journalist who isn’t worried and concerned about this should hang up their journalism card — ditto all First Amendment lawyers as well.”
As it turns out, no — this was not a scandal of epic proportions.
As for the group’s claim that the First Amendment shields its activities, that’s a complicated question. As this blog has noted before, the Supreme Court has extended First Amendment protections to the publication of information that had been obtained illegally — provided that the news outlet didn’t participate in those illegal activities. That jurisprudence stems from Bartnicki v. Vopper, in which Pennsylvania radio host Frederick Vopper received a newsworthy recording that related to an union controversy. The recording itself was illegal, but Vopper played no part in its creation. It just landed in his lap.
Project Veritas, however, may not have Vopperian clean hands in this case. The organization’s claim that it had “no involvement” in how the Florida duo acquired the diary does appear to find corroboration in the Justice Department documents. Its alleged request for a second tranche of items, however, is another matter.
According to the Justice Department document, Harris’s explanations in the New York meeting “confirmed” for Kurlander that she had stolen the items in question. Did Project Veritas reach that same conclusion? In its own filing, Project Veritas said that its sources had characterized the items as “abandoned.” From the standpoint of common sense: When two random people seek payment for items as personal as a diary and family photos involving famous people, you’d have to be pretty naive not to suspect it was stolen.
Project Veritas’s alleged push for more items appears to place its conduct in the same ballpark as a Texas radio station reporter who in the mid-1990s received illegally intercepted recordings of cordless phone conversations for use in an investigative story. The reporter gave his source tips on how to ensure the recordings’ authenticity.
Those actions, a federal appeals court ruled in Peavy v. WFAA TV Inc., were enough to expose the radio station to potential civil liability, the First Amendment notwithstanding.
No charges have been filed against Project Veritas, though law enforcement officials said that Kurlander would cooperate with their investigation, according to the New York Times. Lee Levine, a retired media defense attorney who represented the media defendant in Bartnicki before the Supreme Court, says the authorities “can feel pretty good about their chances that the First Amendment will not be an impediment to prosecution. … The combination of saying, ‘I want more stuff and, by the way, I’ll pay you for it’ — that’s a pretty powerful combination from prosecutorial standpoint.”
Paul Calli, an attorney representing Project Veritas in the case, emailed this statement to the Erik Wemple Blog:
Project Veritas and its journalists never participated in or directed any crime. A journalist must be able to engage in ethical, careful corroboration of source material prior to publication. Accepting corroborative material already in possession of the source, is not a crime. The law says as much and the PV journalists adhered to the law. The fact that sources may elect to plead guilty to a crime changes nothing as to journalists.
In an earlier statement, Calli said that a “journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace, and protected by the First Amendment.”
That’s a fine statement, but let’s be clear: There’s nothing journalistically routine or commonplace about this entire affair. | 2022-08-27T20:51:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Project Veritas' strained First Amendment defense in Ashley Biden's diary case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/27/project-veritas-ashley-biden-diary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/27/project-veritas-ashley-biden-diary/ |
Rising meat prices -— up 11 percent from last year -— are leading many to change purchasing and consumption habits
A shopper pushes his cart past a display of packaged meat in a grocery store in southeast Denver in May 2020. Meat prices have soared in 2022, leading some consumers to change their consumption habits. (David Zalubowski/AP)
It was the $200 weekly grocery bills that finally did him in. With three young kids and soaring meat costs, Logan Wagoner decided it was time to go whole hog.
This spring, the St. Louis attorney bought half a cow and an entire pig — plus a freezer that now holds 320 pounds of bacon, sausages, rib-eye steaks, ground beef and soup bones in his basement.
“My kids eat a lot of hot dogs, and the prices just got to be too much,” said Wagoner, 36. “Finally we said, ‘This is wild. What else can we do?’”
He and his wife spent about $2,000 — including $700 on the freezer — and now have enough meat to last a year. Their weekly grocery bill has fallen to about $125.
Inflation has been at or near 40-year highs since the spring, but families have been pinched by higher food prices for two years. Meat prices in particular have surged 17 percent since July 2020, spurring families around the country to change their purchasing patterns and eating habits.
More than 70 percent of Americans have adjusted how they buy meat because of inflation, according to Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economics professor at Kansas State University who oversees the school’s Meat Demand Monitor, which surveys 2,000 people nationwide about their meat consumption and purchasing habits.
Many are buying less meat or trading down to cheaper cuts — ham instead of pork chops, for example, said Tonsor.
But some, like Wagoner, are taking a more extreme approach: buying entire animals and stashing them in the freezer as a way to save money.
“With prices getting higher at the meat counter, there’s definitely been more direct interest from consumers,” said Jess Peterson, senior policy adviser for the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association and a cattle rancher in southeast Montana. “Our price points are still less than what someone would pay at the store.”
Meat prices have continued to rise even as other costs have come down. Overall meat and poultry prices have risen 11 percent from a year ago, while the cost of chicken has gone up nearly 18 percent, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bacon costs 12 percent more than it did last summer.
The number of Americans buying meat directly from farms in bulk, though still low, is higher than it was before the pandemic, said Tonsor of Kansas State. Early covid-related shutdowns and shortages prompted many Americans to look for more direct, local sources of meat. But more recently, sticker shock at the supermarket is prompting a specific type of family — with the money and space needed — to buy and store hundreds of pounds of beef, pork or chicken at once. In interviews, cattle farmers across the country said they were fielding more requests for direct orders. Some were reconfiguring their businesses altogether to accommodate half- and quarter-cow purchases.
“People are looking for more of a deal now,” said Dana Carey, owner of Circle Bar Beef in Fort Bidwell, Calif. “They’re less concerned about where the meat comes from and more worried about whether they can afford to get it on the table.”
Most of the cows from Carey’s family ranch are sent to pastures or sold to feed lots and eventually make their way to grocery stores across the country. Early in the pandemic, though, she realized people were looking to get their meat locally, from sustainable sources. She found a nearby meat processor and began selling beef directly to consumers.
But lately, interest has been through the roof for a different reason: Everyone wants cheap beef.
To that end, Carey has begun mailing 20-pound beef boxes to customers around the country. Sales began spiking about eight months ago, she said, just as fuel prices began their ascent.
Even in the face of surging grocery prices, retail beef and pork prices cause sticker shock
At Wilson Dowell Farms in Calvert County, Md., demand for half and whole cows has been so brisk among customers in the Washington, D.C., suburbs that owner Jason Leavitt is already sold out for the year. He specializes in grass-fed beef and has had to raise prices by $2 a pound to keep up with a sevenfold increase in grass seed prices.
Even so, he says many customers tell him buying direct has become cheaper than picking up meat at the grocery store. He charges $10 a pound for a quarter cow, though the price per pound drops to $9.50 for a half cow and $9 for a whole one.
“There’s all this inflation talk, and I think a lot of people are just stocking up at this point because of higher prices and shortages,” said Leavitt, who also has a day job at the county’s department of public works. “There’s a certain comfort level in knowing you have a freezer full of beef.”
The freezer itself, which can cost several hundred dollars and takes up a good chunk of space and electricity, is one of the biggest hurdles to buying large slabs of meat, said Tonsor. And buying a year’s worth of beef, pork or poultry in one go often involves hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. There are other reasons such transactions can be impractical, too.
“This doesn’t work for a lot of people because they don’t like all the cuts, or they don’t know how to cook all the cuts,” Tonsor said. “Or maybe they’re a single person who’s got no use for 200 pounds of meat.”
In latest effort to combat rising prices, White House to offer $1 billion in aid for smaller meat-industry producers
In Montrose, Colo., Katherine and Adam Egloff recently decided 185 pounds of beef was just right for their family of three. The couple, who own a Jimmy John’s franchise, have seen firsthand just how scarce and expensive meat has become: Deliveries of sliced turkey and cured meats like capicola at their sandwich shop have been spotty for months.
This summer, they bought a quarter cow for $600, and they now have T-bone steaks, rump roasts, stew meat and one cow liver in a chest freezer in their garage.
“Grass-fed beef has been getting so expensive that it was like, ‘Why am I spending so much at the store when I can just stock up?’” said Katherine, 37. “We are definitely saving money. And if store shelves are ever empty, we know we’ve got six months of beef in the freezer.”
The meat that is sold directly to consumers takes a straighter and cheaper path than the beef that ends up on grocery store shelves. Much of that cattle originates on family-owned ranches, then is sold to feed lots where they are fattened up before being sold to a meat processor. Four major meatpackers — Cargill, JBS, Tyson Foods and National Beef Packing — process roughly 85 percent of beef from U.S. feed lots.
That arrangement, industry experts and agriculture economists say, creates a monopoly-like environment, which can work to keep prices higher. Although meat processors are reporting record profits, the amount of money flowing back to ranchers has fallen over the past half century. Ranchers currently receive 39 cents of each dollar consumers spend on beef, compared with 67 cents on the dollar 50 years ago, according to monthly data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“There is a big difference between what consumers pay and what ranchers receive,” said Claire Kelloway, who manages the food and agriculture systems program at the Open Markets Institute, a nonprofit that advocates against monopolies. “You have the price of beef skyrocketing to record levels, and yet the price ranchers receive has gone down. The processors, though, have gained astronomical profits.”
Lawmakers question beef executives over soaring food prices
Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for the North American Meat Institute, an industry lobby group, said a number of other factors, such as a shortage of cattle and rising costs for labor, transportation and energy, have driven up prices.
Glenn Bloom, a computer specialist in Oklahoma City, says higher grocery prices also prompted him and his wife, Ana, to buy a quarter cow from a nearby farm. The couple ordered a chest freezer for their laundry room and paid $875 for 175 pounds of grass-fed Black Angus beef that will arrive next month.
“Now instead of $15 a pound for rib-eye steaks, it’ll be $5 a pound,” said Glenn, 61. “This way we don’t have to worry about the price going up or availability going down. It just made perfect sense for us.” | 2022-08-27T21:17:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | High meat prices are leading families to buy entire cows and pigs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/27/inflation-meat-prices/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/27/inflation-meat-prices/ |
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Capitol Hill in March. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
U.S. intelligence officials are conducting a national security assessment of classified information and other materials contained in the documents taken from Donald Trump’s Florida estate two weeks ago, a top U.S. official told Congress.
Haines said the review would include an “assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents” that the former president had kept in his private possession since leaving the White House in January 2021.
The FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Aug. 8 after reviewing 184 classified documents that had been kept there, according to a heavily redacted search warrant affidavit that was unsealed Friday.
Takeaways from the redacted affidavit
The office will work with Justice officials to ensure the assessment is “conducted in a manner that does not unduly interfere with DOJ’s ongoing criminal investigation,” Haines wrote in the letter, addressed to Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“We are pleased that in response to our inquiry, Director Haines has confirmed that the Intelligence Community and Department of Justice are assessing the damage caused by the improper storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago,” Schiff and Maloney said in a joint statement. They added that it was “critical” that the intelligence community “move swiftly to assess and, if necessary, to mitigate the damage done — a process that should proceed in parallel with DOJ’s criminal investigation.” | 2022-08-27T21:44:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Intel chief says agency will review documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/27/us-intelligence-trump-documents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/27/us-intelligence-trump-documents/ |
The agency has been hit with a wave of threats and vitriol since the FBI retrieved scores of classified records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club
President Donald Trump attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House in January 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The email capped a year-long saga that has embroiled the Archives — widely known for being featured in the 2004 Nicolas Cage movie, “National Treasure” — in a protracted fight with Trump over classified documents and other records that were taken when he left office.
Trump’s recent actions have whipped his followers into a fervor against the Archives, and he has empowered some of his most politically combative allies to represent him in negotiations with the agency. Former presidents’ representatives have typically been lawyers, historians or family members without clear political agendas. The representatives usually deal with issues such as negotiating privilege claims, setting up presidential libraries or researching presidential memoirs.
But this was yet another norm that Trump broke. In June, around the time the Justice Department stepped up its hunt for documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump assigned two new Archives representatives who focused on publicizing documents they claimed would vindicate Trump and damage the FBI: Kash Patel and John Solomon.
Patel, a former White House and Pentagon aide, has sought for years to discredit the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election. He recently has been promoting a children’s book about the scandal that features himself as a wizard who unravels a plot against “King Donald.” He also sells “K$H”-branded swag to raise money for a legal “offense” fund.
After the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Patel claimed in social media posts and right-wing media interviews that the search was part of an ongoing effort to cover up those materials.
“It’s always been all about Russia Gate,” Patel said on Trump’s Truth Social platform.
Solomon, who runs the JustTheNews conservative website, published Steidel Wall’s letter to Trump’s legal representatives notifying them of her decision to allow the FBI access to the boxes retrieved in January. He claimed the letter was proof of the White House’s “effort to facilitate a criminal probe of the man Joe Biden beat in the 2020 election.”
The Archives battle to secure records from Trump began while he was still president, according to records reviewed by The Post. Gary M. Stern, the agency’s top lawyer, began asking the former president’s attorneys to return two dozen boxes in the residency of the White House before he left. In an email Stern wrote to others, Trump’s counsel, Pat Cipollone, agreed with him. But Trump did not return them.
For months, Stern emailed and called Trump representatives, urging them to simply send them back, using a mix of pleading and an occasional threat. “We know things are very chaotic,” he wrote in one email in May, after describing all the items the Archives wanted back. “...But it is absolutely necessary that we obtain and account for all presidential records.”
Inside the Archives, the decision to provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes — uncharted territory for the 2,800-person agency — was not made lightly, officials said. Steidel Wall deliberated and consulted with the agency’s tightknit senior leadership team consisting of career civil servants. There are no political appointees currently in leadership. Steidel Wall started at the agency in 1991 as an archivist trainee, working on issues from establishing data standards to digitizing records on floppy disks.
The daughter of a police officer and a nursery schoolteacher on Long Island, she came to Washington to study history and government at Georgetown University, where she developed an interest in silent film, according to an interview with her hometown Suffolk Times. She eventually rose to become the agency’s chief of staff and deputy archivist.
“The people handling this … are career civil servants and have handled many sensitive issues, both for Democratic presidencies and Republican presidencies,” said one former Archives official. “We always tried to walk away from the politics of the situation and do our friggin’ job. … If records are alienated, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican, we need to get them back into the government’s custody. And if there’s wayward classified material, materials are classified for a reason.”
On Saturday, the heads of the House oversight and intelligence committees released a statement saying that Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, had confirmed that the Justice Department and the intelligence community were working to assess the potential damage caused by the improper storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. An affidavit unsealed Friday showed that 184 classified documents were found in the initial 15 boxes of Mar-a-Lago records reviewed by the FBI.
“The DOJ affidavit, partially unsealed yesterday, affirms our grave concern that among the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago were those that could endanger human sources,” Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “It is critical that the IC move swiftly to assess and, if necessary, to mitigate the damage done — a process that should proceed in parallel with DOJ’s criminal investigation.”
For most of American history, presidents kept their own papers and their personal ownership had never been challenged, according to a 2006 article co-written by Stern, NARA’s general counsel since 1998.
When Nixon resigned, he made plans to destroy White House records, including the Oval Office tapes that had become central to the Watergate scandal. Congress stepped in and passed the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve all written communication related to a president’s official duties — memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other material — and turn it over to the Archives.
Disputes over the Nixon tapes continued into the 1990s, with lawsuits by former aides and Cabinet members seeking to block disclosure and from public-interest groups demanding access, according to the article. At the end of the Reagan administration, Stern, then with the American Civil Liberties Union, led a groundbreaking lawsuit seeking to preserve White House records related to the Iran-contra scandal.
Research by presidential representatives have in the past raised security risks. In 2005, former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to removing and destroying classified documents from the Archives related to the 9/11 Commission’s investigation. That case was overseen by Christopher A. Wray, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and now the Trump-appointed director of the FBI.
“This is not a sleepy agency — NARA staff are used to records-related controversies,” said Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and former director of litigation at NARA. “This matter, however, is unique. No piece of paper that’s a presidential record should be at Mar-a-Lago. It is clear that NARA staff made extraordinary efforts to recover presidential records and was rebuffed on numerous occasions.”
Trump’s disdain and disregard for the presidential record-keeping system he was legally bound to adhere to is well-documented. And while advisers repeatedly warned him about needing to follow the Presidential Records Act early in his presidency, his chaotic handling of the documents prevailed.
NARA’s motto, Littera Scripta Manet, translates from Latin to “the written word remains.” But in Trump’s White House, the written word was often torn, destroyed, misplaced or hoarded.
'He never stopped ripping things up': Inside Trump's relentless document destruction habits
“There was no rhyme or reason — it was classified documents on top of newspapers on top of papers people printed out of things they wanted him to read. The boxes were never organized,” Grisham said. “He’d want to get work done on long trips so he’d just rummage through the boxes. That was our filing system.”
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in refusing to turn over documents, at times suggesting that the records are his and should not be given back to the Archives.
However, not even some of Trump’s closest advisers anticipated that what they viewed as a bureaucratic dust-up with archivists would snowball into a serious FBI investigation for potentially violating federal law in removing and retaining classified documents without authorization — a felony punishable by five years in prison.
Archives official John Laster told one Trump adviser late last year that since the Presidential Records Act came into existence, someone had accidentally taken things with them at the end of every presidency.
So when Trump finally agreed to return the 15 boxes to the Archives in January, one adviser involved in the process said: “I really thought that was the end of the story. We assumed he’d given the boxes back.”
Trump’s advisers only realized it was ballooning into a bigger issue when the Archives said that they suspected even more items were missing. “But they wouldn’t tell us what, they said they weren’t entirely sure — they just thought everything hadn’t been given back,” this person added. “No one saw the Archives referring anything to the FBI.”
But the Archive’s work may not yet be done: Some NARA officials believe that there might still be more records missing, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“Our fundamental interest is always in ensuring that government records are properly managed, preserved, and protected to ensure access to them for the life of the Republic,” Steidel Wall told her staff in her email. “We will continue to do our work, without favor or fear, in the service of our democracy.” | 2022-08-27T21:44:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside Trump’s war on the National Archives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/trump-archives-records-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/trump-archives-records-war/ |
Off-duty FBI police officer involved in shooting on I-295 in Northeast D.C.
Moriah Balingit
An off-duty FBI police officer was involved in a shooting Saturday afternoon in Northeast D.C., local and federal law enforcement officials said.
There were no reported injuries, a District police spokesperson said.
Gunfire broke out at about 1:30 p.m. on Interstate 295 North, near the intersection of Hayes Street and Kenilworth Terrace NE, District police said. The intersection is directly east of a large wooded area that includes the National Arboretum, Kingman Park and Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.
In a separate statement, the FBI confirmed one of its off-duty police officers was involved in the shooting. The FBI did not name the officer, nor did either agency provide additional information about the circumstances of the shooting.
An FBI spokesperson said the officer’s involvement in the shooting is being investigated by the agency’s Inspection Division.
“The review process is thorough and objective, and is conducted as expeditiously as possible,” the FBI statement said. | 2022-08-27T21:52:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Off-duty FBI police officer involved in shooting on I-295 in Northeast D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/off-duty-fbi-police-officer-involved-shooting-i-295-northeast-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/off-duty-fbi-police-officer-involved-shooting-i-295-northeast-dc/ |
Jean-Jacques Sempé, whimsical illustrator of New Yorker covers, dies at 89
Jean-Jacques Sempé in 2011. (Remy de la Mauviniere/AP)
A lone cyclist crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in the rain. A black cat sits contently on the knobby end of a banister. A solitary summer beachgoer does a handstand at dawn.
Each drawing is shown from a distance, as if you were lucky enough to stumble upon a private little treasure and pause to smile at life. This was the world crafted by French artist and illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé for more than six decades — whimsical, playful and at times ironical — in anthologies, the popular “Le Petit Nicolas” (Little Nicolas) series and more than 100 covers for the New Yorker magazine.
“What I like so much about cartoons is the way they can express certain ideas discreetly,” Mr. Sempé was quoted as saying in a 2014 book, “C’est La Vie! The Wonderful World of Jean-Jacques Sempé.” “It is a way of talking about yourself without really seeming to do so.”
Mr. Sempé, who died Aug. 11 at 89, said he was enraptured as a boy in Paris listening to jazz greats such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie and how their music could convey feelings without words. Mr. Sempé appeared to borrow some of the same sensibilities. He used captions and written puns sparingly — allowing his ink-and-watercolor images to comment on life’s timeless wonders, foibles and pleasant absurdities.
He often preferred a distant vantage point, artistically surveying scenes from high above or across grand cityscapes of New York or Paris, his two main points of reference. The hard edges of reality were pushed aside. What was left were little reminders to pay attention to the special moments when they come along.
His New Yorker cover for the Jan. 5, 1987, issue was a chandelier-eye view of two couples still dancing after a New Year’s party is over. Students in a dance class circle a piano, as seen through a window across a city street, for the Jan. 5, 2015, cover. For the Aug. 21, 2006, issue: A smiling man walks through a park, viewed from the treetops, with his collar undone and tie flapping in the breeze as if to celebrate freedom from the grind.
Cyclists were a recurring theme — Mr. Sempé liked to bike — as were the juxtaposed scenes of lone figures amid huge backdrops. A concert pianist walks across a vast stage toward a grand piano on a 1999 New Yorker cover. (Mr. Sempé entitled it “Slight Anxiety.”) A cover in 1979 has riders on a tandem bike rolling through a grove of trees.
France pays homage to beloved cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé
In New York, at the intersection of 47th Street and Ninth Avenue, a faded mural signed by Mr. Sempé shows a man carrying a woman on a bicycle, trailed by a boy on his own bike.
“If God was a cartoonist, this is how His drawings would look like,” wrote Mexican political cartoonist Francisco “Paco” Calderón.
But Mr. Sempé could draw with a bite, too. A 1963 panel shows a stage-prop tree that just flattened an actor. There were unruly schoolchildren and stodgy teachers, frustrated Parisian traffic cops, hapless tourists and self-absorbed intellectuals. When he depicted cats, however, they were always content and masters of their domain.
Mr. Sempé gave most of his work, especially portrayals of Paris, a heavy veneer of nostalgia: the city’s traditional mansard roofs, roads full of Citroens and baguettes peeking from shopping bags.
“For me, the modern world lacks charm,” he told the Independent in 2006. “I am not saying that things were always better in the past. They weren’t. But things looked better, or at least more interesting, to me.”
Childhood doodler
Jean-Jacques Sempé was born Aug. 17, 1932 in Passac, France, outside Bordeaux. He described doodling and daydreaming as his boyhood passions — partly as an escape from a turbulent family life that included a violent and erratic stepfather.
“I wanted to be like the others. I was tired. Poverty was appalling,” he told News in France earlier this year.
He was expelled from school at 14 for failing to follow the rules and tried to land apprentice-level civil servant jobs, but couldn’t pass the tests. With few options, he peddled tooth powder as a teenage salesman and managed to sell some cartoons to French newspapers, signing his work as DRO as an approximate phonetic English translation for the French “dessiner,” or to draw.
It wasn’t enough to live on, however. He enrolled in the French army at age 17 in 1950 by lying about his age. “The only place that would give me a job and a bed,” he later said.
He was discharged from the military after the ruse about his age was discovered. The next stop was Paris to try his hand as a self-taught illustrator in the comic book industry. His natural talent was recognized with a newcomer’s award in 1952, which opened doors for work in magazines such as Paris Match.
His circle included a growing friendship with writer René Goscinny, who would later co-create the “Asterix” cartoon world. They collaborated on “Le Petit Nicolas,” which began as a comic strip in 1956 about the shortest-boy-in-class Nicolas and his friends in a largely idealized version of postwar France.
The first book based on Nicholas stories was published in 1959 and later gained an international audience in the United States and elsewhere — with readers amused by Nicolas’s childhood views on the oddities of adults. Movie adaptations followed.
“‘Le Petit Nicolas’ is timeless because when we created it, it was already out of fashion,” Sempé said.
In 2004, Goscinny’s daughter Anne discovered dozens of unpublished Nicolas stories and created a 600-page volume of the work. Mr. Sempé provided the illustrations.
Survivors include his wife of five years, Martine Gossieaux Sempé, and daughter Inga Sempé from his second marriage, to Mette Ivers. His first marriage, to Christina Courtois, also ended in divorce. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available. Martine Gossieaux Sempé announced the death but gave no further details. No cause was given.
Mr. Sempé — who was widely known by just his last name — lived and worked Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. “He was brilliant when it came to satire, capturing a gesture, an attitude, a moment, bicycles, smiles, cats and musicians,” wrote Le Monde in a tribute after his death.
Mr. Sempé was introduced to New York in the 1970s by illustrator Ed Koren, who was his early guide through Manhattan and beyond. Koren also brought him to the New Yorker, where Mr. Sempé hoped to join idols such as Sam Cobean, Saul Steinberg and James Thurber on its pages.
Mr. Sempé first cover appeared in August 1978 — a half-man/half-bird in a business suit perched on a window sill, apparently hesitating to take flight.
The New Yorker’s art editor, Françoise Mouly, said the magazine plans to reissue one of Mr. Sempé’s covers for the Sept. 5 edition. It will be his 114th cover, Mouly told Agence France-Presse.
Mr. Sempé “always felt like himself in New York” and felt a special connection with its people, she said. After a cover by Mr. Sempé, there was always a buzz in the New Yorker office.
“Half of my colleagues would say to me, 'That’s me, that’s me,’” Mouly said. | 2022-08-27T22:27:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jean-Jacques Sempé, French illustrator of New Yorker covers, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/27/sempe-new-yorker-illustrator-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/27/sempe-new-yorker-illustrator-dies/ |
This year’s back-to-school checklist: pencils, notebooks, vaccines
Families collected back-to-school supplies and got vaccinations ahead of the first day for D.C. public schools.
Three-year-old volunteer David Fletcher, right, keeps the pen supply topped up at the school supplies table during the back-to-school event at Audi field, hosted by Serve Your City, a mutual aid organization based in Ward 6. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Yessenia held onto her mother’s waist as the needle plunged into her left arm. After much pleading and coaxing from D.C. Health staff, the 12-year-old finally got her first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
“I was crying for all that?” she asked. The middle-schooler got a back-to-school shot on Saturday during a school supplies giveaway. The event, hosted by Serve Your City/Ward 6 Mutual Aid, provided hundreds of families with backpacks and Chromebook laptops ahead of the school year. The first day of class for D.C. public schools is Monday.
This summer, the District has urged families to meet its coronavirus vaccine requirement for children over 12, one of a few such mandates in the country. The rule, the result of legislation passed by the D.C. Council last year, has been criticized for its potential to keep students out of school. Children who do not comply with the mandate — or with a long-standing, but historically under-enforced requirement for routine immunizations against illnesses such as polio and measles — will not be allowed to attend school, officials said.
City education leaders recently moved to give families more time to get caught up. Prekindergarten through fifth-grade students who do not have their routine pediatric immunizations by Sept. 7 will be notified and told to comply by Oct. 11. Sixth- through 12th-graders will be notified about noncompliance on Oct. 3 and will need to be vaccinated by Nov. 4.
Students over 12 who are not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus will be alerted Nov. 21 and will need their shots by Jan. 3 to stay in school.
Some families are grateful for the extra time. But Yessenia’s mother, Anasa Wilson, has long planned to get her family vaccinated. She scheduled an appointment for her daughters earlier this year but missed it. Then, she had trouble rescheduling.
“School had to be closed so many times for outbreaks,” said Wilson, 45, who works in construction and lives in Southeast Washington. Last year, her daughters attended D.C. public schools, but this fall will enroll at the Monroe School, a private school in Northeast. She said she supports the city’s mandate. “The kids are tired of being masked.”
Aaliyah and Aameria Phillips, who attend charter schools in the District, also got their shots Saturday afternoon. Aameria, 13, however, is not a fan of the citywide rule.
“It’s stupid,” she said, adding that kids who do not want to get vaccinated should have a virtual learning option. D.C. public and charter schools are not offering that choice for most students this school year.
Officials say enforcement of the vaccine mandates are necessary to prevent outbreaks. For example, just 72 percent of children between the ages of 12 and 15 have completed their primary series of the coronavirus vaccine, according to data published Wednesday by the city. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds have a 76 percent vaccination rate.
Those numbers, however, contain wide racial disparities. A little more than half of Black 12- to 15-year-olds are vaccinated against the coronavirus, compared to 87 percent of White students in that age group.
Paul Kihn, the deputy mayor for education, said he is waiting for enrollment to settle before saying how many children are behind on routine vaccinations, but earlier this summer about a quarter of the public and private school population were not up-to-date. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said the pandemic caused kids to be separated from their doctors.
“So we have spent a lot of time, and we have worked with all of our providers to make access to the vaccine pretty seamless,” Bowser said during an interview this week. “And so we’re looking forward to families taking advantage of that.”
Outside the vaccination tent, volunteers passed out 1,200 Adidas backpacks that families were able to stuff with notebooks, pink erasers, highlighters, crayons, calculators and other school essentials. About 250 people who preregistered for the event at Audi Field got Chromebooks.
The supplies, laptops and some backpacks were funded by donations from individuals, local foundations and businesses, said Maurice Cook, executive director of Serve Your City and lead organizer with Ward 6 Mutual Aid. The D.C. United Foundation also provided backpacks.
Tiffany El, a direct support professional, was able to secure one of the coveted devices. They family had one last year, but it broke, she said.
“We already have to get uniforms, shoes, haircuts. It’s so much,” said El, who lives in Southeast Washington. She said she hopes the city’s vaccine mandate will mean her children will miss less school this year. The whole family is ready for normalcy. “It’ll make a lot of difference.” | 2022-08-27T22:49:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Back-to-school checklist: pencils, notebooks, vaccines - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/27/back-to-school-dc-vaccines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/27/back-to-school-dc-vaccines/ |
Md. watchdog: Reports from Pr. George’s school board ethics panel are unreliable
An ethics report that targeted Prince George’s County school board members was unreliable, included “factually inaccurate” information and omitted key exonerating statements from witnesses, Maryland’s education watchdog said in a report released this week.
The error-riddled ethics reports, completed last year by a county school board ethics advisory panel and leaked to some community members, accused seven school board members of a variety of offenses, including steering contracts, doing political favors and engaging in a quid pro quo with a labor union. The reports were tentative findings by the panel that would be sent to the Maryland State Board of Education for further action, if approved by the Prince George’s County school board.
But the ethics reports weren’t wholly accurate and cost over $100,000, according to Friday’s report by Maryland Inspector General for Education Richard P. Henry. The inspector general of education “did corroborate some statements found” in the ethics reports, but “many contradictory statements” were left out.
The IG’s investigation also found that Prince George’s school board chair, the ethics panel and the school system’s acting counsel violated several board polices including the duties of an ethics panel, the handling of complaints to the ethics panel, and business operations.
Board chairwoman Juanita Miller did not respond to requests for comment. Former ethics panel chairman Gregory T. Morton was unavailable for comment, but agreed to speak with a Washington Post reporter at a later date. A spokeswoman for the Prince George’s school board said in an email that the inspector general’s report was a fair characterization of the actions of the board’s general counsel.
“I am so pleased and relieved that the truth has finally come to the surface,” said Edward Burroughs, a target of the ethics panel reports and former school board member. Burroughs, who now represents District 8 on the county council, called Henry’s findings “a total vindication.”
Six of the seven members targeted in the ethics panel’s reports provided written responses that challenged its findings, but none of that information was used, according to Henry’s report. Those written responses were included in an ethics panel investigative file brought to the inspector general while an initial interview was being conducted with the former ethics panel chairman Morton.
The inspector general’s office requested to meet with Morton a second time and all of the ethics panelists after reviewing the investigative file.
All declined to be interviewed, according to Henry’s report. Then, the panelists resigned en masse.
Miller, the school board’s chairwoman, filed one of the complaints against the seven board members that spurred the ethics panel’s investigation. Miller also assisted a nonprofit agency and another individual in filing their respective complaints, according to Henry’s report.
Error-riddled ethics reports on school board create political firestorm in Prince George’s County
The ethics panel’s findings caused a political firestorm in the D.C. suburb late last year, with County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) putting out a sharply-worded statement that pushed for state intervention. Prominent pastors and the county’s top business leaders demanded intervention from Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
The inspector general’s investigation, which began in September 2021, was prompted in part by a group of parents and activists who filed a complaint accusing the ethics panel of using “taxpayer funds to conduct an apparently improper investigation.” The parent and activist group cited an article in The Washington Post about misleading information and errors contained in the ethics reports.
Three of the elected school board members targeted by the ethics reports have since left the school board, in part citing dysfunction fueled by the ethics panel’s findings.
The inspector general’s report noted that in each area of the ethics panel’s findings against the seven board members, some members had submitted statements that disputed the panel’s findings, and those statements were not included in its final report.
After flawed ethics reports on Prince George’s school board, parents and activists seek investigation
The inspector general noted that school board member Shayla Adams-Stafford (District 4) — one of the board members targeted by a complaint — filed a lawsuit against the ethics panel on July 26, 2021, that pointed to errors in the panel’s findings. The ethics panel did not reconsider its investigation, despite errors identified by Adams-Stafford’s lawsuit. Adams-Stafford did not respond to a request for comment.
The state watchdog report also found that the school board’s acting general counsel “failed to maintain oversight” on outside legal counsel the ethics panel requested. The acting general counsel also did not consult with the school system to set contract terms or an expiration date for the outside work. The contract as written would have allowed outside counsel to charge the school system more than $250,000.
When a permanent general counsel was hired by the school system, the initial contract was then thrown out. A new one was written that had appropriate oversight, according to Henry’s report.
The inspector general issued five recommendations focused on reviewing and clarifying language in the school board’s ethics policies, training and review of those policies, and other school system governance policies for current and future board members and the board’s general counsel.
A spokeswoman for Prince George’s County Public Schools said Friday the district’s current general counsel will review the report and consult with administration.
Despite the public complaints of flawed information, at a recent school board meeting on June 9, the school board voted to concur with the ethics panel’s findings from last year.
Previous attempts to do so did not pass, but the board makeup has changed since some of the elected members have left.
The Post contacted seven board members who voted to support the panel’s findings to ask whether they would reconsider their vote now following the inspector general’s report. None of those members responded.
The inspector general also found that Miller, the board’s chair, acted in violation of the school board’s ethics policy by voting to accept the findings, since she wrote and assisted in some of the complaints.
Miller has also been issued a notice of charges by the state board of education that could lead to her removal. Though there have been calls for Miller to step down, including from Alsobrooks, Miller has declined to do so. | 2022-08-27T22:49:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | State IG finds Prince George's school board ethics panel reports inaccurate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/27/prince-georges-school-board-ethics-inspector-general/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/27/prince-georges-school-board-ethics-inspector-general/ |
After 60 years, Dulles Airport is poised for a makeover
Richard Golinowski, who took over leadership of Dulles last year, discusses what the future will hold for the airport
The entrance to the Washington Dulles International Airport Station on the Metro system. (Luz Lazo/The Washington Post)
As Dulles International Airport emerges from a global pandemic and prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary this year, the airport is laying the groundwork for a makeover it hopes will set the stage for its future.
Plans for a 14-gate concourse announced earlier this year are part of a broader modernization effort at Dulles, which has long served as the region’s international hub. Shepherding the airport through that process is Richard Golinowski, who worked in various roles at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority for more than two decades. He was appointed director of the airport last September.
Golinowski spoke with The Washington Post about Dulles’ pandemic recovery, plans for future expansion and the benefits of the Silver Line extension. This interview has been lightly edited.
Q: How are things these days at Dulles and how close are you to pre-pandemic operations?
A: The airport is abuzz with activity. It’s pretty phenomenal how many people are starting to come back and starting to get on a plane to travel. We are approximately 85 percent of where we were in 2019. So we are a little bit ahead of our budget numbers right now. And it looks like going into 2023, we’ll probably be around 90 percent of where we were 2019. About 95 percent of our concessions are open and making money, so we are doing well.
Q: What’s fueling the increase in flights? Are carriers coming back and restarting service or are new carriers coming in?
A: We have a mixture of both. We have some carriers coming back. The latest one was Iberia going to Madrid. They had been with us a few years ago. But our existing carriers are adding service. United added Amman, Jordan; Ethiopian added Lomé, Togo; and Avianca added Costa Rica. Allegiant is another new carrier. They started domestic service to Jacksonville, Fla., and Austin this past year. And hopefully, if everything goes well, by November, United will start service to Cape Town.
More Q & A's with transportation newsmakers
Q: How long have you been running the show at Dulles?
A: It’s been about 11 months. I’ve been with the authority for about 27 years, so I knew a lot of people here at Dulles. But there are a lot of interesting places here at the airport that I never knew existed. And I’m getting the grand tour. Somebody is always showing me something new, so it’s pretty exciting.
Q: Dulles is celebrating its 60th year this year. What do you all have planned?
A: The 60th anniversary will be on Nov. 17, so we are building up to that. We’re going to have several events that week, including some giveaways to employees and to customers. We’re going to have a dinner event through our Committee for Dulles organization. And you’re starting to see, if you come to the airport, signs and banners announcing the 60th anniversary. We’re going to involve not just the authority employees, but also all the people who work at the airport on a day-to-day basis. We have about 14,000 people who work here at the airport supporting operations and everybody is pretty excited.
Q: At 60, is Dulles starting to show its age?
A: Yes, it is. We’re starting to see some problems in some of our older buildings and we’re addressing those. Obviously, over the past couple of years, we’ve tried to control our budget as much as we could, but now that things are starting to look up, we’re starting to free up some money for maintenance for some of our older infrastructure.
Q: There’s been some big news out of Dulles recently. Can you tell me more about the 14-gate concourse and what it’s going to mean for travelers?
A: If you’re familiar with the C/D concourse — that’s the United Concourse — when that was built, it was built as a “temporary facility.” Well, it’s been around for 20 or 30 years now. We always had intentions to replace it, so this piece that’s coming, Concourse East, will be the first phase of the revitalization of Dulles Airport. It’s going to be a 14-gate addition that’s going to be built right on top of the C train station. If you’re familiar with this train station today, when you go in and you come out of the train, you have a long walk back to the gate. The new concourse will be built right on top of that train station, so you’ll just pop right up through escalators and elevators right into the concourse.
Dulles concourse gets a boost from Biden's infrastructure law
Q: How long will this take to complete?
A: We hope to have it done by 2026.
Q: How does this fit into the larger master plan for Dulles?
A: After we build this concourse we will then extend it across the airfield over time and ultimately replace the C/D concourse. Right now we are going through the planning process to identify the best way to do that. If you think of it today, it would be one large concourse, parallel to the C/D concourse we have today.
Q: How can the public get involved in the planning process for Dulles?
A: We are going to have a series of public participation venues or events, where people can come and see what our preliminary plan is and what our long-term plan is. The first one was held on April 27 and we are getting ready to schedule the next one or two of those public sessions. People can also go to the website and submit questions or concerns or comments about our master plan. It’s also important to note that the last time we did a master plan was in 1985. So the existing plan is 37 years old and it needs to be updated.
Q: As the person responsible for managing Dulles, do you hear from passengers about features or services they’d like to see?
A: One of the things we constantly hear about is easy access to the gates. So part of the master planning process is trying to figure out how to incorporate [Transportation Security Administration] checkpoint screening areas into our facilities a little bit better. Also, on return flights, we’ll look at how we can help Customs and Border Protection streamline their operations for people coming into the country.
Q: How will the opening of the second phase of the Silver Line impact Dulles?
A: It’s going to be good for the airport. I think, ultimately, it will bring more employees to the airport than it will passengers. But that’s good. If we can get employees to the airport more easily — transporting them via public transportation rather than driving on the roads every day — I think it’s going to be good for the area.
Q: Why won’t more passengers use it? Is it because it’s such a long ride from downtown D. C.?
A: I don’t think it’s a time thing. I think it’s quite frankly, it’s a luggage thing. People don’t want to carry luggage on the Metro. They’d rather just drive or take an Uber, take a taxi or have somebody drive them to the airport with their luggage.
After a years long slump, Dulles Airport is bouncing back
Q: In this region there seems to be some bias against Dulles — that it’s too hard to get to or people just don’t like it. Why do you think that is?
A: That’s a good question. I’m hoping that the opening of the Silver Line takes away some of that perception, makes [Dulles] more accessible. But definitely the development that’s occurred down the corridor has really opened up the possibilities for Dulles Airport and its expansion. So I think slowly but surely that sort of mind-set is leaving us.
Q: I know right before the pandemic, Dulles was on a roll after lots of years of hand-wringing over its future. At one point National had surpassed Dulles in passenger counts. Do you think Dulles is going to be able to regain that momentum?
A: The future is bright here. We have a lot of interest and carriers are coming to the airport. We have a lot of pent-up demand in the region for travel, and this is the place to do it. And we have very good infrastructure to accommodate more flights and more passengers. We can handle it, unlike National, which is somewhat landlocked and restricted on size. They can’t grow. We can grow and we’re ready for it. | 2022-08-27T23:02:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dulles Airport is poised for a makeover after 60 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/27/dulles-airport-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/27/dulles-airport-future/ |
This composite of satellite images shows smoke rising from fires at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine on Aug. 24. (Planet Labs Pbc/AP)
Ukraine and Russia traded blame for fresh shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant Saturday, underscoring the persistent danger of fighting around the plant as the United Nations’ atomic watchdog prepares to visit the site next week.
The fighting has raised global alarm about the risk of a nuclear accident and prompted urgent calls from world leaders for international inspectors to be granted access to the facility. Russia has occupied the nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — since March, though Ukrainian workers continue to operate it. Explosions and fires in the area in recent days have led to the deaths of two workers and temporarily disconnected electricity to and from the plant, producing mass power outages in nearby villages.
Russian troops “repeatedly” targeted the facility between Friday and Saturday afternoons, Ukraine’s nuclear power agency said in a statement Saturday. “As a result of periodic shelling, the infrastructure of the power plant has been damaged, there are risks of hydrogen leakage and sputtering of radioactive substances, and the fire hazard is high,” the agency said.
Russian Grad rockets and artillery shells damaged houses, power lines and an educational center in Nikopol, a city across the river from the Zaporizhzhia plant, and in neighboring villages, Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, said in a Telegram post Saturday. Residents told The Post they were without power for several hours.
Moscow, meanwhile, blamed Kyiv’s forces for attacks on the nuclear plant, alleging Saturday that shells launched by the Ukrainian military from the village of Marhanets hit the power plant’s territory three times over the previous day.
Ukrainian forces fired 17 shells, Russia’s Defense Ministry alleged — with four hitting the roof of a building housing nuclear fuel and 13 exploding near storage sites for nuclear fuel and solid radioactive waste.
World leaders and nuclear experts worry the fighting could compromise the plant’s cooling systems, causing a nuclear meltdown. Radioactive material that leaks from the site could contaminate nearby areas and possibly blow across Ukraine’s borders — posing a silent threat to human health and the environment for years.
Local authorities in the Zaporizhzhia region have begun distributing potassium iodide tablets to residents in case of such a leak. Officials emphasized that people should only take them after a nuclear accident occurs — not as a preventive measure. The pills can help block radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid, decreasing the risk of developing thyroid cancer later from exposure to radioactive material.
Besides contending with near-daily shelling and fraying infrastructure, Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom says the plant’s workers have also been subject to intimidation, detention and torture by Russian forces who control the facility. On Saturday, Energoatom accused Russian forces of setting up a “torture chamber” in one of the plant’s underground bunkers aimed at rooting out any dissent among the workers.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the visit is critical so that the IAEA can inform the world that the presence of Russian forces at the plant is an “imminent threat to nuclear security.”
But Ukrainian officials remain worried that Russian forces will sanitize the plant ahead of the visit and intimidate workers into not telling the truth about Russian behavior, resulting in the IAEA blessing the safety protocols followed at the plant, and in effect legitimizing Russia’s occupying presence.
“The worst-case scenario is when they come and say it’s best that the station is under Russian control [and] in general, nuclear safety protocols are followed,” Kuleba said in an interview at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “This will mean that the Russians stay.”
The negotiations over the visit are being fleshed out between Grossi, Kuleba and their Russian counterparts. Moscow has insisted that Russian media be allowed to cover the IAEA visit — a demand Kuleba said Ukraine would likely accept as long as Ukrainian and international media were also allowed to cover the visit.
“In principle, we have nothing against allowing media coverage, but we have to do it smartly and to minimize the opportunities for the Russians to turn that into a propaganda event,” Kuleba said.
Though the plant is under Russian control, it is run by about 1,000 Ukrainian workers, which is less than 10 percent of its usual workforce. Some Ukrainian officials hope that the IAEA will record accounts of abuse of plant workers but the president of Energoatom, Petro Kotin, said the plant’s workers are unlikely to divulge information that is critical of Russia for fear of punishment.
“It is a very big danger for them,” Kotin said in an interview.
Another sticking point in the talks over the IAEA visit has been how to guarantee the safety of international inspectors while they work in an active war zone — an issue likely to take on added urgency after the latest shelling around the plant.
“We bear responsibility for the mission and we have to protect them from a potential provocation or even false-flag operation staged by the Russians,” Kuleba said.
Russia blocked the adoption late Friday of the final document in a weeks-long review of the United Nations’ key nuclear disarmament treaty. The draft text expressed concern about Russia’s military takeover of the Zaporizhzhia site.
Igor Vishnevetsky, deputy director of arms control and nonproliferation at the Russian foreign ministry, told assembled officials that the final draft of this review cycle’s declaration did not achieve “balance.”
“Our delegation has one key objection on some paragraphs which are blatantly political in nature,” he said.
The 36-page document contained four paragraphs on the Zaporizhzhia facility, voicing “grave concern” over Ukraine’s loss of control and support for the IAEA’s efforts to inspect the plant.
“We were not able to achieve a consensus document because of the inexplicable choice of one state,” Adam Scheinman, the U.S. special representative for nuclear nonproliferation, wrote on Twitter Friday night. “The U.S. deeply regrets Russia’s refusal to acknowledge the grave situation in Ukraine. It is absurd that Russia could not do so.”
“We are in touch with the family and providing all possible consular assistance,” a State Department spokesperson told Post. “Out of respect to the family during this difficult time, we have nothing further to add.”
The official urged U.S. citizens not to travel to Ukraine because of the war and “the singling out of U.S. citizens in Ukraine by Russian government security officials.”
Oleg Kozhemyako, the governor of Russia’s far eastern Primorsky Krai region, said in a Telegram post Friday that members of a military unit from his region had killed the American during a battle, CBS News reported. He said the man had been fighting on Ukraine’s behalf and was killed “in the first clash literally immediately after arriving at the front line.” | 2022-08-27T23:15:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine, Russia exchange blame for more shelling at Zaporizhzhia plant ahead of IAEA visit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/27/ukraine-nuclear-iaea-zaporizhzhia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/27/ukraine-nuclear-iaea-zaporizhzhia/ |
What is a ‘museum’? A revised definition looks forward, not back.
The International Council of Museums now describes museums as institutions that are — or should be — “accessible and inclusive” and foster “diversity and sustainability.”
A gallery in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. (André Chung for The Washington Post)
For the first time in 15 years, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a nonprofit that makes recommendations and establishes standards for museums around the world, has updated its definition of the word ‘museum.’ Following a years-long debate over how ideological the definition should be, the final text includes new language about museums being ethical, diverse, accessible, inclusive and sustainable.
Approved by 92 percent of participants at ICOM’s general conference in Prague on Wednesday, the new definition describes a museum as “a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage.” The noteworthy changes come in the final two sentences, which read, “Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”
In a statement, ICOM president Alberto Garlandi acknowledged that the definition was “not perfect,” but still called it “a great step forward.” The previous definition, which had been in place since 2007, was just one sentence long. Before 2007, the previous definition had not changed in 30 years.
The word “museum,” it’s worth nothing, comes from the Greek for “seat of the Muses,” and refers to mythological figures associated with creative inspiration.
More aspirational than prescriptive, the updated language comes at a fraught time for museums, which are going through a sweeping cultural reckoning that has touched nearly every level of their operations, from decisions about funding to what is shown in their galleries. The new definition reflects this reckoning, but some critics say it doesn’t go far enough to acknowledge museums’ complicated histories of centering White, male and Western perspectives.
In recent years, the museum world has been plagued by accusations of “toxic philanthropy” for receiving money from such controversial patrons as the Sackler and Koch families. The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 prompted renewed scrutiny of museums for their lack of diversity, both in museum staffs and in the objects in their collections. More recently, controversies about stolen artifacts have led some museums to return pillaged artifacts — such as the Smithsonian’s decision to return Benin Kingdom Court style artworks to their homeland in Nigeria. Still, other works with complicated histories remain in some museum collections.
With these debates still playing out, the definition raises questions about how institutions will be held accountable. Similar to the United Nations, but for museums, ICOM can make recommendations, yet lacks the authority to enforce compliance. And in the U.S. where many museums are privately owned, its guidelines do not carry much weight.
Human bones, stolen art: Smithsonian tackles its ‘problem’ collections
In countries with mostly state-run museums, however, the definition can potentially have significant sway with governments that decide what museums and projects are worthy of funding. “That was part of the push to make sure that they got it right,” says Laura Lott, president and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums. “It would have real implications on many museums if it inadvertently said the wrong thing about what museums are or pointed to a past of what museums were.”
Lott, who attended the conference in Prague, praised the ICOM’s wording. “It is a timely reflection of the reality that the roles of museums are varied and many are changing,” she said. “I also find just a lot of hope in the fact that dozens of nations representing thousands of museums came together and found a common definition.”
Lott points to the Oakland Museum of California for its “introspective work on itself and the community,” and the Phillips Collection in Washington, which hired one of the first diversity officers in the museum industry, as examples of museums that embody the principles outlined in the definition.
Others have noted that the definition — which makes strides in opening up a tradition-bound field to self-appraisal — can shape culture.
Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, who began her tenure in 2019 with a vision of reform and reinvention, applauded ICOM for its efforts.
“I appreciate the challenge they had in developing the new statement — a reflection of the breadth of institutions represented by ICOM,” Feldman said in a statement shared with The Washington Post. “It is a complicated time for museums, as audiences and communities expect greater relevance, accessibility and transparency from them. The definition is also aspirational, which gives me great hope for the field.”
The revised wording has been a long time coming. In 2019, ICOM proposed an even lengthier definition that referred to museums as “democratizing, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures,” tasking museums to “safeguard diverse memories” and “contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary well-being.” It was dismissed as a bloated manifesto that used trendy rhetoric and did not do enough to differentiate museums from other cultural institutions.
Some aren’t so happy with where ICOM has landed now either. As Laura Raicovich, author of “Culture Strike: Art and Museums in the Age of Protest,” told ARTnews “It would have been a far more important shift for ICOM to acknowledge that museums are not neutral, and never have been.”
ICOM, a membership-based organization headquartered in Paris, has 40,000 members from 141 countries. Formed in the 1940s, ICOM describes itself as the only global organization in the museum field. It publishes research, host training sessions, issues codes of ethics and maintains a “Red List” database which flags cultural objects at risk of theft and trafficking, so police and customs official can identify them. | 2022-08-27T23:15:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The International Council of Museums redefines the word museum - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/27/international-council-of-museums-redefines-museum/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/08/27/international-council-of-museums-redefines-museum/ |
From Blake Griffin to Joel Embiid, other high draft picks have missed debut seasons and still found success
Chet Holmgren, the No. 2 selection in this year's NBA draft, is not the first top-three pick to have an injury erase his rookie season. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
While defending LeBron James on the fast break during a pro-am game last Saturday, Chet Holmgren jumped to contest a layup and landed awkwardly, injuring his right foot and becoming the latest lottery pick whose debut season ended before it officially began.
Holmgren, the No. 2 selection by the Oklahoma City Thunder in this year’s NBA draft, will miss the upcoming season with a Lisfranc injury, which results from damage to the bones or ligaments that stabilize and support the arch of the foot.
A Lisfranc injury ended Udonis Haslem’s 2010-11 regular season with the Miami Heat, though he returned after six months and played in the postseason. While recovery time from the injury varies from person to person, full recovery for elite athletes typically lasts seven to 11 months, according to Amiethab A. Aiyer, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Reports on Lisfranc injuries within the NBA are sparse compared to those in contact sports such as rugby or football, where they’ve been studied more closely, said Aiyer. Within those two sports, studies show most players return from Lisfranc injuries within 11 months but experience “some declines in those first couple seasons” back.
“For the other sports that the literature is out there for, including rugby and the NFL, where it occurs much more frequently, there’s a pretty good probability — close to 90 percent or higher — of a return to play within a year,” Aiyer said. “Some studies show no real difference in pre-injury versus post-injury play, but there’s definitely some evidence of [potential] decline coming back.”
As Holmgren begins his rehabilitation, he can look to other high NBA draft picks who missed their debut seasons to injuries and returned with somewhat mixed results.
Perhaps the most prominent example of recent star potential spoiled by injuries, Oden was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the top pick in the 2007 draft despite questions about his durability. That summer, the former all-American at Ohio State had an exploratory procedure after experiencing swelling in his right knee and wound up requiring microfracture surgery which forced him to miss the entire 2007-08 season.
From 2014: Miami Heat’s Greg Oden makes long-awaited return to NBA
A series of knee injuries consistently sidelined the 7-footer, who later suffered season-ending injuries during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 campaigns. Oden played three seasons for the Trail Blazers and the Miami Heat, appearing in 105 games and averaging 8 points, 6.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per contest. He is currently the director of basketball operations at Butler under former Buckeyes coach Thad Matta.
Like Oden, injury concerns followed Griffin from college to the pros, where he was the No. 1 pick by the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2009 draft. Months later, during the Clippers’ final preseason game, Griffin winced as he returned to the floor after a dunk. It was later revealed that Griffin suffered a broken left kneecap, delaying his rookie debut for what was thought to be only several weeks. Instead, the former Oklahoma star missed the entire season after tests showed his knee was not recovering properly.
Despite the setback, Griffin, who was considered a rookie during the 2010-11 season, was voted to the 2011 All-Star Game and later earned rookie of the year honors. Although injuries have disrupted Griffin’s career in following years — he missed the remainder of the 2019-20 season due to a nagging left knee injury — he received his sixth All-Star Game selection during the 2018-19 campaign. Griffin, who now plays for the Brooklyn Nets, averaged 6.4 points and 4.1 rebounds per game last season.
Arguably the most dominant NBA star who missed his first season because of injury, Embiid has been one of the best big men in the league since he was taken by the Philadelphia 76ers with the third overall pick in the 2014 draft — despite undergoing surgery on a broken bone in his right foot just six days prior.
The injury forced him to miss the first two seasons of his career after an extended recovery led to a second round of surgery on his foot, more than a year after the initial procedure. Embiid finally made his 76ers debut in October 2016, recording 20 points, seven rebounds and two blocks in a loss to the Thunder.
The 7-footer has since become one of the best big men in the league, earning all-star selections each of the previous five seasons. Embiid has been one of the NBA’s most formidable defensive players, but he also won the league scoring title last season while averaging 30.6 points per game.
The first overall pick in the 2016 draft, Simmons missed his first season with the 76ers after he rolled his right ankle during the team’s final training camp scrimmage. Tests revealed that Simmons had fractured a bone in his right foot and he was officially ruled out for the year after further tests showed an incomplete recovery later that season.
When he debuted the following season, Simmons averaged 15.8 points, 8.2 assists and 8.1 rebounds per game en route to winning NBA rookie of the year. The next season, he earned the first of three all-star selections.
Simmons has established himself as one of the league’s top defensive players, although his offensive shortcomings have increasingly come under scrutiny, and contributed to his move from Philadelphia to Brooklyn in February. Hampered by back issues late last season, Simmons has yet to make his Nets debut. | 2022-08-27T23:15:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chet Holmgren can look to other top NBA draft picks who had season-ending injuries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/chet-holmgren-lisfranc-injury-rookie-nba-season/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/chet-holmgren-lisfranc-injury-rookie-nba-season/ |
Judge signals intent for special master to review Mar-a-Lago documents
Trump on Monday asked for the appointment, while accusing the Justice Department of treating him unfairly
The Mar-a-Lago Club, seen on Aug. 10. (Steve Helber/AP)
A federal judge indicated on Saturday that she is inclined to grant former president Donald Trump’s request for an independent “special master” to review boxes of classified documents and other materials taken by federal authorities from his Florida resort nearly three weeks ago.
In a brief, two-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon gave the government until Tuesday to present its arguments in the matter while scheduling a court hearing for Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Trump’s legal team had filed the request on Monday, asking the court to name an outside expert in the matter, calling the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home politically motivated, overbroad and “shockingly aggressive.” The former president’s lawyers claimed that federal authorities seized records to which they had no legal right.
Although the judge, who was nominated to her position by Trump in 2020, seemed inclined to appoint a special master, she said her order “should not be construed as a final determination on Plaintiff’s Motion.”
The Justice Department didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Federal authorities took about two dozen boxes of materials from Mar-a-Lago during the search, including 11 sets of classified documents, several of them categorized as top secret. Avril Haines, the direct
or of national intelligence, told congressional lawmakers Friday that U.S. intelligence analysts will conduct a national security assessment and classification review of the materials.
After Trump filed his initial request, Cannon had asked him and his lawyers to clarify what they were asking of the court in their 27-page filing and why the Southern District of Florida would have jurisdiction in the dispute.
In the past, special masters have generally been appointed in cases of attorney-client privilege, not executive privilege. In addition, the FBI has been in possession of the files since Aug. 8 and has been reviewing them. Many of the documents require the highest levels of security clearances to view, so any special master may need such clearances to examine them.
What's in the partially redacted Mar-a-Lago affidavit
According to a partially redacted affidavit unsealed on Friday, the agents who conducted the search were seeking all “physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of three potential crimes,” including a part of the Espionage Act outlawing gathering, transmitting or losing national defense information. The warrant also cites the destruction of records and concealment or mutilation of government material. | 2022-08-28T00:03:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge may grant Trump's request for special master to review papers FBI took - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/trump-judge-special-master-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/trump-judge-special-master-fbi/ |
Bills to release rookie punter Matt Araiza amid gang rape allegation
Bills punter Matt Araiza is being released, the team announced Saturday. (Jeffrey T. Barnes/AP)
The Buffalo Bills are releasing rookie punter Matt Araiza, the team announced Saturday, two days after Araiza and two of his former teammates on San Diego State’s football team were accused in a lawsuit of participating in a gang rape of a minor during a party last year at an off-campus residence.
“Ultimately this is a legal situation,” Bills General Manager Brandon Beane said at an evening news conference at the team’s training facility in Orchard Park, N.Y. “We don’t know all the facts, and that’s what makes it hard. But at this time, we just think it’s the best move for everyone to move on from Matt and let him take care of this situation and focus on that. And so we’re going to part ways there.”
Araiza did not participate in the Bills’ practice earlier Saturday after Coach Sean McDermott withheld him from Friday night’s preseason game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte.
“The facts of the incident are not what they are portrayed in the lawsuit or in the press,” Araiza said in a statement released Friday through his agent. “I look forward to quickly setting the record straight.”
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 17 years old at the time of the alleged incident Oct. 17. 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.”
Araiza’s attorney, Kerry Armstrong, has denied the rape allegations, telling the Los Angeles Times the woman’s accusations are “a shakedown.” The Times reported the district attorney’s office is weighing evidence submitted by detectives to determine whether to file criminal charges.
The NFL’s personal conduct policy would not apply to Araiza in this case, even if the accusations are substantiated, because the alleged incident occurred before he was chosen by the Bills in the sixth round of this year’s NFL draft.
The release was not official Saturday, as it did not appear on the league’s transaction wire. The Bills announced the move later Saturday. | 2022-08-28T00:47:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bills release Matt Araiza amid gang rape allegation for rookie punter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/matt-araiza-released-bills/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/matt-araiza-released-bills/ |
Montgomery County settles lawsuit over police berating 5-year-old
Police video recorded two officers yelling at child and saying he should be beaten
Montgomery County agreed to pay out $275,000 to settle a lawsuit that grew from an encounter between a 5-year-old boy and two police officers at East Silver Spring Elementary School, officials said Friday.
The 2020 incident, as recorded by a body camera one of the officers was wearing,, showed them berating and insulting the child after he’d fled from his school, and telling him he deserved to be beaten. The money will come from the county’s self-insurance fund, officials said.
The mother of the child sued the county last year, asserting among other claims that the officers’ behavior left her son with PTSD. Attorneys for the county aggressively challenged the allegations, according to their court filings.
A trial had been set to begin Jan. 23. Among the central claims that were expected to be heard by a jury: The officers put the child in such immediate fear of being hurt that it amounted to assault. “Boy I’m telling you,” one of them loudly said to him, according to the video, “I hope your momma let me beat you.”
Attorneys James Papirmeister and Matthew Bennett, who represented the child’s mother, said all money received by the family will go into a trust that the boy will have access to when he turns 18.
“Our client is glad to put this litigation behind her,” Papirmeister said. “Her son will have money put away for his future, and she won’t have to continue to go through a difficult and sometimes painful process.” | 2022-08-28T02:05:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery County pays $275,000 to settle claims after cops berated boy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/montgomery-police-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/montgomery-police-lawsuit/ |
BYU bans fan, relocates volleyball match after racist incident
Saturday's match between Duke and Rider in Provo, Utah, was relocated after a Duke player was the target of racial slurs during a match against BYU on Friday. (iStock)
A volleyball match was relocated and a spectator was banned from Brigham Young sporting venues after a Black player on Duke’s team became the target of racial slurs during a game Friday at Smith Fieldhouse in Provo, Utah.
The incident was first reported by Lesa Pamplin, an attorney in Fort Worth, who tweeted that her goddaughter, Duke outside hitter Rachel Richardson, was called a racial slur “every time she served” during a match between Duke and BYU. Pamplin also said Richardson, a sophomore from Ellicott City, Md., who is the only Black starter on the team, was “threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus.”
Richardson’s father, Marvin, told the Salt Lake Tribune that a spectator in the BYU student section repeatedly shouted the slur but was allowed to remain at the event, even after Duke players complained to referees. He said a police officer was later placed on the Duke bench.
BYU — which is hosting Duke, Rider and Washington State at this weekend’s doTERRA Classic — said in a statement Saturday that the fan, who was not a student, would be banned from the school’s athletic venues. In a separate Twitter post, it said Saturday’s match between Duke and Rider was relocated to an off-site venue at Duke’s request and that attendance would be limited to team staff and family.
BYU Athletic Director Thomas Holmoe told USA Today the university is looking into the incident and that he spoke with Richardson after it occurred.
“My concern is for Rachel and her well-being, and the school has investigated up to this point. The bottom line is that we are going to have to do more,” Holmoe said. “And we are going to have to be vigilant and continue to say that this is not to be tolerated in any way.”
Duke Athletic Director Nina King responded to the incident in a statement Saturday, saying the “extremely unfortunate circumstances at Friday night’s match at BYU” prompted the relocation “to afford both teams the safest atmosphere for competition. We are appreciative of the support from BYU’s athletic administration as we navigate this troubling situation. I have been in touch with the student-athletes who have been deeply impacted, will continue to support them in every way possible and look forward to connecting further upon their return from Provo.” | 2022-08-28T02:18:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | BYU bans fan who yelled racial slur at Duke volleyball player - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/byu-duke-volleyball-racist-incident/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/byu-duke-volleyball-racist-incident/ |
Joey Meneses slides into second base for a double in the eighth inning, but the Nationals' offense didn't provide much punch Saturday. (Greg Fiume/Getty Images)
With his team in a jam in the sixth inning of a tie game Saturday night, Manager Dave Martinez turned to Jake McGee for damage control. The 36-year-old has been a reliable left-hander during his 13-year career, and he’s a familiar face from Martinez’s days with Tampa Bay.
But McGee is not the same pitcher as he was in his prime, and that was clear in a 6-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds.
McGee gave up a three-run homer to the first batter he faced, left-handed hitter TJ Friedl, after Paolo Espino allowed the previous two Cincinnati hitters to reach base. Then McGee surrendered a solo shot to lefty Colin Moran two batters later. Washington (42-85) has dropped five of its past six and extended its streak to 43 straight games without a starting pitcher earning a victory.
On both homers, McGee threw sliders that caught too much of the plate when he said he was trying to keep them down and away.
“When I looked back at them, they weren’t middle in or really bad, but still I got to execute pitches there,” McGee said.
McGee is the latest struggling veteran the Nationals have taken a chance on in hopes he can contribute.
The Nationals claimed him off waivers Aug. 9, but despite his career ERA of 3.67, major questions remained: His ERA this season was 7.00 from 30 appearances with the Milwaukee Brewers and the San Francisco Giants. Martinez and pitching coach Jim Hickey — who also worked with McGee with the Rays — were banking on experience.
Washington has seen both sides of the spectrum with Erasmo Ramírez and Carl Edwards Jr., who have proven to be effective bullpen arms this season. But not every veteran has success. Take second baseman César Hernández, who was recently benched in favor of prospects. Or designated hitter Nelson Cruz, who hasn’t hit for much power this season. Or third baseman Maikel Franco, who was released Friday.
McGee’s signing was out of necessity for a team that hasn’t had many left-handed options out of the bullpen aside from Sean Doolittle, who was injured in the first month of the season. Francisco Perez and Sam Clay bounced between the majors and minors; Clay was eventually designated for assignment. Josh Rogers was designated for assignment after the Juan Soto/Josh Bell trade, and Evan Lee has been rehabbing from a left flexor strain since mid-June.
So with a lefty in Friedl up to bat in the sixth, McGee seemed like the perfect guy to salvage the outing for Espino, who went 5⅓ innings and kept the Reds (50-75) from getting much solid contact. But McGee couldn’t do the same. Friedl’s and Moran’s homers had exit velocities of 99.6 and 101.5 mph, respectively.
“In those situations, he’s just trying to bury those sliders,” Martinez said. “I know he knows that; he’s a veteran guy. Just a rough outing, but he’s been doing well. We’ve tweaked some things with him. … If we can get him to really focus on using his fastball and elevated fastballs, that’s who he is. The sliders will definitely get better. They’ll definitely come.”
How did Washington fare at the plate? The offense had lots of loud contact but not much to show for it. In the first two innings against Reds starter Luke Cessa, the first eight batters put the ball in play with exit velocities of at least 93.4 mph. Lane Thomas’s 404-foot homer in the second inning was the only run during that time. Luke Voit added an RBI single in the eighth.
What did MacKenzie Gore do Saturday? He threw his first bullpen session since he was traded to the Nationals on Aug. 2. Gore, 23, was placed on the injured list with elbow inflammation before the trade, and the Nationals have been careful with his rehab since. Gore posted a 1.50 ERA through the first nine starts of his season with the San Diego Padres before hitting a rough patch that raised his ERA to 4.50.
What move did the Nationals make? They reinstated 2017 first-round pick and left-handed pitcher Seth Romero from the 60-day injured list and optioned him to Class AA Harrisburg after he rehabbed from a left calf strain.
Outfielder Yadiel Hernandez (calf) was transferred to the 60-day IL in a corresponding move, effectively ending the 34-year-old’s season. After a hot start to 2022, Hernandez earned a spot in the lineup platooning primarily against right-handers. He hit a modest .269 in 94 games with nine homers and 41 RBI.
Romero, 26, made three relief appearances during the 2020 season but has struggled to stay healthy and avoid trouble off the field for his career. He suffered a rib injury in 2021 and was arrested on a charge of driving while intoxicated in January. Even before drafting him, the Nationals had to weigh repeated off-the-field issues from his time at the University of Houston. Martinez still believes that Romero can contribute.
“At this point, it’s up to him,” Martinez said. “As you know, I don’t tolerate a whole lot of things off the field. He’s got to do the right things off the field as well as perform on the field. Only time will tell. He’s still fairly young, which is good. It all just depends on how Seth wants to move forward.” | 2022-08-28T03:45:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals reliever Jake McGee implodes in sixth inning of loss to Reds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/nationals-reds-jake-mcgee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/27/nationals-reds-jake-mcgee/ |
INDIANAPOLIS — Tom Brady led Tampa Bay to a field goal on his first and only series of the preseason and Indianapolis’ backups rallied to beat the Buccaneers in the teams’ preseason finale.
CINCINNATI — Jake Browning came off the bench to go 19 of 24 for 173 yards and a touchdown, leading Cincinnati over Los Angeles in a preseason game contested mostly by backups. | 2022-08-28T03:46:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ravens extend preseason winning streak to 23 games - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/ravens-extend-preseason-winning-streak-to-23-games/2022/08/27/a8830458-2680-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/ravens-extend-preseason-winning-streak-to-23-games/2022/08/27/a8830458-2680-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Tennessee Titans quarterback Logan Woodside (5) spikes the ball after scoring a touchdown on a 9-yard run against the Arizona Cardinals in the second half of a preseason NFL football game Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/John Amis)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Titans have given rookie Malik Willis plenty of opportunities this preseason to show how quickly he can make the jump from Liberty to the NFL. | 2022-08-28T03:47:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woodside's TD in final minute lifts Titans past Cards 26-23 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/woodsides-td-in-final-minute-lifts-titans-past-cards-26-23/2022/08/27/382f96ba-2678-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/woodsides-td-in-final-minute-lifts-titans-past-cards-26-23/2022/08/27/382f96ba-2678-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Spirit 2, Dash 2
Spirit attacker Ashley Sanchez controls the ball at PNC Stadium in Houston. (Erik Williams / USA TODAY Sports)
In its first match since coach Kris Ward’s sacking, the Washington Spirit on Saturday was within moments of winning for the first time in almost four months.
But after taking the lead on Ashley Hatch’s goals two minutes apart early in the second half, the Spirit conceded Michelle Alozie’s stoppage-time equalizer and settled for a 2-2 draw with the Dash in Houston.
The Spirit’s rut, which began after it won the May 1 opener, has covered 16 regular season matches and 18 in all competitions.
The result came five days after Ward was fired following an incident with a player at training Aug. 19. On Thursday, Mark Krikorian, the team’s president of soccer operations, said a “change was necessary.”
Later that day, in an interview with the Athletic, Ward explained the situation. After Saturday’s match, co-captain Andi Sullivan, speaking on behalf of the team, blasted Ward in a prepared statement.
“We know his interview to be a completely inaccurate recollection of a serious situation, and furthermore, the apology offered to us demonstrates a misalignment in his words and his actions towards his team,” Sullivan said. “The players fully support the decision of the club to relieve him of his duties.”
Ward, in his first full season as head coach, would have been fired at the end of the season anyway because of the team’s poor performance and a deteriorating relationship with players, people familiar with the team’s plans said.
Angela Salem, a first-year assistant, inherited the lead role until an interim coach is named for the final five matches.
“When things didn’t go their way, they were still fighting,” she said after Saturday’s match. “That was really positive because that’s not always the case when teams go through difficult times. I really thought they stuck together, and I was really impressed with their fight and resilience.”
The Dash (8-5-5) went ahead in the 22nd minute. Off a free kick, goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury made a sensational diving save to prevent an own goal, but Sophie Schmidt converted the rebound.
Houston’s Jane Campbell made a diving save on Tara McKeown’s deflected bid, and Trinity Rodman was caught offside on a scoring sequence. Three minutes into the second half, Campbell thwarted Rodman’s high threat. After Kingsbury made a one-on-one save on Ebony Salmon, the Spirit struck twice in rapid succession.
It began with a gorgeous sequence in the open field. In midfield, Rodman backheeled the ball to Ashley Sanchez, who returned it to Rodman in stride on the right flank. Rodman’s cross met Hatch in the penalty area for a one-touch finish.
Two minutes later, Washington (1-6-10) scored on a set piece. From the side edge of the penalty area, Sanchez drove a free kick toward Hatch, who adjusted to the ball streaking a bit behind her and used a seven-yard header to score her team-best seventh goal.
Washington’s lead held up until the first of six additional minutes. Kingsbury made a flash save on Alozie’s header, but the Houston substitute beat the goalkeeper to the rebound and slipped it under her.
In the big picture, Sullivan said, “This has been an extremely difficult time, and the way that we still were able to attack training this week and also enjoy each other’s company was really a testament to the players’ characters.”
Notes: Kingsbury, Rodman, Hatch, Sanchez and Sullivan will report to U.S. national team camp in Kansas City, Kan., for next Saturday’s friendly against Nigeria. The teams will then meet Sept. 6 in Washington. If not for injuries, Kelley O’Hara and Emily Sonnett also would have made the U.S. roster. ...
Reserve defender Karina Rodriguez was named to the Mexican squad for friendlies in the Los Angeles area against New Zealand and NWSL’s Angel City. ...
Mike Bristol was added to the Spirit coaching staff after serving as an assistant at Florida State under Krikorian, the former Seminoles coach. | 2022-08-28T04:33:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Spirit draws with Houston Dash after firing coach Kris Ward - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/washington-spirit-houston-dash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/washington-spirit-houston-dash/ |
Ask Amy: My husband’s driving makes me very anxious
I’ve recently developed a condition called Amaxophobia — a specific phobia about riding in a vehicle. Symptoms include extreme anxiety, shortness of breath, nausea, and a racing heart.
I have all of these symptoms — but only when I am a passenger in the car that my husband is driving. It does not affect me when I am the driver, or riding with other people.
My husband has always been a fast driver, speeding and tailgating other cars. In the last few years, I have had to hold onto the seat or side door and press my feet into the floor to feel safe, but recently, my anxiety has increased.
We’ve had long discussions about this. He has agreed to drive more slowly, but doesn’t. I suggested that he drive locally, and I drive on highways.
I have no other anxiety or fear issues. Any suggestions I’m overlooking?
Looking: Your husband’s career of dangerous driving, speeding and tailgating is more likely to lead to an accident as he ages and his reaction time slows.
I doubt that he would allow a neutral person to assess his driving, but AARP does offer an online driving course (aarpdriversafety.org); I assume that successfully passing this course could lower insurance rates, in addition to coaching your husband toward safer driving.
He has staked his position, and you should be very matter of fact about your options and choices. Your body’s extreme anxiety response is a distinct signal telling you what you need to do. This is your “fight or flight” response in high gear.
My partner’s son, “Sam,” who is now almost 30, still lives with us. He pays absolutely nothing, does nothing for the house, and works when he feels like it. His mom still does his laundry and changes his sheets for him.
I’m confused because it’s been 22 years, and this is putting a lot of strain on the home front. I feel like the hints I’ve thrown out there don’t seem to faze anyone or make any difference.
Used: Your patience and passivity have reached pathological proportions. I assume that you believe you don’t have any power or say in this relationship. But this is your life and your home, and you have the right (and responsibility) to stake your own claim regarding what you want.
Fan: It must be a result of this summer’s heat wave. | 2022-08-28T04:50:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My husband’s driving makes me very anxious - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/28/ask-amy-husband-driving-anxiety/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/28/ask-amy-husband-driving-anxiety/ |
He licensed his invention to Kawasaki in the early 1970s, helping to create a new summertime sport. He and the company later battled over credit for the development of the personal watercraft.
Clayton Jacobson II in 2013 at the IJSBA World Finals in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. He was widely credited with inventing the jet ski. (Tim Campbell)
It was a nice look, at least until he was thrown from his bike near Perris, Calif. — by some accounts, he was in the Mojave Desert — and found himself tending to his wounds from the bottom of an irrigation ditch. “I was picking the gravel out of my skin and cleaning the blood off,” he later told the Associated Press, “and I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ ”
His creation had a few ill-fated precedents, including a propeller-driven “water scooter” called the Amanda that was manufactured by Vincent, a British motorcycle maker, in the mid-1950s. Unlike the Amanda, Mr. Jacobson’s version was ridden while standing up and used a jet pump, not a propeller; it also featured an aluminum body, a fixed handle pole and a two-stroke engine from West Bend.
By 1966 he had improved on his design, making a second prototype out of fiberglass. He quit his day job, filed his first patent for a “power-driven aquatic vehicle” and started shopping his invention to manufacturers. Eventually he linked up with the Canadian company Bombardier, which was more interested in the sit-down version of his watercraft, viewing it as a summertime counterpart to their Ski-Doo brand of snowmobiles. They released the original Sea-Doo in 1968, marketing the mustard-yellow vessel as a “jet-powered aqua scooter” that could go 25 mph but was “virtually unflippable.” It was, they said, “the new goin’ thing on water.”
Mr. Jacobson’s role in the development of the jet ski was the subject of a two-decade dispute with Kawasaki, which ran advertisements saying that the company, rather than the motorcycle-riding inventor from California, had created the vessel. In 1989, he filed a lawsuit for libel and slander of title, claiming that Kawasaki had improperly obtained jet-ski patents in Japan and wrongly credited its employees with developing the watercraft. A federal jury awarded him $21 million in damages two years later, although he said he had been looking for much more — $30 million to $60 million, given the fortune that Kawasaki had made from jet skis.
Less than two months later, a federal district judge in Los Angeles overturned the award, saying there was insufficient evidence for the claims against Kawasaki. A new trial was ordered, and Mr. Jacobson settled with the company’s American subsidiary in 1992. He was awarded a cash payment — the amount was not disclosed, but his grandson said it was roughly “a couple million dollars” — and issued a joint statement with the company, acknowledging that Kawasaki had made important contributions to the watercraft’s development. The company’s vice president of marketing, Robert Moffit, acknowledged in turn that Mr. Jacobson was “widely known as the inventor of the first stand-up personal watercraft.”
“Indeed,” he added, “without Mr. Jacobson’s invention, Kawasaki’s Jet Ski brand of personal watercraft would not have been developed.”
The younger of two children, Clayton Junior Jacobson was born in Newberg, Ore., on Oct. 12, 1933. According to the family, there was a misunderstanding when his name was taken down, and he legally dropped his middle name as an adult. His father was a traveling salesman who later worked for Kellogg’s, and his mother was a homemaker. Both parents were the children of Norwegian immigrants; Mr. Jacobson considered himself a modern-day Viking.
He grew up in Southern California, graduating from high school in Los Angeles, and worked in the wholesale food industry before marrying his first wife, Dianne Edwards, and joining her father’s business, Southwest Savings and Loan.
By then, he was racing hot rods, building cars and motorcycles, and off-roading in Mexico. He later worked with auto engineer Gerald Wiegert on the design of the Vector sports car; circumnavigated the globe in a Cessna seaplane in his early 60s; and designed several buildings, including his light-filled home in Parker, Ariz., and his two-story garage in Australia, which included “a prototype of a flying jet ski that never really came to fruition,” said his grandson.
He also self-published an autobiography, aptly titled “Jet Ski Inventor Autobiography,” in 2013. If a person’s ego is defined as their “appropriate self worth,” he wrote, “mine is about the size of my Ford F250 pickup truck.”
His marriage to Edwards ended in divorce. He later married Lee Anne McMillan, his partner of 35 years. She survives him, as do four children from his first marriage, Karen Jacobson, Margo Orona, Tava Mericle and Clayton Jacobson III, a competitive jet-skier; five grandchildren; and many great-grandchildren.
In keeping with his wishes, Mr. Jacobson was cremated as part of what he considered to be a traditional Viking funeral. He was dressed in his usual attire: Levi’s jeans, a puffy Oakland Raiders Starter jacket, a Parker Strip T-shirt and a pair of clogs. Then, in what his grandson described as a nod to ancient tradition, “they put his hand in a bowl of hazelnuts and gave him his Buck knife, which was his closest thing to a sword, and sent him off to Valhalla.” | 2022-08-28T05:21:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Clayton Jacobson II, a jet-ski pioneer, dies at 88 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/28/jet-ski-inventor-clayton-jacobson-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/28/jet-ski-inventor-clayton-jacobson-dead/ |
A 7-year-old girl looks out the car window as she waits with her family in a convoy departing Russian-occupied territory. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
KAMIYANSKE, Ukraine — Oleksander hates pulling into this abandoned Ukrainian village on the Dnieper River, one of the only portals into Russian-occupied territories to the east. When he passes the last Ukrainian flag, flapping next to a bombed-out gas station, he knows that he’s about to encounter the first Russian checkpoint and that the soldiers will question him, check his phone for anti-Russian memes and examine his body for military tattoos.
“This car has been hit three times,” he said, pointing out the patch of tape over a shrapnel hole in the door of his tattered white Ford Transit van. “Nothing good happens when you get [inside Russian-controlled territory]. My smile fades as soon I go in this direction.”
“It’s hard to find toilet paper, and the price has doubled,” said Serhii, another driver who regularly makes the trip between his apartment near Mariupol, which is in Russian hands, and the city of Zaporizhzhia in free Ukraine.
Like Oleksander, Serhii is not being identified by his full name. Although his crossings have gotten easier in recent months — he estimates he has made the trip at least a hundred times since Mariupol fell to the Russians — he still feels a chill when he remembers the time Russian soldiers pulled him at rifle point from his van. The trips may have become more routine with some of the Russians recognizing him, but the danger is always there.
“When guys with guns don’t like you, they get ugly,” he said. “My wife worries about me every minute that I’m gone.”
The Russians sometimes make him dump fresh tomatoes and other produce he is trying to bring out for farmers on the other side. And lately, they have been turning away vans of consumer goods into Russian-held areas.
“They do anything they want, any time,” said Rafik Sultanov, another driver who had been turned away that morning with a van full of toilet paper and laundry detergent donated by aid groups. “We are at their mercy.”
All of the drivers were at a staging area on the Ukrainian-controlled side of Kamiyanske on Saturday, waiting for permission from Ukrainian officials to carry on to the parking lot in Zaporizhzhia, where the families they have brought out will look for rides to Dnipro, Kyiv or wherever they hope to find shelter.
This small, war-ravaged outpost is one of the only legal crossing points along the 1,500-mile front line separating Ukrainian and Russian forces. The area is off limits to the public because of frequent shelling, illustrated by a rocket fuselage embedded in the pavement near the village center. The Post was allowed to make a brief visit to the village, where neither side maintains a troop presence, with permission from Ukrainian officials.
Thousands of families have poured out of the Russian side as fighting has raged around the nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant under Russian control, raising the specter of a cataclysm at Europe’s largest atomic energy facility.
“Everything we own is there,” said Kateryna, who fled the embattled city of Lysychansk on April 5 when Russian shelling caused a fire on her block. “We had to leave with nothing, we were barefoot, and now winter is coming. Everything we have is in Lysychansk.”
Kateryna, who is not being fully identified for her safety, was among hundreds of Ukrainians waiting in an unpaved parking lot on the Ukrainian side of the village for permission to leave to depart for the Russian-held side.
She and the others who were paying about $150 for a circuitous trip in a van to Lysychansk through Russian-held areas had been waiting at this registration point for about 24 hours. Others had been camping in the spot for more than five days.
Oleksander has been stuck frequently, too, waiting for permission to continue. But for him, any delay has the benefit of giving him more time with his family. They long ago evacuated from his hometown of Berestove inside Russian-held territory. He waits with them at an apartment in Dnipro, just more than an hour away, until he gets a phone call telling him he can begin his run back into Russian-controlled territory.
Typically, he loads his van with donated goods that have become scarce or unaffordable in Russian-occupied areas — sugar, pasta, toilet paper, diapers. The exiled leadership of his town also sends packages for citizens back home, giving Oleksander phone numbers to call for pick up when he arrives. He collects parcels and mail on request, and shops for the spare carburetor and shocks that someone needs at home.
“She would never make it this far,” he said in the bright roadside sun of the village that serves as an airlock between warring factions. | 2022-08-28T05:21:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Some Ukrainians routinely come and go from Russian-occupied territories - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/ukraine-russia-occupied-territory-crossover/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/ukraine-russia-occupied-territory-crossover/ |
Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman Al Saud is no slouch when it comes to moving the oil market. A few well-chosen words and a hint of output cuts to come — and Brent is back above $100 a barrel within little more than 24 hours. But I’m puzzled by his most recent logic.
This is what he said: “The paper oil market has fallen into a self-perpetuating vicious circle of very thin liquidity and extreme volatility.”
What he means is that there aren’t enough people trading in the futures markets for oil. That’s an odd thing for a Saudi oil minister to suggest. Who does he want to be more active in trading oil futures?
For most of the 30 years that I have been following OPEC and the oil market, the group has complained that “speculators” have been driving oil prices whenever they move too far, or too fast, in one direction. That group includes everyone who trades in oil futures without ever intending to supply, or take delivery of, physical barrels of oil.
Far from having too many speculators driving price moves that aren’t justified by the physical market, the lament now seems to be that there are too few speculators, or maybe just too few who are bullish.
Perhaps the energy minister wants to see more oil producers trading on the paper markets to hedge their production and give a more accurate reflection of market fundamentals. Perhaps Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, would like to lead the way by starting to use futures markets itself.
ABS, as the oil minister is widely known, goes on to say that these illiquid paper markets “can give a false sense of security at times when spare capacity is severely limited and the risk of severe disruptions remains high.”
If I understand what he’s saying, this means: The physical oil market is much tighter than is suggested by the paper markets that generate the headline Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude prices. The prince’s solution to this failure to recognize the true tightness of the physical market is to suggest that the producer group might cut production, thereby tightening the physical market even further. The Saudi Press Agency, in its reporting of the Bloomberg interview with ABS, even made the threat of output cuts its headline.
From early December, crude prices rose by 86%, peaking in March. But apparently the market was stable enough then for the OPEC+ producers to stick doggedly to their slow and steady increase in production targets. After the surge triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Brent crude then stayed above $100 for almost the entire period between early March and the beginning of August. But that appearance of stability is deceptive. Crude prices moved by more than $5 a barrel in a day 20 times in the past year, 19 of those were during that period, the other was the day in November when the omicron variant of Covid-19 hit the headlines.
Simply put, the Saudis want higher oil prices and, as always, they’re putting the blame on “speculators,” or their absence, for a market they don’t like the look of.
• $10 Gas? Don’t Be Alarmed. It’s the Other Kind: Liam Denning | 2022-08-28T06:52:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | OPEC Sings the Same Old Song, Just With New Lyrics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/opecsings-the-same-old-song-just-with-new-lyrics/2022/08/28/7788f224-2697-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/opecsings-the-same-old-song-just-with-new-lyrics/2022/08/28/7788f224-2697-11ed-a72f-1e7149072fbc_story.html |
Silverstone Auctions’ classic car specialist Arwel Richards polishes the 1985 Ford Escort RS Turbo previously owned by Princess Diana before it went under the hammer on Aug. 27. (Joe Giddens/AP)
A souped-up version of a popular ’80s family car that once belonged to Princess Diana has sold for nearly $764,000 at auction, a record for the model, after a bidding war broke out between British and overseas collectors.
Diana drove the black 1985 Ford Escort RS Turbo for nearly three years and was regularly pictured using it on trips to the posh London shopping strips of Chelsea and Kensington.
“This is a little moment of history, ladies and gentlemen,” the auctioneer said as he began the bidding at 100,000 pounds ($117,000) — a starting figure that already eclipsed the previous record for a similar car, in white, sold last year. The final price, including a 12.5 percent buyer’s premium, was more than $850,000.
Princess Diana died 25 years ago but endures as a role model for women
The sale came just days before the 25th anniversary of a car crash in Paris that killed Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. She was not behind the wheel of that car — a Mercedes-Benz S-280 — when it crashed at high speed early on Aug. 31, 1997.
The princess, and memorabilia marking her life, holds enduring public appeal long after her death. Last year, a slice of cake from her royal wedding to Prince Charles — 40 years old, and probably not fit for consumption — went under the hammer in another auction, going for about $2,000.
Those in attendance at Saturday’s auction certainly appeared eager to keep a slice of U.K. history and a memento to the “People’s Princess,” cheering as bids emerged from Coventry and Cheshire, and booing when the lead bids shifted abroad.
“This is going to be like the Elgin marbles. It will have an embargo on being sent abroad,” the auctioneer quipped, referring to a series of 2,500-year-old sculptures that are the subject of one of the longest cultural disputes in Europe. (Over the years, many have tried to persuade the British Museum to return them to Greece.)
Classic car values have soared in recent years as people cooped up during the coronavirus pandemic poured their wanderlust into other ventures such as cars, real estate and art.
Diana’s car was ultimately sold to a buyer in a bucolic Cheshire village, just south of Manchester, that is favored by British Premier League soccer players.
The auctioneer described the vehicle as an “immaculate example” of the Ford Escort, which was one of the best-selling cars of the 1980s in Britain. Known as the “people’s sports car,” it ranged from basic to fully souped-up sport editions.
It was a rare black version of the car, apparently ordered at the request of palace security officials who wanted Diana to drive a more discreet vehicle. She preferred to drive herself, with a bodyguard riding in the passenger seat.
Also on sale Saturday was a 1973 black Rover P5 used to drive Margaret Thatcher to Buckingham Palace before her appointment as Britain’s first female prime minister and a 2015 Land Rover Defender that featured in the 2015 James Bond film “Spectre.”
The Escort was one of a number of world car sales records broken Saturday, the auction house said. Even the auctioneer appeared surprised as the bidding escalated: “550,000 pounds on the Ford Escort. I’ve never said that before.” | 2022-08-28T08:02:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Princess Diana’s Ford Escort sells for more than $760,000 at auction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/ford-escort-princess-diana-auction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/ford-escort-princess-diana-auction/ |
Thief ran into subway tunnel from Virginia to D.C., Metro says
Service was delayed between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom
Someone who apparently was too impatient to wait for a train ran through the Metro subway tunnel from Virginia to Washington on Saturday evening, according to Metro’s general manager.
A “trespasser committed a theft in Rosslyn then ran into the tunnel," said a tweet from Randy Clarke, the new general manager.
A tunnel carries trains beneath the Potomac River between Rosslyn in Virginia and Foggy Bottom in the District.
After service was shut down in the area of the incident, an arrest was made at Foggy Bottom, Clarke said in a Tweet.
He said he appreciated passengers’ frustration, noting that he was also affected by the delay.
The alleged trespasser was not identified, and it was not clear what was stolen. | 2022-08-28T08:06:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man allegedly runs through Metro tunnel from Va. to D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/man-runs-tunnel-virginia-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/man-runs-tunnel-virginia-washington/ |
Adrian Blanco
First Grand Slam title
First No. 1 and ‘Serena Slam’
Injuries and struggles
Back to No. 1
The birth of her daughter and comeback
Injury and ‘countdown’ to retirement
On Monday, Serena Williams will face No. 80 Danka Kovinic at the U.S. Open, a Grand Slam event she has won six times. It will probably be the last U.S. Open for the 40-year-old tennis star, who is expected to retire after a wildly successful career that began when she was a teenager.
Williams’s career has been full of up and downs in the WTA rankings, filled with the highest professional highs and some gutting lows. She battled injuries. She became a mother. She dealt with incidents on and off the court. But she always came back.
WTA rank
Enters the WTA
ranking at 453rd
1st “Serena
Spends 49 consecutive
weeks as the top-ranked
player in the world
Drops to 140th after
undergoing knee surgery
and suffering from
Misses several
months of competition
after a blood clot is
discovered in
her lungs
Reclaims the top spot and
remains there for 186
consecutive weeks
2nd “Serena
Gives birth to
her daughter
Injures her hamstring
during a first-round
Wimbledon match
1,223rd
1st “Serena Slam”
2nd “Serena Slam”
Since her debut in the 1990s, Williams has spent a total of 319 weeks atop the WTA rankings, a tally that spans three time periods in her career. Only Steffi Graf (377 weeks) and Martina Navratilova (332) have spent more time at the top.
She enters the U.S. Open with 23 Grand Slam singles titles, one shy of Margaret Court’s record.
Here’s a look at her career through the years.
Williams won the 1999 U.S. Open at age 17 for the first of many Grand Slam titles. She defeated top-ranked Martina Hingis in the final. Along the way, she upset Grand Slam champions Kim Clijsters, Conchita Martinez, Monica Seles and Lindsay Davenport, who was the defending U.S. Open champion.
and age
Hingis
Williams is ranked for the first time. The 16-year-old
is No. 453.
Climbs to the top 20
Mauresmo
Defeats Amélie Mauresmo to win her first pro singles title
Upsets former No. 1 Steffi Graf to claim the title in Indian Wells, Calif.
Williams wins her first Grand Slam title, defeating No. 1 Martina Hingis at the U.S. Open.
Williams is ranked for the first time. The 16-year-old is No. 453.
Defeats Amelie Mauresmo to win her first pro singles title
Williams earned her first No. 1 ranking in July 2002, after winning the French Open and Wimbledon. A few months later, she completed her first “Serena Slam,” winning all four major tournaments in a row (but over two calendar years).
Venus Williams defeats her sister Serena in the U.S. Open final. It is the first final contested by two sisters in
the Open era.
Serena defeats Venus in the final at the French Open to claim her second Grand Slam title.
Serena defeats Venus to win the first of her seven Wimbledon titles. She claims the title without dropping a set and earns her first No. 1 ranking.
Serena stays at No. 1 for 49 weeks in a row.
Serena defeats Venus
in the final at the French Open to claim her second
Grand Slam title.
Williams won her second consecutive Wimbledon title in 2003 but was then sidelined by a knee injury. Off the court, she dealt with tragedy. Her half sister, Yetunde Price, was murdered in September 2003.
Williams returned in March 2004 following a months-long hiatus. She was a finalist at Wimbledon in 2004 and won the Australian Open in 2005 and 2007.
Sharapova
Williams returns from an eight-month hiatus following the murder of her half-sister Yetunde Price.
In her quarterfinal in the U.S. Open against Jennifer Capriati, the chair umpire incorrectly overrules a linesperson to declare a shot by Williams out.
Williams takes a six-month break after a knee injury and bout with depression. She falls from the top 100.
After a brief return, Williams ends the year at No. 95, her lowest year-end ranking since 1997.
Williams defeats Maria Sharapova at the Australian Open to win her eighth Grand Slam title and first at any tournament in two years.
Williams reclaims the No. 1 ranking with a U.S. Open victory over Jelena Jankovic in 2008.
Williams reclaims the No. 1 ranking with her U.S. Open victory over Jelena Jankovic. She doesn’t concede a set all tournament.
Williams claims both singles and doubles titles at the Australian Open.
Williams earns both singles and doubles titles at Wimbledon.
After a foot-fault call in a U.S. Open semifinal match against Kim Clijsters, Williams erupts in a tirade against a linesperson. She is placed on a two-year probation.
At age 35, Williams defeated her older sister, Venus, to win her seventh Australian Open title. She later revealed she competed while two months pregnant. She gave birth to a daughter in September 2017. After her maternity leave, Serena climbed back into the top 10. In 2018 and 2019 she lost in the finals of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.
Serena Williams defeats Venus Williams to win her seventh Australian Open title and reclaim the No. 1 ranking. She is two months pregnant at the time.
Williams gives birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., via emergency Caesarean section. She suffers complications during the birth and is left bedridden for six weeks.
Williams reaches her 10th Wimbledon final, her first major final since giving birth. She loses to Germany’s Angelique Kerber.
Williams's U.S. Open final against Naomi Osaka descends into controversy when Williams clashes with the chair umpire. Osaka wins her first Grand Slam title, and Williams is fined $17,000.
Williams again reaches the U.S. Open final and has a chance to tie Margaret Court’s record of 24 major singles titles, but she falls to Bianca Andreescu.
Williams injured her hamstring during a first-round match at Wimbledon in 2021 and left the court in tears. This year, she competed at Wimbledon, the National Bank Open in Toronto and the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati ahead of the U.S. Open, winning only one match out of four.
In early August, she indicated her retirement was near, with an interview with Vogue magazine and a post on Instagram that said, “the countdown has begun.”
Data from WTA and Tennis Abstract. Liz Clarke contributed to this report. | 2022-08-28T08:23:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The wins, losses and comebacks of Serena Williams’s career - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/serena-williams-career-rankings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/serena-williams-career-rankings/ |
As climate change causes summer temperatures to soar, heat-focused officials are working to adapt their cities for a harsher future.
A visitor cools their face at a drinking fountain at Ciutadella Park, a designated climatic refuge, part of Barcelona’s Climate Shelter Network, where residents can take shelter during extreme heat. (Angel Garcia/Bloomberg)
The world will remember the summer of 2022 in the Northern Hemisphere as a season of brutal heat that saw rivers run dry, wildfires rage and farmers struggle to save their crops.
Temperatures broke records in Britain, Spain and Portugal, and in East Asia. Thousands of people in Europe have died from the heat, and heat-fueled fires have burned more than a million acres of land across the continent. In the United States, temperatures soared as high as 113 degrees in Texas in July. Drought in Mexico has driven water rationing and theft. In China, experiencing its worst heat wave in six decades, authorities shut factories.
Politicians and policymakers are worried about what increasingly extreme weather will mean for the health of communities. To face the problem, some cities have appointed “heat officers” or assigned similar officials to help adapt to the new reality.
Climate change will continue to intensify heat waves and droughts. Heat is known as the silent killer: Without the visual cues of other extreme weather events, such as floods and hurricanes, it can be difficult to recognize the health danger until it is too late.
Heat can be particularly deadly in cities. Dark roofs absorb heat and warm the buildings they cover. Glass from office-building windows reflects sunlight onto the streets below, where hard, dry streets and sidewalks streets bake in the sun. Narrow roads and tall buildings block cooling winds.
All of this contributes to the urban heat island effect, in which densely built urban areas with limited greenery become literal hot spots. In these “islands,” daytime temperatures are about 1 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than those in outlying areas, and nighttime temperatures 2 to 5 degrees higher, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“We just didn’t build for these temperatures,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, which launched a project three years ago to encourage municipal or regional governments to designate chief heat officers, empowered to come up with innovative, local solutions. The initiative started in Miami-Dade County, where Jane Gilbert was appointed last year to the world’s first such post. Cities including Athens and Santiago followed suit.
Outside of this project, climate-focused officials in other cities are carrying out similar work to build cooler, more resilient metropolises.
Here’s how four world cities are trying to beat the heat.
Ancient architecture in Athens
Summer in Athens has been mild compared with last year, when a record-breaking heat wave brought triple-digit temperatures and wildfire smoke. But the Greek capital still got an opportunity to test a new early-warning system for heat waves.
Extreme heat, which is “totally invisible” and “pernicious,” is the main problem climate change has caused in Athens, said Eleni Myrivili, who was appointed the city’s first chief heat officer last year. (She recently became U.N. Habitat’s Global Chief Heat Officer.)
Working with the Arsht-Rock Center, Myrivili realized “it would be a game changer if we started categorizing heat waves.”
The city worked with a team of meteorologists to develop a model that could forecast heat waves based on past weather patterns. Using this data, Athens created a system that breaks heat waves into four categories according to their risk to human health.
When temperatures pitched the city into Category 1 this summer — the second-lowest, yet still dangerous, tier — city authorities sent out warning messages on social media and directly to residents’ phones, as well as to employees of organizations that work with vulnerable communities. City employees staffed a hotline for residents seeking help.
A separate project looks to the ancient past to try to bring about a cooler future. Built around 140 A.D., the Hadrian Aqueduct, named for the Roman emperor who commissioned it, has transported water through a 12-mile tunnel underneath Athens for nearly 2,000 years. The aqueduct was once a source of drinking water, but waste rendered the water unusable in recent decades, leading to large quantities of water being dumped into the sea.
Now, officials have a plan to use the water to irrigate a new vegetation corridor through the city. New green spaces, which also include mini “pocket parks,” will help lower temperatures by providing shade and moisture.
Heat shelters in Barcelona
Green space is a centerpiece of Barcelona’s efforts to keep people safe in extreme heat. It’s an increasingly pressing need in the bustling city in northeastern Spain, according to Eloi Badia, the deputy mayor for climate issues.
Elderly people, babies and people with respiratory issues are especially vulnerable in high temperatures, Badia said. In 2020, the city began creating a network of shelters to provide relief from the heat. Maps list the roughly 200 points across the city, some of which are indoor centers with air conditioning and staff trained to provide advice on health effects.
Parks and gardens with water fountains and plenty of shade are also on the list. Their number continues to grow as authorities add nearly 100 acres of green space to the city every four years.
Covered markets in Freetown
In Sierra Leone, climate change, including rising heat, is contributing to rapid urbanization. A large portion of the population depends on subsistence agriculture, and with farming conditions deteriorating, many people are relocating to cities.
But that migration is driving deforestation and making the heat problem worse, according to Eugenia Kargbo, the chief heat officer of Freetown, the West African country’s capital.
“You see the impact — it’s really, really visible. The only challenge that we have is that there is not much importance given to the situation,” she said.
Heat does not impact residents equally, and much of Kargbo’s work centers on protecting the most vulnerable. Thirty-five percent of Freetown’s population of 1.2 million lives in informal settlements that are ill-equipped for high temperatures. In newly urbanized areas, many women engage in informal trade, selling vegetables and fruits at one of Freetown’s 42 markets. More than a dozen of these markets are in open air, where women stand in the sun all day and “suffer immense loss” as their fresh produce perishes in the heat.
Kargbo is working with the Arsht-Rock Center to add shade cover to these markets, in a project that launched Friday. About 11,000 women — shoppers as well as vendors — will benefit, she said.
“The model makes use of a simple heat-resistant material to provide the shade, but also incorporates the installation of solar light,” Kargbo said.
Urban forests, green roofs in Santiago
With more than 8 million residents, Chile’s capital region is home to 40 percent of the country’s population. “Anything that happens here impacts a lot of people,” said Cristina Huidobro, the metropolitan area’s first chief heat officer, who is planning for the season to come as winter winds down.
The city, which has grappled with drought for more than a decade, is dotted with urban heat islands, many in low-income areas.
Poorer communities are also “more vulnerable to heat and all its impacts,” Huidobro said. “That’s why we are working to address that problem with a massive tree forest program next year.”
In addition to the $2 million urban forest program, the Santiago region is rolling out a green roof pilot project. Green roofs, which consist of a layer of vegetation planted on top of a flat or nearly-flat roof, absorb less heat than traditional dark roofing surfaces and provide insulation that reduces the amount of heat that seeps into the building.
First up in Santiago: 10,700 square feet of green roofing to be installed on top of a hospital.
Authorities chose the site partly as a gesture to health workers, who have been working extra hard during the pandemic, Huidobro said. But patients will also benefit, she added, because “it’s been proved that having green environs helps with the healing process.” | 2022-08-28T08:24:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How ‘heat officers’ plan to help cities survive ever-hotter summers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/cities-extreme-heat-adaptation-heat-officers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/cities-extreme-heat-adaptation-heat-officers/ |
Four-year-old Elizaveta Dmytrieva grinned as she pushed her stroller along the street in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. It was nearly five months into the war, but the city where her family had fled from Kyiv seemed safe enough. Her mother took an Instagram video as “Liza,” who was born with Down syndrome, led the way in a moment of delighted independence.
Barely an hour later, the little girl was dead, her mother severely injured. And the image of her black and pink stroller, flipped on its side and spattered with blood, would become symbolic of the gruesome toll Russia’s invasion has inflicted on even the youngest Ukrainians.
What Iryna Dmytrieva remembers, reliving the horror of that July morning in her first interview since leaving the hospital, is a deafening noise overhead that she thought was a plane. She looked up to see a “massive” missile and immediately crouched down to try to shield her child.
“There wasn’t time to do anything,” Iryna told The Washington Post. “It was over in a flash.”
As her injuries slowly heal, she keeps replaying those final moments with Liza. The two were going from one appointment to another, and Iryna is thankful she had securely strapped her daughter into the stroller at that point because they were rushing. Otherwise, she says, “who knows where she would have ended up?”
Her decision meant the family had an intact body they could grieve and bury — unlike the many other bodies blown apart that day.
Two months after Liza’s birth, a genetic test revealed she had Down syndrome — a chromosomal condition that commonly causes physical and intellectual disabilities. Five months later, she underwent heart surgery that lasted more than five hours. Her mother shared photos on social media throughout Liza’s hospitalization, and those images were how many others came to know the little girl.
Throughout Liza’s short life, Iryna used Instagram to shine a light on the struggles, hopes and fears of parenting a child with Down syndrome. The account became an online diary, which also documented her split from Artem. The couple separated when Liza was 2.
“It was the only kind of motherhood I knew,” Iryna said, describing the many medical appointments that became a regular part of life. Each night, before Liza fell asleep, she would remind her: “You’re my most clever, beautiful, ideal child.”
The photos tell a story of love through all seasons. There’s Liza dressed as a witch for Halloween. Liza wearing a sun hat at the beach. Liza lying on a bed of fresh white snow.
“Is it possible to fall in love again and again?” her mother wrote under a photo just weeks before Liza was killed.
Amid the dark, thick smoke, Iryna knew almost immediately that Liza was gone. She saw her still buckled in the stroller. Her daughter’s feet, clad in mint-green-and-white sneakers, were splayed at an unnatural angle. Next to the stroller was a severed human foot — someone else’s.
Video shows Liza Dmytrieva the morning of July 14, shortly before she was killed in a Russian missile strike in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. (Video: Iryna Dmtrieva)
The mother was taken in critical condition to Vinnytsia City Clinical Hospital, where she would spend a month. Doctors removed shrapnel from her stomach, including a piece lodged just centimeters from a vital artery. Her left leg was shattered. Surgery on her left arm removed a fragment from the projectile. She has yet to regain feeling in some of her fingers.
From her hospital bed, Iryna told her mother that she wanted Liza to be buried in a white dress — “like a princess,” she said. And three days after the attack, photos show the little girl lying with a flower crown on her head and some of her favorite toys crowded at her feet in the open casket. Among them was a treasured mouse that went everywhere with her.
“The mental pain is worse than the physical pain,” she said.
She is 34 and, like other parents in Ukraine, struggling with wrenching, incalculable loss. Almost 1,000 children have been confirmed killed or injured since the war began, according to UNICEF, though the agency believes the true number to be much higher.
In a dream she had the day after the attack, she saw Liza in her white dress, surrounded by bright yellow smoke. She embraced her daughter who then moved away. She tried to reach for Liza’s hand, but she couldn’t quite grasp it.
“I ask Liza to take me with her,” Iryna said.
“It’s not your time,” Liza told her mother. “You have to live.” | 2022-08-28T09:03:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukrainian girl killed in Vinnytsia missile attack shows toll of Russia's war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/ukraine-vinnytsia-missile-attack-girl-stroller/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/ukraine-vinnytsia-missile-attack-girl-stroller/ |
The 23-time Grand Slam champion redefined what a women’s tennis player can be
Serena Williams is playing in what will probably be her final U.S. Open. (Daniel Ochoa De Olza/AP)
When Serena Williams walks away from tennis, it won’t simply mark the retirement of an athlete with more Grand Slam singles titles than any player in the sport’s modern era. It will mark something far more profound: the retirement of an athlete who has transformed the game in myriad ways.
The revolution Williams wrought started with the unparalleled power she brought to the women’s game and the competitive ferocity that forced other women to find their own — if they wanted to have a chance against her.
Now 40, she has reset earnings expectations for top female athletes, as well, with her record $94 million in career winnings on the court.
Along the way she has redefined resilience, competing for a quarter-century in the face of criticism, through grief, while pregnant and after childbirth — battling with the same fire whether ranked No. 1 in the world or having tumbled well outside the top 100.
She also has shattered notions of what tennis champions look like, how they dress and comport themselves. She has inspired the next generation of girls and boys to believe tennis was their sport, too, if that’s what they wanted.
Said former U.S. Tennis Association president and CEO Katrina Adams, a former pro herself: “Serena’s presence in our sport revolutionized tennis. She transformed it to what it is today with her power, with her grit, with the perseverance and determination and with her fashion. She left it all out on the court with a never-say-die-attitude whenever she was down in a match.”
Rafael Nadal, 36, hailed Williams as a “legend” and “ambassador” for sports during his pretournament news conference this weekend.
“I think [of] her as an athlete … not just a tennis player,” said Nadal, who counts four U.S. Open titles among his men’s record 22 majors. “From the tennis perspective, it’s a big loss that she is leaving. But on the other hand, she deserved all the things that she achieved because she worked enough to make that happen for such a long time, with a lot of determination, dedication, discipline. If not, all of this is impossible. So now is the moment that she deserves to choose whatever she wants to do.”
If this U.S. Open is Williams’s last star turn, as she intimated in a recent essay in Vogue, explaining why she is “evolving away from tennis” as she approaches her 41st birthday, it will be a fitting bookend.
A ratings bonanza
It seemed the height of hyperbole when Richard Williams predicted nearly four decades ago that his youngest daughter, Serena, would be an even greater tennis player than his daughter Venus. Both, he said, would one day be the world’s best.
He proved prophetic.
What the sisters achieved individually and in tandem has been without precedent in sport. Venus reached No. 1 in the world in February 2002. Serena ascended to No. 2 that June. And in July, the order flipped, with Serena No. 1 and Venus No. 2.
“They could knock the cover off the ball and run down every shot,” tennis historian Steve Flink recalled. “And they had the two best serves in the game.”
For one stretch in 2002 and 2003, Venus and Serena met in the finals of five out of six majors. Serena won them all and, in doing so, held all four Grand Slam titles at the same time to complete what she dubbed a “Serena Slam.”
She had announced herself to most tennis fans at 17, in the 1999 U.S. Open, knocking off defending champion Lindsay Davenport, among the era’s biggest hitters, to reach her first Grand Slam final.
Asked about her fears on the eve of the championship match, Serena said: “I fear no one. I only fear God.”
As S.L. Price characterized Serena’s coming-out party in Sports Illustrated: “Historic shifts hit tennis like hurricanes; you see them coming, but never know exactly where or when they’ll make landfall. Suddenly, at this Open, the future came blowing in.”
Serena was the future of women’s tennis. And she was a ratings bonanza, with CBS reporting its ratings had doubled from the previous year’s women’s final.
That pattern held throughout Serena’s career, according to ESPN vice president Jamie Reynolds, who oversees the network’s production of tennis.
“It is akin to the ‘Tiger Effect’ in golf — the bump in interest based on whether Tiger was in the field or not,” Reynolds said. “That’s what it’s like when Serena is in the field.
“… The trend we typically see when Serena is involved and goes deep in a tournament is that the ratings for those matches can easily double. That’s the general rule of thumb for us.”
Said Hall of Fame inductee John McEnroe, on what has made Williams must-see TV: “All you need to say about Serena is that she’s put herself in that pantheon of GOATs of GOATs.”
‘A savage fighter’
Any analysis of what places her in that pantheon starts with power — of her groundstrokes and especially her serve.
In the serve-and-volley era of women’s tennis that preceded Williams, the convention was to use a well-placed serve to start a point.
Serena, like Venus and a handful of heavy hitters, used the serve to win a point.
While its sheer velocity, hurtling at upward of 128 mph, was enough to knock most opponents back on their heels, the clinical mechanics of Serena’s serve was its real genius.
Explained Paul Annacone, a former pro who coached Pete Sampras much of his Hall of Fame career, as well as Roger Federer: “Serena’s service motion is a thing of beauty. The mechanics are so textbook-oriented. Even in the biggest moments, she can rely on the repetition of a very ingrained, spot-on technique of a serve.”
McEnroe considers her serve better than that of some men on tour.
Said Flink, who has studied the game for five decades: “The motion would never break down. You felt like she could almost go out on court with her eyes closed and hit serves into the corner because the mechanics were so good, the motion was so smooth and elegant. And she could do it excellently under pressure.”
Add to that her groundstroke blasts, and younger players started scrambling to add heft and power to their games. She simply raised the bar so high, they had no choice.
“Steph Curry has changed the basketball game; everyone is shooting three-pointers, but no one does it as well as him,” McEnroe said. “People try to match [Serena’s] power, but that was a level beyond.”
As for her on-court ferocity, Williams calls herself “a savage fighter” and an athlete who managed, through tennis, to turn a negative into a positive.
Mental toughness is tricky to measure, of course. There is no speed gun for that.
But Annacone, now a Tennis Channel analyst, knows it when he sees it. And he places two athletes above the rest on that count: Nadal and Williams.
“They do it with different personalities in different ways, but it’s the same thing: ‘All that matters is the next point, not what mattered 10 minutes ago, not what might happen, not the doubts. All that matters is the next 60 seconds in front of my nose,’ ” Annacone explained. “To be able to do that like your life depends on it — and keep doing it every point — sounds simple, but it’s really difficult.”
To this cause, Serena enlists the full range of passion and emotion — sometimes anger, sometimes joy and quite often shrieks, roars and fist-pumps that fire up her play.
That, too, has been revolutionary for women’s tennis in the view of 18-time Grand Slam champion Chris Evert, who betrayed hardly any emotion while competing. And it’s a revolution Evert hails as liberating, all because of Serena.
“She’s changed the way women compete as far as it’s okay to be ferocious and passionate and vocal out there, emotional out there on the court and still be a woman, still not take away from being a woman,” Evert said.
For some tennis fans, the theatrics and decibels of Williams’s game were too much.
But TV ratings, ticket sales and corporate interest in women’s tennis indicate that far more fans — including newly minted fans — flocked to her matches.
“She brought an element of entertainment to the game — first, just on her pure dominance, physical prowess and pure determination,” Adams said. “That grit. On every single point. People wanted to see that. And people wanted to energize her and motivate her.”
In the 14 months since she hobbled off Centre Court with an injury in Wimbledon’s first round in June 2021, Williams has played just four matches, losing three. She will turn 41 on Sept. 26 and is ranked 410th.
At her most recent match, a straight-sets defeat in Cincinnati to defending U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu, her 4-year-old daughter, Olympia, looked on from the guest box in Aunt Isha’s lap.
Still, it’s preposterous to put limits on what Williams might achieve in her 21st career U.S. Open when she begins play under the lights Monday at Ashe Stadium, cheered by a crowd that has always wanted more.
Serena Williams has spent the past 26 years proving she knows what it takes to be a champion, to face adversity, fight back and produce her best in the toughest moments.
“Not everybody has that ability like Serena,” Adams said. “I don’t know if anyone will ever have that ability going forward.” | 2022-08-28T09:55:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena Williams forever changed how women's tennis is played - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/serena-williams-legacy-final-us-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/serena-williams-legacy-final-us-open/ |
Last August, Martin Luther King III, center left, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, center, led a march in D.C. coinciding with the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Instead of marching on the nation’s capital this anniversary, Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, are focusing their efforts on Black and Brown organizers in communities across the country. They announced on Sunday the launch of a coalition that will invest millions of dollars in 40 groups that promote freedom, justice and equality — a recognition of the ways great social movements harnessed the power of grass-roots organizing to achieve progress.
‘I knew I would be here today’: Thousands demand racial justice at March on Washington
Martin Luther King Jr.’s family marches in D.C. for Senate action on voting rights bill
The funding his Orlando-based organization, Mission Talk, will receive from the coalition will help his group continue educating voters on issues like health care, affordable housing, criminal justice reform and poverty — and mobilize them to cast their ballots.
“When they hear the word ‘evangelical,’ they assume this community is Republican. And for the most part, this community is really in proximity to the pain and has been ignored by different justice movements, even by politicians,” Quiles said. “It’s a community that not a lot of people understand. ... We’re not monolithic.”
Voting rights activists on ‘Freedom Ride’ say their work will continue even after Senate Republicans block election reform bill | 2022-08-28T10:30:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | MLK family announces Drum Major Coalition to aid Black, Brown organizers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/mlk-family-drum-major-coalition/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/mlk-family-drum-major-coalition/ |
Traffic on the Beltway in April 2021 in Silver Spring. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s persistence paid off last week with a milestone in his ambitious toll lane plan to expand portions of the Beltway and Interstate 270, two of the most gridlocked highways in one of the nation’s most gridlocked metropolitan areas. After years of study, the Federal Highway Administration approved a massive environmental review, thereby clearing the way for federal funding. Now Mr. Hogan, a Republican, has less than five months in his term to get further approvals. He’ll need it.
The D.C. region generally ranks right behind New York City — and ahead of notoriously traffic-clogged places such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Seattle — on the misery index of longest commutes among major U.S. metropolitan areas. A big reason is the mess on major arteries in suburban Maryland and Virginia, which bedevils hundreds of thousands of people daily.
Traffic will undoubtedly get worse without major and costly improvements — and the political courage to push projects to completion amid a hornet’s nest of opposition. Mr. Hogan has stood nearly alone among Maryland’s major elected officials in pushing to add the toll lanes, which drivers would use voluntarily to escape the usual crawl in the regular lanes. The toll lanes’ price would vary according to demand, in order to maintain a steady speed.
The project could improve the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of drivers, but it is opposed by elected officials heedless of the mounting gridlock facing drivers and projections that 400,000 more people, along with a quarter-million new jobs, are expected by 2045 in suburban Montgomery, Prince George’s and Frederick counties. If you think traffic there is bad now, imagine it without additional road capacity over the coming decades.
The governor’s work is not done. The project, whose cost could reach $5 billion — and includes replacing the antiquated American Legion Bridge connecting Maryland and Virginia over the Potomac — will face legal, political and regulatory challenges in the months remaining in Mr. Hogan’s term and beyond. Many will be specious. Already, it has overcome an allegation that state officials used fraudulent traffic calculations to justify it. Experts in the U.S. Transportation Department reviewed that claim and found it baseless.
One major hurdle facing the governor is the state’s three-member Board of Public Works, which he chairs; he will need at least the support of one other board member to approve the project’s construction contract. In addition, anti-toll lane activists have five months to challenge the project’s environmental review in court.
Beyond that, both candidates in this fall’s gubernatorial election to succeed Mr. Hogan have thrown cold water on the plan. Either of them, Democrat Wes Moore or Republican Dan Cox, could kill it.
That would be a mistake. It’s true that the region desperately needs more transit options — and Mr. Hogan’s project includes hundreds of millions of dollars for transit. It is equally true that transit will not suffice to ease traffic by enticing sufficient numbers of motorists to abandon their cars. Virginia has widened its major suburban arteries in the Washington area. Maryland must follow suit — or expect mounting misery. | 2022-08-28T11:13:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Larry Hogan's Maryland toll lane project must continue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/larry-hogan-beltway-toll-lanes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/larry-hogan-beltway-toll-lanes/ |
Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, speaks to members of the media at Trump Tower in New York on Nov. 16, 2016. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
One man has donated $1.6 billion to a nonprofit group controlled by a conservative activist who has crusaded, with startling success, to transform the country’s politics. The only reason the public knows about it? An insider tipoff to the New York Times.
The Times reported this week that electronics mogul Barre Seid last year gave 100 percent of the shares of surge protector and data-center equipment manufacturer Tripp Lite to a group called Marble Freedom Trust. The group is led by Leonard Leo — who has helped bankroll right-wing advocacy on abortion rights, voting and climate change, among other things. His chief focus for a time was reshaping the judiciary as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, including by advising Republican presidents on Supreme Court nominees. The tale of how his group got such a lavish gift underscores the sad state of this country’s campaign finance system.
The Marble Freedom Trust donation, possibly the largest ever to such an advocacy group in U.S. history, manages to encapsulate in a single case the problems with the status quo. The issue isn’t merely the distortion of democracy enabled by 2010′s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision allowed for unlimited political spending by corporations and outside groups — to which, in turn, the ultra-wealthy can funnel unlimited funds of their own. The issue is also that the distortion remains, in most cases, invisible. Nonprofits groups registered as 501(c)(4)s, like Marble Freedom Trust, don’t have to disclose their donors.
Adding insult to injury, donors can also use these nonprofits to dodge taxes — in this instance, to the tune of somewhere around $400 million. To sell his company on his own, Mr. Seid would have had to pay capital gains taxes, leaving him with less to bequeath to Marble Freedom Trust. But as supposed “social welfare organization,” 501(c)(4)s are exempt from paying taxes. So instead he handed his shares over to the trust, which then itself sold Tripp Lite: for the $1.6 billion now in Mr. Leo’s coffers. As a result, dutiful everyday taxpayers essentially finance the extravagant expenditures of the privileged few, who use their know-how to avoid their obligations and twist the political landscape.
Congress should close the tax loophole these donors exploit. And the Disclose Act, some version of which has been languishing in Congress for more than a decade, blocked by GOP filibusters, would at least tell voters who’s trying to buy their votes. The Internal Revenue Service can improve things on its own by collecting donors’ information again, after it stopped in 2018. Unfortunately, without a change in Supreme Court precedent or a constitutional amendment, only marginal improvements are possible.
Mr. Leo defended his gambit by saying it is “high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals.” Really, it’s not toe-to-toe but billions-to-billions — and neither side should be proud of that. | 2022-08-28T11:13:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Leonard Leo's $1.6 billion donation shows how money corrupts politics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/leonard-leo-donation-campaign-finance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/leonard-leo-donation-campaign-finance/ |
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), left, meets with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen at the Presidential Office in Taipei on Aug. 26. (Handout/Taiwan's Presidential Office/AFP via Getty Images)
It has been almost a month since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Taiwan, demonstrating solidarity with that self-governing democracy — and infuriating communist China, which claims the island as its own. What some are calling the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis, following those that began in 1954, 1958 and 1995, simmers on. Beijing launched a practice naval blockade of Taiwan. Smaller military exercises continued thereafter, as do visits to Taipei by U.S. lawmakers from both parties, the most recent being Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).
Clearly, tension between China and its democratic neighbors, including not just Taiwan but also Japan and South Korea, is growing, as is pressure on the one-China policy that has provided a strategic framework for the United States — and kept the peace — since Washington formally recognized Beijing in 1979. New realities, the most important of which are China’s economic and military rise, coupled with the openly aggressive posture of its dictator, Xi Jinping, cry out for adaptation.
President Biden has three times explicitly pledged that the United States would defend Taiwan militarily, though aides insist this represents nothing fundamentally new. The need for more “strategic clarity” along the lines of Mr. Biden’s statements — and less of the one-China policy’s “strategic ambiguity” — is the premise of legislation due for consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sept. 14. Known as the Taiwan Policy Act and co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the committee’s chairman, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the bill would be the most significant such enactment since the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, under which the United States has maintained de facto diplomatic relations and arms sales with the island.
In substantive terms, the bill’s key provision is $4.5 billion in military aid for Taiwan and permission to spend the money on “arms conducive to deterring acts of aggression by the People’s Liberation Army” as opposed to the Taiwan Relations Act’s more vague language. Symbolically, the bill breaks more new ground, formalizing the status of “major non-NATO ally” that Taiwan had previously enjoyed informally and rebranding its de facto embassy in Washington as the “Taiwan Representative Office,” a formulation more objectionable to Beijing than the current “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office.”
The bill’s chances to become law in its entirety are iffy, though the least controversial and, substantively, most useful part — stepped-up military aid — could find its way into a later defense policy bill. Also worthy is the Biden administration’s separate initiative, reaffirmed after Ms. Pelosi’s trip, to deepen trade ties with Taiwan. Nevertheless, debate on the bill has raised important questions that must be resolved sooner or later.
On this issue, symbolism is substance, especially to China; the question, as always, is to maximize deterrence for Taiwan while minimizing unnecessary provocation of China. The bill’s authors are right that recent history — especially the Russian invasion of Ukraine — shows appeasement doesn’t work and “provocation” is the aggressor’s all-purpose excuse to lash out. The only thing worse than an avoidable war in Asia, however, would be an avoidable war for which objective observers could hold U.S. policy partly responsible. Those considerations define the balance for which the Senate and the administration must strive. | 2022-08-28T11:13:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S. must back Taiwan and deter China without spiking tensions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/taiwan-us-china-tensions-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/taiwan-us-china-tensions-war/ |
A polar bear stands on the ice in the Franklin Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
“We are on alert,” Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who chairs the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, told me. Anti-regulation conservatives, she added, “haven’t been successful in legislation, but they have succeeded in packing the court.”
The court majority claimed that Congress had never given the agency explicit authority for such actions. “A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.
“The Clean Air Act was written to be very flexible,” Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in an interview. “The EPA has the authority and the obligation to protect public health, and as new sources of pollution arose, the EPA could act.”
“Working with our colleagues in the House, we reaffirmed the current state of the law, which is that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act,” Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told me in an email. “It’s an insurance policy against a court that’s become out of step with the American people.” | 2022-08-28T11:14:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Greenhouse gases are pollutants. The Inflation Reduction Act says so. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/west-virginia-epa-inflation-reduction-act/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/west-virginia-epa-inflation-reduction-act/ |
A new book about American farm life enraged me all over again
Writers, farmers and scientists have been warning us for decades: Small farms are in trouble. ‘Bet the Farm’ drives the point home in a very personal way.
Review by Jane Smiley
(Island Press; Rob Mattson/Noble Research Institute)
My 1999 novel “A Thousand Acres” was inspired by my understanding that the most fertile topsoil, perhaps in the world, in north-central Iowa, was being poisoned by pesticides and fertilizers. I thought someone would care.
Judging by what Beth Hoffman discovered when she moved to Iowa with her husband 20 years later, there are plenty of people who care, but they don’t matter, because the banks and the Big Ag companies have made change — and therefore resurrection — impossible.
In her book “Bet the Farm,” Hoffman boils down the problems of American farming to one small unhappy incident: Her father-in-law, Leroy, “had kept cows in the same pasture for several months every winter and spring to calve, and now, fifty years into the practice, the pasture was a muddy, manure-filled bog in the spring, a no-cow’s-land.” An adviser bends down and picks up some soil — it is “compacted”— and “looks like a slab of clay.” Southeast Iowa was once thought to be the agriculture paradise that would be productive forever. Hoffman’s book shows why that is no longer so.
What a farm owner does in a workday
There is a reason that “Bet the Farm” was written only a year or so after Hoffman and her husband, John, moved to Whippoorwill Creek Farm. It is not so much prescriptive as it is the chronicle of a learning experience. John grew up on the farm his great-great-grandfather James Ship Hogeland had bought in the 1850s — but spent most of his adult life in a city. Hoffman is an urbanite and a journalist who had been writing about food and agriculture for years. John and Beth knew that they were somewhat naive when they moved to Iowa, but Hoffman is very skilled (and eloquent) about turning that ignorance into observation and learning.
“I didn’t really understand how financial problems exist not just for poor farmers in developing nations or for a smattering of American farmers once in a while, but for the vast majority of them every year,” Hoffman writes. “I did not realize the amount of debt farms carry today — the average farm in Nebraska owes $1.3 million — nor did I consider closely the challenges of a seasonal cash flow or the high cost of land. Like many privileged Americans when thinking about the failure of any business, I chalked up foreclosures and bankruptcies to ineptitude and a lack of creativity. Yet in reality, going broke is just over the horizon for the majority of farms in the country.”
What does it mean to be a ‘horse girl’? It’s more than a silly kid who wants a pony.
Hoffman wants to change the system, but she also wants to know, viscerally, what the system demands of her and how she can meet those demands. And one of the things she has to do is to learn not to worry.
In the 16 chapters of her book, Hoffman is careful to touch on every aspect of current farming. For those of us not in the know (most Americans) the first is the most shocking. Of her father-in-law’s farm, she writes, “the technology insures an ever-increasing supply of corn or wheat or soybeans … the more farmers invest and produce, the more their neighbors … invest and produce, driving the price of goods lower and lower.” In other words, as she points out, more equipment, more debt, higher production, less use for it, more debt, more devastation of the ecosystem. Why not grow organic vegetables? That’s what Hoffman and her husband want to do, but the difficulties of making it work, start with one word: weeds.
Hoffman’s eloquent and detailed exploration of her first two years on the farm do not say much about the biggest threat, though, that she knows is out there — too much rain at the wrong time of year, no rain when the crops (and the grass-fed cattle) need it, traumatic weather events that can do away with the farm altogether.
“Even in the best of times,” Hoffman writes, “everything from the weather to world politics impacts your bottom line, not to mention your daily schedule. This, I believe, is one of the main reasons so many farmers have turned to genetic modification and company contracts, chemicals and government programs, ‘solutions’ that give them a feeling of control over the elements and help create certainty in their lives. A contract is a guarantee about the future, even if it only guarantees how bleak that future will be.”
As someone who lived in Iowa for 25 years and was fascinated by farming from the moment I moved into a farmhouse that I rented southwest of Iowa City, I would have thought that my job as I read Hoffman’s book would be to nod in a sad way, agreeing with whatever she said. But her book is so precise and well-thought out, that it turned out that my job was to be enraged once again that the most essential task that any group of Americans has pays almost nothing, is almost entirely controlled by oligarchs, produces too much that is unhealthy and too little that is healthy and destroys the natural world. How long have knowledgeable authors been addressing this subject?
The first book I read, 50 years ago, was “The Closing Circle,” by Barry Commoner, which lays out the damage humans had already done to the ecosphere. Not long after I read Commoner’s book, I learned about James Hansen (from Denison, Iowa), who knew what carbon emissions were doing and did his best to issue a direct and specific warning (which almost everyone in the government and corporate culture ignored or denied).
In 1999, appropriately (considering that a lot of people were predicting the end of the world), historian Jared Diamond published an article in Discover magazine about agriculture entitled “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.” In it, he compares the mostly archaeological evidence of hunter/gatherer populations with agricultural populations and pointed out that agriculture made way for “malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases,” as well as social inequality and sexism, not to mention eco-destruction. According to Diamond, hunter/gatherers lived longer and healthier lives than people in ever-expanding agricultural communities for 90,000 years and still do. In the 10,000 years since the first domestication of plants, humans have moved closer and closer to destroying themselves. What he does not mention is how the agricultural revolution triggered the industrial revolution, and we all know where that could lead.
So here we are — the people who feed us can barely afford to do so, the efforts that people like Hoffman and her husband are making to transform our food system are hitting roadblocks, and we are staggering into the future, distracted by constant arguments about whose belief system is true and who has to obey whom.
“We need to move away from the romantic tales of farming to understand that while farmers feed people and take care of land, they also need to be able to take care of themselves and their families,” Hoffman pleads, “instead of idealizing the self-reliant, self-sacrificing farmer, toughing it out in the field alone and beating her competitors, farmers have to know that we can work together — perhaps even to limit our own output — for the benefit of the land and each other.”
It’s hard to have hope, but the organized observations and plans of Hoffman and people like her give me some. Read her book — and listen.
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including “A Thousand Acres,” which won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. “A Dangerous Business,” a murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, will be published in December.
Bet the Farm
The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America
Island Books. 272 pp. $26 | 2022-08-28T11:18:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jane Smiley reviews 'Bet the Farm' by Beth Hoffman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/28/bet-the-farm-smiley/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/08/28/bet-the-farm-smiley/ |
Curbside pickup is here to stay, and retailers are going all in
With inflation causing consumers to change their spending habits, major retailers are leaning into “omnichannel” shopping options to draw in customers
Shoppers use a curbside pickup at a Best Buy store in San Antonio. More consumers are taking advantage of those services, but some stores might start charging for the privilege. (Eric Gay/AP)
For Michael Whitley, pulling into the curbside pickup spot at Walmart affords him a measure of independence that wasn’t as widely available in his Huntsville, Ala., neighborhood before the pandemic.
“I hate asking for help more than anything,” said the 45-year-old, who also came to rely on the service at Publix, Kroger and Best Buy as cancer made walking long distances difficult and heightened his risk for contracting the virus. He still does, even now that his health has improved.
“It’s one of the good things that’s come out of covid,” he added.
Curbside pickup, BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store) and other “omnichannel” approaches meant to make shopping seamless no matter the point of purchase — in-store, by phone, app or desktop — were already gaining traction before the coronavirus crisis took hold in early 2020. But the pandemic forced retailers to adapt quickly to new safety concerns and social distancing norms, and now there’s no going back for many consumers: 33 percent of adults younger than 50 who started using curbside pickup during the pandemic say it’s a habit they expect to continue, according to a study from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the SCAN Foundation.
Retailers ranging from major department stores to local hardware stores are leaning into the demand. But some may take it a bit further — by adding fees.
“Retailers have started to see it as a competitive advantage,” said Katherine Cullen, the senior director of industry and consumer insights at the National Retail Federation. “They know it’s something shoppers like … and it addresses the reality that there’s not really a distinction in consumers’ minds anymore between online or in-store.”
A recent round of earnings reports from some of the nation’s largest retailers and government data show consumers are changing how and what they buy. Though they’re still spending, a larger share of their resources is going toward necessities like gas and groceries because of historically high inflation. That leaves less room for more discretionary purchases like apparel, consumer electronics or a DIY project for the home.
A slowdown in consumer spending has implications for the broader economy, because it accounts for two-thirds of GDP. It could be a concern for policymakers and economists — especially when consumer sentiment is hovering near historic lows. It’s a combination that can pull an economy into a recession.
To win over shoppers, retailers are focusing on improving the experience. One important draw is offering several shopping options, according to Conor Flynn, the chief executive of Kimco Realty. The real estate investment firm was early to the omnichannel trend, working with its retail tenants to put in their branded neon green designated parking signs in its shopping centers. The company even trademarked “curbside pickup” right before the pandemic hit.
“I think consumer habits and behavior is changing so rapidly that there isn’t sort of one thing that is consistent across the board,” he said. “It’s almost like how you shop for groceries today — there’s no consistency. People go to like three different grocery stores for three different things. And I think the same goes for how people shop — whether it’s online, or in-store, or curbside, or buy online — they sort of want the menu of options that works and whatever works for them that day.”
The options are particularly helpful for shoppers with young children. Jelisa Osouna, a single mother in Newport News, Va., opts for curbside pickup whenever her 1-year-old daughter is with her.
“It’s very convenient if I need to grab something really quick,” Osouna, 30, said, adding that it saves her from having to lug her daughter and the car seat out of her car. “It can be a lot sometimes, so curbside is perfect.”
Supply chain bottlenecks and labor shortages during the pandemic also shifted expectations for consumers about wait time for online delivery orders. People realized that curbside and BOPIS are often faster, Cullen said. These changes allowed retailers to shave costs by persuading their customers to drive their own cars, using their own gas, in their own time, to pick up their items from the store. The BOPIS model also creates opportunities for shoppers to pick up some more items when they go inside to retrieve their online order, Flynn said.
“You get the halo effect,” he added. “And that’s really powerful.”
But Amanda Wise said she uses curbside pickup, in part, to avoid impulse spending. “The problem with Target is as soon as you go in, it’s hard to leave without spending at least $100,” the 34-year-old from Raleigh, N.C., said. Wise added that prices at some stores are cheaper online and she can use coupons and take advantage of cash-back apps or browser extensions when she buys ahead.
Most major retailers don’t charge for curbside pickup as long as customers meet an order minimum, generally at least $30 to $35. But that could change, Chad Lusk, a retail consultant at Alvarez and Marsal, said, noting that Sam’s Club recently added a $4 fee for customers who don’t have the premium membership, Sam’s Club Plus.
“As in-store shopping meaningfully returns, retailers now have to start comparing the cost of curbside fulfillment using additional labor to in-store purchases,” he said, adding that Sam’s Club’s move could be used “as a way to [incentivize] consumers fully back into stores.”
Bob Hoyler, a retail consultant with Euromonitor International, said he wouldn’t be surprised if other warehouse clubs like Costco or BJ’s Wholesale Club also adopted fees because customers are mostly drawn to the bulk discounts. But he doesn’t believe fees would go over well at grocery stores, particularly among consumers who choose curbside over delivery services like Instacart and Shipt to avoid the added cost, including tips.
If a curbside user is struggling financially and the grocer decides to tack on a fee, “you better believe [those shoppers] are going to be investigating the alternatives immediately,” Hoyler said.
Some retailers are changing their physical stores to better adapt to BOPIS and curbside pickup. Best Buy, for one, has reconfigured some of its stores to make room for backroom warehouse space, Lusk said.
“Further down the spectrum, we’re seeing the grocery space invest in microfulfillment centers, automated facilities that picks and stages orders for both in-store pickup and at-home delivery, separate from the store itself,” he added.
Microfulfillment centers, which are often used for one- or two-hour delivery, are particularly effective in densely populated regions. But they aren’t prevalent in rural areas, Cullen noted. Instead, omnichannel shopping options are particularly beneficial to those communities.
These expanded options for shopping are still “in the first inning,” Flynn said.
“I do think it’s going to evolve, but it is very clear that it’s working and a lot of customers love it,” he added. | 2022-08-28T11:26:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Curbside pickup is here to stay and retailers are going all in - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/28/curbside-pickup-shopping/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/28/curbside-pickup-shopping/ |
The hatred these Black women can’t forget as they near 100 years old
Three veterans of the civil rights movement fought segregation in St. Augustine, Fla., enduring violence and racism in America’s oldest city
By Martin Dobrow
Cora Tyson, 99, stands in front of her home in St. Augustine, Fla., on July 15. The plaque commemorates the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s stay at her home while he pushed for the racial desegregation of dining and lodging amid Ku Klux Klan violence. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/For The Washington Post)
Half a mile away, Janie Young Price, 96, has no trouble summoning the outrage she felt when she emerged from her hospital shift and found her Buick Electra turned upside down. She can still hear the hate at the Howard Johnson restaurant when a nearby White woman held her nose and said, “Ew, it stinks in here! Somebody must have left the sewer open.”
St. Augustine, Fla., the oldest continuously inhabited city in the continental United States, is built on history. The year 1565, when Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés settled here, is splashed across virtually every hat and T-shirt hawked in the bustling outdoor market. Trolley drivers crow about the oldest street, the oldest school and Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth.
Elusive as it might have been for Florida’s European discoverer, the fountain flows freely through the veins of Vickers and Tyson, who celebrated their 99th birthdays a few days apart this spring, and Price, who turned 96 a few days earlier. These three Black women are St. Augustine’s grandes dames of civil rights. Among them, they have decades of razor-sharp long-term memory, a double-edged gift.
“The movement did something to me that I don’t tell to the average person,” Tyson reflected earlier this month. “Because I trusted everybody. They broke a trust. It did something to me physically, mentally, and spiritually. … It hurt very deep. Even now, when I talk about it, I get all emotional. I’m 99; I guess I’ll just die with it.”
‘I wanted to get away from here’
The landmarks of their childhood in the central plaza spoke to St. Augustine’s difficult history: the open-air pavilion where slaves had been sold (still widely known as the Slave Market), the towering Confederate memorial. Black elders talked in hushed tones about the lynching of Isaac Barrett in 1897.
“Segregation was so bad,” she said. “I wanted to get away from here.”
Beaten by the Klan in 1963, a Black man just spoke to the White pastor who helped rescue him
Price likewise seized her chance to get away. In 1944, she was accepted into Grady nursing school in Atlanta on a government-sponsored scholarship amid the wartime nursing shortage. On Saturday nights, Grady students hosted well-dressed young men from Morehouse College at jukebox parties. One of the occasional guests was a precocious teenager named Martin Luther King Jr., who was dating one of Price’s classmates. Price returned to St. Augustine in 1947 for a nursing job at Flagler Hospital, where the rooms, bathrooms and even maternity wards were racially segregated.
‘All sense of law and order has broken down in St. Augustine’
The civil rights movement began in earnest in the 1950s. The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education paved the way for school integration. The next year, King emerged as the reluctant leader of the Montgomery bus boycott. The lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till — and the horrific photos of his body in Jet magazine — alerted many White Americans to the brutality of racism.
Things were mostly quiet in St. Augustine, the tourist economy chugging along, White and Black St. Augustinians living by codes of paternalism and second-class citizenship. Tyson, who managed the cafeteria at the all-Black Webster Elementary School, said the “way of life” made for relative peace. “I figured we were living here and we were okay,” she said.
She added, “Came to find out it wasn’t what I thought it was.”
Hayling opened an integrated dental office at 79 Bridge Street, next door to Tyson’s home in Lincolnville. His family rented a one-story house in West Augustine across the street from Vickers, who operated a small hair salon in her home. Later, under a cloud of violence, Hayling moved to Central Avenue in Lincolnville, next door to Price.
Things started to heat up in the summer of 1963, when the NAACP Youth Council, under Hayling’s leadership, began downtown protests. The response was brutal.
Night riders began terrorizing Scott Street. At the first word of the approaching pickup trucks, “We would call and alert everybody,” Vickers recalled. “ ‘They’re coming through! They’re coming through! Get down!’ ”
In September, the city’s first limited school integration began — nine years after the Brown decision. On Sept. 18, at a Klan rally in St. Augustine, Hayling was seized and almost burned alive.
One night in February 1964, the home of one of the families that had integrated a local elementary school was firebombed. A few hours later, night riders shot up Hayling’s house, killing his beloved boxer, Madonna, and narrowly missing his pregnant wife. The FBI report was chilling: “Investigation disclosed three or four loads of double zero shot had been fired at the front door. Penetration was sufficient to have killed anyone inside in the line of fire.”
Furious, Hayling moved his wife and children to Tallahassee, where his parents lived, then returned to the tinderbox in St. Augustine. With his home damaged, he rented the house next to Price’s.
July Fourth parade led to a massacre of Black people in Hamburg, S.C.
By the time King arrived in mid-May, the city was being torn apart by racial tension. J.B. Stoner, the vice-presidential candidate for the white supremacist National States’ Rights Party, gave incendiary speeches at the Slave Market. The ultra-right-wing John Birch Society established a chapter in St. Augustine. The city’s White power structure, including the mayor, sheriff and publisher of the local newspaper, all fervently opposed integration.
Nightly marches to the Slave Market by Black demonstrators and White allies were met by attacks with bricks and chains. “Kneel-ins” at White churches led to doors being slammed to keep Black worshipers out. “Swim-ins” at St. Augustine Beach led to blood in the water. The local paper published the location of King’s rented cottage; that night, it was ravaged with gunfire. King appealed to President Lyndon B. Johnson for federal help, saying, “All sense of law and order has broken down in St. Augustine.”
Vickers, Price and Tyson forged a connection with King during his time in the city. Talking from the pulpit about an upcoming march, he turned directly to Vickers and said, “Young lady, will you go?”
“It was just electrifying,” she recalled. “He had something about him that was different.”
Price attended another church meeting where King spoke. At first, she didn’t recognize him as the young man she had known in Atlanta, but he approached her afterward and reminded her of those dances by the jukebox. Price and her husband hosted King for a night, as he moved from house to house for his safety. She was amazed by the man he had become.
“We called him our Black Moses,” she said in a 2019 interview. “I think he was put on this earth to do what he did.”
Tyson’s house, next to Hayling’s dental office, became a home base for the SCLC. She cooked for King and his associates. They all signed her family Bible.
She even engaged King in conversation about his tactics. “I told Dr. King, ‘I do not appreciate this nonviolent thing you got going,’ ” she said. “He looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Mrs. Tyson, that’s the strategy.’ ”
She thought it might prove a fatal one. When those black limousines drove by ahead of the marching Klan, King’s friend Hosea Williams ran onto her porch and said there were men with guns. He told King, “If they come in here, it’s going to be a slaughter.”
While King was in St. Augustine, the U.S. Senate finally broke a filibuster, ensuring the passage of the Civil Rights Act. His V-for-victory salute in a photograph taken inside the Ice Berg Restaurant on Bridge Street is one of the enduring images of the St. Augustine movement. John Herbers of the New York Times interviewed King on Tyson’s porch on July 1. The next day, King was in Washington as Johnson signed the bill, handing him one of the pens as a souvenir.
The tripwire tension began to ease in St. Augustine, although not without fallout. Hayling, his dental practice ruined, left in 1965. In April 1968, he went to Atlanta, walking beside the mule-drawn cart that carried King’s casket. Hayling died in December 2015.
St. Augustine remains a tourist destination. Battles over public memory — what gets preserved, what gets erased — are ongoing. There is a small civil rights museum in Hayling’s old dental office. Scott Street has been renamed for Hayling, Central Avenue for King.
Vickers was the driving force behind a public art installation, the Foot Soldiers Monument, honoring the town’s unsung civil rights heroes. It was erected in the city’s central plaza in 2011. In 2020, after years of contentious debate, the Confederate memorial was removed by a 3-to-2 vote of the city commission. The Slave Market remains.
Lincolnville has been transformed. Once 90 percent Black, it is now about 90 percent White.
The grandes dames carry on. Tyson is a petite woman whose hair is still more black than gray. Price uses a wheelchair and relies on her niece’s help but continues to tell lively stories from her youth. Vickers, stylish and virtually wrinkle-free, could pass for 20 years younger.
They are not the city’s oldest residents — the local Council on Aging hosted a luncheon in May with seven people who were 100 or older — but the three women have become quasi-public figures in St. Augustine. The tourist trolleys, which used to bypass Lincolnville entirely, now routinely share some Black history, citing Price and Tyson by name as they pass their homes, sometimes eliciting a wave from the porch. The St. Augustine Record, which used to confine its coverage of Black people almost exclusively to crime, put Tyson’s 99th birthday on its front page.
“They need to know about it,” Vickers said. “You couldn’t just sit and think it was going to happen. You had to make it change.”
Martin Dobrow is a professor of communications at Springfield College.
More on racial violence
Ole Miss yearbooks appear to mock lynching victims | 2022-08-28T11:27:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black women in St. Augustine, Fla., remember racism, civil rights battles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/27/st-augustine-civil-rights-veterans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/27/st-augustine-civil-rights-veterans/ |
By Chris Lamb
Cannon Street players and coaches watch the Little League World Series championship game in 1955. (Little League Baseball and Softball)
The Cannon Street team wasn’t going all this distance in a broken-down bus on unfriendly roads to play in the World Series. The team knew it would not be allowed to compete. Yet it became what Creighton Hale, the former chief executive of Little League Baseball, called “the most significant amateur baseball team in history.”
And as some of the country’s top young baseball players take the field Sunday for the finals of the 75th Little League World Series in Williamsport, the legacy of the Cannon Street team lives on in a league whose biggest barriers the Charleston players helped break down.
“It’s a tragedy to take dreams away from youngsters,” said John Rivers, the team’s shortstop, who became a successful architect. “I knew it then. I know it now, and I’ve seen to it that no one takes dreams away from me again.”
In 1955, Morrison waded into the civil rights struggle when he registered the Cannon Street league’s all-star team for a Little League tournament in Charleston.
Jackie Robinson had integrated Major League Baseball eight years earlier, but the White parents of Charleston weren’t ready to let their sons play baseball with Black boys. The Cannon Street team won the tournament by forfeit when the White teams all withdrew in protest, amid widespread Southern resistance to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that struck down segregation in public schools.
Little League Baseball, citing the organization’s prohibitions against racial discrimination, ordered the White teams to play the Cannon Street squad. The adult managers of the teams responded by seceding from the organization and creating a segregated youth baseball league. Hundreds of other teams in the South followed. The boys wore Confederate flags on their uniforms. The organization, Dixie Youth Baseball, still exists, though it has been integrated for decades.
The Cannon Street team again won the tournament by forfeit and advanced to the regional tournament. If it won there, it would qualify for the World Series. But Little League Baseball President Peter McGovern declared the team ineligible for the regional tournament because, according to organization rules, teams had to win on the field — not by forfeit — to advance.
McGovern, who admitted regret over his decision, invited the team to be the organization’s guests at the World Series.
The ‘father of Black basketball’ transformed a White-dominated sport
Decades later, Rivers bristled at McGovern’s response. “The compromise was, let them come but don’t let them play,” Rivers said. “You know, try to walk the fence. All right, that would satisfy everybody. Well, it didn’t.”
At the time, however, Rivers and his teammates were thrilled about going to Williamsport. “Just the idea of getting on a bus with your friends for a long trip was more exciting than Christmas,” he said.
Morrison had raised money for the state and regional tournaments that went unspent after the tournaments were canceled. He contributed some of his own money and collected donations to fund the team’s trip to Williamsport.
Morrison had a bigger agenda than baseball. He created the Cannon Street league and registered its all-star team for a tournament to confront segregation and advance the cause of racial equality. White newspaper columnists and editorial writers condemned the South Carolina teams for refusing to let their boys play a Black team. Dick Young of the New York Daily News called for McGovern to resign for not adhering to his organization’s ban on racial discrimination.
“Let them play! Let them play!”
Rivers said, “I can hear it now.”
A century before Zimmerman, Walter Johnson transformed D.C. baseball
They saw the integrated New Jersey team and wondered why they weren’t allowed to play like the Black kids on that team. They thought they were better than the players they watched. They were convinced they would have won, given the opportunity.
While their bus drove back to Charleston, Emmett Till, who was not much older than the Cannon Street players, was kidnapped from his uncle’s house in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a White woman, then tortured and murdered. A few months later, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.
Over the next several decades, the players rarely talked about what happened in Williamsport. But in the past 25 years, they’ve told people why their story needs to be remembered.
Leroy Major, the team’s best pitcher, who became a teacher in Charleston, received a letter from a boy in Pennsylvania who thanked him for his contributions to the civil rights movement and said he should be remembered the way Parks and others are.
“Tears came to my eyes,” Major said.
More on sports history
Millennia before UFC, there was the brutal Olympic sport of pankration
The modern NFL didn’t have a Black head coach until 1989. Here’s his story. | 2022-08-28T11:27:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | All-Black Cannon Street team's journey to Little League World Series - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/28/cannon-street-little-league-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/08/28/cannon-street-little-league-series/ |
The latest layoffs at Gannett come amid an industry-wide trend of the shrinking newspaper newsroom.
CAMBRIDGE, OH: The exterior of The Jeffersonian newspaper building at 831 Wheeling Ave, Cambridge, Ohio. (Kristi Garabrandt)
Then came the layoffs. Earlier this month, the Daily Jeff’s parent company, Gannett, announced a dismal second-quarter. The company reported a $53.7 million loss on $748.7 million in revenue, as it dealt with inflation and soaring print costs, the CEO said. Employees were warned in an email of “necessary but painful reductions to staffing.”
A week later, Garabrandt became one of at least dozens of Gannett employees who lost their jobs. It took her off guard. “When you’re the paper’s only reporter, you don’t consider yourself nonessential,” she said.
Gannett will not disclose how many journalists were laid off or which newspapers were impacted. The nonprofit media institute Poynter and the employee union NewsGuild have tracked at least 70 to 90 newsroom positions eliminated this month, a fraction of Gannett’s total workforce of roughly 13,000. At some papers, the journalists let go were their newsroom’s only sports editor, photojournalist, customer service representative or, like Garabrandt, full-time news reporter.
In the past, such reductions have meant the work gets spread among remaining staff, freelancers or journalists at other Gannett papers. The Daily Jeff, for instance, is left with one sports reporter, besides freelance contributions.
Gannett’s chief communications officer, Lark-Marie Antón, said in a statement that company was forced to take “swift action” in a challenging economy. “These staffing reductions are incredibly difficult, and we are grateful for the contributions of our departing colleagues," she said. Out of deep respect for our colleagues, there is no further comment.”
Newspaper companies have been struggling to find their financial footing with the decline of print advertising. A recent Northwestern University study predicted one-third of newspapers that existed roughly two decades ago will go extinct by 2025. Another study from the Pew Research Center found some 40,000 newspaper newsroom jobs vanished between 2008 and 2020.
Gannett — the largest newspaper chain in the country with more than 200 daily newspapers and its flagship publication USA Today — had already been shedding jobs. Its workforce decreased by 35 percent between 2019 to 2021, although it’s unclear how many of those reductions hit newsrooms, and whether they were because of layoffs, attrition or other reasons. The company has also sold some papers back to local owners.
During reporter and editor Darrel Rowland’s 31 years at the Columbus Dispatch, he worked on stories that have led to the resignation of an Ohio attorney general; two wrongly-convicted men walking free; and the state fessing up to improperly withholding $40 million in child support payments to single parents.
“I can point to laws that were changed because of our reporting,” said Rowland, who lost his job this month. “How do people find out what their elected officials are up to? How are they finding out how their tax money is being spent? To me, [these] are the basic, fundamental questions and one of the fundamental reasons for journalism to exist.”
Rowland has also seen his paper shrink from 200 employees to 70, and eliminate its statehouse bureau and rely instead on a centralized Gannett bureau that feeds stories to all Ohio papers, effectively making local papers less local. He also said a job offer was rescinded from an intern who went to a non-Gannett paper in Utah and won a Pulitzer Prize two years later.
Now, Rowland worries whether newspapers have the resources and expertise to dig through millions of records the way he and others did on consequential stories, like inflated prescription drug prices. “We need good journalism and good journalists. I wish I were part of it for the paper I worked at for so long. I still want that paper to succeed and the readers to have the benefit of having good journalism.”
Newspapers keep eliminating print days. They say it’s for the best.
During this month’s earnings call, Gannett CEO Michael Reed cited a challenging economic environment and more readers dropping pricier print subscriptions. Reductions and selling off its real estate holdings, he said, were necessary for Gannett to create a more sustainable business. The company also carries $1.3 billion in debt from a 2019 merger.
While Gannett’s digital business has grown — paid subscriptions increased by 35 percent in the last year — it hasn’t been enough to make up the loss of print revenue, said Edmonds.
Gannett laid off other longtime journalists in the latest round of cuts, such as photojournalist Don Shrubshell, who has been at Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri since 1998. He was inducted into the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame the day before he was laid off from his job, according to the Maryville Forum.
Since May, Zachariah Chou, 24, had been the only Gannett employee managing opinion content full-time for all of Georgia. Before he lost his job this month, Chou fact-checked letters to the editor and helped residents get their opinions on local, state and national issues published in a newspaper.
The biggest U.S. newspaper chain wants less opinion in its pages
Community leaders are worried about the fate of their local papers. During his 15 years as mayor of Cambridge, Ohio, Tom Orr has seen the Daily Jeff shrink its staff, cut back on printed papers and publish photos from faraway communities. “I love this town and I don’t like to see it suffer, and that’s what this is causing it to do, suffer,” he said.
Some laid-off journalists immediately began looking for new jobs, such as Garabrandt, 50, who is her family’s primary income provider. She has been in journalism for about 10 years and especially loves upbeat stories. “Many of us, as you know, live for the job,” she said. “In a world gone mad, I call myself a good news girl. I think there needs to be more good news put out there.”
Chou, who had been working remotely while living with his parents in Texas, was offered a reporting position at Gannett after his job was eliminated, but it would have required him to relocate to Savannah, Georgia, something he said was not feasible.
And Rowland, the longtime Ohio journalist, still wants to write accountability stories that lead to lasting change. At 67, he’s nearing retirement age. But, as he said, “I just feel like God has some more stories in these fingers of mine.”
Paul Farhi contributed to this report. | 2022-08-28T11:27:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | They were some of the last journalists at their papers. Then came the layoffs. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/08/28/gannett-layoffs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/08/28/gannett-layoffs/ |
Missy Jenkins Smith survived a shooting at her school at the age of 15, but was paralyzed from the chest down. (Julia Rendleman/For The Washington Post)
A school shooting shattered a town in 1997. Now the gunman could get parole.
“Am I going to die?” she asked.
Carneal is up for a hearing next month in what family members of the deceased, survivors and experts say is among the first instances that an assailant in a school shooting has a chance at being released. The proceeding will be held Sept. 19 and 20 over Zoom to determine whether Carneal, now 39, will be released in November.
“I knew this day was going to come,” said Christina Hadley Ellegood, the sister of Nicole Hadley and a leading advocate for victims and survivors of the shooting. “It’s always been something in the back of my mind.”
‘Michael did this?’
The Paducah area, which meets at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, is a farming community in western Kentucky that’s the halfway point between Nashville and St. Louis. That winter morning over two decades ago was cold and dreary. Inside the high school, students were anxiously returning to class.
The Hadley sisters had just put up Christmas decorations with their family. Jenkins Smith was excited to show off her new Adidas outfit. Hollan Holm was thinking about the Spanish quiz he had in first period. Brittney Thomas, a freshman, couldn’t wait to get back out on the basketball court for a game against a rival school.
A frail boy with curly hair and wire-rim glasses, Carneal was an unremarkable attention seeker in the school of fewer than 500 students, according to classmates. Jenkins Smith, who was in the marching band with Carneal, remembered him more as “a fun person to be around” who loved a good prank.
“I was never afraid of him,” Thomas said, recalling how Carneal once stole her purse and dumped it in the trash as a joke. “I never had a reason to be.”
But he also acknowledged in a 2009 interview with the BBC that he was experiencing “these strange feelings of alienation.” Before the holiday break, Carneal warned classmates that “something big is going to happen on Monday at prayer meeting.”
On Thanksgiving Day, as families sat down to turkey and stuffing, he broke into his neighbor’s garage and stole guns and ammunition.
“This was supposed to be the best times of our teenage lives,” Kelly Carneal Firesheets wrote in an essay in the 2019 book “If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings.” “But then, my little brother brought a gun into our school and sent the entire world to hell in a handbasket.”
More than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine
Before the start of school, a daily announcement echoed through the lobby at Heath High School: “Time to pray!” The informal morning tradition brought together teens to pray about whatever was on their mind that day, from a test they didn’t study for or a grandparent in failing health.
As the students held hands, one of them requested: Let’s pray for our safety.
“I thought that was so weird — ‘Why are we praying for that?’ ” Thomas recalled. “That had never been a prayer request before.”
A few feet away, Carneal put in his ear plugs and took the Ruger pistol out of his bag at around 7:45 a.m.
“I had heard in my head that I better do it because time was running out,” he said in the 2009 documentary “Going Postal.” “I kept hearing these different things in my head — ‘Now is the time, do it now.’ ”
When he started firing, the first three girls — Hadley, Steger and James — dropped to the floor. The chaotic firing that followed hit five students all over their bodies — chest, neck, shoulder, head. Holm played dead, while Thomas, who was not wounded, said she stared down the barrel of Carneal’s gun before a friend grabbed her and they belly-crawled to safety.
“I was like, ‘Who’s got the gun?’ ” Jenkins Smith recalled asking her twin sister in the moment. “And she said, ‘Michael Carneal.’ And I was instantly thinking, ‘Michael did this?’ ”
Principal Bill Bond slowly approached Carneal after he had fired 10 shots from the clip. The teen placed the gun on the ground, and Bond kicked it away before taking the gunman to his office. After the shooting, Bond recounted to investigators that Carneal had told him that, “It was kind of like I was in a dream, and then I woke up.”
Sitting in her French class, Hadley Ellegood grew worried about her sister. Her classmates urged to see whether Nicole was all right. When the 15-year-old walked out of her classroom, she saw a body on the floor and thought, “I don’t think that person is alive.”
She walked farther toward the lobby and found her sister.
“I just walked right up to where she was at and saw her laying there on the floor,” Hadley Ellegood said. “I remember thinking, ‘I feel like I should be crying right now.’ But I wasn’t crying. I was in so much shock that my body didn’t know how to process or how to handle what I was seeing that I just kind of stood there.”
Steger was pronounced dead at a hospital about 45 minutes after the shooting, and James died during surgery that afternoon. Hadley was pronounced dead when she was taken off life support at about 10 that night.
The school shooting made national headlines for weeks and was denounced by President Bill Clinton. Yet, even while the community was reeling, an unlikely message also hung from a banner at the school the very next day: “We forgive you, Mike.”
‘He ripped the veil’
“When Carneal did what he did, he ripped the veil off that feeling of security in school,” said Assistant McCracken County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jamie Mills, “and, obviously, we have not been able to get that back.”
Hadley Ellegood, who said she has attended every court hearing in which Carneal was present, has been planning for the shooter’s parole board hearing for the last two years, working with the McCracken County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office to make sure victims and family members of the deceased get a chance to speak.
“I felt like everyone else in this community, and everyone else who was affected, has the right for their voice to be heard,” she said.
Officials with Kentucky State Reformatory, where Carneal is being held, did not respond to multiple requests to interview Carneal for this article. It’s unclear whether Carneal will be represented by an attorney or a family member, or whether he will represent himself. John Carneal, his father and a former attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.
Dan Boaz, the commonwealth’s attorney for McCracken County, said his goal is to make sure Carneal remains “incarcerated for as long as he lives.” Although it’s unclear how the Kentucky Parole Board — a mix of appointees from former Republican governor Matt Bevin and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear — will act, the bar for giving a school shooter parole is much harder, given the regularity of shootings in America.
“We have seen a bit of momentum in America in acknowledging that young people tried with crimes should be given another opportunity, but a school shooting case is going to be the hardest one for a parole board,” said Rachel Barkow, a professor of law at New York University and an expert on parole. “It’s not supposed to be based on the crime itself, but, realistically speaking, it’s very hard for any parole board not to take into account the nature of the initial crime.”
Many school shooters will never get the chance of parole. They are often killed during the attacks or sentenced to life without the possibility of getting out. Nikolas Cruz, the convicted shooter in the 2018 Parkland massacre, currently faces either the death penalty or life in prison after pleading guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. But according to the nonprofit Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, at least 25 states and the District of Columbia mandate that young convicts receive a chance at release.
In Paducah, there is near-consensus that Carneal should not be released. But Holm, who was grazed in the head from one of the bullets, doesn’t think that keeping him in prison is a great solution, either. Holm said he would prefer that Carneal be transferred to a halfway house or a facility that can better address his mental health needs.
“Your brains are not even fully developed at age 14 to be able to appreciate the consequences of your actions,” said Holm, a Louisville attorney. “I don’t think prison is the best place for him to try to put his life back together.”
Others, like Thomas, worry that even if Carneal doesn’t get released this time, there is a chance the parole board could revisit his case in a couple of years.
“It’s going to be difficult either way,” said Thomas, 39, who works in health care in Lexington, Ky. “For us, it just never ends.”
Forgiving a gunman
Outside the building that used to be Heath High School, a stone memorial surrounded by trees honors the three girls who “saw the face of God on December 1, 1997.”
Sitting on a memorial bench near what is now Heath Middle School, Hadley Ellegood, 40, who still lives in Paducah and works in real estate, takes solace in knowing that her sister and the other victims are remembered in a place so calming and peaceful.
“This feels like a safe place,” she said.
At her home in rural Kirksey, Ky., Jenkins Smith, who wants Carneal to remain in prison, says that she has found peace regardless of what happens. She met Carneal at the prison years ago and decided to forgive him. She said she did it not to let him off the hook or exonerate him. Rather, she did it so that Carneal, the man she only calls “the shooter,” won’t dictate her life anymore than he already has.
“I didn’t want to face this sentence he gave me for the rest of my life,” she said. “But I don’t have control about whether he gets out.
“It’s 25 years later, and it feels like I still don’t have control.” | 2022-08-28T11:27:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michael Carneal, the Paducah, Ky., high school shooter in 1997, could get parole 25 years later - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/28/school-shooting-paducah-kentucky-michael-carneal-parole/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/28/school-shooting-paducah-kentucky-michael-carneal-parole/ |
The Targaryens struggle with a ‘crown prince problem,’ like all authoritarians
In House of the Dragon — as in the Game of Thrones — leadership succession is a bloody problem
Analysis by Andrej Kokkonen
Anne Meng
Jørgen Møller
Anders Sundell
Emma D'Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen from "House of the Dragon." (Ollie Upton/HBO/AP)
Game of Thrones is back — at least in the form of a prequel, House of the Dragon. And there’s enough passion out there for that universe, despite a loathed final season, that last Sunday’s premiere crashed the HBO platform for some viewers. As with its predecessor, the plot focuses on who will take the Iron Throne — or as we put it in political science, the challenge of leadership succession. (Note: Spoilers ahead)
The pilot opened with two succession crises in a row. Ailing Westeros King Jaeherys, of the dragon-owning Targaryen family, lacks a son and therefore an obvious heir to the throne. When Jaeherys calls the Great Council to decide between candidates, it chooses his grandson Viserys Targaryen. The episode immediately shifts to years later, when King Viserys Targaryen is also having trouble producing a living male heir.
When King Targaryen dies, who will sit in the Iron Throne? How will power be transferred from one ruler to another?
The crown prince problem
All dictatorships face the fundamental and existential challenge of leadership succession, including the imaginary regimes of Westeros. The ruler knows it’s important to name a successor to prevent the chaos that could grow from members of the royal court jockeying for power, in anticipation of the eventual transition. But the heir can also be a power player himself — and a threat to the ruler. Worse, an heir has a direct interest in the ruler’s demise and might be tempted to hasten the succession. To political scientists, this is the classic “crown prince problem.”
The members of the elite — the powerful individuals just below the ruler — also have conflicting interests. On one hand, they might contest the succession, in order to put in their own claim or support a preferred candidate. On the other hand, they also prefer clarity and unambiguity about the succession in order to prevent the outbreak of a potentially disastrous conflict — like a civil war.
How should succession be arranged?
The House of the Dragon’s opening episode showcased four succession models: election, primogeniture, brother inheritance and by appointment. All these modes of succession have historical precedent; some are still used in modern-day dictatorships.
Dragon power is awesome. But it can’t tell you how to rule.
Our own research has explored the consequences of different ways of arranging the succession, in both historical and modern times. Each type of succession carries its own benefits and risks.
The episode opens with this first type of succession arrangement, when ailing King Jaeherys asks the Great Council to vote for his successor. The council chooses Prince Viserys Targaryen, the king’s grandson, over Princess Rhaenys Velaryon, his older granddaughter.
Elections have an important advantage in that the elites who will have to abide by the arrangement get to select qualified candidates, although from a limited pool. King elections have historically meant a choice between different members of the royal family. The downside, however, is ambiguity, as no one can be sure prior to the election who will become ruler. The new ruler may also end up compromised upon taking the throne, as they must bribe the nobility to secure the election.
Primogeniture
The core of the episode focuses on King Viserys Targaryen’s plight: to have a son who can inherit the throne.
Primogeniture, in which the oldest son inherits the throne, became the dominant principle of succession among European monarchies. Primogeniture was often favored as an orderly, predictable and almost mechanical procedure: There’s no competition over succession, as the eldest son is guaranteed to be the heir, at least if he survives. Presumably, a son would be content waiting for his turn on the throne, since he could still look forward to a long reign after his father dies.
But primogeniture includes a few risks. First is the terrifying possibility of producing a brutal or utterly incompetent heir — like Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones. Second, the principle hinges on the king producing living sons. When that fails, crisis is all but inevitable — as illustrated over and over again in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.
On ‘Game of Thrones,’ Daenerys Targaryen faces a sexist double bind — like so many female leaders
Brother inheritance
When King Targaryen’s newborn son dies within hours, the succession arrangement defaults to the king’s brother, Prince Daemon.
Brother inheritance — long practiced in modern-day Saudi Arabia, and historically in the Ottoman Empire — should also be predictable and orderly, at least in theory. In practice, however, it has often led to conflicts between brothers, and between uncles and nephews. Since brothers tend to be of similar age, they might not be content to wait for the ruler to die, the way a son would.
To make matters more dangerous, in this particular instance, Prince Daemon also has control over coercive power as the commander of the City Watch. Elites who control arms are particularly good at unseating rulers, the research shows, and authoritarian leaders generally fear their own military appointees.
Hand-picking a successor: The crown prince(ss)
The episode closes with a twist. Unsatisfied with all the existing succession arrangements, King Viserys banishes his brother, Prince Daemon, from King’s Landing and names his daughter and sole living child Princess Rhaenyra as his successor.
Hand-picking a successor — a method used most frequently in modern-day autocracies — avoids many thorny issues. The ruler can select a competent but unthreatening candidate who is unlikely to be able to overthrow him. Princess Raenyra would be the first woman to assume the Iron Throne, which means she lacks the independent power base (so far!) to depose him prematurely. A danger of this strategy is that the ruler can also deselect the successor — and thus give the appointee an incentive to preemptively stage a coup or otherwise hasten the ruler’s demise.
Succession to the highest political leadership will always be fraught with difficulty. In fact, the way nations approach leadership succession largely defines their political system. Modern representative democracies have regular elections to encourage rotation in office; political science generally considers this a superior method for dealing with the succession problem. Perhaps Westeros should democratize, as Sam Tarly seemed to suggest in the much-maligned final episode of Game of Thrones. Of course, as we have seen in recent several years, no democracy is safe from threats against peaceful succession.
When power is on the line, the stakes will always be incredibly high — with or without dragons.
Andrej Kokkonen (@AndrejKokkonen) is an associate professor in political science at the University of Gothenburg and the author (with Jørgen Møller and Anders Sundell) of “The Politics of Succession: Forging Stable Monarchies in Europe, AD 1000-1800” (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Anne Meng (@annemeng_) is an associate professor in political science at the University of Virginia and the author of “Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes” (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Jørgen Møller is a professor of political science at Aarhus University and author (with Andrej Kokkonen and Anders Sundell) of “The Politics of Succession: Forging Stable Monarchies in Europe, AD 1000-1800” and (with Jonathan Doucette) “The Catholic Church and European State Formation, AD 1000-1500” (both published by Oxford University Press, 2022).
Anders Sundell (@sundellviz) is an associate professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg and author of “The Politics of Succession” (Oxford University Press 2022). | 2022-08-28T11:27:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Perhaps Westeros should democratize. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/28/house-of-the-dragon-westeros/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/28/house-of-the-dragon-westeros/ |
By Andrea Rosa and Frances D'Emilio | AP
L’AQUILA, Italy — Making a pilgrimage in an Italian mountain town, Pope Francis on Sunday hailed the humility of a 13th-century pontiff who resigned to live a hermit’s life, and praised him for using his brief papacy to highlight the value of mercy and forgiveness. | 2022-08-28T11:27:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Francis praises humility of 13-century pontiff who resigned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/francis-praises-humility-of-13-century-pontiff-who-resigned/2022/08/28/801ba386-26bb-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/francis-praises-humility-of-13-century-pontiff-who-resigned/2022/08/28/801ba386-26bb-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Distinguished person of the week: A judge finds women’s lives and health matter
Attorneys Monte Stewart, left, and Daniel Bower, center, who are representing the Idaho legislature, leave the courthouse in Boise, Idaho, after oral arguments on Aug. 22 in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against Idaho over the state's near-total ban on abortion. (Rebecca Boone/AP)
Among the most egregious aspects of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the majority’s refusal to consider the real-life impact of overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to recriminalize abortion. Women’s lives, health, dignity, financial future and responsibilities to existing children counted for nothing. Last week, a federal judge in Idaho took a different approach and defended women’s right to critical medical care. It was about time.
At issue was the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as EMTALA, which mandates that hospitals receiving Medicare funds must provide care when a patient’s life or health is at risk. In Idaho, District Judge B. Lynn Winmill reintroduced some facts into a conversation that has been dominated by right-wing officials with little regard or, sometimes, understanding of the implications of their wretched laws. He wrote:
Pregnant women in Idaho routinely arrive at emergency rooms experiencing severe complications. The patient might be spiking a fever, experiencing uterine cramping and chills, contractions, shortness of breath, or significant vaginal bleeding. The ER physician may diagnose her with, among other possibilities, traumatic placental abruption, preeclampsia, or a preterm premature rupture of the membranes. In those situations, the physician may be called upon to make complex, difficult decisions in a fast-moving, chaotic environment. She may conclude that the only way to prevent serious harm to the patient or save her life is to terminate the pregnancy — a devastating result for the doctor and the patient.
So the job is difficult enough as it is. ...
But when the stabilizing treatment is an abortion, offering that care is a crime under Idaho Code § 18-622 — which bans all abortions. If the physician provides the abortion, she faces indictment, arrest, pretrial detention, loss of her medical license, a trial on felony charges, and at least two years in prison. Yet if the physician does not perform the abortion, the pregnant patient faces grave risks to her health — such as severe sepsis requiring limb amputation, uncontrollable uterine hemorrhage requiring hysterectomy, kidney failure requiring lifelong dialysis, hypoxic brain injury, or even death. And this woman, if she lives, potentially may have to live the remainder of her life with significant disabilities and chronic medical conditions as a result of her pregnancy complication. All because Idaho law prohibited the physician from performing the abortion.
Litigants, advocates and lawmakers who pushed for abortion bans understood full well that they would create horrible situations and legal chaos. Their persistence reflects how little advocates of forced birth care about women’s lives and health. One has to wonder what kind of legislature would dream up such a perverse system that endangers women even when the fetus is no longer viable. Notably, while the “cruel and unusual punishment” provision of the Eighth Amendment applies to the punishment meted out to convicted criminals, this is worse: The scenarios permitted under the abortion ban effectively demand a woman’s permanent injury as the price of avoiding criminal prosecution of her doctor.
As Winmill recognized, there are emergency medical conditions that might call for an abortion. Under EMTALA, physicians are required to provide such care if they “reasonably expect the patient’s condition will result in serious impairment to bodily functions, serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part, or serious jeopardy to the patient’s health.” But, he noted, Idaho’s abortion ban “admits to no such exception.” In some circumstances, a doctor cannot abide by both laws.
The judge also suggested the state law is unconstitutionally vague (though did not explicitly raise a due process claim), asking “when, precisely, does the ‘necessary-to-prevent-death’ language apply?” He pointed out: “Healthcare providers can seldom know the imminency of death because medicine rarely works in absolutes.” The doctor in many cases will find it hard to fathom whether death is imminent enough to allow abortion under the law.
By effectively forcing doctors to choose between stepping in to save a woman in conditions that might be permissible under the state statute or protecting themselves from prosecution, doctors might err on the side of caution. Which means that female patients might die or face serious impairment even if their doctor might have eventually prevailed if prosecuted.
This perverse situation flies in the face of the federal obligation to treat emergency patients. “Delayed care is worse care,” Winmill wrote. “Rather than providing the stabilizing treatment that EMTALA calls for, Idaho subjects women in medical crisis to periods of ‘serious physical and emotional trauma’ as they wait to get nearer and nearer to death.” The federal law aimed to prevent this. Moreover, the situation created by Idaho’s ban violates the medical and moral precepts doctors are trained to follow.
Winmill also observes that Idaho’s law “will likely make it more difficult to recruit OB/GYNs, who are on the front lines of providing abortion care in emergency situations. Because Idaho does not have in-state training for the specialty, all OB/GYNs must be recruited to come here.” Who would want to work under such conditions? All Idaho women, then, stand to suffer from a lack of care.
By looking at potential risks to patients’ lives and health, as well as physicians’ practices and obligations, a single federal judge displayed far more insight, care, legal acumen and humanity than the six right-wing Supreme Court justices who essentially told women: You’re on your own.
For taking his judicial obligations seriously, examining the consequences of a barbaric law and simply taking the time to consider what happens to women when their right to health care is denied, Winmill put the Dobbs majority to shame. For that we can say, well done, Judge Winmill. | 2022-08-28T12:05:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Distinguished person of the week: An Idaho judge says women's lives matter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/federal-judge-pushback-idaho-abortion-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/federal-judge-pushback-idaho-abortion-ban/ |
U.S. warships pass through Taiwan Strait in first since Nancy Pelosi visit
Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG 54) is underway, in this file photo, off the coast of Japan near Mt. Fuji. Antietam patrols in the 7th Fleet supporting security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, Nov. 22, 2014. (David Flewellyn/AP)
The United States sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, in an apparent first since the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei earlier this month sparked tensions.
While the U.S. Navy said the guided-missile cruisers were conducting a “routine” transit and passing through international waters, China’s military said it was tracking the warships and its troops would “stay on high alert, ready to “thwart any provocation.”
Taiwan’s defense ministry, monitoring the situation, said eight Chinese military vessels and 23 aircraft were detected in the region Sunday.
The USS Chancellorsville and USS Antietam, part of the U.S. 7th fleet, “transited through a corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal State,” the U.S. Navy said in a statement.
“The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows.”
Taiwan, which is separated by the roughly 100-mile strait from China, is home to 23 million people. Beijing regards the democratically-governed island as its territory.
China’s military criticized the United States for having “hyped” the operation “publicly.” Shi Yi, a senior colonel and spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command, said in a statement that China’s military was conducting “security tracking and monitoring of the U.S. warships’ passage in the whole course and had all movements of the two US warships under control.”
The United States and other nations have periodically sailed through the strait in the past drawing stern replies from China, though such passages did not take place as China conducted military exercises in the waterway after Pelosi (D-Calif) visited.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Pelosi said her visit was meant to honor pledges to “stand by Taiwan,” calling it “an island of resilience.” The United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and has long maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity over the extent of its assistance — making it deliberately unclear what it would do if it comes to militarily defending Taiwan.
Days ahead of Pelosi’s Taiwan trip, Chinese leader Xi Jinping requested President Biden halt the visit, according to White House officials. But Biden told Xi he could not, despite defense and other U.S. officials’ concerns about the repercussions of the trip.
Since Pelosi’s visit to Taipei, other U.S. lawmakers have followed suit, including Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). She called Taiwan a “free and independent nation,” as she met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, earlier this week.
In a further show of support, the United States and Taiwan also announced this month they would begin formal trade negotiations together in the fall. | 2022-08-28T12:10:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. warships pass through Taiwan Strait; China says troops on 'high alert' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/china-us-navy-taiwan-strait-pelosi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/china-us-navy-taiwan-strait-pelosi/ |
In fast-warming Nevada, climate bill may not lift Democrats
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) has campaigned on the biggest climate bill in U.S. history. But her pitch may not resonate with voters who are more worried about the rising cost of living.
Sen. Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) speaks to supporters at a campaign event at a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas on Aug. 12. (John Locher/AP)
LAS VEGAS — About a week after President Biden signed into law the largest climate bill in U.S. history, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) laid out to voters here how she helped get $4 billion in the bill to combat the acute drought now punishing the American West. Outside the air-conditioned offices of the Las Vegas Valley Water District offices where she spoke, the temperature stood at 93 degrees — on its way to an oppressive 106 later that day.
“As you all know, the western U.S. continues to face a historic drought, and we need to do all we can to combat it,” Cortez Masto said Monday, standing before a photo showing the nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, at record lows. “That’s why I have been championing measures to help Southern Nevada further conserve, recycle and reduce water use.”
Cortez Masto — one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection this year — has spent recent weeks courting Nevada voters who want leaders in Washington to prioritize the climate crisis. Yet climate change has rarely decided the outcome in congressional races, even in Las Vegas, the nation’s second-fastest warming city in a region experiencing the most extreme drought in 1,200 years.
Voters across the country have consistently ranked the economy and health care as a higher priority than global warming. And if Democrats cannot successfully sell their environmental agenda in Nevada, which has seen a cascade of climate disasters this summer, it’s unclear whether climate concerns will ever become paramount in key national races.
In interviews with more than a dozen voters in the working-class neighborhoods that encircle Las Vegas, most said they were focused on providing for their families amid soaring housing costs and gasoline prices. Few of them brought up climate change or were aware the Inflation Reduction Act provided drought relief.
“I’ve been not buying a lot of things because I can’t afford it,” office worker Melissa Salinas said in an interview outside La Bonita, a Hispanic supermarket in northwest Las Vegas where a gallon of milk costs $4.99, above the national average. “I’m like, ‘The kids don’t need juice for school anymore. We’ll just do water.'”
While Salinas was not familiar with the climate bill, she’s worried enough about the drought that she and her family are considering relocating: “We’ve looked into moving from here because it was just like, ‘Where’s the water going to come from?’”
The signs of climate change are everywhere in Nevada this year. Las Vegas reached a record daily high of 109 degrees on June 10 — so hot that sensors in space picked up the heat. And on the same day that Biden signed the climate bill into law, federal officials informed Nevada policymakers that they must cut the state’s water use from the dwindling Colorado River by 8 percent, while National Park Service rangers discovered a fifth set of human remains in the receding waters of Lake Mead.
Cortez Masto’s GOP challenger, former Nevada attorney general Adam Laxalt, has said little about the Western drought and supports oil and gas drilling, which is helping drive up global temperatures. He has criticized the Inflation Reduction Act, which no Republicans supported, as “reckless” spending that will “fuel inflation.”
The climate package authorizes the biggest infusion of federal spending yet to tackle global warming — roughly $369 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below their 2005 levels by the end of this decade. Democrats have said the measure will reduce Americans’ energy costs by providing tax credits for consumers to buy electric vehicles, install solar panels and embrace other climate-friendly technologies.
The bill also sets aside $4 billion for drought mitigation, which will help conserve water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell and pay farmers who voluntarily reduce their water deliveries. Cortez Masto fought to include the drought funding along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and two other Democratic senators facing tight reelection races: Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Michael F. Bennet (Colo.).
The Colorado River is in crisis. And it's getting worse.
Kelly, a former astronaut who has seen the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest from space, said in an interview that the drought money “has little or nothing to do with the election” and “everything to do with” preventing an environmental catastrophe.
“We can’t allow the Colorado River to get down to dead pool,” Kelly said, referring to when key reservoirs drop so low they would not be able to produce hydropower.
Seven Western states in the Colorado River basin last week blew past a deadline to reach an agreement on making unprecedented cuts to their water use. The Bureau of Reclamation responded by announcing Arizona must reduce its water supply by 21 percent, Nevada by 8 percent and the country of Mexico by 7 percent. Larger cuts loom in the future.
Laxalt sent a statement on the drought to 8 News Now, a local news outlet, after initially declining to comment on the issue. He endorsed “long-term solutions that take an all-of-the-above approach, including desalination in California and Arizona.”
Big Oil and wildfires
Cortez Masto’s first campaign ad of the general election accuses Laxalt of being bankrolled by large oil and gas companies, yet another way to keep the impact of climate change at the forefront of her campaign.
“Where you find Big Oil, you’ll find Adam Laxalt,” a narrator says in the ad, as the phrases “Big Oil” and “Adam Laxalt” interlock on a crossword puzzle. “He’s been on their side for years.”
As Nevada’s attorney general from 2015 to 2019, Laxalt opposed efforts by Democratic attorneys general to investigate whether oil companies misled the public about climate change. During his unsuccessful bid for governor in 2018, a super PAC largely funded by oil interests spent $2.5 million to support his run.
In a recording obtained by The Washington Post, Laxalt told a crowd of supporters that they need to push back on anyone highlighting his ties to Big Oil companies or claiming that those companies are responsible for high gasoline prices. (As of Friday, a gallon of gas cost an average of $4.89 in Nevada and $3.87 nationally, according to AAA.)
“You can’t survive an economy where you go to $2 gas to $5.50, $6 gas,” Laxalt said in the recording of the Southern Hills Republican Women luncheon in late July. “And who is responsible for it? We all know it is not [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. And it is not greedy oil executives. And it is certainly not the private citizen.”
A spokesman for Laxalt’s campaign, Brian Freimuth, blamed high gas prices on Democrats. “Biden Masto policies are the reason that energy prices have skyrocketed and Nevada voters are demanding change,” Freimuth said in an email.
In recent weeks, Cortez Masto’s campaign has also run two ads touting her efforts to include funding for wildfire management and prevention in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law.
“Catherine has been a vital partner to the fire service, and we know that we have her full support,” Reno Fire Chief Dave Cochran says in one of the ads, which shows firefighters battling a wall of orange flames during last year’s destructive fire season.
Laxalt has attributed recent blazes to poor forest management rather than global warming, though a growing body of research shows climate change has increased wildfires’ frequency and intensity.
“Adam believes that proper forest management is essential to preventing the spread of dangerous wildfires and has emphasized his intention to fully support the brave officials working to protect Nevada lands,” Freimuth said.
Courting key constituencies
Some Democratic strategists remain optimistic that the drought money will help boost turnout for Cortez Masto — especially among the working-class and Latino voters who have formed the core of the Democratic machine built by the late Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.).
“I think it will resonate with Nevadans who are sick of seeing inaction on things like climate change and drought,” said Megan Jones, a Nevada operative working with the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC.
Cortez Masto, the only Latina ever elected to the Senate, has sought to bolster her standing with Hispanic voters, a demographic that Biden won by 26 percentage points in the state in 2020. Her campaign started running Spanish-language ads in March and recently hosted a boisterous party at a community center with tables for Latin American countries and Mexican states.
Laxalt’s campaign has unveiled its own strategy — dubbed “Latinos for Laxalt” — aimed at countering this approach.
In theory, Cortez Masto’s climate pitch should resonate with Latinos, who are more vulnerable to climate impacts than many Americans. Nationwide, Latinos are 43 percent more likely than others to lose work hours and pay because of extreme heat, according to a report released last year by the Environmental Protection Agency. In Florida, Latino immigrants from Central and South America have collapsed from heatstroke while working at plant nurseries on especially hot days.
Yet Obed Castaneda, a part-time graphic designer and Uber driver, said he probably won’t vote in the midterms because he doubts it would make a difference. He, too, had not heard of the $4 billion for drought mitigation in the climate bill.
Castaneda said many voters in Las Vegas are too busy working, whether at the bustling casinos on the Strip or other businesses around town, to pay attention to politics. He joked that the billboards on the Strip — whose neon letters advertise the newest concerts, comedy shows and gentleman’s clubs — should instead spread awareness about the drought funding to residents.
“I want to see a freakin’ billboard down the freakin’ Strip,” he said. “You got that much money? Let’s see it.”
Young voters, who consistently rank climate change as a higher priority, account for 29.5 percent of registered Nevada voters and could play a key role in the race.
But Cortez Masto may not get much help from youth climate activists. The Las Vegas chapter of the Sunrise Movement, a key advocacy group, has declined to endorse her because she does not support the Green New Deal, the liberal proposal to eliminate the nation’s fossil fuel use within a decade.
Still, Dexter Lim, a 19-year-old co-founder of the chapter, said he prefers Cortez Masto to Laxalt, given her stronger support for renewable energy.
“Of course we have to support her in this race because the alternative is much, much worse,” Lim said. | 2022-08-28T12:58:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In fast-warming Nevada, climate bill may not lift Democratic senator - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/28/nevada-climate-bill-cortez-masto/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/28/nevada-climate-bill-cortez-masto/ |
New York Is Beating Texas in Carbon-Free Electricity, But Maybe Not for Long
It’s been hot this summer in much of the US, with the intensity of the heat waves likely due in part to rising concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In response, the 88% of us with air conditioning have been cranking it up. To meet the resulting increase in electricity demand, power generators have been burning more natural gas, coal and other things, thus emitting lots of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The key to getting out of this doom loop is moving to a system of electricity generation that isn’t so dependent on burning stuff. So how are we doing on that?
Overall, 38% of the electricity generated in the US last year at utility, industrial or commercial scale (i.e., not including residential solar panels) was produced by means that didn’t directly produce carbon-dioxide emissions, up from 30% 10 years earlier. This excludes electricity produced from wood and other biomass, because while some characterize the overall process of growing and burning it as carbon-neutral the evidence doesn’t seem to support that, for wood at least.
Thanks to a big shift from high-emissions coal to moderate-emissions natural gas in electricity generation, the sector’s CO2 emissions declined even more than the above statistics would indicate, falling 29% since 2011, 36% since hitting an all-time high in 2007. But with coal down to 22% of US electricity generation in 2021, future CO2 reductions will increasingly have to come from supplanting gas-fired power plants with emission-free sources — not to mention that the methane in natural gas is, when it leaks from wells or pipes or storage facilities, a potent if relatively short-lived greenhouse gas.
Some states are big net power importers, with Massachusetts and Delaware getting the majority of their electricity from other states in 2019, and others net exporters, so this map does not consistently reflect the sources of electricity consumed in each state. Still, it’s in the ballpark for most, and the mismatch is probably less significant when comparing the change over time in the electricity generation mix. Since 2011, 37 states have seen the non-carbon-emitting share of electricity generation go up, with some in the middle of the country making huge gains. But the energy transition has been going in reverse in a few states, most along the West Coast and in the Northeast.
The backsliding in the Pacific Northwest may be something of a fluke, in that Idaho, Oregon and Washington get most of their electricity from hydroelectric dams and 2011 was a very wet year, resulting in very high hydropower generation, while 2021 was a bit below average. Less hydropower was an issue in California too, but perhaps not so fluky given that 2021 hydropower generation was less than half the 1990-2011 average and only two years in the past decade have been above that average. Persistent drought and shrinking snowpacks have set the state’s energy transition back, as did the 2013 closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant.
Still, California is clearly making that transition, with utility-scale solar and wind accounting for more than a quarter of the state’s electricity generation in 2021 and big banks of batteries now beginning to ease the evening shift from ample solar power to none, which will enable solar’s share to keep rising. The same cannot be said of the Northeast, where nuclear plant closures in Massachusetts and New York and a natural gas boom in Pennsylvania have left the region more dependent on fossil fuels for electricity generation than it was a decade ago, and wind and solar have so far made only modest inroads.
In a big report issued in May on “The Future of Energy Storage,” researchers with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative estimated that without restrictions on carbon-dioxide emissions, the Northeast (which they defined as New England plus New York) will have even higher per-kilowatt emissions from electricity generation in 2050 than it does now. This was a huge contrast with the other two US power markets studied in the report, with Southeast projected to see a 59% decline in CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour by 2050 and Texas 78% — again, in the absence of any policies to restrict or otherwise discourage those emissions.
This no-intervention scenario will not come to pass, given that most Northeastern states already have ambitious emissions-reduction targets and the climate bill (aka Inflation Reduction Act) signed into law by President Joe Biden this month will give a further big impetus to non-carbon energy. But the modeling results are an indication that the Northeast faces unique challenges in decarbonizing, mainly because, as MIT economist Richard Schmalensee explained in a podcast interview that succinctly sums up the report:
• Its climate isn’t great for solar,
• Its population density makes it hard to add onshore wind generation, and
• Nuclear plants find it hard to compete in its power markets.
The Southeast, by contrast, has ample sun, a less tightly packed population and vertically integrated utilities that can, if desired, keep nuclear plants running (and even build expensive new ones). Texas is, well, Texas, with vast open spaces perfectly suited for solar and wind power generation.
Given that the Southeastern states and Texas probably won’t legislate their way to emission-free electricity anytime soon, this is fortuitous. As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Liam Denning and energy expert Jeff Davies showed recently with an accounting of renewable energy potential by congressional district, places that tend to elect Republicans also tend to be great for wind and/or solar power generation and battery storage. And as I discovered last month, many red states also have a high share of all-electric households, which would ease the anticipated transition away from natural gas as a heating and cooking fuel. Much of Red America appears destined to go carbon-free or at least carbon-light whether it wants to or not.
Blue America, at least its Northeastern chapter, is already relatively carbon-light. The region has mostly stopped burning coal to generate electricity, it’s got a lot of its own hydroelectric power and access to more nearby in Canada, and its residents are more likely than those in other regions to live in apartments, ride public transportation and work in non-energy-intensive sectors. Seven of the 10 states with the lowest per-capita energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions in 2019 (the most recent year for which the US Energy Information Administration has estimates) were in the Northeast.
Now, however, comes the hard part. After decades of flat to falling demand, the Northeast will need much more electricity to power electric cars and replace oil and gas furnaces with heat pumps. Providing it will be a challenge under any scenario, and it could be especially difficult if the region tries to do so without some continuing role for natural gas — which is currently the plan in New York, where the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act calls for 100% emission-free electricity by 2040. According to the MIT study, Northeastern electricity prices would be almost twice as high in 2050 under a zero-emissions scenario as under one that limits emissions to 5 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity (to put that in context, US electric power industry CO2 emissions were about 386 grams per kilowatt-hour in 2020). Prices would also be much higher in the Northeast under the zero-emissions scenario than in the other regions studied.
Yes, these are just the results of an economic modeling exercise, relying on a bunch of assumptions that may not pan out. Still, it’s pretty weird to contemplate that over the next few decades it may prove easier to be a climate hawk in Georgia or Texas than in Massachusetts or New York.
Energy-Rich Texas Should Love the Climate Bill: Liam Denning
Climate Bill Alone Won’t Halve Emissions by 2030: Eduardo Porter
US Green Energy Is Surprisingly Republican: Denning and Davies | 2022-08-28T14:29:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York Is Beating Texas in Carbon-Free Electricity, But Maybe Not for Long - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/new-york-is-beating-texas-in-carbon-free-electricity-but-maybe-not-for-long/2022/08/28/2722e570-26d2-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/new-york-is-beating-texas-in-carbon-free-electricity-but-maybe-not-for-long/2022/08/28/2722e570-26d2-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
The Future of the American West Is in Central Oregon
Analysis by Francis Wilkinson | Bloomberg
BEND, OR - AUGUST 9: Paulina Falls, though slowed somewhat from a drought, flows out of Paulina Lake and through the Deschutes National Forest, is viewed on August 9, 2021, south of Bend, Oregon. Newberry National Volcanic National Monument includes 54,000+ acres of lakes, lava flows, and spectacular geologic features, the highest point being Paulina Peak (7,985 ft.), showcasing views of the Cascades, Newberry Caldera and across the High Desert. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images) (Photographer: George Rose/Getty Images North America)
Central Oregon is not the Pacific Northwest. The landscape bears little resemblance to the green and piney coast; there are no rainforests. The region looks more like dusty Nevada. In Portland, on the west side of the Cascade range, it rains three feet per year. On the east side, in Bend, annual rainfall is about one foot, slightly less than the historical average for Los Angeles. This year, like last, water is particularly scarce. Almost two-thirds of the state is in drought.
Central Oregon is part of the American West, what John Wesley Powell called the “arid region” of the US. Historically parched, warped by the occasional deluge, the West is experiencing a drought that may be the worst in 1,200 years. On the August days when I visited irrigation districts near Bend, the fast-growing seat of Deschutes County, the temperature peaked at about 100 degrees. The air had a monotonous consistency, as though any capacity for variation had been sucked dry along with the last vestige of moisture.
In his classic 1986 book on the West, “Cadillac Desert,” Marc Reisner writes that without “a century and a half of messianic effort” to manipulate the flow of water, “the West as we know it would not exist.” Public investment in the region has been largely devoted to managing water, with the goal of manufacturing more habitable land with the potential for crops and livestock. Some of those public projects are astonishingly large; the Hoover Dam uses enough concrete to run a two-lane road, 8 inches thick, from New York to San Francisco. Others are quite modest. But they can mean the difference between local farmers thriving or failing.
Marc Thalacker, manager of the Three Sisters Irrigation District near Bend, has spent much of the past two decades re-engineering a creek. The degree of difficulty involved in altering Whychus Creek, a tributary of the Deschutes River and a source of water for the 200 farms in his district, is a reflection of the visceral stakes, and political complexity, of water in the West. To see his project through, Thalacker needed the skills of an engineer, fundraiser, politician and lobbyist.
Thalacker was raised in suburban New York and later worked in Southern California for a clothing company. After growing disenchanted with California, in 1988 Thalacker and his wife bought a 400-acre ranch, with 200 irrigated acres, and moved to Central Oregon near the small farm then owned by his in-laws.
“I spent the first 10 years killing myself, learning,” Thalacker said. “We raised 200 acres of hay. We had an Arctic freeze the first year, no water for 30 days. I learned how to be a plumber, a welder, an electrician. I built a couple houses.” In 1997, Thalacker took over as manager of Three Sisters, his local water district. There was not great competition for the job.
Irrigation districts are quasi-governmental corporations, subject to state oversight, that deliver water to private “patrons.” The districts can issue bonds to help finance reservoirs and other improvements. Irrigated acreage nationwide has grown from less than 3 million acres in 1890 to more than 58 million acres in 2017. Almost two-thirds of the agriculture in Oregon receives water through an irrigation district. Three Sisters, which has an elected three-person board of directors, provides irrigation water to 7,500 acres of ranches and farms in the Deschutes basin.
Thalacker flings acronyms for government programs and agencies like a veteran Washington bureaucrat, crediting “ARRA” (the 2009 stimulus law, officially called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) for providing a crucial infrastructure boost to his district. He talks of projected changes to the House Committee on Appropriations after this fall’s elections like a baseball fan weighing the merits of a star pitcher’s pending trade. He cites 28 different official “partners and funders” on the Three Sisters irrigation project, from government agencies to environmental groups and private foundations.
Thalacker also speaks rapturously of the properties of high-density polyethylene piping, miles of which he has buried across his district to carry water from the creek to farms. “High density polyethylene is amazing stuff,” he said. “It’s got a hundred- to a thousand-year shelf-life. And you can bend it through S turns.”
In and around the little town of Sisters, Oregon, where Thalacker’s water district has its small headquarters, you can see the results. Thalacker is nearing the promised land, having completed 62 fluid miles of a 65-mile engineering marathon. “Here we are in this horrible drought,” he said, “where we’ve got [neighboring] Arnold Irrigation District already shut down, and we’re delivering 70% of our water right now and it’s almost mid-August. It’s just unprecedented.”
What Thalacker is saying, more or less, is that he has conjured water from a stone. Except in the case of the Three Sisters Irrigation District, it is water from 54-inch high-density polyethylene pipes purchased from a factory in Arizona.
The West has high elevations. Water flows downhill. If you marry those two elementary facts, and run them through a pipe, it’s possible not only to deliver water more efficiently but also to generate a little clean energy.
Energy Trust of Oregon is a nonprofit devoted to supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy. It’s funded by a fee paid by the customers of five utilities that operate in Oregon and Washington, and it’s overseen by the Oregon Public Utility Commission. It’s also a power player, with a sprawling portfolio and a budget to match: $215 million last year, of which about 10% was devoted to renewables. Since 2002, the trust has invested $2.4 billion in energy projects large and small.
An interest in small-scale hydropower led Energy Trust to local irrigation districts. “These aren’t dams,” said Dave Moldal, a senior program manager in the renewable sector. “These are in-conduit, in-pipe, hydropower.”
In effect, if you can funnel enough water volume into a pipe, and then run that pipe into a smaller pipe, thereby increasing the water pressure inside, and direct the entire project downhill, generating even more pressure, you can deliver pressurized water to farms, eliminating the need for electricity-gobbling water pumps. If the details are right, you can also place a small turbine along the way and produce a modest amount of hydropower, which you can sell back to a utility to help pay for the infrastructure upgrade. Thalacker projects that his district’s three mini hydro plants will generate at least $200,000 annually when all are operational next year.
“We see tremendous hydropower potential from modernized irrigation districts,” Modal said. The trust has helped or is helping modernize 26 irrigation districts in Oregon, at a cost of about $14 million. “It’s early-stage capital, critical, that the irrigation districts just don’t have,” he said. Central Oregon Irrigation District, the largest of the local districts being piped, is hoping to generate 20 megawatts of hydropower in-conduit.
To help it reach irrigation districts around the state, Energy Trust contracted in 2015 with Farmers Conservation Alliance, a 501(c)3 group that pursues “water management solutions that benefit both agriculture and the environment.” FCA provides technical expertise to the districts, which are generally short of both money and labor and are often encumbered by significant debt as well.
The Three Sisters district’s annual budget, for example, is $350,000. Total capital costs of its irrigation upgrades over the years come to around $50 million. There is simply no way to generate that level of investment from that kind of budget without a lot of outside assistance.
FCA, based in Hood River, Oregon, helps irrigation districts file a watershed plan, including a cost/benefit analysis, which is necessary to seek federal funding under the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act. After helping districts manage environmental and technical assessments, and access funds, FCA helps them follow through on upgrades. The goal is to change a district’s water delivery system from open ditches and canals, many of which date to the turn of the 20th century, to enclosed, pressurized (and potentially profitable) pipes.
Water is obviously scarce now, and with climate change bearing down, there is a growing recognition that it may be for years to come. The stress of that realization falls especially hard on farm families. “You think about national, mental instability right now,” said Julie Davies O’Shea, executive director of FCA. In addition to worries about Covid, she said, “imagine if you weren’t sure if you were going to get water to your house.”
Besides Oregon, FCA works in California, Colorado, Montana and Nevada — about 40 districts in all. But the group’s roots are in what O’Shea calls the “fish versus farm” battles that pitted Oregon environmentalists against farmers, each arguing over rivers that couldn’t supply enough water to support both fish and agriculture. “It was very adversarial back then,” she said.
To help ease the conflict, in 2005 FCA began marketing a fish screen to prevent fish from being diverted into farm irrigation channels. At the point where water is diverted for agricultural use, the device redirects fish back into the river or stream from which they came. I took a long hard look at Marc Thalacker’s fish screen from a narrow walkway above. But I can’t say I saw much — just a hazy underwater detour that sends fish from a concrete diversion channel through a polyethylene speedway back to the Whychus Creek.
Ultimately, a fish screen only works if there is enough clean water left in the stream, after the farmers have taken their share, for fish to swim and spawn. Western agriculture has been devastating to chinook salmon, bull trout, steelhead trout and other members of the endangered species list. One of the goals of irrigation modernization is to leave not only fish in the stream, but enough water in the stream for the fish to survive.
I am standing in a field of vegetables, getting intermittently soaked by the rotating nozzle of a sprinkler. My guide on this tour of Rainshadow Organics farm is standing tall and sun-drenched in the same sprinkler’s path, unbudging, increasingly soggy and seemingly oblivious. Most of the farm is irrigated by drip lines, which target plants with precision. But not this stretch. So I continue posing questions, and receiving answers, between regular dousings. Once we pass through the sprinkler zone, it takes only minutes for the water on my clothes and skin to evaporate. The temperature is 98 degrees and heading higher.
Sarahlee Lawrence, 40, grew up on this Oregon farm, where her parents raised hay and a fair amount of dust. Throughout her college education, a subsequent master’s program in environmental science and writing, and various adventure tours as a river guide, Lawrence said she harbored no desire to return home to the farm. But then her father contemplated selling the land, and she read Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” a cultural landmark on food production and consumption. She moved back.
Rainshadow now encompasses 27 irrigated acres producing about $300,000 worth of crops annually. “I never had a business plan,” said Lawrence, who is also the author of an acclaimed memoir. What she has instead is an organic showcase featuring everything from heritage hens and plump pigs to kale, beans and kohlrabi. She grows more than 50 varieties of vegetables. Her business is about 30% wholesale, selling to restaurants and markets, and 70% direct to consumer. She does two or three farm-to-table events at the farm weekly and hosts some weddings.
In 2010, her first season back on the farm, Lawrence was getting her water from a canal, which ran to a ditch, which fed a small pond. She pumped water out of the pond to a wheel line that irrigated her fields.
In addition to electricity costs for pumping, Lawrence faced environmental costs. Open canals and ditches collect runoff, distributing chemical fertilizers used by other farms. They also transport weed seeds all down the line, spreading nuisances to every farm that draws water. And because they’re prone to algae and other harmful growth, irrigation districts often spend thousands to ply canals with chemicals to kill the blooms. It’s hard to run an organic farm. It’s harder still when your water is laced with chemicals.
Despite a variety of costly problems stemming from flood irrigation, not everyone in the Three Sisters district was in favor of piping. In the early days, when funds were low and proof of concept less sure, the irrigation project required in-kind contributions from farmers in the form of labor. Lawrence, whose farm is in the Lower Bridge subdistrict of Three Sisters, teamed up with a septuagenarian neighbor to work a front loader, weld and lay pipe. Meanwhile, some locals were surprisingly aggressive in their efforts to stop it.
“It was like the Wild West,” Lawrence said, recalling one neighbor’s effort to physically block the pipe installation. “There were people that did not want the pressurized water. They didn’t want to pipe their ditches because ditches are flowing in the summer, and while it’s not like living on an actual river, it’s a seasonal stream. There’s all this ambiance.”
The pipeline exploited a 400-foot drop in elevation from the reservoir to the terminus, delivering pressurized water to farms. District-wide, Thalacker said, piping saves about $700,000 in electricity costs. By containing the water in pipes, the district was able to increase the water supply, extend the growing season and reduce water use by a third or more. The saved water now finds its way back to the creek, which both federal and state agencies encourage in return for their support. It also reduces the stress on groundwater: Farms that previously drew on wells to supplement their allotments can now afford to leave more well water in the aquifer.
Some farmers objected to returning so much water to the creek, although the infusion has given the fish a fighting chance. Still others simply wanted to do things the way they always had. Meanwhile, a few landowners wanted to be paid to have the new pipeline cross beneath their property in lieu of the open canal.
The conflict eventually produced lawsuits, but not a work stoppage. “We kept moving, and while we were building, they were suing us,” said Thalacker. The irrigation district ultimately prevailed in court.
Lawrence said the pressurized water deliveries now save her several thousand dollars a year in electricity costs. “The amount of money you spend pumping and managing your pond, and the logistics of irrigating, is just a lot,” she said. “It’s an incredible thing to be able to turn on pretty clean pressurized water as an organic farm.”
Water management has always been essential to the West. As a US government history of dam building notes: “With much surface water originating either as seasonal snowmelt or infrequent torrential rainstorms, the ability to support widespread agriculture — as well as mining, municipal growth, and hydroelectric power development — has by necessity become dependent on artificial means of controlling water.”
Those artificial means have rendered desert mirages, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, real. They have produced thousands of dams, reservoirs and viaducts irrigating farms and ranches that would otherwise shrivel and die. The Colorado River alone is bedecked with 15 dams to engineer water and generate electricity.
Yet the river’s water allotments were oversold from the start. In a good year, the Colorado comes up short of ever-expanding human demand. This year, persistently high heat and lack of precipitation have put the river at risk of “catastrophic collapse,” according to the US Department of Interior.
Water rights in the Deschutes River basin date from the turn of the 20th century, an era when the US population was less than one quarter of what it is today. Around Bend, irrigation districts rely on water rights attained in 1899, 1900, 1905 — when the population of Oregon, now more than 4 million, was a little over 400,000.
“There are seven irrigation districts that pull water off the Deschutes,” said Steve Johnson, manager of the Arnold Irrigation District in Bend. “We’re 1905.” That means the district gets water only after farms in nearby districts, with rights attained in 1899 and 1900, use up their allotments. What the Arnold district’s 1905 rights amounted to on Aug. 9, when I joined Johnson for a tour, was a dry bed of caked dirt and rock in a canal.
“When the water rights were given out here, it was a wet cycle, kind of like when they built Lake Mead and everything else,” Johnson said. “You know, the mindset was ‘man over nature,’ with no regard for environmental flows. I mean, they gave out more water than the river could even naturally provide.”
There used to be enough water for six of the seven irrigation districts to get their allotted shares, Johnson said. But as the region grows hotter and drier, that’s no longer the case. “Now you’re in a situation where there isn’t enough to go around,” Johnson said. “So people get shut off.”
Johnson previously managed the Central Oregon Irrigation District, which was on the front end of the region’s irrigation modernization. There, he worked with Energy Trust of Oregon and other funders, including a trust connected to a confederation of local tribes, to channel pressurized, piped water through a 5-megawatt in-conduit hydropower turbine. The Arnold district, however, is missing a crucial ingredient that contributed to COID’s success: gravity.
“This district does not have significant elevation drop,” Johnson said. “It only drops 40 feet in 12 miles of main canal. So, we’ll realize a little bit of pressure that will help the deliveries to the farmers. But, basically, we need the pipe to conserve the water.”
Because open canals lose anywhere from 40% to 60% in seepage, farms only receive about half the total water that is diverted from the source. As chronic drought drains supplies, the Arnold district has begun running dry earlier each summer. “Three years in a row now we’ve had to turn off our irrigation season early because our legal supply of water has run out,” Johnson said. “We turned off on July 23rd this year. It was July 31st last year. It was August 29th the year before. This is the earliest we’ve had to turn off in 117 years.”
Piping the Arnold district’s canals won’t generate power, but it would keep the water flowing longer. “If our main canal had been piped last year, instead of having to turn off in July, we would’ve been able to get water into September,” Johnson said. “The same for this year. It’s kind of simple math.”
Reduced water supplies mean the Arnold district’s farmers earn less money, and return less money to the local economy. “Because the drought has decreased the water supply, and we can’t provide water through the whole irrigation season, people can’t raise enough hay or crops to make a living or feed their animals,” he said. “I’ve already talked to two guys this year who are selling their farms to get out of Arnold to move into Central Oregon Irrigation District, where they’re going to be able to have a water supply. People are selling because they don’t have enough water to utilize their land.”
The water supply is not only shrinking, it’s also being delivered earlier. “Snow pack melts, except at real high elevations, and that supplies water to the streams,” Michael Campana, a hydrologist at Oregon State University, told me. But climate change, he said, is starting to trigger snow melt earlier in the year. The result is that water reaches streams before either farms or spawning fish are ready to make full use of it. New water storage techniques may become necessary, along with more efficient delivery.
In California, a robust debate is under way about what types of crops should be raised in an arid climate with large urban populations and declining water supplies. Carrot seed, hay, alfalfa, hemp and cattle are currently prominent in Central Oregon. Researchers at Oregon State University and elsewhere are exploring alternate crops, some of which could potentially be raised during alternate growing seasons.
There is also the possibility of conserving water by paying farmers in parched terrain to stop farming altogether. Over beers at a local hangout, Marc Thalacker had a visceral response to that proposal, speaking with an edge I hadn’t heard before. It is an “actual, established fact,” he said, that the world must double its food supply by 2050. “I don’t think America is ready for empty shelves.”
Central Oregon is making progress, but it’s still not fully piped. It has taken years of effort by small irrigation districts with limited resources to get this far. The Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in August should help. The bill includes $4.6 billion to support drought adaptation in agricultural regions, and another $18 billion for the Department of Agriculture’s conservation programs, which can be used for irrigation modernization.
The engineering of water is evolving from preoccupation to obsession in much of the West. But even in the best-case scenario, it’s highly unlikely that water will become more plentiful anytime soon. “This is the West,” said Steve Johnson. “Water in the West is always an issue.”
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was an editor for the Week, a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist. | 2022-08-28T14:29:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Future of the American West Is in Central Oregon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-future-of-the-american-west-is-in-central-oregon/2022/08/28/275fb36a-26d2-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-future-of-the-american-west-is-in-central-oregon/2022/08/28/275fb36a-26d2-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
How Safe Is the Salmon on Your Plate?
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.Amanda Little: Demand for farmed fish has been soaring in recent years as wild fish populations decline. This might be a good thing in a world where seafood is the dominant source of protein for nearly half of humanity, and a low-carbon alternative to beef. Yet the aquaculture industry – and, in particular, salmon farming – has come under scrutiny for problems including waste, fish escapes, disease, and chemical use.
In “Salmon Wars: The Dark Underbelly of Our Favorite Fish” you examine Atlantic salmon farming and the risks associated with eating the fish the industry produces. The two of you have enjoyed varied careers in journalism, government and the field of private investigations. You now live in a small coastal town in Nova Scotia. What are you having for lunch?
Douglas Frantz, co-author, “Salmon Wars”: Fresh vegetables from our garden, cheese and crackers, homemade kombucha, and wild blueberries from our front yard. We can also get fresh Atlantic salmon that was grown in land-based facilities here in Nova Scotia, which we believe is the future of farmed Atlantic salmon: they’re on land, they’re chemical free and they don’t damage the environment.
AL : Why publish this book now?
Catherine Collins, co-author, “Salmon Wars”: A couple of years ago, we heard from a neighbor here in Nova Scotia that one of the largest fish-farming companies in the world, Cermaq, was considering expanding into Nova Scotia with potentially 20 fish farms. It prompted a whole series of public meetings called “Hello, Nova Scotia,” in which they tried to get feedback from the community and support from the government for this investment in the province.
DF: Those meetings turned out to be “Goodbye, Nova Scotia.” In the areas where they planned these farms, the public rose up almost unanimously, because of their fears of the impact on the environment, on the lobster industry, and on tourism, because these farms are kind of ugly and make a lot of noise. There was this groundswell of public opposition here. And we used that as a vehicle to look at the larger global problem coming from open-net pen salmon farms all around the world.
AL: The growth of the salmon industry has been meteoric. Can describe the arc of that growth?
DF: Demand for farmed salmon has tripled in the last decade. When commercial salmon farming on the ocean began in Norway, in the 1970s, it was a series of small farms that grew at a reasonable pace. Small farms don’t produce the pathogens and parasites that the big ones do. But you know, over time, as with many businesses, the industry grew. The seminal moment for salmon farming came in 2006, when the richest man in Norway, John Fredriksen — who had become a billionaire by grabbing a monopoly on oil tankers in the Middle East — took that idea to salmon farming and started buying up small farms. At the same time, here in eastern Canada, there was an outfit in New Brunswick called Cooke Aquaculture that was doing the same thing. There are now only 10 big salmon farmers globally; four of the biggest ones are Norwegian, a couple others are in Chile. It’s become a $20 billion global industry.
Ninety percent of the farmed Atlantic salmon eaten in the US is imported. More than half of it comes from Chile — a place where they use a lot of chemicals, a lot of pesticides and a lot of antibiotics because of conditions in the water there.
AL: You walk through a lot of problems with salmon farming in this book: the waste, the fish escapes, the parasites, the pathogens, the chemical use, among others. Which of these concern you the most, and why?
DF: First and foremost are the health risks from eating farmed Atlantic salmon — particularly for women who are pregnant, for infants, for children, and for anyone who has a history of cancer in their families because of the way these toxins, particularly polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), remain in the salmon flesh, and are therefore transferred to our flesh. That’s our number one concern.
Number two is the impact on the environment. And that breaks down two ways: first, the impact on the few remaining wild salmon. These farms are petri dishes for pathogens and viruses and parasites, which inevitably spread through the nets to the wild salmon. Many of these farms are located on salmon migration routes. Salmon come down from freshwater rivers on the way to maturing in the open ocean and have to pass by these open pen salmon farms which are steaming out columns of pathogens and parasites. It’s particularly dangerous in that early stage of migration, when you have young salmon that are no more than four or five inches long. They get attacked by sea lice, which clamp their jaws on the fish and kill them.
CC: And then there’s the impact on marine life. We found a photograph of a salmon farm on the south shore of Nova Scotia that shows a yardstick buried in the seabed, 32 inches deep in muck — muck left by excess feed, by feces and the various chemicals and things that were used on the salmon. And these are grounds that are used by other fish, by lobsters, by lots of bottom feeding fish. It’s not a good thing.
AL: You also show how the operations themselves are creating sort of natural feedback loops that are really cutting into fisheries’ production. Can you describe this phenomenon of nature fighting back against the industry?
CC: Worldwide, the mortality rate for farmed Atlantic salmon is 15%, maybe 20%. This is a lot of fish. Compare that to chicken and cows, which see about 3-5% loss every year. But it doesn’t stop there. In Newfoundland, not far from here, one company in the summer of 2019 lost 2.6 million salmon in a couple of weeks. That’s an astonishing amount of fish. The photographs showed the salvage boats taking these dead creatures out of these massive pens and shooting rotting salmon flesh out of huge pipes. It coated the coastline for thousands of meters, the impact was terrible. Newfoundland that year lost more fish than it harvested. And in the years since then, it’s lost between 40-50% of its fish each year. That is the definition of an unsustainable business.
AL: So on top of the fact that it’s not good for the environment, losing that amount of product is a problem for the companies’ bottom line. My understanding is that the seafood giant Mowi, among others, have collaborated with environmental groups to try to address some of these problems. Do you see any hopeful signs of change and progress in the industry?
DF: I think that the industry’s changes have been primarily lip service. For example, some companies have reduced the amount of forage fish in salmon feed. Forage fish are collected by huge trawlers off the coast of West Africa. The local fisheries there are collapsing because of the demand for forage fish, which are then ground into fish meal and fish oil for aquaculture feed and for pet food. The salmon industry has reduced the amount of fish meal in its feed, but they’ve done it not to protect the forage fish, which they call trash fish, but because the demand has pushed the price of these forage fish up. So they’re responding to the economics of the situation and they’re trying to put this gloss on it. They’ve taken words like “sustainable,” “naturally raised,” “organic,” and applied them to a product that is in no way sustainable, and no way naturally raised. There’s nothing natural about the iconic salmon swimming around for more than two years in its own feces.
AL: So when you’re in Whole Foods and see the seal of approval from a marine organization that the fish you’re buying is sustainably farmed, is that a thing? Can we trust labels like “sustainably farmed salmon?”
DF: I don’t think you can. Our research shows that farmed salmon is inherently unsustainable, because salmon are carnivores and you have to feed them other fish to get the protein.
We were just in Costco yesterday. We looked at the labels on their salmon, as we often do, and they say, “Fresh Atlantic salmon farmed.” Now, that’s even more disclosure than you often get in a supermarket, because often you’ll just go in and see “fresh Atlantic salmon.” And if you ask the person behind the seafood counter, what does that mean? Where did this come from? Chances are they won’t know.
AL: You explore ways that the industry can be reined in through appropriate regulations. Can you walk me through some of them?
DF: Some have been more radical than others. In August of 2017, an entire salmon farm collapsed in Puget Sound off the coast of Washington state and more than 250,000 alien Atlantic salmon were released into the waters of the Pacific salmon. In the aftermath of that, Washington state passed a law banning all open-net pen Atlantic salmon farms from its waters, because they’re non-native fish. If you want to still have locally raised, farmed Atlantic salmon [in Washington], you’re going to have to do it on land.
Norway has also done something interesting: they’ve made salmon farm leases on the water far more expensive. You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to lease public land on the water for an open-net pen salmon farm, encouraging them to move on to land where the government gives licenses for free.
Unfortunately, the profit margins are so high for the open-net pen salmon farmers that they haven’t taken advantage of this. They’re freeloaders. They’re using the public commons for their business. They’re paying very little money; they don’t have to treat their waste, they just let it flow into the ocean. Their overhead is very small, since they have only a handful of workers for every one of these sites. And so they can sustain mortality losses of 15-20% per year, or even sometimes 50% per year, because the margins are so high. The families that control the four largest salmon producers in Norway made $2.2 billion net profit in the first quarter of 2022. It’s a highly profitable industry right now.
AL: So walk me through the growth of on-land salmon production. I’m guessing it’s expensive, and so it’s been slow to displace the open-net pen farming. How does it work?
CC: Superior Fresh, in landlocked Wisconsin, has a really interesting facility where they raise their salmon in freshwater. Recirculating aquaculture systems pump the water through special filters in order to prevent disease and contamination and then treat the water with an ultraviolet light. So the fish are not swimming in excess feed, they’re not swimming in their own feces, and the systems recirculate about 99% of the water. But it’s very capital intensive. It takes financing, planning, permitting and construction. It’s not a plug and go system.
DF: The biggest on-land facility in the world, Atlantic Sapphire, is in Homestead, Florida, just outside Miami, and they tap into the Florida aquifer to get both their sea water and their freshwater. Then they recirculate it down to that aquifer, where it’s cleaned and shipped back out in the ocean. They want to produce up to 20% of the salmon eaten in the United States. You can buy their salmon in many places in the US now and it’s very good. We hope that eventually, with help from consumers and from governments, land-based farms will replace the open-net salmon pens in the ocean and force these companies to pull their operations out of the water. That’s a much better alternative for the environment, for the climate, for the health of the fish and the health of consumers.
AL: What’s the best-case scenario, in your mind, of the fish-farming industry in 30 years, in terms of its size and its practices and its volume of production?
DF: We hope that the volume of aquaculture increases, particularly vegetarian aquaculture. There are plenty of fish that just eat plants and grains, tilapia being one of them. So what we would hope to see in 30 years is open-net pen salmon farms out of the water and on land, or in closed-containment systems, if they can be developed. We don’t want people to stop getting this wonderful source of protein. But it has to be raised in a sustainable way that doesn’t damage the environment and protects our health. | 2022-08-28T14:29:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Safe Is the Salmon on Your Plate? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-safe-is-the-salmonon-your-plate/2022/08/28/2799fa48-26d2-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-safe-is-the-salmonon-your-plate/2022/08/28/2799fa48-26d2-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Author Melodie Davis poses with her new book, ““Memoir of an Unimagined Career: 43 Years Inside Mennonite Media,” at Trinity Presbyterian Church on Aug. 18, 2022, in Harrisonburg, Va., where she is a member. (Jillian Lynch/Daily News-Record via AP)
HARRISONBURG, Va. — It was from humble beginnings that Melodie Davis, at the age of 16, intrepidly stepped into the world of Christian media. | 2022-08-28T14:30:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Author documents career in Mennonite media in new book - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/author-documents-career-in-mennonite-media-in-new-book/2022/08/28/9b108b0a-26d1-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/author-documents-career-in-mennonite-media-in-new-book/2022/08/28/9b108b0a-26d1-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Detectives suspect the same man might have exposed himself on the trail three other times.
Fairfax County sex crimes detectives are searching for a man who wasn’t wearing pants and who grabbed a woman on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail on Friday, police said.
Police were called to the trail at 8:12 a.m. Friday. The woman was walking east along the trail between Town Center Parkway and Fairfax County Parkway in Reston when the attacker approached her from behind and grabbed her around the waist, police said.
The woman broke free and saw the man running toward the 12100 block of Sunset Hills Road, which crosses the trail.
Police used dogs to search the area but couldn’t find the man. Detectives with the county’s sex crimes squad have taken over the investigation and looked for surveillance footage. They suspect the same man might have exposed himself on the trail in the same area on three other mornings in August. | 2022-08-28T16:01:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man without pants grabbed a woman on W&OD trail, Fairfax police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/wod-trail-naked-attack-fairfax/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/wod-trail-naked-attack-fairfax/ |
Man starts fires at homes and fatally shoots fleeing residents, police say
Four people were killed after a man set a residence on fire, shot at people fleeing and was then killed by a police officer early Sunday in Houston, authorities said.
Just after 1 a.m., the city’s police and fire departments received calls about a fire and shooting at a house used as a rental facility, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference. Firefighters arrived first but had to take cover when the gunman opened fire, although it was not clear if he was firing at them.
Soon after that, police officers got to the scene and found the shooter in a parking lot across the street from the house. An officer shot and killed the man, who was dressed in black and armed with a shotgun, Finner said. Two residents were pronounced dead at the scene, and a third died at a hospital.
Authorities did not name the people killed. They said the gunman was in his 40s and the victims were men between the ages of 40 and 60. In addition to those who were killed, a man was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound to his arm. One other man had minor injuries that did not require a hospital visit. | 2022-08-28T16:01:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Houston gunman kills three people after setting fires at homes, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/28/houston-arsonists-fatally-shoots-three/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/28/houston-arsonists-fatally-shoots-three/ |
A number of factors led to the pristine 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card selling for a record $12.6 million. (LM Otero/Associated Press File)
The 1952 Mantle card brought a tidy profit for Anthony Giordano, the president of a recycling and waste management company in New Jersey who bought it for $50,000 at a New York City show in 1991 and told The Washington Post he can sense a good deal. The buyer is not yet known. | 2022-08-28T16:53:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mickey Mantle card sets record, sells for $12.6 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/mickey-mantle-card-auction-record/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/mickey-mantle-card-auction-record/ |
16-year-old on scooter struck by car, Alexandria police say
The teenager was transferred to the hospital with critical, life-threatening injuries
A 16-year-old riding a scooter was struck by a car in Alexandria on Saturday night and taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said.
The collision happened at the intersection of N. Beauregard Street and Sanger Avenue at 10:17 p.m. Saturday. The scooter was making a left turn from Beauregard while going southbound, while the car was headed northbound, police said.
The driver stayed on the scene to report the incident to police, who are still investigating the details of the crash. | 2022-08-28T17:10:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 16-year-old on scooter struck by car, Alexandria police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/teen-scooter-hit-car-alexandria/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/teen-scooter-hit-car-alexandria/ |
A person suffered minor injuries after being hit by a Metro train
The incident caused delays on the Blue and Silver lines Sunday morning
A person was taken to the hospital after being hit by a train at Foggy Bottom station on Sunday morning, Metro said.
Trains single-tracked between Foggy Bottom and Clarendon on the Silver Line and Foggy Bottom and Arlington Cemetery on the Blue Line, causing delays for a couple of hours.
Metro spokesman Ian Jannetta said the person was hit after “intentionally placing themselves in the path of the train.”
The person suffered minor injuries, Metro said. The transit agency didn’t immediately provide any further information about the circumstances of the incident.
The delays came after service was suspended in the same area of the network Saturday evening after a suspected thief fled down a train tunnel. | 2022-08-28T17:10:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A person suffered minor injuries after being hit by a Metro train - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/28/person-suffered-minor-injuries-after-being-hit-by-metro-train/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/08/28/person-suffered-minor-injuries-after-being-hit-by-metro-train/ |
These U.S. locations saw the most extreme temperatures in the last decade
Analysis by Jacob Feuerstein
A sign warns of “extreme heat danger” in Death Valley National Park in California last summer. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
An analysis of more than a decade of this data reveals the nation’s most exceptional temperatures range from a scorching 130 degrees in Death Valley, Calif., to a numbing minus 56 degrees in Cotton, Minn.
Death Valley hits 130 degrees in highest temperature in at 90 years
The lowest temperature in the 10-year period, meanwhile, was a frigid minus 56 degrees in Cotton, Minn., on Jan. 31, 2019. The town, about 31 miles northwest of Duluth, was at the epicenter of the severe cold air outbreak that struck much of the central United States that week, during one of the most extreme periods of cold to impact the Midwest in decades.
The chill of that late October day was the fault of a slug of frigid air that slid along the Rockies, bringing a minimum temperature of minus 46 degrees to the notoriously cold valley in Utah known as Peter Sinks. It was the coldest October low nationwide in the past decade by 11 degrees. | 2022-08-28T17:32:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Death Valley and Minnesota home to most extreme U.S. temperatures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/28/extreme-temperatures-death-valley-minnesota/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/28/extreme-temperatures-death-valley-minnesota/ |
LIV Golf joins its players in antitrust lawsuit against PGA Tour
LIV Golf, which stages its fourth event this weekend, has joined a federal antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. (Seth Wenig/AP)
As the PGA Tour’s season winds down and the LIV Golf Invitational Series prepares for its fourth event this week, golf’s dueling heavyweights are now positioned to battle head-to-head in the courtroom. The Saudi-funded LIV Golf start-up has joined the federal antitrust lawsuit launched by a handful of its players, claiming the PGA Tour has illegally tried to stifle competition.
While the lawsuit could have huge implications for the future of professional golf, legal analysts say the case promises to be long and nuanced, and that LIV Golf and its players could face an uphill road to prove claims that the PGA Tour’s actions were intentionally harmful and not simply supporting the tour’s own interests.
An amended complaint was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Northern California by LIV Golf and seven golfers, including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau. Four of the plaintiffs from the initial complaint have dropped out of the lawsuit: Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak, Pat Perez and Carlos Ortiz. LIV Golf officials had previously expressed support for the players’ case, though they were not a party in the original complaint filed on Aug. 3.
In the amended complaint, the LIV players say the PGA Tour is “an entrenched monopolist with a vice-grip on professional golf,” and it violated federal antitrust laws in its efforts “to crush nascent competition before it threatens the Tour’s monopoly.” The LIV lawyers contend that the court must intervene and address the tour’s alleged actions and its regulations because “facing head winds of this nature is not sustainable.”
“I think any antitrust case today is a bit of an uphill challenge,” said Michael Carrier, a Rutgers law school professor who specializes in antitrust matters. “The courts over the past 50 years have made it difficult for antitrust plaintiffs with sports cases. Usually there is deference to the league because they need to have certain rules. I think this case might be a bit different, though, because the PGA is not the collection of teams that we might see with the NFL or NBA. And also it’s an interesting time because at the antitrust agencies, there is a focus on workers for the first time in a very long time.”
LIV Golf’s entry into the marketplace has already induced upheaval and uncertainty across the professional golf world, cleaving the game’s best players into two groups and potentially weakening the playing fields in tournaments big and small for the indefinite future. The PGA Tour has watched some of its biggest stars abscond to the Saudi start-up and last week announced a series of new measures aimed at making the tour more financially rewarding for players. In that sense, LIV Golf has already forced sweeping changes across the sport, long before a federal judge rules on any legal claims.
“This is only one thing in LIV Golf’s toolbox,” said Jodi Balsam, a former NFL attorney who is now a professor at Brooklyn Law School. “And from LIV Golf’s perspective, if litigation succeeds only in distracting and imposing expense on the PGA Tour, they’ve won. All they need to do is put the PGA Tour on its back heels, force them to articulate their business reasons and the logic behind what they’re doing and to reevaluate their business model.”
In addition to the PGA Tour suspending the players, the lawsuit alleges tour officials have “threatened sponsors, vendors, broadcasters, and agents to coerce players to abandon opportunities to play in LIV Golf events.” The LIV players also claim the tour “orchestrated a group boycott with the European Tour.”
“The PGA Tour also has leaned on other entities in the so-called golf ‘ecosystem,’ including certain entities that put on golf’s ‘Majors,’ to do its bidding in its effort to maximize the threats and harm to any golfer who defies the Tour’s monopsonistic requirements,” the amended complaint states.
The court will have to decide whether the tour’s attempts to protect its own product crossed a line. The tour’s lawyers could argue that trying to maintain a dominant, unified tour is good for the game and consumers — “that there is a really good reason for all the best golfers in the world to be playing at the same tournament,” said Henry Hauser, a former attorney for the Federal Trade Commission who now specializes in antitrust matters for Perkins Coie, “and that makes a more appealing product.”
“But if they took actions that only seemed to harm a competitor, then that could be exclusionary,” Carrier noted. “And so that that’s the lens through which the court will view the PGA’s conduct. A lot of times what is good for you is bad for a competitor.”
The PGA Tour scored an early legal victory in the case when U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman denied a bid by three golfers seeking to compete in the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford sought a temporary restraining order from the court, but the judge denied the request on Aug. 9, saying the golfers hadn’t suffered “irreparable harm” by joining LIV.
“She’s not in any way suggesting that the players are dead in the water, though” said Balsam. “Not at all.”
The case is not necessarily dependent on the success or failure of LIV Golf or whether the LIV can still get rich golfing for their Saudi benefactors. The upstart tour could prove itself viable and lucrative before the case reaches trial, but the PGA Tour could still be found to have illegally hampered LIV’s efforts to get off the ground.
“It’s still possible that these players could make more in the LIV Golf, but there could still be a competitive behavior that is suppressing wages for other elite golf services,” Hauser said.
There is little in the way of comparable precedent in the sports world. In the 1940s, Major League Baseball banned several players who’d left for higher contracts offered by an upstart, well-funded Mexican league. The ensuing lawsuit was settled before a judge could weigh in and MLB lifted the bans. More recently, in the 1980s, a group of sponsors sued the Men’s International Professional Tennis Council (MIPTC), the governing body of the men’s game at the time, alleging a series of antitrust violations. The case wound its way through the legal system as the MIPTC was losing its grip on the spot.
“It went away entirely and a brand new tool was formed — the ATP tour,” said Balsam, who worked on the case. “What is the takeaway from that? The PGA Tour doesn’t want to be this generation’s MIPTC.”
LIV Golf will stage its fourth event beginning Friday at the International in Boston. The Saudi-backed series had already lured away some of the PGA’s biggest names by offering many seven- and eight-figure contracts and is expected to add a half-dozen more players as early as Monday, now that the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs has concluded. The latest wave is expected to include Cameron Smith, this year’s British Open champion.
In the lawsuit, LIV Golf said the PGA Tour’s regulations and “unilateral and conspiratorial threats of punishment have scared off the large majority of elite players as well as the pipeline of future elite players.” The tour’s tactics forced LIV Golf to “offer supracompetitive compensation well above the levels that would prevail in a market not polluted by the Tour’s anticompetitive conduct,” according to the complaint.
“This has forced LIV Golf into an unsustainable business model,” the LIV lawsuit states. “If the Tour’s anticompetitive conduct is not enjoined, LIV Golf will be unable to sustain a competitively viable tour.”
The complaint states that the PGA Tour has also applied pressure that made it impossible for LIV Golf to conduct business with several vendors, including a tent business, media companies, technology firms and sporting apparel businesses.
As with most antitrust cases, the LIV lawsuit won’t likely reach a quick resolution, but the judge has established an ambitious schedule. A summary judgment hearing is set for next July, and trial is scheduled to begin in January 2024. | 2022-08-28T17:33:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LIV Golf intensifies battle with PGA Tour, joins antitrust lawsuit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/liv-golf-antitrust-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/liv-golf-antitrust-lawsuit/ |
A woman was found dead in Hyattsville home
Prince George’s County police said they found a dead woman inside a home in Hyattsville Sunday morning.
Officers went to a home in the 2000 block of Amherst Road to check on someone’s welfare around 11:30 a.m. They found the woman, who had suffered trauma to her body. She was pronounced dead at the scene. | 2022-08-28T18:46:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A woman was found dead in Hyattsville home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/woman-homicide-hyattsville/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/28/woman-homicide-hyattsville/ |
By Chico Harlan
Stefano Pitrelli
Pope Francis enters the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio after performing the rite for the opening of the Holy Door, during a one-day pastoral visit to L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo region, on Aug. 28. (Domenico Stinellis/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
VATICAN CITY — The Catholic Church’s cardinals have converged in Rome for a slate of official events that started Saturday when Pope Francis elevated 20 new churchmen to their exclusive club. Next on the agenda is two days of discussions, beginning Monday, about reforms to the Vatican constitution.
The cardinals need to get to know one another, because whenever Francis resigns or dies, they’ll have to pick his successor from among their ranks. Given the rarity of such gatherings, this is one of their best chances to huddle, size up one another, and form opinions about the future direction of the Catholic Church.
“It’s not a casting [call], but we need this moment,” said Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, the Spanish-born archbishop of Rabat, Morocco. “Sooner or later, we have to choose the next pope. So we need to hear one another, to know one another.”
The Vatican says that 197 of the world’s 226 cardinals have made it to Rome this week — a remarkable percentage, given the advanced age of the group members. (Only the cardinals younger than 80 — at the moment, 132 people — are eligible to participate in a conclave that selects the pope.)
Though cardinals generally convene in significant numbers at the Vatican anytime Francis creates new members — something he has done eight times during his papacy — there was no consistory, as it is known, in 2021. And the one in 2020 had limited attendance because of the pandemic. As a result, this is the first major gathering of cardinals since 2019, a time when the endpoint of Francis’s pontificate seemed a far more distant notion. Some church watchers say one has to go back even further — to 2015 — to find a moment when cardinals turned up at the Vatican in similar numbers.
In four months, Francis turns 86, an age reached by only one other sitting pope since the 1800s: Leo XIII, still sitting at age 93 in 1903. Although his health had been steady throughout much of his papacy, last year he underwent colon surgery and says he still experiences residual “traces” from the general anesthesia. And recently he’s been mostly in a wheelchair because of knee pain. While neither issue has prohibited his governing of the church, the events have stood as a reminder about the frailty of old age and have intensified questions about his longevity.
Francis said last month that the “door is open” to retirement in the event that his health makes it impossible for him to run the church. But he said he had not yet reached that point.
“That doesn’t mean the day after tomorrow I don’t start thinking [about it], right?” Francis said. “But right now, I honestly don’t.”
Pope Benedict, in retired seclusion, looms in the opposition to Pope Francis
Whenever Francis leaves the job, there are several crucial questions facing cardinals who will pick his replacement. One is whether they’ll seek a successor who shares Francis’s vision of a more inclusive church. Francis, more than nine years into his pontificate, has helped to boost the odds of such a scenario, because his appointments now account for 63 percent of voting-age cardinals, according to Vatican statistics. Still, conclaves are notoriously unpredictable. Not all cardinals selected by Francis share his worldview. And support from cardinals selected by more conservative predecessors Benedict and John Paul II would still be necessary for any future pope to reach the two-thirds threshold.
Another question is about geography — whether the next pope will be non-European. Before Francis, who is Argentine, the church had selected European pontiffs for more than 1,000 years running. But as the church withers in Europe, its geographical heart has shifted to places like Latin America and Africa. Francis, with the cardinals he has selected over the years, has made the body of would-be electors less European. Francis’s latest batch of cardinals represent places such as Timor-Leste, Colombia and Nigeria.
On Monday, the cardinals will hold two days of talks on the Vatican’s new constitution, which was published in March and amounted to a reorganization of the church’s bureaucracy. But there is also plenty of time for fraternizing. Their time in Rome coincides with the city’s August shutdown, with Romans having decamped from the city to mountains and beaches, and many cafes and restaurants are closed. The streets around the Vatican are filled with a mix of tour groups and high-ranking prelates.
López Romero, in an interview, said he had already had time to dine with and pray with a cardinal from Guinea, Robert Sarah. The youngest cardinal, Giorgio Marengo, 48, an Italian who has served in Mongolia for many years, said his hopes for the days ahead are “very basic” — getting to know the other cardinals better.
“You have people coming from persecuted churches. Theologians,” Marengo said. “I hope these days will help me learn [from them].” | 2022-08-28T19:47:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Catholic Church’s cardinals have converged at the Vatican with Pope Francis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/vatican-cardinals-pope/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/28/vatican-cardinals-pope/ |
The U.S. military’s overdue reckoning with civilian casualties
Afghanistan residents search through the rubble after a U.S. drone strike in Kabul in August 2021. (Susannah George/The Washington Post)
When Gen. Richard D. Clarke retires this month as head of U.S. Special Operations Command, he will depart with a chest of hard-earned combat medals — but also with the recognition, now widely shared by his colleagues, that too many civilians died unnecessarily in America’s two decades of war in the Middle East.
This reckoning with the cost of war is overdue. For too long, the Pentagon rejected reports of civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria as false claims or enemy propaganda. But it’s an admirable quality of the U.S. military that leaders such as Clarke have now acknowledged that something went badly wrong in casualty assessments and are trying to fix it.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week announced a new plan for “civilian harm mitigation,” to avoid disasters such as the August 2021 strike in Kabul that was meant to kill an Islamic State terrorist but instead struck a van carrying an innocent nongovernmental organization worker and seven children. That was just one notorious incident. Senior Pentagon officials know there were dozens, maybe hundreds more.
For officers such as Clarke, who commanded the warriors at the sharpest point of America’s military spear, this rethinking of civilian casualties goes to the heart of their profession as soldiers. He told me in an interview Friday that he had come to recognize that avoiding civilian harm is both an operational and moral imperative. The United States cannot fight the way Russia is doing in Ukraine, oblivious to the civilian cost, and succeed.
Clarke began our conversation by explaining the combat logic of avoiding civilian deaths. “If we work in and amongst the population in places like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, our people on the ground, usually with partner forces, have to be trusted to do the right thing,” he said. “We cannot create another generation of terrorists because we have been lax in our procedures and have unnecessarily harmed civilian bystanders.”
Clarke then talked about the moral cost, not simply for the victims, but for the Americans who pulled the triggers. “You injure the individuals who are calling in those airstrikes,” he explained. “They have to live with themselves the rest of their lives. Living with that can sometimes have long-term effects resulting in behavioral and psychological issues that I don’t want our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to have to go through.”
Clarke recalled the commander’s dilemma from his days as a two-star Army general when he oversaw U.S. and Iraqi troops pushing Islamic State fighters from the Euphrates Valley. He wanted to trust that Iraqi partners were accurate when they requested fire support against the enemy. “Time is of the essence, and you’re looking at targets through a soda straw to determine whether they are valid targets,” he recalled. Those assessments weren’t always right.
The Special Operations Forces that Clarke has led, known as “SOF” in Pentagonese, have carried the heaviest load in America’s Middle East wars. They did the toughest work of fighting and killing in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes, as in the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, the cycle of combat had a corrosive effect. Gallagher was convicted by a military court for posing in a trophy picture with the corpse of a dead Islamic State prisoner in Iraq. But he was hardly the only SOF warrior who crossed the lines in those 20 years.
“I believe that over 99 percent of the time, our Special Operations Forces did the right thing,” Clarke told me. “They made tough calls, and they dealt with the results afterwards. But mistakes inside our community are made sometimes. Humans are fallible.” The stresses were aggravated, he said, “because SOF’s capabilities were highly valued. We were spread pretty thin, constantly deployed throughout combat zones.”
After the Gallagher case made headlines in 2019, Clarke ordered a comprehensive review of SOCOM — SEALS, Army Rangers, Marine Raiders and other Special Forces. I described in a column last December how that review — and an intensive internal effort by SEALS commander Rear Adm. H. Wyman Howard III — helped restore standards within that elite Navy force.
America’s wars in the Middle East took a terrible toll. It’s good that one result is a new code that says, in the words of Austin’s directive last week: “The protection of civilians is a strategic priority as well as a moral imperative.” War changes countries, usually for the worse. But here’s one change that’s for the better. | 2022-08-28T22:59:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Pentagon leaders welcome new focus on civilian casualties - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/richard-clarke-lloyd-austin-civilian-casualties/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/richard-clarke-lloyd-austin-civilian-casualties/ |
That sum seems paltry given the scale of Noble’s collapse. Last month alone, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined an insurer $50 million for not properly disclosing fees to annuity investors, while the UK Financial Conduct Authority would have imposed a £37.9 million ($44.5 million) penalty over misleading statements leading the collapse of Carillion Plc, had the firm not already been in liquidation. Banks received about $9 billion in fines over the scandal about rigging the Libor interest-rate benchmark over the past decade, while BNP Paribas SA alone received a $9 billion penalty in 2015 for violating US sanctions. The modest sum levied against Noble is hardly likely to deter other companies on the same path, considering gross profits of more than a billion a year that it was cranking out in its pomp.
Issuing false statements has “no place in Singapore’s capital markets” and risks having “an adverse impact on the integrity of our capital markets,” regulators and law enforcement authorities led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement announcing the penalty. The MAS didn’t respond to an email seeking comment for this article.
The official words strike the right note, but giving a light nudge to the stable door now, years after the horse has bolted, strikes a discordant tone. As early as February 2015, Iceberg Research, a short seller run by a former Noble credit analyst, was citing issues with the marketing agreements that formed the core of last week’s fine. Singapore’s investigation of the issue didn’t begin until November 2018, at a point when shares had already been suspended and 10 months after the company announced a debt restructuring that wiped out stockholders. Noble still operates as separate industrial and trading businesses following the restructuring. | 2022-08-28T23:38:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Singapore Telling Noble They Were Naughty Sends What Message? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/singapore-telling-noble-they-werenaughty-sends-whatmessage/2022/08/28/f43d14a6-2725-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/singapore-telling-noble-they-werenaughty-sends-whatmessage/2022/08/28/f43d14a6-2725-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Commanders’ Brian Robinson Jr. shot during possible attempted carjacking
Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. takes part in a training camp drill Aug. 18. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Washington Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. is in stable condition after being shot during a possible attempted carjacking in Washington, according to a D.C. police spokesman.
The spokesman, David Sternbeck, confirmed Robinson is the victim and added that the shooting occurred shortly before 6 p.m. Sunday in the 1000 block of H Street NE. Robinson was shot twice and taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries believed not to be life-threatening.
Police said they were looking for two juveniles with shoulder-length dreadlocks. One was wearing a black or brown shirt with yellow smiley faces on it. No further details were immediately available.
A rookie out of Alabama, Robinson was drafted by the Commanders in the third round this year.
Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. shot during attempted carjacking | 2022-08-28T23:38:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Commanders' Brian Robinson Jr. shot in attempted robbery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/brian-robinson-jr-shot-attempted-robbery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/brian-robinson-jr-shot-attempted-robbery/ |
Judge Aileen Cannon signaled intent to appoint an outside analyst to review materials
An aerial view of former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club after FBI agents took documents in August. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
A federal judge’s indication that she is prepared to appoint a special master to review materials seized by federal agents from Mar-a-Lago could present new complications and unresolved legal questions in the federal government’s high-stakes quest to wrest control of the documents from former president Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s two-page order issued Saturday appeared unusual in that the judge has not yet heard arguments from the Justice Department, said former federal prosecutors and legal analysts on Sunday.
Cannon, 41, whom Trump appointed to the bench in the Southern District of Florida in 2020, has also given federal officials until Tuesday to provide the court with a more detailed list of items the FBI had removed from Trump’s Florida estate on Aug. 8.
She asked the government to give a status report of its own review of the materials and set a Thursday court hearing in West Palm Beach, Fla. That location is about an hour away from the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she typically hears cases.
Yet her ruling left unclear how a special master would operate and who might qualify to take on such a role in a case involving classified national security secrets.
“It’s going to have to be somebody with expertise and experience in classified and national defense information. Those people don’t grow on trees,” said Stanley M. Brand, a defense attorney who focuses on representing clients involved in government investigations. “They are either former-somethings in the government or lawyers with a lot of experience in those issues. But that will be contested issue as well. Once again, we’re on the frontier.”
Legal experts said the very provisions Cannon asked of the Justice Department ahead of the hearing could render the need for a special master moot by the time the parties appear before the judge. For instance, federal prosecutors could indicate that the government review is nearly complete. And it may provide such a specified accounting of the documents taken that the judge herself could assess whether they belong to the government.
“There’s already been a team reviewing this for almost three weeks now. You don’t collect this stuff to let it sit there and not get started. There’s public pressure on them,” said Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during the Obama administration.
The government could report that it is far along in its review, she added, rendering an evaluation by a special master too late.
“Then, you can’t put the milk back in the bottle,” McCord said. “Pointedly, she did not tell them to stop, so they can keep reviewing until she makes a ruling.”
The official inventory said authorities removed more than two dozen boxes of materials during the search, including 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top secret.
Cannon’s hearing is taking place independently of the proceedings over the authorization of the search warrant, which was signed by U.S. District Judge Bruce E. Reinhart.
On Aug. 22, Trump’s legal team specifically filed its request for the court to appoint a special master in a separate venue than Reinhart’s. His lawyers argued that the appointed person should sift through the material the FBI seized and set aside any that should be shielded from government review because of executive privilege.
Analysts emphasized that such a figure — potentially a retired judge or a lawyer with specific expertise on executive privilege — would not be tasked with determining the legality of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 or the merits of the search warrant affidavit, a redacted version of which was released Friday under Reinhart’s orders.
But Brand emphasized that the presence of a special master could complicate the case if that person were to clash with the Justice Department’s own “filter team” — also called a “taint team” — officials not connected to the primary investigation who are tasked with ensuring investigators don’t see information to which they are not entitled and that could taint the case.
“The question for me is: What if the special master takes a different position than the taint team? How does that get resolved?” Brand said. He also questioned how the court battle might proceed given that two judges — Reinhart and Cannon — now have jurisdiction over different aspects of the FBI search.
Such uncertainties, Brand said, could work in Trump’s favor “because to the extent gets this gets caught up in a litigation muddle, as do so many things that happen around him, it’s to his benefit.”
The tussle over the documents has been underway for months. Trump aides relinquished some documents to the National Archives and Records Administration in January. But federal authorities, after determining that 184 of those were classified, grew alarmed that the former president was hiding more sensitive materials that could jeopardize national security if they fell into the wrong hands.
Trump and his advisers have defended his actions by stating that he had a standing declassification order for documents brought to his residence, though there is no written record of such a directive and some former Trump aides have disputed the notion.
Cannon, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and graduated from the University of Michigan law school, served from 2013 to 2020 as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida. She clerked for Judge Steven M. Colloton, who was appointed by President George W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.
Former Justice Department official Andrew Weissmann, who served as senior prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel investigation, said it is not clear that Cannon’s court should maintain jurisdiction in the matter given that the documents in question have been returned to the National Archives in Washington and are no longer in southern Florida.
He said that while special masters have been assigned in civil cases to review questions of attorney-client privilege, it is virtually unheard of for such a figure to be asked to assess executive privilege claims — particularly given that Trump is no longer president and appears to have no standing for such a claim.
“DOJ has a lot of work to do in terms of setting out not just a particular position on a special master but elucidating [Cannon] on issues about attorney-client privilege and executive privilege,” Weissmann said.
Yet, he said, Trump’s team, in seeking the special master in a 27-page court filing last week, has opened the door for Justice Department prosecutors to address, in public, not only the legal arguments raised by the former president’s arguments, but also the factual inaccuracies.
The Justice Department has generally refrained from commenting on ongoing investigations. But Attorney General Merrick Garland held a news conference after the FBI search to affirm that he had authorized the operation and to defend federal agents in the face of hostile critiques and physical threats from some of Trump’s allies and supporters.
“This isn’t a situation where you have to worry about how much to push the envelope at a news conference,” Weissmann said. “This is a filing and the court directly calling for a response to a filing.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) on Aug. 28 reacted to redactions in the affidavit to search former president Trump's home. (Video: The Washington Post)
The fight over the documents has injected another flash point into the nation’s political debate, with less than 75 days before the 2022 midterm elections.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who has been a vocal critic of Trump and a rumored 2024 Republican presidential candidate, suggested without evidence that the timing of the Mar-a-Lago search was intended to help Democrats in the midterm elections.
“Former President Trump has been out of office for going on two years now,” Sununu said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We think this is a coincidence, just happening a few months before the midterm elections?”
On Sunday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who has publicly defied Trump and much of the GOP for years, said it was hypocritical for members of his party to defend the former president after some of them had “spent years chanting ‘lock her up’ about Hillary Clinton because of some emails.’”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Kinzinger pointed out that lawmakers would have never been allowed to take classified information out of specialized, secure government facilities where they are typically viewed.
“If any of us walked out intentionally with even one document … and our organization came to us and said you have to give this document back and we refused to do it for years, we’d be in real trouble,” Kinzinger said. | 2022-08-28T23:55:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A special master for documents taken from Trump's Mar-a-Lago could complicate case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/28/trump-special-master-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/28/trump-special-master-fbi/ |
Marcos Brings Myth-Making to the Silver Screen
As a film, “Maid in Malacañang” is almost certainly among the worst the year will produce. As a historical account, the melodramatic hit depicting the last days of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ family in the presidential palace is a travesty.
As propaganda, it ticks every box.
This has been the family’s year. In May, son Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known as Bongbong, won the presidential election with a landslide — the culmination of a decades-long effort to rehabilitate the deposed kleptocrat’s name. Never mind that the campaign had little to say about details like the post-pandemic economic recovery, and focused instead on sepia-tinted fantasies. The dynasty scion leaned heavily on the disillusionment of voters who have seen scant material benefits flow from the 1986 People Power Revolution, and on the youthful majority, who have no recollection of the brutal years of martial law. Six years of Rodrigo Duterte, a leader with little time for civil liberties, helped too.
“Maid in Malacañang,” with Marcos Jr.’s older sister Imee as executive producer, is an undisguised big-budget effort to cement those gains.
Sold to the audience as “the untold truth,” the film, released earlier this month in the Philippines, in fact reworks history to the family’s advantage. The Marcos exit in February 1986 in the wake of mass protests is portrayed as a generous decision, taken to avoid bloodshed. They were the real victims, the plot insinuates, who simply loved the people. The contrast between the weeping family with their loyal servants and torch-carrying marauders outside Malacañang Palace — opposition leader Cory Aquino is shown callously playing mahjong with nuns, while the country teetered on the edge — is impossible to miss. A song about love betrayed plays as angry demonstrators scramble over the gates.
In another scene, one of several overwrought tete-a-tetes, Bongbong comforts his impeccably coiffed mother Imelda as she weeps. “We will come back,” he says. The camera turns to her bejeweled shoes and a cataloguing sticker on the sole. 2022. Just in case viewers were unclear.
Using silver-screen glitz to sell a more palatable version of history and reality is not a new tactic. The Soviet Union did it. We’ve all watched “Top Gun” and “Rocky,” with their invincible all-American heroes, the epitome of soft power. The Chinese government has for years encouraged blockbusters filled with patriotism and valor, nurturing nationalist sentiment. Reeling audiences in with drama, all uncomfortable problems neatly resolved, works.
And of course when it comes to cinematic enterprises like this one, a clear continuation of the election campaign’s use of black-and-white footage of the Marcos glory years to glamorize a brutal period, history is not about the past. It’s about the present.
The movie makes no effort to deal with the proximate causes of 1986’s uprising. The context — the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, the rise of his widow Cory, a snap February election and Marcos’ effort to claim victory — are barely dealt with. The regime’s cruelty and large-scale corruption are swept aside. In the movie, Imelda frets over photographs and children’s mementos as she leaves — never mind she actually took cash, gold and millions of dollars in jewelry. “No government is perfect, remember that, Dad,” one of the daughters tells Marcos, a man who plundered the state to the tune of $10 billion, tortured and killed thousands of his opponents.
It puts the Marcos family — and particularly Imee, whom the father describes as a selfless servant, his maid in Malacañang — as the ones guiding events, with the patriarch (actually in extremely poor health, due to autoimmune disease lupus and associated kidney ailments) brooding, concerned for his people, worried that he would not be remembered as a valiant soldier. He makes booming speeches at each of his children, anointed his worthy successors. Little concession is made to the role of rebel military leaders, the Roman Catholic Church, Cory Aquino and the thousands massed on the thoroughfare known locally as EDSA, or indeed to the US government — who supported Marcos until famously, through Senator Paul Laxalt, they told him to “cut, and cut cleanly.”
The departure — an embarrassing defeat in the face of popular anger — is depicted here as a selfless act, and a dignified one. The family have time to debate clothes, to discuss the future, to give motivational addresses to distraught staff. They help rip Imelda’s gowns to tie yellow scraps around servants’ heads (the color of Cory supporters, and so a safety measure), and still walk out calmly to waiting helicopters. The reality was different. Contemporary accounts like that of loyal and long-serving aide-de-camp Arturo Aruiza describe Marcos sitting “in the midst of pure bedlam,” desperate efforts to open a safe, documents being burned. Photographs taken after the Marcos’ departure show a mess of papers, books, boxes, uneaten dinner.
Finally, the film also goes to great pains to demonstrate how the family were adored by ordinary people — represented here by the trio of housemaids that tell much of the tale, a Greek chorus and comic relief. They are the ones spooning out the last caviar to the Marcos children.
The movie’s flagrant rewriting of historical fact hasn’t gone unnoticed. There’s a counter-narrative in the planning. The Catholic Church — which had a pivotal role in 1986 — has objected to the portrayal, particularly of the Carmelite nuns, who were not playing mahjong, but in fact praying and fasting as tension rose. The head of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board was forced to answer criticisms by saying the film did not “purport to be a documentary.”
What’s less clear is whether anyone was paying attention to that minor detail.
• Marcos Comeback Runs on Manipulated Nostalgia: Clara F. Marques
• The Powerful Machine That Brought Marcos to Victory: Daniel Moss
• Fidel Ramos: a Legacy of Caution and Courage: Howard Chua-Eoan | 2022-08-29T01:09:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marcos Brings Myth-Making to the Silver Screen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/marcosbrings-myth-making-to-the-silver-screen/2022/08/28/24f417bc-272a-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/marcosbrings-myth-making-to-the-silver-screen/2022/08/28/24f417bc-272a-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
For one day this summer, most U.S. movie theaters will sell $3 tickets
Sept. 3 will mark the inaugural “National Cinema Day.” (iStock)
No matter the time of day or the film format, on Sept. 3 people will pay just $3 (not including taxes or fees) to see a movie on the silver screen. That’s according to an announcement Sunday from the Cinema Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the National Association of Theatre Owners.
More than 3,000 theaters with over 30,000 screens are expected to participate in the event, including major chains such as AMC and Regal. (There were about 41,000 screens at about 5,800 sites in 2020, according to the most recent data available from the National Association of Theatre Owners.)
Jackie Brenneman, the Cinema Foundation’s president, said in a news release that the event is a “thank you” to moviegoers who helped make this summer a relative success, and motivation for those who haven’t returned to theaters. The news release did not specify how or whether studios and movie theaters would be compensated for the discount.
As of this weekend, 2022’s estimated domestic box office total is $5.3 billion, according to data from ComScore, a media measurement and analytics company. That’s up 161 percent from this time last year.
The National Cinema Day offering comes after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered many theaters while officials tried to slow the spread of covid-19. Even the once-reliable family-film genre saw dips at the box office last summer, when the delta variant swept through the nation. Financial woes have continued to plague the industry even after vaccines and boosters became available. The Associated Press reported last week that the British company Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas, announced that it’s considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States to contend with debt and empty seats.
Yet there have been glimmers of hope for movie attendees and industry professionals recently.
The subscription service MoviePass announced that it has been resurrected after it declared bankruptcy in 2020, and movie watchers had more options to visit their local theater compared with the past two years.
The rise and decline of MoviePass, the subscription service that flew too close to the sun
Ticket sales have increased since 2021, though they have yet to return to 2019 numbers, Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for ComScore, told The Washington Post.
National Cinema Day is a fitting celebration for “an incredible summer movie season,” he said.
“It’s a great way to bring an industry together,” he said, noting that 2021 was below traditional box office levels. “This summer, with ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ ‘Doctor Strange’ and ‘Jurassic World Dominion,’ the film industry is able to prove to the world that movie experience is here to stay.”
Amid theater closures and low turnout, Paramount Pictures bumped the release date for “Maverick” from November 2021 to this May, and Disney’s Marvel Studios delayed the debut of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” from last fall to March.
Amid delta concerns, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ release is moved from November to May 2022
“We still are, the movie theater industry, making that big comeback. It’s taken many, many months,” Dergarabedian said. “We’ll probably get back to a more normalized marketplace next summer.”
This summer had about 30 percent fewer major blockbuster movies on the schedule compared with pre-pandemic times, according to David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a box office analyst and film marketing consultancy.
Gross noted that “Maverick,” “Elvis” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” provided some of the strongest stretches of bankable movies since the pandemic began.
He estimated that total domestic box office numbers in August and September will finish 45 percent lower than the same stretch in 2019.
The National Cinema Day deal comes at a time when there’s a lull in movie attendance along with a weak movie schedule, according to Gross, whose LinkedIn profile lists a stint as a Twentieth Century Fox marketing executive in the early 1990s.
“Doing some kind of special offer to bring people in is not going to revolutionize the business or change the bigger picture,” he said.
But the $3 deal is a good way to get more people in movie seats and buying concession stand items, Gross said.
The rebound of moviegoing and box office success will depend on movie schedules, which look promising for the months ahead, and time will need to be counted in years, not months, according to Gross. | 2022-08-29T01:09:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | National Cinema Day: Movies in most U.S. theaters will cost $3 Sept. 3 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/28/national-cinema-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/28/national-cinema-day/ |
Police seek suspect in fatal random shootings in Detroit
Police seek suspect in fatal random shootings
Four people were shot, three fatally, by a person who appeared to be firing at people randomly over a roughly 2½-hour period Sunday morning in Detroit, police said.
Police were searching for a suspect with help from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Detroit Police Chief James White warned residents to be alert and to call 911 if they know the identity or whereabouts of the shooter.
He said police discovered a woman in her 40s who had been shot multiple times about 4:45 a.m. Sunday. While officers were investigating that fatal shooting, a witness reported a 28-year-old man had been shot multiple times nearby, White said.
A third victim, a woman in her 40s, was found in the area about 6:50 a.m. She died after being shot multiple times, police said.
About 7:10 a.m., an elderly man reported he saw a man peering into vehicles. When the elderly man told the person to get away from the cars, the gunman fired at the elderly man, who was shot once and survived, police said.
O'Rourke cancels events amid illness
He continues to trail Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in opinion polls before the Nov. 8 general election.
Jury awards $100M in stun-gun case
Jerry Blasingame now needs round-the-clock care costing $1 million a year, and he has $14 million in medical bills so far, attorney Ven Johnson told jurors.
Jurors found that Officer Jon Grubbs used unreasonable force against Blasingame, who was 65 and had been asking drivers for money on July 10, 2018. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He is now 69.
Food truck explodes in Portland, Ore.: Authorities suspect a propane tank was the source of an early morning explosion among a group of food carts in the city's downtown area on Sunday. The blast reported at about 3:40 a.m. shattered a large number of windows in the surrounding block, the Portland Police Bureau said. No injuries were reported. Area streets were temporarily closed as a bomb squad swept the area for potential explosive devices. | 2022-08-29T01:09:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police seek suspect in fatal random shootings in Detroit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-seek-suspect-in-fatal-random-shootings-in-detroit/2022/08/28/011bc2ac-1471-11ed-aba1-f2b7689c0492_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-seek-suspect-in-fatal-random-shootings-in-detroit/2022/08/28/011bc2ac-1471-11ed-aba1-f2b7689c0492_story.html |
COLUMBUS, Ohio — David Lingmerth led wire-to-wire to win the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship and wrap up a PGA Tour card.
KETTERING, Ohio — Jill McGill won the U.S. Senior Women’s Open for her third U.S. Golf Association title, closing with an even-par 73 on a day when no one broke par for a one-stroke victory over Leta Lindley. | 2022-08-29T01:09:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | McIlroy wins Tour Championship for third FedEx Cup title - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/mcilroy-wins-tour-championship-for-third-fedex-cup-title/2022/08/28/74ab7790-272b-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/mcilroy-wins-tour-championship-for-third-fedex-cup-title/2022/08/28/74ab7790-272b-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Nebraska fans did more cheering before the start of a game in Ireland against Northwestern, as shown, than once it ended. (Peter Morrison/AP)
Perhaps the only people unhappy about all the free beer that flowed Saturday in Dublin during the Nebraska vs. Northwestern game might have been officials with the catering company in charge of food and drink. On Sunday, though, they applauded their staff at Aviva Stadium for making sure “the fan experience was upheld.”
The stadium’s vendor, Levy UK + Ireland, blamed the situation on a technical issue with its payment provider that prevented card transactions from being processed for two hours.
“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this caused customers,” a Levy spokesman said in a statement, “and would like to thank our employees at Aviva Stadium for the spirit they showed in keeping everything going.”
Word quickly spread in the first half and before long lines began to grow at concession stands. It wasn’t just beer that was handed out, but everything available, including food.
The Omaha World-Herald reported at least one fan coming away with seven beers and many others opting for a more manageable four. French fries — or chips, as they are called on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean — proved a popular item, as did hot dogs.
“Nothing is free in Ireland — but this is!” exclaimed a Dublin native attending the game, per the newspaper.
While most of the food is gone, the beer is still flowing at halftime. Still free because the internet remains out and the cashiers can’t take payments. pic.twitter.com/5W0bmnTP3G
With the college football season set to begin in full next week, the Cornhuskers and Wildcats were among a handful of teams playing Saturday, and their tilt was by far the most prominent matchup. The matchup of Big Ten programs, squaring off before a listed 42,699 fans in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic, was the only power conference showdown on the “Week 0” stage.
Unfortunately for Nebraska and embattled coach Scott Frost, the Wildcats pulled off a second-half comeback and got a 31-28 win. Helping Northwestern’s cause was an unsuccessful onside kick attempt by the Huskers after they took a 28-17 lead in the third quarter.
If that decision by Frost was unexpected, the same could be said for the prolonged period during the game in which food and drink were given away to anyone willing to queue up for it. For the Nebraska fans who made the trip to Ireland only for a disappointing result, there was at least some silver lining — not only did they receive free beer, but time spent on the concourse was time not spent watching another loss unfold following last year’s 3-9 season.
Attendees and staffers at the game weren’t the only ones affected. Levy, the catering company, said the third-party issue extended to elsewhere in Ireland and even beyond the country.
“Our team at Aviva Stadium were extremely quick to ensure that the fan experience was upheld and food and beverage kiosks were kept open serving customers for the entirety of this period,” Levy said in its statement. It added that after its payment system returned to operational status, fans “continued to enjoy the College football event.” | 2022-08-29T02:15:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vendor salutes staff after free beer at Nebraska-Northwestern game in Dublin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/nebraska-northwestern-free-beer-dublin-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/28/nebraska-northwestern-free-beer-dublin-football/ |
Australia winners of the 20220 world rugby severs series celebrate after defeating Samoa in their Bronze medal match at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, Calif., Sunday, 28, Aug. 27, 2022. Australia who came third in the LA tournament, have won the 2022 series. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) (Marcio Sanchez/AP) | 2022-08-29T02:41:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Zealand wins LA 7s; Australia secures World Series title - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/new-zealand-wins-la-7s-australia-secures-world-series-title/2022/08/28/480faeb6-273c-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/new-zealand-wins-la-7s-australia-secures-world-series-title/2022/08/28/480faeb6-273c-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
My boyfriend and I decided that it would be best for me to be a stay-at-home mom, and being that I did that for many years with my other children, I was ecstatic.
I have no idea what has changed. He now says he needs space, and my heart is broken. He says he’s tired of me making him feel as if everything he does is wrong. l definitely don’t think that. I do get upset over his phone usage, especially around the baby.
I feel as if he’s hiding something from me.
I’ve been an emotional mess, and I feel as if it’s affecting my new baby.
It Takes a Village: Your question’s signature provides a clue into what I urge you to do in the short term: Let the “village” help to take care of you. Reach out to friends, family members and other new or “redux” moms.
According to an article published by the Mayo Clinic: “Kratom is believed to act on opioid receptors. At low doses, kratom acts as a stimulant, making users feel more energetic. At higher doses, it reduces pain and may bring on euphoria. At very high doses, it acts as a sedative, making users quiet and perhaps sleepy.
“ … Depending on what is in the plant and the health of the user, taking kratom may be very dangerous. Claims about the benefits of kratom can’t be rated because reliable evidence is lacking.”
This herb is also toxic to babies.
If your guy “needs space,” I suggest you give it to him, because he does not seem to be in a stable place right now. The emotional and physical health and safety of you and your baby are paramount.
I’ve been hanging with some of my friends from childhood and high school. Don’t get me wrong: These are salt-of-the-earth people, and I don’t want to judge them.
Looking: First, let’s stipulate that it’s not that you don’t “like” your hometown friends, but that your interests have expanded beyond hanging out on Randall’s couch, getting high and pulling video heists.
Start hiking, biking, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, and going to concerts or clubs.
Getting a life can be challenging, even if you’re young and unencumbered. It can be even harder in your hometown, because you’re pigeonholed into friendships and habits by other people.
Need: “Bothered” specifically did not ask how to solve this, but about adopting a new mentality. | 2022-08-29T04:12:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: New mom fears her boyfriend is hiding something - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/29/ask-amy-new-baby-husband/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/29/ask-amy-new-baby-husband/ |
Or spam. Miss Manners has noticed that spammers have adopted versions of “Dear one” as a salutation, sometimes ratcheting it up to “Beloved.”
Could you honestly have said, “I admire your work?” If not, perhaps a cordial, “I know you by reputation.”
I understood that a standing ovation was reserved for exceptional performances, and I have leaped to my feet at some outstanding productions. Now, however, there seems to be a race to see who can stand up the fastest. On the other hand, one does not wish to be the only one retaining their seat.
No. But you will not be alone, because Miss Manners is going to remain seated unless the performance is truly outstanding, or she is related to the performers.
What you are describing is ovation inflation, the entertainment world's equivalent of grade inflation in academia. Audiences have surrendered their privilege of passing judgment on professional performances, with the sweet but mistaken idea that they must thank the performers for showing up, whether or not they succeeded. | 2022-08-29T04:12:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I don't like when mail starts with 'Hi' instead of 'Dear' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/29/miss-manners-dear-hi-email/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/08/29/miss-manners-dear-hi-email/ |
More kids are swallowing batteries. Here’s how to keep your children safe.
By Elizabeth Chang
Button batteries are everywhere: remote controls, key fobs, greeting cards, kitchen scales, tea light candles, watches, toys and hearing aids. And, increasingly, they are making their way into the bodies of children, causing discomfort, injury and, in some cases, death.
According to a paper published in the September issue of the journal Pediatrics, emergency department visits involving children who had swallowed a battery between 2010 and 2019 were more than twice the number of visits between 1990 and 2009. Button batteries (small disc-shaped cells, also known as coin batteries) were involved in 85 percent of the cases in which the battery was described.
When such batteries lodge in the esophagus, the tube that connects the throat to the stomach, they can cause serious damage in as little as two hours. While larger lithium cells are of more concern because they are more likely to be caught in a child’s esophagus, smaller non-lithium button batteries can cause severe injury as well, the team said, especially in children younger than 1.
Using data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, the researchers estimated there were 70,322 battery-related emergency room visits among children between 2010 and 2019. Ninety percent of the visits involved children who had swallowed batteries (other injuries involved insertions into the nose, ear and mouth). Most of the cases were among children ages 5 and younger, with the highest number involving 1-year-olds.
The increase in battery-related emergency room visits can likely be attributed to the greater prevalence of button batteries in homes, according to Mark Chandler, senior research associate at Safe Kids Worldwide, which conducted the study in cooperation with Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Global Injury Research Collaborative, both located in Columbus, Ohio.
“In recent years, particularly in the last decade … devices that are commonly found around the home just continue to get smaller and smaller, and that means that the types of products that are powered by button batteries have become more plentiful,” he said.
Chandler said parents often aren’t aware of how many devices in their home are powered by button batteries and the significant risk that the batteries can pose to children. The researchers concluded that existing prevention efforts are not doing enough to cut down on battery-related emergency room visits, and they called for “regulatory efforts and adoption of safer [button battery] designs by industry to reduce or eliminate ingestion injuries in children.”
On Aug. 16, President Biden signed a bill, Reese’s Law (named after a child who died after ingesting a button battery), that will set those regulatory efforts into motion. The legislation directs the CPSC to develop new safety standards regarding button or coin batteries that will require safer packaging, more visible warning labels — including on the batteries themselves — and more secure compartments on devices that hold the batteries, to prevent access by children 6 or younger. The agency has a year to issue the standards.
In the Pediatrics study, 12 percent of all swallowed-battery cases resulted in hospitalization; ingestions involving specifically button batteries were twice as likely to result in hospitalization. The data did not include outcomes beyond hospitalization. According to the National Poison Data System, 3,467 button battery ingestions by children and adults were reported in 2019; of those, 207 resulted in moderate effects, 51 in major effects and 3 in death. More than half the cases involved children 6 or younger.
New safe sleep guidelines for babies include flat beds and no bed-sharing
Varun Vohra, clinical toxicologist and director of the Michigan Poison & Drug Information Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine, said that through 2017, Michigan had actually seen a drop in cases of button battery ingestions. There were 562 reported to the center from 2010 through 2017, compared with 723 from 2002 through 2009. But button batteries “are always a concern because they’re so small, and they’re in so many different products,” he said.
Most cases don’t result in severe harm, Vohra said, and button batteries can pass through a child’s gastrointestinal system. But when a button battery becomes lodged in a child’s esophagus, the consequences can be severe. Moisture in the mucus membranes can trigger an electric current that causes a chemical reaction, injuring the adjacent tissue (the current creates hydroxide, which causes alkaline burns).
“This can lead to severe injury, including esophageal perforation, which can result in significant downstream complications,” Vohra said. If X-ray imaging reveals a battery in the esophagus, it will need to be promptly removed, either endoscopically or surgically, since severe injury to the esophagus can occur in as little as two hours. But the injury can progress even after the battery is removed, resulting in relatively rare complications such as vocal cord paralysis or tracheoesophageal fistula, an abnormal connection between the trachea and esophagus.
The latter is what happened to the child that Reese’s Law is named for. Reese Hamsmith, an 18-month-old child from Texas, was having breathing difficulties in October 2020 that were initially diagnosed as croup. After the family realized that a button battery was missing from a broken remote control and that Reese had ingested it, she underwent surgery to remove the battery but developed a difficult-to-treat fistula between her esophagus and trachea. After weeks of hospitalization and complications, she died on Dec. 17, 2020.
While thankful that the bill has passed, Trista Hamsmith, Reese’s mother, said that truly protecting children will require more. “We ultimately need a safer battery,” she said.
Hamsmith, who founded the organization Reese’s Purpose to advocate for protections for children from dangers such as button batteries, urges parents “to be very diligent and very aware of where these are in their homes — if they choose to have them in their homes.” She and Chandler offered some safety tips for parents.
Make a sweep of your home; you may find button batteries in surprising places, including some children’s electric toothbrushes. “They’re literally designed to go in our children’s mouths, and they’re powered by button batteries,” Hamsmith said.
Keep any devices powered by button batteries and any loose batteries out of reach and out of sight of children.
Purchase button batteries packaged in ways that aim to reduce the chance of a child getting into the package and ingesting them. For example, Hamsmith said, some battery packages need to be cut open. She also noted that Duracell sells button batteries with a bitter coating designed to discourage kids from swallowing them.
Examine your button-battery-powered devices to make sure the battery compartment is as safely secured as possible. Devices that secure the cover with a screw are generally considered safer to have around children, Chandler said.
If your child does swallow a battery or is found near an open electronic device that is missing a battery, Vohra offers this guidance.
Call the Poison Help Line (800-222-2222), which will connect you to a local poison control center. They will ask for and document important information regarding the battery (including size and imprint code) and may tell you to head for the nearest emergency room for further evaluation. They will also want to know how old your child is, how long it has been since the battery was swallowed and what symptoms the child is experiencing, in order to help establish a treatment plan.
Do not try to make your child vomit.
Make note of symptoms such as wheezing, drooling, vomiting, bleeding, abdominal pain, difficulty swallowing, chest discomfort, coughing, choking or gagging, decreased appetite or refusal to eat, or fever.
Do not give your child anything to eat or drink.
If a magnet is swallowed along with the battery, this can potentially lead to more severe injury. Call poison control and head to your nearest emergency department.
If it’s been less than 12 hours since the battery was swallowed and your child is older than 12 months, you can give them commercial honey — two teaspoons every 10 minutes for up to six doses — on the way to the ER. This will coat the battery and prevent the generation of hydroxide, delaying burns to adjacent tissue. However, it is not a substitute for removing the battery, because this helps slow but does not eliminate the risk of tissue damage.
In cases where a child has a battery lodged in their nose or ear — which can also damage tissue — look for pain or discharge. Do not administer nose or ear drops before a complete examination by a physician; these fluids can potentially lead to worsening damage. | 2022-08-29T04:12:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | More kids are swallowing button batteries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/29/button-battery-ingestion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/08/29/button-battery-ingestion/ |
In the age of climate change, our past intrudes upon the present. Last week, receding water levels in a Serbian stretch of the Danube, Europe’s second-largest river, surfaced a flotilla of Nazi-era German warships that were still packed with ammunition and unexploded ordnance. They were exposed at a time when Europe is experiencing what appears to be the worst dry spell in half a millennium, with two-thirds of the continent under some form of drought warning.
Other ruins and wrecks are popping up as waterways shrink. A submerged 1st century A.D. Roman bridge possibly constructed under the orders of Emperor Nero emerged from the Tiber River last month; further to the north, out of the depths of Italy’s tourist-clogged Lake Como, emerged a 100,000-year-old skull of a deer and the ancient remains of lions, hyenas and rhinos.
Scorching high temperatures left the Iberian Peninsula drier than any time in the last 1,200 years. In Spain, parched riverbeds and shrinking reservoirs have exposed a Neolithic monument known as the Spanish Stonehenge, a Roman fortress, a medieval church, and a number of more recent “ghost towns” that had been abandoned and flooded following 20th century dam projects.
In France, which is experiencing its worst drought on record, wine makers are harvesting their grapes earlier than ever. At a time where anxiety is already mounting over energy costs, surging temperatures and sparse rainfall have hit hydropower capacity in parts of Europe. They have also wreaked havoc on the continent’s agricultural output.
These maps show how excessively hot it is in Europe and the U.S.
Yet what’s being experienced now in Europe — and all over the world — isn’t simply a rerun of the past. The northern hemispheric summer has been defined by a relentless series of unwelcome climate-related superlatives. Heat waves set record temperatures across cities in the Middle East and Europe. China is in the grips of its worst drought on record, which has dried up parts of the Yangtze River and impacted swaths of the country’s industrial sector. Meanwhile, in the space of only five weeks, U.S. cities experienced five instances of 1,000-year rain events — that is, episodes of severe flooding that have just 0.1 percent probability of happening in any given year.
The scale and ferocity of what’s taking place is supercharged by climate change. “Studies have found that heat waves are increasing in intensity and duration in China, as well as delivering warmer temperatures at night, because of human-induced climate change,” my colleagues reported. “The increase has been observed in urban and rural locations. Heat waves are also starting earlier and ending later.”
In China, the droughts in some parts of the countries have been met by a deluge in others. The western province of Qinghai experienced such heavy rains that some rivers changed course; landslides and floods killed more than a dozen people earlier this month.
In some cases, there is a direct link between drought and floods — soil actually absorbs water better when damp, while heavy rains slosh off parched landscapes into waterways. That explains why researchers in Central Texas are fearful of what may happen after a drought exposed 113-million-year-old dinosaur tracks in a dried-up riverbed.
“Given the wild fluctuations in weather and precipitation, we can have these long dry periods exposing things and then catastrophic flooding,” Vincent Santucci, senior paleontologist at the National Park Service, told my colleagues. “The high-energy nature of those floods can completely destroy a fossil site.”
Gaze upon "Spanish Stonehenge," the rare prehistoric site that recently emerged from a receding reservoir amid Spain's historic drought. Experts say it could date back to 5,000 B.C.
📸: Reuters pic.twitter.com/xt4p3Rx7ph
In South Asia, searing heat earlier in the summer gave way to an erratic and intense monsoon season. That, in turn, has stoked major flooding and landslides across Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Pakistan has been ravaged in recent weeks, with heavy rains and rising rivers leading to the deaths of more than 1,000 people and the displacement of over 10 million. Pakistan declared a state of emergency over the weekend and requested international aid, with officials describing the devastation wrought by a summer of extreme weather as the worst in over a decade.
Pakistan is experiencing a “climate catastrophe,” the nation’s climate change minister told NPR this weekend.
“Extreme climate events have become a regular phenomenon in South Asia,” wrote Hamid Mir for The Washington Post’s opinion pages last month. “We are facing weather-related problems in almost all parts of Pakistan. Flooding has become almost routine in some areas; others are plagued by drought. Glaciers are melting fast, resulting in reduced water flow in rivers. Farming is suffering as a result, and the decline in agricultural productivity is creating food insecurity. All this is accelerating migration from rural areas to cities.”
South Asia is at the sharp end of a planetary crisis. “Unrelenting heat waves have led scientists to wonder whether areas in the region may soon become uninhabitable or too dangerous for human life. “Across India and around the world, summer has become a season of peril, when society’s poorest and most vulnerable members must live and work in conditions that push the limits of human endurance,” my colleagues detailed in a grim but important piece that charted life for Indian day laborers with no choice but to work outside.
No part of the world is shielded from the reality of climate change. “The signature of a warming world is now perceptible every day in the conditions we regularly face,” wrote my colleague Matthew Cappucci, when exploring the scientific causes of increased rainfall in the United States.
“For many people, the concept of a changing climate might seem distant and removed — a two-millimeter rise in sea levels a year or a subtle uptick in global temperatures may appear inconsequential,” he added. “But human influence is affecting the dynamics of weather systems, the periodicity of the jet stream and the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere.”
The experience of these weather extremes is not forcing major climate policy reforms. The global panic over energy has led to the short-term pursuit of more fossil-fuel extraction. China had to scramble for more coal after the summer heat and drought delivered a blow to its hydropower capacity.
“After this crisis, the coal lobby will be saying, ‘This is why you need to have more coal mines and more coal-fired power plants,’” Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Energy Studies Institute, told my colleagues. “As in Europe, the key is keeping the lights on and keeping the heating and the air conditioning going. That is the short-term priority.” | 2022-08-29T04:13:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In a summer of extreme weather events, a simultaneous great drought and deluge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/global-extreme-weather-events-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/global-extreme-weather-events-climate-change/ |
Bacterial infection disrupts Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for Texas governor
Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke (D) speaks to supporters during a campaign rally Aug. 24 in Kingwood, Tex. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, postponed campaign events in his whirlwind tour across the state after he was diagnosed with a bacterial infection, he said Sunday.
“After feeling ill on Friday, I went to Methodist Hospital in San Antonio where I was diagnosed with a bacterial infection,” O’Rourke said on Twitter.
He said he received IV antibiotics and would be resting at home in El Paso “in accordance with the doctors’ recommendations.”
He said he was “sorry to have had to postpone events because of this, but promise to be back on the road with you as soon as I am able.”
O’Rourke is running against Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in the November election. He ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2018, though he was within a few percentage points of Sen. Ted Cruz (R). That race propelled O’Rourke to the national political stage and an unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He previously represented El Paso in the U.S. House.
The two campaigns put O’Rourke on the record on various positions including abortion and gun rights — particularly tense topics in Texas, where gun ownership is among the highest in the country. He lags Abbott in recent polls by multiple percentage points outside the margins of error.
O’Rourke’s illness comes at the tail end of his “Drive for Texas,” a 49-day tour in a Toyota pickup truck with 70 events across more than 65 counties. A video from an earlier stop on the tour, in Mineral Wells, went viral after O’Rourke confronted a heckler during his speech about the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex. Gun control has been a staple of his platform to defeat Abbott.
O’Rourke’s campaign events from Thursday last week to Sunday will be rescheduled, according to his website. The last campaign event before he fell ill was in Fort Bend County, outside Houston, according to the website. The final event of the tour is set for Sept. 7. | 2022-08-29T05:35:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Beto O'Rourke ill with bacterial infection, postpones campaign events - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/29/beto-orourke-bacterial-infection-hospital/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/29/beto-orourke-bacterial-infection-hospital/ |
Europe Can’t Go Into Winter Thinking All Is Lost
It’s la rentrée.
Europe is getting back to business after its summer break — but this year feels like jumping into a cold shower. Just listen to Emmanuel Macron. The French President told his ministers during their first formal gathering last week that a new paradigm is on the horizon — it’s the end of abundance in a care-free world.
That’s a sobering statement coming out of the country of opulence itself. French history is shaped by splendor; its national ethos pursues grandiosity in the values it represents and the role of puissance d’équilibre — a power of mediation — it seeks to play on the international scene. Luxury is also a veritable moneymaker for the French economy — the industry feeds on insatiable consumer demand.
All of this contrasts with Macron’s statements, which critics have called crude, pessimistic, even defeatist. Yet, although the message wasn’t the most palatable, it was an important one. The truth is, Macron’s words are merely catching up to the reality of what Europe faces. Russia is wreaking havoc on the energy market, inflation is rampant and governments are actively seeking demand destruction to avoid rationing. The opposite of abundance is scarcity. The flip-side to opulence is sobriety. Why sugarcoat things?
The French president has a habit of shaking public opinion with shock statements. He once described NATO as brain dead and suggested he would gladly emmerder (“piss off”) non-vaccinated people if that helped push up the vaccination rate in France. His tone and language are often divisive. The political left has already accused Macron of being out of touch — a recurring criticism — if he thinks the French working class lives in opulence, especially as the cost-of-living crisis bites into modest salaries. Marine le Pen, his political nemesis, said the crisis scenario he laid out isn’t just the result of the war, but also of his policies.
Some of Macron’s ministers rushed to clarify his comments hours later, suggesting the president isn’t defeatist but lucid. It was an exercise in damage control, but the tone had been set. Much of the ensuing TV commentary was spent debating what sacrifices will be demanded of the public. In that sense, Macron’s language contrasts with that of Joe Biden’s administration, which is reluctant to fuel recession talk, and even of the UK’s Liz Truss, frontrunner for Tory party leader, who refuses to believe a recession is inevitable despite the fact that the Bank of England predicts one. And the UK arguably faces a much bleaker picture than France.
In 1979, former US President Jimmy Carter pronounced what some described as the pinnacle of pessimism in politics. Against a background of inflation and pain at the gas pump, he argued that America was going through a “crisis of confidence” — in the future and the nation — that threatened the very social fabric of the country. As Europe struggles with the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Carter’s speech rings relevant today. Much will be decided by the bloc’s resolve to stay united, have confidence and determination.
I’ve long argued that many Europeans are still in denial about how a severe winter could hobble the economy. For households and businesses, it could force draconian choices: Buy fuel or buy good, stay open or close shop. Still, a reality check doesn’t mean fatalism.
For Macron, who already went through a traumatic period of social unrest with the yellow vest protests in 2018, fatalism risks undermining his own government. The French have capped energy prices, absorbing much of the pain through the state-owned utility Électricité de France, which reported a loss of 5 billion euros ($5 billion) in the first six months of the year, and cushioning the blow for consumers. Despite the malaise, France currently has one of the lowest inflation rates in the euro area. In that sense, Macron is buying social peace, just like he did with his “whatever the cost” stimulus during the pandemic lockdowns. The government shouldn’t sound like it’s throwing in the towel now.
Defeatism also risks undermining public support for Ukraine. Russia wants to see Europe reach its breaking point and ease sanctions. Despite the obvious stress in the energy market, where both gas and forward electricity prices are pushing fresh highs almost weekly, the EU so far has signaled it won’t reverse course. Even Macron himself recently suggested there was no room for compromising with Vladimir Putin under the current circumstances. Ultimately, he argued, this is battle of values too.
That’s encouraging, but maintaining morale will get harder as the days get colder, especially if we’re told everything is doomed from the get-go. For Ukrainians, who are paying a heavy price in blood and destruction, that is a disservice.
Macron also talked about a series of crises, going from the war to climate-related events to supply-chain issues. These are important issues but such blending can confuse public opinion and dilute Putin’s responsibility for the current situation — had he not invaded Ukraine, we wouldn’t be talking about an energy crisis of this magnitude.
Europe is entering uncharted waters this winter. We must stay lucid about the risks, but let’s not go into the storm assuming all is lost already.
• Don’t Try to Guess Putin’s Next Move. Just Listen: Maria Tadeo | 2022-08-29T05:44:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Europe Can’t Go Into Winter Thinking All Is Lost - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europe-cantgo-into-winter-thinking-all-is-lost/2022/08/29/4223e50a-2758-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europe-cantgo-into-winter-thinking-all-is-lost/2022/08/29/4223e50a-2758-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
An aerial view shows low water levels in the Bough Beech Reservoir in Kent, England. The British government officially declared a drought across swaths of England earlier this month. (Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)
People need to become “less squeamish” about drinking water that is derived from wastewater, the head of Britain’s Environment Agency says, as a way to tackle water shortages and increasingly severe droughts.
The idea of recycling wastewater for human consumption — once the realm of dystopian sci-fi films — is gaining traction globally as climate change intensifies droughts.
“Part of the solution will be to reprocess the water that results from sewage treatment and turn it back into drinking water — perfectly safe and healthy, but not something many people fancy,” Sir James Bevan wrote in Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper, as the country swelters through a record-breaking hot and dry summer.
In Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel “Dune,” inhabitants of a desert planet wore “stillsuits” designed to capture their sweat, urine and, yes — feces — and recycle it. That idea is still mired in fiction, but once-derided “toilet-to-tap” programs are becoming a reality in places including the Los Angeles area. Perth, Australia’s most water-parched big city, has said that eventually all of its wastewater could be recycled and put back into drinking water.
Water officials in London faced backlash in 2013 when they first proposed introducing recycled toilet waste into the city’s tap water to avoid looming water shortages. Now, many parts of the United Kingdom are grappling with low water supplies in reservoirs and rivers following months of record-low rainfall and unprecedented high temperatures. The government officially declared a drought across swaths of England this month.
“We need to remember where it comes from: when we turn on the tap, what comes out started in a river, lake or aquifer. The more we take, the more we drain those sources and put stress on nature and wildlife,” Bevan wrote.
Many parts of Europe have seen their driest summer on record as rivers dwindle to a trickle. Water shortages have become a problem in Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands.
Bevan acknowledged that recycling wastewater for drinking could be “unpopular,” but he said people need to change the way they think about water.
Britain’s water companies have been under the spotlight lately amid water leakages and sewage dumps that have polluted waterways, killing fish in the toxic waste and eroding trust in water regulators.
Proponents of recycled drinking water say it goes through a stringent process before it reaches household taps. First, it is treated at a waste treatment plant, before being passed through course and fine screens to filter out any debris. It then goes through a process known as reverse osmosis, water experts say, to remove any pathogens, viruses and bacteria. In the final step, the water is disinfected using ultraviolet light.
In Singapore, a craft brewing company announced in July that it was working with the national water agency to produce a beer made entirely from recycled wastewater — to help raise awareness of environmental issues. Brewerkz said at the time that it was “an opportunity to cast the spotlight on climate change impacts such as droughts and floods, which threaten the world’s freshwater supply.”
The tasting notes describe the beer as “highly quaffable” — perfect for Singapore’s tropical climate — with a “smooth, toasted honey-like aftertaste.” | 2022-08-29T06:57:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. official: Don’t be squeamish over drinking reused sewage water - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/uk-drink-sewage-water-squeamish-wastewater-recycle/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/uk-drink-sewage-water-squeamish-wastewater-recycle/ |
Members of the House of Lords at the State Opening of Parliament by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019. At 800-plus members, the Lords is the second-largest parliamentary chamber in the world. (WPA Pool/Getty Images)
LONDON — Britain’s House of Lords is bloated, lazy and unpopular. It’s certainly undemocratic, and by design. It’s a chamber of cronies; a palace of patronage, where some members barely care enough to show up. It’s a body in desperate need of modernization.
And those are the opinions of the lords themselves — some of them, anyway. The Lord Speaker, John McFall, warned last month that the house had become “too big,” that the recent political appointees “have not been especially active,” and their selection risks undermining “the public confidence in our parliamentary system.”
But if Boris Johnson gets his way, another 50 life peers could soon be bending elbows in the chamber’s rarefied dining rooms. That’s because a farewell perk allows the outgoing prime minister to ask the queen to bestow peerages to any number of people of his choosing — including top-money donors to the Conservative Party and all manner of political allies, including family and friends.
The Sunday Times of London and Open Democracy group last year estimated the going rate at 3 million pounds for a seat in the Lords.
This appears to be both scandal, and tradition.
But it comes at a moment when many — including a number of highly competent peers — fear that without serious reform, mostly stymied over the past century, the House of Lords might not survive far into the 21st century, because the people just won’t have it.
Conservative leadership race is making Tories miss Boris Johnson
Arising in the 14th century, begun in its present form in 1801, the House of Lords evolved to become the second chamber of Britain’s bicameral parliament, where unelected peers scrutinize government policy and bills drafted in the elected, more boisterous House of Commons, seen by a global television audience in recent years banging on about Brexit, as the bellicose speaker bellowed out “orrrder!”
The Commons is where real power lies, but the Lords provides, as one member put it, “real value.”
“You will find the people who are most keen for reform of the House of Lords are the Lords themselves,” said David Anderson — since 2018, Lord Anderson, Baron of Ipswich — a prominent barrister with expertise in human rights and constitutional law.
He worries that the chamber has become a target of derision. “The perception of corruption is extraordinarily corrosive,” Anderson told The Washington Post. He said the way appointments are doled out by prime ministers is “the biggest abuse, more than the actual numbers,” which is also a problem.
Much of the negative focus is not really about the money spent on the Lords, but the money Lords might pay to get into the house. The life peers — many of them already well-to-do — earn only a gig rate. For each day they show up to work at Westminster, they receive $379, tax-free, plus modest travel expenses.
How big is the House of Lords? Huge.
And on his way out the door, Johnson may make it more huge. There is no upper limit.
It’s gotten so big, there aren’t enough seats on the red-upholstered benches in the Victorian-era Palace of Westminster for the all the members’ bottoms.
The official count is “around 800” members — and the lack of precision underscores the fact that the deliberative body is replete with inactive or aged members, who because of sickness or infirmity or more pressing matters elsewhere, might be in the act of quiet quitting or subtle retirement.
A lot of them simply don’t show up.
Regardless, the number 800 makes the Lords the second-largest parliamentary chamber in the world, after China’s National People’s Congress, with 2,980 members.
Population of Britain: 67 million.
Population of China: 1.4 billion.
Members of China’s assembly serve five-year terms. The Lords serve for life. (Their 650 counterparts in the House of Commons rise and fall by each general election.)
Quiz: Boris Johnson did WHAT?
Who are these 800-plus Lords?
There are 26 “spiritual peers,” bishops of the Church of England — despite the fact that Britain is a nation of multiple faiths, where half the people say they don’t belong to any religion.
Another 92 are “heredity peers.” These are the Downton Abbey-type aristocrats whom many reformers would like to see tossed: The marquesses, viscounts, barons et cetera, whose titles are passed down for generations.
One earl dies, another takes his place, elected by his fellow noblemen, to the house.
By the way, the hereditary peers are all men. A lone hereditary baroness died a few years ago.
The vast majority of the Lords — 700 or so — are nominated by a prime minister, in consultation with other political leaders, and appointed by the monarch. Many are aligned with the political parties, but a few hundred are “cross-benchers,” who are mostly independent (though not without their own political loyalties).
Johnson, after three years in office, has already sent 86 new members to the Lords — more than 10 percent of the current house. They include his former boss at the Daily Telegraph newspaper, the columnist and Thatcher biographer Charles Moore; the Russian-born businessman and tabloid newspaper owner Evgeny Lebedev, son of a former KGB officer; and Jo Johnson, his younger brother.
Once in, hard to kick out. Some reformers have pressed prime ministers to adopt a “two out, one in” rule to slim down the Lords. The diet plan hasn’t worked.
Life peer means what it says, for life — and these aren’t spring chickens.
The heredity peer Lord Trefgarne took his seat on his 21st birthday in 1962 and has been in service for six decades. He’s now 81. Which isn’t really that old, considering. The average age is 71. The oldest member is Lord Christopher. He’s 97. Baroness Gardner of Parkes at 95 is the oldest woman.
Some members do eventually die. Some retire. A few are pushed, including Lords who, it turned out, weren’t British taxpayers, but domiciled in Monaco, Hong Kong and Switzerland.
So far, the list of names on Johnson’s resignation honor roll remains semi-secret. But the former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, revealed last month that he had seen a draft drawn up by a political lobby group that advises Johnson, with a plan “to appoint up to 50 new Conservative peers to force contentious new laws through parliament.”
Brown charged that it was Johnson’s plan to pack “the Lords with his cronies and legitimize bribery.”
“Money talks, and nowhere more so than in the Lords,” Gordon wrote in the Guardian. He said 22 of the most generous Tory donors — who together have donated $64 million to the Conservatives — have been made Lords since 2010, when the party began its 12-year hold on 10 Downing Street.
Brown pointed out that the abolition of the current House of Lords was one of the ten commitments Keir Starmer made when he took over leadership of the Labour Party in 2020.
Johnson has not confirmed plans to appoint so many new peers, of which a majority would certainly be Conservative Party members. But a spokesman defended the prime minister. “Given retirements and departures, new members of the Lords continue to be needed,” he said. “It is entirely proper for a prime minister and opposition parties to put forward names for a political peerage list.”
The British parliament is sometimes compared to the U.S. Congress, with its House of Representatives and Senate, but in fact is very different.
In the British system, the House of Commons is where really all the action is. It’s where the government introduces legislation, and where it’s debated and voted upon.
The House of Lords serves more as an advisory, overseeing body — but provides important services. The chamber closely, methodically, line-by-line, scrutinizes the bills approved by the House of Commons. It regularly amends the drafts. Its committee report are the best of class, but rarely read widely outside the Westminster bubble.
The Lords is the more deliberative, less partisan body, deploying considerable expertise that can shape and sharpen public policy and hold the government to account.
“There are a substantial number of peers who really work quite hard,” said Robert James Roberts, a.k.a. Lord Lisvane, a former lawmaker from Wales, who previously served as the clerk or chief executive, in the House of Commons. Roberts told The Post there were also many members he might not even recognize in the chamber, as they attend so infrequently
“We are seen as a bloated chamber,” said Peter Norton, professor of government at the University of Hull, described in the press as Britain’s “greatest living expert on parliament” and since 1998 a member of the Lords. But he told The Post that the chamber does provide “excellent value” in its improvement of legislation.
He said the reputation and mission of the House of Lords has been undercut by rule-breaking Johnson, “a prime minister putting cronies in, or people who will just support the party line.”
“This doesn’t help” anyone, he said, except maybe Johnson.
Norton has introduced a private member’s bill that would give the House of Lords statutory authority to vet — even veto — a prime minister’s nominees.
He envisions a high bar: Appointees must demonstrate “conspicuous merit” and “a willingness to serve,” and not just a desire to exploit their new title.
He called the proposed vetting a necessary tool to maintain “quality control.”
Norton pointed to Tory donor, businessman and billionaire philanthropist Peter Cruddas, who was ennobled in 2020 in defiance of advice from the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which recommended unanimously that Johnson rescind the nomination. Days after becoming Baron Cruddas, The Times of London reported, he gave half a million pounds to the Conservative Party.
“Ultimately it is for the Prime Minister to decide who he wants in the House of Lords,” Cruddas told The Post in a statement. “I was nominated because of my Brexit work.”
Johnson praised Cruddas for his philanthropy and his financial acumen.
Cruddas said the vetting commission in the Lords existed for the last 20 years and that the group “never give reasons, and they never publish their minutes of meetings, and their decisions are secretive and without explanation.”
Robot-carved Elgin marble replicas: A solution for the British Museum?
Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, an advocacy group pushing for the democratization of the House of Lords, said many Britons tell pollsters they view the House of Lords “as a cozy club for the privileged few,” but might not understand that they pass legislation.
A recent survey by the YouGov group in March 2022 found that almost half those asked said they had little or no confidence in the House of Lords.
“The Lords has some very distinguished individual members, but they and all their hard work is degraded by this kind of grubby connection between membership and money,” Hughes said.
Reforms would require approval from the government and the House of Commons. Some prime ministers have expressed support, but actual measurers have gone nowhere.
Anderson says the chamber is stuck in part because the House of Commons is satisfied with the status quo.
“A lot of elected politicians pretend they want the House of Lords to be elected because that is more democratic. But the reality is that if the Lords were elected, the House of Lords would have a legitimacy that it currently does not,” he said. “It would become a democratic rival to the Commons, in a way you are familiar with in the United States, with the House and Senate.”
“It probably suits them,” he said, “that the Lords look a little bit ridiculous around the edges.” | 2022-08-29T07:06:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boris Johnson could make bloated House of Lords even larger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/boris-johnson-house-lords/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/boris-johnson-house-lords/ |
ATLANTA — Rory McIlroy,rallied from six shots behind to win the Tour Championship and capture the FedEx Cup for the third time.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Austin Dillon avoided a massive wreck in the rain to win at Daytona International Speedway and snag a playoff spot in the Cup Series’ regular-season finale.
LAS VEGAS — Jewell Loyd scored 26 points, including Seattle’s final six, and the Storm edged the Las Vegas Aces 76-73 to take a 1-0 lead in the WNBA semifinals.
CHICAGO — DeWanna Bonner had 15 points and nine rebounds to lead the Connecticut to a 68-63 win over the Chicago Sky in Game 1 of their WNBA semifinals series. | 2022-08-29T07:15:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weekend Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/08/29/6d8ea648-2763-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/08/29/6d8ea648-2763-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
A homeowner keeps an eye on the depth of floodwaters Aug. 28, while driving through a neighborhood in northeast Jackson, Miss. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
Residents near the Pearl River in Mississippi prepared for flooding this weekend as the mayor of the capital, Jackson, warned people to evacuate “as soon as possible” if they hadn’t already.
The river, which runs through the southern part of the city, was expected to crest at about 36 feet on Monday, possibly on Tuesday, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D) said Sunday on CNN.
As many as 150 homes in the northeast and southern parts of the city are threatened, Lumumba said. Flooding in the area in 2020 serves as a reference point for this week’s weather, Lumumba said, so “we know the damage that can occur.”
During that flood, the Pearl River crested at 36.67 feet.
Gov. Tate Reeves (R) issued a state of emergency on Saturday in preparation for the flooding. He said in a statement that “if your home flooded in 2020, there is a high probability it will happen again.”
State authorities were “monitoring this situation closely,” he said.
The state has prepared by deploying drones to assess water levels, as well as 126,000 sandbags.
The Red Cross was operating an evacuation shelter at the Jackson Police Training Academy, Reeves said.
Despite the urgency, Reeves urged “everyone to remain calm. Be aware, but don’t panic.”
Lumumba said residents had already been “inundated with persistent rain” in recent days, complicating preparation efforts. “By and large,” people have heeded calls to evacuate, he said.
Residents have been advised to pack evacuation kits with up to two weeks of supplies, as the “water can be with us for some time.” | 2022-08-29T08:46:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mississippi flood threat prompts Jackson mayor to urge evacuations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/29/mississippi-flooding-jackson-mayor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/29/mississippi-flooding-jackson-mayor/ |
‘She’s doing it her way, and there’s no more comfortable way of doing it.’
Naomi Osaka counts herself as a Serena Williams disciple. (David Gray/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Chanda Rubin, a Tennis Channel commentator and former sixth-ranked singles player in the world, credits some small part of her fifth WTA singles title to Serena Williams. Rubin beat Williams “by the skin of her teeth,” she said, in a three-set quarterfinal in Los Angeles in August 2002. At the end of the match, the players met to shake hands and Williams told Rubin, “Now go win the tournament.”
It was the kind of tacit support any Black person operating in a majority-White space might recognize.
Williams is more than five years younger than Rubin, who was no slouch herself and had won a title already that summer. But Williams was No. 1 at the time and had been on a 21-match winning streak that included a victory over Rubin at Wimbledon. Her words imbued within Rubin a confidence she still vividly remembers today.
“She said that to me, and I thought, ‘Okay, yeah, I should.’ And then I won the tournament!” Rubin said. “It was just something about being a competitor and going all out against her, but having total respect, being uplifted by her — all of those feelings, for me, are wrapped up in it.”
As Williams begins the U.S. Open, which she has hinted will be the end of her tennis career, she leaves in her wake more than two decades’ worth of Black women who have watched her and at some point or another felt like Rubin did standing at the net that day. Proud. Uplifted. Energized.
Williams is a talisman for many Black women because the only lines she ever stayed within were on a tennis court. Even her presence there, at the time of her and her sister Venus’s debuts in the late 1990s, was radical, more than 40 years after Althea Gibson became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam title.
Comfort in her own skin
Staley has spent her career around tall, strong, sturdy athletes. She knows they’re often more agile than they look, just as she knows the limitations of towering height and big feet.
When she’s asked what impresses her most about Williams’s athletic career, it isn’t the longevity or titles won or number of weeks spent at No. 1.
“Um, I mean, a big body like that is not supposed to move like that,” Staley said with a warm chuckle. “Seriously, think of the power and grace. She has the best of both worlds. I love it.”
In speaking with Black women about their feelings on Williams, what comes up without fail is her comfort in her own skin.
From the moment she emerged on tour, Williams stood out, even compared to her sister, never fitting the paradigm of what audiences had been taught to accept as a “typical” tennis body. She played with beads in her hair and worked muscular arms and legs, unleashing war cries that reverberated through a stadium when she pumped her fist after a big point.
Her screams, in particular, were noteworthy. Williams plays with all of the passion that Black women — all women — have been told to dampen their entire lives, lest lazy brains cast them as angry, sassy, disrespectful or worse.
“Looking different or feeling different or sounding different, especially in the workplace, that was something a lot of us could relate to,” said Roxanne Aaron, the president of the American Tennis Association, a more than 100-year-old Black organization.
Aside from the sheer fact of Williams’s physical presence was how she chose to boldly adorn it.
Denim, as Williams sported at the U.S. Open in 2004, isn’t really meant to be lunged in. Tulle, as seen in her ballerina skirt at the U.S. Open in 2018, might not be fit for a warrior in some minds.
Perhaps nothing communicates self-confidence more than a one-legged catsuit.
Williams’s envelope-pushing ensembles expressed the type of personality usually reserved for streetwear. They were defiantly, breezily individual, like Williams herself.
To Rubin, the outfits were also a mission statement.
Williams dressed the way she wanted, challenging not just what audiences were used to seeing but the idea of what a player representing blue-chip brands had to look like.
“For me — I’m going to speak for myself — I think a lot of times Black women in sports feel like we’re the lowest on the totem pole in terms of what is more valued, what people want to see or what sponsors want to connect with,” Rubin said. “As tennis players, that’s sort of how we value ourselves — ‘How much are you getting in the marketplace? What’s your contract value?’ Watching Serena and seeing her evolve, dress the way she wants and just be who she is … I think that resonates. She is owning her value. She set the market.”
Years ago, Williams was filming a commercial for which a stunt double was needed, someone who could pass for a younger version of her from the neck down. The shoot ended up being what Coco Gauff says was her first check.
In hindsight, the payday is symbolic. When Gauff shot to tennis stardom with a surprise run to Wimbledon’s fourth round in 2019, she stepped into a world in which consumers were accustomed to seeing Black female tennis players atop the food chain and sponsors and TV broadcasters valued them more appropriately.
Williams had topped the list of Forbes’ highest-earning female athletes for years when Gauff made her debut, after taking the title from Maria Sharapova in 2016. Before then, Sharapova had reigned for 11 straight years despite the disparity in their on-court achievements — five Grand Slam titles as of 2016 to Williams’s 21.
But after Williams, it was another woman of color who took the crown.
Naomi Osaka, the child of a Japanese mother and a Haitian father who counts herself as a Williams disciple, became the world’s highest-paid female athlete in 2020. She leveraged her talent and her multicultural appeal to set an earnings record for a female athlete in a year with $37.4 million, a record she eclipsed this year by just shy of $20 million.
“We are product pushers, we are influencers, and Serena has made it okay for Black women to represent in this way,” Staley said.
Gauff understands this intimately. She will play this year’s U.S. Open in her signature shoe, the Coco CG1, which she produced with longtime sponsor New Balance. At 18, she is the only active tennis player aside from Roger Federer with signature footwear.
In answering a question about her relationship with Williams, Gauff said the lesson she has taken from conversations with the 40-year-old over the years is about career management. She notices the way Williams carries herself, that she never puts herself down.
“Sometimes being a woman, a Black woman in the world, you kind of settle for less,” Gauff said. “I feel like Serena taught me that, from watching her. She never settled for less. … As a person, I'm growing into being an adult and learning how to handle things now with the media and tennis and everything. I'm trying to learn to not settle for less.”
‘Somebody who looked like me’
Osaka was caught on camera this month at a tournament in Cincinnati, cheering in the stands while watching Williams’s first-round match against Emma Raducanu. She froze mid-clap when she realized the camera was on her, capturing her messy bun and off-duty glasses.
Caption This! 😂 @naomiosaka | #CincyTennis pic.twitter.com/K7PTaH8MnA
She was at the match not to scout — she had lost earlier that day — but as a fan, to soak up as many moments of her idol’s career as she could.
“Her legacy is really wide to the point where you can’t even describe it in words,” said Osaka, who cried when she realized Williams was gearing up for the final leg of her career. “She changed the sport so much. She’s introduced people that have never heard of tennis into the sport. I think I’m a product of what she’s done.”
If Williams has affected the everyday woman of color in more emotional or interior ways, her impact on tennis is the rock-solid distillation of her influence.
The Williams sisters turned what was a sad trickle of Black and Brown players entering the sport into a steadier stream, in large part because of the manner in which they broke through. The Compton, Calif.-raised sisters’ success was a family affair, one that proved stars could come from anywhere in the country and didn’t have to be wealthy to win.
The U.S. Open hit a high water mark in 2020 with 13 Black players in the women’s singles tournament, a 25-year age gap between the oldest (Venus) and youngest (15-year-old Robin Montgomery).
The Black players the Williams sisters have inspired include Grand Slam champions such as Osaka and Sloane Stephens. On the men’s tour, the United States’ second-ranked player, Frances Tiafoe, calls Venus and Serena mentors.
“Growing up, I never thought that I was different because the number one player in the world was somebody who looked like me,” Gauff said.
Yet true power is the ability not just to cut a wider path for those who follow but to affect those around you as well. Williams set Rubin on a mission in 2002 with five words and her presence.
Rubin, who in more recent years has connected with her old opponent over the challenges and joys of motherhood when they catch up, continues to be inspired.
“There’s no blueprint, really, for what she’s done and what she’s in a position to continue to do beyond tennis,” Rubin said. “That’s the amazing part of it. We set the bar pretty high for her at this stage, but in some ways, she’s still figuring a lot of things out, too. I feel lucky. I feel lucky that I’ve had an opportunity to witness it.” | 2022-08-29T08:47:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Serena Williams is iconic to many Black women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/29/serena-williams-black-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/29/serena-williams-black-women/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Nuclear watchdog mission ‘on its way’ to Zaporizhzhia as attacks near plant injure 10
A satellite image shows the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian forces, in Ukraine on Sunday. (Planet Labs PBC /AP)
A “support and assistance mission” from the International Atomic Energy Agency is “on its way” to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, the head of the organization said Monday, as Ukrainian officials say Russian forces struck perilously close to the plant. Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
IAEA inspectors are headed to Zaporizhzhia as a result of complex negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations-linked agency amid rising international concern that strikes around the plant, which is under Russian military control, could cause a nuclear accident. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi tweeted Monday that a mission to Zaporizhzhia would reach the site “later this week.”
Ukrainian officials reported more strikes around the Zaporizhzhia plant. Ten people were injured, including four of the plant’s workers, in Sunday’s shelling that hit the city of Enerhodar, where the facility is located and many of its workers live, according to Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear power company. Shelling on Sunday in Nikopol, across the Dnieper River from the plant, left at least one dead, five injured and more than 2,600 families without electricity, according to the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko.
Russia’s FSB announced an update in its investigation into the killing of Daria Dugina, the daughter of the Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin who died when a bomb exploded in the car she was driving outside Moscow last week. Russia’s federal security service, which blamed Ukraine’s special services for the incident, claimed Monday to have identified another Ukrainian national involved in making the explosive device that detonated in Dugina’s car. Ukrainian officials have denied any responsibility for the killing, which further ratcheted up tensions between Kyiv and Moscow.
E.U. countries are unlikely to agree to ban visas for all Russians, according to Josep Borrell, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, who will chair a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers this week where the proposal is on the agenda. While there is support for the measure in some E.U. countries, others, like Germany, have expressed reservations. “I don’t think that to cut the relationship with the Russian civilian population will help and I don’t think that this idea will have the required unanimity,” Borrell told the Austrian broadcaster ORF TV on Sunday.
New Zealand is trying to repatriate the body of one of its nationals who died fighting in Ukraine, but it may not be possible given conditions on the ground, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday, according to the New Zealand Herald. Local media outlets reported last week that Dominic Abelen, a corporal in New Zealand’s army, traveled to Ukraine while on leave to fight and died there.
The story of little Liza, killed in her stroller by a Russian missile: Headlines about the 4-year-old girl who was killed by a Russian strike in Vinnytsia in July reverberated around the world. Her mother, Iryna Dmytrieva, in her first interview since leaving a hospital because of her own injuries, says she keeps replaying those final moments with Liza.
The Post’s Jennifer Hassan writes: “The two were going from one appointment to another, and Iryna is thankful she had securely strapped her daughter into the stroller at that point because they were rushing. Otherwise, she says, ‘Who knows where she would have ended up?’ ”
The decision meant the family had a body to bury, unlike the many other bodies blown apart that day. “She was my life. What Russia took from me cannot be forgiven. All my plans are destroyed,” Dmytrieva said. | 2022-08-29T08:47:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/29/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
Prince George’s, Montgomery, D.C. schools begin new year
Hundreds line up to receive stuffed backpacks, digital devices and other supplies during the back-to-school event Aug. 27 at Audi Field, hosted by Serve Your City, a mutual aid organization based in D.C.'s Ward 6.
Across the Washington region, more students are heading back into classrooms as Maryland’s two largest districts and D.C. public schools begin classes today.
Arlington Public Schools also begins its school year today;; most school systems in Northern Virginia started last week.
Along with welcoming back students, school officials are also working to fill remaining teacher shortages, ensuring students have completed vaccinations and keeping a close eye on community levels of covid-19 cases.
Montgomery County Public Schools reported 169 teacher, 29 part-time teacher, 448 support staff and 32 bus driver openings as of Friday. Prince George’s County Public Schools has about 900 teacher vacancies and still needed about 165 bus drivers as of Friday. The district has told families who rely on the bus to expect delays for the first few weeks, as drivers get used to new routes. Many of the teacher openings there are in special education, which districts across the country have struggled to staff for years — even before the pandemic. Montgomery County reached an incentive package agreement with its teachers union just before the start of school to better staff special education classrooms.
D.C. public schools has reported about 150 teacher vacancies. School district leaders have tapped central-service staff to fill in classes during the month of September. Contracts for substitute teachers have also been expanded, officials said.
Many educators left the profession during the past school year amid complaints about burnout, low pay and unsupportive environments, particularly after the pandemic disrupted in-person learning. The Washington Teachers’ Union has gone three years without a labor contract with the public school system, much to the ire of members.
Despite those challenges, parents are hopeful another year of in-person learning will continue to help students recover academically. Lei Zong, a parent of a third- and fifth-grader in Prince George’s schools said she was looking forward to “get back into ‘normal’ — whatever normal is.” Friday was the first time she was able to step into a school building since the beginning of the pandemic for a back-to-school event at her children’s school, Robert Goddard Montessori in Seabrook, Md.
“I’m glad the county brought back the mask mandate, at least at the beginning of the school year just to keep the numbers down,” Zong, 44, said. Prince George’s reinstated its universal mask mandate in August, though CEO Monica Goldson has indicated the requirement could ease “in the coming weeks” as covid positivity rates decline.
In the District, students and staff have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test before returning to classrooms on Monday morning, a measure that was first implemented in the previous school year. The District is mandating students over the age of 12 be vaccinated against the coronavirus — a requirement that makes it an anomaly not just among schools in the region, but in the country.
The measure, the result of legislation passed by the D.C. Council last year, has faced criticism for its potential to keep students out of school. Education officials in the city recently decided to give students more time to comply — children who are not fully vaccinated against the virus will be notified Nov. 21 and will need to get their shots by Jan. 3.
Beyond those requirements, most schools in the area have relaxed many of the coronavirus protocols that were in place. Mask mandates have been dropped — except in Prince George’s schools — and policies that required students and staff to quarantine after being exposed to the virus have been eliminated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose recommendations many school systems follow, relaxed its covid guidelines for schools earlier this month.
Outside of coronavirus and staffing concerns, officials in the District are anticipating enrollment to tick upward after taking a hit during the first year of the pandemic. Those numbers, however, will likely continue to fluctuate before the official count day on Oct. 5.
“We can only speculate,” Paul Kihn, deputy mayor for education, said during an interview Thursday. “In the early years, people were keeping their kids home and not sending them to our pre-K programs, for example.”
He also suspects there were high school students who opted out of virtual learning. “So there are, we think, a large number of students that are here that are coming back,” Kihn added.
Officials are also expecting about 40 migrant children who have arrived in the District on buses from the southern border to enroll this fall. More than 7,000 migrants have come in the city since April — a situation that was created by Republican governors from Texas and Arizona who are providing the rides as a way to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies.
Many of the younger migrants are living in temporary shelters and hotels. They will come to classrooms with tremendous needs — from mental health care to Spanish language services, according to volunteer groups that have been assisting the new families.
“We’re going to receive school-aged children in the District, and we’ll be ready for all of them,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in an interview. “We have systems in place to welcome them on Monday and to assist them with their enrollment. | 2022-08-29T10:05:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Back to school: Montgomery, Prince George's, D.C. schools begin today - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/29/dc-montgomery-prince-georges-back-to-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/29/dc-montgomery-prince-georges-back-to-school/ |
Two-bedroom, three-bathroom condo in Brightwood lists for $399,999
The two-level unit has hardwood floors and a large living room that can accommodate a home office space. (HomeVisit)
Access to public transportation, shops and restaurants are often a priority for home buyers in the city, but that preference typically comes with a high price tag. The median sales price for a home in D.C. was $646,000 in July, according to Bright MLS.
Buyers looking in the city may be drawn to neighborhoods where they work or meet friends, but sometimes it pays to look at areas that are less familiar. For example, the Brightwood neighborhood in Northwest Washington has a mix of rowhouses, single-family homes and condos. Public transportation is easily accessible along Georgia Avenue from many homes in Brightwood and the Takoma, Georgia Avenue-Petworth, and Fort Totten Metro stations surrounding the neighborhood.
Neighborhood options for shops, restaurants and activities are growing with the development of the Parks at Walter Reed. The Fort Stevens Recreation Center and the Takoma Recreation Center are also nearby, along with Rock Creek Park.
One condo now on the market, approximately one mile from the Parks at Walter, is at 1000 Rittenhouse St. NW. Condo unit #24 is priced at $399,999. Annual property taxes are $2,619 and monthly condo fees are $282. The condo fee includes building maintenance, reserve funds, water, trash and sewer services. Only on-street parking is available.
The building has been approved for FHA financing, which many first-time buyers choose because of its easier qualification guidelines and a down payment requirement of just 3.5 percent.
The 1,053-square-foot unit has two bedrooms and three bathrooms. The two-level unit has hardwood floors and a large living room that can accommodate a home office space. A separate dining room, galley kitchen and powder room complete the main level. The kitchen includes a gas range and white cabinets but could be updated. Upstairs are two bedrooms, each with a private full bathroom and large closets. This level also has a closet with a stacked washer and dryer. The condo building allows pets. The unit has central air conditioning and gas heat and hot water.
Assigned schools include Brightwood Education Campus and Coolidge High.
For more information, contact Leslie Griffith, a real estate agent with Century 21 Redwood Realty, at 410- 707-2785. | 2022-08-29T10:18:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two-bedroom, three-bathroom condo in Brightwood lists for $399,999 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/29/two-bedroom-three-bathroom-condo-brightwood-lists-399999/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/29/two-bedroom-three-bathroom-condo-brightwood-lists-399999/ |
Twin lawsuits in the D.C. area show just how fleeting the direct impact of civil litigation can be for incarcerated people
Those incarcerated at the D.C. jail sued over coronavirus conditions. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Christmas was days away, omicron cases of coronavirus were surging and the attorneys who had been fighting to protect people in jail were running out of options.
After a nearly two year court fight, Civil Rights Corps lawyers had reached a settlement agreement with officials in Prince George’s County, Md., to help those incarcerated at the jail there. The settlement imposed mandatory testing, isolation and vaccine protocols at a facility where people had complained of conditions so bad they said they didn’t even have enough soap.
But the third-party inspector and other measures designed to make the jail safer was about to go away — as the coronavirus was spreading as never before.
The best the attorneys could do, they decided, was to write a firm letter.
“While the enforcement period for the Settlement Agreement in this case ends today,” the attorneys wrote to county leaders in December 2021, “there is no end in sight to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
An ‘insane’ coronavirus lockdown two miles from the Capitol, with no end in sight
At the same time, several people detained at the D.C. jail were fighting their own lawsuit with similar accusations.
The legal battles over coronavirus protections in the neighboring jurisdictions, experts say, helped expose grim realities about the jails here and nationwide. Jails are not equipped to provide specialty or ongoing care, leaving the people in them vulnerable to the spread of infectious diseases. As a result, generations of detainees in the facilities have suffered from outbreaks of valley fever, MRSA, HIV — and now the coronavirus, with a looming new threat of monkeypox.
Because many jurisdictions have limited local independent oversight of their jails, incarcerated people often turn to lawsuits for relief from dangerous conditions. But the two-year litigation over coronavirus in the D.C. and Prince George’s jails — as well as a federal law that makes it harder for incarcerated people to file lawsuits — shows just how fleeting the direct impact of lawsuits can be, lawyers say, even when the allegations are a matter of life and death.
“This to me is a perfect example of why lawsuits can call attention to very pressing problems, but they are limited,” said Ellora Israni, the Civil Rights Corps attorney who helped lead the litigation in Prince George’s. “Lawsuits are not going to solve these problems in and of themselves.”
Turning to the courts
A 48-year-old said he had not received a bar of soap in two weeks. A 24-year-old said he wanted to wear a mask but couldn’t get one. A 46-year-old said medical staffers refused to meet with a sick detainee on his unit.
It was March 2020, and while much of the outside world was stocking up on dry goods and bottles of hand sanitizer, the people held in the D.C. jail struggled to protect themselves from what doctors were calling the novel coronavirus.
The D.C. Department of Corrections, attorneys alleged in court filings, was failing to provide basic sanitary equipment and medical care as people were falling ill behind bars. They filed grievance report after grievance report, trying to get the attention of leadership. When that failed, they sued.
In the earliest weeks of the pandemic, when the coronavirus was spreading far faster in the jail than in the rest of the city, the D.C. Public Defender Service and the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. argued that the city had shown “ongoing failure to take reasonable precautions to prevent the spread and severity of a COVID-19 outbreak.”
“We knew we had to take action quickly,” said Scott Michelman, the legal director of the ACLU of D.C. “It was our view that days or hours were a matter of life or death.”
Two weeks later, a 51-year-old detainee named Deon M. Crowell died of covid-19.
The lawsuit, the attorneys hoped, would shine light on jail conditions, compel the court to order improvements and then, critically, help to ensure change.
For a time, Michelman said, that lawsuit worked. Court-appointed inspectors published a report that found detainees who were isolated with coronavirus infections were denied showers, spent days in soiled clothes and could not contact family members for up to weeks at a time. A federal judge granted a motion temporarily requiring jail officials to address those deficiencies.
In June 2020 — after inspectors returned and found shortcomings, including that the jail was still delaying care for those who were ill — the judge issued a preliminary injunction to reinforce and extend the guidelines in her first order.
Although the facility was never in complete compliance with the court’s order, attorneys for those detained said, by September 2020 the jail had “invested additional resources” in responding to detainees’ requests for medical help. They had also distributed tablet computers with educational programs about how to avoid catching the virus, according to an inspector report.
“I think it’s clear the order had a significant effect of changing the practices of the Department of Corrections,” Michelman said. “I really believed that saved lives.”
The jail’s population had also decreased since the onset of the pandemic, largely as a result of a drop in the number of people being charged and defense attorneys arguing in individual cases for pretrial release and sentence reductions for people deemed not dangerous.
But in July 2021, as the delta variant of the coronavirus was devastating the region, that progress began to unravel.
The city had used a federal law called the Prison Litigation Reform Act to argue that the preliminary injunction had long expired. The 1996 law requires incarcerated people to exhaust a facility’s entire grievance procedure before taking officials to court, and it causes preliminary injunctions to end automatically after 90 days.
The D.C. Court of Appeals agreed with the city, ending the injunction that had been in place for more than a year as detainees’ most powerful vehicle for effecting change.
The decision meant that in December 2021, when the first case of omicron was detected in the region and the threat of outbreaks in the jail once again escalated, no active court oversight was in place.
D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D -Ward 8) said the deluge of phone calls he received complaining about coronavirus conditions at the D.C. jail that month took him back to the beginning of the pandemic.
A spokesperson for the D.C. Department of Corrections said in a statement that “DOC has made significant progress in our efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among our residents and facilities,” and cited the department’s work with other District agencies to put in place practices including “rigorous medical evaluations of DOC residents” and “increased frequency of cleaning and sanitizing the facilities.”
By late December 2021, the city reported that 82 detainees and 62 employees at the jail had tested positive for the coronavirus, accounting for about a fifth of the facility’s total reported case count since the onset of the pandemic. The facility reverted to near lockdown.
‘The pandemic is far from over’
Next door in Prince George’s, advocates worried that omicron was spreading through the jail at an equally alarming rate.
But unlike in the District, where the ACLU and public defenders were just beginning their settlement negotiations, Civil Rights Corps attorneys in Prince George’s had already reached a resolution with the county — which came more than a year after a federal judge had blasted officials there for acting with “reckless disregard” of the outbreak.
As part of the settlement, infectious-disease specialist Carlos Franco-Paredes had access to the detention center from September to December 2021 for four independent, unannounced inspections.
Franco-Paredes found during those visits that the jail had made certain court-ordered changes, which he documented in reports obtained by The Washington Post. Officials, he wrote, had acquired more clean masks and sanitizing supplies. The jail also had improved its testing protocol after plaintiffs and the court criticized officials for under-testing people, then claiming low case counts.
But other deficiencies, he said, persisted.
Franco-Paredes said that medical staffers were consistently taking detainees’ temperatures on their arms or necks with a device that yields accurate results only when used on foreheads. Some detainees were waiting weeks for the medical staff to acknowledge requests for help, his reports said, and alleged they were often ignored altogether. Detainees sick with covid-19 in medical isolation told Franco-Paredes they had to yell and bang on their cell doors for attention. Even then, the doctor wrote, they were offered only Tylenol.
In his final walk-through in early December, shortly before the terms of the settlement were scheduled to expire, many of the same problems remained, he said. And vaccination rates were still concerningly low — despite what the doctor had reported as a good-faith rollout effort by the jail — because many detainees distrusted the jail’s medical staff.
“As evinced by the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in the surrounding community and the rise of the omicron variant,” Franco-Paredes wrote, “the pandemic is far from over.”
The terms of the settlement had allowed for a 60-day extension of the oversight, but a judge did not issue one — a decision made with no public ruling or explanation because settlement mediation is not documented in the court docket.
On Dec. 23, the day the enforcement period expired, the Civil Rights Corps team sent its letter to county officials.
“Prince George’s County itself has taken drastic steps to ensure the health and safety of its non-incarcerated residents,” the letter said. “Plaintiffs hope that the Department will take the same care with regard to incarcerated residents.”
The county never responded.
In a statement to The Post, the county acknowledged receipt of the letter but said officials did not respond because they were no longer legally obligated to do so. A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections described as “without merit” the allegations in the letter as well as the claims in Franco-Paredes’s reports about delayed response to sick calls and detainee distrust of the jail’s medical staff.
“All of the COVID-19 procedures and safety protocols remain in effect,” the county’s statement said.
Over the holidays, rumors began to circulate of another coronavirus outbreak.
Civil Rights Corps attorneys and community advocates were flooded with desperate pleas from incarcerated people and their family members. A group of 37 detainees at the jail wrote a signed letter to advocates and a Post reporter describing conditions inside and saying their concerns went unaddressed. Staffers were becoming sick and calling out, the letter said, forcing detainees into a two-day lockdown.
“Do we have to become ‘positive’ to get the proper treatment in here?” they wrote. “Or does someone have to ‘die’ before the jail takes this seriously?”
In December 2021 alone, according to the jail, at least 122 incarcerated people and 87 jail staffers tested positive for coronavirus — nearly the same number of confirmed cases as the prior 22 months combined.
By the end of January, the total covid case count for that month among detainees and staffers had reached 221.
‘Very temporary changes’
By the arrival of fall, a season when coronavirus case numbers have spiked and when experts predict new variants of the virus will continue to spread, the court-ordered independent inspections in D.C. will be long gone. In Prince George’s, there have been no lawsuit-related independent inspections this year.
Officials say they have implemented robust systems to protect people at the jails. But Franco-Paredes, who also conducted the D.C. jail lawsuit inspections, is worried.
“My impression is that these are very temporary changes,” he said, discussing his decades of work in detention facilities. “Once we aren’t watching, I don’t think there is any clear effort to make these systemic, long-term changes.”
Advocates and public defenders in both jurisdictions say lawmakers must do more to create permanent, independent oversight of the jails.
In D.C., there was some movement to create more permanent oversight of jail conditions after the U.S. Marshals Service conducted an unannounced inspection last year that found unsanitary living conditions and the punitive denial of food and water to those detained among other problems. Accusing the facility of “systemic failures," the service transferred hundreds of detainees facing federal charges to a penitentiary in Pennsylvania. After that report, litigators and advocates pushed the D.C. Council to introduce legislation creating a new body to oversee the jail.
In Prince George’s, advocates and lawmakers say that there has been far less formal movement on establishing a local independent oversight body and that the jail is monitored by only a few outside community organizations, including Life After Release and its subsidiary, Court Watch PG.
In the future, advocates and people in jail say, their only recourse would be new lawsuits with new plaintiffs and new allegations. They’d have to start over.
“The problems in the jail don’t begin and end with covid,” said Israni, the attorney who helped litigate the Prince George’s case. “They don’t begin and end with this lawsuit.” | 2022-08-29T10:18:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawsuits over coronavirus conditions in jail show fleeting nature of change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/29/coronavirus-jail-conditions-lawsuits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/29/coronavirus-jail-conditions-lawsuits/ |
The reptiles were nearly wiped out, and researchers are working to track and protect them
Researchers at the National Zoo's conservation facility in Front Royal, Va., are working to learn more about wood turtles in an attempt to save them as their habitats disappear. (Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute)
They’re brown, red and black, about the size of a football, and in serious trouble. Now, local ecologists are launching an effort to track wood turtles to help the struggling species survive in the D.C. region.
Wood turtles were once found in abundance from Maine to Virginia, but in the last few decades their population has dropped significantly. Efforts are underway in a partnership with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and the Conservation Biology Institute, along with wildlife departments in Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia, to count them and get a better sense of their population and habitats.
“Wood turtles, like trout, don’t like ugly places, and we need them as part of a healthy, functioning ecosystem,” said Tom Akre, a research ecologist at the Smithsonian’s facility in Front Royal, Va. “They matter because they’re important indicators of our environment, and their presence — or absence — lets us know if there’s clean water and clean air.”
Wood turtles lost a lot of their habitat as the streams where they’re typically found have became polluted with runoff from agricultural uses or overrun by nearby development, experts said.
In Virginia, experts said, wood turtles have “lost nearly half of their historic range,” and they’re considered “one of the most endangered freshwater turtles in North America.”
Akre’s team plans to look for wood turtles in Rock Creek Park in the District by using what’s called “environmental DNA” to find how many of them remain. Because their population there may be low — and they’re hard to see in murky water — researchers take water samples and then filter them at a lab where DNA is extracted to see if it matches that of a wood turtle.
“We’re essentially using crime scene-like technology as markers to detect them,” Akre said.
Researchers have put GPS and radio transmitters on wood turtles they’ve found in northwest Virginia so they can better understand how far they travel, especially when searching for a mate. In a few cases, they have found instances of wood turtles crawling roughly 15 miles over mountains in northwest Virginia and neighboring West Virginia to look for new streams and mates.
It is illegal to harass or possess wood turtles. The public should not disturb them and only watch them from a distance, experts said. Smithsonian researchers are allowed to conduct wood turtle surveys under state research permits, and they’re trained to handle them carefully with minimal disruption to their habitats.
Adapting to a changing environment has been one of the biggest challenges for wood turtles. Bald eagles, for example, have made a resurgence in many areas, including in the D.C. region, as they’ve made their homes in more urban, suburban populated areas. But for wood turtles, it is not the same.
“Relative to most mammals and birds, everything wood turtles do is slow,” Akre said. “They grow slowly, and they reproduce slowly.”
Akre said it takes, on average, 15 years for a wood turtle to grow and mature to be able to reproduce. “So the fastest an offspring could mature and lay eggs would be about 30 years after its mother hatched,” he said.
But because the “survival of eggs, hatchling and juveniles is so low, it can actually take much longer for an average female wood turtle to replace itself with a mature and reproducing daughter,” Akre said. “By the time an average hatchling reaches maturity and successfully reproduces an offspring that survives to successfully reproduce offspring, it could be closer to 60 years.”
Akre said hatchling wood turtles are sometimes called the “M&Ms of wildlife” because they’re “small, brown and easy to eat,” making them easy prey for raccoons, herons, crows, skunks and foxes.
Experts said they believe that wood turtles still thrive in roughly 30 to 40 streams in the D.C. region but lost a large portion of their habitat long ago.
In Virginia, Akre said, all of their habitat along the Potomac River in parts of Fairfax and Loudoun counties has nearly disappeared. In Maryland, experts said, the wood turtle population has lost roughly one-third to one-half of its range and is now found mostly just in the western part of the state.
“If we don’t track them and understand them,” Akre said, “then there’s a potential they might not be around.” | 2022-08-29T10:18:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Experts at National Zoo's site in Va. are trying to save wood turtles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/29/wood-turtles-endangered-smithsonian-conservation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/29/wood-turtles-endangered-smithsonian-conservation/ |
Their ancestors came to America. After Dobbs, they want out.
The curtailing of abortion rights and general political turmoil have made many in the U.S. see dual citizenship as an escape hatch
Anthony Del Grosso at his home in Albuquerque. Del Grosso, 28, has begun the process of obtaining dual citizenship by descent in Italy. (Adria Malcolm for The Washington Post)
On the morning of June 27, Julie Schäfer logged into her work computer and sat stunned at what she saw. The lawyer at Schlun & Elseven in Düsseldorf often helps Americans obtain dual citizenship in Germany, and that Monday morning, she scrolled and scrolled and kept scrolling. A flood of more than 300 inquiries had piled up in the firm’s inbox.
The Friday before, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned the 49-year-old precedent Roe v. Wade, which protected the right to legal abortion nationwide; in Germany, abortion is decriminalized before 12 weeks with mandatory counseling, and in other cases when a pregnancy is deemed a threat to the pregnant person’s mental or physical health. Following the ruling, which came just as the staff in Germany was clocking out for the night, frantic Americans flocked to the firm’s website, creating a tenfold spike in clicks on its questionnaire to determine eligibility for dual citizenship.
After inquiries poured in all weekend, Schäfer says, Monday felt like “the aftermath.” Many were seeking dual citizenship through a German ancestor; a handful mentioned in their messages that they were fearful about losing access to abortion care. Of those, a plurality came from Texas.
By now, we all know the stirring stories about immigrants’ arduous journeys to America ― about Ellis Island, about huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Now, though, the sudden nationwide curtailing of abortion rights and the assorted political turmoil of the summer have pushed many U.S. citizens to start the process of obtaining second citizenships in countries that grant them to direct descendants of nationals. Immigrants’ American-born grand- and great-grandchildren are grasping backward through time and bureaucracy, hoping their ancestors might now provide them with a way to start over back in the motherland. Or at least provide them with a quick, visa-free way to live and work elsewhere for a while, in case of emergency. An escape hatch, some say. A backup plan. A parachute.
In 1910, 10-year-old Calogero Cirafisi left his birthplace of Agrigento, Sicily, with his family. They landed in Norristown, Pa., where Calogero became Charles, according to his granddaughter, Helen Kirbo. A 22-year-old photography student who lives in Atlanta, Kirbo has learned all of this in the process of seeking dual citizenship in Italy.
When a draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision leaked in early May, Kirbo was disturbed by the notion that, if what was outlined in the draft came to pass, “my mom would have had more rights to her body than I [do now], growing up.” She began to explore the idea of moving abroad after she graduates from college in 2023.
In June, though, Kirbo learned from a friend about Italy’s jure sanguinis policy, which essentially guarantees citizenship eligibility to anyone who can prove themselves to be a direct descendant of an Italian citizen (with a few caveats). “It was like the out I was always looking for,” Kirbo says. “And immediately after Roe v. Wade was officially overturned, it was like, there was no question for me.” In Italy, abortion has been legal upon request and performed free of charge since 1978.
Italy also has one of the most relaxed policies in Europe regarding citizenship by descent, though it requires all applicants to submit multiple vital records for each person in the line of descent — which can take years to pull together. According to Giorgio Nusiner of the Italian American Citizenship Assistance Program, which has offices in Florida and Italy, inquiries from Americans seeking help applying for dual citizenship have come in this year at double the rate of last year.
For Paige, a 31-year-old in Chicago, it was the back-to-back heartaches of the Dobbs decision and the July 4 mass shooting in Highland Park, Ill., just a half-hour from her home.
Paige, who works in sustainability and who spoke on condition that she be identified only by her first name, because she’s still figuring out her next moves with her employer, hopes to start a family soon. But looking at the widely circulated maps floating around of post-Roe America, she has begun to keep a mental list of states she wouldn’t feel comfortable living in or even traveling to. She wouldn’t want to have a miscarriage or a pregnancy complication in a state where she may not be able to access abortion care, for example, or suddenly need a medicine that doctors or pharmacists might deny her on the grounds that it could cause an abortion. The Independence Day parade attack, which came just over a week after the Dobbs decision, underlined the urgency. “Gun violence is a very real thing here in a lot of ways, but I think it just got a little too personal,” she said. “I’ve been a Chicago kid in the suburbs at a Fourth of July parade. I didn’t sleep at all that night.”
Paige’s search for a relative whose lineage could offer her an out hasn’t been as successful as Kirbo’s; her Slovakian great-grandparents, she learned recently, were born in a town that’s just outside the borders of present-day Slovakia (where abortion is legal on request up to 12 weeks after conception, and for medical reasons later on). Now, she’s researching ways to legally work in the United Kingdom, where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks after conception.
“It’s a prudent thing to do, to know how you can escape the burning building,” she says. Paige and her husband hope to leave next year.
Gabrielle Stoner, 27, began the process of obtaining dual citizenship by descent in Ireland after the Uvalde, Tex., shooting and the Dobbs decision, which both made Stoner fearful about the possibility of one day raising kids in the United States: “Reproductive freedom includes the freedom to know that your babies will be safe,” she says.
She also paid grim attention to Clarence Thomas’s written opinion implying that same-sex marriage rights could be up for reexamination next. And she fears that the Dobbs decision could create complications for those seeking treatments such as in vitro fertilization and sperm donation. Stoner, a copywriter who’s in a same-sex relationship, knows that in the future she’s “going to rely on those resources to have a family.”
Ireland was a conservative country when Stoner’s mother left in the 1970s, Stoner says. “But now, they’ve repealed the abortion bans and same-sex marriage bans, and they just seem to be moving in the right direction.” An Irish passport could be her ticket to Ireland or another European Union country; Stoner and her partner are still figuring out where they might land.
Many dual-citizenship applicants, like all of those in this story, are seeking it in European Union countries specifically because, as Stoner notes, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, “member states have put out all sorts of affirming statements, saying, you know, ‘We will protect your rights. We have no intention of taking away your right to an abortion or things like marriage.’ ” Plus, citizenship in any E.U. country gives you the right to live and work in any other one. If one nation doesn’t work out, there are others at your immediate disposal. Of course, there’s a glaring irony to the situation: It is the White descendants of European immigrants who have the best shot at escaping the United States via dual citizenship — not the Americans of color who could be most acutely affected by changes such as the ones in the Dobbs decision.
Even before the Dobbs bump, agencies that help dual-citizenship seekers were already seeing higher interest levels than usual. Kelly Cordes, the founder and manager of Irish Citizenship Consultants in Elgin, Ill., has seen interest in Irish dual citizenship spike to what she estimates as “twice or three times” the normal rate this year, after both the Dobbs decision and the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde a month before. That said, Cordes has seen spikes like these around the last two presidential elections, too. “We always joke, if we weren’t watching the news and didn’t know what was happening, we would be alerted to go and figure out what was going on just based on the number of inquiries,” Cordes said.
For Anthony Del Grosso, 28, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision was just one of many reasons he has recently begun the process of obtaining dual citizenship by descent in Italy. He wants to have a family one day without working himself to death just to be able to provide for them. He wants health care that won’t strain his bank account.
Plus, “it just seems to be getting worse politically here. It’s normal to just have mass shootings. And it’s normal to just have, like, rights stripped away from people,” says Del Grosso, an Albuquerque-based assistant location manager for film and TV sets. Over the course of the next few years, he’ll probably spend around $5,000 getting documentation together to prove the line of descent from his great-grandfather, who emigrated from Italy in 1906.
There’s something universal about the desire to solve a problem by simply disengaging, by abandoning the situation entirely. But is there a country on Earth where the populace is plagued by exactly none of the United States’ problems? Virtually no nation has emerged unscathed by the coronavirus; no country has escaped climate change, and all of them have at least a few corruptible politicians. Paige notes that the United Kingdom has a deepening political divide that looks a lot like the United States’. Kirbo acknowledges that Italy’s health-care system has its own problems with inefficiency. Stoner points out that Europe as a whole is struggling with a housing crisis.
“Italy has a variety of problems,” Del Grosso says. “They just got rid of another prime minister. There’s political turmoil. There’s inflation just like here. There’s a drought just like here.”
In other words, the parachute may have a few holes in it. And yet: The people in this story remain undeterred.
In Italy, “they have maternity leave,” Del Grosso says. And even if he worked in a fast-food joint there, he’d be entitled to at least four weeks of paid vacation per year. “I don’t expect to ever find a place where [we] … fix all of the problems and make a humanitarian world. But just being able to say, like, ‘Hey, I’ve got paid vacation, and I have health care, and I only work 30 hours a week, but I can afford a two-bedroom apartment,’ ” Del Grosso says, would make it all worth the trouble.
“The existence of social problems isn’t what makes me feel hopeless, because social problems exist anywhere. It’s the lack of political will, and the lack of concrete material solutions to the problems, that I find so frustrating,” Stoner says. “Seems like the people in power in America are committed to moving backwards. The E.U. is at least committed to moving forward.”
Certainly, the descendants of immigrants suddenly consulting their grade-school genealogy charts in search of an escape route is a weird coda to all those triumphant stories of yore about starting over in America. But desperation is eclipsing the desire to uphold legacies.
“When you’re the child of immigrants, you don’t really think about going back to where your parents came from — because they came here for a better life, is the narrative. But, you know, I’m gay,” says Stoner, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla. “I live in one of the states that, realistically, if given the opportunity to do so, would take away my right to marry.”
Paige thinks her great-grandparents might even be proud of her efforts to find a way out. “They came over looking to the future, right? They probably had a similar thing, where they had to break up with their past,” she says. “In that way, it almost feels like the family tradition.” | 2022-08-29T10:18:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Dobbs, many Americans see dual citizenship as an escape hatch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/29/dual-citizenship-european-union-germany-italy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/29/dual-citizenship-european-union-germany-italy/ |
Are Republicans falling in the same traps they did in 1998?
Growing evidence shows that the GOP strategy of playing to their base is alienating many voters
Perspective by Steven M. Gillon
Steven M. Gillon is a senior faculty fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia and scholar-in-residence at HISTORY. He teaches history at the University of Oklahoma and is author of "The Democrats' Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy," (Columbia University Press, 1992).
President Bill Clinton listens as House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks on budget talks before their session with Congress in 1995. (Keith Jenkins/The Washington Post)
Democrats have newfound hope for November. The Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to abortion, along with the passage of major pieces of President Biden’s economic agenda and falling gas prices, have temporarily buoyed their spirits about the upcoming midterm elections. Pat Ryan’s victory in an Aug. 23 special election in a swing district in New York — after a campaign in which he focused on protecting abortion rights — suggests that those hopes are not misplaced.
Yet Democrats still face enormous challenges. Not only does the party that controls the White House almost always lose seats in the midterms, but President Biden’s low approval ratings, along with high inflation, give the GOP a clear edge. The 1998 midterms, however, indicate that Democrats have a secret weapon that could have a dramatic impact: Republican extremism.
That year, Republicans chose to stoke the anger of their right-wing base and impeach President Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, ignoring polls that showed an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted Clinton to remain in office. They are making similar mistakes this year. In 1998, Republicans were trying to remove a democratically elected president for lying about a private matter. This time, they are defending Donald Trump, a twice-impeached ex-president who denies the results of a legitimate election, who encouraged a violent mob to descend upon the Capitol to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, and who now appears to have kept classified documents in violation of the law. They’ve also adopted extreme positions on cultural issues, especially abortion, that defy the opinion of clear majorities of Americans. In other words, then and now, Republicans are choosing political partisanship over democratic fairness — though it remains to be seen if the outcomes will be the same.
Many conservatives hated Clinton because they saw him as the embodiment of the countercultural values that emerged from the Left during the 1960s. He smoked marijuana, dodged the draft, married a feminist and appointed members of the LGBTQ community to high-level positions. They couldn’t believe he won twice, and that was before they found out in early 1998 that he had an affair with a young White House intern. The conservative White Christians, largely Southern, who dominated the GOP viewed the affair through the lens of morality. They were determined to punish Clinton and purge the values that he represented from government.
Even so, they tried to cloak this motive and focus the impeachment debate on the rule of law, specifically lying under oath. But this tactic didn’t work — for most Americans the debate was all about sex.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the successful Republican Revolution in the 1994 midterm elections, allowed his disdain for the president to override his better political instincts. Convinced that the Lewinsky affair would bring about the end of the Clinton presidency, Gingrich ordered the release of the sexually explicit Starr Report, prepared by special counsel Kenneth Starr, which spelled out the sordid details of the affair. He then demanded that the House Judiciary Committee not limit its impeachment inquiry to the Starr Report but include all of Clinton’s other “scandals” from Whitewater to Travelgate — allegations voters had already decided in 1996 weren’t reasons to remove Clinton from office. Although Starr, too, found no evidence of wrongdoing on any of these issues, Gingrich refused to let go.
Gingrich was confident that the Lewinsky affair signaled a Republican windfall that needed to be exploited before the fall elections. At the very least, the scandal would so dispirit Democrats that they would stay home. At best, it would produce a backlash that would push angry Democrats to vote for Republicans. In addition, Gingrich believed that the Starr Report would incite outrage among Christian conservatives and drive them to the polls in record numbers. “When things happen that make one side’s partisans unhappy, they stay home. When they stay home, they stay home for the whole ticket,” Gingrich told a crowd of Young Republicans in suburban Atlanta. “I believe this fall we’re going to see a surprisingly big Republican victory almost everywhere in this country.”
Instead, the Starr Report bolstered Clinton’s already formidable approval ratings — as high as 68 percent in one CBS survey. Since the report focused so clearly on his extramarital affair, it only seemed to confirm for Americans that his transgressions were related to his personal life, not his job as president. Polls showed that a majority of the public supported the House voting to censure the president — in effect, voting to condemn his actions — as opposed to impeachment, which was opposite of the GOP’s strategy.
Yet Gingrich ignored this polling, certain that his political calculus would play well with voters. A few days before the election, he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “If everything breaks against us, my guess is we’ll be about plus 10. If everything breaks for us, we’ll be much closer to plus 40.” According to James Rogan, a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, “Gingrich was telling us in October that we would pick up twenty or thirty seats — plus. We were going to come back with a windfall of seats.” As late as the afternoon of Election Day, Gingrich continued to foresee a gain of 20 seats.
He could not have been more wrong. Instead, Republicans lost five seats in the House and made no gains in the Senate, making them the first party since the Civil War to lose seats to the party of an incumbent president in his second midterm election.
Republicans quickly turned on Gingrich, forcing him to step down as speaker only days after the crushing defeat.
Even so, Gingrich and his colleagues could not bring themselves to change course. He admitted to Clinton’s chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, that the election results sent a clear signal that the public did not want to see a prolonged impeachment trial. Despite that acknowledgment, Gingrich still blazed ahead with an impeachment vote. When asked why, he responded: “Because we can.”
While Gingrich managed to secure majorities on two impeachment counts by denying more moderate members of his caucus the option to vote for censure, the Senate came nowhere close to convicting Clinton and removing him from office. Instead, the president again emerged from the proceedings relatively unscathed — despite plenty of Americans finding his behavior unsavory — while Republicans simply looked mean-spirited and bitter. Ultimately, Gingrich ended up saving Clinton’s presidency by trying to destroy it.
Today, there are similar warning signs that Republicans are once again pursuing a risky strategy of thumbing their noses at public opinion. Despite the daily trickle of damaging evidence from the Jan. 6 committee about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his brazen refusal to turn over classified documents after his presidency and his verbal assaults against members of the FBI, the vast majority of Republican leaders remain blindly loyal to him. White Christian conservatives, who make up the party’s base, demand such fidelity — just as they demanded Clinton face consequences in 1998.
And growing evidence shows that today, just as in 1998, the Republican strategy of playing to their base is alienating many voters. According to a recent NBC News poll, despite GOP complaints of “witch hunts,” a clear majority of voters want the many investigations into Trump to continue. The survey also revealed that Americans now consider “threats to democracy” a higher priority than inflation — a wake-up call for Republicans who believe that inflation is their key to regaining power. In many states, Republican governors have also plunged ahead with abortion bans with no exceptions, even for rape and incest, despite polls showing strong majorities that want abortion to be legal in many circumstances.
The past is not often a good predictor of the future, and there is no doubt that Democrats face an uphill battle to retain control of the House. In 1998 they had a popular president, prosperity and peace on their side. Not this year. They can only hope that, as in 1998, voters will see through the GOP’s extremism and reject those leaders following in Gingrich’s footsteps. | 2022-08-29T10:19:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Are Republicans falling in the same traps they did in 1998? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/29/are-republicans-falling-same-traps-they-did-1998/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/29/are-republicans-falling-same-traps-they-did-1998/ |
The right has long tried to impose its vision on American education
Yet, conservative activists have long discovered their views to be a minority
Perspective by Adam Laats
Adam Laats is professor of education at Binghamton University (SUNY) and author of "Fundamentalist U." and "The Other School Reformers."
Rose Snuffer leads morning prayers at the Faith Gospel Tabernacle Elementary School in Kanawha County, W.Va., in 1975. The school is housed in a church basement and sprang up in response to a push for inclusion of “multiethnic content” in literature textbooks. (AP)
Conservative school boards have banned prizewinning books like “Maus” and “The Bluest Eye.” Activists have targeted a children’s book because it mentions that mating sea horses “twist their tails together and twirl gently around.” Some lawmakers have even demanded that offensive schoolbooks be burned.
These tactics — extreme as they are — are only the latest in a century-long conservative effort. Since the 1920s, conservative boycotters have pledged that no tactic is too extreme to keep children safe from school curriculum. One example from the 1970s, where protesters boycotted public schools in Kanawha County, W.Va., reveals how these efforts have long since been driven by a pair of assumptions: first, that the mere exposure to certain ideas poses a dire threat to children and second, that conservative activists have the right to impose their vision of safety on the rest of society.
The explosive Kanawha County school war seemed to come out of nowhere. At a calm, quiet school board meeting on April 11, 1974, the Kanawha County board heard about the new literature textbook series adopted by the state of West Virginia. The new books — part of the Interaction series edited by James Moffett — reflected a new push for inclusion of “multiethnic content.” Instead of only White male authors, the books presented in this series included a range of voices — from militant Black writers such as Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson to nontraditional poets such as E.E. Cummings, as well as noncanonical pop writers such as daredevil Evel Knievel.
The school board seemed ready to accept the new books as a matter of course, until one new member spoke up. Alice Moore was new to Kanawha County, but she was an experienced conservative activist who was plugged into national antiabortion and anti-multiculturalism networks. She raised a concern about the use of “dialectology” — nonstandard English — and what she saw as the anti-American tone of the new books.
Although Moore was outvoted on the board, her concerns sparked outrage among right-leaning members of the local community. The next school board meetings were mobbed. Speakers who opposed the new books, including local pastors and members of activist parent groups, tried to make their case. One parent warned that poems like cummings’s “i like my body when it is with your” encouraged children to engage in dangerous sexual experimentation. Protesters believed other selections forced the “language of the ghetto” on White children, using — as many speakers complained — language that was racist because it was anti-White. Overall, conservative parents and pastors were certain that exposure to these books would cause immediate, irrevocable harm to vulnerable children. The books’ tone, as one activist put it, was “negative, racist, impulsive, and in some cases right-down vulgar.”
In an attempt to defend the books during one school board meeting, an English teacher explained that the goal of the series was to help “dispel prejudice.” Moore asked him pointedly, “Do you think a teacher has academic freedom to challenge a child’s belief in God?” Parents had rights, too, Moore insisted, earning loud, raucous applause.
Yet the right-wing revolt failed to persuade the school board to remove the books before the school year started. In September 1974, ministers from conservative churches in the area such as the Rev. Marvin Horan and the Rev. Avis Hill called for a boycott of public schools until the books were removed.
National conservative leaders climbed on the Kanawha County bandwagon. Phyllis Schlafly praised the protesters for rejecting the notion that a modern education required “a tolerance of violence, theft, adultery, obscenity, profanity and blasphemy.” From the White House, President Gerald Ford’s education secretary, Terrel Bell, encouraged textbook publishers to examine their content and concentrate on “good literature that will appeal to children without relying too much on blood and guts and street language.” Pundit Andrew Tully attacked the books as mere “pornography” that was “imposed on the country by a tiny minority in the name of ‘academic freedom.’ ”
Support from on high emboldened boycotters in Kanawha County, who felt they could not wait for a solution and needed to act immediately — even violently — to shield their children from dangerous literature.
Angry mobs surrounded schools and the episode turned violent. District offices were dynamited. An elementary classroom was firebombed. Snipers shot school buses on their way to pick up students. A protesting minister led a public prayer for God to kill school board President Albert Anson, and a conservative judge in a nearby town formally charged board members, along with Superintendent Kenneth Underwood, with contributing to the delinquency of minors through the use of “pornographic and un-American” textbooks.
Teachers and administrators lived in fear. Underwood slept in a different place every night because of repeated death threats. One teacher told journalists she had been repeatedly threatened by anonymous phone callers.
In the end, despite all the heat and anger, the protests failed. For one thing, families were not willing to keep their children out of school. By the third week of September, almost all students were back in school. When it came down to it, most families — even ones who might have considered themselves fairly conservative — valued school more than they valued activists’ pleas to boycott the books.
Soon, another local judge dismissed the charges against Anson and the others as mere harassment. Rallies in favor of the textbooks grew far larger than anti-book protests, including one in Charleston, W.Va., that October with 2,000 participants.
Students also protested in favor of the books. At George Washington High School in Charleston, for instance, students walked out on Sept. 12, with the approval of their principal. As one student leader told journalists, “We felt it’s hard to let a minority rule the majority.”
Conservative leaders seemed authentically surprised. They had assumed that their views about literature, racism and sexuality were shared by the vast majority of Americans. As Alice Moore told an NBC news reporter in the early days of the protest, “the educational establishment is completely removed from the mainstream thinking of the American people.” To their chagrin, Moore and her allies learned the hard way that they, in fact, were the ones who were out of touch with mainstream thinking.
Right-wing anger was real. Conservative anxiety was powerful. And the resulting threats were dangerous. But conservative assumptions were out of step with reality. Instead of a vast moral majority, by the 1970s only a small and shrinking proportion of families held right-wing ideas about student safety.
Nevertheless, a certain type of conservative activist — the type who dreams of making America great again — has always assumed the privilege of defining the boundaries of student safety for everyone. They have assumed the right to sharply limit academic freedom if it crossed a line that they unilaterally imposed. As in Kanawha County, their outbursts have not been successful. In recent months, despite all the fury about critical race theory and mask mandates, fire-breathing right-wing candidates have tended to lose school-board elections. And politicians like Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) have been burned by embracing conservative attacks on public education.
Yet along the way, protests from the right have inflicted damage on schools and students. Today, just as in the 1970s, protests have spread a toxic blend of fear, anxiety and censorship. Teachers, students and parents might be able to take heart knowing that threats and boycotts often appear to have far broader support than they actually have. But real academic freedom means more than just the eventual defeat of book-burning mobs. It means more than waiting until the next election to oust irresponsible politicians. It means the freedom to teach the truth without always looking over our shoulders.
This essay is the second in the Freedom to Learn series sponsored by PEN America, providing historical context for controversies surrounding free expression in education today. | 2022-08-29T10:19:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The right has long tried to impose its vision on American education - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/29/right-has-long-tried-impose-its-vision-american-education/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08/29/right-has-long-tried-impose-its-vision-american-education/ |
Soldiers of the French military mission in Mali fold a French flag at an undisclosed military installation on Aug. 11. (Etat Major des Armées/AFP/Getty Images)
William Drozdiak, a former Post foreign editor and correspondent, is a global fellow with the Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of “The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron’s Race to Revive France and Save the World.”
PARIS — The withdrawal of the last remaining French troops from Mali this month has inflicted a serious blow to Western military efforts to curtail a growing Islamist threat spreading across the Sahel region of Africa.
The failure of the French military mission, which included up to 5,000 soldiers in what became known as Operation Barkane, demonstrates the perplexing difficulties of waging a counterinsurgency campaign against regional remnants of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. It also raises concerns that Russia and China might step into the geopolitical void left by frustrated and impatient Western governments.
As the United States ponders the lessons of its 20-year struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, which ended in a chaotic exit one year ago, France is reconsidering its own strategy in coping with the proliferation of Islamist militants in many of its former African colonies.
President Emmanuel Macron has assigned his leading defense chiefs and advisers to review all of France’s military postures on the continent after the failure to eradicate the threat posed by violent Islamist radicals.
The French departure has opened the door to Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private security business linked to the Kremlin. Mali’s rulers say France’s decision to break relations left them no choice but to seek other partners. Up to 1,000 Russian mercenaries are estimated to have descended on Mali in recent months, hoping to be paid with gold extracted from local mines. China is also eyeing ways to expand involvement in the region and tap into its mineral wealth.
The Sahel, a vast semiarid region separating the Sahara desert in the north from tropical savannas in the south, has emerged in recent years as a fertile breeding ground for Islamist terrorists who have exploited local grievances against the corruption and brutality of military rulers. The Sahel houses the world’s fastest-growing population and is also one of the poorest, with 80 percent of people living on less than $2 a day. The region encompasses four countries bordering Lake Chad — Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria — as well as Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.
Around 4 million people have been displaced by the fighting, and many thousands have died. The desperation of the local people has been compounded by persistent drought as climate change spreads desertification through the region. An estimated 50 million people gain their daily sustenance from Lake Chad, which experts predict will evaporate within a decade and force those residents to move, creating still greater hardship for the region.
The French mission in Mali began nine years ago with a promising string of successes in pushing back the advance of Islamist militants toward the capital of Bamako. But relations eventually broke down between French forces and Mali’s military rulers, who seized power two years ago. A second coup took place last year. The army rulers have refused to hand power over to civilians as France had demanded.
The French withdrawal from Mali might jeopardize the fate of the United Nations peacekeeping mission known as MINUSMA, which has some 14,000 troops stationed there. Contingents from Britain and Germany are soon expected to follow the French lead in departing the country.
French forces scored some victories during their long campaign and estimate they have killed about 2,700 militants, yet the Islamist threat continues to grow and attract recruits from disgruntled youths. Islamist guerrillas have expanded beyond Mali into Burkina Faso and Niger and lately have spread terror farther south into coastal states such as Benin and the Ivory Coast.
Regardless of their political or religious fervor, the militants have been able to achieve their territorial gains largely by capitalizing on the pernicious forces of climate change, drought, diminishing food production and, most of all, rapidly surging birthrates.
It is hard to see how these impoverished societies will be able to cope with the quadrupling of their populations in the decades to come, as projected by the United Nations. By the end of this century, Mali is expected to grow from 20 million to 85 million people, and the even poorer state of Niger will rise from 25 million to 165 million people.
As the United States discovered in Afghanistan, even the most modern armies cannot succeed in battling Islamist insurgents with powerful weapons alone. As France is learning the hard way in Africa, the fight against violent Islamists can only be won by combining military prowess with more effective local governance. Curbing corruption and improving the lives of civilians through better schools, medical clinics, clean water and sufficient food supplies are vital.
Defeating Islamist extremists can only be achieved by providing local populations with hope for a better life, not a cause for which to die. | 2022-08-29T10:19:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The French withdrawal from Mali marks a new counterterrorism failure - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/29/french-mali-pullout-failure-fight-terrorism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/29/french-mali-pullout-failure-fight-terrorism/ |
Maseriani Lenyirai enters her home in Tanzania. (Pradip Malde)
How does one begin to talk about something as controversial as female genital mutilation without stirring up unwanted, complicated, emotions? Who is allowed to tell what stories? Is it okay for a man to tell this story? These are important questions in the back of my mind that surface often as I choose what work to highlight here.
I had to ask myself these questions when looking at Pradip Malde’s book “From Where Loss Comes,” (Charcoal Press, 2022), a powerful exploration of female genital mutilation. Malde’s work is an important contribution to the dialogue about this controversial and abhorrent tradition.
There is always bound to be a person, or people, unhappy with the way a subject is explored, especially when it’s something as controversial and personal as female genital mutilation. In Malde’s case, the work is, first and foremost, sensitive and respectful. And it is accompanied by multiple texts by authorities giving their stamp of approval — not to mention the cooperation of the people who appear in the photographs.
Dr. Linda Mayes, the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology and Director of the Yale Child Study Center, says: “ ‘From Where Loss Comes’ asks us to hold in the same visual space love and violence, sacrifice and gain, mutilation and beauty, personal loss and community belonging. In a deeply sensitive, sobering collection of photographs, Malde captures the humanity contained in a fundamentally inhumane practice and compels viewers to linger with their own self-reflection of how they may bring hurt even as they care.”
Meg Partridge, Director of the Imogen Cunningham Trust, says: “In this book of insightful portraits, Pradip Malde captures the viewer’s attention with their photographic beauty while taking a deeper look into one of humanity’s darkest practices. The perception and compassion of Malde’s eye is palpable.”
The book itself is immaculately produced. It is utterly gorgeous. This speaks to the intent behind the image making and eventual transformation into book form. The attention to detail in all aspects of the book’s production is informed by sensitivity and even reverence toward the people documented.
Malde made the work after returning to his home country of Tanzania after an extended absence. Back home, he partnered with Sarah Mwaga, founder of the Anti Female Genital Mutilation Network. Together, they traveled 3,000 miles over three years. They visited remote communities where they spoke with, and photographed, female activists who were victims of the practice of genital mutilation.
Malde photographed not only these women, but also the sacred sites where the rituals took place, along with the cutting tools that the circumcisers used. It is important to note that the people Malde photographed have renounced the practice.
Unfortunately, Mwaga passed away before the book’s publication and it is dedicated to her. It is a searing, powerful, reverent, exploration of this deplorable practice. Malde was able to do the work only because of the help from Mwaga and the people he photographed. In addition, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 that helped him complete the project.
The rituals we put ourselves through to fit in in the world vary widely from country to country. Some, like female genital mutilation are physically scarring and painful. We seem to like to debase ourselves. It is part of human nature. Racism, sexism, ableism, nationalism.
Different people have different expectations, and we concoct various ways to make that true. The result? Massive inequality, war, famine, death, destruction. Nothing good comes of it. The world is not fair. Malde’s photos are a sharp reminder.
You can find out more about the book, and buy it, here. | 2022-08-29T10:19:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos documenting former adherents of female genital mutilation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/29/where-loss-comes-explores-love-violence-sacrifice-gain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/08/29/where-loss-comes-explores-love-violence-sacrifice-gain/ |
Takeout orders line the bar at a Georgetown restaurant in 2021. (Allison Shelley/For The Washington Post)
In its current session, the D.C. Council has mandated how often hotels must clean their rooms and at what frequency movie theaters must show films with closed captioning, among other measures narrowly targeting businesses’ inner operations.
To council members and consumer advocates, the measures provide protection for residents and visitors. But some business owners see a trend of overly onerous rules when the ongoing pandemic is stretching businesses.
That dynamic has sparked pushback that could affect the coming general election, in which a wide field of candidates is vying for two at-large council seats — including the current chair of the council’s business committee and its labor committee, two camps often seen as at odds.
Labor and consumer advocates want to continue their gains, while some business owners are hoping the next council will act more in their favor, with laws that could reduce their insurance burden and other regulations.
The two-plus years since the start of the pandemic have been difficult for businesses in the District, especially those that cater to the city’s tourists (who disappeared for months) and its downtown office workers (many of whom have yet to return to their desks). Vacant storefronts dot downtown corridors. More than 1,000 businesses closed in the first part of 2020, although license applications for new businesses have since picked up. Data shows that although more than 2,300 businesses left downtown D.C. from February 2020 to March 2022, suburban areas such as Bethesda and Loudoun County have fared much better in maintaining and attracting businesses.
Solomon Keene, who heads the Hotel Association of Washington, said proprietors who were hard hit when the pandemic wiped out vacation travel and conferences can scarcely afford the effects of the hotel housekeeping law, which allows the mayor to make rules on how often hotel rooms should be cleaned, and another recent regulation that required hotels to notify guests of “actual or potential disruptions to service,” including if a hotel staff union threatens a labor action.
“We have very real competitors on our borders in Virginia and in Maryland at National Harbor,” Keene said. “Quite frankly, this does make people consider the competitiveness of the District.”
Two council members objected to the housekeeping bill when it passed in April — Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said washing hotel sheets more often would be detrimental to the environment, and Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) said businesses could not necessarily afford the cost of more housekeepers — while the rest of the council endorsed the measure, with many saying it would benefit workers by compelling hotels to hire more people.
Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), the council’s foremost advocate for worker rights and a candidate for reelection in the at-large race, shrugged off the idea that the council’s recent legislation would steer business out of the city.
“When we banned smoking in the city, [business owners] said all the restaurants were going to move to Virginia. Did that happen? No. D.C. has had one of the most thriving restaurant scenes of any city in the country,” Silverman said. “Then we increased the minimum wage — again the little boy that cried wolf. Again, ‘everyone’s going to move to Maryland and Virginia.’ Nope, that didn’t happen.”
She said the same speculation arose when she championed a paid parental leave benefit for D.C. employees, which she believes has helped local businesses attract workers rather than hurt their bottom lines. “Workers in their 30s and 40s are asking about paid family leave. It’s an important benefit to them now. We keep hearing that the sky is falling. The sky hasn’t fallen.”
Silverman is running for reelection this year in an at-large field that includes Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5), who chairs the council’s business committee and has been more friendly to businesses. McDuffie did not respond to requests for comment.
The two council members are competing against incumbent Democrat Anita Bonds, independents Fred Hill, Karim Marshall and Graham McLaughlin, Republican Giuseppe Niosi and DC Statehood Green Party candidate David Schwartzman, in a race in which the top two vote-getters will win.
D.C. general election ballot takes shape
McLaughlin has been running on a pro-business platform. He criticized some of the council’s recent actions, including a bill banning companies from making many employees sign noncompete agreements and the hotel room-cleaning legislation. “Incentivizing businesses to train team members — those are things that we want,” he said. “The hotel bill is an example of performative action based on requests by interest groups, not thoughtful consideration of what is best for the city and its residents. We should let businesses determine the best way to run their businesses, not try to constantly tinker with the market.”
Instead, he suggested loosening regulation, such as removing licensing requirements for certain professions, like interior design, and allowing businesses to move forward to projects if they don’t get a timely response from city regulatory agencies.
Phil Mendelson (D), the chair of the council, said he views “tension” between laws that protect workers and residents and those that favor businesses as a key challenge for the council in the upcoming term.
“The council has had some debates on finding the right balance. We need to be looking more broadly at other aspects of burden that we place on businesses,” Mendelson said, saying his summer to-do list included looking at fees like licensing costs that the city could reduce, and speaking with others about ways to prevent small businesses from leaving the city, citing the recent example of a distillery that closed in Ivy City while maintaining production in Kansas. “The council should be looking for ways we could improve the business climate.”
D.C. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars propping up businesses as the pandemic drags on into its third year, handing out multiple rounds of generous grants to restaurants, entertainment venues, hotels and others.
“There has been a tremendous amount of aid poured into business culture in D.C. We’re very grateful for all of that. We couldn’t have gone this far without it. It is amazing,” said Kimberly Bender, who represents several local businesses as executive director of the D.C. Brewers’ Guild.
But she said that even as grant money has kept breweries afloat, local laws have sometimes hobbled them, too. “During any challenging time, a small business can only survive as well as they can pivot. ‘Pivot’ was the word of the pandemic for a small business. If you have your hands tied in too many ways, you really don’t have a lot of options.”
Dean Hunter, who leads a trade association for landlords who own small rental properties, said his organization has been hosting workshops for landlords who want to buy their next building in Baltimore or Richmond, rather than D.C.
“The D.C. Council used the pandemic as an excuse to pass a series of regressive anti-landlord measures that are devastating landlords today. Leftist activists used the pandemic as an excuse to advance their agenda, and they did so very successfully,” Hunter said, pointing to landlord-tenant laws including a prohibition on filing an eviction over less than $600 in missed rent and more stringent notifications for how landlords notify tenants of an eviction.
Business advocates have fiercely lobbied the council throughout the pandemic. The back-and-forth between opposing advocates, such as landlord and tenant groups, led to some compromises on the frequently changing eviction rules during the pandemic. Recently, a year after passing a total ban on noncompete agreements, the council voted again to switch to a much more narrowly tailored version of the bill, at the urging of business owners.
Some are making plans for how they can more aggressively push back the tide of legislation. Hunter said he is encouraging landlords to run for advisory neighborhood council, the lowest level of local government. Restaurant owners are discussing hiring David Catania, the former councilman turned local lobbyist, to advocate for legislation that would reduce their insurance burden just as he has lobbied for provisions friendly to the medical marijuana industry.
Complaints about the high cost of liquor liability insurance in the District date back decades; in 1985, The Post quoted a bar owner whose insurance shot up from $185 to $26,500 as D.C. judges found bars responsible for accidents caused by their patrons more stringently than Maryland or Virginia judges.
“This is something we should have tackled a long time ago,” said John Guggenmos, a restaurant owner and advisory neighborhood commissioner advocating for laws to reduce bars’ liability. The staffing shortages and soaring cost of supplies plaguing restaurants aren’t the city’s fault, he said — indeed, city grants have helped restaurants survive those challenges — but liability reform would be a help.
D.C. vaccine mandate for government workers is unlawful, judge says
Guggenmos said he asked his insurer what it would cost to cover his Logan Circle bar Number Nine if it were located in Maryland and got a quote that was less than a tenth the price he is paying. “To drive down the rates to parity with Virginia and Maryland is going to require legislative action.”
Lisa Dean, who owns a construction firm, said she believes D.C. requires much too costly a level of insurance for small firms like hers.
But as a lifelong resident, she finds the rewards outweigh the hassle. Recently, the city hired her firm to renovate playing fields at several recreation centers.
“It’s different when you get to see a field or something in use that you worked on. It’s a nice project being utilized by the residents of the city you live in,” she said. “When [the playing fields] were completed, you got to see the kids come outside and actually get to play on them.” | 2022-08-29T11:06:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. Council’s business measures could be factor in at-large race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/dc-business-regulations-at-large-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/27/dc-business-regulations-at-large-race/ |
Sports betting timeline: From Las Vegas to the Supreme Court
There are few immutable principles of sports betting, but one thing is certain: If a game is being played, people are going to gamble on it. This fact has been borne out over the history of professional sports in this country. Betting — legal or otherwise — has been a constant sideshow, one that exploded into the forefront this century with the 2018 legalization of sports gambling.
Here’s a look back at the industry’s colorful history in the United States over the past 101 years.
Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis permanently bans eight Chicago White Sox players accused of throwing the 1919 World Series in collusion with sports gamblers, even though a Chicago jury had acquitted seven of the players on conspiracy to defraud charges the day before. The saga was memorialized in the 1988 film “Eight Men Out,” and baseball’s prohibition on gambling by its players remains in place today.
Nevada legalizes gambling, including betting on sports. For decades, the state’s casinos are the only spots in the United States in which it’s legal to place a sports bet.
Thirty-two college basketball players from seven schools admit to taking bribes to fix 86 games in 17 states between 1947 and 1950, with seven of the players coming from the City College of New York team that in 1950 became the only team to win the NCAA and NIT titles in the same season.
Looking to discourage the spread of legal sports gambling outside of Nevada, the federal government imposes a 10 percent tax on the money brought in by legal sports gambling in the state, which leads to a sharp decline in Nevada’s betting industry.
In an attempt to limit bookmaking by organized-crime groups, President John F. Kennedy signs the Federal Wire Act, which prohibits the use of wire communications for interstate sports gambling. The law remains in effect today and is seen as the reason sports gambling is under the purview of states and not the federal government. For instance, someone in Pennsylvania may bet on sports using companies approved by that state but cannot place an online bet through sportsbooks regulated in New Jersey or any other state.
The federal government lowers its tax on sports betting in Nevada from 10 percent to 2 percent, prompting casino operators to consider offering new places for Americans to legally bet on sports.
The first sportsbook inside a Las Vegas casino opens at the Union Plaza. The next year, bookmaker Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal opens a sportsbook at the Stardust that will become the prototype of sportsbooks to come, with six huge television screens and seating for 300. Robert De Niro would later portray a character based on Rosenthal in the 1995 movie “Casino.”
Oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder joins CBS’s “NFL Today” pregame show, offering predictions on the day’s games. At the time, the NFL forbid its broadcast partners from discussing point spreads, so Snyder would only give out what he thought would be the final scores of the games. Snyder would remain on the show until 1988, when he was fired for racist comments made in a television interview.
The federal government reduces its tax on Nevada’s legal sports bets even further, to 0.25 percent, where it remains today. Sportsbooks begin to proliferate in the state, spurred also by advances in satellite television that allow them to show sporting events from all over the country and the world.
Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader, is permanently banned from baseball after an investigation finds that he had bet on baseball games — including ones involving the Cincinnati Reds, the team he was managing — between 1985 and 1987. Rose violated an MLB rule that prohibits players and managers from betting on baseball games, a rule that remains in place today.
President George H.W. Bush signs the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which outlaws sports gambling in states that did not already have laws allowing it. In essence, Nevada becomes the only state with legal sports gambling.
President George W. Bush signs the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which forbids companies from “knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law.” The law was created in response to the boom in online poker and casino games but carves out an exception for fantasy sports, declaring them skill-based games and not games of chance. This opens the door for the daily fantasy industry, which eventually sees its popularity explode.
Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy pleads guilty to two gambling-related felonies after an FBI investigation finds that he bet on NBA games (including games he officiated) and gave other gamblers information about referee assignments, relationships between referees and players, and player health. He would serve 15 months in prison.
The state of New Jersey files its first federal lawsuit seeking to strike down PASPA, arguing that it violated the 10th Amendment’s protection against federal anti-commandeering laws. New Jersey’s legal attempts to allow sports gambling, which were opposed by the four major U.S. sports leagues and the NCAA, eventually reach the Supreme Court in a case titled Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, which the court agrees to hear in June 2017.
The American Gaming Association estimates that Americans will wager approximately $4.76 billion on Super Bowl LII between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles, with $4.6 billion of that amount (97 percent) wagered illegally.
The Supreme Court strikes down PASPA, ruling that the law is not “consistent with the Constitution” and that states are free to establish their own sports gambling laws in the absence of a federally regulated system.
With sports gambling legal, some are betting on a new kind of fan experience
Delaware accepts single-game sports wagers, becoming the first state to take advantage of PASPA’s repeal. By the end of 2018, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Mississippi, West Virginia, New Mexico, Arkansas and Pennsylvania would either start accepting sports bets or vote to allow the practice. Today, 30 states and the District of Columbia allow sports gambling, with five more set to join them in the coming months.
DraftKings becomes the first online sportsbook outside of Nevada, taking its first bets over the Internet in New Jersey. Numerous other sports gambling operators follow in New Jersey and other states.
The NFL, which fought legalized sports gambling for years, announces its first marketing agreements with three sports-gambling providers. The league expects to generate about $270 million in revenue in the first year of the agreements. The three other major U.S. sports leagues also have deals with legal bookmakers.
The first sportsbook inside a U.S. stadium opens at Capital One Arena in Washington.
Legal sports gambling brings in $4.33 billion in revenue to operators in 2021, a 179.7 percent increase over the year before.
The NFL suspends Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley indefinitely for betting on NFL games while he was away from the team to focus on his mental health. The NFL determined that Ridley made parlay bets through a sportsbook mobile app while in Florida, and some of the parlay legs were on the Falcons to win. Despite the widespread legalization of legal sports betting, NFL players and team or league personnel are not allowed to gamble on any sporting event.
As sports leagues embrace gambling profits, Calvin Ridley’s suspension resurfaces issues
Colorado Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon becomes the first MLB player to sign a partnership with a legal sports-gambling operator after the league’s newly approved CBA allows such deals for the first time. Rose remains banned from baseball.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds that 66 percent of Americans approve of legal sports gambling, up from 55 percent in 2017 and 41 percent in 1993. | 2022-08-29T11:14:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The history of legal sports gambling in the U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/29/history-of-sports-gambling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/29/history-of-sports-gambling/ |
When the Supreme Court opened the door to legal sports betting in 2018, it allowed each state to determine its relationship with the divisive pastime. Some embraced it with open arms, taking their first single-game bets that very same year. Others seem to have no interest in allowing a wager to be made within state lines.
With football season around the corner, now is the time that interest in sports betting usually spikes. Here’s a breakdown of where in the United States you can and cannot place a legal bet.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Alabama, both online and in-person. Alabama is also one of the few remaining states without a state-run lottery. Currently, a gambling and lottery bill that would allow sports betting in casinos is working its way through the Alabama Senate and House.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Alaska, with no immediate change on the horizon.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Arizona, both online and in-person. The state passed legislation to legalize it in April 2021.
Sports betting will keep booming in 2022, but some see risks in growth
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Arkansas, both online and in-person. It had been allowed at casinos since 2019, but legislation was passed in February to allow online options as well.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in California, both online and in-person. However, that might soon change, as there are multiple measures that could be on the ballot this fall.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Colorado, both online and in-person. Colorado voters narrowly approved a measure in the November 2020 election and the state has since developed a robust variety of betting options.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Connecticut, both online and in-person. Online sports betting went live in October 2021, three months after Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed new gaming legislation.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in Delaware, but online is not. A few weeks after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on sports betting in 2018, Delaware became the first state outside of Nevada to accept a legal, single-game sports bet. However, the action is limited to the state’s three casinos.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in the nation’s capital, both online and in-person. Mobile options are limited depending on location. Mobile sports betting is not allowed on federal properties, and other betting options are limited to sports venues such as Nationals Park.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Florida, both online and in-person. There was a brief period of in-person betting in 2021, but it was struck down by a federal judge after a deal between the state and Seminole Tribe — which controls gambling in Florida — fell apart.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Georgia, both online and in-person. There have been two failed efforts to push for legalization in the state legislature, with the most recent campaign failing to get off the ground.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Hawaii, both online and in-person. It is one of two U.S. states with no form of gambling.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Idaho, both online and in-person. There have been no proposals to change that in recent years.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Illinois, both online and in-person. In-person betting was launched in March 2020, and online options followed in June of that year.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Indiana, both online and in-person. Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) signed a bill legalizing it in May 2019.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Iowa, both online and in-person. In-person action was given the green light in 2019, while online betting launched in 2021.
Legal: Kansas became the latest state to join the legal sports betting movement after it launched online and in-person betting on September 1. Gov. Laura Kelly (D) signed a bill in May that authorized the move, and the hope had been that it would be fully operational by football season.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Kentucky, both online and in-person. A recent effort to legalize fell just short of making it to the desk of Gov. Andy Beshear (D).
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Louisiana, both online and in-person. After being approved by voters in November 2020, in-person betting launched in October 2021 and online options arrived in January 2022.
Legal but pending: Sports betting is legal but pending in Maine, both online and in-person. There is no set timeline for launch.
Legal but in-person only: Maryland voters approved sports betting in November 2020, but currently only in-person options are available. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has pushed for the speedy launch of online betting ahead of this NFL season, but the timeline remains murky.
Legal but pending: Sports betting will soon be legal in Massachusetts, both online and in-person. It is the latest state to legalize sports betting, as the state legislature approved a bill in early August, with Gov. Charlie Baker (R) expected to sign it soon after. The bill would allow for betting at casinos and horse racing tracks as well as online action through approved applications.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Michigan, both online and in-person. Retail betting launched in March 2020, and online sports books joined about a year later.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Minnesota, both online and in-person. In 2022, a bill that would have given the state’s Native American tribes — operators of the state’s casinos — the ability to control online and in-person action fell apart in the state senate.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in Mississippi, but online action is prohibited. Retail betting launched in 2018, but online betting is only allowed when inside a casino. Several online bills have been introduced, but none have gained traction.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Missouri, both online and in-person. There was a serious push in 2022, but it fell apart in the state senate.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in Montana, but online action is prohibited.
Legal but pending: Sports betting is legal but pending in Nebraska. The legislature passed a bill in May 2021, but online and in-person operations are still being planned out.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Nevada, both online and in-person. It has long been the leader in retail betting, as the state first starting accepting in-person bets more than a decade ago and was the only one to do so until 2018. Online betting is a little more complicated, as bettors are required to sign up inside a casino location.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in New Hampshire, both online and in-person. Online options went live in December 2019, but betting on in-state colleges is still prohibited.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in New Jersey, both online and in-person. It was the third state to take a legal bet, launching online and in-person operations in the summer of 2018.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in New Mexico, but online action is prohibited. No legislation has been passed, but Native American casinos have taken bets since 2018.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in New York, both online and in-person. While casino betting has been allowed since 2013, online betting launched in January 2022 and quickly turned New York into one of the country’s most robust markets.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in North Carolina, but online action is prohibited. An effort to bring online options to bear is working its way through the state legislature.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in North Dakota, but online action is prohibited. Similar to New Mexico, the state has not passed any official legislation to legalize, but Native American casinos take in-person bets.
Legal but pending: Sports betting is legal but pending in Ohio. Legislators passed a sports betting bill in December 2021, but operations aren’t expected to launch until the end of 2022.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Oklahoma, both online and in-person, with no immediate change on the horizon.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Oregon, both online and in-person. But online action is limited to the state’s official sportsbook: DraftKings.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Pennsylvania, both online and in-person. Retail action launched in 2018, and online options went live in 2019.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Rhode Island, both online and in-person. However, online action is limited to the William Hill sportsbook.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in South Carolina, both online and in-person. A bill is under consideration by the state legislature, but there is little optimism that it will get off the ground.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in South Dakota, but online action is prohibited.
Online only: Online sports betting is legal in Tennessee, but in-person action is prohibited. It is one of only two states in the United States (along with Wyoming) with such an arrangement.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Texas, both online and in-person. Legalization doesn’t appear likely in the near future.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Utah, with no immediate change on the horizon.
Illegal: Sports betting is illegal in Vermont, both online and in-person. A bill was introduced in the state legislature in 2022, but it gained little momentum.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in Virginia, both online and in-person. Online betting launched in January 2021, and the state opened its first retail betting site in July 2022.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in Washington, but online action is prohibited. Like Mississippi and Montana, Washington only allows online betting while on-site at a retail location.
Legal: Sports betting is legal in West Virginia, both online and in-person. Mobile betting went live in August 2019, and in-person action has been flowing since August 2018.
In-person only: In-person sports betting is legal in Wisconsin, but online action is prohibited.
Online only: Wyoming is one of two states (along with Tennessee) with online betting but no in-person options. The first online sports books started taking bets in September 2021. | 2022-08-29T11:15:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | States where sports betting is legal, not legal and pending - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/29/sports-betting-laws-by-state/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/29/sports-betting-laws-by-state/ |
A fight among historians shows why truth-seeking and activism don’t mix
U.S. Park Police officers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before the “Defeat the Mandates” rally on Jan. 23 in Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
I first started hearing it myself about seven years ago, when I delved into the commonly quoted statistic that only 2 percent to 8 percent of rape allegations are false. That’s not what the underlying research actually said; what it said was that 2 percent to 8 percent were provably false — setting a floor on the number of false allegations, not a ceiling. When I pointed that out, I was surprised how many people pushed back, not by arguing with my interpretation of the data, but by asking why I would write about it. Was I trying to give cover to rapists?
An unhealthy profession, on the other hand, starts asking itself “Why bother?” and demands to know why colleagues are voicing inconvenient truths. It reconceives of its own work as a kind of political activism. This may be done from the best of motives, but it is shortsighted in the extreme — you might even say presentist. Because, unfortunately, the most important asset that knowledge workers have is their credibility. And once you’ve donated that to the cause, you can’t get it back.
Of course, that decline was assisted by Donald Trump et al. But public health experts made it easy for them by repeatedly demonstrating that, yes, they really were trying to manipulate the public and often in service of the profession’s broadly left-wing commitments — from suggesting that anti-racism protests somehow had a different risk profile from other kinds of public gatherings, to obscuring the fact that monkeypox is spreading almost entirely through sex between males. | 2022-08-29T11:32:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | American Historical Association fight is about more than 'presentism' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/29/american-historical-association-presentism-controversy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/29/american-historical-association-presentism-controversy/ |
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