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Albertin Montoya replaces Kris Ward, who was fired in August. (USSF/Washington Spirit)
The Washington Spirit on Friday named Albertin Montoya as its interim coach for the remainder of the National Women’s Soccer League season.
Montoya, 47, replaces Kris Ward, who, less than a year after overseeing the club’s first NWSL title, was fired Aug. 22 amid a 17-game winless streak across all competitions and strained relations with the players.
Montoya’s first game will be Sept. 10 at Audi Field against the San Diego Wave.
“He is a wonderful teacher of the game and our players will benefit from his development and leadership,” Mark Krikorian, the Spirit’s president of soccer operations, said in a statement. “We look forward to having Albertin lead this group through the final five regular season matches and are optimistic about what he will be able to add to our club.”
Montoya, 47, is the director of coaching and the technical director of Mountain View Los Altos Soccer Club, a youth operation in Northern California that helped develop U.S. World Cup defender Abby Dahlkemper, among others.
Given his deep ties and work commitments in the San Francisco area, Montoya is not likely to vie for the permanent job, one person familiar with the situation said.
Previously he was a head coach in the NWSL’s forerunner, Women’s Professional Soccer, leading FC Gold Pride (Northern California) to the 2010 championship with a roster that included current Spirit players Kelley O’Hara and Nicole Barnhart. Montoya guided the U.S. under-17 girls’ national team in 2011-12.
“It’s an incredible honor to be named interim coach,” Montoya — who played at North Carolina State and Santa Clara and made one appearance for San Jose in the 1998 MLS season — said in a statement. “My goal is to provide the best possible experience for these players and do my part to help [owner Y. Michele Kang] and Mark build the foundation for the future of the Washington Spirit organization.”
The Spirit (1-6-10) has not won since the regular season opener May 1, sits in 11th place in the 12-club league and is almost mathematically eliminated from qualifying for the six-team playoffs. | 2022-09-02T16:20:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Albertin Montoya named Washington Spirit interim coach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/washington-spirit-interim-coach-albertin-montoya/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/washington-spirit-interim-coach-albertin-montoya/ |
Canadian singer-songwriter Feist performs during the June 2013 Governors Ball Music Festival at Randall's Island in New York City. (Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)
The allegations, which Butler denies, surfaced in a lengthy investigation by Pitchfork that was published shortly before the start of Arcade Fire’s tour with Feist through Europe and North America. Feist played two dates with the band before deciding to drop out.
Pitchfork’s story detailed the experiences of four young Arcade Fire fans who said Butler took advantage of their gaps in age and power dynamics in a series of unwanted sexual interactions between 2015 and 2020.
Three women said Butler sent them unwanted, sexually explicit messages when he was in his late-30s and they were between 18 and 23. A fourth person who is gender-fluid said Butler sexually assaulted them twice in 2015, when they were 21 and he was 34. | 2022-09-02T16:24:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Feist leaves Arcade Fire tour after Win Butler sex abuse allegations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/feist-arcade-fire-abuse-allegations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/feist-arcade-fire-abuse-allegations/ |
A nuclear plant is valuable war booty. The complex would cost more than $40 billion to build today. Though power is still flowing to Ukrainian consumers, according to grid operator Ukrenergo, Russian engineers have been laying plans to connect the plant to Russia’s power grid and to charge the Ukraine government for whatever output would remain for Ukraine. In addition, European intelligence officials say that Russia is likely using the plant to shield troops and equipment, anticipating that the facility’s sensitivity protects it from major attacks. Russia has used the wider area to rest its forces at night and has launched long-range artillery attacks from adjacent regions, the officials said. Ukraine has circulated photographs showing Russian armored personnel carriers near Zaporizhzhia’s critical infrastructure.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a member of a team of inspectors who arrived at Zaporizhzhia Aug. 31, said it was “obvious that the plant and the physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times.” During two days of shelling around the facility in early August, shells landed near spent nuclear fuel that was in storage and wounded a Zaporizhzhia worker, according to Energoatom. Ukraine and Russia blamed each other for the shelling, which prompted Grossi to say there was a “very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”
Suriya Jayanti, a former US State Department official who advised policy makers on Ukraine’s energy supply, says Zaporizhzhia “can take a decent amount of abuse.” Unlike the reactors at Chernobyl -- one of which exploded, contaminating some 150,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine with radioactive fallout -- those at Zaporizhzhia are surrounded by concrete and steel containment structures designed to stop the release of radiation. There are still dangers, however:
• Keeping the reactors cool requires a constant flow of electricity; a power cut could trigger a so-called meltdown, where, in the worse case, the reactor’s fuel gets so hot it breaches containment walls and is released to the outer environment. This is what happened at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan in 2011 after a tsunami damaged the plant’s backup generators.
• Another risk comes from spent fuel ponds, which Zaporizhzhia has in abundance. Were a storage tank to be hit with a bomb or shell, fuel exposed to the air could react and release radioactive particles -- with severity depending on the age of the fuel.
After their initial inspection, some IAEA inspectors stayed on at the plant as “resident experts,” Grossi said. They’ll remain as neutral observers who can provide assessments of potential risks caused by the war. The presence of impartial monitors could help assign responsibility to attacks. | 2022-09-02T16:24:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Ukraine’s Big Nuclear Plant Raises Worries Again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ukraines-big-nuclear-plant-raises-worries-again/2022/09/02/df9c870e-2ad4-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-ukraines-big-nuclear-plant-raises-worries-again/2022/09/02/df9c870e-2ad4-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Roughly three-quarters of the park’s annual rainfall fell in one day. Now, the park may break a global heat record, too.
A thermometer shows a temperature of 114 degrees with flames on a screen ahead of an expected heat wave just south of Death Valley in Baker, Calif., on Aug. 30. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
Death Valley National Park is living up to its reputation as having one of the world’s most extreme climates: The Southern California park is in the midst of one of its most intense September heat waves, weeks after it established a record for its most extreme deluge, park officials announced Thursday.
Park rangers manually recorded 1.70 inches of rainfall on Aug. 5, making it officially the rainiest day on the books at the infamously arid landscape. Renowned for its hot and dry conditions, Death Valley averages just 0.11 inches of rain in August and 2.2 inches in an entire year.
Flash flood in Death Valley strands about 1,000 people in national park
The flooding on Aug. 5 washed out several roads, including the main highway into the park, California 190. That route has since reopened, but many other roadways are still too damaged to allow cars to travel on, with pavement entirely washed away by the rushing waters that enveloped parts of the park.
The historic rainfall, triggered by this year’s unusually strong Southwest monsoon, also temporarily stranded around 1,000 people. Businesses and hotel rooms flooded, while cars were trapped in parking lots by floating garbage bins or immobilized by debris flows.
The Death Valley flood also came amid a series of significant flooding events that seemed to hit all corners of the country. From the end of July to the middle of August, four 1-in-1,000-year rain events occurred — inundating St. Louis, eastern Kentucky, southeast Illinois and Dallas. Earlier this summer, Yellowstone National Park also experienced devastating flooding.
From record rain to record heat
Though park rangers in Death Valley are not yet done cleaning up from the flooding, Mother Nature has moved on.
On Thursday, temperatures in the park reached 124.4 degrees Fahrenheit, just 1.6 degrees below the all-time highest temperature ever recorded in September anywhere in the world — 126 degrees Fahrenheit.
That record reading was measured in Mecca, Calif., in September 1950, which is a little over 200 miles south of Death Valley.
This weekend, Death Valley has a real chance to break some of its own heat records — if not the worldwide high-temperature record for September.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a high of 124 degrees on Friday, a number that would smash the previous high for Sept. 2, 122 degrees, which was set back in 2017. Saturday’s record is also a candidate to be rewritten, with a forecast high of 123 degrees, two degrees higher than the former record, which was set back in 2007.
The most extreme heat doesn’t arrive until Labor Day, though. The current forecast from the NWS has temperatures in Death Valley rising to a wicked 125 degrees, making it more than possible that the temperature there will not only break the local record but also manages to rise past the global all-time high for September.
Another 125-degree day is also forecast for Tuesday, giving the park’s Furnace Creek station at least two serious chances next week to smash the monthly record.
Death Valley already holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth, as well as several runners-up. Officially, Death Valley reached 134 degrees on July 10, 1913. But that record has been questioned by several climatologists — as has the next-highest temperature: 131 degrees measured in Kebili, Tunisia, on July 7, 1931.
In both 2020 and 2021, the temperature in Death Valley reached 130 degrees without controversy, making the two measurements the highest pair of reliably measured temperatures on Earth.
Death Valley soars to 130 degrees, matching Earth’s highest temperature in at least 90 years | 2022-09-02T16:24:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Death Valley, known for extremes, is facing intense heat weeks after record rain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/02/death-valley-heatwave-rain-record/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/02/death-valley-heatwave-rain-record/ |
Trump White House counsel Cipollone appears before Jan. 6 grand jury
The former top lawyer at the White House is the highest-ranking aide to testify in Justice Department criminal probe of Trump’s actions amid efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Pat Cipollone, right, arrives at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse on Friday morning. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone appeared Friday morning in federal court in Washington, where he was expected to appear before a grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cipollone became the highest-ranking White House aide known to appear before the grand jury in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including then-President Donald Trump’s actions, that culminated in the siege of Congress as lawmakers met to confirm President Biden’s 2020 election victory. Cipollone deputy counsel Pat Philbin was expected to appear later Friday.
The two attorneys received federal grand jury subpoenas about four weeks ago for testimony and documents about that day and events leading up to it, CNN first reported. Their expected appearance Friday was reported by ABC News, and it followed grand jury appearances in July by former vice president Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, and attorney Greg Jacob.
It was not immediately clear how much time Cipollone or Philbin would spend with the grand jury, what topics they would discuss, and whether their testimony would steer clear of private presidential communications typically subject to executive and attorney-client privilege.
Cipollone and his attorney Michael M. Purpura walked into the courthouse shortly after 9:30 a.m., where they were greeted by lead federal prosecutor Thomas Windom and escorted to an elevator leading to the grand jury area.
Cipollone was the top White House lawyer at the end of the Trump administration, and he has emerged in several public accounts as a key witness to and critic of conversations held by the then-president with private lawyers and others in his inner circle who allegedly sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won; pressure the Justice Department to falsely claim the election was rigged with fraudulent votes cast; or propose the seizure of voting machines by the U.S. attorney general, secretary of defense or other federal officials.
In videotaped testimony played at televised hearings this summer held by the House select committee investigating events leading to the Capitol breach, Cipollone told investigators that he vigorously resisted efforts by Trump and outside advisers to undo the election, and that he, like former Trump attorney general William P. Barr, did not believe there was sufficient fraud to have affected the outcome of Biden’s victory in any state.
At a late-night meeting at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, that Cipollone termed “unhinged,” for instance, he said election lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn exhibited a “general disregard for backing what you actually say with facts.”
Of the conspiracy-fueled notion to seize voting machines, Cipollone recalled telling Powell, “I don’t understand why we even have to tell you why that’s a bad idea, it’s a terrible idea for the country.”
Cipollone also has been described as opposing the sending of a letter drafted by attorney Justin Clark to officials in Georgia, falsely declaring that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states.”
Cipollone told Trump that Clark’s proposed letter was “a murder-suicide pact” that would “damage everyone who touches it,” according to a deposition by then-deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue. In a call on Dec. 27, 2020, witnesses have said, Trump told acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen that he wanted the department to say there was significant election fraud, and said he was poised to oust Rosen and replace him with Clark, who was willing to make that assertion.
“Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” Trump told Rosen, according to notes of the conversation reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Cipollone answered questions for eight hours earlier this year before the House Jan. 6 committee, following riveting testimony by his former aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, who described her boss as one of the last firewalls blocking Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results.
She testified that on the morning of Jan. 6, Cipollone warned her in words she paraphrased as “ ‘Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.’ ” | 2022-09-02T16:24:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump White House lawyer Pat Cipollone appears before Jan. 6 grand jury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/cipollone-philbin-jan6-grand-jury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/cipollone-philbin-jan6-grand-jury/ |
Among the seized materials were multiple empty folders that bore a classified marking, the document unsealed Friday says
FBI agents reported finding partially redacted documents with classified markings, including colored cover sheets indicating their status, at former president Donald Trump's office at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. (Department of Justice)
Former President Donald Trump intermingled classified and unclassified materials in boxes at his Florida residence and had multiple empty folders that bore a “classification” marking, according to an inventory list made public Friday morning that describes in more detail what FBI agents recovered when they searched Mar-a-Lago last month.
A federal judge — with approval from Trump’s legal team and Justice Department lawyers — ordered Thursday that the inventory list be unsealed. The 11-page document provides the most detailed view yet of the government materials that Trump kept with him in Florida after he left the White House and the seemingly haphazard way he stored them.
Previously released court documents had revealed that Trump had 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked “top secret,” which means the exposure of them could pose “exceptionally grave danger” to national security. The more-detailed inventory provides further information of the manner in which these sensitive documents were stored, often commingled with other items in some of the 27 boxes that were seized by the FBI on Aug. 8.
The Trump search warrant focuses on classified information. What you need to know.
Box No. 25, for example, contains 76 magazines and articles published in 2016 and 2017. Mixed in with those media clippings was a government document with a “confidential” classification marking and another with a “secret” classification marking, according to the inventory list.
The box also contained 20 government documents and photographs with no classification, the court filing says. And there was an empty folder with a “CLASSIFIED” banner on it. It’s unclear if Trump and his associates took the folder from the White House without any documents in it, or if documents had been in the folder but were later removed.
In Box No. 2, for example, taken from Trump’s office, there were 43 empty folders with classified banners; 28 empty folders labeled “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide”; 24 government documents marked confidential, secret or top secret; 99 news articles and other printed media; and 69 government documents or photos that were not classified.
Analysis: The photo of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, annotated
A notice filed with the inventory states that the Justice Department has already reviewed every item seized from Trump that is not potentially covered by attorney-client privilege. It says the assessment of the items will continue as part of an ongoing criminal probe into how presidential documents were handled.
“The seized materials will continue to be used to further the government’s investigation, and the investigative team will continue to use and evaluate the seized materials as it takes further investigative steps, such as through additional witness interviews and grand jury practice,” the court filing reads. | 2022-09-02T16:25:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FBI Mar-a-Lago list shows classified mixed with unclassified, empty folders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/fbi-inventory-mar-a-lago/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/fbi-inventory-mar-a-lago/ |
Meghan Markle in New York on Sept. 23. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Aug. 31 marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Also killed were her Egyptian lover, Dodi Al Fayed, and their driver, who was trying to evade a horde of photo-seeking paparazzi chasing them.
Diana was White female innocence personified — “Shy Di,” who had the sympathy of many women who faced unhappy marriages inflamed by adultery and unwelcoming in-laws. As the years went on, Diana’s story became about her attempts to use both her glamour and relatability to break out of the confining box of the British royal family.
It’s probably not a coincidence, then, that Meghan Markle chose last month to launch “Archetypes," a podcast that aims to explore the stereotypes and boxes that societies put women in.
Which led me to think about the meaning of Markle’s saga with the royal family.
In a conversation on “Archetypes” with biracial singer Mariah Carey, Markle discussed how she was made more aware of the shifting goal posts of race. “I think for us, it’s so different because we’re light-skinned,” she said. "You’re not treated as a Black woman. You’re not treated as a White woman. You sort of fit in between.”
“I mean, if there’s any time in my life that it’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I started dating my husband," Markle said about dating Prince Harry. "Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a Black woman. Because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted.”
When it comes to privilege in the Black community, colorism — and America’s “one-drop” rule — is one of the most difficult topics to discuss openly. Still, I can’t help but ask the question unspoken here: What did Markle mean when she said she was “treated like a Black woman”?
I suppose it’s easy to guess. Black women, especially in America, claimed her, hard. We loved how her mother, Doria Ragland, rocked dreadlocked hair. We noted the touches of Blackness at her wedding to Harry — the gospel choir, the rousing sermon of Bishop Michael Curry in the Black Church tradition. These were no doubt all deliberate choices — a message that “Blackness” could mean “modernizing” the British monarchy.
So why is Markle, who grew up with a Black mother, in California, and attended Northwestern University (my alma mater, too), saying she didn’t understand what it meant to be a Black woman before? Was Don Lemon right when he criticized Markle’s newfound education on Blackness? That it took her marrying a White man from literally the most powerful White family in the world to understand what it was like to be Black? Are we supposed to feel sorry for Markle’s racial naivete?
As a dark-skinned woman, I have never and will never experience the privileges or the pain of being in the limbo space between Whiteness and Blackness.
But from the outside looking in, here’s what I see: Markle went from a royal bride destined to “modernize” the Whitest of institutions to having to escape to (a very privileged) self-exile in the United States. She had to endure racist questions about the appearance of her baby from within the royal family. The British media was relentless in criticizing her, and outside of her husband, the royal family did little to stand up for her. Markle spoke openly about how it all led to suicidal thoughts.
The whole thing conjures up the sad and very specific archetype of the “tragic mulatto” — the slavery-era trope of a light-skinned mixed-race woman who passes for White but is destined for unhappiness because of the way her “one drop” of Black blood is used against her by White power structures. The couple literally had to leave Harry’s country for their family to be safe mentally and emotionally.
One part of the myth of the “tragic mulatto” woman is that she is an ambitious seductresses of White men, who are powerless before her womanly schemes.
And — surprise! — this is exactly how Markle has been treated. Just read all the British media squawking about the opportunistic older divorcee and her supposed long-standing plot to steal poor Harry away from his family.
Colorism and privilege are thorny issues — but let’s not forget that white supremacy, which the British did so much to create, is ultimately to blame.
But more and more prominent light-skinned mixed-race women, including actresses Zendaya and Thandiwe Newton, have opened up about colorism and privilege in Hollywood. At least Markle was honest about talking about her light-skinned privilege. Maybe one day the Duchess will be brave enough to take the enduring myth of the “tragic mulatto” full on.
Home Front: Texas’s latest anti-democratic backslide
So, my home state of Texas has a new law saying that public schools can display “In God We Trust” signs in public schools, so long as the signs are donated to a district. This has set off alarms about the increasing influence of White conservative Christianity in all aspects of life down here. This week I watched as local activists and parents put the rules to the test at a school board meeting in Southlake, a town already infamous for attacking critical race theory. The results were, well, you can read my column for yourself.
During an August 29th meeting of the Carroll ISD school board, Southlake, Tx. resident Sravan Krishna attempts to donate student-made 'In God We Trust' signs. (Video: Karen Attiah/The Washington Post)
Global Radar: Nigeria bans foreign models and voice-over artists
Speaking of Blackness and representation, Nigeria has announced that beginning Oct. 1, it will outlaw the use of foreign models and voice actors in the advertising industry. The hope, according to reports, is that it will boost local industry. Nigeria’s music, and culture have been taking the world by storm. Nigerian pride is at an all-time high. There’s no question a country of 200 million people has plenty of talent. The big question is: Will other nations follow suit?
Cat Corner: Artemis is ready for launch!
Here’s Artemis in his spacesuit. NASA’s Artemis will attempt to go to the moon this weekend. How long till there are cats on Mars?
Artemis wants to go to space, but he's not too sure about the astronaut suits. (Video: Karen Attiah/The Washington Post) | 2022-09-02T16:25:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Karen Attiah newsletter: Meghan Markle, colorism and the archetype of the ‘tragic mulatto’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/attiah-newsletter-meghan-markle-texas-schools/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/attiah-newsletter-meghan-markle-texas-schools/ |
One judge said the striking piece evoked Renaissance art. But some critics compared it to ‘entering a marathon and driving a Lamborghini to the finish line.’
Jason Allen's AI-generated art won first place in the Colorado State Fair arts competition. (Courtesy of Jason Allen)
When Jason Allen submitted his “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” into the Colorado State Fair’s fine arts competition last week, the sumptuous print was an immediate hit, beating 20 other artists in the “digitally manipulated photography” category to win the first-place blue ribbon and a $300 prize.
What Allen had only hinted at, however, was that the artwork had been created in large part by an artificial-intelligence tool, Midjourney, that can generate realistic images at a user’s command. The portrait of three figures, dressed in flowing robes, staring out to a bright beyond, was so finely detailed the judges couldn’t tell.
Allen’s piece offers a clear example of how rapidly AI-generated art has advanced. Trained on billions of internet images, the systems have rapidly pushed the boundaries of what computers can create.
Text-to-image tools like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney have rapidly increased in sophistication and become one of the hottest topics in AI. They can generate not just fake people, objects and locations but mimic entire visual styles; a user can demand the art piece look like a cartoon storybook or a historical diagram or an Associated Press photograph, and the system will do its best to oblige.
But AI-generated art has been criticized as automated plagiarism, because it relies on millions of ingested art pieces that are then parroted en masse. It has also fueled deeper fears: of decimating people’s creative work, blurring the boundaries of reality or smothering human art.
Allen said his art piece shows people need to “get past their denial and fear” of a technology that could empower new inventions and reshape our world. The AI, he said, “is a tool, just like the paintbrush is a tool. Without the person, there is no creative force.”
“You said AI would never be as good as you, that AI would never do the work you do, and I said, ‘Oh really? How about this? I won’,” he said. “It’s here now. Recognize it. Stop denying the reality. AI isn’t going away.”
Allen, 39, lives south of his hometown of Colorado Springs and runs a company, Incarnate Games, that makes tabletop fantasy games. He went into the Air Force after high school and got a computer science degree at a Colorado technical school. He does not consider himself an artist and had never entered an arts competition before.
Earlier this year, he said, he started noticing people posting more AI art on social media, but he had been initially skeptical to try it himself due to “spiritual reasons.” Elon Musk, he remembered, had compared AI to “summoning the demon,” and the practice felt like it could be “a gateway into communicating with the unknown.”
“That’s what it feels like. This isn’t being created by a human,” Allen said Thursday while watching a jiu jitsu tournament in Las Vegas. “There’s a lot to be said about the spiritual meddling of our reality. They would use anything they could to influence humanity.”
But the art was just so intricate, he said, that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He started playing with AI-powered art tools: WOMBO Dream, NightCafe, starryai. Then, someone invited him to Midjourney, and he became obsessed.
The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life
Midjourney has become one of the most popular AI-art generators largely because it allows anyone to freely create new images on command. Using the prompt “/imagine,” a user can type in whatever they want to see and the AI will return four newly created images in 60 seconds; the user can also ask the AI to improve, or “upscale,” the visual quality with new variations on the same idea.
The start-up, which calls itself “an independent research lab … expanding the imaginative powers of the human species,” operates largely out of a 1-million-follower network on the chat service Discord, with rooms devoted to character creation, environments and “show and tell.”
After paying for a corporate account, Allen started generating thousands of images, changing the text prompts with every creation. He experimented with new settings, scenarios and effects. He asked for images in the styles of Leonardo DaVinci and the American psychedelic artist Alex Gray.
The pieces that really caught his attention, though, were what he now calls his “space opera theater” series. He started with a simple mental image — “a woman in a Victorian frilly dress, wearing a space helmet” — and kept fine-tuning the prompts, “using tests to really make an epic scene, like out of a dream.” He said he spent 80 hours making more than 900 iterations of the art, adding words like “opulent” and “lavish” to fine-tune its tone and feel. He declined to share the full series of words he used to create his art, saying it is his artistic product, and that he intends to publish it later. “If there’s one thing you can take ownership of, it’s your prompt,” he said.
“I was like: Dude,” he said. “This is so sick! I want to see more of it! I’m addicted! I’m obsessed!”
When he found images he really liked, he pulled them into Adobe Photoshop to remove visual artifacts; in one image, the central figure was missing a head, so he also painted in a crop of dark, wavy hair. He used another machine-learning tool, Gigapixel AI, to increase the photos’ quality and sharpness, then printed the three pieces on canvas — all variations on the French phrase for “space opera theater,” which he thought sounded cool — and drove to submit them to the state fair.
When he looked at the pieces, he said, he saw “a supernatural reality … something we haven’t even been able to experience yet, past the great beyond.” But the pace of AI art is moving perhaps even faster than the internet. “You’re looking at art from a month ago,” he added. “In technology terms, that’s decades. This piece is antiquated compared to what Midjourney is doing now.”
The state fair in Pueblo, Colo., was an unlikely place for the writing of a new chapter in art history. The 150-year-old festival, known for its horse and livestock competitions, runs a series of more traditional art competitions, including for homemade dolls, quilts, porcelain art and needlework, as well as for the best canned carrots, medicinal remedies and holiday breads.
Of the 596 entries in the “fine arts” competition, 21 amateur “emerging artists” submitted pieces of “digitally manipulated photography,” one of the fair’s newest categories. Asked what art materials he had used, Allen told state fair officials only that he used Midjourney — though he did not exactly go into detail, and no one seems to have asked.
One of the judges, Dagny McKinley, an author and art historian who runs a playwright festival in nearby Steamboat Springs, remembers walking past Allen’s canvas and being immediately drawn to a piece that felt reminiscent of Renaissance art.
“It had an immediate story: People looking out into another world, everyone with their backs to you, no one facing or engaging with the viewers,” she said. “You get interested: What are they seeing?”
McKinley said she did not realize the art was AI-generated but said it wouldn’t have changed her judgment anyway; Allen, she said, “had a concept and a vision he brought to reality, and it’s really a beautiful piece.”
Sebastian Smee, The Washington Post’s art critic, said the piece’s textures and lighting are reminiscent of Gustave Moreau, a late 19th-century artist, associated with the Decadents, who influenced Edgar Degas and Henri Matisse. (He also recalled a quote from the artist Sol LeWitt, who said, “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”)
When Allen announced his victory himself on Midjourney’s Discord channel, saying he had spent “many weeks of fine tuning and curating,” the responses spiraled between muted excitement to outright dread. In a chat board devoted to philosophical debates, one user compared the win to “entering a marathon and driving a Lamborghini to the finish line”; another user wrote that the “stunt” threatened to “get this tool banned and hated even more.”
The win also triggered a flood of rage online. A tweet calling Allen’s win “pretty f---ing s---ty” has been liked more than 85,000 times; another person tweeted, “We’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes.” Allen said he has also gotten “a lot of very nasty hate” in his online inboxes; on his game company’s Instagram profile, one user said he should return his award and “post a public apology before some MAJOR backlash comes your way.”
Some of the frustration has come from how the tools were built: a similar tool, Stable Diffusion, was “trained” on 2 billion images taken from the internet, including from personal blogs and amateur-art sites like Flickr and DeviantArt.
Allen, however, dismisses the point as shallow: “Where did you learn how to do your art? You looked at art. Whose art was it? You learned their techniques; you studied their art; you added it to your repertoire,” he added.
Allen listed the pieces for $750 each, he said, and two were sold at the fair to unknown buyers, though he now frets that he should have charged far more, given that it could be “essentially a piece of art history.” On Discord, some users asked whether he should have been more explicit, to which Allen replied: “Did I have to?”
Despite the online furor, Allen’s neighbors seemed more sanguine about adapting to AI. As far as anyone at the Colorado Department of Agriculture can tell, Allen did not break any rules. Pieces for the category are only required to involve “technology as part of the creative or presentation process.” Digital filters, color-manipulation tools and the “recombination of images” are all expressly allowed.
No one has filed an official grievance over the result, either, department spokeswoman Olga Robak said, though there has been an unrelated dispute in the fair’s goat-shearing contest.
Robak, who studied art history, finds the controversy fascinating. “People put bananas on the wall and called it art,” she said. “Even photography was not considered an art form for a long time; people said it was just pushing a button, and now we realize it’s about composition, color, light. Who are we to say that AI is not the same way?”
Don’t ask if the duct-tape banana is art. Ask if it’s any good.
Jessica Hair, a 25-year-old receptionist at a doctor’s office who won third place in the competition, said she did not feel Allen had acted unfairly and had no hard feelings about his win.
Hair said her “Judge, Jury, Executioner,” which depicts a tuxedoed skeleton on a golden throne surrounded by skulls, took 15 hours to create with a stylus on an iPad Pro. But Allen’s piece took time, effort and subjective judgment, too, and “how do we qualify what is and isn’t art?” she said.
She did wonder, though, if it might have broken the fair’s rules requiring all art to have been made by Colorado residents. Would the AI, wherever it exists, qualify?
McKinley, the contest judge, said she understands the frustrations from some artists feeling spurned in their craft, and she believes the festival should consider a category purely devoted to AI art. But she sees such technology as opening up a new world of possibilities for artists — and as something it’d be better to embrace, since it isn’t going away.
“It’s not going to take away from a beautiful painting or a sculpture you can touch,” she said. “It’s just one more tool we have to advance what we can create.”
Gregory Block, an oil painter in Denver who was not a part of the competition, said he finds it hard to imagine an AI generator supplanting the hundreds of hours — and all the “heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears” — he’s invested into his art. But he also thinks back to the artists that first inspired him, who used rudimentary devices like the camera lucida, in the 1800s, to aid their own designs.
“That was thought of as cheating, too,” he said. “Yet they used it to make these incredible paintings: anatomically correct figures, beautiful soft lighting. … Those steps in technology are elemental to our art. Otherwise, we’d still be doing cave paintings with just our hands and blood.”
The AI, he said, can imbue the art with a mysterious beauty, made all the more special because it is so hard to understand. But “the soul any of us can find in a piece of artwork, the emotion, the human struggle we identify with in art is always our own.”
“It doesn’t have to necessarily be created out of a human soul, the artwork itself. It is for us to see and react to,” Block said. “We the viewers are, in the end, the ultimate artists. We’re the ones creating the world that is coming in through our eyeballs. That world is in our mind.”
Nitasha Tiku contributed to this report. | 2022-09-02T16:26:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Colorado artist used artificial intelligence program Midjourney to win first place - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/02/midjourney-artificial-intelligence-state-fair-colorado/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/02/midjourney-artificial-intelligence-state-fair-colorado/ |
The “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” anime film was released on Aug. 19. (Crunchyroll/AP)
Christopher Nolan, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman have all done their parts to try to save movie theaters. But every superhero team needs a surprising member. And in the quest to preserve the cinematic experience, the anime distribution company Crunchyroll is punching above its weight.
The company’s success is welcome good news for a troubled sector. And it says a lot about the power of smaller-but-more-voracious audiences in the contemporary pop culture economy.
Crunchyroll doesn’t get numerous glowing profiles like indie darling A24, the studio behind “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Ex Machina” and “The Witch,” among other critical (and personal!) favorites. But the anime-oriented distributor and streaming service purchased by Sony from Warner Bros. in 2021 merged with fellow anime purveyor Funimation this year to become a powerful figure in the world of targeted movie distribution.
Japanese cultural products have an increasingly large footprint in the United States, particularly among younger consumers: manga (Japanese comics) sales nearly tripled between 2021 and 2022. Japanese animation capitalizes on this by offering fans of these popular comics motion pictures and TV shows to accompany them. And there’s a steady flow of product from Japan that is easily dubbed into English.
That said, some of these series have been around — and popular in the United States — for decades. Consider the success of their latest release, “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” — a predecessor of which was so popular that it inspired a modest moral panic — which led the box office two weekends ago with a surprisingly strong $21.124 million opening. That figure by itself would make it the ninth-highest-grossing A24 film of all time, domestically, sneaking it just ahead of “The Disaster Artist.” The $31.3 million it has grossed through Monday, Aug. 29 would put it at fifth on the list.
Crunchyroll and Funimation have really perfected the art of releasing these “surprise” hits, propelling a bunch of movies that average consumers might not have heard of into big grossers.
In March, “Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie” opened to $18 million and ended up with $34.5 million total. A previous Dragon Ball picture, “Dragon Ball Super: Broly,” raised eyebrows when it opened to nearly $10 million and more than tripled that figure over the course of its 36-day run. And Crunchyroll’s biggest hit so far, “Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train,” earned a genuinely shocking $49.5 million — a figure that would have made it A24’s third-highest-grossing film.
In the grand scheme of things, both A24 and Crunchyroll are putting up modest numbers; the opening of a new “Demon Slayer” movie will never compare to the opening of a new MCU picture. However, on slower weekends they can be a huge boon: “Super Hero” nearly doubled the opening weekend of Universal’s more mainstream-minded “Beast.”
Earning grosses like this requires two components working in tandem, says Mitchel Berger, senior vice president of global commerce at Crunchyroll.
First is fan passion.
“When you look at anime fans, they love to come together. They love to share their passion. They love to talk, they love to debate. They love to experience things together and doing that in a theater,” he says. “There’s just nothing like it. There is nothing like sitting in a darkened theater with 200 or 300 people who share your passion, watching something that you love and experiencing it together in real time that just can’t be replicated anywhere else.”
Under the watchful eye of Sony, which has vigorously pursued this slice of the theatrical exhibition market, Crunchyroll has turned itself into a dominant force with this sector of fandom. The success isn’t just at the multiplex. Crunchyroll has more than 5 million streaming subscribers, and a thriving live events business: The Crunchyroll Expo sold out its offering this year in San Jose after a hiatus during the pandemic.
The second is reliable expression of that passion. Anime fans have demonstrated to theater owners that animated, subtitled movies that might otherwise be seen as box office killers can actually be a source of consistent revenue.
“We’re not having to spend as much time educating people on what anime is and convincing them that it matters,” Berger says. “The exhibition community in general has seen the performance of things like ‘Demon Slayer’ or ‘My Hero’ or ‘Dragon Ball,’ and they understand what that demand is there.”
As in nearly all business endeavors, success begets success, and the success of Crunchyroll — which has combined Fathom-style one-day or one-week events with a wider release strategy, depending on the popularity of a given property — has demonstrated to exhibitors that the company is able to not only deliver success but can do so nearly on demand during slower weekends.
“There’s a history now. You know, one or two of these films is kind of a, an interesting one-off, but after three or four of these, it’s a trend,” Berger says. “I think that they appreciate what anime is and where it sits in the theatrical community now.”
This is a Band-Aid for the theatrical industry, a small fix in an era where the number of wide releases is nearly one-third fewer compared to 2019 and the box office 28 percent lower. But Crunchyroll is demonstrating how small-but-motivated fandoms can help fill some of the gaps in a weakened box office.
Not all such targeted endeavors will offer a similarly front-loaded box office. “Where the Crawdads Sing,” the first picture from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine label that is actively targeting female audiences, has grossed more than $82 million domestically despite a somewhat soft $17 million opening and unduly harsh reviews. Theaters themselves are tapping into motivated fandoms: consider the way Alamo Drafthouse has encouraged a cultlike sensibility surrounding its theaters and AMC’s Adam Aron has, oddly, tapped into the meme stock phenomenon to try to generate a new, more dedicated customer base.
None of these efforts will replace a good, solid run of blockbusters. But if movie theaters can’t sell themselves as a cause, they can sell themselves as a gathering place for subcultures, one niche product at a time. | 2022-09-02T16:33:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Crunchyroll may rescue the theaters Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise can't - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/crunchyroll-anime-movie-theaters-recovery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/crunchyroll-anime-movie-theaters-recovery/ |
Comedians Tiffany Haddish, Aries Spears accused of child sexual abuse
Comedians Aries Spears and Tiffany Haddish were accused of child sexual abuse in a lawsuit filed Aug. 30 in Los Angeles Superior Court. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images; Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
Comedians Tiffany Haddish and Aries Spears were accused of sexually abusing children in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The suit — filed on behalf of anonymous individuals Jane Doe and John Doe, the latter of whom is still a minor — alleges that Jane was sexually harassed and abused by Haddish and Spears while attending a comedy camp in 2013, when she was 14, and that John was abused during the filming of a sketch in 2014, when he was 7.
Jane, now 22, is the legal guardian of John, her younger brother who was born in 2007. They knew Haddish as a family friend through their mother, who, according to the document, found out about the alleged incidents after the fact and was “distraught, immensely sad, depressed, shocked, cold, numb, nauseous, and suicidal for trusting Haddish with her children.”
The Daily Beast first reported news of the suit.
In a statement shared Friday with The Washington Post, Andrew Brettler, an attorney for Haddish, said the mother “has been trying to assert these bogus claims against Ms. Haddish for several years. … Now, [she] has her adult daughter representing herself in this lawsuit. The two of them will together face the consequences of pursuing this frivolous action.”
Debra Opri, an attorney for Spears, said her client “isn’t going to fall for any shakedown.”
Here are some of the most jarring allegations against Armie Hammer and his family in new docuseries
During the summer of 2013, a teenage Jane attended a comedy camp at which Haddish was a guest speaker. According to the suit, Haddish told Jane she had a role for her in a comedy skit and showed Jane a video of two people arguing over a sandwich that they then began to eat simultaneously “in a manner that simulated the act of fellatio.” Jane alleged that Spears, who was also present, then told her to mimic the actions and sounds she had seen, and that Haddish coached Jane on how to do it as well.
“Physically, emotionally, and mentally uncomfortable, Plaintiff Jane Doe mimicked the acts that Haddish and Spears wanted her to do so she could go home,” the lawsuit alleges, adding that “until this point, Haddish was a role model to this 14-year-old victim. … Haddish groomed the child victim, gained her trust, and created a false sense of security.”
A year later, Haddish allegedly brought the children to Spears’s home to film John in a video sketch she said would help him book a role on Nickelodeon. The suit states that Haddish separated the siblings and that she and Spears stripped John down to his underwear to film a video titled “Through A Pedophiles Eyes,” which depicted “Spears lusting over the 7-year-old child and molesting him throughout.” The document includes stills from the footage, which at times focused on John’s body.
The children’s mother said Haddish and Spears were evasive when she asked to see the footage that had made her son cry. According to the suit, the video was uploaded to the Funny or Die website, where it remained until last year.
Spears is best known for having regularly appeared on the sketch comedy series “Mad TV,” while Haddish has risen to A-list status after her breakout role in the 2017 comedy “Girls Trip.” Jane alleged in the suit that seeing Haddish mime oral sex in a scene from the film “unlocked a repressed memory” and led Jane to realize “the severity of what happened to her.” | 2022-09-02T17:34:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Comedians Tiffany Haddish, Aries Spears accused of child sexual abuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/tiffany-haddish-aries-spears-abuse-allegations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/tiffany-haddish-aries-spears-abuse-allegations/ |
Today’s jobs report made clear that despite rising interest rates and incessant recession talk, American businesses are still hiring. This was reflected mainly in the headline 315,000-job increase in nonfarm payroll employment, but also in the less-closely watched employment estimate from the household survey that is used to determine the unemployment rate, which showed an August gain of 442,000. Adjust the household survey number to measure something more or less equivalent to nonfarm payrolls, and the increase was 599,000.
For a while this spring, the household survey seemed to be showing hardly any employment growth even as nonfarm payrolls kept rising at a healthy pace. Now — if you make the proper adjustments — both measures are showing solid job growth. Here’s another way of looking at the data:
The Current Employment Survey that generates the nonfarm payrolls number is a mostly online check-in by the Bureau of Labor Statistics with “131,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 670,000 individual worksites.” For the Current Population Survey, the Census Bureau quizzes “a probability selected sample of about 60,000 occupied households” by phone and in person about their employment situation and other matters.
As it says on the tin, the nonfarm payrolls number excludes farmers and farmworkers and those who aren’t on someone’s payroll — i.e. the self-employed. The CES also counts jobs rather than people, meaning that those with more than one job can show up multiple times in the payroll data while being counted as just one employed person in the household survey. Since March, agricultural employment and self-employment are down, while multiple job holding is up.
The BLS factors these three metrics into the “ CPS employment adjusted for CES concepts” data series shown in the first two charts, and they appear to account for about two-thirds of the difference since March between it and the unadjusted CPS employment numbers. I realize one has to squint to see the changes since March on the above chart, but figured that showing the numbers since the beginning of 2021 would give a sense of both how modest those changes have been and how common such ups and downs are in the household data. Other contributors to the disparity include workers in private households such as nannies and housekeepers, unpaid family workers in family-owned businesses and wage and salary workers with unpaid absences, for which the data I could find are not seasonally adjusted and so noisy that putting them on a chart seemed pointless.
The nonfarm payrolls numbers tend to be less noisy but are subject to revision; first as more information from employers trickles in during the next two months after the initial report, and then once a year in January when the numbers are trued-up with state and federal unemployment-insurance data for more than 10 million workplaces. The BLS gave a preliminary indication a few weeks ago of how big next January’s revision will be, reporting that nonfarm payroll employment as of March 2022 was 462,000 or 0.3% higher than the number as currently reported.
This provides no information on what’s happened since March and there’s a long history of economy-watchers claiming to see portents in the household survey that the establishment survey isn’t reflecting yet. That’s in part because it takes the BLS a while to make contact with newly formed businesses, and to figure out when businesses that aren’t reporting have shut down. To account for these comings and goings, the agency uses the ominous-sounding “ net birth-death model,” which generally does a good job but may be less reliable at economic turning points. With the numbers from both surveys headed in the same direction again, though, we do not seem to be at one of those turning points.
Wall Street Is in Denial Over the ’Real’ Economy: Gary Shilling
The Fed Is About to Go Full Throttle on QT. Fear Not: Kevin Muir | 2022-09-02T17:56:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Job Market Anomaly Begins to Correct - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-job-market-anomaly-begins-to-correct/2022/09/02/feda06ea-2ae4-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-job-market-anomaly-begins-to-correct/2022/09/02/feda06ea-2ae4-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
It’s an umbrella term for a variety of short-term, voluntary conservation efforts that encourage homes and businesses to reduce electricity during hours when grid operators fret power supplies may not meet heavy demand. Getting consumers to switch off is a critical tool for helping California avoid blackouts during a mounting heat wave this week, as temperatures soared above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in some regions. It’s also sometimes called “power shaving,” and can, in a way, be considered a form of rationing.
They range from a simple call to arms to time-based rates and a range of financial incentives. According to the California Public Utilities Commission, demand response efforts have evolved to encourage customers to “shift electricity consumption from hours of high demand relative to energy supply to hours where energy supply is plentiful relative to demand.” For California, that crunch comes between the hours between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., when people return home from school or work and the sun starts to set on the state’s many solar farms. One simple form is the California grid operator’s “Flex Alert” notices distributed through Twitter and other channels, which alert customers to windows of time when they should conserve power. The notices were sent on both Aug. 31 and Sept. 1. | 2022-09-02T17:56:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Demand Response’ Helps Avert Blackouts in California - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/demand-response-helps-avert-blackouts-in-california/2022/09/02/32698ad0-2adb-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/demand-response-helps-avert-blackouts-in-california/2022/09/02/32698ad0-2adb-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
The US is still creating more than 300,000 jobs a month, a robust pace compared with the one before the Covid-19 pandemic. But under the surface, the labor market is showing some cracks that may take some pressure off inflation and make the Federal Reserve more inclined to ease up on interest-rate increases. The high-flying US economy may be coming in for a landing, but it’s not clear that it will be particularly soft.
US employers added 315,000 jobs in August, slightly more than expected, after adding a revised 526,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said Friday. But the government’s diffusion index shows that a smaller proportion of industries are carrying the monthly gains. At 62% of industries gaining, the diffusion index fell to the lowest since January 2021.
The manufacturing jobs diffusion index is retreating quickly as well, with just about 57% of sub-industries adding jobs in August, down from 85% in February.
In August in particular, warehousing and storage, furniture and home furnishing stores and food manufacturing were among the categories that experienced significant declines in payrolls. Meanwhile, health care continued to be a top driver of gains, as did restaurants and bars.
Is this shift good or bad? That depends on whether you’re a worker or a central banker. From a monetary policy standpoint, it’s exactly what Fed Chair Jerome Powell wants to see to cool the rate of wage growth and make sure that it doesn’t translate into a wage-price spiral. Although wages didn’t start the US’s inflation troubles, they could keep overall inflation higher for longer as companies pass on higher labor costs to consumers. So it was welcome news to see average hourly earnings rise just 0.3% on a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, a significant slowdown from July’s 0.5% reading.
Annualizing the latest monthly figure implies a 3.8% pace of wage growth, but it’s just one report in a volatile economy. What’s more, even that number is still too high for Fed policy makers. In theory, central bankers working to control inflation would only want to see wage growth exceeding their 2% inflation target if the extra earnings were offset by productivity gains. Right now, that’s not the case. Productivity is actually declining in the US, so the math suggests wages still need to cool considerably. Even assuming a return to more normal pre-pandemic productivity growth of 1% to 1.5%, 3.8% is still a bit too high.
With those caveats, there were many pleasant surprises in the August jobs report. Americans in the prime of their working lives are returning to the labor force, which will help offset wage pressures by bringing labor supply and demand into better balance. Unemployment ticked up slightly, but mostly because of that larger denominator effect (payrolls increased, but the number of people in the labor force increased more). That’s an important development that had been sluggishly resolving itself after the disruptions from the pandemic.
All told, the latest report should be encouraging to the Fed and leaves an open question as to whether the central bank will raise the upper bound of its Fed funds rate to 3% or 3.25% when it convenes later this month. For now, the onus shifts to this month’s inflation report, where the focus will be on core prices excluding volatile food and energy. But market bulls would be rash to assume that the report is a sign that the coveted “soft landing” is at hand for the economy — that policy makers will soon vanquish high and volatile prices without tipping the labor market into a recession. Even if inflationary pressures are easing, the momentum is shifting subtly underneath the labor market and, once it starts to stumble in earnest, it’s hard to prevent the job losses from getting out of hand. | 2022-09-02T17:56:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Subtle Job Growth Shift Exposes Cracks in Labor Market - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/subtle-job-growth-shift-exposes-cracks-in-labor-market/2022/09/02/b41f073c-2ade-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/subtle-job-growth-shift-exposes-cracks-in-labor-market/2022/09/02/b41f073c-2ade-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Danielle is 2022′s first Atlantic hurricane — and it’s a strange one
The storm, the latest first hurricane since 2013, developed unusually far north in the record-warm Atlantic
Satellite view of Hurricane Danielle on Friday. (NOAA)
Tropical storm Danielle reached hurricane strength late Friday morning over the open Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center has declared. The storm, which is not expected to threaten any land areas, is the first hurricane of what has been a quiet Atlantic season so far.
Danielle is also the latest first hurricane to form in the Atlantic since 2013, said Phil Klotzbach, a tropical weather researcher at Colorado State University.
Another oddity in a weird Atlantic season: The storm gained strength unusually far north — near 40 degrees latitude — where hurricanes are rare. But it was record-warm ocean waters there that fueled the storm.
Michael Lowery, hurricane specialist for Miami TV affiliate WPLG, tweeted that the sea surface temperature near Danielle topped 80 degrees for first time on record. Tropical storms and hurricanes require such warm water to intensify.
Much of the northwest Atlantic is substantially warmer than normal, reflecting the effects of human-caused climate change that has raised ocean temperatures around the world.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a moderate to strong marine heat wave underway in the area where Danielle has developed. Marine heat waves occur when ocean temperature are abnormally high for a long time and are associated with significant effects on marine ecosystems.
Danielle is among the farthest north and east hurricanes to form in the Atlantic, owing, in part, to this heat wave.
At 11 a.m. Eastern time, Danielle was centered 885 miles west of the Azores, nearly stalled. “The hurricane is forecast to meander over the open Atlantic during the next couple of days, then slowly turn toward the northeast early next week,” the Hurricane Center wrote.
The center projects the storm to strengthen to a Category 2 hurricane by Sunday before weakening to Category 1 by the middle of next week.
The 2022 hurricane season has surprised forecasters for being abnormally quiet despite initial forecasts for a busy season. The Atlantic went without a named storm for nearly two months, from the beginning of July to the end of August. August passed without a named storm for the first time since 1997.
While warm ocean waters have favored storm formation, a combination of dry, stable air and hostile winds have generally suppressed development.
But since the start of September, the Atlantic has shown signs of waking up. In addition to Danielle, the Hurricane Center is monitoring a disturbance east of the Lesser Antilles, and gives it a 70 percent chance of developing into a tropical depression or storm over the next five days.
This system bears watching: Most forecast models suggest that the disturbance will curl out to sea in several days, but a few suggest it could continue westward toward the Bahamas and perhaps the Southeastern United States.
One other disturbance just west of Africa is also being monitored, but the center has determined that it has only a 10 percent chance to develop. | 2022-09-02T17:56:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Danielle strengthens into first Atlantic hurricane of the 2022 season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/02/hurricane-danielle-atlantic-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/02/hurricane-danielle-atlantic-climate/ |
Temperatures in California’s Central Valley could top 110 degrees.
Diana Leonard
The downtown skyline during a heat wave in Los Angeles on Sept. 1. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg)
Nearly 40 million Americans are under excessive heat warnings as a sprawling, intense heat dome delivers “extremely hot temperatures” across the West. Dangerous conditions are possible in California’s highly-populous Central Valley through the middle of next week, and highs could top 110 degrees.
The brutal heat is taxing power grids, sparking wildfire concerns and posing a danger to the homeless, elderly and other vulnerable populations. It’s an episode notable for its intensity, duration and coverage — on Wednesday and Thursday, there were records broken from California to the northern Rockies.
The state’s grid operator, California ISO, is calling for customers to voluntarily conserve electricity between 4 and 9 p.m. Friday — the third day in a row to feature a Flex Alert, with more possible over the holiday weekend. California ISO is also asking residents to “precool” their homes by setting the thermostat to 72 degrees in the morning, and then raising it to 78 degrees after 4 p.m.
“The power grid operator is again expecting high electricity demand, primarily from air conditioning use, and needs voluntary conservation steps to help balance supply and demand,” the agency wrote.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has declared a state of emergency to free up state resources to address the extreme heat. The proclamation notes that, by Monday, energy demand could exceed 48,000 megawatts, the greatest load of the year.
Highs will run 10 to 20 degrees above average for the western third of the nation, courtesy of a stagnant heat dome, or ridge of high pressure, parked over the Great Basin of Nevada. It won’t budge until Tuesday, and will bring hot, dry air that will sink and parch the landscape. The high will also act as a force field, deflecting any storm systems north toward Canada.
The heat will be more reminiscent of July than September across the Golden State, the Desert Southwest as well as Nevada.
Records set so far
A litany of records were approached or surpassed across the western U.S. on Friday, and some monthly records are in jeopardy through the coming days. Here’s a look at some of the cities that have tied or broken records:
Salt Lake City established a new monthly record high for the month of September on Thursday after hitting 102 degrees. The previous record was 100 degrees. It also marks the 28th day so far this year to reach 100 degrees in the Utah capital; the previous record was 21 times last year, as well as in 1994 and 1960.
Helena, Mont., hit 97 degrees Thursday, breaking the record of 96 set in 1955.
Missoula, Mont., hit a record high of 99 degrees Wednesday, breaking the previous record of 94 set in 1929.
Lake Yellowstone, Wyo., made it to 80 degrees, breaking the record 0f 78 set in 2019.
Lander, Wyo., peaked at 98 degrees Thursday, crushing a previous record of 94 degrees set in 1983 and 2019. Records there date back to 1891.
Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Reno, Nev., hit 100 degrees Wednesday, tying a record. The site also hit 100 degrees Thursday, breaking a record of 99 set in 1950.
Hanford, Calif., hit 105 degrees Thursday, tying a record set in 2017.
Bob Hope Airport in Burbank climbed to 112 degrees Thursday, breaking a previous record of 108 set in 2017.
The National Weather Service office in Seattle hit 89 degrees Wednesday, beating out the previous record from 1987.
Yakima, Wash., broke a record of 97 degrees set in 1949 on Wednesday when the city hit 98.
Dallesport, Pasco and Ellensburg, Wash., logged record highs Thursday, and capped off a record-warm August on Wednesday.
More records coming
Continued record-setting warmth is likely in the coming days, with the heat reaching a dangerous crescendo Tuesday. The National Weather Service warned that “extreme heat will significantly increase the potential for heat related illnesses, particularly for those working or participating in outdoor activities over the holiday weekend.”
Some of the hottest weather will be found in California’s Central Valley, including Sacramento, where highs could hit 110 degrees Monday and Tuesday. That would beat records of 108 and 109 set in 1988 and 2020, respectively.
Sacramento has already had three dozen days at or above 100 degrees this year, and will probably reach the record of 41 days by the middle of next week.
Redding, Calif., is predicted to see highs of 109 both Monday and Tuesday, and even downtown Los Angeles should climb to about 103 degrees Sunday.
The only place to adequately beat the heat will be along the immediate coastline, like in the San Francisco Bay area, where comparatively manageable highs in the upper 70s to near 80 are expected.
There’s even a chance that Death Valley, Calif., could meet or exceed its record of 125 degrees, which would be the hottest ever observed there during the month of September. The temperature made it to 124.4 degrees Thursday. If Death Valley nicks 126 degrees, it would tie a global record for the month of September.
Early outlooks hint that, after a brief tempering of the heat dome Tuesday, a resurgence of heat in the western U.S. could be in the cards. It may even last until mid-September.
Dangerous fire weather
We are already seeing extreme fire behavior/growth on the newly started #RouteFire, and this is just day 1 of this 5+ day heatwave across California.
Expect to see more rapidly spreading wildfires over the next week as the state endures a prolonged period of extreme heat. #CAwx pic.twitter.com/xVT76YtiZ6
The record-breaking heat is fueling wildfires in several Western states, exacerbating parched conditions brought on by years of drought stress and unusually hot weather this summer.
The Cedar Creek Fire near Eugene, Ore., was exploding in size Friday morning, ahead of winds that are forecast to pick up later in the day. It’s one of several forest fires actively burning in the state. Wildfires are also spreading in Idaho, where numerous temperature records fell this week.
In San Diego County near the U.S.-Mexico border, the Border23 Fire grew to nearly 4,400 acres Wednesday and destroyed several structures, including three homes.
Forest fires have been burning more actively, including Oregon’s Rum Creek Fire, which is threatening several thousand structures, and the Sturgill Fire in the northeastern part of the state.
Conditions are predicted to worsen as the heat wave peaks over the Labor Day weekend.
Gusty winds expected Friday and Saturday could also lead to rapid spread of new and existing fires.
The Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center is warning of “critical fire weather” in Northern California, Nevada and Oregon as an upper-level trough passes through the region. Red Flag Warnings for high fire danger have been issued in several states, from California to Washington, Idaho and Montana.
The forecast is particularly concerning for California, where scorching temperatures this weekend will send vegetation to “ultra-flammable” levels, according to a forecast for Northern California from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Predictive Services. Periods of wind, combined with warm nights and low humidity, would further challenge firefighters who are already working through dangerous heat.
“Fires that become well established will spread through all fuel types with near total consumption the next several days,” another forecast for Southern California says.
Carlos Molina, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., said that soaring temperatures of up to 107 degrees would reach into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, a popular destination for visitors to national forests and national parks, including Yosemite National Park. While the Sierra did receive moisture from monsoon storms this summer, coverage was spotty and generally only ranged from a half inch to an inch, he said.
“The fire danger is extremely high at the moment,” he said. “It’s bone-dry out there.”
Ignitions tend to spike during holiday weekends because more people are outdoors.
This weekend, travelers will not only be exposed to serious heat risk but also to increased wildfire risk. On Labor Day weekend in 2020, campers and hikers in the Sierra Nevada were airlifted to safety after they became trapped by the explosive Creek Fire, which broke out amid record-shattering heat in the state.
Climate change has intensified wildfire risk because a warmer atmosphere can more easily pull water from soils and plants. Studies have shown that human-caused climate change is a major contributor to increased vegetation dryness and burned area in the western U.S., particularly in forests. | 2022-09-02T17:56:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blistering heat wave in West sets records, escalates fire danger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/02/western-heatwave-california-fire-drought/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/02/western-heatwave-california-fire-drought/ |
FBI agents were directed to windowless storage room when they came looking for classified documents in June
A window is illuminated at Mar-a-Lago during a dinner with President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, on March 7, 2020, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Alex Brandon/AP)
The ornate centerpiece of the historic Mar-a-Lago estate that Donald Trump bought for cheap in 1985 is an expansive, elegant living room, featuring a golden coffered ceiling and a massive stone fireplace.
Directly beneath lies a far more modest open area with a concrete floor.
It was dug into the foundations of the early 20th-century building not long after Trump bought the place, a former employee said, carved out to create more space to store tables, chairs, umbrellas — the stuff necessary to complete Trump’s conversion of what had once been a grand residence for a single family into a private club for 500 members.
The room plays a starring role in the Justice Department’s damning recitation of its interactions with Trump and his lawyers, including the partially unsealed affidavit that accompanied the FBI’s request to search Mar-a-Lago last month. The “STORAGE ROOM,” that document called it, explaining that the space did not meet exacting standards described in federal regulations to house highly classified documents.
Court filings say a top Justice Department official and a gaggle of FBI agents were allowed to tour the storage room when they visited Mar-a-Lago on June 3 to pick up classified documents collected by Trump’s lawyers in response to a grand jury subpoena. A lawyer for Trump said the room was where they would find all of documents that had been carted from the White House to Florida after Trump left office.
Two months later, agents returned with a court-approved search warrant and carted off more than two dozen boxes of documents and assorted other items gathered from the storage room and the former president’s office. The raid exposed anew the potential risks of keeping highly sensitive material at a club that hosts weddings, galas and other large events, where outsiders are common and many employees — as well as some visitors — are foreign nationals.
Not yet clear is why Trump chose the basement storage room to keep highly sensitive documents nor who exactly had access to the documents kept there — or who could have gotten access had they tried. Spokespeople for Trump and his company did not respond to requests for comment. Trump’s lawyers have disclosed that the Justice Department sought surveillance video from the club in late June; people familiar with the matter said the video showed various people coming in and out of the larger storage area.
People close to Trump said a variety of Mar-a-Lago and Trump staffers had access to that area beneath the public living room. Access to the closet where the documents were kept was more restricted, they said.
“It’s a very limited number of people that have access down there,” Trump lawyer Christina Bobb told Fox News host Laura Ingraham a few days after the FBI search. “Certainly Mar-a-Lago is secure, in and of itself. Just getting onto the compound is hard. Then it was a locked door. Getting back to the basement, there’s security down there, only certain members of staff can get down there.”
“And then," she added, "there’s only one key.”
A security ‘nightmare’
Bobb did not respond to later questions about the key — including where it was kept and who controlled access to it. Some of her other assertions in the days after the search have since been called into question. (For instance, she told The Washington Post last month that she and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran allowed a Justice official to open boxes and flip through documents in June, a claim prosecutors have now alleged is untrue.) Still, another person familiar with the room, who like several others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing criminal case, agreed that only one key existed to the lock on the closet’s door.
A single locked door — even one with only one key — hardly meets the exacting specifications required by federal regulations to physically store classified documents. Documents classified at the top secret level, for example, are required to be stored in a “security container” approved by the General Services Administration. The container must be inspected every two hours by a person with clearance to review top secret material or feature an intrusion alarm that meets specific requirements.
The Justice Department official who toured the room in June wrote an email to Corcoran five days later to complain it did not meet the law’s requirements.
“As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information,” wrote Jay Bratt, the Justice Department’s Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, according to court documents. “As such, it appears that since the time classified documents were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location.”
Bratt asked that the storage room “be secured” and that all boxes moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago “be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”
Experts said security at the Spanish-style club has long been a headache. The facility has served a frequent residence for Trump and his family during the winter months, including while he was president. But it also boasts tennis courts, a dining room, two pools, a spa and beachfront facilities, all open to its members and their guests. Its giant ballroom and other larger areas are frequently booked for large parties and political and charitable fundraisers, all open to even more visitors, some of them foreign nationals.
Since Trump left office, Republican candidates also have flocked to the club for official events, to genuflect to Trump and attempt to secure his endorsement. Political donors have flocked, too. People who have visited the club since Trump left office said they were allowed in without so much as an identification check.
“I think Mar-a-Lago is a counterintelligence nightmare,” said Joel Brenner, former head of U.S. counterintelligence under the director of National Intelligence and former inspector general for the National Security Agency, citing the flow of hundreds of people, the presence of foreign nationals and Trump’s long-established carelessness with national secrets.
A person who is familiar with the club’s workings and spoke on the condition of anonymity described regular movement from club facilities to the basement and back. “This is an operating property,” this person said. “There’s a kitchen and a guy who does pastries and a liquor cabinet. There’s a restaurant here. You see activity. A guy getting vodka to bring to the bar. A person going to get cupcakes to bring upstairs.”
Mixing business and pleasure
Mar-a-Lago’s 17 acres stretch across Palm Beach Island, from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Ocean. It was opened in 1927 as a private estate by Marjorie Merriweather Post, the cereal heiress who was at the time one of the richest women in the world. Post gave the estate its name, which means “From Sea to Lake." In 1973, she donated the 128-room home to the U.S. government, intending for it to become a winter White House, but the government deemed it too expensive to maintain and turned it over to the private Post Foundation.
Trump purchased the property from the foundation in 1985 for the bargain price of $5 million, plus $3 million more for its collection of European furnishings. After using it as a private home for about a decade, Trump converted the property to a club in 1995, throwing open the doors to paid members, their guests and other attendees of various events.
The original home came with a basement area accessible by a spiral staircase at the north end. Workers soon realized that a club would need far more storage and embarked on a project to expand the basement area underneath the south end of the home as well, said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Trump supporters.
That’s when the space beneath the living room and the connecting storage room at the heart of the FBI dispute were built.
After Trump’s election, he was eager to use the home as the winter presidential residence — a comfortable weekend spot for him and his family. Visits came with the added benefit of giving priceless promotion to his private business, which operated during his presidency much as it had before.
Trump has long relied on temporary foreign labor to make the club hum during the winter months known locally as The Season, a practice that did not end while he was president or after. (The club is closed to members each year during the swampy Florida summer months from Mother’s Day to Halloween.) According to documents filed with the Labor Department, the club got permission to hire 87 foreign waiters, cooks and housekeepers for the season that began last fall and ended this spring. The company has asked to hire 92 more to start in October. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not respond to a question about how foreign workers are vetted.
Brenner, the former counterintelligence office, said the U.S. government has special rules are in place to prevent foreign nationals from having access to classified documents. He speculated that Mar-a-Lago’s foreign labor force likely elicited interest from counterintelligence professionals.
“The rules about foreign nationals are not in place because we think that particular foreigners are bad people,” he said. “But we don’t trust them as much. We have rules to keep information vital to the national security not only in the hands of Americans, but Americans who have been vetted and are trusted and have clearances."
Trump's classified papers and the 'myth' of presidential security clearance
Showing off ‘love letters’
Trump has long reveled in intermingling sensitive presidential duties with his wealthy partying guests at Mar-a-Lago.
As president and in the months after he left office, he was known to show off correspondence that he had received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — which he had termed “love letters" — to guests at his club, people in his orbit have said. (It was these letters that originally sparked the dispute that eventually led to the FBI search, after officials at the National Archives and Records Administration noticed the famous correspondence was not among the presidential records they received from Trump’s White House and requested they and other missing documents be returned. After negotiations, Trump in January returned 15 boxes, including the letters, but kept dozens of other boxes of documents in Florida.)
Even while president, Trump’s practices at Mar-a-Lago concerned security experts. A month after taking office, Trump faced questions after he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe popped open a laptop and reviewed a North Korean missile launch while dining on Mar-a-Lago’s outdoor patio, surrounded by paid guests, while a wedding celebration took place nearby.
At the time, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters that “no classified material” had been shared at the table and that Trump had been briefed at a secure location both before and after dinner. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, recalled that a special secure room had been installed at Mar-a-Lago for the review of classified documents while Trump was president.
But Bratt’s June email suggests the room was decertified or no longer in place after Trump left office.
The government revealed the email in a court filing late Tuesday. The filing also accused Trump’s team of refusing to let Bratt and the FBI agents open or look inside the boxes that were in the storage room when they visited June 3. Trump’s lawyers countered the government had “significantly mischaracterized" the meeting but did not say how.
Government records were “likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room,” the Justice Department’s filing says, including some that were taken from the room before the lawyers even conducted their search to comply with the subpoena. The government did not specify what it believes was removed from the room, or by whom.
After getting a court-approved search warrant, prosecutors said, FBI agents found more than 100 additional classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, including 76 in the storage room, 11 of them marked “top secret.” Other items were found in Trump’s office, including three documents with classification markings found in desk drawers, along with the former president’s current and expired passports.
Newly unsealed FBI list shows how Trump mixed classified, unclassified items
Trump has insisted that he had declassified all of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago — though there’s no evidence he undertook a process while president to do so, and as a former president he has no power to declare records no longer classified.
In its filing, the Justice Department noted that over months of negotiations over the documents, Trump’s lawyers never asserted that the documents — clearly marked as classified including at the highest levels — had been declassified.
Chance encounters, slipping through
Mar-a-Lago has experienced a number of embarrassing security lapses while Trump was president and since he left Washington.
In 2019, a Chinese national was arrested carrying phones and other electronic devices after getting past a reception area by saying she was headed to the pool.
Late last month, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that a Russian-speaking woman named Inna Yashchyshyn visited Mar-a-Lago last year posing as Anna de Rothschild, an heiress of the famous European banking family.
John LeFevre, an investment banker from Texas, said in an interview that he was introduced to Yashchyshyn as Anna de Rothschild while having drinks around the Mar-a-Lago pool. He described the meeting as the kind of chance encounter not unusual at Trump’s club.
“Everyone is friendly and generous. At any given time, there are eight people at a table, then 12 people, then two tables are pushed together,” he said. "People are just hanging out, often with people they don’t know well or didn’t arrive with.”
Andrew Smallman, a lawyer for Yashchyshyn, said she is a Ukrainian citizen and longtime U.S. resident, and that at the time she visited Mar-a-Lago she was acting under the influence of a former employer. He said she was able to enter Trump’s home with a friend without showing any identification nor answering any questions from security.
“He spoke to someone," Small said, “and they were waved inside.”
Carol D. Leonnig and Alice Crites contributed to this report. | 2022-09-02T17:57:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Deep inside bustling Mar-a-Lago, a storage room where secrets were stashed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/deep-inside-bustling-mar-a-lago-storage-room-where-secrets-were-stashed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/deep-inside-bustling-mar-a-lago-storage-room-where-secrets-were-stashed/ |
While broadcasters typically air a prime-time address by the president, they determined that this speech was more ‘political’ than newsworthy for live coverage.
President Biden delivers remarks on what he calls the “continued battle for the Soul of the Nation” in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
While President Biden warned the nation about threats to democracy in a prime time address on Thursday, ABC was airing a game show, “Press Your Luck.”
As Biden spelled out his objections to former president Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” NBC was broadcasting a rerun of “Law and Order.” CBS skipped the speech to show a rerun of “Young Sheldon.”
The networks’ rejection of Biden’s speech — delivered in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, washed in dramatic red lighting as Marines stood guard — marked an unusual moment in the long relationship between the White House and the nation’s most powerful broadcasters.
Presidents rarely make speeches during prime TV viewing hours, and typically only do so to address a national crises or matter of exceptional urgency. The networks, in turn, typically carry presidential speeches when the White House requests the time and after previewing the president’s remarks.
The subtle stagecraft behind the Jan. 6 hearings
In the Thursday night address, Biden argued that Trump and his supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic.”
Using the acronym for Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, he said, “MAGA Republicans want to take America backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.” He also referenced the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, saying, “We can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American. They’re incompatible.”
Biden’s speech was carried live on CNN and MSNBC, but it was not aired on Fox News, the most-watched of the cable-news channels. Fox stuck with its usual 8 p.m. eastern-time program, a commentary show hosted by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson.
The networks’ decision not to carry the speech all but ensured that Biden’s remarks will reach a far smaller audience than the millions of viewers who typically watch live presidential addresses on ABC, CBS and NBC.
Sesno added that while he personally believes that all Americans should be concerned about “the influence of a people and a party that deny reality [and] seek to undermine elections,” he also thinks that networks have to make their coverage decisions “based on the newsworthiness of the speech and whether it’s a true ‘address to the nation’ or primarily political in nature.”
The non-coverage stands in contrast to the three networks’ decision in June to preempt their entertainment programs to air the first hearing of the House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. | 2022-09-02T18:35:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Biden warned about democracy’s collapse, TV networks aired reruns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/02/biden-speech-network-coverage-independence-hall/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/02/biden-speech-network-coverage-independence-hall/ |
Figuring out how many ‘MAGA Republicans’ there actually are
Supporters of former president Donald Trump demonstrate outside Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on Aug. 9, 2022. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg)
There are two views of who President Biden was excoriating in his speech on Thursday night.
To Biden and his team, the group was clearly delineated: “MAGA Republicans,” a group of Americans who support former president Donald Trump, reject the outcome of the 2020 election and are open to political violence as a tactic. To Biden’s critics — a group that includes but isn’t limited to Trump supporters — he was speaking more broadly, using the term “MAGA Republicans” as cover for attacking the right broadly.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has walked through what Biden said and the context in which he said it, both on Thursday and last week, when he used the label “semi-fascism” to describe that group’s worldview. But what if we went one step further, trying to assign an actual numeric value to the group Biden is describing? It’s not “half the country” as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and others have insisted. But how much of the country is it?
We’ll start with Biden’s description of the group.
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself. ... They promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country. They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at it as patriots.”
This is a subset of what Biden said, certainly, but, with four categories, it captures the heart of what his speech was focused on: rejection of the 2020 election, embrace of candidates who similarly reject the results, approval of the Capitol riot and a willingness to consider violence as a political tool.
(That Biden later added that the Republican Party was largely beholden to this faction of its base has been used to argue that he was impugning Republicans more broadly. You may evaluate that assertion as you wish.)
Let’s begin with the first category: Those who reject the election results. Before we pull specific numbers from polling, we should set other boundaries. Biden’s comments weren’t specifically about the views of Trump supporters but, instead, of Republicans. So to evaluate how much of the country he’s describing, we’ll look at members of the GOP or, where available, independents who align with Republicans, for our analysis. Are there Republicans who deny the 2020 election results and also hate Trump? Probably! But probably not that many.
This question of how people view the 2020 election is asked regularly. Just last month, for example, YouGov asked the question on behalf of the Economist. They determined that nearly 7 in 10 Republicans believed Biden didn’t legitimately win. So how much of the country is that?
Well, about 20 percent of the country is under age 18, so we will ignore them. How many adults are Republicans? Gallup polls on this regularly. In its most recent iteration of the poll, it found that 28 percent of the country identifies as Republican while 41 percent identify as independent. Of those independents, though, more than a third lean Republican. So 45 percent of American adults are Republican or Republican-leaning independent.
Now we just do some math, applying percentages to the total population pool. The result? About 15 percent of the country (and 19 percent of U.S. adults) are Republicans who think Biden didn’t legitimately win in 2020. About 50 million MAGA Republicans, per Biden.
Except that Biden described MAGA Republicans as holding a variety of positions, not just this one. Is that 15 percent really included in Biden’s descriptor? Or is it only the subset that also believes in the potential use of political violence, etc.? This is hard to measure, since we can’t compare subgroups across polls. So we’ll simply estimate the scale of each of the differentiators Biden listed.
We move on to support for candidates who reject the election results. This is fairly easy to determine, thanks to polling produced this summer by Pew Research Center. Pew asked Americans how they felt about leaders who said that Trump was the legitimate winner in 2020 — and whether they liked such leaders a little or a lot. A third of Republicans said they liked such leaders a lot; another 19 percent said they liked them a little. That’s about 11 percent of the country, then, that likes such leaders.
Looking at the figure for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, the total is similar: 8 percent of the country (and 11 percent of adults) like such leaders at least a little.
Then we consider Biden’s assessment of how Jan. 6 rioters were viewed. In the YouGov poll mentioned above, respondents were asked if they approved of “Trump supporters taking over the Capitol building” on that say — an admittedly generous way of phrasing it. But more than a quarter of Republicans said they approved at least somewhat, some 6 percent of the population.
The percentage of Republicans holding that position has hovered around 25 percent since the riot occurred.
Now we get into the trickier question: support for the political use of violence. One report from Bright Line Watch in November found limited support for the specific question at hand. Would Republicans endorse the commission of violent felonies to accomplish their political goals? Very few agreed. Asked if they supported political violence if Democrats won in 2024, though, about 10 percent of strong Republicans said they supported the use of violence.
In March, The Washington Post and our partners at ABC News asked Americans the extent to which they viewed violence against the government as potentially justified. About 4 in 10 Republicans (and the same percentage of Republicans and leaning independents) believed that it was. That’s about 9 percent of the population (or 15 percent in the case of GOP/leaners).
In July, a group of researchers from the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis released data including a question that’s been posed in a number of recent polls, asking respondents whether they agreed that because “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast ... we may have to use force to save it.” Asking the question in this way is fraught, since doing so can result in “acquiescence bias” — a tendency for people to overstate the extent to which they agree. In this case, more than half of Republicans said they did — or about 12 percent of the population.
Again, we can’t assume that these percentages all overlap. But we get a consistent picture. Over and over, about 10 percent of the population (plus or minus a few percentage points) expresses the sort of view that Biden articulated: Republican or Republican-leaning and in favor of the positions he associated with “MAGA.”
If one agrees with Biden that this group poses a threat to American democracy, it is reassuring that it constitutes a tenth of the public — and not, as Biden’s detractors had it — half.
The latest: John Podesta joins White House climate team | 2022-09-02T19:14:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘MAGA Republicans’, by the numbers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/trump-republicans-biden-maga/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/trump-republicans-biden-maga/ |
The SNL exodus continues: 3 more stars will depart the sketch series
Alex Moffat, left, as Eric Trump, alongside Mikey Day as Donald Trump Jr. and Colin Jost during “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live.” (Will Heath/NBC)
Melissa Villaseñor, Alex Moffat and Aristotle Athari are leaving the show, according to a person familiar with the exits who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Villaseñor, who was a semifinalist on NBC reality talent show “America’s Got Talent,” made history as the show’s first Latina cast member when she joined in 2016. She is best known for her celebrity impressions, including portrayals of Kristen Wiig and Lady Gaga.
Villaseñor, Moffat and Athari join four former castmates — Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney and Pete Davidson — who said their goodbyes in May during last season’s finale. | 2022-09-02T19:19:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SNL departures: Melissa Villaseñor, Alex Moffat, Aristotle Athari exit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/snl-cast-exits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/snl-cast-exits/ |
A federal judge in Florida signaled she’s leaning toward granting former president Donald Trump’s request for a special master to review documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago home as part of a probe into his handling of sensitive government records. At issue is whether he can block prosecutors from making use of documents he says should be protected by some form of legal privilege. The Justice Department is opposed to the request. Trump’s motion could delay the investigation and has, at a minimum, provided him with a new forum to attack the investigation. After a Sept. 1 hearing, US District Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated to the bench by Trump, said she would issue a ruling “in due course.”
Trump contends that at least some of the documents seized by the FBI during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago are privileged, meaning they’re covered by legal protections that make them off-limits to federal prosecutors. Trump has cited attorney-client privilege, which covers communications between lawyers and their clients, and executive privilege, a doctrine that is meant to protect a president’s ability to communicate freely with close advisers. Trump has referenced both of those privileges in accusing federal investigators of abusing their power and seizing documents that they weren’t authorized to take under the search warrant. He’s asked Cannon to appoint a special master to review the documents and to block DOJ from looking at them in the meantime.
Defendants who don’t want the government in charge of the privilege review can ask a judge to bring in a special master. That happened during the criminal investigation into ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The judge in that case explained that he had “faith” that prosecutors’ integrity was “unimpeachable,” but that bringing in a special master would help with the “perception of fairness” given the unique circumstances at play. Citing the Cohen case, prosecutors in New York made a preemptive request to a judge to appoint a special master after seizing materials from two other Trump lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing. Trump has highlighted those cases in his pitch for a special master now.
5. Is Trump’s request unusual?
A request for a special master isn’t unusual, but a couple of things set Trump’s situation apart. Very few criminal investigations potentially implicate executive privilege, so bringing in a special master to consider that question would be a rarity. There’s also the timing: Cohen went to court to try to stop the government from looking at his documents almost immediately after the search. DOJ went to court a few days after the Giuliani and Toensing searches, and government lawyers made clear that they hadn’t started looking at seized materials. Legal experts also questioned why Trump didn’t lodge his special master request with the federal magistrate judge who had signed off on the warrant and was already presiding over a case related to the release of warrant materials; filing a new case meant Trump landed before a different, randomly-assigned judge on the Florida bench. DOJ is against using a special master at all, but argued that if the judge goes that route, it should be someone with top secret security clearance, another unusual element.
6. What does the government say?
Another layer of review could delay the probe, though it’s not clear how many documents would be at issue. Whether a special master is assigned to go through the entire cache of seized records, versus reviewing a smaller subset where Trump and DOJ disagree about what’s privileged, would affect how long the process takes. A special master advises a judge, but doesn’t make the final call. They typically submit a report to the judge with recommendations -- in a case like Trump’s, laying out what they think should happen to disputed documents -- and the parties could then get a chance to weigh in before the judge rules. | 2022-09-02T19:27:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Everything You Need to Know About Trump’s Push for a ‘Special Master’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/everything-you-need-to-knowabout-trumps-push-for-a-special-master/2022/09/02/bbb28cb6-2aee-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/everything-you-need-to-knowabout-trumps-push-for-a-special-master/2022/09/02/bbb28cb6-2aee-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Va. Supreme Court affirms probe of Loudoun sexual assaults can continue
A probe of how Loudoun County Schools handled two sexual assault incidents can continue, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed Friday that a special grand jury investigating how Loudoun County school officials handled two high-profile sexual assaults can continue its work, despite a challenge from the local school board.
Virginia’s highest court concurred with a July ruling by a Loudoun County judge, who found Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and Attorney General Jason Miyares had not overstepped their authority in convening the panel as the school board argued. The school board asked the State Supreme Court to review that ruling.
Judge rules grand jury investigation of Loudoun sexual assaults can continue
Miyares (R) said in a statement the Friday ruling allows him to fulfill his pledge to voters to investigate the sexual assaults, which led to a political firestorm that gained national attention and became an issue in the 2021 race for governor.
“This is yet another win for both Loudoun families and the Commonwealth in our fight for justice and answers,” Miyares said.
Youngkin, who signed an executive order on his first day in office allowing Miyares to launch the investigation, called the ruling a “victory” and said the school board failed to address the sexual assaults and “continuously let down parents and students in Virginia.”
The governor has recently taken a harsh tone toward Virginia school districts — especially Northern Virginia systems — for their policies on transgender students.
The grand jury was launched earlier this year to probe why a then 15-year-old, who sexually assaulted a girl in a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in 2021, was allowed to re-enroll at Broad Run High School, where the teen sexually assaulted a second student. The teen was awaiting trial in the first incident at the time of the second assault.
Loudoun County officials promised major changes in the wake of the case.
The parents of the Stone Bridge victim described her assailant as “gender fluid.” Authorities have not commented on that characterization. Authorities said the teen was wearing a skirt during the Stone Bridge assault.
The case sparked backlash against a Loudoun County schools’ policy that allowed students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. The policy was put in place after the first assault occurred.
Va. teen pleads no contest in high school bathroom sex assault
The Loudoun County School Board sought a temporary injunction against the special grand jury probe in May, saying Youngkin and Miyares were on a politically motivated “fishing expedition” instead of a criminal probe.
Wayde Byard, a spokesman for the Loudoun County schools, said in a statement the school board was disappointed with the ruling.
“Loudoun County Public Schools appreciates the Supreme Court’s consideration of the unusual circumstances regarding this special grand jury,” Byard said. “LCPS will continue to comply with the Special Grand Jury’s requests and awaits the results of its investigation.” | 2022-09-02T19:27:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Va. Supreme Court affirms probe of Loudoun bathroom assaults can continue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/loudoun-bathroom-assault-grand-jury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/loudoun-bathroom-assault-grand-jury/ |
We need a fresh look at Beltway traffic calculations
Heavy traffic approaching the split on the Beltway on July 27, 2021, in Bethesda. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Aug. 29 editorial “Relieve commuters’ misery” stated that experts at the U.S. Transportation Department found baseless the allegation that state officials used fraudulent traffic calculations to justify the toll lanes. The experts did not draw any conclusions on the allegation against the integrity of the traffic calculations. What the experts found is that they “could not assess the plausibility or the validity” of the adjustments that the state officials made in the traffic calculations for the toll lanes. State officials made these adjustments in response to the discrepancies and anomalies in the traffic model results, which emerged during the public review of the draft and final studies. Further, the experts found that it was unclear how the traffic results favoring the preferred toll lanes alternative were obtained, and suggested that whatever process generated the results in the draft analysis, it was not revised as part of the final traffic modeling.
Only an internal memo filed by the Federal Highway Administration claims that the experts did not find fraud in the toll lanes traffic model. None of the findings reported by the experts support that claim.
Rodolfo Pérez, Silver Spring
The writer was the engineer adviser to the inspector general of the U.S. Transportation Department and was a member of the Montgomery County Transportation Policy Task Force.
The Aug. 29 editorial “Relieve commuters’ misery” discussed Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) plan for toll lanes on the Beltway and Interstate 270, as well as an expansion. Nary a twist in this years-long saga has passed without an editorial boost for the project. Like the governor himself, the editorials consistently gloss over the project’s myriad (and serious) flaws and take dismissive swipes at project critics instead of examining the facts behind the criticism.
A fresh, unbiased look at the issue and support for creative, less harmful approaches to solving traffic congestion would be welcome.
Lynn Marble, Rockville | 2022-09-02T19:28:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We need a fresh look at Beltway traffic calculations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/assessing-beltway-traffic-calculations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/assessing-beltway-traffic-calculations/ |
More youth carjackings in D.C.? ‘A disturbing trend’ indeed.
Washington Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. during summer training camp on July 27 in Ashburn, Va. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The most unusual aspect about the Aug. 28 shooting and attempted armed robbery of Washington Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. was that he decided to fight back. Fortunately, the promising NFL rookie got away with his life and is on the road to recovery. Just about everything else about the incident followed a now-familiar script.
Police Chief Robert J. Contee III showed up at the scene to announce they were looking for two teenage suspects. Contee repeated a declaration he has made at past crime scenes that residents should feel safe in the city. He acknowledged, however, that when situations such as Robinson’s carjacking get in the news, “they make people feel less safe.” No kidding.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) was on hand to repeat her demand that gun users, regardless of age, should face “clear and certain consequences.” She didn’t spell out what those consequences should be, but said the criminal justice system must get people who use guns on a “different trajectory.” Toward what? Didn’t say.
It fell to council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), the Judiciary Committee chairman who oversees public safety agencies, to state the obvious: “We’ve seen a disturbing trend.”
Said Allen, “A number of armed robberies and thefts, where we’re seeing younger people be a part of that.” They were, Allen said, “carrying a gun to commit an armed robbery, somebody was shot.” Echoing Bowser, Allen declared, “There has to be accountability for that. There just has to be.”
That D.C. officialdom reaction was pretty much it.
What’s left to say?
Carjackings are a regular fixture on the D.C. crime scene. So, too, are young lawbreakers.
So far this year, according to the D.C. police department’s carjacking dashboard, there have been 330 carjacking offenses. That works out to well over one per day, and a leap of over 25 percent over last year’s 264 recorded at the same time.
In the 1st Police District, where the Robinson shooting took place, there have been 64 carjackings, a 52 percent increase from last year.
Most of the time, carjackers brandished guns. Reports show a firearm was present in 240, or 73 percent, of total carjackings.
But here’s the most sobering statistic of all: Two-thirds of this year’s carjacking arrests involve juveniles. The Carjacking Dashboard age distribution shows:
· Age 13 — six arrests.
· Age 14 — 12 arrests.
· Age 18 — eight arrests.
· Ages 19 to 23 — 11 arrests.
Thirteen-year-old kids violently commandeering cars? I don’t care what comes out of city hall; D.C., we are in trouble.
The last category is also pause-worthy.
The amended D.C. Youth Rehabilitation Act, spearheaded by Allen, provides that people 24 years old and younger who are convicted of and sentenced for a crime other than homicide are eligible to have their convictions sealed if they complete their sentences. At one time, 24-year-olds were considered adults who were responsible for their actions. Moreover, if a judge decides that a young person would be better served by probation instead of confinement, the judge can suspend the sentence and place the person on probation.
So, it follows that if any of Robinson’s assailants are under 25 and are arrested and charged, there’s no telling, if convicted, the extent to which they will be held accountable, notwithstanding Bowser’s plea for “consequences.”
Last year, Contee, facing soaring rates of gun violence, called for Allen and the D.C. Council to reevaluate whether gun offenders should be eligible for the Youth Rehabilitation Act’s lighter sentences and the provision that allows records to be wiped clean. Contee’s plea were not heard.
Allen, other city lawmakers and several criminal justice advocates, contend that many younger offenders are not fully intellectually developed at the time of their offenses, and that their home lives and capacity for rehabilitation ought to weigh heavily in favor of leniency in sentencing.
This week, I tried to obtain current data on people sentenced under the Youth Rehabilitation Act, and whether the city’s changes have reduced recidivism and made D.C.’s streets safer.
The office of the D.C. attorney general told me: “The vast majority of Youth Rehabilitation Act cases are handled by the U.S. attorney’s office. We don’t keep track of them in any reports.”
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office stated: “I’m not aware of any USAO data or recent statements that we have made on the YRA.”
The spokesman did, however, refer me to the D.C. Sentencing Commission’s April 20 Annual Report submitted to the D.C. Council. The report analyzed felony sentences imposed last year by the D.C. Superior Court. The commission stated, however, that it had denied a request for information pertaining to sentences under the Youth Rehabilitation Act “because the Commission does not currently have reliable YRA data.”
Satisfied with that, city leaders?
Meanwhile, which will come first? Robinson’s return to the gridiron or his assailants going before the bar of justice? Does it even matter? | 2022-09-02T19:28:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Increasing youth carjackings are indeed a 'disturbing trend' in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/carjackings-dc-youth-offenders-rising/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/carjackings-dc-youth-offenders-rising/ |
(Michelle Kondrich for The Washington Post)
Tracy Moore is a Los Angeles writer.
A study published in the journal Nature last month about something called “bridging social capital” elicited many no-duhs on social media. The study’s big takeaway was that when the poor get a chance to meet the wealthier among us, they have a greater chance at succeeding. It is beyond obvious, many have noted, that good connections increase the odds of getting a good job.
But as someone who jumped classes, from living below the poverty line to solidly middle-class, I can shed some light on the numbers. Being around the better-off didn’t just forge connections that would lead to employment opportunities. It taught me something more crucial: how to act like I belonged in the first place.
There was only one catch: I would have to stop acting poor, which meant polishing aspects of myself that would prevent those friendships from sticking. Smoothing those edges paid dividends, but at the uncomfortable cost of erasing parts of myself. To create a better life, I had to mask the outward signs of a chaotic home life, troubled self esteem and the mental health affects of growing up for stretches without even basic amenities. Everyone’s history, painful or not, is intertwined with who they are.
If it were that easy to hop classes in this country, all you’d have to do is start packing. So, I was heartened that the study acknowledged this is no easy feat in itself: in areas that are largely Black, or where Black and White residents are equally poor together, economic isolation made that jump all but impossible.
But, if you’re lucky enough to simply be around “better,” you’ve got a fighting chance. That’s what happened to me. I grew up in a poor Appalachian town of 900 people, but then moved to a town of about 20,000 in Tennessee, where we lived in a trailer park with a handful of other families like ours, single mothers on welfare.
That didn’t give me instant access to wealthier friends, but it was still a small-enough town that public school did. Nearly all my acquaintances were better off. This meant that by sheer virtue of seeing how other kids acted in school and going to their homes, I saw what middle-class looked like — what “better” was.
It was an eyeful. I went to McMansions in new suburbs, to houses with pools, closets stuffed with brand-name clothing and fridges stuffed with brand-name food. I didn’t want all of it, but I wanted a bunch of it.
But it was my friendship with one family that gave me a window into how I might attain it. Alison’s parents weren’t ostentatiously wealthy, but their lives held all the hallmarks of middle-class aspiration. Books, games and art projects were scattered around the family room; they read newspapers and magazines, and they discussed current events. They not only set a high bar for their children, but also they reinforced their children’s ability to meet it, daily. Good grades were a baseline. Extracurriculars were not optional. Success was treated as inevitable — not some lucky break, as it had been among my class of origin.
And acting “right” was the secret sauce, and that was heavily dependent on knowing what was considered acceptable and unacceptable even in normal conversations with other people. They didn’t burp the alphabet, like my sister could, or tell crass jokes, like I did. Money wasn’t discussed. Bringing up my con-man father whose name I didn’t even know, or the struggles of my less-educated kin? Not great table talk. Learning when not to talk was a big hurdle.
Middle class meant napkins neatly folded in laps, pleases and thank yous unrolling sincerely and automatically. It would be outrageous to suggest that poorer families don’t value these things — my mother certainly did. But working two jobs and the exhaustion of raising four girls alone made those conditions impossible to create to the degree this two-parent family could.
So, I memorized these behaviors and ditched my poverty tells until I figured out my own values. You can still catch me eating bologna, and no study would ever convince me that growing up poor was a loss when I consider the resilience and gratitude it imparted. But it didn’t take a good SAT score to notice what I was supposed to act like, dress like, talk like, and seem like to make those friends, to improve my lot. The sooner I accomplished that, the sooner I realized no one knew what class I grew up in — unless I told them.
On some level, shedding an upbringing requires distancing yourself from where you started. That can put a disadvantaged person in the position of erasing themselves, their history and their people just to feel worthy of a better life. I have no doubt it was critical to succeeding, but it’s still not easy to admit to myself the extent to which I was willing to happily join in on that erasure all on my own. For all the study’s merits, that’s a cost it did not seem able to account for. | 2022-09-02T19:29:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | I rose from poverty, but left part of me behind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/how-i-rose-from-poverty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/how-i-rose-from-poverty/ |
It’s not too early to plan for winter storms along I-95
Drivers wait for the traffic to be cleared on Jan. 4 near Carmel Church, Va., as cars and trucks are stranded on sections of Interstate 95. Almost 48 miles of the interstate was closed because of ice and snow. (Steve Helber/Associated Press)
I hope Virginia officials, including the Transportation Department and other agencies, can develop and implement plans to reduce the impact of snowstorms on Interstate 95 between D.C. and Richmond. This stretch of highway has been problematic for decades and is one of the most traffic-choked segments of I-95 on the East Coast.
Even in good weather, one can expect significant backups. There are long stretches without exits and services. A rapid snow buildup combined with holiday traffic and thousands of trucks can lead to problems similar to what occurred in January.
Public education during the winter driving season, better real-time signboard data and push notifications to cellphones should all be implemented. Everyone on this road during the winter driving season should have emergency supplies and a full tank of gas, as we now know that ignoring these precautions can be life-threatening. I wouldn’t know what to recommend regarding restricting or closing this segment to trucks or to cars during a snowstorm. Obviously, reluctance to do that was a major factor in this incident.
Weather and traffic can deteriorate very rapidly. Once things are jammed with poor traction, recovery becomes much more problematic.
Bob Hugman, Midlothian, Va. | 2022-09-02T19:29:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | It’s not too early to plan for winter storms along I-95 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/its-not-too-early-plan-winter-storms-along-i-95/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/its-not-too-early-plan-winter-storms-along-i-95/ |
It’s about more than a little light reading for the American public
The Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The Post has had many articles about former president Donald Trump’s cache of secret papers. Readers might have wondered why he kept these documents. But the Aug. 27 front-page article “Affidavit details search’s origins” included the best answer from former Trump administration official Kash Patel. The article reported that “Patel claimed in an interview … that Trump had declassified sets of material before leaving the White House that he ‘thought the American public should have the right to read themselves.’ ”
So, the former president thought “the American public should have the right to read” reports on spies and secret informers, and on how the United States’ interception of foreign leaders’ secret messages worked. Isn’t that what Mr. Patel said? That would be exciting, if we could keep it just to ourselves.
Edward Stern, Bethesda | 2022-09-02T19:29:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | It’s about more than a little light reading for the American public - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/little-light-reading-american-public/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/little-light-reading-american-public/ |
Pickleball has an exclusionary side
A basket of balls used to play pickleball. (Zack Wittman for The Washington Post)
I was concerned by what was left out of Katrina vanden Heuvel’s Aug. 31 op-ed, “Pickleball is more than just a silly fad.” She mentioned that the social aspect is a positive factor. But there’s a divisive and exclusionary side occurring in communities all over the country.
For the past several years in my Port Jefferson community on Long Island, village officials have attempted to convert basketball courts on a part-time, shared basis into pickleball courts. These public courts are used by people representing various cultures and generations, including individuals and families.
With much persistence, and by attending village meetings, I was able to convince village officials of the effect this would have on the many people who use this facility. An agreement was worked out, limiting pickleball usage on the basketball courts. Unfortunately, in many communities this new and fast-growing sport has disenfranchised many. That’s not what the country needs.
Myrna Gordon, Port Jefferson, N.Y. | 2022-09-02T19:29:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Pickleball has an exclusionary side - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/pickleballs-exclusionary-side/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/pickleballs-exclusionary-side/ |
Resistant employers still have the upper hand, but Americans overwhelmingly support organized labor
Perspective by Steven Greenhouse
Steven Greenhouse, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is a long-time labor journalist. He is author of "Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor."
Workers at a Starbucks in Buffalo celebrate their vote to unionize in December 2021. Employees at more than 220 Starbucks locations have formed unions. (Joshua Bessex/AP)
Not long ago, a top official from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told me that labor unions were relics of the 1930s and that today’s workers don’t really need them — that they can do just fine lifting themselves up individually without an “outside third party” like a union speaking on their behalf.
Workers — particularly young workers — disagree. As we head into Labor Day, they’re more enthusiastic about unions than they have been for decades. Over the last year, employees at some of the nation’s best-known companies — Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Apple, REI and Chipotle — have organized for the first time. Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis voted 55-5 to unionize; at an REI store in Manhattan, it was 88 to 14. Unions are no more relics than these young workers are; they’re useful mechanisms to improve pay and the jobs that come with it.
Review of "Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor"
There’s a striking disconnect here. Corporate executives who insist that workers don’t want unions correctly note that just 10.3 percent of America’s workers are in unions, down from 35 percent at labor’s peak in the 1950s and 20 percent in the 1980s. But the surge of unionization efforts by young workers tells a different story. It’s not just Starbucks baristas and Trader Joe’s cashiers, but also museum workers, digital journalists, grad students, nurses, adjunct professors, cannabis workers, and those toiling for political campaigns and nonprofit organizations like the Audubon Society and the Brookings Institution. Undergraduates who work in college dining halls and libraries have flocked to labor’s banner. At Grinnell College, undergraduate workers voted 327 to 6 to unionize, and at Dartmouth, the vote was unanimous, 52 to 0. Workers at more than 220 Starbucks have voted to unionize, and workers at an Amazon warehouse in Albany, N.Y., are seeking to organize, after April’s historic unionization victory at an 8,300-employee Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. Workers at the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Civil Liberties Union have unionized, as have 600 tech workers at the New York Times, more than 1,300 nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., and more than 17,000 graduate student researchers at the University of California.
If unions are a relic, young Americans didn’t get the message.
The public at large has warmed to unions significantly, too. On Tuesday, Gallup released a poll showing that 71 percent of Americans approve of unions, the highest level since 1965 and up sharply from 48 percent in 2009. Another study found a sizable increase in the number of nonunion workers who say they would vote to join a union if they could: from a third in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to slightly over half of all nonunion workers today. “Support for a union in their workplace rises to 74% for workers aged 18 to 24, 75% for Hispanic workers, 80% for Black workers, and 82% for Black women workers (the highest of any race and gender group),” President Biden’s White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment wrote, in further describing the findings of that study.
What is powering this surge in union support, and is it enough to counter the decades-long downward trend? The decline started with the loss of unionized factory jobs, but just as important, American corporations have fought harder to keep out unions than companies in any other advanced industrial nation. If today’s surge is to result in more than a modest increase in union membership, the big unions will have to step up — they haven’t so far — and support the current activity in a major way.
But there is no doubt that the enthusiasm is there, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic. The number of workplaces petitioning to unionize jumped 58 percent in the first nine months of this fiscal year compared with the same period last year. Many Americans have come to see unions favorably because they’ve grown frustrated, even angry, about income inequality and decades of wage stagnation. Since 1973, after-inflation wages have remained essentially flat for the typical American worker, at least until recently. At the same time, Wall Street and corporate profits have soared while productivity per worker keeps hitting record highs. All this has led to egregious levels of income inequality, with organized labor increasingly seen as the one institution that has consistently fought for a fairer economy.
The young Americans who are powering much of today’s surge have their own reasons for embracing unions. Many are finding it hard to make ends meet, what with soaring rents and mountains of student debt, not to mention the highest rate of inflation since the 1970s. Hearing predictions that they’ll be the first generation in American history to do worse financially than their parents, many see unions as a far easier route to improving their pay and working conditions than, say, getting an MBA or going to medical school. Inspired in many instances by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s calls for economic justice and by the Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, and the #MeToo and environmental movements, today’s young workers are more enthusiastic about unions than those who grew up during Ronald Reagan’s 1980s.
When I asked Samantha Heyne, 29, who recently helped lead an effort to unionize her nonprofit, the Guttmacher Institute, why so many young people are unionizing, she told me: “With inflation, the world is really difficult to live in right now, and we’re spiraling toward impending climate apocalypse. Who knows how many years we have on this planet? Let’s try to make it as livable as possible while we’re here. We spend so much of our lives at work, let’s try to make things sustainable at our jobs so that it works for everyone.”
No, the pandemic hasn’t given workers more power. But that could change.
Older Americans may remember labor’s bad old days — the horrible corruption in the Teamsters and longshoremen’s unions — but many young workers know little about those dark chapters. And while many unions have a legacy of discriminating against women, workers of color and immigrants, today organized labor is very much embracing those groups — for instance, child-care workers, teachers’ aides and nursing-home employees (although that’s not to say discrimination has disappeared).
The pandemic — or the way many employers treated workers during the pandemic — has played an outsize role in the current unionizing surge. Many front-line workers, whether supermarket cashiers, bus drivers, health-care workers, meatpackers or fast-food cooks, risked their lives day after day. They grew furious that their employers were slow to provide them with personal protective equipment — remember the McDonald’s workers who said they were told to use coffee filters and dog diapers to protect themselves?Front-line workers were also angry that their employers did not give them hero or hazard pay — a few extra dollars an hour to reward them for the risks they were taking — while many corporations’ white-collar employees, who earned far more, worked safely from home. Workers were further dismayed that their wages did not keep up with inflation while executive pay and corporate profits often rose steeply and companies spent hundreds of billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich their shareholders.
These workers see unionization as a tool to get a fairer share of the economic pie.
The unusually low unemployment rate and the large number of job openings have also encouraged today’s burst of unionization. Typically, many workers worry that if they seek to unionize, they’ll get fired or their workplaces will close, but that fear is greatly alleviated if other jobs are easy to come by.
Biden is arguably the most pro-union president in history — he has met with workers who helped unionize Amazon and Starbucks — and that encourages unionization. Still, many workers are frustrated that Washington in general has done little to help. Congress has failed to increase the federal minimum wage (which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009) or enact a law guaranteeing paid parental leave. The United States is the only advanced industrial nation not to guarantee all workers paid parental, family and medical leave.
American corporations continue to fight ferociously to keep unions out, as we’re seeing now at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s and elsewhere (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post). Starbucks workers complain that the company has sought to stifle unionization in myriad ways; for example, by closing several stores that have unionized and by firing 75 workers who have helped lead unionization drives. (Starbucks says it closed those stores for safety reasons and fired those workers not because they were pro-union but for misconduct or other reasons.)
Laws also often make it hard to unionize. Supreme Court rulings let corporations prohibit union organizers from setting foot on company property, while companies have access to workers 24/7. They can show anti-union videos in breakrooms and lunchrooms, and they often require workers to attend anti-union propaganda meetings. Amazon even put anti-union posters in the toilet stalls at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.
American workers who want to unionize say that there are far too many obstacles, that it often seems like running a gantlet. If corporations didn’t squeeze and pressure workers so hard not to unionize, the union movement would be far larger and stronger — and many more workers would have a stronger voice and better treatment on the job. And they’d have more to look forward to this Labor Day weekend. | 2022-09-02T19:29:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Young workers are organizing. Can their fervor save unions? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/02/young-workers-unions-starbucks-amazon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/02/young-workers-unions-starbucks-amazon/ |
The non-polarizing speech President Biden should have given
President Biden speaks outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Sept. 1 during an address billed as the "battle for the soul of the nation." (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg)
After President Biden spoke outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, politicians from Sen. Marco Rubio to Ohio Senate nominee J.D. Vance responded by denouncing his remarks as needlessly polarizing. Biden’s remarks included such lines as, “This is a nation that honors the Constitution. We do not reject it” and “This is a nation that respects the rule of law” and “We do not encourage violence.” Horribly divisive and, indeed, frightening words to hear from a president. Dark times indeed, when the president of the United States would paint so many of his fellow citizens in such an ominous light — though he was willing to stand, himself, in an ominous light for the duration of the speech.
You might say, “Is the idea that ‘We are still, at our core, a democracy’ really so polarizing?" Yes, obviously. He should have delivered a less divisive speech. Such a speech follows.
My fellow Americans. I am the president of the United States ... maybe!
To those of you who believe that although we have differences, we are still one nation, and to those of you who believe that I am spearheading a complicated, Satan-driven, child-snatching conspiracy with very detailed logistics that I can’t say I fully comprehend, I wish you equally a great Thursday! I am not here to give anybody a hard time.
Eugene Robinson: To sound the alarm on democracy, Biden chose the perfect stage
To those of you who say that violence is never the answer, and to those of you who say that violence is the answer right now, I say, Yup!
This is a nation, after all, that honors the Constitution. Or doesn’t, if it doesn’t feel like it! Who am I to say who’s wrong and who is right? Maybe the president, but maybe just some guy!
There is an election coming up. I think, and a lot of Americans do too, that for our democracy to continue, we need to accept the results of that election, even if our side loses. Other Americans agree: They will accept the results of the election if my side loses. That’s common ground, I think! We can build on that. Or not, if people don’t want to.
I was planning to come out in favor of democracy and accepting the results of elections even when they don’t go our way, and to say that those MAGA Americans who want to install Donald Trump as some sort of consequence-free, god-king-for-life are doing something bad, but I was told that would alienate a lot of people, so, instead, I want to take that time to just stare intensely out at the audience for a solid minute.
Yay King Trump!
To those of you trying to take away people’s rights and those of you fighting to preserve them: Keep going! To those of you who want to treat some people in this country as less than full citizens, and to those who think that’s terrifyingly wrong, I see you both and celebrate you both equally!
So I say to everyone, to the people working to get out the vote and the people working to undermine the entire concept of voting, good work! We have had a democracy for a while, which I personally would like to keep, but some people seem to want us to try something new, and that could be ... fine! Maybe 235 years is a good stopping point.
Greg Sargent: MAGA Republicans are seething because Biden hit his target
I was going to criticize the people who are trying to thwart the will of the voters and who, earlier, wanted to stop the peaceful transfer of power, but then I thought, that would be needlessly divisive. Probably they are some very fine people! Indeed, I might go so far as to say, “I love you, and you’re very special!”
I am sorry I got mad that some of you tried to storm the Capitol. It was patriotic, actually. What is tearing this country apart is people who dare to criticize that sort of thing, not people who dare to do that sort of thing. I am sorry that I said your behavior was a little creepy and that it would be bad to have fascism here. That was made to sound like I oppose fascism, whereas in fact I am neutral about it, because I do not want to polarize or divide.
Off the subject of democracy, which I can see is polarizing and dividing a lot of you here, maybe there’s something else we can agree on. I think it would be good to work together to repair the infrastructure and build bridges! But in the interest of not being polarizing, maybe we should burn those bridges instead! Two equally valid things to do with a bridge, and not my place to choose. | 2022-09-02T20:32:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The non-polarizing speech President Biden should have given - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/democracy-speech-biden-should-have-given/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/democracy-speech-biden-should-have-given/ |
The College Football Playoff is set to expand from four to 12 teams. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
Breaking: The College Football Playoff will expand from four teams to 12 as early as 2024
The new format includes the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large teams. The expanded playoff is scheduled to start in 2026 but could begin in 2024 or 2025. The 12-team playoff appeared to be at an impasse in January, when the conference commissioners disagreed on a format for expansion. | 2022-09-02T20:41:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/college-football-playoff-expands-12-teams/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/college-football-playoff-expands-12-teams/ |
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen watches soldiers operate equipment during a visit to a naval station on Penghu, off Taiwan's western coast, on Aug. 30. (Taiwan Ministry of National Defense/AP)
Taiwan to boost defense spending to deter China’s military threat
Taiwan’s status is the single-most fraught issue in the U.S.-China relationship. Washington, under its one China policy, recognizes Beijing as the sole legal government of China. But it has never endorsed Beijing’s position that Taiwan, a self-governed island, is part of China. Nonetheless, under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the United States is committed to providing Taipei “defense articles and defense services” necessary to enable it to defend itself.
Xi Jinping asked Biden to prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan
“The ability of the primary defense contractors to ramp up production quickly simply is not there,” he said. “That’s for fighter jets, ships, missiles. When we need more HIMARS [multiple rocket launchers] for Ukraine, there just isn’t the capacity in the production lines.”
“No single sale is going to solve Taiwan’s problems, but a sustained level of investment in anti-ship and anti-air capabilities that builds credible stockpiles is a positive trend,” said Eric Sayers, a former adviser to the U.S. IndoPacific Command and now a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. | 2022-09-02T20:59:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. to sell $1.1 billion in anti-ship, air-to-air weapons to Taiwan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/taiwan-weapons-us-sale-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/taiwan-weapons-us-sale-china/ |
At West Point, a historical commission checks facts and takes names
Lee Barracks, named for Civil War General Robert E. Lee, is shown at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, July 13, 2020, in West Point, N.Y. A commission created by Congress is recommending that multiple historical reminders tied to Confederate officers during the Civil War be removed — many honoring Lee, one of the academy's most famous graduates. (Mark Lennihan/AP, File)
The agency Congress created in 2020 to scrub names of Confederate generals from U.S. military assets, and recommend alternatives, continues to advance its long-overdue mission. The Naming Commission, as it is concisely known, must submit a final report to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin by Oct. 1. The first installment, submitted on Aug. 8, recommended new names for nine Army facilities, proposing the first women and people of color to be recognized.
The second installment, focusing on the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, came out Monday. Once again, the commission did not equivocate. Of West Point, the commission noted, “Its storied history serving the defense of the United States makes it especially incongruent for Confederate commemoration” — that is, recognizing “men who fought against the United States of America, and whose cause sought to destroy the nation as we know it.” As the report noted, denying pride of place to Confederates was the institution’s practice for more than 60 years after the Civil War, until, influenced by a national movement — among Whites — to romanticize the “lost cause,” West Point bestowed honorifics on alumni who wore the gray.
"Capehart" podcast: How Ty Seidule went from revering Robert E. Lee to being one of his fiercest detractors
The commission essentially calls for restoring the earlier approach. It recommends that West Point delete barracks, streets, a gate, a monument and other symbols bearing the name or likenesses of such figures as Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard, with renaming entrusted to the academy itself. The commission recommended the Naval Academy rename two buildings and a street that currently honor a Confederate naval officer and a Confederate civilian official. The commission properly declined to alter neutral memorials at both institutions that simply mention the Confederate service of graduates on combined lists with the majority who defended the Union.
In one remarkable case, the commission pushed the boundaries of its mandate, which is to examine “commemoration of the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily” with the Confederacy. Strictly speaking, that would not include the Ku Klux Klan, which emerged as a terrorist organization after the Civil War. And yet, since 1965 a small bas-relief bearing an armed, hooded figure and the words “Ku Klux Klan” has been visible on an 11-foot-tall bronze triptych, dedicated to World War II and Korea veterans, at the entrance to West Point’s Bartlett Hall. The Klansman is one of dozens of similarly sized historical figures embossed amid a large tableau, titled “History of the United States of America,” that depicts several Confederate generals — but also the Indigenous leader Tecumseh, feminist Susan B. Anthony, and abolitionists John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison.
The commission recommended deleting the triptych’s Confederate figures but lacked legal authority to do more than call public attention to the Klan representation, whose original intent is ambiguous. The sculptor who made it acknowledged at the time that the KKK was “criminal,” but that context is not explicit on the artwork. West Point, which credibly says it does not condone racism, ought to address this issue thoughtfully, but on the same timetable that the commission suggested for removal of Confederate iconography — “without delay.”
What to rename the Army bases that honor Confederate soldiers
The proposed new names for military bases are in, and they’re inspiring
How Ty Seidule went from revering Robert E. Lee to being one of his fiercest detractors | 2022-09-02T20:59:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Naming Commission suggests changes at West Point - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/naming-commission-west-point-confederate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/naming-commission-west-point-confederate/ |
All this week on “Post Reports,” we’re airing episodes of the “Broken Doors” podcast, a six-part investigative series about how no-knock warrants are deployed in the American justice system — and the consequences for communities when accountability is flawed at every level. Hosted by Jenn Abelson and Nicole Dungca.
The fourth episode of this series is called “‘The blink of an eye.’” In this episode, we head to Port Allen, La.
On July 25, 2019, a Black man was killed during a no-knock raid in a motel room in Louisiana. His fiancee was also inside. An investigation into what led up to the fatal shooting reveals the speed with which the raid happened — and raises questions about electronic warrants, a relatively new technology being adopted by law enforcement agencies across the country. | 2022-09-02T20:59:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Broken Doors, Episode 4 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/broken-doors-episode-54/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/broken-doors-episode-54/ |
Jan. 6 committee withdraws subpoena against RNC and Salesforce
The Salesforce logo is pictured on a building in San Francisco in 2016. (Reuters Staff/Reuters)
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is dropping its subpoena against the Republican National Committee and Salesforce, a software vendor, according to people familiar with the development.
Counsel for Salesforce and the RNC were notified this week that the committee is formally withdrawing a subpoena issued earlier this year, seeking records from Salesforce on performance metrics and analytics related to email campaigns for former president Donald Trump, his election campaign and the RNC.
“Given the current stage of its investigation, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has determined that it no longer has a need to pursue the specific information requested in the February 23, 2022 subpoena that it issued to Salesforce,” House general counsel Douglas Letter wrote in an email reviewed by The Washington Post, notifying the parties of the motion to dismiss the case.
The committee had previously argued that records from the RNC’s fundraising platform, which is owned by Salesforce, were necessary to understand how the RNC’s fundraising practices might have inspired some rioters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The move comes in the final days of Congress’s August recess, which congressional investigators have spent following up on threads that emerged over the course of the investigation and tracking down new tips. Lawmakers on the panel are expected to resume public hearings this month.
“We said all along that this subpoena was unconstitutional. This is a victory for freedom of speech, privacy, and Americans’ right of political association without fear of partisan reprisal,” said RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn. The Jan. 6 committee declined to comment.
Committee investigators have remained focused on Trump’s fundraising practices related to claims the election was stolen and have continued to interview Republican Party and Trump campaign officials about their fundraising tactics, said people familiar with the matter.
A panel of three federal appeals judges temporarily blocked the Jan. 6 committee from obtaining RNC records earlier this summer. The temporary injunction came after the RNC appealed a federal judge’s decision ordering Salesforce to comply with the subpoena.
The RNC is the only entity to date to successfully oppose a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the insurrection. | 2022-09-02T21:00:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 committee withdraws subpoena against RNC and Salesforce - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/jan6-committee-withdraws-subpoena-rnc-salesforce/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/jan6-committee-withdraws-subpoena-rnc-salesforce/ |
Barr says no ‘legitimate reason’ for Trump to have classified documents
Then-Attorney General William P. Barr speaks during a news conference Dec. 21, 2020, at the Justice Department in Washington. (Michael Reynolds/Pool/AP)
In his sharpest critique of his former boss, former attorney general William P. Barr said there is no reason classified documents should have been inside Donald Trump’s personal residence in Florida after he was no longer president.
“No, I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they could be taken out of government, away from the government, if they are classified,” Barr said in an interview with Fox News that aired Friday. Barr’s comment comes after federal officials entered Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and home last month with a court-issued warrant to retrieve classified documents, a move the former president said was improper and politically motivated.
“People say this was unprecedented,” Barr said Friday, “but it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, okay?”
“If in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and said, ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse and show such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents,” Barr said.
“What people are missing,” Barr told Fox News, is that documents, regardless of whether they were classified, “still belong to the government and go to the archives.” The other documents that were seized, like news clippings, were “seizable under the warrant because they show the conditions under which the classified information was being held,” Barr said.
Though Barr also said that “it is clearly foolish what happened, and inexplicable,” he added that it was not clear whether the actions should be criminally prosecuted, considering, among other things, the documents were ultimately recovered. | 2022-09-02T21:00:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | William Barr, Trump's attorney general, says no 'legitimate reason' for former president to have classified documents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/trump-fbi-search-classified-documents-barr/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/trump-fbi-search-classified-documents-barr/ |
The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Phoenix in 2014. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The Department of Veterans Affairs, in a historic shift, will provide abortion counseling and abortions in cases of rape, incest or if the pregnancy threatens the health of the pregnant veteran, at its federal health facilities throughout the country, including in states that ban or severely restrict the practice, the department announced Friday.
According to a draft of the rule change, the new policy overhauls health-care service provided to 9 million veterans and eligible family members; VA previously did not provide abortions of any kind or offer abortion counseling to patients considering the procedure.
There are 2 million female veterans in the United States, according to VA data, and about a quarter of them are enrolled in VA care.
“VA serves roughly 300k women of childbearing age, and women Veterans are VA’s fastest growing cohort,” VA spokesman Terrence Hayes said in an email. Once the rule is published, Hayes said VA will “immediately prepare to provide these services in as many locations as possible.”
Abortion ruling will worsen military personnel crisis, Pentagon says
VA Secretary Denis McDonough in a statement called the change “a patient safety decision.”
“Pregnant Veterans and VA beneficiaries deserve to have access to world-class reproductive care when they need it most. That’s what our nation owes them, and that’s what we at VA will deliver,” McDonough said.
“Increasing access to timely and quality health care for veterans should always be a top priority for the VA,” Jeremy Butler, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America, a veterans advocacy group, said in an email.
The move comes two months since federal protections provided by the landmark Roe v. Wade decision were overturned by the Supreme Court. Shereef Elnahal, VA’s undersecretary for health, in a statement said VA made the change after speaking to veterans and health-care providers who “sounded the alarm” over state-level restrictions that came into place after Roe was overturned created a health risks for veterans and their families.
Michigan Republicans block abortion referendum, setting up showdown
While the new policy is an expansion of veteran health-care benefits, the regulations closely resemble existing care within the Defense Department, which provides abortions at military hospitals using the same criteria. The active-military care is not widely used, with fewer than two dozen abortion cases on average every year, according to Pentagon data.
Still, advocates have pressed lawmakers and defense officials to help remove obstacles for elective abortions, pointing to military bases in many states that ban all abortions and the difficulty of traveling long distances. VA described a similar issue in the draft policy, saying some veterans and family members “may no longer be able to receive such medical services in their communities.”
Under the new VA policy, medical providers will determine what meets the criteria of a pregnancy that endangers the health of the life of the pregnant person on a case-by-case basis. Veterans seeking to end a pregnancy that is the result of rape or incest need only to self-report and do not need to provide documentation, such as a police report, the department said.
With the department offering abortion services for the first time, it’s unclear how quickly VA facilities will be able to bring on doctors who can perform the procedure, particularly in states where abortion is significantly restricted. One solution could be to seek care at civilian hospitals if veterans and eligible family members qualify. VA would foot the bill in those cases. | 2022-09-02T21:00:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | VA to offer abortion in cases of rape, incest or danger to health - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/va-abortion-policy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/02/va-abortion-policy/ |
Twitter struggles to respond to anti-LGBTQ attacks on children’s hospitals
Employees warned colleagues to take action against Libs of TikTok, saying it was “only a matter of time” before the posts led to violence.
Elizabeth Dwoskin
Pedestrians walk past a sign outside the Boston Children's Hospital, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022, in Boston. (Charles Krupa/AP)
Children’s hospitals across the U.S. are facing growing threats of violence, driven by an online anti-LGBTQ campaign attacking the facilities for providing care to transgender kids and teens.
Twitter has left up the account inspiring the attacks , despite employees voicing concerns in internal Slack channels that it’s “only a matter of time” before the posts lead to someone getting killed.
The campaign is led by Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account with more than 1.3 million followers run by a former Brooklyn real estate agent named Chaya Raichik, whose posts are frequently cited by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and other right-wing media figures.
After gaining a large Twitter following in the spring as she baselessly accused LGBTQ teachers of being pedophiles and “groomers,” Raichik began criticizing children’s health facilities earlier this summer, targeting a hospital in Omaha in June and another in Pittsburgh in August. The attacks resulted in a flood of online harassment and phoned-in threats at both hospitals.
Next came threats against children’s hospitals in Boston and Washington, D.C. after Raichik posted tweets targeting them.
Reached by Twitter direct messaging on Thursday, Raichik didn’t respond to a question about whether she felt responsible for the threats to the hospitals. “We 100 % condemn any acts/threats of violence,” she wrote.
Twitter declined to comment, but people familiar with internal discussions say Twitter executives face internal pressure from some employees to respond more aggressively to the account. Meanwhile, hospital providers and their vulnerable patients have taken action to lessen the possibility of drawing Raichik’s attention.
“A lot of people have chosen to try to be as quiet about their practice as they can to avoid those direct attacks,” said Michael Haller, a professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of Florida. “Institutions have removed their websites, taken down their publicly facing phone numbers.”
“It’s actually crazy. I can’t even imagine being one of my patients,” said Justine Lee, a craniofacial and pediatric plastic surgeon in Los Angeles who performs gender-affirming surgeries. “I can’t think of any other medical condition that would result in this level of hate.”
After Raichik falsely claimed on Aug. 11 that Boston Children’s Hospital performs hysterectomies on children, the hospital received a barrage of “hostile internet activity, phone calls, and harassing emails including threats of violence toward our clinicians and staff,” the hospital said in a statement. The hospital does provide hysterectomies to certain patients over 18.
On Tuesday, police responded to an anonymous bomb threat at the hospital. No explosives were discovered, and hospital officials said they were cooperating with the police investigation of the incident. “We remain vigilant in our efforts to battle the spread of false information about the hospital and our caregivers,” the hospital said.
Raichik made a similar accusation against Children’s National Hospital in Washington, posting a recording on Aug. 25 in which she can be heard questioning two unidentified hospital employees about whether gender-affirming hysterectomies are offered to patients aged 16. Both employees erroneously said the procedure was available to a 16-year-old and one said even younger patients are eligible, though the hospital says that information was incorrect and that neither employee is involved in patient care. During the call, Raichik said she was asking about care for her 16-year-old child, but she declined to answer Thursday when asked if she has a 16-year-old daughter in need of the surgery.
The recording has been played more than 1.1 million times on Twitter.
After it was posted, Children’s National was inundated with threatening emails and phone calls, a hospital spokeswoman told The Post. Social media posts suggested the facility be bombed and its doctors run through a metal shredder. Police in D.C. say they are closely monitoring the risk to providers, while Boston police said they are investigating both the initial threats and the more recent bomb threat.
Medical workers in other parts of the country are watching the events in Boston and Washington with alarm.
Michael O’Brien, a pediatrics resident at a hospital in South Carolina, said he received threats after Libs of TikTok on Aug. 15 retweeted a tweet in which he’d criticized the account. Some appeared serious enough to prompt him to report them to his employer’s public safety office. “I got three specific threats that came from within a 50-mile radius of where I live,” he said. “The threats felt very tangible. I had to take action to protect my partner and warn my family.”
“Every single time [Raichik] claims not to have responsibility, but she continues to do the same thing,” he said. “She’s very tactical, and purposefully tries not to break the terms of Twitter while knowing what she’s doing is causing harm.”
Specialists in online disinformation are especially critical of Twitter’s approach to Libs of TikTok. The platform on at least two occasions has blocked Raichik’s ability to tweet — once, for 12 hours in April and then again for a week, in a sanction that ends Saturday.
Asked if she intends to resume attacking hospitals after her current timeout ends, Raichik declined to answer.
Joan Donovan, a leading disinformation expert with the Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, said she sees parallels between Twitter’s handing of Libs of TikTok and the way it failed to deal quickly with QAnon and the Stop the Steal movement, both of which faced a crackdown only after numerous acts of violence had been tied to their content.
She criticized Twitter’s approach to Libs of TikTok, saying it shows a misunderstanding of how social media influences people’s actions. “Networked incitement to violence is a snowball effect, where you see people getting more emboldened to participate,” she said.
She drew a comparison between the Libs of TikTok campaign and its amplification by right-wing media and the online campaign that gave rise to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The snowball effect makes people feel “more willing to take action.”
“We’re seeing more people feeling — as they did during the insurrection — that storming a hospital might be their only option to defend themselves and their values,” she said.
Twitter has long struggled with where to draw the line between free expression and harmful speech. The platform prohibits doxing, or the sharing of someone’s private information, as well as direct calls for violence and content “that has the potential to lead to offline harm,” according to its published content policies.
But the company was years late to take action against the conspiracy theory QAnon, banning its adherents under a new “coordinated harmful activity” policy in 2020 — four years after a proponent opened fire at a pizzeria in Northwest Washington that was falsely accused of allowing powerful Democrats to imprison and abuse children in a nonexistent basement. The conspiracy raged on Twitter, Reddit and other social platforms.
Pizzagate's violent legacy
The issue came to a head again in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when many Trump supporters claimed the election was fraudulent, using the slogan Stop the Steal. Twitter chose to label some of those tweets as misinformation and took some action to limit their spread, but largely did not penalize the accounts involved — despite a company policy prohibiting purposeful attempts to manipulate elections. Twitter took strong action only after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, banning tens of thousands of accounts associated with both the Stop the Steal movement and QAnon. Twitter also banned former president Donald Trump.
Twitter purged more than 70,000 accounts affiliated with QAnon following Capitol riot
Twitter’s April action against Libs of TikTok came after Raichik violated the platform’s rules against targeted harassment, according to a tweet she posted at the time that included a screenshot of Twitter’s penalty language.
The offending tweet included an image of a transgender woman and claimed the person had been using female locker rooms, referring to the woman as male. Some employees argued in internal Slack channels that more should have been done because the account’s misgendering of someone — purposefully changing the gender pronoun of a transgender person — violated the company’s policies on hate speech, according to internal correspondence that was shared with The Post.
But Twitter executives told the workers who were upset that further sanctions were unlikely because Raichik had already deleted the tweet and that the target of the attack needed to report it themselves, according to the Slack exchange shared with The Post.
Internal debate raged again in June after the right-wing extremist group the Proud Boys disrupted a Drag Queen story hour for children at the public library in San Lorenzo, Calif., an unincorporated settlement across the bay from San Francisco. A spokeswoman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s office, which provides policing services in San Lorenzo, told The Post then that investigators believed the confrontation had been spurred by a post from Libs of TikTok.
Proud Boys disrupt drag-queen reading event, prompting hate-crime probe
Again, employees demanded that the company take stronger action, arguing that it was “only a matter of time” before the posts led to someone getting killed, according to the internal Slack exchange shared with The Post. But experts within the company argued that the account’s tweets did not meet the standard for prohibited threats and harassment. When employees pushed back, an executive asked employees to “refrain” from discussing if an account should be suspended, arguing the conversation could be leaked, according to a Slack conversation viewed by The Post.
Debate raged again in August, after Twitter’s lack of a strong response to the events at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Late last week, the company locked Raichik’s account for violating the company’s hateful conduct policy and issued a warning that she could be permanently banned. Twitter declined to say what tweet it was responding to, but The Post has learned that the action was taken in response to a tweet where Raichik again misidentified a person’s gender.
As in April, Raichik deleted the offending tweet herself, before Twitter could do so.
Donovan said quickly deleting problematic tweets is a common way for disinformation sowers to make an impact with a broad online audience but then incur a lesser penalty from Twitter. She noted that influencers such as Libs of TikTok play a sophisticated cat-and-mouse game with the social media companies, “paying close attention to the company’s twists and turns in their terms of service,” to purposefully dance around the rules.
The one service that has banned Libs of TikTok is TikTok, which banned her account in March of this year. But Raichik frequently posts on Facebook and Instagram. She also sells subscriptions on the email newsletter platform Substack and merchandise on the e-commerce platform Shopify.
Substack declined to comment.
Facebook has taken even less action than Twitter against Raichik. The company suspended Libs of TikTok for 24 hours earlier this month, but later said the suspension was in error, according to a screenshot of messages Raichik received from Facebook and posted to Libs of TikTok on Twitter. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment, and referred questions from The Post to Raichik’s Twitter account. Stone offered no reason for the temporary suspension and would not comment on whether any of Raichik’s Facebook or Instagram posts constituted harassment.
On Tuesday, activists launched a campaign to pressure Shopify to drop Libs of TikTok, claiming Raichik’s store was in violation of Shopify’s acceptable use policy, which bans hateful content and goods or services that lead to harassment, bullying, or threats. As of Thursday morning, over 4,300 users submitted reports to Shopify to drop Libs of TikTok. In a statement, Shopify seemed to defend Raichik’s presence. “We host businesses of all stripes and sizes, with various worldviews,” a spokesperson said, declining to be named and refusing to elaborate on the company’s policies.
“Libs of TikTok relies on monetizing through Shopify and Substack. They use these funds in continuing their work to target children’s hospitals and getting them shut down,” said Erin Reed, a content creator and legislative researcher.
Healthcare providers say Raichik’s campaign is already having an effect on people’s ability to seek health care. “Kids are getting this significant messaging of, not only are you not okay, but we want to hurt you,” said Michelle Forcier, a clinician at Folx Health, a national telehealth group that provides care for LGBTQ health issues. “That’s a pretty scary message to get as an 8-year-old or 12-year-old. It absolutely makes everybody think twice about walking in the door [to a hospital], kids and parents.”
Meredithe McNamara, assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale, specializing in adolescent medicine, said that “allowing this hate speech to fester on the internet and fuel direct threats is going to create long standing harms that are difficult to recover from.”
In a Substack post on Monday, Raichik says she’ll continue her campaign against children’s hospitals.
“Getting suspended by Twitter has made me realize my biggest mistake: I only called one hospital. I should’ve called dozens because I promise you, Children’s National is not the only one,” she wrote. “I promise to learn from my mistake and uncover more of what our Big Tech overlords don’t want us to know.” | 2022-09-02T21:42:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Libs of TikTok blamed for threats on children's hospitals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/02/lgbtq-threats-hospitals-libs-of-tiktok/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/02/lgbtq-threats-hospitals-libs-of-tiktok/ |
Jane Fonda announces she has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Jane Fonda attends a climate protest in front of the U.S. Capitol in 2019. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Actress Jane Fonda announced Friday on Instagram that she has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and is in the midst of receiving six months of chemotherapy treatments.
Fonda, 84, said in a caption accompanying a selfie that the diagnosis has underscored for her “the importance … of growing and deepening one’s community.”
“This is a very treatable cancer,” she wrote, adding that “I’m also lucky because I have health insurance and access to the best doctors and treatments. I realize, and it’s painful, that I am privileged in this. Almost every family in America has had to deal with cancer at one time or another and far too many don’t have access to the quality health care I am receiving and this is not right.”
A few years ago, Fonda told British Vogue that she has “had a lot of cancer” in her life and said she had a mastectomy shortly before attending the 2016 Golden Globes. In Friday’s post, Fonda urged her followers to talk “much more not just about cures but about causes so we can eliminate them.”
“For example, people need to know that fossil fuels cause cancer,” she said.
Known as much for her history of activism as her acclaimed acting career — she has won two Academy Awards and an Emmy — Fonda has in recent years participated in protests against climate change, including the “Fire Drill Fridays” she attended on a weekly basis in 2019.
“We’re living through the most consequential time in human history because what we do or don’t do right now will determine what kind of future there will be and I will not allow cancer to keep me from doing all I can,” she wrote. “The midterms are looming, and they are beyond consequential so you can count on me to be right there together with you as we grow our army of climate champions.” | 2022-09-02T21:46:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jane Fonda announces she has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/jane-fonda-non-hodgkins-lymphoma/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/02/jane-fonda-non-hodgkins-lymphoma/ |
D.C. man sentenced to 14 years in fatal shooting of aspiring social worker
Volunteer Tom Marmet was delivering meals for So Others Might Eat in 2018 when a stray bullet struck him in the neck as he sat in his Jeep at a traffic light
Tom Marmet (N/A/Family photo)
Both men were just 22 years old that evening in October 2018 when their lives intersected.
Tom Marmet was a Chevy Chase native who wrote his college thesis on political activist Angela Davis and wanted to find solutions to aid the District’s most disadvantaged residents.
Barry Marable, according to attorneys, struggled with mental illness and severe paranoia after he and his younger brother grew up in an abusive foster home following their mother’s drug addiction and his father’s death from cancer.
Marable was the type of District resident Marmet wanted to help. But just before 6 p.m. on Oct. 24, in what his defense attorney said was an episode of uncontrolled paranoia, Marable pulled out a gun and fired aimlessly across a busy street.
Marmet, who had just finished delivering meals as a volunteer for So Others Might Eat (SOME), was struck and killed on his way home as he sat in his Jeep at a red light in Northeast D.C.
On Friday, after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter while armed, a D.C. judge sentenced Marable, now 26, to 14 years in prison.
“What is so hard about this case is the very striking difference between the life experiences of the two people whose lives crossed on that day,” D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal E. Kravitz said. “Mr. Marmet had every advantage and was making the best of those advantages to help others in a very unselfish way. Mr. Marable had every disadvantage in life. The amount of trauma that he suffered is unspeakable.”
About 10 members of Marmet’s family sat on one side of the courtroom with a large photo of him smiling as they listened to the judge, federal prosecutors, Marable’s attorneys and Marable himself speak.
Kravitz told the courtroom that he read more than 70 letters that Marmet’s family, friends and colleagues wrote.
Marmet’s mother, Elizabeth, slowly read aloud a letter written by Marmet’s sister Sally, who wrote that she chose not to attend the sentencing hearing “to preserve my own mental health.”
In the letter, Sally Marmet playfully described her brother as “goofy and hilarious,” and also knew “exactly how to annoy me.” She also described him as a “pacifist” who “was deeply dedicated to creating a more admirable future.”
New academy will train workers who mediate conflict on D.C. streets
Their father, Roger, a D.C. restaurateur who has since emerged as an advocate for victims of violent crime, spoke about losing his “best friend” and described his son as someone who focused on helping others in society who seemed to have been abandoned.
“Tom was a force for good,” Roger Marmet said. “He was an extraordinary child and young man, finding for justice and for those who were most marginalized and forgotten by us as a society.”
Roger Marmet spoke of how his son chose to help those who have been released from prison, to help them with job training, substance abuse care and resume writing. “Tom believed in them and receiving a second chance. He believed in helping those who didn’t get a fair first chance.
“Tom made the decision to exit the comfort of immense comfort and privilege to place himself close to those who had been forgotten.”
Prosecutors and Marable’s attorneys entered into a sentencing agreement in November that called for a prison sentence between 8.5 years and 16 years. Marable’s attorneys argued for the minimum, while prosecutors petitioned for the maximum.
Kravitz said despite Marable’s personal challenges that may have led to the shooting, he believed Marable’s actions were “reckless and dangerous” and deserved severe punishment to also serve as a deterrent for others.
Marmet’s family had previously expressed outraged by the plea agreement and wanted Marable to go to trial, where if convicted of second degree murder he could have faced 25 years or more in prison.
Amy Phillips, one of Marable’s public defenders, said at the time of the shooting, Marable believed he saw someone who he said had attacked him days earlier. Marable was walking with two women who also became frightened and ducked behind a white, concrete wall across the street from the gas station. Prosecutors however argued Marable too could have ducked behind the same wall. But instead, he chose to pull out a gun and fire. Marmet was the only person struck.
Phillips said Marable will need extensive mental health treatment and counseling while incarcerated.
Marable, sitting next to his attorneys, spoke briefly: “I just want to say I am willing to take it like a man. I own up to my selfish actions. I want everyone in this courtroom to know I am far from a bad person. When I get out, I will show everybody here I can make a difference to all the people who doubt it. Right now, I feel like I am the worst person in the world. But I’m going to get through it.”
The judge said a longer period of incarceration will better ensure that Marable will receive the treatment he needs.
Meanwhile, Roger Marmet said the escalating crime that reaches across the city, from the some of the more affluent neighborhoods of upper Northwest to more economically depressed areas of parts of Southeast Washington and the Washington Highlands, is not being addressed.
“One day a professional athlete, one day a 22-year-old social worker, 12 people shot last week. When are we going to say enough is enough,” the senior Marmet said. “I am dedicating the rest of my life to fixing this problem. Our city is crying out for help as our most marginalized and forgotten are dying in the street.” | 2022-09-02T22:08:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barry Marable sentenced in D.C. shooting of Tom Marmet, an aspiring social worker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/marable-sentenced-fatal-shooting-marmet-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/marable-sentenced-fatal-shooting-marmet-dc/ |
WASHINGTON — America’s employers added a healthy number of jobs last month, yet slowed their hiring enough to potentially help the Federal Reserve in its fight to reduce raging inflation. The economy gained 315,000 jobs in August, a still-solid figure that pointed to an economy that remains resilient despite rising interest rates, high inflation and sluggish consumer spending. Friday’s report from the government also showed that the unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, up from a half-century low of 3.5%. Yet that increase was also an encouraging sign: It reflected a long-awaited rise in the number of Americans who came off the sidelines and started looking for work.
BERLIN — Russian energy giant Gazprom says it can’t resume the supply of natural gas through a key pipeline to Germany for now because of what it said was a need for urgent maintenance work. Friday’s announcement came just hours before Gazprom was due to resume deliveries. The Russian state-run energy company had shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday for what it said would be three days of work. It said in a social media post Friday evening that it had identified “malfunctions” of a turbine and said the pipeline would not work unless those were eliminated.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo are announcing $1 billion in federal grants for manufacturing, clean energy, farming, biotech and more. The grants announced Friday go to 21 regional partnerships across the nation. The government chose the winners from 529 applicants that vied for grants that were part of the already-approved $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The grants include $65 million in California to improve farm production and $25 million for a robotics cluster in Nebraska. Georgia gets $65 million for artificial intelligence. There’s $64 million for lithium-based battery development in New York. West Virginia coal counties receive $63 million to help with the shift to solar power and find new uses for abandoned mines.
BERLIN — Finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrial powers have pledged to put in place a system designed to cap Russia’s income from oil sales, an idea the nations’ leaders had promised to explore in June. The aim is to reduce Russia’s revenues and, by doing so, its ability to fund its war in Ukraine, while also limiting the impact of the war on global energy prices. In a statement Friday, the ministers said they “confirm our joint political intention to finalize and implement a comprehensive prohibition of services which enable maritime transportation of Russian-origin crude oil and petroleum products globally.” Providing those services would only be allowed if oil is purchased at or below a fixed price.
TOKYO — Nissan says it’s aggressively pushing electric vehicles to take advantage of a new U.S. law that gives up to $7,500 in tax credits. President Joe Biden signed the landmark law last month. The tax credit can be used to defray the cost of purchasing an electric vehicle that’s made in the U.S. The Nissan Leaf electric car is among the models that qualifies. Vehicles must contain a battery built in North America with minerals mined or recycled on the continent to be eligible. Chief Sustainability Officer Joji Tagawa says an analysis is underway at Nissan, though specifics are still undecided. | 2022-09-02T22:30:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: August jobs, stocks' losing streak - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-august-jobs-stocks-losing-streak/2022/09/02/3672674a-2b04-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-august-jobs-stocks-losing-streak/2022/09/02/3672674a-2b04-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
President Biden gave a prime-time speech on 'the continued battle for the soul of the nation' from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on Thursday night. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The White House’s decision to flank President Biden with U.S. Marines as he delivered a speech raising alarm about the authoritarian impulses of former president Donald Trump and his supporters has sparked debate about what is an appropriate use of the military.
Biden, speaking at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday night, said that democracy and equality are under assault, and that he wanted to “speak as plainly as I can to the nation” about threats to them. Trump and his allies represent a form of extremism that “threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said, adding that while “mainstream” Republicans respect the rule of law, the former president does not.
“The President gave an important speech last night about our democracy and our values, values that our men and women in uniform fight every day to protect,” the official said in a statement. “The presence of Marines at the speech was intended to demonstrate the deep and abiding respect the President has for their service to these ideals and the unique role our independent military plays in defending our democracy, no matter which party is in power.”
Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University, said that while presidents are political actors, they “need to be careful about not bringing the military into the frame when they are engaging in partisan, political acts.”
“In this case, the choice to literally keep the Marines guards in the frame was an unfortunate one,” said Feaver, who raised concerns about how Trump politicized the military on numerous occasions. “It may even have the effect of distracting from the message as people debate the optics rather than the substance of the president’s speech.”
Lindsay Cohn, who studies civil-military affairs at the Naval War College, said that Biden being framed by Marines during the speech was “not a crisis, but it could and should have been avoided.”
Cohn said she can see an argument that Biden was making a necessary and nonpartisan speech in which he noted explicitly that not all Republicans are a threat. But she added that the Biden administration needs to be “oversensitive and cautious about optics to try to strengthen some of the norms” that the Trump administration weakened.
Addressing U.S. troops at the Pentagon in February 2020 at the beginning of his administration, Biden said that he would never disrespect them and “never politicize the work you do.”
Biden’s critics — including many who remained silent during Trump’s battles with the Pentagon — pounced on the use of the Marines.
“The only thing worse than Biden’s speech trashing his fellow citizens is wrapping himself in our flag and Marines to do it,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) tweeted.
James Hutton, a Veterans Affairs official during the Trump administration, tweeted that Biden “used Marines as props for his divisive and clearly political speech.”
President Biden used U.S. Marines as props for his divisive and clearly political speech. Despicable conduct in attacking more than half of Americans. pic.twitter.com/7QHObYTlaZ
— James Hutton (@JEHutton) September 2, 2022
Biden’s supporters responded by pointing out the many ways that Trump undermined the nonpartisan nature of the military.
In June 2020, he sought for days to use active-duty U.S. troops to quell protests prompted by the police killing of George Floyd, alarming senior Pentagon officials who saw his plans as an abuse of power. At the height of the crisis, federal forces cleared protesters from Lafayette Square outside of the White House before Trump led other senior U.S. officials to a nearby church for a photo opportunity. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, later apologized for appearing with the president briefly outside the White House, saying that his presence in that moment “created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
At the outset of his administration, Trump traveled to the Pentagon and signed executive actions that included an order meant to severely curb immigration from several Muslim-majority countries. He did so in the Pentagon’s “Hall of Heroes,” a room dedicated to the military’s Medal of Honor recipients. | 2022-09-02T22:30:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marines at Biden speech prompt debate about politicizing the military - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/biden-marines-backdrop-democracy-speech/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/biden-marines-backdrop-democracy-speech/ |
FILE - Jane Fonda arrives at the Season 7 final episodes premiere of “Grace and Frankie,” on April 23, 2022, at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles. The 84-year-old actor said in an Instagram post Friday, Sept. 2, 2022, that she has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and has begun a six-month course of chemotherapy. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-09-02T22:30:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jane Fonda says she has cancer, is dealing well with chemo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jane-fonda-says-she-has-cancer-is-dealing-well-with-chemo/2022/09/02/3c09d572-2b08-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jane-fonda-says-she-has-cancer-is-dealing-well-with-chemo/2022/09/02/3c09d572-2b08-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
At least 18 die in blast at mosque in Herat
Eighteen Afghans were killed and dozens wounded as a blast ripped through a mosque in Afghanistan’s western Herat province, the latest in a series of attacks on worshipers.
The explosion occurred as one of the people at the mosque stepped forward to greet pro-Taliban cleric Mujib Rahman Ansari before the Friday prayers, Mahmoud Shah Rassouli, a police spokesman for the province, said by phone. A spokesman for Herat’s governor, Hameedullah Motawakel, confirmed the number of casualties in a separate text to reporters.
It was not clear Friday who was behind the blast. The Taliban condemned the attack in a Twitter post, saying Ansari was killed in a “cowardly” manner and they’re looking into the case. The cleric strongly supported Taliban rule, saying in an event in Kabul in July that whoever stood against them must be “beheaded.”
Gunmen kill at least 42 in Oromiya region
Gunmen killed at least 42 people in Ethiopia’s Oromiya region, two residents who buried the bodies in mass graves said Friday, the latest killings in the country’s most populous region where escalating violence has left hundreds dead.
The latest attack by an armed group against residents occurred Tuesday, they said, in the Amuru district, around 230 miles west of the capital Addis Ababa.
They said the victims were all Oromos and described the attackers as members of a volunteer militia known as Fano, mostly composed of ethnic Amharas. Clashes between the Oromo and Amhara, Ethiopia’s two largest ethnic groups, have been rising in recent months.
8 to go on trial in 2016 truck attack in Nice
Seven men and a woman will go on trial Monday in the 2016 Bastille Day attack in the French city of Nice, in which 86 people were killed and hundreds injured by a gunman who drove a heavy truck into a crowd gathered to watch fireworks.
The gunman was fatally shot by police, ending an assault that shocked a country already reeling from the Islamist attacks in Paris the previous year.
Prosecutors say the accused, who face five years in jail to a life sentence, helped Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, obtain weapons, rent the truck or survey the route he took.
Lahouaiej Bouhlel swerved his truck through crowds on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice’s seaside, palm tree-lined boulevard, causing devastation and chaos among the 25,000 or so gathered for the festivities.
4 killed in shooting at soccer field in central Mexico: Four people were killed, including a former mayor, in an attack on a soccer field in central Mexico, according to state authorities. The Morelos state prosecutor's office said in a statement that the attack occurred Thursday night in the town of Yecapixtla. In addition to the four dead, there were a number of people wounded in the shooting. Gunmen in two vehicles fired on people gathered after a soccer match, the statement said. Local media reported at least eight wounded. Among those killed was 57-year-old Refugio Amaro Luna, a former mayor.
Transgender man, 25, dies after German pride parade assault: A 25-year-old transgender man died from his wounds in a hospital Friday almost a week after he was assaulted while rushing to help women at a Pride parade in the western German city of Muenster, police said. The man, whom police have named only as Malte C. in accordance with privacy conventions, intervened when an attacker started hurling homophobic slurs at other participants in the Christopher Street Day parade, police said. The attacker hit Malte twice in the face. He lost consciousness after his head hit the ground when he fell, and never woke up. Police said Friday that they had detained a 20-year-old man in the attack.
Fuel still leaking from damaged ship, Gibraltar officials say: Gibraltar said Friday that heavy fuel continues to seep from a damaged and partly sunken bulk carrier off its shore. The government said that despite Thursday's efforts to halt a slick, small amounts were still leaking Friday. In a statement, the government said there were reports of some oil-covered birds but that it was "taking every possible measure … to minimize the environmental impact of the spill." | 2022-09-02T22:31:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: Sept. 2, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-sept-2-2022/2022/09/02/e24ecca4-2acb-11ed-806e-f01a46624ddb_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-sept-2-2022/2022/09/02/e24ecca4-2acb-11ed-806e-f01a46624ddb_story.html |
People stand in a guard tower on the perimeter wall of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on April 23, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)
There are no surprises in the long-awaited United Nations report on China’s brutal human rights violations in the region of Xinjiang. But its contents, and the circumstances around its release, should bring renewed attention to China’s persecution of the Uyghur people — and Beijing’s determination to cover it up.
The report, released Wednesday by U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, concludes that China’s actions in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” The details are chilling. Investigators found that, under the guise of “counterterrorism,” the Chinese government perpetuated “severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights.” Central to this campaign was the mass detention of Uyghurs in “vocational education and training centers,” a sanitized term for internment camps. Former detainees and camp workers described a litany of abuses and torture, including beatings with electric batons while strapped to “tiger chairs” and solitary confinement. In addition, survivors spoke of being given unidentified injections or pills that made them drowsy, while some women reported sexual violence and rape.
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Investigators also documented allegations of enforced disappearances, family separations and the targeting of Uyghurs abroad, and raised concerns about the apparent destruction of religious sites. Crucially, they found “credible indications of violations of reproductive rights,” including first-hand accounts of forced birth control and abortions.
These findings echo what many other institutions had already concluded. The United States rightly declared last year China’s repression of the Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang a genocide. Other organizations have also accused Beijing of crimes against humanity. But the United Nations’s imprimatur is significant, particularly because many advocates and survivors worried the report would never see the light of day.
In December, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights Office said the report would be released in “a matter of a few weeks.” In May, after Ms. Bachelet embarked on a highly restricted visit to China, she released a tepid statement that invoked Beijing’s own rhetoric on Xinjiang. Her anodyne comments are all the more galling in light of the damning report, which was well underway. As recently as last week, Ms. Bachelet claimed her office had faced “tremendous pressure to publish or not to publish” it. She finally released the document on her very last day in office, alongside a 131-page rebuttal from China replete with propaganda and diversions.
Despite the delay, the report offers a strong, clear accounting of China’s violence and oppression against Uyghurs — and should be a call to action. It will need to be formally presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council, so member states can begin discussing next steps. The Biden administration, for its part, should vigorously enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans products from Xinjiang unless companies can prove they were not manufactured with forced labor. It should also use its authority under the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act to impose sanctions on officials complicit in the persecution of Uyghurs. Meanwhile, all governments must move to protect whistleblowers and dissidents from reprisal by Chinese authorities.
Beijing cannot be allowed to continue committing atrocities with impunity. The U.N. report represents a small, overdue step toward accountability and justice. Now, it’s on the international community to follow through. | 2022-09-02T22:31:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.N. report on China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs is damning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/un-report-china-uyghurs-xinjiang/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/02/un-report-china-uyghurs-xinjiang/ |
‘New Tales from the Borderlands’ is more Gearbox than Telltale
The team making ‘New Tales’ say the differences from the original are very intentional.
(Washington Post illustration; 2K Games)
With brightly colored outfits, high-tech glasses and hoverchairs aplenty, “New Tales from the Borderlands’ ” three main characters certainly look the part. And as their journey through a sewer (in search of one of the series’ borderline-mystical Vaults, of course) gives way to “Metal Gear Solid”-inspired box shenanigans and a life-or-death duel with a guard involving action figures instead of guns, it feels the part, too. This is definitely a successor to “Tales from the Borderlands,” Telltale’s unexpectedly spectacular story-driven spinoff of a series not typically known for its story.
It’s hard to put a finger on what, exactly, as the action plays out during a virtual demo presented by Gearbox, the studio handling development after Telltale, the spinoff’s originator, died in 2018 and then (sort of) came back the next year. The setup is reminiscent of the original “Tales from the Borderlands” while starring a new cast: Anu, Octavio and Fran, three lovable losers who’d likely be background NPCs in a standard first-person shooter “Borderlands” game, bumble, stumble and stutter their way through the machinations of evil capitalists and a planetary invasion on the worst day of their lives. There are jokes and quips aplenty. There are dialogue choices, quick-time events and minigames. Octavio, the main male lead, exudes a certain-to-be-humbled cocksureness that’s reminiscent of previous “Tales” lead Rhys, except streetwise instead of corporate.
But it all hits a little differently. Maybe it’s due to the large quantity of meta jokes referencing “Borderlands,” character archetypes and other video games — the generously poured sauce atop standard “Borderlands” games’ feasts of scenery chewing which the original “Tales” dialed back (slightly) in favor of more stand-alone character-driven shenanigans. Maybe it’s the look: darker, dingier and dirtier, to bring “New Tales” in line with 2019 main series entry “Borderlands 3.” Maybe it’s the lack of Telltale’s signature “So-and-so will remember this” prompt when you make a decision that resonates profoundly — for good or ill — with another character.
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It’s a fine line to walk, echoing back to a beloved cult hit while also charting a new course. But the leads of the new team making “New Tales” say the differences are very intentional. The lack of a “So-and-so will remember this” prompt is a good example. On one hand, Telltale’s signature line pushed players into the head space of considering what other characters might be thinking of them; it got the imagination going with little more than a brief line of text. On the other, it gave certain choices more weight than they necessarily deserved.
“That notification does make you think about [your decision], but also from what we observed, people tended to think that those were the most important choices — the big ones — and in the process it potentially undermined all the other choices you make,” Gearbox director of production James Lopez told The Washington Post. “One of our mottos while making this game is that every input is a choice, and every choice matters. It’s kind of hard to celebrate that idea if we still use the notification, so instead we invested more in a spectrum of consequences.”
In addition, “New Tales” is running on the Unreal Engine instead of Telltale’s herky-jerky old tech, allowing Gearbox to employ a suite of motion capture tools to bring its characters’ faces and bodies to life. The hope, then, is that players will no longer need a prompt to let them know when characters think they’ve done something cool (or incredibly stupid).
“Performance capture lets you understand, ‘Oh, this had an impact!'” said Gearbox Studio Quebec producer Frédéric Scheubel. “If you’re in a hurry, just like in real life you don’t have the weight of the consequences in front of you right away. Performance capture allowed us to bring it forth without a cue. It allowed us to do it with our actors and their acting.”
While the brief 20-or-so minute demo was heavier on sewer spelunking and gags than heartfelt character growth, Lopez and Scheubel said that character relationships are still very much at the core of this game — more so even than the team expected at the outset of development. The reason for this, oddly enough, is the pandemic. “New Tales’ ” script was written before covid-19 sent us all scrambling into our own vaults for safety, forcing rewrites so that mocap scenes could be shot over the course of 14 months without endangering actors.
“We had some fight sequences where the idea was to have, like, eight to twelve people on set, which was a lot even pre-pandemic,” said Lopez. “So the pandemic happened, and it could have been a matter of us just cutting the actors in half — the number of actors, not the actual actors. That would be a crime.”
But instead of committing a crime against the script (or human actors), the “New Tales” team focused on rewrites that gave the story a more intimate focus.
“We have three playable characters, and a lot of the time it’s them plus someone else,” said Lopez, explaining that shoots usually maxed out at just five actors. “So it was like, these three characters are gonna get really close to each other; we should probably think of the story through that lens. … It became much more of a story about family and unconditional love for each other despite your flaws.”
These unique constraints in mind, it’s not surprising that “New Tales” gives off a vibe that’s part-"Tales,” part-"Borderlands” and part-all its own. That said, Gearbox seems intent on maintaining a direct lineage to the original “Tales,” if not with cameos (Lopez and Scheubel said this one will have a “98 percent new cast”) then with assistance from former Telltale staffers — something the company has repeatedly touted. This makes sense; the original was a uniquely narrative-heavy project whose sensibilities were born of a relatively small, specific group of people.
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However, Gearbox has been conspicuously cagey about precisely which, if any, ex-"Tales” leads are attached to the project. The Washington Post contacted several lead writers from the original “Tales,” all of whom either said they were not involved or did not reply. Most of the game’s main writers, years later, are now listed as having full-time jobs at studios like Remedy, King and the Netflix-owned Night School. One former “Tales” lead who chose to remain anonymous out of concern over potential retaliation said Gearbox only reached out to get his current company to say it’s not working on “New Tales.”
“Our only contact with Gearbox was them asking us to put out a statement that we were not working on it when there was a rumor that we were,” said the ex-"Tales” lead. “We responded to them asking to chat about it before putting out a statement, but they basically iced us. As someone [who] put a lot into the project I was hoping we’d be able to get a glimpse into their plans, but it was radio silence after that.”
In response to repeated inquiries about which specific “Tales” writers contributed to “New Tales,” Gearbox would only say that Bruner House — the new studio run by Telltale founder Kevin Bruner, whose managerial style reportedly contributed to crunch and burnout — was “integral to getting this game off the ground” and that “many alumni from the original Telltale Games narrative team for ‘Tales from the Borderlands’ partnered with Gearbox and worked on the title.” Bruner House’s narrative engine, Beanie, also provides scaffolding for “New Tales.”
Lopez and Scheubel say they did their best to avoid Telltale’s managerial missteps while working on “New Tales,” whose October launch is now just around the corner.
“The development process, we focused on sane energy,” Scheubel said. “The whole studio was mostly doing nine-to-five throughout the project. Even landing this title right now, we have people on vacation. That’s the feeling that we want. That was my priority on the development side.” | 2022-09-02T22:33:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'New Tales from the Borderlands' is more Gearbox than Telltale - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/02/new-tales-from-the-borderlands-impressions-preview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/02/new-tales-from-the-borderlands-impressions-preview/ |
He says the company repeatedly ignored requirements to disclose funding information about political advertisers
A sign at Facebook parent company Meta's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., in October. (Tony Avelar/AP)
The court said that Facebook, which last year renamed itself Meta, repeatedly broke the state’s law requiring technology platforms make information about political ads available for public inspection in a “timely manner,” according to a statement from the Washington state attorney general’s office.
King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North also turned down Facebook’s request to gut part of the law, delivering a blow to the social media giant’s challenge of some of the strictest disclosure rules governing digital political advertising in the country, according to the attorney general’s office.
“We defeated Facebook’s cynical attempt to strike down our campaign finance transparency law,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) said in a statement. “On behalf of the people of Washington, I challenge Facebook to accept this decision and do something very simple — follow the law.”
Facebook limits some political ad targeting, but impact is unlikely to be great
Under state law, Facebook could be hit with a $10,000 fine per violation, which could be tripled if the court finds the company’s actions were intentional.
That lawsuit followed one filed in 2018 that led to a consent decree that required Facebook to pay $238,000, according to Ferguson’s office. After Facebook continued to run political ads, Ferguson sued again in 2020.
After revelations that Russian operatives used social media platforms to try to influence the 2016 presidential election, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington, D.C., introduced legislation to require digital platforms to disclose more about who is buying political ads. The bill would have forced large platforms to create a political ad database with information on the groups spending money on political advertising and a description of the targeted audience. Since then, some tech platforms such as Facebook and Google have published their own ad libraries disclosing information about candidates’ marketing campaigns. | 2022-09-02T23:09:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | State judge rules Facebook violated campaign finance rules - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/02/facebook-political-ads-details/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/02/facebook-political-ads-details/ |
20 migrants rescued after boat capsizes off Florida Keys
20 migrants rescued after boat capsizes
Twenty people were rescued from the ocean off the Florida Keys on Friday morning after their migrant boat capsized while trying to reach South Florida, authorities said.
After the vessel capsized, civilian boaters, Coast Guard crews and officers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission rescued the people from the water while four others swam to land, Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan Estrada said.
Adam Hoffner, division chief for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Miami operations, said he received reports that the vessel was “possibly in distress.”
Other law enforcement sources said some of the people were rescued by civilian boaters.
Van carrying workers overturns; 4 killed
The crash on the Palisades Interstate Parkway in Englewood Cliffs occurred around 1:25 a.m., authorities said. The van ended up in the center median of the southbound lanes, leaving the driver and all the passengers trapped inside the vehicle.
Authorities said everyone in the van was from New York City, but their names and further details about them have not been released. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
Stabbing, shooting at mall outside Atlanta
The incident began when a suspected thief began smashing jewelry counters inside the Macy’s store, authorities said. The suspect then stabbed a store employee who tried to stop him and fled, police said.
Gwinnett County Police saw the suspect as he was fleeing the scene in a gray pickup truck, police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Richter said. One officer tried to ram the vehicle and the suspect attempted to run on foot. An officer fired his weapon, hitting the suspect at least once, she said. | 2022-09-02T23:26:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 20 migrants rescued after boat capsizes off Florida Keys - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/20-migrants-rescued-after-boat-capsizes-off-florida-keys/2022/09/02/02db9c4c-1512-11ed-b403-f31960ffb1d0_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/20-migrants-rescued-after-boat-capsizes-off-florida-keys/2022/09/02/02db9c4c-1512-11ed-b403-f31960ffb1d0_story.html |
By Jeremy Barr
John Harwood, left, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press” in 2009, with fellow journalists Bethany McLean and Mark Zandi. The veteran White House correspondent abruptly left his most recent job at CNN this week. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images for Meet The Press)
CNN parted ways with veteran White House correspondent John Harwood on Friday in what network insiders viewed as the latest evidence of a shift to a less politically charged tone under new leader Chris Licht.
Harwood, who could not be reached for comment, appeared on CNN Friday morning, reporting from the grounds of the White House. But at noon, he announced his departure on Twitter. He wrote that he is “proud of the work” he did at CNN and “[looks] forward to figuring out what’s next.”
Harwood, a longtime Wall Street Journal reporter, joined the network in January 2020, after working as CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent from 2006 to 2019. According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Harwood still had time remaining on his CNN contract, which suggests that network brass decided to end his tenure prematurely.
Representatives for CNN declined to comment on the reason for his departure. “We appreciate John’s work covering the White House, and we wish him all the best,” they said in a statement.
As a reporter who often provided political analysis, Harwood was a regular presence on the network’s airwaves who was “clearly in-demand by the shows,” one surprised CNN insider said.
His exit follows the abrupt departure of CNN’s chief media correspondent, Brian Stelter, host of the weekly media news show “Reliable Sources,” which had aired for three decades until it was canceled last month. Like Harwood, Stelter had time remaining on his contract. Another longtime CNN commentator, legal-affairs pundit Jeffrey Toobin, announced his departure on Aug. 12.
Several current and former CNN employees who spoke with The Washington Post — most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly — are interpreting the sudden exodus as evidence that Licht, who joined the network as chairman and CEO in May, is starting his tenure by casting out voices that had often been critical of former president Donald Trump and his allies, in an effort to present a new, more ideologically neutral CNN. That aligns with a vision repeatedly expressed by David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Zaslav hired Licht to replace Jeff Zucker, the network’s ousted longtime leader, who had encouraged an earlier tonal shift at CNN by allowing the network’s stars to express more emotion and opinion.
From 2021: The new CNN is more opinionated and emotional. Can it still be ‘the most trusted name in news’?
“People are freaked out,” said one CNN journalist. “It almost feels like there’s a pattern. Is there a purge going on? They seem to be sending a message: ‘Watch what you say. Watch what you do.’”
Licht has provided little guidance publicly about a new mission for CNN, leaving some employees feeling unmoored. “Longtime CNN personalities are disappearing and the viewers don’t know why,” another CNN insider said, noting that Licht has not hired many new voices to replace them.
Harwood’s vocal commentary set him apart from many of his CNN peers. In his final reporting appearance Friday morning, Harwood called Trump a “dishonest demagogue” when discussing President Biden’s address from Philadelphia the previous night. Harwood added that the “core point” of Biden’s speech, which asserted that Trump and his supporters present a threat to democracy, “is true.”
Harwood acknowledged on-air that his own statement veered from the conventions of traditional journalism. “We are brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them,” he said. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. These are not honest disagreements.”
Harwood’s comment came across as an intentional “last salvo,” said Wajahat Ali, a political commentator who served as a CNN contributor in 2019 and 2020. “I don’t think it was an accident,” Ali said.
Ali speculated that the forced departures of Stelter and Harwood will send a message to other CNN journalists that they should curb their political analysis for fear of crossing a line into opinion, at risk of losing “a plum job that everyone wants.”
Licht has told CNN staff that he hopes to see more Republican politicians making guest appearances. He visited Capitol Hill in July and held meetings with key Democrats and Republicans.
But the network has pushed back on suggestions that Licht was specifically trying to curry favor with Republicans, saying that he just wants to make CNN “a place for fair and respectful dialogue, analysis and debate.”
Licht’s early actions in the job are being closely watched in light of comments by John Malone, a major shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery, who said on CNBC last fall that he “would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists.”
In an interview last month with the New York Times, Malone denied that he was involved in the decision to push out Stelter. He said he wants “the news portion of CNN to be more centrist” but that he is “not in control or directly involved.”
But one of the CNN journalists who spoke with The Post said that colleagues are still trying to figure out where, exactly, the new lines are being drawn. “I think they’re hoping people will just guess what to do.”
A veteran producer at the network, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, expressed concerns about how the recent departures — and the message they have sent internally — will impact coverage of the upcoming midterm and presidential election, which could include Trump as a candidate.
“It’s a really confusing and unsettling time from top-to-bottom at CNN,” the veteran producer said. “I don’t know anyone who is happy right now. ” | 2022-09-02T23:44:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Harwood CNN exit viewed as strategy shift: 'Is there a purge?' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/02/john-harwood-cnn-chris-licht-stelter-opinion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/02/john-harwood-cnn-chris-licht-stelter-opinion/ |
Student fatally shot at high school in Baltimore, police say
The shooting occurred at dismissal time at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High, according to Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison
A student was fatally shot at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School by another high-schooler in Baltimore on Friday afternoon, Baltimore police said.
The shooting occurred as students were leaving the school through the parking lot during dismissal, Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said at a news conference.
Harrison said the student of the vocational school also known as Mervo High was approached in the schoolyard by a student from another school and the two had a “heated” encounter. The student from the other high school took out a gun during the encounter and then fired “multiple times at our victim,” Harrison said.
The victim was taken to a hospital and died at about 3:26 p.m., Harrison said. No one else was injured in the shooting, he said.
Baltimore City Public Schools police officers were outside in the yard during the shooting and chased after the student who fled down the street, Harrison said. Police arrested the student nearby and recovered a gun they believe was used in the shooting, he said.
“This is an extremely tragic situation,” he said. “Beyond tragic, happening on the grounds of a school in the beginning of the school year as school is opening.”
Baltimore City Public Schools said on Twitter it canceled all after-school activities. The school system welcomed students back for the first week on Monday, according to the school system’s website.
Harrison said police would not be naming the school the student attends or either students’ names on Friday. The victim’s family has been notified and was at the hospital, he said.
Harrison said police are still investigating how and why the conflict started.
“This is again another case of the prevalence of guns in our community, the ease of access to those guns and the willingness to use them just to solve conflict,” Harrison said. “This is conflict resolution, or the failure to solve conflict in a peaceful, sensible way.”
Counseling services for the school community were on-site and will continue through next week, Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises said at the news conference.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) said at the news conference that there is a “school full of children” crying and encouraged the community to become more involved in helping youth. The mayor is a graduate of Mervo High, according to the city government website.
“There are too many, too many young people that are being harmed in our city,” Scott said. “But there are also so many others that are out there just waiting for someone to care for them. To show them a better way.” | 2022-09-02T23:48:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Student fatally shot at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/mervo-high-shooting-baltimore-fatal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/mervo-high-shooting-baltimore-fatal/ |
Migrants wait to be processed by the Border Patrol after illegally crossing the Rio Grande river from Mexico into the United States at Eagle Pass, Tex., on Aug. 26. (Eric Gay/AP)
The bodies of eight people were recovered from the Rio Grande after dozens of migrants were swept downriver near Eagle Pass, Tex., in what appeared to be the deadliest mass drowning along the border in years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said Friday.
Body of National Guard soldier who drown in Rio Grande is recovered | 2022-09-03T00:01:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 8 migrants drown trying to cross Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/texas-migrants-drownings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/02/texas-migrants-drownings/ |
FILE - Challenger Earnie Shavers, right, follows through with a right against champion Muhammad Ali during the fourth round of their boxing bout in New York’s Madison Square Garden, Sept. 29, 1977. Shavers, whose thunderous punches stopped 68 fighters and earned him heavyweight title fights with Ali and Larry Holmes, died Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. He was 78. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm, File) | 2022-09-03T00:02:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Earnie Shavers, one of boxing's hardest punchers, dies at 78 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/earnie-shavers-one-of-boxings-hardest-punchers-dies-at-78/2022/09/02/bac78396-2b17-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/earnie-shavers-one-of-boxings-hardest-punchers-dies-at-78/2022/09/02/bac78396-2b17-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
The U.S. Open is the only major where Gauff, 18, had yet to reach the fourth round. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Of all the American power hitters to follow in Serena Williams’s wake, Madison Keys may be the strongest of the group. A tennis ball off her racket might be able to crack rocks.
Coco Gauff matched Keys’s might with cool confidence Friday, making a meeting of two Grand Slam finalists look lopsided as she zipped into the fourth round of the U.S. Open for the first time in her career. She did it with a 6-2, 6-3 win that took a businesslike 72 minutes.
The U.S. Open was the only major where Gauff, 18, had failed to make at least the fourth round. But rather than feeling like a milestone, her victory felt routine.
Gauff entered the match with one main focal point following a three-set loss to Keys in January: be less hesitant in her shots to match Keys’s aggression.
It was a strategy that was easier to follow than Gauff expected. Her overall confidence in her tennis is higher than it was at the start of the year following a coaching change and what she said is a crisper sense of identity on court.
“In January I was relying too much on my speed. Because against lower-ranked players, I could get away with just getting the ball back. Playing higher players, power hitters, I’m like, okay, that’s not working anymore,” Gauff said. “ … It really changed my mentality on how I’m using my athleticism. I’m not relying on it anymore. Now I’m trying to use it as a weapon.”
Gauff played freely Friday, going for big groundstrokes but staying within her game.
A solid seven winners to 14 unforced errors was plenty against an opponent with a penchant for getting herself into trouble. The difference was that Keys wasn’t as clean — she had 13 winners to 22 unforced errors, and couldn’t find a way to break Gauff’s impenetrable calm.
Gauff also limited herself to three double faults after serving eight in her second-round match.
She advances to face China’s Shuai Zhang on Sunday.
Keys, who lost to Sloane Stephens in the championship match here in 2017, hasn’t reached a Grand Slam final since (though she’s reached a semifinal three times, including at this year’s Australian Open). She hasn’t made it past the fourth round in New York since 2019.
Gauff reached her first major final this year at Roland Garros, where she fell to world No. 1 Iga Swiatek.
The most impactful thing to have come from that match for Gauff is that she now knows what it feels like to play for a Grand Slam trophy.
“I didn’t expect myself to be so nervous before the final. Now that I know what to expect, I expect myself to at least do better, maybe not win next time, but do better,” Gauff said. " … Instead of trying to say, ‘I’m not nervous, I’m not this,’ I’m saying, ‘I am nervous, I do feel pressure, I do feel this.’ Now once you acknowledge a problem, you can solve it.”
Gauff showed it Friday — she’s a quick learner.
Live updates: Serena Williams drops first set to Ajla Tomljanovic at U.S. Open | 2022-09-03T00:41:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Coco Gauff cruises past Madison Keys into U.S. Open fourth round - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/coco-gauff-madison-keys-us-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/coco-gauff-madison-keys-us-open/ |
Man arrested and charged with murder in Prince George’s, police say
Police say the victim was not the intended target of a shooting, according to an initial investigation
A 20-year-old man was arrested and charged with murder Thursday in a District Heights area shooting in August, Prince George’s County police said.
Trevon Cox, of Clinton, is charged with second-degree murder and related counts in the killing of Stanley Ramey, 28, of District Heights, on Aug. 17, police said. He is being held without bond at the county jail.
Man fatally shot in Prince George’s County
Officers found Ramey with gunshot wounds in an apartment complex parking lot about 10:30 p.m. in the 2100 block of Rochelle Avenue, police said. He died at the scene.
According to an initial investigation, police said Ramey was not the intended target of the fatal shooting. Police are investigating a motive.
The department released a video Friday afternoon showing what they think is a car connected to the shooting or whose driver or occupants were the intended target. The footage was taken at the time of the shooting, police said, and shows a red car driving on Rochelle Avenue.
Police said they are looking to speak with the occupants of the red car and do not think anyone in the car was injured.
It was not immediately clear whether Cox has an attorney. | 2022-09-03T01:20:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trevon Cox charged with murder in District Heights shooting, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/man-charged-murder-district-heights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/02/man-charged-murder-district-heights/ |
Barbara Ehrenreich in 2005. (Andrew Shurtleff/AP)
Her daughter Rosa Brooks, who confirmed the death, said her mother had a stroke. Ms. Ehrenreich has been declining health after publicly revealing a breast cancer diagnosis, but wrote in 2018 that she refused “to accept a medicalized life” and stopped most doctor visits and other care.
In more than 20 books, Ms. Ehrenreich explored a sweep of topics that echoed her varied background as a feminist political activist and scientist with a doctorate in cellular immunology. She returned over and over, though, to cast a critical eye on chronic inequities in U.S. society — from health care to housing to gender roles — and the collective folklore that hails the country as the land of unlimited opportunity.
She lived paycheck-to-paycheck — sometimes falling short, sometimes eking by — in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels.
Although Ms. Ehrenreich mostly framed the book as cry for help for poverty-level workers, her portrayals of her colleagues were sympathetic and at times uplifting. Some readers saw the book as a look into the first steps of immigrant success stories.
Began with science
Barbara Alexander was born in Butte, Mont., then a copper-mining hub, on Aug. 26, 1941. Her father worked in a mine while studying at the Montana School of Mines. Ms. Ehrenreich described her mother as a New Deal liberal who “would always talk about racial injustice” but possessed a volatile side that left her scared as a child.
The family moved to Pittsburgh while Ms. Ehrenreich’s father earned a Ph.D. in metallurgy at Carnegie Mellon University. He later became director of research at Gillette in Massachusetts.
Ms. Ehrenreich graduated in 1963 from Reed College in Portland, Ore., with a degree in chemistry. She received a doctorate in cellular immunology in 1968 from Rockefeller University in New York, where she met her first husband, John Ehrenreich.
Ms. Ehrenreich left academia in 1974 to write full time. Her gaze remained fixed steadily on those left behind by the U.S. economy or just hanging on. “Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class” (1989) and “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream” (2005) dug into what she called the facade of middle-class security.
Opinion: Barbara Ehrenreich on 'how we're in trouble as a species'
In 2018, her book “Natural Causes” tied together many of the themes of her past work — American culture, health care failings and corporate influence — into a critique of what she called an obsession over ignoring the inevitability of death. The body was in a constant fight to keep us alive. And one day it will lose, she reminded readers after her own breast cancer diagnosis. | 2022-09-03T01:33:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barbara Ehrenreich, writer who explored American inequities, dies at 81 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/02/ehrenreich-journalist-author-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/02/ehrenreich-journalist-author-dies/ |
LOS ANGELES — California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Friday intended to open the way for the state’s last operating nuclear power plant to run an additional five years, a move that he said was needed to ward off possible blackouts as the state transitions to solar and other renewable sources. | 2022-09-03T03:04:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California governor signs bill to keep last reactors running - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/california-governor-signs-bill-to-keep-last-reactors-running/2022/09/02/4cfafb78-2b2a-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/california-governor-signs-bill-to-keep-last-reactors-running/2022/09/02/4cfafb78-2b2a-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Serena Williams thanks the fans after losing to Ajla Tomljanovic at the U.S. Open. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Serena Williams said what is in all likelihood her goodbye to tennis Friday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium, 23 years and 23 Grand Slam titles after winning her first here at the U.S. Open.
She lost to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic in a tense, 7-5, 6-7 (7-4), 6-1 match full of the signature power and fight she employed to rule women’s tennis for the past two decades. In the final game, she staved off six match points and took Tomljanovic to deuce eight times, even as the inevitable became clear.
It was the most thrilling night of a week-long run that Williams has called a bonus to her nearly 27-year career.
She announced in Vogue last month that she intends to “evolve” away from tennis and arrived at Flushing Meadows having played just four matches in the past 14 months, winning only one.
But Williams, who turns 41 later this month, exceeded expectations in every fashion. She was feted throughout the week with on-court ceremonies and lavish tribute videos played before every match; celebrities including Tiger Woods, Anna Wintour, Spike Lee, Russell Wilson and Gladys Knight turned up to watch.
She said she wanted her play to live up to all the pomp and circumstance; on Friday, it did.
After the final game, Williams walked nearly all the way to her chair before pausing, taking a step back and holding her hand up to the crowd. She moved her hand to her heart and mouthed “I love you” to the spectators on their feet in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the site of six of her Grand Slam titles.
After she toweled off, she retuned to the court for her usual twirl and wave. She choked back tears as she thanked the crowd then paid tribute to her family — her mother Oracene, sisters Venus Williams and Isha Price and husband Alexis Ohanian all standing in her player box.
“Thank you daddy, I know you’re watching,” Williams said, addressing her father Richard before tears began falling in earnest. “Thanks mom. I just thank everyone that’s here, that’s been on my side so many years — decades, oh my gosh, literally decades. But it all started with my parents, and they deserve everything … I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you Venus. She’s the only reason Serena Williams ever existed.
“It’s been the most incredible ride and journey I’ve ever been on in my life, I’m just so grateful to every single person that’s ever said, ‘Go Serena’ in their life, because yeah. You got me here.”
Should Williams never play another tournament, she walks away with 73 career titles — the fifth most in the history of the women’s game in the open era — a record $94 million in career earnings and the Open era record of 23 major trophies, one shy of Margaret Court’s all-time record.
Court collected hers at a time when fewer players traveled to the Australian Open and she, a native Aussie, dominated the tournament to win 11 times. Yet the No. 24 held strong motivating powers for Williams, who had been chasing the record throughout the final years of her career.
She came up one short. To the throngs of supporters roaring her name Wednesday, it did not matter.
Williams and her sister Venus opened the floodgates for diversity in tennis, inspiring a swath of Black players to take up the sport — and even more to start tuning in at home.
Viewers regardless of age, race or gender could appreciate the longevity of her dominance and, in the final stretches of her career, what she represented to mothers. Williams won the 2017 Australian Open, the final title of her career, while pregnant with her daughter Olympia.
On court, no player revolutionized women’s tennis more. She made power matter in a game of angles and finesse, introducing to it big muscles and the shot that will be her on-court legacy: her serve. Its unmatched combination of speed, ferocity and accuracy have made some call it the greatest shot women’s tennis has ever seen.
She leaves tennis less relevant in her absence, the first to shelve her racket of a cosmic group of players who transcended the game. Venus, 42, has not said a word about retirement. Roger Federer, 41, is missing his third straight U.S. Open as he recovers from knee surgery. Rafael Nadal, 36, and Novak Djokovic, 35, remain active but with much less career in front of them than behind.
It seemed for a while Friday that Williams might not be ready for her career to end. Williams leaped to a 5-3 lead early but Tomljanovic, a 29-year-old Aussie with a steel-lined gut, was not cowed by the roar of the crowd nor the deficit.
She remained in motion throughout the night, following her forward momentum after a winner to the chair or doing heel-kicks between points, staying physically loose but mentally locked.
She blazed through four straight games to take the first set.
Williams held to win the first game of the second. But it required an effort that originated deep in the belly, including one lunge for a Tomljanovic shot hit at such an acute angle it left Williams sprawled on the court.
Her opponent’s nerve lit Williams’s pilot light. She began the second set pummeling the ball and going for bigger winners, rattling off four straight games of her own with the best, most precise play she’s exhibited all tournament.
Tomljanovic cut Williams’s lead to two games and then, serving from 2-5 down, fought off four set points in a nine-deuce game to make it 5-3.
Williams held at 6-5 to put herself within a game once again, sweat pouring down her face as she walked to her chair. The crowd broke into a “SER-E-NA” chant as Tomljanovic prepared to serve.
The Aussie pushed Williams to a second-set tiebreaker, which she won on her fifth set point. | 2022-09-03T03:05:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena Williams loses at U.S. Open in what may be her final match - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/serena-williams-retirement-us-open-2/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/serena-williams-retirement-us-open-2/ |
DeMatha reinforces status by easily fending off Rock Creek Christian
Stags 26, Eagles 0
DeMatha lines up before its 26-0 win over Rock Creek Christian on Friday in Landover. (Kyle Melnick/TWP)
Moments after the public address announcer called DeMatha running back Tovani Mizell’s touchdown run late in Friday night’s game, the Stags’ fight song blared over the speakers at Prince George’s Sports & Learning Complex in Landover.
DeMatha, long the premier program in Prince George’s County, was headed to another win — 26-0, over Rock Creek Christian Academy — and the familiar tune marked another celebration for the Hyattsville private school.
It was also a reminder of the strength of DeMatha’s tradition. No. 9 Rock Creek Christian Academy, an up-and-coming program from Upper Marlboro, entered the season with visions of shaking up the local hierarchy. But No. 3 DeMatha restored order.
“There’s a lot of history behind it,” said DeMatha defensive end Jason Moore, an Ohio State commit. “It’s a lot of responsibility to stand up to it. It’s definitely an honor to put [the jersey] on and represent DeMatha the best way I can.”
With a Washington Catholic Athletic Conference-best 24 championships, DeMatha (1-1), founded in 1946, is arguably the D.C. area’s most accomplished program. Rock Creek (0-2) played its inaugural season last year after Coach Andre Kates and most of his players transferred from nearby National Christian Academy. The Eagles finished 7-1 against a national schedule.
Rock Creek is attempting to maintain that success with four returning starters from last season. In an area surrounded by established private schools, Kates has prioritized building ties with players and their families to attract talent. He grasped the importance of relationships while coaching National Christian in 2019, when Kates asked a player why he works hard in warmups and walk-throughs.
“Maybe my mom will come back into my life,” he responded, “if she sees me in a newspaper.”
Every week, Kates and his 17 assistant coaches call players to discuss life. Those same coaches ride a bus to local youth games every Saturday in green-and-gold apparel.
Kates raises fundraising money via local businesses and team carwashes. He paid thousands of dollars for a players’ lounge, which includes four TVs, PlayStations, Xboxes and a 120-inch projector screen, which displays college and NFL highlights of players Kates coached.
“I promise to God, if we ever came up on money like the St. John’ses and DeMathas and Good Counsels and them have,” Kates said, “we will be the No. 1 team in this area.”
To build that reputation, Rock Creek must surpass DeMatha, which itself is aspiring to regain status as the area’s top team. The Stags last won a WCAC title in 2016 under Elijah Brooks, who’s now Maryland’s running backs coach.
DeMatha gained a lead four minutes into the second quarter Friday when linebacker Nathaniel Owusu-Boateng sacked Rock Creek’s quarterback in the end zone for a safety. The Stags settled into a rhythm and led 19-0 after quarterback Denzel Gardner’s touchdown pass to wide receiver Gerald Campbell three minutes into the second half.
Mizell, who scored the game-sealing touchdown from 10 yards out with 5:32 remaining, moved to College Park from Florida on Aug. 1. The junior Georgia commit soon learned the prestige of his new school.
As DeMatha players lined up at midfield for postgame handshakes, “All I Do Is Win” by DJ Khaled played on the home speakers.
“Honestly, it’s crazy because I didn’t realize how many people came out of DeMatha,” Mizell said. “It’s definitely a powerhouse, and I’m talking about from all sports. It’s a great experience. Knowing that could be me one day, it’s crazy.” | 2022-09-03T04:01:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeMatha reinforces status by easily fending off Rock Creek Christian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/dematha-reinforces-status-by-easily-fending-off-rock-creek-christian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/02/dematha-reinforces-status-by-easily-fending-off-rock-creek-christian/ |
The thought of losing my friend in the short or long term in the event that this goes south is hard to face.
But I also feel a genuine connection with his daughter, and I think a full-on and successful relationship could lead to a great future.
— Conflicted in Pa.
Conflicted: If you want to preserve your friendship with the elder man, then you should make him aware of your new friendship with his daughter.
I intuit that there is a complication you are not revealing; perhaps the father and daughter are estranged, or their relationship is strained.
He was happy to hear from me, and we swapped emails a lot, although only when I sent him writing samples, which he said he enjoyed reading.
I asked to see samples of his work, because I was sending him so many of mine, but he didn’t send them.
He did not respond to that, send good wishes or follow up.
Not Well Read: Your former teacher seems to have been very kind to you.
Yes, I suggest you keep in touch, just to check in. Catch him up on how your surgery went and ask about how he’s doing.
Dear Amy: A weird question, perhaps, but I often find myself very moved and concerned by the questions I read in your column, and although you are frequently funny, I do find myself tearing up.
Wondering: Yes, most days. I anchor to the long-ago wisdom of the great Ann Landers, who said something like: “I can’t take on other people’s problems. I’ve got enough problems of my own.” | 2022-09-03T04:36:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Should I date my close friend's daughter? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/03/ask-amy-friend-daughter-date/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/03/ask-amy-friend-daughter-date/ |
In this frame grab from Iranian state television, Iranian navy sailors throw an American sea drone overboard in the Red Sea on Sept. 1. (Iranian state television via AP)
An Iranian warship seized two U.S. unmanned surface vessels in the Red Sea before releasing them 18 hours later, the Navy said, in a provocative move that comes as indirect nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington appear close to stalling.
At around 2 p.m. local time Thursday, the Iranian navy ship Jamaran seized two Saildrone Explorers, uncrewed vessels that were unarmed and taking unclassified photos in international waters, according to the Navy. The incident occurred in the southern part of the Red Sea, a waterway separating the Arabian peninsula from Africa.
The guided-missile destroyers USS Nitze and USS Delbert D. Black responded to the incident, dispatching helicopters and attempting to negotiate the release of the drones with the Jamaran. At around 8 a.m. on Friday, the Iranian warship released the two Saildrones, wind- and solar-powered vessels used primarily for data collection.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately return a request for comment late Friday.
Earlier in the week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military organization created to protect the Islamic republic’s ideology, attempted to seize an unmanned American vessel in the Persian Gulf. The incident took place as U.S. diplomats hoping to revive a deal that could prevent Tehran from attaining nuclear weapons said negotiations were near an impasse.
Iran has two naval forces with separate missions and commands. This is why.
Run-ins between U.S. and Iranian warships aren’t new. In June, three Iranian ships controlled by the Revolutionary Guard buzzed two American ships traveling in international waters in the Persian Gulf at “dangerously high speed,” the U.S. military said.
In April 2020, 11 Iranian ships “repeatedly crossed the bows and sterns” of American naval and Coast Guard ships in the Persian Gulf. Iranian boats regularly shadow American ships in those waters, raising the risk of confrontation between the two sides. | 2022-09-03T04:37:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran releases Saildrones seized in Red Sea after U.S. Navy intervenes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/02/iran-us-navy-drone-capture/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/02/iran-us-navy-drone-capture/ |
An airstrike on a nursery and the end to Ethiopia’s uneasy peace
‘We cannot keep up,’ said the head of a hospital in Tigray that received victims from the school playground.
People inspect a damaged playground following an air strike in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, August 26, 2022 in this still image taken from video. Tigrai TV/Reuters TV via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES (Tigrai Tv/Via Reuters)
NAIROBI — Even before the airstrikes began again, the hospital in the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region was barely hanging on.
The electricity at Ayder Referral had been cut for weeks, said hospital head Kibrom Gebreselassie. Medical and fuel supplies were dwindling. Doctors and nurses had been working without pay for 16 months.
But an uneasy peace in Ethiopia’s civil war had meant that, at least since March, the flow of wounded had paused. Then last week, an airstrike that residents, United Nations officials and local media all blamed on the Ethiopian government ripped through a nursery school. Gebreselassie said four people — including two children — were declared dead on arrival at the hospital. As staff at the Ayder hospital rushed to treat more than a dozen victims, he said, the staff were forced to forgo care for their regular cancer, kidney and cardiac patients.
“We cannot keep up,” said Gebreselassie, a 44-year-old surgeon.
Nearly two years into Ethiopia’s devastating civil war, which has left millions in Tigray on the brink of famine, intense fighting has resumed between government forces, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The extent of the violence, which has included two airstrikes in the area of the regional capital, Mekelle, has dashed hopes for peace talks between the two sides.
Both sides blame each other for launching the attacks. In a statement about the airstrike, the Ethiopian government said that its Air Force only targets military sites and accused the TPLF of “dumping fake body bags in civilian areas.”
Left to suffer are the 5.5 million people living in Tigray, where the Ethiopian government has largely cut off communication and banking services, restricted access for journalists and limited fuel distribution. About 9 in 10 Tigrayans are in need of food aid, according to a recent U.N. report.
At Ayder, the main hospital in Mekelle, food supplies have mostly come from nonprofits operating in the area, according to Gebreselassie, who said he has not been able to see his wife in Addis for more than a year and that his relatives in Mekelle are going hungry. He said the food supply has been sporadic, and staff have had times struggled to have enough food to feed the patients. Even though many staff members are themselves going hungry, Gebreselassie said, they have continued coming to work.
“Siege is a slow killer,” he said, “slowly you lose your loved ones, slowly you see people starving to death or losing hope.”
“When there is active fighting on top of the blockade, he added, “it is disastrous for civilians and everybody.”
They fled hundreds of miles to escape war in Ethiopia. But they fear it wasn’t far enough.
Ethiopia had once been a source of stability in the Horn of Africa, and a partner to the West. But the nation of 117 million, has also long been riven by ethnic divisions.
The TPLF, a guerrilla group from the country’s mountainous north comprised mostly of ethnic Tigrayans, was welcomed by many Ethiopians after it seized power in 1991 from an oppressive Marxist regime. But over decades in government, the TPLF suppressed many of Ethiopia’s larger ethnic groups, including the Amhara and Oromo. Abiy, who is half Amhara and half Ormoro, was heralded as a liberalizing figure when he came to power in 2018 and was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace with neighboring Eritrea.
What began as a political dispute between his government and the TPLF turned violent in the fall of 2020, when the TPLF attacked an Ethiopian military base in Tigray — the Tigrayans called it a preemptive strike— and Abiy launched a military offensive in Tigray. Abiy has framed the war as “existential” and referred to the TPLF as “weeds” and “cancer” that must be eliminated. Both sides have committed atrocities, according to a U.N. report last year, including executions and mass rapes.
Despite pressure from Western countries, peace talks have made little progress. In a news conference Tuesday, TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda said Abiy’s government was able to “hoodwink the international community” into believing they were serious about peace. The Ethiopian government on Wednesday accused the TPLF of launching an invasion in the direction of Sudan’s border, and the TPLF on Thursday claimed the government and Eritrean troops had launched a “massive” offensive against Tigray.
“The escalation risks the situation spiraling out of control,” said William Davison, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It is all a major set back to a peace process that was already struggling.”
Actions taken by both sides, including allegations that the Tigray authorities stole fuel from the World Food Program, make it unlikely that the federal government will completely end an effective blockade anytime soon, he said.
Opinion: The World’s Deadliest War Isn’t in Ukraine, But in Ethiopia
When the airstrike occurred last week, three loud booms rang out and an aide worker named Liwam and her co-workers scurried into their office for shelter. She said her mind went blank as she realized what was happening. Then she thought of her family and three children.
After about an hour, Liwam, who asked to be identified by her middle name because her job does not allow her to speak to media, headed to the scene of the airstrike at RES Kids Paradise. The nursery school near her home was closed for summer, she said, but its playground filled every day with children clamoring over its colorful play sets. What Liwam said she found were medical workers loading injured children into ambulances. Women crying as they looked for their own children. Blood everywhere.
One of the images she said she cannot get out of her head is that of two children killed in the strike, their bodies charred.
“For the siege and blockage, why let us die in front of everyone?,” she said. ' “Our national government is telling us, either die or accept...Is our living of no interest to the government?”
Tewelde Legesse, a popular entertainment reporter from Tigray who fled to a neighboring country after war broke out, was sitting with friends when he got a message on WhatsApp that there had been an airstrike near his hometown. Legesse opened a local news channel on YouTube and he saw his cousin, her head covered in blood. She was telling the local television station she could not find her children.
He wanted desperately to call her but couldn’t. There was no way to get through.
As he watched the aftermath of the airstrike unfold, he could not help wondering why it felt like so little of the world was paying attention. It’s a concern that has been echoed in recent weeks, including by the head of the World Health Organization, who recently called the war “the worst disaster on earth” and sharply criticized Western leaders for their silence.
Legesse said he appreciated the attention given to the war in Ukraine, but it nonetheless left him questioning: “Why not for Tigray?”
In Mekelle, Liwam said her 7-year-old often begs her not to come home, worried she will be killed on the miles-long journey back from the office. Her 11-year-old tells her Tigray has not choice but to win the war, because they have already suffered so much. Her 16-year-old wonders when he can go back to school.
This week, a few days after the strike at the nursery, Liwam and her husband were awakened at dawn by the sound of three loud booms. She realized a another airstrike had just been carried out. | 2022-09-03T06:16:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ethiopia’s escalating war devastates besieged Tigray - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/ethiopia-civil-war-tigray/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/ethiopia-civil-war-tigray/ |
A portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, in his office at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow. (Maxim Shipenkov /EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Russia will hold funeral rites Saturday for Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, laying to rest the man whose policies of openness and economic restructuring — glasnost and perestroika — spurred the dismantling of Communist authoritarianism in Europe but who then watched his legacy unravel as Russia returned to isolationist dictatorship under Vladimir Putin.
Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at 91 at a hospital in Moscow, will be eulogized at a public memorial service at the House of Unions in the Russian capital and then buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery on Saturday afternoon.
Gorbachev, who is adored in the West for bringing the Cold War to an end but whose radical economic reforms made him a controversial, and at times despised, figure at home, was denied an official state funeral as was customarily held for all Soviet leaders except for Nikita Khrushchev, who was ousted as Community Party premier in 1964 and loathed by his successors.
In a historical echo, Putin disdained Gorbachev and called the collapse of the Soviet Union a “catastrophe.” While other former Soviet leaders were buried within the Kremlin walls, Khrushchev was buried in Novodevichy, which will also be Gorbachev’s final resting place.
The Kremlin said Gorbachev’s ceremony would still have “elements” of a state funeral, such as honorary guards, and that the state was helping to organize it.
Putin, however, will not be in attendance, in a snub that reflects the Russian leader’s disdain for Gorbachev’s rapprochement with the West, his political and economic reforms, support for free speech and government transparency and, most of all, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
On Thursday, Putin paid a muted tribute to Gorbachev by visiting the hospital where the politician’s body remained after his death. In a clip broadcast by government television channels, Putin could be seen leaving a bouquet of red roses by the coffin, bowing and then departing the mourning hall of the Central Clinical Hospital without uttering a word.
Saturday’s memorial ceremony, which is open to the public, will take place in the Pillar Hall of the old Soviet House of Unions, which was also the site of memorials for Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. Gorbachev will then be buried next to his wife, Raisa, who died in 1999.
Gorbachev’s farewell is in stark contrast to the burial of Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia and the only other national leader who died during Putin’s presidency. Yeltsin, who handpicked Putin as his successor, was honored with a televised farewell ceremony held at the central Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior when he died in 2007.
Putin declared the day of Yeltsin’s funeral to be a day of national mourning.
Putin has often criticized Gorbachev’s legacy, albeit while avoiding personal attacks, and famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
“A statesman who will forever remain in the history of our country — many argue about the role he played,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the day after Gorbachev died. Peskov said Gorbachev wrongly hoped that “an eternal romantic period would begin between the new Soviet Union and the West.”
“No romantic honeymoon happened,” Peskov said. “The bloodthirstiness of our opponents showed itself.”
Gorbachev, who generally avoided any direct personal criticism of Putin, was reportedly distraught over the current Russian president’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Pavel Palazhchenko, an aide and interpreter who worked alongside Gorbachev for nearly four decades, said that in one of their last phone conversations Gorbachev seemed “shocked and bewildered” by the state of the country he once ruled.
“It’s not just the [military] operation that started on Feb. 24, but the entire evolution of relations between Russia and Ukraine over the past years that was really, really a big blow to him,” Palazhchenko told Reuters in an interview. “It really crushed him emotionally and psychologically.”
Alexei Venediktov, a prominent liberal media figure who spoke to Gorbachev by phone in July, also said the former Soviet leader opposed the war and was hurt by the undoing of his life’s work by Putin, who had left civic freedoms and free press in ashes.
“I can tell you that Gorbachev is upset,” Venediktov told Russian Forbes magazine.
Unlike Yeltstin’s funeral, which was attended by dozens of heads of state and other foreign dignitaries, including former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Gorbachev’s ceremony will be attended by relatively few such guests given the severe tensions over ongoing war in Ukraine.
The State Department said Friday that U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan would attend the funeral. President Biden, along with hundreds of other officials from countries Russia now deems “unfriendly,” have been barred from entering the country. | 2022-09-03T06:16:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gorbachev, last Soviet leader, is mourned and buried in Moscow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/gorbachev-funeral-soviet-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/gorbachev-funeral-soviet-russia/ |
Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud has Heisman hopes as the season gets going. (Carlos Osorio/AP)
After learning that Nebraska is Not Back in Week 0, college football gets going in full with a Week 1 smorgasbord. Here’s the bounty we’re looking at.
MASN (in D.C. area)
No. 24 Houston at Texas San Antonio
North Carolina State begins perhaps the most anticipated season in program history with a road game at East Carolina. The Wolfpack has matched its highest Associated Press preseason ranking (13th), but the past four times it earned a spot in the preseason poll — 2003, 1993, 1989 and 1975 — it finished the season unranked. Such is the life for a perpetually middling program that has exceeded nine wins once (2002) in its 122-year history, but this year there are obvious causes for optimism: Quarterback Devin Leary threw for 3,433 yards, 35 touchdowns and only five interceptions, while a strong defense from 2021 returns 13 of the 15 players who played at least 250 snaps. The Pirates, who last season posted their first winning record since 2014, would love nothing more than to play early-season, in-state spoiler. … Speaking of ACC teams playing early-season, in-state road games, North Carolina travels to Appalachian State in perhaps the most anticipated regular season game ever for the hosts. The Mountaineers actually are small favorites to win (as of this writing), so an Appalachian State victory would be magnitudes less seismic than its upset of Michigan in 2007 (the Tar Heels also are 5-10 in road games over the past three seasons). Still, the largest crowd in Kidd Brewer Stadium history is expected. …
Georgia begins its first season as a defending national champion since 1981 by hosting Oregon. The Bulldogs should see no significant drop-off on offense, with steady-if-unspectacular quarterback Stetson Bennett, the team’s three leading pass-catchers and a nice chunk of the offensive line back for more this season. The defense will have to replace the five players selected in the first round of this year’s NFL draft (three other Georgia defensive players were selected in later rounds, too), but the returning players on that side of the ball plus all the replacements bring an abundance of talent. The Ducks probably know what they’re going to get from that defense because first-year coach Dan Lanning was the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator for the past three seasons. … Cincinnati visits Arkansas looking to prove that last year’s undefeated regular season and College Football Playoff berth were no flukes, but it might be tough: Cornerback Sauce Gardner, quarterback Desmond Ridder and seven others were NFL draft picks. But Coach Luke Fickell has constructed a program that seems ready to make the jump to the Big 12 next season, with returning players and transfer additions filling the void. Last season, the Razorbacks reached nine wins for the first time since 2011, but Arkansas must replace its big-play threats on offense and nearly all of its starting defense. …
Ohio State is a 17-point favorite over Notre Dame, the fourth-biggest spread in a game featuring two top-five teams since 1979. None of the three bigger favorites over that span covered, and one of them actually lost outright (fifth-ranked Tennessee beat No. 2 Florida by two as a 17.5-point underdog in 2001). Whether the Fighting Irish can keep pace with the Buckeyes — whose offense should again be outstanding — probably depends on whether an offense led by first-time starter Tyler Buchner can put up points on an Ohio State defense that wasn’t all that great last year. Jim Knowles was brought in from Oklahoma State to fix things as the Buckeyes’ new defensive coordinator, but Notre Dame knows all about his ways, having faced the Cowboys in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 2. The Irish put up 35 points and gained 551 yards in a two-point loss. | 2022-09-03T06:24:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football TV schedule: Ohio State-Notre Dame is a tasty opener - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/college-football-tv-schedule-week-1/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/college-football-tv-schedule-week-1/ |
A residence goes up in flames as the Mill Fire causes damage near Weed, Calif., on Sept 2. (Hung T. Vu/AP)
Californian firefighters are battling a fast-moving fire that erupted early Friday afternoon about 230 miles north of Sacramento, prompting the mandatory evacuation of thousands of residents and injuring several people.
The Mill Fire, which was burning completely uncontained as of 11:11 p.m. local time, had devastated 3,921 acres of land. It was first detected in Weed, Calif., a largely rural town of just under 2,900 located 40 miles south of the Oregon border, according to the state fire department.
That fire is expanding significantly faster than many other blazes that have burned through fire-wracked California in recent days. Fire units from the Sacramento and Placer County area have also been deployed to support operations around Weed, which logged temperatures of above 90 degrees in the late afternoon.
Video footage posted on social media showed flames ravaging residential areas, burning forested land and destroying at least one industrial building in the Weed area. Municipal leaders and California fire officials could not be reached for comment late Friday, but the Associated Press reported that several people had been injured. The mayor of Weed told the Los Angeles Times that the fire appeared to have started at a lumber mill close to the town.
A nearby fire that began at around 6 p.m., dubbed the Mountain Fire, was concurrently raging in Gazelle, Calif., ten miles northwest of Weed. That fire has also not been contained and had burned through 1,464 acres as of late Friday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County, which contains the towns of Weed and Gazelle. High temperatures, extreme drought conditions, dry fuels and high winds were responsible for the scale of the recent fires, he said in his emergency proclamation. More than 5,800 residents in Weed and its surrounding areas have been evacuated.
California and many parts of the western United States have been toiling through an intense, long-duration heat event that weather experts said could get worse over the weekend. Firefighters battling two earlier fires in southern California this week blamed the heat wave and dry climes for those blazes. | 2022-09-03T07:39:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mill Fire blazes around Weed in northern California as thousands flee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/03/california-mill-fire-weed-evacuations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/03/california-mill-fire-weed-evacuations/ |
Serena Williams bids an emotional farewell to the New York fans after a three-set loss in the third round of what was likely her final Grand Slam event. “I mean, there’s so many things to be remembered by. Like the fight. I’m such a fighter,” she said. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
All of the celebrity tributes and voice-over videos were artificialities, junk, compared to the audience’s acclaim for Serena Williams, the pure roaring waterfalls of applause that thundered down in Arthur Ashe Stadium. It came in full-throated cascades, for the greatest women’s tennis player in history, for the bravura thrust of her game and for the breadth of her dominion now complete. Beneath the shouting and stomping were so many sentiments they could hardly be expressed as the 40-year-old made one last twirl and wave before exiting.
It had been a long, sometimes contentious, multi-hurdled journey from chippy kid to all-time champion who radicalized one of the Whitest and fustiest of sports with her presence. She won her first U.S. Open title at age 17 in 1999, the beginning of a modern record 23 Grand Slam titles. She found the very bottom of her competitive heart and guts Friday night, when just three weeks shy of her 41st birthday she battled with trademark fierceness for three sets and killed five match points with an array of huge if wearying cuts at the tennis ball before losing to Ajla Tomljanovic, 7-5, 6-7 (7-4), 6-1, in what was almost certainly her last major championship match. Just two days earlier, she had upset the No. 2 player in the world, Anett Kontaveit.
“I tried,” she said simply, afterward.
Nobody in the history of the game, perhaps any game, has ever tried harder or for longer.
“I mean, there’s so many things to be remembered by. Like the fight. I’m such a fighter. I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like I really brought something — and bring something — to tennis. The different looks, the fist pumps, the just crazy intensity. Obviously the passion I think is a really good word.”
It was such a complicated career over the span of 27 years that it was hard to encompass. “Her legacy is really wide, to the point where you can’t even describe it in words,” said Naomi Osaka, her rival and friend.
Her impact could be partly illustrated by two bracketing images. On Aug. 9, Williams announced her impending retirement or “evolution” as she called it in a less painful term, with a majestic pose on the cover of the August issue of Vogue magazine in a queenly blue gown with train. Twenty-four Augusts ago, in Williams’s breakthrough year of 1999, the Vogue “cover girl” that month was Carolyn Murphy, a typically gossamer-thin, flaxen-haired supermodel who wore a size 4. Williams would redefine female beauty with a new template of strength while defying the traditional strictures of tennis, prying it open to more diverse audiences. She has appeared in Vogue four times — the first Black female athlete to appear in its pages. It was no trivial accomplishment that a strong Black female athlete made the glossy magazine into her house organ. Not to mention a showcase for the accessories she so delightedly draped over her muscle, down to the crusts of diamonds on her boxer’s sneakers.
“I feel grateful that I can have that impact,” she said earlier in the tournament. “I never thought I would have that impact, ever. I was just a girl trying to play tennis in a time where I could develop this impact and be a voice. It was just so authentic because I do what I do. And I just do it authentically [as] me. I think people could really relate to that.”
Williams’s career on and off the court was an exploration in power — the massive windup of her strokes was accompanied by control, a deep precision that allowed her to brush the lines. Through the ebbs and flows of the victories, she was unapologetic about her towering temper and hard-charging game and voice and her origins on the hardscrabble, cracked and strafed public courts of Compton, Calif. “I wouldn’t be who I am if I didn’t go through — and get through — what I got through,” she said at Wimbledon earlier this summer. “I love who I am. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Anything she did “wrong” or out of step with tennis tradition was inevitably magnified, criticized or scrutinized. But instead of being timid about that, she went right at it and made huge statements, about body image, ideas of what tennis clothing could look like and how loudly a woman could compete. Typically, the tennis world had imposed subtle pressures on women to keep their ambitions and their voices within a certain range, to suppress. It was Williams who imposed her own pressure on tennis with the potency of her competitive personality. She took all of the advantages from the tennis world and none of the disadvantages. She avoided burnout, disenchantment, the injuries from overplaying that plague most young champions.
And finally, she became not only the most enduring champion of the modern era but also its most revered. Over the past week she was lionized by Oprah and Queen Latifah, but she was urged on by a crowd noise of a volume and quality of affection that had been heard for no other champion. Not even the longest tennis observers had heard such ovations. “This is not a tennis noise,” commentator Mary Carillo remarked.
Williams could feel the receptions in her very chest, she said. Her first-round opponent, Danka Kovinic, said, “In some moments during the match, I couldn’t hear my shots.”
As Williams fought against Tomljanovic, the crescendo rose and rose. In one game in the second set, she forced her opponent to fight for 15 full minutes just to hold her serve. When Williams took that set, she issued a guttural scream of her own, so intense it bent her double.
But in a siege of a final game — one that lasted 22 points — as the match had entered its third hour, she alternated her walloping strokes and surges to the net, shots that landed like uppercuts, with arm-weary errors.
The final shot was a tired forehand that clipped the white net tape. And suddenly it was done.
Afterward, in an on-court interview, as she thanked her family and friends, she wept in a swirl of conflicting emotions. “These are happy tears — I guess,” she said. “I don’t know.”
And then she thanked that crowd, which had finally learned to appreciate her. “I’m just grateful to everyone who said ‘Go Serena’ in their life because you got me here,” she said. | 2022-09-03T09:10:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena Williams’s exit was just like her career — a fight to the end - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/serena-williams-us-open-loss-retirement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/serena-williams-us-open-loss-retirement/ |
Sam Lock, owner of the Record Exchange, wears a mask as he looks over damaged records and CDs at his store in Frederick. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
But when owner Sam Lock got to the Record Exchange in Frederick one night late last month, the first sense that flared was the smell: smoke, billowing out of the three-story building that had housed the shop on North Market Street since 2010.
“When I got off [Interstate] 270 … I could smell it, like, that far away,” Lock said of the fire, which he was told blazed from about 9:30 p.m. until around 4:30 a.m. “And I could see the smoke, and I was like, ‘Holy [crap].’ That’s not just a small fire on the ground.”
The front door was already busted open, and firefighters were pouring torrents of water to extinguish the fire on the top floor. Lock saw it all flowing out the Record Exchange’s ground-level doorway, taking a couple records out with it. In a single night, the shop “lost pretty much everything,” he said. About 20 percent of its stock was left, most of it CDs.
Lock, 55, had come to the area in 1997 to open up five outposts of the once-mighty Record Exchange franchise, including locations in Adams Morgan and Silver Spring. But the 2008 financial crisis sank three of them, and in 2019, Lock sold the Silver Spring branch, leaving Frederick his one and only.
These local record shops give you an analog break from a digital world
“I’ve had kids come in donating 20 bucks, and they said they started shopping here with their dad when they were 7,” Lock said. “People are like, ‘I bought my first turntable and record from you guys, and you really got me into it.’ ... It’s really come back to us [with] the GoFundMe. I cry every time I take a look at it. It’s going to save us.”
“I had seen the pictures,” Willems said. “I kind of knew what I was walking into. But it was still shocking. I finished closing up at night [on Aug. 19], walked through this place, looking around like, ‘Man, what a cool place to work,’ and walking back into [it] now was, man …”
Thankfully for Lock and Willems, customers were excited to extend their support and poke around what was left. Christine Wisniewski, who had a stack of metal CDs in the crook of her arm, said she was “devastated” when she heard about the fire, which Lock said remained under investigation. | 2022-09-03T10:28:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Frederick Record Exchange rebuilds after fire, GoFundMe effort - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/frederick-record-exchange-fire-gofundme/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/frederick-record-exchange-fire-gofundme/ |
The weather used to be good for small talk. Now it’s dead serious.
On a planet beset by climate change, what’s the best way to handle a heated conversation?
(Luisa Jung for The Washington Post)
Two co-workers walk out of the office into a scorching summer afternoon.
“Wow, it’s really hot today,” says one, making what she thinks is polite small talk.
“It’s always hot in the summer,” snaps the other, and the simplest of conversations just got complicated. The air is heavy, and not just with humidity.
Of course it’s miserable in the dog days of summer, and a few years ago that conversation might have segued to an upcoming beach vacation or a 2-for-1 margarita happy hour. We talked about weather to break the ice. We talked about weather to kill time. We even talked about weather when we didn’t really want to talk. It’s the universal connector, rich or poor, a literal barometer of how we’re doing.
But what used to be smallest of small talk is now big: Big issue, big problems, big opinions. It’s climate, not just weather, and it encompasses historic heat, flooding, drought, wildfires and storms — all looming in the daily news and social media feeds. It’s freaking some people out, ticking some people off, and turning what was a safe subject into a hidden land mine. Weather is the newest topic — along with politics, religion and sex — to avoid at those awkward Thanksgiving dinners.
The science of climate change is not the issue at hand. The question is how and when to bring it up.
“I do my best to keep politics out of it,” says Weather Channel meteorologist Stephanie Abrams. “That’s really the best thing that you can do — it’s just stating facts.”
Summers in Atlanta can get uncomfortably hot, but weather is not a subject she’ll broach at a social gathering. “If someone brings it up to me, then I’ll certainly have that conversation. But that can get politicized and if you don’t know someone, you want to make sure that you’re not jumping into that.”
Abrams is, naturally enough, a magnet for questions. Some are innocent — older people might ask about the summers or winters of their childhood, and she’ll confirm that, yes, things are different today. “I don’t think it’s like standing on a soapbox, but people are genuinely interested. They’re curious, ‘Is this happening? Am I going crazy? Am I seeing more of this or less of that?’ So I think that could help confirm what they’ve been feeling or thinking.”
What’s a 100 (500 or 1000) year flood event? It might not be what you think, but also pretty easy to understand! This will be good material for the next party you go to! pic.twitter.com/qhC0vl7QT5
— Stephanie Abrams (@StephanieAbrams) August 24, 2022
Abrams says the majority of people she talks to agree that humans are causing climate change; now she’s co-hosting a new show on the Weather Channel titled “Pattrn” that looks at the science of the issue. Like Abrams, the show steers clear of politics to focus on strategies around the world to address climate change. “This can be very overwhelming, it can be depressing,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Let’s shift the gear and see all the wonderful things that people are doing for the environment.’”
And so at a party, she looks for common ground: “This is what I say: ‘Forget everything else. Can we just not be wasteful?’ We don’t need to leave the lights on. We can use stuff that’s gently used. We can recycle plastic and glass. When you’re going to the grocery store, bring your cloth bags instead of us all using these plastic bags. I mean, I’m pretty sure that we can all agree that we just don’t need to be wasteful and excessive.”
Abrams calls this the weather equivalent of hiding the vegetables in the casserole. “We can all educate ourselves, and it doesn’t have to be doom and gloom and it doesn’t have to be political. It’s kind of a nice way to gently put it out there.”
But some do not go gently into that good night. As the political becomes increasingly personal, the line where polite conversation stops and activism starts has blurred. So if you invite Margaret Klein Salamon to your party, you’re going to hear about climate change, whether you want to or not.
“People are acting like things are normal,” says the executive director of the Climate Emergency Fund, which funds what it calls “disruptive” climate protests. “We are not acting like this is an emergency. It’s time to break with social convention.”
Salamon, 36, says she made small talk about weather — just like everyone else — until she had a “climate freak out” nine years ago. Her therapist pointed out that she worried a lot but didn’t know much about the subject. So she dedicated her life to educating herself and others about the coming apocalypse. She’s gets it’s not a pleasant topic. She’s undeterred. She’s Cassandra — can’t stop, won’t stop.
“Any conversation can be viewed as an opportunity for a political intervention,” Salamon says. Small talk facilitates denial, and that’s not happening on her watch. “I’m not saying you have to give a lecture. The rule of thumb is to acknowledge reality. We all have a moral duty to do what we can.”
For Salamon, who trained as a clinical psychologist, that means explaining to baby boomers how climate change will hurt their kids and grandkids. It’s means warning people who live in areas less affected that no place is immune. It means telling people climate is a real issue even on those gorgeous spring and fall days, or that the planet is warming despite that huge snowstorm in the winter. It means reassuring her peers that their anger and anxiety are both appropriate and that they shouldn’t be afraid to share their concerns. “Overwhelmingly, people want to talk about it,” she says.
WHY CAN'T TEXAS WEATHER EVER BE CHILL? pic.twitter.com/HnCLTsEyqQ
— Evil MoPac (@EvilMopacATX) August 22, 2022
Do they? Not everyone, all the time. Some people know just enough to avoid the topic because they’re terrified. Some stick their head in the sand, she says, comfortable with their “willful ignorance.” And many don’t share the urgency she feels, or the need to obsess about it.
So, occasionally she shuts up. Sometimes a party is just a party, not a platform. “Discretion is the better part of valor,” she admits, not entirely convinced herself. “You’ve got to pick your battles.”
There’s yet another approach, one that calculates how much is enough — or too much.
Jamal Raad, the executive director of Evergreen Action, spends every day thinking about climate change. His organization is focused on more federal spending for clean energy and clean cars, and he’s pretty excited about the Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which includes more than $300 billion for energy and climate reform.
But not at a party, please. “I would probably not engage in a discussion about climate change because the last thing I want to do at a BBQ is talk about work,” says Raad, 37. “I don’t think I need, in my personal life, to make that connection. That sounds physically and emotionally draining to me.”
Make no mistake: Raad is a full-time climate activist; he grew up in Washington state and spent five years in Washington, D.C. Like most people living in the nation’s capital, he escaped the muggy misery of August when he could. And when the heat and humidity came up in conversation, it was a short acknowledgment of shared hardship, not a political statement: “Talking about weather without climate was pretty common until a few years ago.”
That changed in 2017, after wildfires in Northwest filled the air with smoke and then there was record heat in Seattle — one of the least air-conditioned cities in the county. During a road trip in 2020, Raad drove through towns “burnt to a crisp.” And in the circles he travels “the connection between weather and climate happens more often than most.”
He’s actually optimistic: Most people understand that climate change is a real phenomenon and support clean energy policies. But the fight for change doesn’t have to happen at a social event.
“If someone wants to have an earnest conversation, I’ll engage but I will not initiate,” he says. “We only have so much time in a day. Having a balance is really important.”
Something shifted in Washington over the past few years: A town devoted to the idea of bipartisan civility and engagement got rude. Protesters have always gathered on the National Mall or in front of the Supreme Court; now they swarm into restaurants to confront officials and show up outside their homes. Establishment dinner party conversations escalated into tense confrontations; partisan A-listers were shunned at elite parties. Some things, explained social power brokers, are more important that civility.
“As conditions change, social expectations change as well,” says Daniel Post Senning, the great-great grandson of etiquette expert Emily Post.
As spokesman for the Emily Post Institute, Senning has fielded a number of weather-related questions: Living in a drought area with water restrictions, one homeowner wanted to know whether she should tell visitors that they are allowed only one shower per day. (Yes.) Another wanted to know whether she should warn an upcoming houseguest that the local air quality is bad. (Absolutely.)
Part of his job is to teach social and conversational skills, and Senning breaks it down into three tiers. Traditionally, Tier 1 is safe talk for polite company: Food, traffic, sports, pop culture, hobbies. Tier 2 involves subjects that evoke strong opinions and emotions: Religion, politics, sex. Tier 3? Family and personal finances, subjects that should be avoided unless you know the person very well and they ask for your opinion.
Senning, 45, has already seen a generational shift — younger workers, for example, thinks it’s important to talk more openly about money to address pay inequities. Weather used to be the obvious icebreaker, the safest of low-hanging fruit. But that has changed, too, especially among millennials facing decades of living with the damage of climate change.
“I won’t say, ‘Don’t talk about the weather,’ but if the conversation goes there, handle it like any Tier 2 topic that needs to be managed with the same care,” he says. The price of admission for any sensitive subject: A willingness to listen, an awareness that people feel strongly, and an understanding that it is not your job to force your opinion on other people: “There’s a responsibility to get your etiquette antenna out. Don’t dive in too deep too quickly. And your willingness to cede the last word is often the quickest exit.”
But etiquette has limits, and there’s value in protest, what the late Georgia congressman John Lewis called “good trouble.” Are you going to change minds? Probably not right away, says Senning. Will some people think it’s rude? Yes, but that’s the point. His only caveat? Think about what you’re doing and why: “Stepping into the realm of protest requires consciousness of action.”
Stay quiet or speak up? Gentle persuasion or protest? Polite or rude? And will it make any difference? Something to talk about. | 2022-09-03T10:41:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The weather used to be small talk. Now it’s dead serious. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/03/talking-about-weather-climate-heat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/03/talking-about-weather-climate-heat/ |
Agencies create second workplace hazards plan to fix what the original missed
Rescue workers help victims outside the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, N.C., after a 1991 fire left at least 25 people dead and more than 54 injured. (Richmond County Daily Journal)
Annette Zimmerman’s pain, even after three decades, is a constant reminder of being trampled while trying to escape a chicken-processing plant fire that killed 25 of her co-workers.
She survived — but after multiple physical and emotional traumas, including 11 operations and 37 pieces of surgical hardware in her neck and spine, she still struggles to recover.
And the federal government has continued struggling to respond in a meaningful way to that 1991 Imperial Food Products tragedy in Hamlet, N.C.
Last month, the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) approved an agreement designed to improve the detection of workplace hazards.
That looks like progress, but it’s also a reminder that a similar 1994 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two agencies, signed in reaction to the fire, was mostly neglected. Competing agency cultures and missions hampered collaboration and blunted the MOU’s attempt to break through silo-like, bureaucratic thinking.
The agreements cover much of the same ground. Each was meant to facilitate the reporting of workplace hazards by food inspectors, because Ag’s FSIS inspectors, in charge of food safety, are in food plants regularly — far more often than those from OSHA, who look for threats to worker safety. (Days after the fire an Agriculture spokesperson told the Charlotte Observer the accident “doesn’t fall under our responsibility at all.”) One difference is this year’s document requires FSIS inspectors to be trained within 120 days in workplace hazard recognition and in making referrals to OSHA. It expires in five years.
Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) pushed the agencies to update the decades-old memo after the Assembly, a North Carolina digital magazine, exposed the inaction in a retrospective piece last year. Price admonished both agencies in an October 2021 letter that said “it seems clear that the 1994 MOU has been largely, if not completely, ignored.” He hopes the August agreement will highlight continuing workplace hazards and lead to safer environments for workers.
“That’s the bottom line,” he said by phone.
Although FSIS did not provide evidence that its inspectors reported workplace hazards following the 1994 agreement, as Price and reporters, including from The Washington Post, requested, the agency insisted the MOU “between the two agencies was implemented.” In an email late Friday, FSIS said its employees were trained and OSHA posters were displayed with a hotline number FSIS inspectors could use to report safety hazards. The statement did not say if FSIS ever sent a safety hazard report to OSHA.
Without mentioning political, media and watchdog pressure on the departments, a Labor spokesperson said “the agencies thought it was important to develop this new MOU in light of changes in workplaces and in recognition of new and emerging workplace hazards, as well as those well known in the meat and poultry industry. The MOU demonstrates a recommitment to the agencies’ shared goal of protecting the safety and health of workers in FSIS-regulated establishments.”
That “recommitment” means little to Zimmerman, because the initial commitment meant little to the agencies. She doesn’t expect the current agreement will be implemented any more than the first one was, not “until something more tragic than the Imperial fire” forces a more significant federal response.
Zimmerman’s doubts are backed by government watchdog reviews of the agencies’ inertia. Although “poultry slaughter and processing is one of the most hazardous industries in the United States,” according to a 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit, “collaboration between OSHA and FSIS is limited and has improved little since we recommended in 2005 that the two agencies strengthen their 1994 MOU on worker safety. Since FSIS is already present in many plants, the federal government is missing out on a cost-effective opportunity to further protect the safety and health” of workers.
GAO repeatedly urged the agencies to strengthen the 1994 document and in 2005 determined that “agency efforts to implement this MOU had lapsed.” GAO cited three areas where the agencies failed: a process for FSIS inspectors to inform OSHA of “serious hazards facing plant workers,” training of FSIS staff in workplace hazard recognition and an agreement to coordinate standards and exchange information.
Major responsibility for implementing the agreement rests with FSIS because its inspectors are in food-processing plants far more often, and the thrust of the agreements is for FSIS report workplace hazards to OSHA. That did not happen.
“The MOU was never implemented by FSIS,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA chief of staff and senior policy adviser during the Obama administration, adding “they had no interest in implementing it. The FSIS is incredibly close to the industry, they are a captured agency.”
OSHA doesn’t look good either.
“OSHA outreach and training could have helped to bridge cultural gaps and challenges and sent a clearer message to external agencies” about interagency cooperation, Labor’s Office of Inspector General reported in March. “It is particularly important that OSHA clarify these issues of possible miscommunication and misunderstanding with FSIS enforcement personnel as they play a prominent role in meat and poultry processing facilities.”
In the Hamlet case, FSIS might have contributed to the tragedy. In May 1991, four months before the fire, an Agriculture Department inspector approved locking a plant door. The reason given on a FSIS “process deficiency record” was to stop flies from entering the plant.
“You don’t lock doors, all doors, in a plant for fly control,” said Woody Gunter, a lawyer who represented many of the victims. “You put fly strips up or you put a screen door up or you put a big industrial fan up.”
Zimmerman suspects racism, more than flies, was the reason the doors were locked. The deceased White owner of the now-defunct factory unjustly suspected the predominantly Black workforce of stealing chickens, she recalled. A prosecutor said the owner, who was sent to prison on involuntary manslaughter counts, personally approved locking a door, according to the Assembly.
Doubting the notion of locking — not just closing — exits to keep flies out, Zimmerman wondered, “what kind of flies could open up that big door.”
Under “preventive measures” noted after a 1991 plant inspection, the FSIS inspector wrote: “door is now locked.” | 2022-09-03T10:41:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FSIS and OSHA have a second workplace hazards plan to do what first didn’t - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/03/agriculture-department-osha-safety-agreement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/03/agriculture-department-osha-safety-agreement/ |
A police officer stands outside the courthouse in Florida where much of the legal back-and-forth is taking place over what former president Donald Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago home. (Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Over the past week, there’s been a ton of legal back-and-forth over what the FBI took from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
Through all this, we’ve learned quite a bit about the case. Last week, the government released a heavily redacted version of its affidavit justifying its extraordinary search. This week, Trump has been pushing for a special master — a third party who would go through the documents for any that could possibly fall under executive privilege.
Through all this, we’ve learned quite a bit about the investigation and how Trump is trying to defend himself. Some of the biggest revelations so far:
Trump took an astounding amount of classified material with him out of the White House to a club that could be accessed by a much broader swath of the public, including foreign nationals. Compare that to Hillary Clinton, whom the FBI investigated for using a private email server. It found 113 emails containing classified information in them — what then-FBI Director James Comey called “only a very small number” — with none nearly as secretive as what the government alleges Trump had.
The documents at Mar-a-Lago were collected in batches, first in a sweep by the National Archives in January. Archivists weren’t necessarily looking for classified information; they just wanted to collect any official documents that Trump took with him out of the White House, possibly in violation of the Presidential Records Act (which requires outgoing presidents to hand over presidential records to the government).
But when archivists found classified information amid the 15 boxes they got from Mar-a-Lago, they notified the FBI. Agents counted 184 classified documents, including top-secret documents — information that, if released, could “reasonably result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security,” the government said.
The FBI went to Mar-a-Lago with a subpoena in June, and got an additional 38 documents marked as classified, but investigators suspected there were more. They got a search warrant, and in August searched Mar-a-Lago and got 100 more documents marked with varying degrees of classification. This week they released a photo of some of what they said they found in Trump’s residence:
On Friday, the government released a detailed inventory of what was found in the 33 boxes. Many had newspaper and magazine clippings mixed in with classified material, according to the government’s search and tally:
Trump has said that he and his lawyers have been “cooperating fully” with the government on the return of these documents. The government has maintained in several court filings that this is simply not true.
Consider the timeline: It took the National Archives six months of asking to get some documents back. The Justice Department went in with a subpoena this summer to try to get additional documents marked as classified that it suspected were still at Mar-a-Lago. But Trump’s lawyers prohibited the investigators from fully searching a storage room, the government alleged in a court filing this week. It also said there is evidence that some documents were removed from the storage room before the lawyers searched it. The FBI ended up having to get a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago in August to get the rest of the documents it said belonged to the government.
That’s more than 18 months of haggling, cajoling, and eventually resorting to force to get back records, including some that contained government secrets.
To what extent Trump was directly involved in any possible obstruction is unclear. The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig, Jacqueline Alemany and Rosalind Helderman reported that all this year, Trump resisted handing much of anything over to the government, to the point where his allies feared he was “essentially daring” the FBI to come after them.
The FBI says there’s probable cause to think several laws were broken
The search warrant and underlying affidavit mention three potential laws the government thinks have been violated. All relate to taking or hiding government documents, or obstructing a government investigation. None of the laws cited requires that information be classified — so simply taking material out of the White House and refusing to give it back could be enough for prosecution.
The government specifically cited a section of the Espionage Act that says a person in violation may have been in unauthorized possession of government secrets and they had “reason to believe [this information] could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
His defense has shifted, and the government has punched major holes in what’s left of it.
Trump regularly claims on social media that, as president, he declassified the documents. But prosecutors pointed out in a court filing this week that Trump’s lawyers have never argued that in court, or in conversation or correspondence with the Justice Department. And many of the documents they found, according to the photo investigators shared of one box, still had bright yellow or red cover sheets declaring “Top Secret” or “Secret.”
We don’t know if Trump or his allies will get charged with anything
The government claims that Trump’s lawyers, at least, misled them about what documents remained at Mar-a-Lago. When investigators went there this summer, a Trump representative acting as custodian of records signed a statement certifying that all material with classification markings had been returned to the government.
That turned out not to be true. The Justice Department says it’s still investigating whether documents were mishandled and by whom, and whether laws were broken.
But the Justice Department faces a dilemma, report The Post’s Perry Stein, Alemany, Dawsey and Devlin Barrett: “What does it take to charge someone who once served as the commander in chief?” Legal experts say it’s a very high bar — the evidence would have to be even more compelling than in a typical case, and the alleged crime may have to be even more serious. | 2022-09-03T10:42:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The major revelations from the investigation of what Trump took to Mar-a-Lago - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/03/trump-investigation-mar-a-lago-explained/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/03/trump-investigation-mar-a-lago-explained/ |
Delegates of Chile's constituent assembly wave national flags Thursday at the final rally for Chile's proposed constitution in Santiago. (Luis Hidalgo/AP)
SANTIAGO, Chile — For more than four decades, Chile has been governed by a set of principles written by a brutal military dictatorship that was responsible for the torture and murder of thousands.
The 1980 constitution, though since amended, was written to help the authoritarian regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet strengthen its grip on power. It’s also credited with turning the country into a Milton Friedman-inspired, free-market model for the region.
On Sunday, Chileans will vote on a dramatically different vision for their country, a constitution that could transform this South American nation into a new kind of model.
Supporters of the country’s first democratically drafted constitution say it’s among the most inclusive in the world. It describes Chile as a country composed of several autonomous Indigenous nations. It would recognize a national duty to provide a safety net for all citizens. In what’s believed to be a global first, it would guarantee gender parity in government, public and public-private companies. It would grant rights to nature and animals and require the government to address the effects of climate change.
Perhaps most remarkable is the path that led Chile here. It began with months of massive protests, ignited by an increase in subway fares, known as the social explosion of 2019. As confrontations between protesters and government security forces grew increasingly violent — buses and metro stations burned and protesters blinded by rubber bullets were signatures of the conflict — a group of politicians negotiated an ambitious solution: A referendum to draft a new constitution.
More than three quarters of voters approved the idea in 2020. But now the proposed charter, supported by the leftist President Gabriel Boric, seems poised to fail: Polls last month showed a plurality of voters plan to reject it.
The months-long campaign was marred by misinformation, disinformation and confusion over the content of the 388-article document. Supporters say it would help bring fairness to a deeply unequal society and expand rights to high-quality education, water and health care. Critics, including some prominent voices who identify as center-left, have argued its proposals, particularly those that create structural changes to the country’s political and judicial system, are too radical. Some say it would ruin Chile’s stable and relatively prosperous economy. Some say the constitutional convention did not incorporate the views of its conservative minority.
Any outcome remains possible. Polls have not been allowed in the past two weeks, and it’s unclear whether the turnout of a rare compulsory vote could move the needle toward support.
But the intense division in the country, days before a vote on a charter intended to unify it, underscores the challenges of designing a new government for the 21st century.
“You’ve got high levels of polarization, and democracies are struggling to figure out how they should function, what they should be,” said David Landau, a political scientist and law professor at Florida State University who studies constitutional design and observed the drafting process as a Fulbright grantee.
“It’s almost a global identity crisis for liberal democratic systems,” he said. “It remains to be seen, win or lose, whether Chile can transcend those problems.”
The vote Sunday will serve as a referendum not only on the charter but also on Boric, the 36-year-old former student activist who, as a member of Congress, helped broker the deal to write it. Boric’s administration has urged Chileans to back the charter and has said Congress will reform it as needed.
In addition to critics from the right, a coalition of center-left activists has formed in opposition to the charter. Amarillos por Chile — “Yellows for Chile” — is calling on voters to reject the constitution in the hope of writing a new one. Dozens of the group’s supporters gathered in a hotel conference room in the capital on Thursday, waved yellow flags and sang “I reject.”
Group founder Cristián Warnken, a professor of literature, described the document as an “infinite list of rights” that would be impossible to finance.
Sitting in the audience Thursday, Cecilia Becerra focused on a frequent point of criticism: Its description of Chile as a plurinational country made up of autonomous Indigenous nations.
“Chile can’t be 11 nations,” Becerra said. She described herself as a socialist and said she voted for Boric and for a new constitution, but she plans to vote against the proposed charter. “We are one Chile, with the same rights for everyone, not that some have more rights than others.”
Rosa Catrileo, a constitutional delegate representing the Mapuche people, Chile’s largest Indigenous group, said the recognition of plurinationality “catches up with the reality of Chile, because the original people have existed and will continue to exist with or without the constitution.”
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The constitution would recognize the principle that Indigenous peoples may use their own legal practices to settle disputes. It leaves it to lawmakers to define how this would work. Under the proposal, government and Indigenous legal systems would be integrated and operate on an equal footing, but the Supreme Court would have the authority to revise judgments made by Indigenous courts.
Christian Viera, who coordinated the relevant portions of the draft, said the Indigenous justice system would pertain only to low-level crimes, such as animal theft.
Other critics have focused on proposed changes to the political system. It would replace the senate with a similar but weaker body to be known as the Chamber of Regions. It would allow the possibility that some legislation could become law with the approval of only one chamber.
Oscar Landerretche, director of the University of Chile’s School of Economics and Business, said the changes would diminish the legislature’s checks and balances.
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“Any Erdogan or Trump can gerrymander his way to infinite power,” he said. He said the proposal must be read through the lens of worst possible scenarios, such as the rise of another authoritarian leader. “Legal systems cannot be interpreted in the ‘My Little Pony’ way.”
Supporters say the proposed structure would help correct a system that was designed to work against the passage of legislation.
Landau, the Florida State political scientist, said the changes are not as drastic as critics say.
“Domestically, there’s a fear in certain corners that the constitution is going to unleash a set of radical changes,” Landau said. “Whereas everybody I’ve talked to internationally and all the academics and people watching the process from abroad are like, ‘It’s a less radical and more mainstream constitution than this discourse would suggest.’”
On Thursday night, a crowd of thousands flooded the Alameda, the main avenue through downtown Santiago, for a rally to close the campaign to support the proposal. People of all ages held up Chilean and Indigenous flags and chanted “Apruebo!” — Approve! They carried photos of Chileans who disappeared under the Pinochet dictatorship. Many cried when a young man, blinded by police during the 2019 protests, said “I approve, for all of the eyes we have lost.”
In the audience were many who had lived through the terror of the dictatorship, when demonstrations like these were often impossible. A 65-year-old woman whose family member was detained and tortured under Pinochet. A 59-year-old cook who biked to the rally after work, a Chilean flag on his wheel, whose father died of cancer after he couldn’t afford a surgery in time.
Then there were many who were raised in a very different Chile, a democracy that allowed them to demand change.
“It’s a dream generations in the making, of my mother, of my grandmother,” said Rocio Navarrete, a 21-year-old with hoop earrings who came of age protesting on the streets of Santiago in 2019. “They’ve always told us this is the cradle of neoliberalism, so here is where that should fall.”
For some, both in the plaza and across the country, it was a celebration — regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s vote.
“There are countries where, after falling into a profound social crisis, what comes next is a civil war,” said Amaya Álvez, a lawyer and member of the constitutional convention. “In our case, we were capable of reverting a profound social crisis, one marked with violence and deaths, into an institutional process. In an extraordinary way … we proposed a constitution.”
“That, to me,” she said, “is a great achievement.” | 2022-09-03T10:42:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chile referendum: Voters consider new, Boric-backed constitution - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/chile-constitutional-referendum/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/chile-constitutional-referendum/ |
Liz Truss attends a final Conservative Party leadership campaign event in London on Aug. 31. (Hannah Mckay/Reuters)
LONDON — We will know on Monday, when the Conservative Party’s vote count is announced, but all the opinion polls say the next prime minister of Britain will be Liz Truss, whose political journey began on the left — down with the monarchy! she cried — only to arrive on the right, as a hard-line Brexiteer who has tried to channel the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher.
Truss has held six ministerial posts under three prime ministers, including 11 months as foreign minister. Yet after her years of public service and a summer making her pitch to Conservative Party activists, many Britons confess they don’t really know Truss. Not the way they knew Boris Johnson — former London mayor, newspaper columnist, colorful orator, serial prevaricator — when he took office just a few years ago.
It’s fair to say Truss is a shapeshifter. She fought for Britain to remain in the European Union before becoming a staunch defender of Brexit. Her supporters say she accepted the outcome of the 2016 referendum and got with the program. Others say she’s a weather vane, pivoting when it suits her advancement.
How the next U.K. prime minister will be chosen
She’s been called “ambitious” by her critics. Truss responds that’s what they always call women who rise.
Unpopular in Moscow — and Brussels
Truss is a reliable NATO ally and Ukraine supporter, talking tough on Russia and Vladimir Putin. She’s led the charge on sanctioning oligarchs — many who had been living the high life in London.
But she has stumbled. In a BBC interview at the start of the war, she endorsed, “absolutely,” the idea of Britons going to fight in Ukraine — a remark that the British defense establishment vehemently shot down.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov argued that Truss was a prime example of how the West didn’t understand the basic geography of the conflict, after the British foreign secretary appeared confused in a February closed-door meeting about whether two territories — Rostov and Voronezh — were in Russia or Ukraine. British officials said that Truss had misheard Lavrov and that the alleged gaffe was Russian propaganda designed to distract from its aggressions.
While unpopular in Moscow, Truss is also not big in Brussels. She’s seen as an agitator, an anti-Europe opportunist who could make matters even worse in the rocky relationship between Britain and the 27-nation bloc.
“The jury is still out,” Truss said last week, on whether French President Emmanuel Macron was “friend or foe” — a remarkable diss for one the U.K.’s closest trading partners.
Macron responded, “If the French and British are not capable of saying whether we are friends or enemies — the term is not neutral — we are going to have a problem.”
When she became foreign minister a year ago, there was hope in Europe that she might prove a fair partner, said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm.
Instead, she pushed forward plans for a unilateral rewriting of a key part of the post-Brexit agreement, the Northern Ireland Protocol, outraging European officials.
Brexit is Boris Johnson’s singular achievement. How well is it working?
“The E.U. feels quite burned by Truss,” Rahman said. “She brings a massive trust deficit to the relationship from day one.”
In Washington, at least outside of diplomatic circles, there’s not much of an official take on Truss. She wants a trade deal with the United States — which the Biden administration is in no rush to negotiate. The White House is also wary of her moves on Northern Ireland.
Winning over Tories with tax cuts
If she gets Britain’s top job, the 47-year-old Truss promises to slash taxes and boost borrowing, even as inflation soars past 10 percent and the Bank of England forecasts a protracted recession by year’s end — alongside an energy price spike set to quadruple the heating bills for homeowners and businesses.
Boris Johnson idolized Churchill. U.K.’s next leader may look to Thatcher.
No matter. This is not a general election but a selection by 200,000 or so Conservative Party members — about 0.3 percent of the British population — who are older, wealthier and 95 percent White — and more to the right than population.
They are ones choosing between finalists Truss and Rishi Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance secretary, helped launch the revolt against Johnson.
It’s Rishi Sunak vs. Liz Truss for U.K. leader; Boris Johnson says, ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’
Truss’s brother Francis told BBC in 2017 that his older sister was always confident and opinionated, and hated losing, even at Monopoly.
“She was someone who had to win. She would create some special system to work out how to win,” Francis said.
It seems she has, once again, figured out a path to victory.
“She’s going to win because she’s said the kind of things that Conservative Party members like to hear,” said Jonathan Tonge, a politics expert at the University of Liverpool.
Namely, she’s promised to lower taxes — “that’s like throwing red meat at Tory members,” Tonge said — whereas her opponent, Sunak, said the country first needs to tame inflation.
It also helped Truss that, unlike her rival, she stayed loyal to Johnson, who remains popular with the grass roots, who already confess they miss him. If Johnson were on the ballot, he would have a good chance of winning.
Conservative leadership race is making some Tories miss Boris Johnson
From liberal to conservative, with many strong beliefs along the way
Another point in Truss’s favor: Compared with Sunak, she has more humble origins.
Truss has alluded to Sunak’s pricey private education — a sensitive topic in class-conscious Britain — in contrast to her state high school in Leeds, where children were “let down,” she said, with “low expectations, poor educational standards and lack of opportunity.”
It was this experience that she said eventually led her to move right. “It’s the reason I am a Conservative,” she said.
She describes her parents as “left-wing activists,” her father a professor of pure mathematics at the University of Leeds and mother a nurse and local leader of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Several former teachers and students have disputed her description of her high school.
Dave Hendry, who was a year behind Truss at Roundhay School, told The Washington Post that he doesn’t recognize her account. “I had the complete opposite experience, with teachers there for me, helping me,” said Hendry, who still lives in the affluent area in northeast Leeds.
He said he’d love for his three young children to get into Roundhay. “If it’s that bad, how come they gave her extra tutoring to get into Oxford? I think she’s just trying to score political points.”
After high school, Truss studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University — like many prime ministers in the making before her.
She was president of the center-left Oxford University Liberal Democrats, and it was at a Lib Dem conference in Brighton in 1994 that she called for abolishing the monarchy. “We do not believe people are born to rule,” she told delegates.
She has since described the royal family as “essential” to Britain.
Neil Fawcett, now a Liberal Democrat councilor, worked with Truss during that time.
He told The Post: “She’s one of the most difficult people I’ve ever worked with. She’s extremely strong-minded and takes fixed positions and won’t be moved from them, even if there’s clear evidence that what she wants won’t work.” He added that it was also “very difficult to tell what she actually believed. She took strong positions to play to whatever audience she was speaking to.”
Marc Stears, Truss’s tutor at Oxford and now director of a policy lab at University College London, offered a similar account in the Times of London. He wrote that in their tutorials, Truss “demonstrated an unnerving ability to surprise” and was “self-consciously unconventional.”
“Truss lacks the media élan of Tony Blair and David Cameron. She lacks the dogged determination of Gordon Brown or the patient, long-term vision of Margaret Thatcher,” he wrote. “Her most noticeable characteristic is a capacity to shift, unblinkingly, from one fiercely held belief to another.”
Truss explains her political positions before joining the Conservative Party in 1996 as youthful indiscretions.
She told the BBC, “When I was in my youth, I was a professional controversialist and I liked exploring ideas and stirring things up.”
Speaking to an audience of Tories last month, she said: “People may know about me that I have a bit of a dubious past … We all make mistakes, we all had teenage misadventures, and that was mine. Some people have sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, I was in the Liberal Democrats. I’m sorry.”
She uses the line often — and it always gets applause from her party members.
What sort of prime minister would she be?
In recent years, British politics could be described, judiciously, as a little crazy. Brexit, lockdown parties, scandal. Three prime ministers in six years. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson. Gone, gone, gone. Each one done in by their party. Or as some Conservative Party members themselves describe it: “Tory psychodrama.”
Will Truss steady the ship? The assessments are mixed.
Ben Wallace, Britain's defense secretary, said he was backing Truss “not because she is a slick salesperson, but because she is authentic.”
Wallace said, “She stands her ground. She is straight and means what she says.”
Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, who helped bring down his former boss, has called Truss “a compulsive leaker” and “a mad box of snakes” and “a human hand grenade.”
Cummings told UnHerd, a center-right online outlet, that Truss would be an “even worse” prime minister than Johnson.
Her standing on the continent is such that Politico Europe, a Brussels must-read, recently ran a piece headlined, “Does the whole world hate Liz Truss?”
Probably not. Most of the whole hasn’t even heard of Liz Truss. But if she enters 10 Downing Street on Tuesday — after curtsying to the queen — they soon will be able see where she wants to take the country.
Rauhala reported from Brussels. | 2022-09-03T10:42:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Truss: What to know about the U.K.'s likely next prime minister? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/liz-truss-uk-prime-minister/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/liz-truss-uk-prime-minister/ |
Test tubes labeled “Monkeypox virus positive and negative” are seen in this photo illustration taken May 23, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
Regional public health experts are fine tuning their approach to getting monkeypox vaccine into arms, even as D.C. reports a steady decline in new cases.
New cases of monkeypox have declined 20 percent on average per week since the peak in mid-July, Anil Mangla, the state epidemiologist at D.C. Health, said in an interview Friday, a trend the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified in some states with larger outbreaks, such as New York and California.
“There’s light the end of the tunnel when it comes to monkeypox in D.C.,” Mangla said. However, he said officials are “erring on the side of caution” with an aggressive vaccination effort and close monitoring of universities, which could see a bump in cases as students return to campus.
As demand for the vaccine has waned in the District, officials last month expanded eligibility and amended procedures in an effort to undercut stigma associated with a virus that has overwhelmingly impacted men who have sex with men but can infect anyone. Virginia expanded eligibility guidelines shortly after D.C., despite a national shortage in vaccine and federal approval of an intradermal injection method to stretch doses.
Several months into a global outbreak of monkeypox, federal data show nearly 20,000 people had tested positive in the United States as of Thursday. There were 436 cases in the District as of Thursday, and 534 in Maryland and 353 in Virginia as of Friday, data show.
The District, which has received more vaccine than its neighbors, has administered nearly 24,000 doses of Jynneos, the only vaccine approved to treat monkeypox.
At one of three walk-up clinics held every Friday, the lunchtime crowd was thin. Over the course of an hour, two men — both of whom spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy — received first doses of the two-dose regimen.
“I was a little sad to not see more people here,” said one man. He was invited to make an appointment after preregistering online, but said going to a walk-up clinic on his own schedule was simply easier.
He praised the smooth process but wondered if demand was down because people were unaware of where to get vaccinated or could not access the sites.
D.C. public health removed intrusive questions from the registration process and made vaccine available to all people of any sexual orientation or gender who have had multiple sexual partners in the past two weeks, in accordance with CDC guidance.
In an effort to learn from their experiences deploying coronavirus vaccine, they also quickly enlisted community partners to host clinics for people underserved by the medical establishment. Black people also make up a significant segment of people testing positive for monkeypox across the region.
In the District, White people account for about 37 percent of cases and Black people account for 36 percent; 55 percent of people getting vaccinated are White and 20 percent are Black, city data show. Maryland case data shows Black people account for 58 percent of cases and White people account for 16 percent, with 20 percent not reporting. In Virginia, 39 percent of cases reported are among Black people and 26 percent are among White people, but White people are far more likely to be vaccinated.
The Biden administration on Friday asked Congress for more than $4.5 billion in emergency funds to respond to monkeypox as part of a broader $47 billion request.
National Black Gay Men Advocacy Coalition, which includes Us Helping Us, a D.C.-based organization that provides medical, behavioral health and social services to Black gay and bisexual men and Black transgender women, applauded federal efforts to ramp up the public health response.
“The U.S. public health response was slow to recognize the impact of MPV among Black gay and bisexual men. Our community is paying the price for that inaction,” the NBGMAC said in a statement this week. “NBGMAC applauds and honors the resilience of Black gay and bisexual men across the nation who are actively seeking MPV testing, vaccination, and treatment, despite unacceptable shortages and other structural barriers.”
Maryland public health officials this week launched a preregistration system for monkeypox vaccine. The state has received 14,539 doses of vaccine and has administered 3,470 doses, leaving more than 11,000 doses unaccounted for.
Although rates of infection are slowing in some states with larger outbreaks and D.C., the CDC this week reported that some states, including Virginia, are “experiencing accelerating growth.”
Virginia has given out 7,741 doses, mostly in Northern Virginia which has the highest population and highest concentration of cases, state data show.
Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins, noted that more vaccine is needed across the country and not enough testing is being done to capture all cases.
“When people are worried about getting monkeypox in the grocery store, I say they are probably OK if they don’t cuddle or kiss six shoppers,” he said. “This is not a highly transmissible virus but there are ways to control risk.”
Monkeypox is primarily spread through close skin-to-skin contact.
Although places like D.C. may be recording a reduction in cases and vaccine demand, he said — as with coronavirus — monkeypox may spread to unprepared communities.
“This is one of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to be the CDC director,” Ray said. “Great preparation makes it look like a nonevent. The challenge here is it might smolder out, but it also might go into its next year and we don’t know which way this virus is headed.” | 2022-09-03T11:33:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. monkeypox cases decline but public health experts advise caution - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/decline-monkeypox-vaccine-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/decline-monkeypox-vaccine-dc/ |
The hourly wage increase will take effect in January
The Shoemaker Building at the University of Maryland campus in College Park. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
Last year, Vivian Flanagan got worn out by her campus job at the University of Maryland: The hours were brutal, with some shifts starting or ending at 3 a.m. that left her struggling through classes. She worried about handling packages and working directly with so many students in the midst of the omicron surge of the coronavirus pandemic.
And with wages around $12 an hour, she thought, “I’m not getting paid enough for this.”
She was hardly alone in her frustration. In November, more than 1,200 U-Md. students signed a petition launched by the campus chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops in support of a campuswide $15 hourly minimum wage.
Flanagan was thrilled when the university’s president announced this week, as classes began in College Park, that the minimum wage for student workers would increase starting in January.
“Oh my gosh — I was really not expecting this to happen,” she said. “I’m really, really excited.”
In a message to the campus community, U-Md. President Darryll J. Pines called the minimum wage increase “a significant multimillion-dollar investment in a key pillar of our strategic plan: to invest in people and communities.”
Pines said by phone that as a matter of equity, “we feel that it’s important that we are listening to our communities and responding to their concerns about wages.” University leaders wanted to accelerate a state timetable to increase wages, he said, and make sure students could sustain themselves in a metropolitan area with such a high cost of living.
Pines said that “even prior to the student advocacy, our administration was already focused on this issue.”
The state of Maryland is raising the minimum wage to $15 for most hourly employees by 2025. And last year, the University System of Maryland — which includes the College Park campus — approved a $15 minimum wage for most of its employees.
But many student workers were stuck at the old pay levels.
University System of Maryland approves $15 minimum wage for most employees
A university spokeswoman said U-Md. has about 4,300 student employees, some who are earning $12.50 an hour until the new rate goes into effect next year. Others, typically those helping faculty members with research tasks, already make more than $15 an hour.
Flanagan, a member of the United Students group and a student leader, helped push forward a bill that passed the school’s Residence Hall Association, calling for an increase in their wages after hearing from students who relied on their campus jobs to pay for food and rent. Some had to take out loans to cover living expenses. In July, as a rising senior, she said she learned that her department’s wages would increase to $15 an hour.
The stipends for graduate assistantships increased this year, as well, to nearly $31,000 a year on top of tuition benefits, said Joey Haavik, 26, who is in a master’s program studying international education policy.
According to the administration, the minimum stipend for graduate assistants increased more than 26 percent in 2022, and by more than 50 percent over the past four years.
Haavik, who is president of the Graduate Student Government, said the tuition benefits were one of the things that drew him to U-Md. — but that he has to live with his parents in Columbia, Md., because the stipend isn’t enough to cover rent, books, fees and other expenses.
“It’s not a financially practical decision to live in College Park with this stipend,” he said. “A financial adviser would not recommend it.”
Rising rents add to college students’ scramble for affordable housing
U-Md. leaders have been supportive of students advocating for better pay, said Ayelette Halbfinger, 22, the student body president, with the challenge being how to fund an increase.
She has worked part-time throughout her time as a student — but not on campus. The pay was better elsewhere.
As for Flanagan, she quit the job with the crazy hours, and took another one in the same department. “The move to a different job, as well as the increase in wages,” she said, “has really drastically improved my life.” | 2022-09-03T11:34:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | University of Maryland sets $15 minimum wage for student workers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/03/university-of-maryland-minimum-wage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/03/university-of-maryland-minimum-wage/ |
New books by Megan Goldin, Jonathan Ames, Laurie Loewenstein, William Kent Krueger and Tracey Lien offer a murder-and-mayhem tour across the globe
Review by Dan Fesperman
(Atria; William Morrow; St. Martin's Press)
For a fall getaway of the imagination, here are five novels offering a murder-and-mayhem tour across New York, Los Angeles, rural Oklahoma, the Northwoods of Minnesota and an enclave of Vietnamese emigrants near Sydney. As a bonus, there’s also time travel. The Oklahoma trip takes you back to the Dust Bowl on a steam locomotive during the Depression. The journey to Australia lands you in the 1990s.
The first stop may be the most bracing. Megan Goldin’s “Stay Awake” (St. Martin’s) opens in the back of a cab crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in the dead of night. Passenger Liv Reese groggily awakens to discover that her wallet and phone are gone. So is all memory of the previous two years of her life, and now her roommate and boyfriend seem to have vanished without a trace. Oh, and there’s a bloody knife in her pocket.
From then on, the pace rarely flags, even as Goldin adds a second narrative when rookie police detective Darcy Halliday arrives at a murder scene. We know these two threads will converge, but Goldin — writing in sharp, uncluttered prose — cleverly keeps us guessing as to how and when, and with what consequences, as she steers us smoothly to the conclusion.
New books to read in September
Onward to L.A., where, in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, versatile writer Jonathan Ames (novelist, essayist, screenwriter) offers “The Wheel of Doll” (Mulholland, Sept. 6) a contemporary noir with graceful writing and mordant humor. Private eye Happy Doll checks many of the requisite boxes for brooding introspection — troubled childhood, ex-Navy, ex-cop — but Ames updates this archetype by making Doll “an armchair Buddhist” who tokes up more than he drinks.
Driving the plot is Doll’s search for a missing woman on behalf of her estranged daughter, with the twist that the missing woman is one of Doll’s former lovers. This is Ames’s second novel featuring Doll, but you don’t need to have read the first to get the full flavor of the character or his milieu. The detective’s sardonic outlook is as important as the plotting, and the comforts of his narrative voice become even more vital as bodies begin to pile up.
Laurie Loewenstein takes us to another time and place: the small town of Vermillion, Okla., in the Dust Bowl in late 1935. “Funeral Train” (Kaylie Jones Books, Oct. 4) is her second installment featuring town sheriff Temple Jennings, but it stands solidly on its own as he investigates possible sabotage after an westbound train derails nearby, killing more than a dozen people, most of them in the shabbily built car designated for Black passengers.
Loewenstein handles the investigatory details well enough, but the book’s richer rewards are its finely rendered portraits of small-town life under trying circumstances. She creates a vivid cast of gossips and cranks, loners and busy bodies. Some are lovable, some are not. All are connected to the secrets that lie just beneath the surface of the town’s dusty streets.
Next we reach the far north of Minnesota, where William Kent Krueger’s “Fox Creek” (Atria) is a wilderness survival tale as much as it is a mystery, and that’s a good thing. This is the 19th book featuring Cork O’Connor, the part-Irish, part-Anishinaabe private investigator with such a light case load that he’s often flipping burgers at the town diner.
O’Connor sets off into the woods in pursuit of a trio of shady fellows who, in turn, are pursuing O’Connor’s wife, Rainy, and two others, including Rainy’s hardy but aging uncle, Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe healer and mystic. In this atmospheric novel, the pursuers and their prey tramp past chilly lakes beneath snow flurries and starry skies. Woven through it all is a creeping sense that, for everyone, time may be short, as we begin to discern that a deeper conspiracy of more remote forces may be driving the chase.
Our last stop is the one that may linger the longest in your memory, because it’s that powerful. “All That’s Left Unsaid” (Morrow, Sept. 13), by Tracey Lien, is set in 1996 in Cabramatta, a community of Vietnamese refugees on the outskirts of Sydney, where tradition and family ties are being tested by the pressure to assimilate and the ravages of a heroin epidemic.
Twenty-something Ky Tran, who has escaped Cabramatta and her controlling parents for a life as an up-and-coming reporter at a Melbourne daily, returns home for the funeral of her younger brother, Denny, a model student who was beaten to death on the night of his high school graduation. Witnesses don’t want to talk about it, and the police don’t much care, so Tran looks for answers, which requires an exploration of her own past, and that of her family and friends. Lien’s debut is moving and beautifully rendered.
Dan Fesperman, a former foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, is the author of more than a dozen suspense novels, including, most recently, “Winter Work.” | 2022-09-03T12:13:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Best thrillers and mysteries to read in September 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/03/best-thrillers-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/03/best-thrillers-2022/ |
Nerve surgery on his hand was underway when doctors discovered something they hadn’t expected
By Sandra G. Boodman
(Cam Cottrill For The Washington Post)
The act was so routine Michael Brenner never thought about it — until the Sunday morning in June 2021 when he ambled over to his computer to type a quick note and discovered he couldn’t. Brenner, who is right-handed, was unable to lift or extend his fingers, which felt inexplicably stiff. His left hand was unaffected.
“I thought, ‘This is really weird. Who wakes up and their hand doesn’t work?' ” Brenner recalled.
A week later, his condition unchanged, the 29-year-old investment firm research analyst saw his internist for what he assumed was a minor, and easily fixable, problem. He soon discovered it was neither trivial nor easy to diagnose; he had no idea how tricky it would be to treat.
Over the next 10 months, Brenner would consult an orthopedic hand surgeon; a physiatrist, a medical doctor who specializes in physical rehabilitation; multiple neurologists; a neurosurgeon and a plastic surgeon in a circuitous, time-sensitive effort to fix his partially paralyzed hand.
In January two Baltimore surgeons — with the help of a New York expert who was looped into the operating room at the last minute via video call — performed microsurgery that appears to have been successful.
“I had become very open to the idea that I was never going to know what was wrong,” said Brenner, whose diagnosis was finally made only 11 days before his operation. “Most doctors told me they hadn’t seen anything like it.”
Saturday Night Palsy
At first Brenner, who lives in suburban Maryland, thought he had pulled a muscle. When rest didn’t improve his ability to move his fingers, he bought an ergonomic keyboard and computer mouse to ease what he thought might be carpal tunnel syndrome, a common condition resulting from a pinched nerve in the wrist. But those remedies, along with an anti-inflammatory drug, did nothing to restore the use of his thumb and fingers.
Brenner’s internist was concerned; he suspected damage to the radial nerve, which helps control movement and sensation in the wrist, arm and fingers. The radial nerve is part of the peripheral nervous system. Peripheral nerves, located outside the brain and spinal cord, transmit messages between the brain and the body.
A tenacious student uncovered the root of an onslaught of broken bones
The internist mentioned “Saturday Night Palsy,” which occurs when the radial nerve is compressed after a person, often intoxicated, falls asleep on an arm pressed against a hard surface. Brenner, who doesn’t drink, assured him that no such event had occurred.
The doctor referred Brenner to an orthopedic hand surgeon. The surgeon asked him to lift his right wrist, which drifted to the left and to make a “thumbs up” sign, which he couldn’t execute. The surgeon diagnosed deep radial nerve palsy and ordered an ultrasound to determine the cause.
The ultrasound showed that a large unidentified mass, possibly a peripheral nerve sheath tumor, was compressing the radial nerve, which extends from armpit to hand. The surgeon told Brenner that such a tumor is rarely malignant and ordered an MRI scan, which surprisingly found no sign of one. The radiologist suspected posterior interosseous nerve syndrome, which occurs when a branch of the radial nerve is pinched. The hand surgeon recommended a radial tunnel release, an outpatient procedure to alleviate pressure on the nerve.
The surgeon, who operated on Brenner in late July, told him his nerve had been extremely compressed and that he should slowly improve with physical therapy.
Early on, Brenner had devised workarounds for most activities. He could grip a fork to feed himself but couldn’t manipulate it normally because he couldn’t extend his fingers. “I couldn’t take it out of my right hand without pulling the utensil out using my left,” he said. “I ate a lot of fish” and foods that didn’t need to be cut.
He became adept at hunt-and-peck typing; texting with his right thumb was no longer an option. Driving was dicey.
“I was very nervous to drive and basically drove with one hand,” he said.
As the weeks passed, he worried increasingly that the paralysis might spread to his left hand. “The list of things I couldn’t do was small,” he said. “But if my left hand had become affected, it would be every single thing.”
In early November after four months of PT, Brenner was no better than he’d been before surgery. The hand surgeon sent him to a physiatrist for electromyography (EMG) and a nerve conduction study, tests that evaluate the functioning of nerves and muscles.
When Brenner said he had no idea how he’d injured his hand, the physiatrist looked incredulous. Five years earlier, he told Brenner, he’d seen a woman with a similar injury who had fallen asleep on her arm while lying on a rock.
Midway through the EMG, the doctor’s reassuring manner changed. He left the exam room saying he needed to check a textbook. Upon his return he announced that he had detected nerve damage on a part of the radial nerve where the surgeon had not operated. Brenner said the physiatrist told him he’d probably need a second operation.
The hand surgeon called early the next morning with a recommendation that Brenner see a neurologist and repeat the EMG in 90 days. If the first surgery hadn’t worked, the doctor said, the next step would be a tendon transfer, which moves a working muscle and tendon in place of a nonworking one. The surgery is often performed on nerves that are damaged beyond repair.
Brenner, who had been researching his condition, was alarmed. A tendon transfer is a bigger operation than the one he had undergone and seemed unduly drastic. “I was determined to learn all I could and to avoid it,” he said. “I realized I needed a whole new medical plan.”
He consulted a neurologist who ordered extensive blood tests. All were normal, which seemed to rule out systemic neurological problems or cancer. The neurologist told Brenner she didn’t know what was wrong and referred him to neurosurgeon Allan Belzburg, chief of peripheral nerve surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She also recommended that he undergo a second, more specialized EMG. That test found a previously undetected lesion just above Brenner’s elbow on the brachioradialis muscle, which is responsible for flexing the forearm.
Brenner met with Belzburg in mid-January.
“I felt a lot of time pressure,” he recalled. “I’d been sitting there for six months without a fix” or any improvement. Brenner knew that the more time that elapsed, the greater the chance of atrophy and permanent paralysis.
After examining Brenner and reviewing his test results, Belzburg told him the nerve damage was most likely the result of Parsonage-Turner syndrome (PTS), an uncommon and little understood disorder also known as neuralgic amyotrophy. The cause of most cases of PTS is unknown, but it may result from an abnormality in the immune system or changes in blood circulation.
“He told me there’s really nothing else this could be,” Brenner said, even though he had not experienced pain, which is typically the first symptom. The condition, which affects more men than women, often starts as a sudden sharp pain in the shoulder or upper arm that strikes in the middle of the night.
First described in the late 1800s, PTS involves the brachial plexus, the network of nerves in the shoulder responsible for movement and sensation in the arms and hands. PTS is estimated to affect about 3 in 100,000 people, although some experts believe a substantial number of cases go undiagnosed.
Reported triggers include bacterial and viral infections, including covid-19, surgery, childbirth, strenuous exercise, injury and vaccinations. Brenner had received his second covid shot in April 2021 two months before his symptoms occurred. Although there is no way to know whether that might have played a role, “I’d do it again,” Brenner said. He received a booster in October.
Some people with PTS get better without treatment or after physical therapy; surgery is reserved for cases where there is no improvement. Belzburg recommended nerve transfer surgery, which would involve taking a healthy, redundant nerve from Brenner’s wrist and connecting it to the damaged nerve, allowing it to function. (One surgeon compared it to splicing cables.)
Belzburg told Brenner that he performs such procedures with plastic and reconstructive surgeon Sami Tuffaha, who has advanced training in hand surgery.
Brenner met with Tuffaha, an assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery, who agreed that nerve transfer offered the best hope for recovery. Brenner “understood that there was a gray area about doing the surgery,” said Tuffaha, who estimates he has treated 20 PTS patients.
What no one knew is that the surgeons’ operative plan would be swiftly jettisoned after they found something unexpected.
An OR surprise
When the surgeons opened Brenner’s arm, they discovered what appeared to be a severed nerve at the site of his first surgery. Closer examination revealed a possible hourglass-like constriction, a rare deformity sometimes seen in PTS patients, caused by a band that tightly encircles the nerve making it resemble an hourglass.
Tuffaha said that the Hopkins surgeons had not previously encountered this, but reached out to someone who had: Surgeon Scott W. Wolfe of New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery co-authored a 2021 study describing successful surgery performed on 11 PTS patients with hourglass constrictions. The procedure, known as microneurolysis, involves decompressing the nerve by releasing the band of tissue and painstakingly repairing the nerve damage.
“We FaceTimed him into the OR, and he’s looking at our microscope and we talked about what to do next,” Tuffaha said. “Scott convinced us that microneurolysis should work.” Wolfe recommended wrapping the damaged nerve in connective tissue harvested from Brenner’s wrist to protect it.
At the end of the four-hour operation, Tuffaha was hopeful but unsure the novel approach would work. If Brenner showed no improvement after three months, the plan was to perform a graft using a nerve from Brenner’s leg.
Six weeks later, the first post-operative EMG showed no nerve regeneration. Brenner steeled himself for the results of the second, which was performed a month later — one day before his scheduled graft.
Brenner was overjoyed when the test detected the first flickers of activity. Tuffaha canceled the impending surgery.
Since then, Brenner has made slow but steady progress. “I’m getting better every week,” said Brenner, who now types and drives with both hands. “I’m at about 65 to 75 percent. I don’t know that I’ll get back to 100 percent.”
Tuffaha said he thinks Brenner could make a full recovery which could take 18 months. “I’m just not worried about him anymore,” he added.
Brenner said he wishes he had seen a neurologist early on, which might have expedited the diagnosis. “I wish I’d had all the available tests done before that first surgery,” he said.
Submit your solved medical mystery to sandra.boodman@washpost.com. No unsolved cases, please. Read previous mysteries at wapo.st/medicalmysteries.
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Back pain plagued her for 30 years. A recurring clue sparked a delayed diagnosis. | 2022-09-03T12:13:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘This is really weird. Who wakes up and their hand doesn’t work?’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/03/medical-mystery-immobile-hand/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/03/medical-mystery-immobile-hand/ |
‘World’s Richest Negro Girl’ inspired media ridicule, fascination, alarm
Sarah Rector was 11 when oil was discovered on her land in Oklahoma in 1913. Her sudden wealth became the object of racist news coverage.
By Sydney Trent
Sarah Rector with her nephew, Charles E. Brown Jr., in 1960 (Family photo)
Deborah Brown grew up calling her “Aunt Sister,” and she remembers her storied life through the haze of childhood in segregated Kansas City, Mo., more than a half a century ago.
There were the fancy limos and Cadillacs that ferried young relatives to school and out for barbecue, the White-owned department store that opened its doors just so Sarah Rector could shop; the rolling farmland where Rector would invite Brown’s mother and the children for family gatherings.
Brown, then a grade-schooler living in a two-room house with three siblings, her parents and her grandmother, marveled but didn’t dare ask questions.
“We’re from a generation where you don’t spread family business,” said Brown, a very fit-looking 72-year-old with a short afro seated in the lobby of the Hampton Inn in Bowie, Md.
Her mother, Rosa Rector, would simply say, “Aunt Sister can afford to do that,” Brown said. “That’s the way she would put it. ‘She can afford it.’ She never said she was rich.”
It wasn’t until Brown was in her late teens — after Rector died in 1967 at the age of 65 — that Brown realized Aunt Sister had indeed been rich. Historically so.
For the first time, Brown heard the word: oil.
Rector, whose relatives had been enslaved by Creek Indians and later lived among the tribe’s members in Oklahoma, was just 11 in 1913 when Black Gold was discovered on her allotment of tribal land. Rector became instantly wealthy. A guardian was appointed to manage young Sarah’s income, and a judge oversaw the guardian. Along with the oil, the checks began flowing, as if by magic, to the Rectors, who, illiterate and barely scraping by, knew little about managing money.
The White-owned newspapers, seemingly unconstrained by facts and at times human decency, were openly racist in their coverage.
“Oil Made Pickaninny Rich” blared a headline in The Washington Post, which described Rector in 1914 as “an orphan, crude, Black and uneducated, yet worth more than $4,000,000.”
The truth: At the time, Rector was living with both her parents in a two-room cabin. She’d yet to become a millionaire, crossing that threshold at about 18, with oil earnings that would be worth $14 million today.
The sensationalism that dogged Rector in her youth has continued long after her death. In a role not unfamiliar to descendants of historical figures, Brown said she finds herself constantly playing whack-a-mole as journalists and academics replicate earlier errors. In the internet era, she said with a sigh, it sometimes seems like a losing battle.
She sued her enslaver for reparations and won. Her descendants never knew.
The most vexing bit to Brown: the black-and-white photo of the somber-faced girl with pigtails wearing a dark plaid dress. It has appeared on the cover of an award-winning book about Rector, on the Facebook page of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, and elsewhere.
Although the image can be traced to the 1915 issue of the The American magazine, a now-defunct White-owned publication, Brown insists it is not her aunt. Brown’s mother insisted, too. Rector, with the family’s signature round face, looked nothing like the girl with the more angular chin in the picture, said Brown, who first caught sight of the photo online in 2010. “We can’t prove with absolute certainty to everybody that it’s not her,” Brown said, because there are no childhood photos that exist for comparison. “But it definitely isn’t her.”
The retired phys ed teacher had traveled from Kansas City to Maryland with her partner to coach a women’s softball tournament. But she was also on a dual mission: She had packed two small black-and-white photographs of Aunt Sister to hand to the right authority at the African American Museum in D.C.
“We were going to present them and say, ‘This is the record. This is Sarah Rector,’ ” she said.
Enslaved by Native Americans
Rector’s life story did not need embellishment. Her maternal great-great-grandmother had been enslaved by Creek Chief Opothle Yoholo in Alabama during the first half of the 19th century, according to Tonya Bolden, author of “Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America” published in 2014. (Bolden said she found the disputed book cover photo in The American magazine. Inside, it says it was Rector “at 12,” while the 1915 caption, which does not include a photo credit, says she was 10. )
Although slavery was not common among Native Americans, prominent members of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole tribes in the southeastern states sometimes enslaved people, in part to flaunt them as status symbols. How better to impress White Southerners than to become slaveholders themselves? In return for that and otherwise assimilating to Anglo-American culture, White Southerners often called them the “Five Civilized Tribes.”
Even as tens of thousands of Native Americans were forcibly relocated northwest to Indian Territory from 1831 to 1850 in the genocidal journey known as The Trail of Tears, the tribes largely sided with the Confederate states during the Civil War. Many of the Black people who accompanied the tribes lived in slavery until 1866, after treaties with the federal government abolished the ownership of people on tribal lands.
By the early 20th century, the Creek Freedmen, as they were known, had settled in all-Black towns dotting Indian Territory, which in 1907 became the state of Oklahoma. Taft in Muscogee County (the Creeks were also known as the Muscogee) was prominent among them as home to two newspapers, a general store, a bank, a soda factory and two hotels. Many Freedmen eked out a living raising corn, cotton and other common crops.
In 1902, young Sarah Rector was born into this world, the second eldest of Joe and Rose Rector’s nine children. Around 1906, Rector and her two siblings, Rebecca and Joe Jr., were each allotted 160 acres by the federal government, Bolden writes. But the land given to the Freedmen was of generally inferior quality — rocky and unfit for farming, hardly worth the tax burden. Sarah’s acreage, divided into two parcels near the bend in the Cimarron River, did not appear to be an exception.
Joe Rector’s attempts to lease it for oil and natural gas exploration at first netted little. Yet the possibility of riches teased the imagination as landholders throughout Oklahoma began striking oil. In 1913, a speculator produced a gusher on Sarah’s land. Soon, the wells, which would come to number in the dozens, were pumping 2,500 gallons a day, with about $300 a day — a 12.5 percent cut — flowing Sarah’s way, Bolden writes.
Great greed followed great wealth, however, and the hunger for oil money sometimes led to murder, a phenomenon that played out notoriously in the decades-long killings of the Osage Indians for their oil rights beginning just a few years before Sarah struck it rich. Around the same time, two children of Freedmen whose allotments had spouted oil were murdered by dynamite as they slept.
The federal government required the appointment of financial guardians, usually White men, to manage the oil wealth of Native Americans and Freedmen. Many turned out to be thieves. But Rector’s first guardian, a rancher named T.J. Porter, invested her earnings judiciously in rich river bottom land, business properties and lucrative mortgages. The investments and payments to Sarah were overseen by Judge Thomas Leahy, who, by accounts of the time, was one of Muscogee County’s most honorable men.
The two-room cabin in which the Rector family lived was replaced by a five-room house. A horse and buggy were purchased to spare the children the two-mile trek to school. Joe Rector also began receiving payments of about $50 a month — about $1,500 in today’s dollars. Later, Sarah received a phonograph, a piano and a Premier motor car, Bolden writes.
Sensationalist media coverage
Yet depending on the publication, the family was either senselessly rich or persistently poor.
The White-owned newspapers across the country heralded young Sarah as the “world’s richest Negro girl” and gushed about her supposed fairy-tale life, all the while suggesting she was unworthy of it.
“Consider Little Sarah Rector, Unkempt, Illiterate, 12-year-old child, Half Negro, Half Creek Indian,” read a 1918 article published in the Enid (Oklahoma) Events, managing two errors in the opening lines. Rector was about 16 then and not half-Creek. “If Sarah had rubbed Aladdin’s lamp and commanded the Jinn to provide every luxury her most vivid imaginings could picture, the Jinn’s efforts would yet be far removed from the actuality.”
The rags-to-riches story made its way around the world, with American newspapers reporting that several German youth wrote Leahy requesting the child’s hand in marriage.
For their part, Black-owned newspapers, including the influential Chicago Defender, speculated anxiously that Rector’s White guardian was taking advantage of her and shortchanging her education.
“Richest Colored Girl Forced to Live in Shack,” the Defender proclaimed.
The facts, including that Rectors themselves had selected Porter, a family friend, went unacknowledged.
W.E.B. Dubois, founder and editor of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, set out to discern whether the reports were true. In response to DuBois’s inquiry, Judge Leahy wrote a letter to the famous Black intellectual with a frank accounting of spending on Rector’s behalf: $54,490 in eight months. The judge also approved money for Rector to attend the children’s school at Tuskegee Institute.
Then in 1917, the source of all the speculation vanished from Oklahoma.
The high life in Kansas City
Did Joe and Rose Rector move the family to Kansas City to escape the violent fate that befell too many oil-rich Natives and Freedmen? Brown assumes so.
Decades after the Rectors made Missouri home, Brown’s parents warned their children never to inquire about their aunt’s land in Oklahoma. “They said, ‘Whatever’s down there, you don’t bother with it. It’s too dangerous,’ ” Brown recalled.
Soon after arriving to Kansas City, the Rectors bought a sprawling stone foursquare at the corner of 2000 East 12th Street. Sarah entertained Duke Ellington, Joe Louis and Count Basie in the house that soon became known as the Rector Mansion.
At 18, Rector came fully into her wealth, free now of guardians. The Roaring 20s had dawned and the spending began in earnest: furs, luxury cars, lavish parties and the shopping sprees at the Emery, Bird, Thayer department store. Rector married the first of her two husbands at the age of 20 and bore three sons, all now deceased.
No one, including historians, is clear on what happened to Aunt Sister’s money. The stock market crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed probably depleted her accounts. At some point, the mansion was sold and Rector moved into a more modest house. Certainly, the spending coupled with what Brown believes was little understanding of managing money didn’t help. If there’s a lesson for others in her legacy, it’s in the importance of financial literacy, she said.
“No one took the time to teach her how to spend the money or how to invest it,” Brown said.
Of course, Brown has no memory of Rector spending anything. Her memory of Aunt Sister is all about family. In the late 1950s, Brown was 7 and Rector was in her late 50s when Aunt Sister would have her and her mother, Rector’s youngest sister, down to her farm. The adults would work in the garden farming potatoes and a rich variety of greens while Brown, her siblings and Rector’s children played in the barn and the dirt and got chased by the “evil geese.” She recalls Rector’s generosity with her time and devotion to family.
It’s this legacy that Brown saw herself paying tribute to about 12 years ago when she began with the help of her sisters and partner, Karen Riffle, to document Sarah Rector’s life. The fallacies kept cropping up and, worst of all, that pesky photo. Diane Euston, a Kansas City history writer and preservationist, had seen it, too. In researching Sarah Rector, she decided to go directly to Brown and her three sisters who are still right there in Kansas City. Euston published her myth-busting piece about Rector in 2019 on her history blog, The New Santa Fe Trailer. Since then, she’s been contacting historical societies to urge them not to use the image.
On Brown’s visit to the D.C. area, she set out with Riffle for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture bearing the faded photographs of Rector as a woman. (Museum officials did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)
Brown walked up to the visitors desk and asked the two women behind the counter if she could speak to a museum official to explain the photos before handing them over.
“You can leave them as donations,” one of the women politely told her.
Brown returned the images to the envelope.
Later, she sounded frustrated. “I’m not going to leave them so they can sit on someone’s desk,” Brown said. “That’s not going to happen.”
The Smithsonian can count on it, she said: She’ll be back in touch. | 2022-09-03T12:13:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sarah Rector, America's richest Black girl, inspired racist news coverage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/03/sarah-rector-richest-black-girl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/03/sarah-rector-richest-black-girl/ |
Emissions rise from power-generating station in Ghent, Ky., in April 2021. (Bloomberg News)
At the beginning of summer, it looked as though Congress would spend yet another session failing to act on climate change. Then Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) announced unexpectedly in late July that he would vote for a major climate bill, which Democrats promptly passed on a party-line vote. Suddenly, the United States has what many observers had all but assumed was unattainable: an ambitious, legislated strategy to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, setting the country on course to reduce its carbon footprint by roughly 40 percent by 2030.
This is a signal moment in the struggle against this century’s greatest environmental threat. But the new law does not guarantee success. It has gaps. And achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century, as scientists recommend, will require policy that has not yet been written and technological breakthroughs that have not yet been achieved.
The law rests on the notion that paying people and businesses to make cleaner choices — rather than penalizing them for continuing to pollute — will result in big emissions cuts. It offers tax credits to utilities that build or operate renewable electricity facilities, set to run until the electricity sector achieves substantial emissions cuts. It provides consumers with generous new incentives to buy electric vehicles and more efficient home appliances. And it pumps money into energy research and development, in the hopes that doing so will drive down the cost of clean technologies.
The Princeton University ZERO Lab, which models the effects of climate policies, reckons the law will reduce yearly emissions by roughly 1 billion metric tons by 2030. Before the law, the country’s emissions were set to decline by 27 percent from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. Now, Princeton’s experts predict a 42 percent cut — nearly reaching the Biden administration’s goal of halving emissions by 2030.
A difference of 15 percentage points might seem small relative to the volume of environmentalists’ loud cheering about the law. Yet it implies that the United States will slash emissions at roughly double the pace it did between 2005 and 2020, and with some of the easiest shifts already made. Moreover, a future Republican president cannot easily rip up this new policy. Before now, climate wonks rested their hopes on President Biden taking executive actions that might not survive his administration. “The period of American exceptionalism on climate policy — that is, not having a climate policy — is over,” said the Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
Big challenges remain.
If you build it …
The law foresees a vast buildout of industrial-scale solar, wind and other facilities, along with miles of new heavy-duty transmission lines to zip electricity across the country and thousands of new electric-vehicle charging stations. Because the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine in all places at all times, and because wind and solar facilities occupy more land than fossil-fuel-fired power plants, Americans will see a lot of new energy infrastructure — and, in a country in which NIMBYism is practically the national pastime, renewables operators will have to fight bitter state and local opposition to build it. Another complication: Most of the nation’s deposits of lithium and other critical minerals lie near Native American reservations, raising questions about whether and how quickly they can be tapped.
Already, a bill that would ease the seemingly endless permitting delays that energy projects face — support for which was one of Mr. Manchin’s conditions for backing the new climate law — is facing progressive skepticism in Congress. Environmentalists have opposed efforts to deliver clean electricity to American homes because they would require new wires run through forests. Environmentalist opposition to emissions-free nuclear power has long been counterproductive in the climate effort. Without congressional action to ease construction — and the cooperation of state and local regulators — some of those calling loudest for addressing climate change could become enemies of that very effort.
Work with the market
Meanwhile, the Princeton researchers estimate that 29 percent of the law’s emissions cuts will come from the transportation sector. Yet the law’s consumer tax credits for electric vehicles come with substantial strings. To enjoy the full credit, vehicles’ batteries must be manufactured in North America, and the minerals that go into them mined here or in an allied country. These requirements are supposed to prevent China and other adversarial countries from cornering the market on components that will be critical to an electrified transportation system. But U.S. automakers warned that none of the electric vehicles currently on the U.S. market would qualify once these requirements kicked in. If supply chains do not adjust quickly, the new subsidies might not encourage much buying of electric cars.
Concerns about the effectiveness of the law’s push for EVs reflect broader questions about the all-carrots-no-sticks philosophy underlying it. The law lacks bite, neither placing an enforceable cap on national greenhouse emissions nor directly discouraging most fossil fuel use — by, for example, taxing carbon. So, emissions cuts are not guaranteed, the whole economy is not covered evenly, and legacy fossil fuel plants might continue operating for a long time. The Princeton analysis found that, particularly after 2025, the law would put the country on a far-improved emissions trajectory — but one that would still fall short of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Environmentalists look to state and federal regulators to fill the law’s gaps, using powers the Clean Air Act gave them decades ago. On electric vehicles, state and federal regulators might set vehicle efficiency standards. California officials, for example, just banned the sale of new gas-powered cars after 2035. In other sectors, too, the Environmental Protection Agency retains substantial powers to force greenhouse gas cuts at fossil-fuel-fired power stations and other dirty sources, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. Green-minded state officials can force more rapid change within their borders than the new law would accomplish on its own.
In other words, a huge amount of important climate policy has yet to be imposed. And, as ever, it is crucial that policymakers focus intently on getting the most emissions cuts from the money society spends on decarbonization. Instead of clunky mandates, they should marshal market forces in the fight.
Rather than dictating exactly what kinds of cars people may buy, a better approach would be to steadily raise gas taxes. This would encourage people to reduce unnecessary travel and seek cleaner cars without crimping consumer choice. City and state governments can help by removing irrational laws prohibiting dense urban construction, permitting more people to walk rather than drive.
Similarly, it would be better for states to supplement the new law’s support for renewables with carbon prices within their borders. They could even band together into regional carbon price blocs; one such organization already exists in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Spurred by a price signal, consumers and companies would decide how to wring carbon out of the economy, finding the cheapest and most convenient ways to do so.
Though high gas taxes and carbon pricing are key parts of other major countries’ climate strategies, most U.S. climate hawks have renounced the market-friendly approach, assuming it would be unpopular. Similarly, many politicians have concluded that people must be sheltered from market signals that reflect the reality of a changing planet. For example: After major climate-related natural disasters, they will be tempted to subsidize rebuilding in areas that rising seas, more frequent wildfires or more intense drought conditions have rendered more dangerous than before. The instinct to insulate Americans from any kind of climate-related pain will be expensive and counterproductive.
Look abroad
Yet the greatest challenge is not perfecting climate policy within the U.S., but coaxing other nations to follow suit. Consider: If the new law cuts 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, that would represent only about 2.7 percent of the world’s 2021 carbon footprint. The law brings the United States to the international climate negotiating table with credibility it never had before. U.S. policymakers must leverage that into obtaining serious commitments from other major emitters.
Some critics of acting on climate change argue that this is impossible. In fact, European countries have done far more than the United States to cut their emissions — and even China had aggressive climate policies in place well before Congress brought America up to speed. From here, the United States must insist on strong, independent international verification programs to confirm that other countries are following through on the emissions commitments that they make. The U.N. climate negotiation process is cumbersome; U.S. diplomats should engage a smaller number of major countries directly, cutting side deals with the relatively small number of nations responsible for the bulk of global emissions. And it will be crucial for future presidents to keep up the pressure on foreign countries; if the United States is going to spend vast resources greening its economy, blowing up international climate negotiations would just negate that sacrifice.
For those concerned about climate change, Mr. Manchin’s unexpected flip was an encouraging moment. But cheering is premature; this is only the beginning of an effort that will be as difficult as it is urgent. | 2022-09-03T12:13:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Inflation Reduction Act is only a start to fighting climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/climate-change-law-what-next/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/climate-change-law-what-next/ |
The unusual story behind a newly identified dinosaur’s name
Bisticeratops was a horned dinosaur, or ceratopsian, and a relative of the triceratops. The plant-eating dinosaur lived 74 million years ago in jungles and swamps in what is now northwestern New Mexico. (New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science )
About 74 million years ago, the now-arid landscape of northwestern New Mexico was covered with jungles and marshes that bordered a warm sea — and roamed by a massive horned dinosaur related to triceratops.
That’s the conclusion drawn by researchers from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, where a fossil first unearthed in the 1970s has been identified as a new genus and species of dinosaur. Bisticeratops froeseorum was named in part for the region where it was found — and in part for an electronic-music pioneer.
Bisticeratops was a horned, plant-eating dinosaur, or ceratopsian, from the same group as the famous triceratops, with an estimated body length of about 18 feet.
The fossil includes most of the skull. The skull shows bite marks from a large predatory dinosaur, probably a tyrannosaur, although it is uncertain whether this was from active predation while Bisticeratops was alive or due to scavenging after it died.
It took decades to prepare the specimen and determine that it was a species unto itself, according to the Farmington Daily Times.
It’s the latest of several dinosaur finds in the area, which was reportedly home to multiple unique species of the horned vegetarians. Bisticeratops froeseorum also is described in the latest edition of the Bulletin of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
The fossil was discovered in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area, which is home to badlands and unique rock formations and is largely overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Its name incorporates the Navajo words for “among the adobe formations” and “standing crane,” a nod to petroglyphs of cranes in the region.
Though the dinosaur’s genus name points to where the skull was found, its species name is a nod to one of paleontologist Sebastian Dalman’s favorite bands, Tangerine Dream, according to a news release. The groundbreaking electronic music group was founded and led by the late Edgar Froese, a German experimental musician whose signature synthesizers and atmospheric vocals proved a major influence for the genre — and now paleontology. | 2022-09-03T12:14:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The unusual story behind a newly identified dinosaur’s name - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/09/03/dinosaur-name-tangerine-dream/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/09/03/dinosaur-name-tangerine-dream/ |
In Minnesota, people come far and wide every year to worship at the altar of fried foods
By Linnea Bullion
Scenes from the Minnesota State Fair. (Photos by Linnea Bullion for The Washington Post)
The Minnesota State Fair is known for “everything on a stick” — from alligator to Key lime pie. Marking the bittersweet end of summer, the annual event boasts an impressive breadth of these once-a-year foods. So many of them are fried that one can stomach them only once a year, anyway.
In 2019, more than 2 million visitors over 12 days attended the fair in St. Paul — a tradition for many out-of-state visitors as well as for Minnesotans. Though the fair is typically one of the largest in the country, the 2021 event felt like a soft return, with almost half the usual number of visitors attending. But this year, from Aug. 25 to Sept. 5, the beloved event is back in full swing.
Growing up in Minnesota, I spent my summers looking forward to the state fair — and still do. Despite now living 2,000 miles away, I pilgrimage to the fair each year. For me, it’s more about people-watching and petting cows than the fried food. That’s the beauty of it: there are dozens of ways to enjoy it.
In 2020, when it was canceled, I sat on my couch in Los Angeles eating corn dogs from the frozen foods aisle of the grocery store and put on a video walk-through of the fair on YouTube. There’s some debate on which is the “best” state fair in the country, but I try not to get bogged down by minutiae. Every out-of-state visitor I photographed this year said some version of the same thing: “I always come back.” | 2022-09-03T12:14:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos: Minnesota's state fair returned. So did food on a stick. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/03/minnesota-state-fair-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/03/minnesota-state-fair-photos/ |
She has become a symbol of resilience and won the public relations war with the royal family
Analysis by Roxanne Roberts
August 20, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Fans of Princess Diana walk through a traveling exhibit about her this month in Virginia. (Doug Kapustin for The Washington Post)
The story of Diana started like a fairy tale and ended like a Greek tragedy: a handsome prince, a beautiful princess, then fame, betrayal, reinvention and a fatal car crash 25 years ago in Paris.
If Diana had lived happily ever after, today she would be a 61-year-old royal grandmother: older, wiser and probably far less interesting. While Charles has calcified into a state of permanent suspension, Diana has been transformed into an archetype, a symbol of resilience and redemption. She is Everywoman, or what every woman wants her to be.
“I’ve watched her since I was a little girl,” said Christine Tomsovic, 52, who was visiting a traveling exhibit on Princess Diana at the Tysons Corner mall in Northern Virginia this month. “I watched her get married. I watched everything to her tragic death. I’m just a huge fan.” Diana, she explained, was “caring, compassionate and loving.” She was a humanitarian. And she was different from other royals: “Her personality broke the mold. She was herself. She didn’t let anybody tell her what to do.”
Tomsovic’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m just sad that she’s gone.”
Gone but never, ever forgotten. If anyone thought Diana’s death on Aug. 31, 1997 would finally quell the endless drama and tabloid stories, they were sensationally wrong. An estimated 2 billion people watched her funeral, and the ensuing quarter-century has only burnished her reputation. Her story has been told and retold — recently in Netflix’s “The Crown” and last year’s movie “Spencer” — with the historic narrative landing solidly in Diana’s favor: Charles as a careless and unloving husband, the royal family aloof and controlling, and Diana as a romantic innocent, loving mother, betrayed spouse and forever, triumphantly, the people’s princess.
This romanticized depiction of her is literally on display at the exhibit during this melancholy anniversary. Tomsovic was one of Diana’s admirers — many older, some young, almost all women — who paid $25 for the walk-through tour of more than 100 oversize images: Diana the fashion legend, Diana the trailblazer, Diana the role model.
Diana lived her life “with love, not by rules,” said Mariana Orozco, 26, who was visiting from Mexico. She was just a baby when Diana died but grew up fascinated by her. Recently engaged, she wore a small blue stone on her left hand: “All my life I said I would like a sapphire like Diana’s.”
“Her beauty and style draw people in really quickly,” explained exhibit curator Cliff Skelliter. “Then there is a lot of connectors to what feels like a fairy tale. We love fish-out-of-water stories because they act as a way for us to protect ourselves easily into the character. So when somebody like Diana comes along, all these women who were around the same age, now in their 60s and 70s, projected themselves onto this young lady and forged this strong bond.”
The eight-foot photos were shot by Anwar Hussein — one of the many royal photographers who covered Diana’s every move for her 16 years in the public eye — and his two sons, who shoot Prince William and Prince Harry and their families. Most of the famous images have already appeared in newspapers, magazines and books, but together they serve as a reminder of the short, dazzling trajectory of her life.
“We could tell these anecdotal stories about Princess Diana to really build a picture of her humanity, that she was this real person who was learning in front of a whole bunch of cameras and the whole world watching and not necessarily being perfect, but figuring her way through it,” Skelliter said.
My God, she was so young. There is a photo of a dewy Diana, newly engaged and delicious, with a charisma beyond her years. In another, Charles and Diana are leaving the church after their 1981 wedding, when more than 750 million people all over the world tuned in to witness the ceremony and the famous balcony kiss. The groom was 32 and in love with another woman, the bride just weeks after her 20th birthday.
“I felt sorry for her. I remember thinking, don’t do it,” said Lois Wren, 67. Like so many women at the exhibit, Wren remembers waking up at 4 a.m. to watch the royal wedding. She was old enough to worry that the newly minted princess was walking into the lion’s den. “So tragic,” she said, shaking her head. “So tragic.”
Her 31-year-old daughter, Laura, watched Diana’s funeral as a young girl, and her takeaway now is that Diana emerged from that lion’s den unbowed. “I think she was great,” she said. “She didn’t seem like a snob, like other royals. She seemed like a really genuine person.” She pointed to a photo of Diana cradling a sick child. “No other royal does that, not even celebrities do that, maybe not even a decent human does that. But she did it.”
“We’ve always been very intrigued by the royal family,” said Maria Melgar, 25, who came to the exhibit with her mom, Martha. “You hear Diana’s name everywhere. She had such a way of connecting with people. She presented herself as someone you could relate to, one of us.”
Diana used the media and the media used her until the day she died
History is an unreliable narrator, and many of the nuances of Diana’s life have faded to the background in service of a simpler story. She was no Cinderella: Her family was aristocratic and friends of the queen. She moved in rarefied circles and was destined for a prestigious marriage, although a match with the crown prince was a coup for the Spencer family, as Diana was the first English woman to wed an heir to the British throne in more than 300 years.
When that union fell apart, Diana could have retreated to living a quiet, discreet life separate from Charles, but that was not her personality. The unspoken truth in her life (and in the photos) is how much Shy Di loved attention and used the spotlight, first because she liked it, and later in her ongoing battle with Charles and the royal family. The constant paparazzi ultimately proved to be a Pandora’s box she could not close, but her service was both a genuine expression of compassion and a way of winning the public relations wars.
The exhibit includes the famous shot of Sad Diana alone at the Taj Mahal (paired with another of William and Kate in the same spot), and Sassy Diana wearing the sexy black “revenge dress” the night Charles publicly admitted his infidelity. Separation, affairs and divorce: The end of the fairy tale was the beginning of Diana’s emergence as a modern role model. She was beautiful and stylish, but it was her vulnerability, her disappointment, her foundering that made her relatable.
“In the beginning, I wasn’t all that interested in her,” Margaret Kizis said. “Once I read Andrew Morton’s biography, I realized it was not all glamour and beauty, that she was suffering a lot.” What Kizis admires most is that Diana turned that suffering into helping others. “We all try to soothe our own pain and that’s not a bad thing to do. The sad thing is that I don’t think she realized how much people loved her in return.”
How Britain and the rest of the world mourned Princess Diana
The 76-year-old has a trove of books, magazine articles, figurines and china about Diana that she hopes to auction for charity one day. “She brought kindness into the world, and she touched so many people who needed love, who needed kindness and who needed some humanity,” Kizis said.
That legacy has passed on to Diana’s sons, who have now both lived more years than their mother. William, 40, seems more like his father as the years go by, not surprising for a man who will become king one day. Harry, who turns 38 next month, always had his mother’s touch and — now unburdened by the weight of royal duties — her defiance and sensitivity. The exhibit includes images of the brothers and their families, a then-and-now nod to her influence and what might have been had she lived.
“I think she was a woman ahead of her years, especially for females,” said Taylor Stephens, 29. “She did a lot for women at that time. You can see it in the way she raised her boys. That set precedent for the rest of the royal family. You can see that with Kate, you can see that with Meghan. She took what was a very reserved royal family and made them more human.”
In the end, history will remember Diana in broad strokes: a beautiful princess, a lonely marriage, a champion of the hurt and disenfranchised, a woman who touched the untouchables.
“One of the things I hope people come out with is that they aspire to represent something good in the world,” said Skelliter, the exhibit curator. “Because Princess Diana did that, right? She showed us an example of how to be this great, engaged mother and how to move her way through an extraordinarily difficult scenario in a very tricky world that is not perfect. The world is still like that, and if we could look at her and go, ‘Okay, there is hope for us,’ that is a net positive.” | 2022-09-03T13:40:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Princess Diana died 25 years ago, but she endures as a role model for women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/20/princess-diana-death-anniversary/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6IjM1MTIwNzEiLCJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNjYyMTQ4MzcxLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNjYzMzU3OTcxLCJpYXQiOjE2NjIxNDgzNzEsImp0aSI6ImM1ZWI1MWY2LTk4ZmQtNGIyMC1iMzc3LWUxZjllNGFkZjc1MyIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9saWZlc3R5bGUvMjAyMi8wOC8yMC9wcmluY2Vzcy1kaWFuYS1kZWF0aC1hbm5pdmVyc2FyeS8ifQ.AFrsj_Rr5w5AbfuWfpKTLH0xm-Mvm0chboFJtDC5G3o&itid=gfta | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/20/princess-diana-death-anniversary/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6IjM1MTIwNzEiLCJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNjYyMTQ4MzcxLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNjYzMzU3OTcxLCJpYXQiOjE2NjIxNDgzNzEsImp0aSI6ImM1ZWI1MWY2LTk4ZmQtNGIyMC1iMzc3LWUxZjllNGFkZjc1MyIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9saWZlc3R5bGUvMjAyMi8wOC8yMC9wcmluY2Vzcy1kaWFuYS1kZWF0aC1hbm5pdmVyc2FyeS8ifQ.AFrsj_Rr5w5AbfuWfpKTLH0xm-Mvm0chboFJtDC5G3o&itid=gfta |
Wattpad gave authors a boost. TikTok launches them to new heights.
By Natachi Onwuamaegbu
Even though her books had millions of reads, Ariana Godoy was hardly a household name — her fan base predominantly consisted of 13-to-24-year-old romance readers with a thing for vampire stories. The year was 2009, and niche internet communities were having their heyday. Think Tumblr, Myspace and, Godoy’s website of choice, Wattpad.
Wattpad, the effervescent, cultish book-sharing platform, was where authors donned online personae, escaped their day jobs and brought readers along on a journey of whimsy, love and the occasional typo. One of Godoy’s first novels, “Through My Window,” or “A Traves De Mi Ventana,” went viral there — and landed her a book and movie deal.
Then 12 years and 950 million reads later, Godoy’s writing went viral again. But this time was different: It went viral off a post she didn’t make or even know about. It went viral on TikTok.
Book internet culture has changed wildly in the past decade. Wattpad could (and still does) get amateur authors book deals, but TikTok is sending established authors into the stratosphere. There is a trade-off though: On Wattpad, authors retain a lot of the control, but on TikTok, it’s hard to know when and how a story will go viral, and when authors try to control the narrative, they can be chastised for it. Cue a lot more scrutiny — but also a lot more sales.
Wattpad began in 2006 as a platform for users to share and read original stories free. While the company still prides itself on being a place where novice writers get their start, they have also launched several modes to help their writers make money.
“I do think that Wattpad has, in many ways, pioneered book culture, particularly from smaller authors,” said Jeanne Lam, president of Wattpad. “I think part of what makes [book culture] cool is understanding all the different version of books and reading. With Wattpad, there was an understanding that we can be nerdy together and that’s okay.”
In recent years, other modes of book internet culture have popped up — like BookTok, a popular side to the video-sharing app TikTok, where readers discuss their favorite books in short narrative bursts. When books go viral on BookTok, sales skyrocket. Movie deals are made. It can make a self-published author into an overnight sensation.
According to Anna Todd, author of viral book series and movie franchise “After,” there was a period where interest in reading seemed to decline between the height of Wattpad in the early 2010s and the rise of BookTok in recent years. Across the board there was less of an interest in romance stories, Todd said, and “people were just getting tired of [them].” During this hiatus of sorts, it seemed like there was less of a public obsession over certain types of romance books.
But that lull abruptly ended with BookTok’s rise during the pandemic. Suddenly, self-published, indie authors were able to go viral yet again and see skyrocketing book sales. In the first quarter of 2021, book sales rose by almost 30 percent compared with the same period in 2020, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks sales. Even when the book market started evening out again, sales of adult fiction, such as the novels by former Wattpad author and BookTok mainstay Colleen Hoover, managed to continue increasing.
On TikTok, crying is encouraged. Colleen Hoover’s books get the job done.
Todd noticed the impact of BookTok when the first installment of her One Direction fanfiction, “After,” hit the big screen. All of a sudden, her fans didn’t just exist on message boards or Tumblr pages. Which meant she got a lot more readers. And a lot more hate.
Authors publishing on Wattpad didn’t face scrutiny in the same way. Potential readers who stumbled across an author’s writing on Wattpad knew exactly what they were getting. Judgmental 20-somethings who have never heard of fanfiction don’t.
“It depends on the way that [a book] goes viral because I’ve seen lately this trend of people destroying authors,” Todd said. “There’s always a downside when people on the internet can say whatever. But I definitely think sometimes it’s good for the author not to have a lot of control, especially if they’re not really comfortable marketing themselves.”
To fully understand the power BookTok has in making or breaking a career, you have to go inside BookTok itself. Part-time content creator Tishni Weerasinghe started making BookToks in December 2020. Since then, she has had the opportunity to be “one of those people in the book world that influences bestseller charts.”
But, like Godoy and Todd, her internet book journey began long ago with Wattpad. Unlike the authors, Weerasinghe remained just a reader, leaving the occasional comment or two and messaging her favorite authors within the app. It wasn’t until BookTok that she realized there’s an avenue for readers to also be content creators. And while it’s been a rewarding experience, she echoes Todd’s point: Going viral isn’t always a good thing.
“There’s the darker side of BookTok,” Weerasinghe said. “I feel like a lot of people are starting to get on their high horse and judging people for what they’re reading — which goes against the whole point of BookTok, which was to not judge people for what they’re reading.”
While criticism might tank a book, positive reviews might make a bestseller. And increased sales aren’t the only positive of BookTok. There’s power in bringing book culture to the mainstream, taking it out of a limited space and into the land of algorithms. For younger readers, BookTok also brought loving books out of the shadows of Wattpad and into the mainstream.
“It became okay for people to just say, ‘Hey, yeah, I’m a reader,’ ” Weerasinghe said. “Before, when you heard someone say, ‘Oh, I’m a reader,’ you think of a grandma. Now when someone says, ‘I’m a reader,’ I think of like a cool 20-year-old, someone who has it all together with her venti Starbucks.”
For authors especially, it’s hard to rationalize what’s easier. More reads or more community? More love or more hate? But at the end of the day, clicks pay the bills. Godoy realized this when the Spanish version of her book, “Heist,” went viral on TikTok. She even remembers how she found out.
Godoy was inundated with notifications — of both book sales and social media tags. She clicked on one of the many notifications on her phone one morning and was greeted by a brunette. In her left hand was Godoy’s book, and right below that was a little icon reading “16.4K likes.”
“Isn’t it crazy?” said Godoy, who laughs, then pauses. “It’s not even that long. The video is just 15 seconds or something. The readers are just in control now — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.” | 2022-09-03T13:44:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TikTok is launching authors to great heights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/03/authors-tiktok-wattpad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/03/authors-tiktok-wattpad/ |
See how the most iconic cars are going electric for the future
Legacy automakers are investing in fully-electric versions of classic cars
By Aaron Gregg
For many Americans, the image of an electric vehicle is largely confined to a futuristic sedan or boxy hatchback. But legacy automakers are racing to offer electrified versions of their classic brands, holding on to the design and sensory elements that made their gas-powered predecessors cultural touchstones.
For Ford, that means an all-electric F-150 pickup truck with even more horsepower than before. Volkswagen has turned its bus, the iconic hippie van of the 1960s, into an ambient lounge where seat-backs fold down into tables. Dodge plans to take the signature roar of its muscle cars and play it through an electronic speaker.
Year available: 2024
Battery range: TBD
The signature rumble of an 8-cylinder engine came to define car culture in the late 1960s and early ’70s, thanks in large part to the Dodge Charger. But Dodge now plans to retire the gas-powered muscle car and replace it with the all-electric Charger Daytona SRT concept car, sporting an electronic roar that imitates the classic sound.
Parent company Stellantis designed the concept car to have the look and feel of a classic Dodge, and the electronic muscle car roar is an industry first, it says.
Longtime muscle car enthusiasts say there’s a lot at stake. “The muscle car era [will] just fade on away unless they show us something mighty mighty good,” says Alton Freeman, curator of the Wellborn Muscle Car Museum in Alexander City, Ala.
Year available: 2022 in Europe, 2024 in United States
Price: £57,115 in the United Kingdom ($65,739)
Battery range: 258 miles
The Volkswagen Microbus, or “bus” for short, has long embodied social liberation and a rejection of car-buying norms. It was a symbol of protest culture in the 1960s. More recently it has figured into the viral #vanlife social media trend, in which people chronicle travels in the vehicles.
The ID. Buzz ― released in Europe in 2022 and with a U.S. release slated for 2024 ― is a five-seat electric redesign. The European version includes a three-person bench seat that can be folded down, and fold-down tables on the backs of the front seats.
An optional 30-color ambient lighting system includes a “mood menu” with pre-configured light strips throughout the interior. The European model also includes an electronically-limited maximum speed of 90 miles per hour, and makes little noise even at high speeds.
Ford’s F-150 has been the best-selling pickup in America for more than four decades, according to JD Power, and the prospect of an all-electric version sent a shockwave through the auto industry when production began in April.
Ford is marketing its new electric vehicle as a stronger, tougher, battery-powered version of what came before. The basic appearance is little changed. Under the hood, however, the Lightning is a noticeably different vehicle. It carries a 580-horsepower motor, marking a significant upgrade from its predecessor’s 430-horsepower engine. It can accelerate from zero to 60 in just four seconds ― not far behind some high-performance racers made by Porsche and Ferrari. And with bidirectional charging, the battery could be used to charge other vehicles or even a home.
Ford’s Mustang crossover makes several key departures from past models, a risky move for any legacy manufacturer. The classic nameplate now appears on a four-door SUV with more internal storage space, marking a stark contrast from the muscular sports cars that came to define the brand.
The company could win over longtime Mustang enthusiasts with the sheer performance of the electric version. The car boasts an all-wheel drive system thanks to separate electric motors on the front and rear axle, giving the driver additional acceleration.
Battery range: 250+ miles
To many, the Hummer SUV is known as a notorious gas-guzzler. It was originally conceived as a consumer version of a military Humvee, with its gas mileage averaging around 10 miles per gallon, or even lower on city streets.
General Motors is now selling an electric Hummer SUV marketed as a rugged off-road vehicle. Its standard features include an infinity roof, all-weather floor liners, and 35-inch all-terrain tires. GM also touts a “crab walk” function that allows the vehicle to move diagonally. The driving experience can be modified through a “mode dial” offering the driver settings like “off-road,” “terrain,” “tow,” and “adrenaline.” And it is designed with the power and hauling capacity of its predecessor, with up to three electric motors available.
Price: €67,818 in Germany ($67,499)
Mercedes-Benz EQV carries the design elements of the car-maker’s signature V-class vans, known in the U.S. as the Metris. It carries the space and functionality of a different classic: the minivan.
The EQV’s 8-seat capacity sets it apart. It comes in two settings: long, and extra long. It also has a number of added comfort features such as a fold-out table console for the middle row of seats. Currently it’s only available in Europe.
Porsche’s Taycan electric vehicle series is being marketed for its speed and maneuverability in the tradition of the brand’s high-performance sports cars. It comes in three variants designed to accentuate various design characteristics. The Cross Turismo and Sport Turismo each carry an enlarged rear in the style of a hatchback.
The pricey Taycan Turbo variant, meanwhile, is a true racer. It can zoom from zero to 60 miles per hour in three seconds flat. And it’s more aerodynamic than any other Porsche model ever produced, according to the company.
Mini Cooper SE Electric
With a starting price in the mid $30,000 range, the Mini Cooper Electric is one of the most affordable electric vehicles on the market.
Its compact frame makes it a common choice for congested city driving. Its limited battery range of 110 miles, however, could make a tough sell for car-buyers looking for more than a suburban commute.
Battery range: up to 292 miles
Jaguar’s all-electric I-Pace is described as a “performance SUV,” recreating the brand’s classic sports-car feel with a more spacious interior.
The company describes its luxury vehicle as a “sanctuary from the outside world,” employing a sharp exterior to minimize wind noise. It has motor encapsulation to further reduce noise.
Editing by Karly Domb Sadof and Laura Stevens. Additional editing by Haley Hamblin, Hadley Green and Gaby Morera Di Núbila. | 2022-09-03T13:44:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | See how the most iconic cars are going electric for the future - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/03/new-electric-cars-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/03/new-electric-cars-2022/ |
The market is down, inflation is up and your retirement prospects aren’t looking so good. It’s tempting to pine for the old days, when employers provided defined pensions to workers, giving them more certainty in their golden years. Except…. it wasn’t quite like that, actually. Defined benefit pensions are overrated. Even in this scary market, you should be grateful to have a retirement account like a 401(k).
There are two basic ways to finance retirement. You can save for yourself in your own account — such as a 401(k) — where you decide the amount to set aside, take all the investment risk and then figure out how much you can spend each year when you retire. How much income you have in retirement depends how much you saved, the generosity of your employer in matching contributions, and how much your investments returned. Whatever you don’t spend is left for your heirs.
But individual retirement accounts aren’t necessarily a worse deal. Often they are better.
First of all, pensions aren’t free. If an employer is putting aside money for your pension, that’s money that might otherwise go toward a higher salary. Rising pension costs is one big reason why teacher salaries have stayed so low; as interest rates fell over the years, financing pensions got more expensive, and that adds up to less money available for paying workers.
And pensions carry their own risks. They’re much less valuable if you change jobs because benefits are tied to tenure. And poorly managed pension funds can run out of money for payouts. Defined-benefit pensions are financed in two ways: There’s the funded model where the sponsor can put money aside for each person each year, pool it all together and invest it, and then pay a set amount upon retirement. Or there is the pay-as-you-go model, where little or no money is put aside and current workers pay for retirees.
If you have a pay-as-you-go model and an aging population with low birth rates, you will eventually run out of money to pay full benefits. That’s exactly the problem Social Security faces in America, and that European government pensions are also confronting.
With a funded model, there’s always an incentive to set aside less money than is needed to pay future benefits, often with the hope that some risky investment will succeed and make up the difference. Private companies and the government would rather put their money to other uses than reserving it to pay benefits 50 years down the road. That’s why there’s a long history of private companies underfunding pensions.
It’s telling that once corporations were forced to fully account for the cost of pensions — after the Employee Retirement Income Security Act passed in 1974 — most companies stopped offering them. Now most pensions are found in public sector jobs, where shoddy accounting standards allow them to be underfunded and overexposed to risky investments. Unlike a 401(k), workers have no say over that risk. Hence, public pensions are chronically underfunded and suffering even more with the current market downturn.
If your pension fund runs out of money, your promised retirement payout could be severely cut. Or, as often happens, there is a government bailout, which means higher taxes or reduced funding for other services such as libraries or schools. The biggest problem with pensions is that it’s very hard to create the incentives to fully fund and invest them responsibly. And when it comes to government pensions, where politicians tend to be short-sighted, it’s especially difficult.
The reason people think individual retirement accounts are a worse deal is that they reveal the truth we’d rather not face: Retirement is very expensive, no matter how you fund it. Chile had one of the more successful retirement account programs, but it will probably be scrapped because the saving rates — about 10% — weren’t enough to fund an adequate retirement for most people.Yet pensions have the same problem. American workers and their employers together pay a combined 12.4% of their annual earnings for Social Security retirement benefits, and the program is still facing financial strains. The same goes for most countries that provide pensions. The difference is that 401(k) accounts make the underfunding problem clear to everyone. So no wonder Chile’s system is facing an overhaul and there are calls to expand pensions in other countries. These calls will grow louder if there is a recession and the market retreats further. But increasing reliance on defined-benefit pensions would be a mistake; They’re just another form of debt that goes unfunded.
Transparency is what makes 401(k)-type accounts so unpopular, but that’s also what makes them better. With all the uncertainty we face today, that 401(k) is still a better bet in the long run, because they expose something we’d rather not face: It takes a lot of money to retire. At least with a 401(k) we know what to expect and can act on the information.
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Defense Stocks Are More Than a Recession Haven: Thomas Black | 2022-09-03T13:44:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pensions Aren’t the Answer to Your Retirement Anxiety - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pensions-arent-the-answer-to-your-retirement-anxiety/2022/09/03/22967eac-2b89-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pensions-arent-the-answer-to-your-retirement-anxiety/2022/09/03/22967eac-2b89-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
Tim Meko
Large areas of drought were
interspersed with rare deluges
Percentage of normal precipitation
over the last 90 days
Five places saw extremely rare 1,000-year flood events, often a season’s-worth of rain in a single day.
Note: Data for Alaska and
Hawaii is not available
Effingham, Ill.
Hazard, Ky.
Percentage of normal precipitation over the last 90 days
100% less
150% more
Large areas of drought were interspersed with rare deluges
Note: Data for Alaska and Hawaii is not available
Like an unhinged seesaw, this summer’s rainfall has teetered between too much or too little across the United States. Record rain fell in pockets in the country and brought unprecedented flooding; meanwhile other communities yearned for just a few drops as drought worsened.
Weather patterns have always brought variable rainfall across the country, but this summer typified a new era of extreme precipitation events brought on by a warming world: wet events are getting wetter, and dry events are becoming drier.
Much of the United States has either experienced significantly below average or above average rainfall; very few swaths are on par with long-term average precipitation amounts, as shown in the map above of rainfall differences from normal.
The map below shows the total amount of precipitation over the summer, highlighting how precipitation varies based on geography. It also casts light on how small amounts of rain can have a large effect in locations that typically don’t see much in the summer, such as in the western U.S., sometimes leading to unusual flooding in the area.
Parched in the west,
soggy in the southeast
Observed precipitation over the last 90 days
1,000-year flood events
Parched in the west, soggy in the southeast
This summer, the most notable precipitation differences from normal occurred in the southwestern United States, which received around 100 to 150 percent more rain than its long-term average rain because of an active monsoon season.
The Southwest monsoon is a seasonal wind shift that brings moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean north to the Southwest and parts of Southern California. Thunderstorms during monsoon season can bring up to 50 to 70 percent of the region’s total rainfall. This year, the monsoon started in mid-June, which is about two weeks earlier than normal, and continued.
“Probably the most interesting feature to me was the reincarnation of the southwest monsoon this year, which led to numerous flood hazards in the parched southwestern U.S.,” wrote John Abatzoglou, a climate scientist at the University of California Merced, in an email.
For instance, heavy rain at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico trapped 200 people for several hours until officials rescued them. Twice in about two weeks floodwaters poured into casinos in Las Vegas in late July and early August, as the city saw its most monsoon rain in a decade.
Carbin added the monsoon pattern helped break all-time monthly rainfall records near the Arizona-New Mexico border. “In fact, there are locations in this region that have experienced monthly rainfall amounts during July and August that have not been previously observed in at least the past 50 years.”
The summer’s most devastating rain events were spread across the southwest and central states, in which record downpours produced a season’s worth of rain in a single day. The most notable single-day rain events occurred in St. Louis, western Kentucky, eastern Illinois, Death Valley and Dallas. All five rainfall events were exceptionally rare, estimated to only have a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.
The torrents triggered serious flooding that engulfed communities, damaged infrastructure and prompted emergency rescues. Thirty-eight people died from the rain event in western Kentucky, and at least one person died during the flooding in Dallas.
Several other areas also experienced unusual and serious rain events. In June, two to three inches of rain fell over Yellowstone National Park and melted snow, triggering historic flooding and landslides and washing away roads and homes. Near-record rainfall in Jackson, Miss. on Aug. 24 knocked out the city’s primary water treatment plant, leaving some neighborhoods without running water.
Record rain is hitting drought-stricken areas. That’s not good news.
In recent years, a larger portion of rain in the United States has come in the form of intense single-day events. Data shows that nine of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events have occurred in the last three decades.
Swain explained the gradual warming of the atmosphere has increased such extreme single day events. A warmer atmosphere can “hold” more water; the atmosphere can hold approximately 4 percent more water for each degree Fahrenheit of warming. Since the 1979, average temperatures in the United States have risen between 0.32 to 0.55 degrees Fahrenheit degrees per decade.
But while these extreme precipitation events logged impressive rainfall rates, they are not large enough to compensate for the large regions of drought. Swain said, in addition to the low precipitation, a warmer atmosphere is also driving more evaporation from the ground, worsening drought conditions.
The western U.S., specifically California, is the most noticeable drought-stricken area in the country. The drought is mostly due to the recent lack of winter rain and snow as well as warming temperatures, which are hastening evaporation.
By itself, Abatzoglou said California’s paltry summer rain isn’t too alarming since typical summer precipitation “is next to nothing.” A healthy round of storms and snowfall in the fall and winter could help put a dent in the drought, although full recovery will likely take several years.
Southwest drought is the most extreme in 1,200 years
Yet lack of summer precipitation has severely affected the Northeast. Boston experienced its fourth driest July on record. Only about a half an inch of rain fell in Providence, Rhode Island in July, about 2.5 inches below average. Drought conditions spread from New Jersey to coastal Maine.
Much of the central and southern plains also experienced limited rainfall and well above normal temperatures, where drought expanded and intensified.
As of August 30, around 65 percent of the country was experiencing abnormally dry to exceptional drought conditions.
“The generally smaller footprint of these extreme rainfall events has been offset by widespread drought,” said Carbin. “My own analysis of year-to-date rainfall places 2022 slightly below normal when looking at the coverage of high-end (10-inches or more) monthly rainfall.”
But Carbin said rainfall totals could change quickly, even catastrophically so, if the Atlantic hurricane season picks up. In recent years, many locations have experienced tropical-related rainfall events that dropped large amounts of rain.
Excessively wet 2021 in eastern U.S. shows fingerprints of climate change
Last year, the remnants of Hurricane Ida unloaded a historic deluge in the northeast around Sept. 1. Newark received more than 8 inches of rain and experienced its wettest day on record. Although Ida is an exception, most extreme tropical cyclone rainfall events tend to occur later in the month of September and sometimes October, said Carbin.
Data is from gridMET | 2022-09-03T13:45:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maps show extreme rain and dangerous droughts this summer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/03/rain-drought-united-states-maps/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/03/rain-drought-united-states-maps/ |
By Logan B. Anderson, Delaware State News | AP
Samantha Grantland, CEO of Grantlin Fabrications and CRS Hoods, stands with part of a project her company created for a local school district, in Smyrna, Del., on Aug. 19, 2022. The former model is working to expand her businesses while helping others succeed. (Logan B. Anderson/Delaware State News via AP)
SMYRNA, Del. — When Samantha Grantland comes up with an idea, she has to see it through.
For the former model and current welder and business owner, there are no bad concepts — just opportunities to learn and grow.
“I get an idea in my head, and I roll with it. Sometimes, they fail, and sometimes, they work,” she said.
Though the self-described tomboy said she’s more confident in a “man’s world,” the wife, mother and entrepreneur doesn’t see society as broken up into gender roles. She’s just busy making “Sam’s world.”
In 2016, her husband, Andy Grantland, started Grantlin Fabrication — a metal-production shop that has created everything from custom fencing to specialized lockers for Smyrna’s Citizens’ Hose Co. In 2018, Ms. Grantland took over as CEO, boosting the business with multiple employees and partnerships, while stretching its territory to the mid-Atlantic region.
Along with custom metalwork, Grantlin Fabrication works closely with Allan Myers, the largest civil construction and materials producer on the East Coast.
Meanwhile, in November 2019, Mr. Grantland’s father passed away, leaving behind his AG&G Sheet Metal, owned with his other son, Geoff Grantland. AG&G was a leading restaurant hood-maker and sheet metal fabricator in the region.
As a result of the loss, the family decided to shutter the well-known business. But to continue to serve AG&G’s customers and maintain her husband’s family legacy, Ms. Grantland had another thought.
She and Andy recently launched CRS Hoods. The venture will absorb AG&G and continue to create customized ventilation systems. She runs both businesses from her family’s home, near Smyrna.
Model earns her mettle
When Ms. Grantland was 19, she worked on an assembly line, building cars.
“I’ve always been a tomboy. I worked at General Motors on the assembly line. I built the (Pontiac) Solstice and (Saturn) Skys,” she said.
While there, FHM magazine came to write a story on the company, and she was featured in photographs for the piece. Once it hit the streets, readers wrote in, asking to see more of Ms. Grantland. FHM reached out to her, and she agreed, becoming one of the feature models in the last issue printed in the U.S. in 2007.
After meeting her husband, she wanted to learn and do more, she said. She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and started her entrepreneurial journey.
After learning from her business-savvy in-laws that “it’s OK to take a risk,” her first initiative was Pretty’s Primitives, a home decor store in Kenton.
“I had the idea, got my business license. I went to Pennsylvania to buy my stock, and I opened on a Monday,” Ms. Grantland said.
The venture only lasted a year, but instead of seeing its end as a failure, she took it as a lesson.
“When that closed, I said, ‘OK, what’s my next season?’ Everything comes in seasons,” she said. “This season may say that you can do it, but next season might say that you can’t. I’ve never had a plan. I rolled with it. I said, ’This is our season. We are just going to keep going.”
And keep going she did: Ms. Grantland and her husband decided they were going to follow their passions.
“We both quit our jobs. We only had $2,000 to our names. But we both said, ‘Let’s venture out and do what we want to do,” she said.
Soon, the couple were working together at Grantlin Fabrications.
“We are mainly commercial and industrial work. But we do residential work for some customers. We build everything custom,” she said.
After helping any way she could, she eventually earned her welding certification, became CEO and started CRS Hoods.
“It’s not about me. It’s about who I can help. At the end of the day, that’s what it is about. Providing for other families and giving back. I always feel like I have to be replaced in life. I want someone to replace me,” Ms. Grantland said.
The idea in her head now is centered on building her businesses and helping others thrive.
Along with supporting other local enterprises, she has taken to YouTube to teach welding and metal fabrication.
“We wanted to show people how to weld. We wanted to teach people how to do different things,” she said, adding that she hopes to grow her channel to reach more interested in the industry.
When asked if she had any advice for those thinking about starting a new opportunity, she recommended: “Don’t have a plan.” She encourages acting on dreams and following “seasons.”
“You have to invest in what you believe in. Research, research and read. ... Unless you have someone that can teach you the ropes, you have to teach yourself.”
Another piece of advice is to keep showing up, something she had to embody when her mother recently died. Ms. Grantland was left dealing with her grief, raising her family and leading her companies.
“It’s hard facing challenges, dealing with losses and family. When you run a business at your house, it doesn’t shut off,” she said. “We just had to keep showing up and showing up.” | 2022-09-03T13:45:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grantlin Fabrication CEO sees enterprise widen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/grantlin-fabrication-ceo-sees-enterprise-widen/2022/09/03/98b432ba-2b88-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/grantlin-fabrication-ceo-sees-enterprise-widen/2022/09/03/98b432ba-2b88-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
The interactions provide rare insight into a police officer’s interactions with someone suspected of being tied to a white nationalist group
Members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front march down the National Mall on Dec. 4, 2021, in Washington. (Robert Miller/The Washington Post)
On one end of the phone was a D.C. police lieutenant in charge of the intelligence unit. On the other, a man who called himself “Mason,” purporting to be a top adviser to the white nationalist group Patriot Front, and its leader, Thomas Rousseau.
The veteran police supervisor, Shane Lamond, wanted to know when the group planned a return visit to the District, so police could prepare, and allow demonstrators to safely protest “without being attacked or hassled,” he told the man on the other end of the line.
Mason pressed for intelligence on plots targeting his group. And he was interested in learning of police officers “sympathetic to what we’re trying to do.”
“These days, we like working with patriots, and it’s hard for us to trust people that don’t share those patriotic views,” the man said. “Where do you stand on that question?”
Lamond laughed. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I can’t answer that question, for the simple fact that … I have to be objective. I can’t express my personal feelings either way.” Then he added, “I think if you look at just kind of the ideals and demographics of your group, and other groups, you all tend to be more favorable of law enforcement than other groups, I’ll put it that way.”
The man calling himself “Mason” told The Washington Post that he was not, in fact, affiliated with Patriot Front or its leader; he was an anti-racism activist posing as a member to out possible sympathizers. He said he recorded his dealings with Lamond, but shelved the exchanges when it appeared the police lieutenant didn’t reveal secrets or admit to allegiances with the far-right.
Patriot Front is on the march. It’s selling a story about whiteness
But then in February, D.C.'s police chief put Lamond on leave amid an FBI investigation into his contacts with a different extremist group, the Proud Boys, and their leader, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio. The activist revisited his conversations with the purported Patriot Front member.
Mason provided his exchanges with Lamond to The Washington Post after Lamond’s name publicly surfaced in the investigation of his contacts with the Proud Boys. He did so on the condition of anonymity, saying he might face retaliation from the neo-Nazi groups which he seeks to infiltrate, but gave The Post his real name. The materials he provided include email and Twitter direct message exchanges, as well as a recording of a phone call.
The interactions, which began in the days after the Patriot Front marched in the District in February 2020, provide rare insight into a police officer’s interactions with someone suspected of being tied to a white nationalist group.
Lamond’s attorney, Mark E. Schamel, said the texts, emails and audio recording appear authentic. The lawyer declined to comment further, as did Lamond. At first, the activist said he pretended to be Rousseau himself; he later switched personas, pretending to be one of Rousseau’s aides.
Numerous attempts to reach Rousseau and representatives of the Patriot Front were not successful.
The recordings show a police officer trying to cultivate a relationship, and at times appearing friendly to a racist group. But experts say it is hard to assess whether they show Lamond crossing a line and getting too close with extremists — or simply working sources for information that he could use to keep people safe. Some of the contacts seem entirely legitimate, and the activist himself could face criticism for spurring police to focus efforts on him.
Mason and Lamond were in contact for months spanning two tumultuous periods in the District and for the nation — the social unrest over policing in the summer of 2020, and the attack on the Capitol in 2021. During nightly demonstrations over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, officers arrested hundreds, as they confronted looting and fires downtown, and engaged in sometimes violent clashes with protesters. Later in the year, marches led by the Proud Boys produced street brawls, stabbings and more destruction.
Police intelligence officials were under pressure to learn of demonstrators’ intentions, so they could try to head off possible violence.
In the wake of Lamond’s suspension, his wife came to his defense in an internet post on the Christian crowdsourcing site GiveSendGo soliciting money for his defense, saying Lamond’s job was to gather information on those who might cause harm in the city. As of Sept. 1, the site shows $8,042 had been raised.
“Help DC Officer suspended for doing his job,” says one of the posts. Lamond’s wife argued her husband kept “conflicting parties separate,” and she accused authorities of “attempting to ruin a good police officer’s life for doing his job.”
D.C. police lieutenant suspended over alleged ties to right-wing group
The nature and scope of the FBI investigation involving Lamond’s alleged contacts remains unknown, but D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in February the inquiry is in part about “investigations involving January 6.”
Tarrio and others are charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. Those charges are among the most serious filed by federal prosecutors in the sprawling criminal investigation of the riot.
Experts said some of Lamond’s conduct was especially concerning if he did not clear the dealings with supervisors.
Lamond first reached out to the activist’s fake Twitter account — named in a way it appeared to be Rousseau’s, though it was set up and monitored by the activist — on Feb. 20, 2020, according to documents shared with The Post. About 100 masked members of the Patriot Front had marched 12 days earlier along the National Mall.
Mason said he was trolling the internet, hoping to draw out Patriot Front members and expose sympathizers to discredit followers. Rousseau has little to no social media presence and operates in areas of the internet not easily accessible to casual users. At one point in a phone conversation, Lamond wondered aloud if he was being duped, and if the person he was talking to might be posing as a Patriot Front officer.
Mason said he wasn’t searching for a police officer, and the contacts from Lamond were “a happy accident.”
“Hey Thomas, it’s Shane Lamond with the D.C. police,” the lieutenant wrote in a direct message on Twitter. Lamond noted he had given Rousseau his business card at the earlier march, and he wanted to know if the Patriot Front planned to return for Memorial Day.
“We won’t interfere with you or try to stop you from conducting your demo, but if I have a heads up ahead of time I can prevent all the craziness from the last time like the helicopter and the 50 million cops,” Lamond told the activist, who was then pretending to be Rousseau himself.
Policing protests: Demonstrators say officers are taking sides as D.C. hosts pro-Trump rallies Saturday
Megan Squire, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, described Rousseau as “extremely paranoid” about his organization being infiltrated, doxed or exposed, to the point of sacrificing outreach and membership for security.
She said Lamond’s following an impostor online was, “frustrating to watch,” because the activity could “suck energy from other things police intelligence units need to be doing.”
In their conversations, Lamond assured the activist, “Any information you provide me would be kept strictly confidential; it would be kept very quiet to a few MPD members for planning purposes.” And he said he “took a big risk” reaching out to the group.
As the discussion continued, Lamond messaged: “If you prefer to call me so nothing is in writing that’s cool.”
Shane Sims, a former FBI agent and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Kivu Consulting, who reviewed the exchanges between Lamond and Mason for The Washington Post, noted several possible “red flags” in the conversations.
Those include Lamond agreeing to take conversations offline, and his suggestion he would “collaborate” with Mason at a rally.
“Hi Thomas, I never heard from you. With everything that is going on in DC and across the country there isn’t a better time to communicate/collaborate,” Lamond wrote in a message.
Sims said those phrases could pique the interest of federal law enforcement. But Sims also said it is important to know if Lamond followed proper protocols during his interactions with the person he thought was the Patriot Front leader or its representative. He said best practice is for intel officers to pair with a colleague and document every contact to ensure nothing is misconstrued. He said that “being untruthful is okay” to earn someone’s trust.
“Ultimately, this comes down to whether or not he was documenting things properly, in accordance with department’s policies and procedures,” Sims said. “If not, the red flags become a deeper state of red.”
Keith Taylor, a former New York City police supervisor and assistant commissioner for that city’s corrections department, overseeing gang intelligence, said it is important for law enforcement agencies to forge relationships with representatives of groups, regardless of their politics or ideologies.
But Taylor, now an adjunct assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said developing informants requires close supervision and monitoring.
“Police officers are not allowed to act as their own entities,” Taylor said.
A D.C. police spokesman declined to comment on the investigation into Lamond’s contact with the Proud Boys — or on his dealings with Mason — other than to say he remains on administrative leave. The U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. and the FBI declined to comment.
Federal prosecutors in the criminal case against Tarrio turned over to Tarrio’s defense lawyers chats between Lamond and the Proud Boys leader, as well as summaries of interviews with police officials “relating to contacts between Tarrio and Lamond.”
Nayib Hassan, an attorney for Tarrio, declined to provide those communications to The Post, saying they have been “classified as highly sensitive.” He said that Tarrio and Lamond “had a professional relationship” that was “limited to necessary information regarding when Proud Boy rallies would occur and their location during the rally.”
In a recent court filing, Hassan described Lamond as the police department’s “point of contact” with Tarrio, and noted the lieutenant and others were concerned that the Proud Boys planned to eschew wearing their signature colors on Jan. 6 so they could not easily be identified.
Tarrio was arrested two days before the insurrection on charges that he burned a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a historic African American D.C. church during a violent Proud Boys march the previous month. He was set free the next day to await trial, but barred from the District, keeping him out of the nation’s capital on Jan. 6.
As he left the city, he met in an underground parking garage with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the extremist group Oath Keepers, and others. In a 22-minute video that captured part of that meeting, he told a participant that he knew of his pending arrest as he flew into a D.C.-area airport.
“In the air is when I knew they signed the warrant,” Tarrio said, without explaining how or by whom. He added, “They texted me from the air.”
The day it was announced that Lamond had been placed on leave, Tarrio told The Washington Post that he had talked often with the lieutenant before and during marches in D.C., describing those contacts as professional. He said Lamond would tell him the location of counterdemonstrators. Tarrio said that was so his group could avoid conflict, though after one violent night of demonstrations, police accused the Proud Boys of roaming the city looking for and instigating fights, targeting people they believed to be antifascists.
In a recorded phone conversation with Mason, Lamond said his primary objective was to get a heads up when Patriot Front visited the District, to “make sure there are no counter groups interfering with your right to demonstrate.”
Proud Boys leader and lieutenants charged with seditious conspiracy
On Jan. 29, 2021 — about three weeks after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol — the Patriot Front came to the District and marched. D.C. police said at the time they were “aware previously that demonstrations were to take place.” But that information apparently didn’t come from Lamond.
The lieutenant fired off email to the person he thought was Rousseau. “Maaan, I thought we were forging a partnership to share Intel but you didn’t give me a heads up you were coming! I was out on foot with you all but I couldn’t get close enough to say hi. At least there were no issues.”
Five days later, the activist apologized for the “breach of trust” but said the events of Jan. 6 had changed everything. “My guys and I thought it would be a bad idea to try to coordinate anything with LE in the expectation that any response would be pretty heavy handed,” the activist wrote back. | 2022-09-03T14:15:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police Lt. chatted up Patriot Front poser, not knowing it was a setup. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/patriot-front-dc-police-conversations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/patriot-front-dc-police-conversations/ |
Maxwell Frost is figuring out how to be Gen Z’s likely first congressman
Maxwell Frost, a Democratic candidate for Congress, on his way to be interviewed on a podcast in Orlando. (Photos by Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
ORLANDO — One week after winning his first-ever political campaign, Maxwell Alejandro Frost was grappling with a fresh decision: Where should I go on vacation?
Plans to ride roller coasters with his girlfriend in Tampa were scrapped due to unpredictable stormy weather, and now Frost was deciding between rerouting to Miami or Charleston in South Carolina. He wasn’t convinced any of it was a good idea.
“There’s so much to do because I just want to hit the ground running in January,” he said during an interview earlier this week at his quiet campaign office in downtown Orlando. “But a lot of the advice I am getting is, you can do all that and not go as hard as you had to go in the campaign essentially.”
Frost, who turned 25 in January, had just overcome the biggest hurdle in his quest to get to Congress, winning a grueling primary in a reliably Democratic district that will likely end with him coasting to victory in November.
But House Democrats had already warned him to take a break. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) had even given him an ultimatum, Frost recalled: “You got to text me by Monday where you’re going.” “I actually need to do that,” Frost said, promptly looking down at his phone and beginning to type.
Frost was a relatively unknown name outside of his hometown before August, when he won a 10-way Democratic primary against some rivals who had served in office before he was born. He has no political experience and no college degree, but interest in his candidacy — and his personal story — has skyrocketed as pundits openly wonder if his perspective is a necessary injection of energy for a party that remains largely under the leadership of octogenarians.
As he remains cognizant of maintaining the right work-life balance, Frost is also trying to find his footing as an expected new member in a chamber he describes as having “a lot of structural problems.” That means staying true to his political identity as a young liberal, but he is also pushing back against the perception that he would frequently challenge or fully rebel against leadership, as other fresh House Democratic faces before him have done.
“I got a call from the speaker who congratulated me and she said she thinks it will be very refreshing to have my presence on the Hill,” Frost said, referring to Democratic lawmaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who is roughly 60 years his senior. “So we’ll see.”
Unconventional path to Capitol Hill
If elected in November, Frost would become the first member of Congress to hail from Generation Z, the term bestowed upon those born after 1996. Like many in his generation, Frost is a good multitasker. keeping up with conversation without missing a beat while often texting with one hand as he holds a red Solo cup in the other.
Wearing a crisp blue suit and white button down, Frost looked overdressed in what now looked like an abandoned office as his team moves to a larger space shared with national Democratic campaigns. He often made sarcastic jokes or quipped about what was left, at one point gesturing to his district map and saying the tacks on it marked the best restaurants in the area.
But unlike many in his generation, he admits not being great at TikTok, which he barely used in his campaign. And he does not shy away from his Southern Baptist faith, talking about it openly as a motivator for him politically though he understands “the skepticism around organized religion.”
Born to a mother who already had several children and often experienced violence around her, Frost was hospitalized for weeks as a newborn, his small body shaking from withdrawals to his mother’s crack cocaine addiction. He was adopted at birth and raised in a Cuban American household where Spanish was primarily spoken. His adopted mother and grandmother left Cuba for the United States during the Freedom Flights in the early 1960s. He wishes Republicans “good luck” with trying to paint him as a Socialist, saying, “My family fled that.”
Frost has faced discrimination as an Afro Latino, recalling the “racial hate” he received while protesting the killing of George Floyd in 2020, an experience he described as “traumatic.” He quit his job as an organizer to run for Congress, which he acknowledged “has been very difficult both financially and emotionally.” At night, Frost drives for Uber, his yellow Kia Soul serving as a conduit that provides him a source of income and a place to quickly convince a rider to vote for him. He may continue the gig after he is in office.
“I think those experiences give me an insight that maybe, you know, some other folks have not had, especially White folks, you know, in Congress,” he told The Washington Post.
The school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., sparked his activist spirit at 15. It motivated him to protest and organize against gun violence as shootings continued across the country, including at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, which is now in his district. He took online college classes while working for the ACLU, helping mobilize Florida voters to pass two amendments that would raise the minimum wage to $15 and restore voting rights to former convicted felons. Frost is about a year shy of graduating college, which he intends to do.
Frost was working as a national organizer for March for Our Lives, the gun violence prevention group created by students who survived the high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., when activists nudged him to consider running for office as rumors swirled Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) would campaign for the Senate. Kevin Lata, his campaign manager, said Frost spoke with about 200 union, community and faith leaders about a possible candidacy.
But it took reconnecting with his birth mother in June 2021 to fully convince him to run. It was then that he learned of the extreme hardships she experienced without any path to help break the cycle of violence, poverty and drugs she often found herself in. It pushed him to realize he could help those suffering like her in Congress, but he often reminds people he is “not a savior” for everyone’s top issue. “One dude from Orlando is not going to fix that,” he said.
Frost officially launched in campaign in August 2021 at the age of 24, before he was constitutionally eligible to hold office. Besides running to end gun violence, Frost hopes to help enact Medicare-for-all, pass more climate reforms and provide more housing, among other issues. He campaigned on redefining what it means to be a politician, telling those in his community that he would remain close to the community while fighting to ensure justice for all.
An ‘unusual’ 25-year-old candidate
It was Frost’s life story and desire to give back that caught the eyes of several high-profile liberals including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who all cited his activist roots in the gun violence space as a necessary addition to the House.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), a fellow organizer who is only 10 years Frost’s senior and also Black, followed Frost on Twitter before seeing him on MSNBC a month after launching his campaign. He was struck by Frost’s message and poised delivery, which he said is “really unusual for a 25-year-old.”
“His political sophistication, maturity and commitment to values, it eclipses those of many of his future colleagues, young and old,” Jones said. “I am impressed with how he has navigated many of the pitfalls that some of my progressive colleagues succumb to, and his ambition to be not just a rank and file member of our caucus but a leader among us.”
Frost said Jones was the first sitting member of Congress to contact and give him advice. Over the past year, they have spoken often on a daily basis. Jones has counseled Frost on how to navigate the House Democratic caucus and the importance of establishing a hard-working staff who will not be afraid to disagree with him.
Jones’s recent reelection loss means he will not be able to mentor Frost within the halls of Congress, something both friends regret. But Frost said he is already building a close relationship with other Democrats running for office.
He talks often with Greg Casar, who likely will be elected to represent a new Democratic district in Texas. Delia Ramirez, who is running in a district north of Chicago, stopped by to see Frost on his primary election day while she was vacationing here. The political community Frost is building is also helping him sort out what kind of politician he would like to be. But for now, he is not making promises.
“I think one of the reasons there is so much voter apathy is because for generations we have had politicians tell us, ‘If you vote for me, everything will be okay,’” he said. “I feel like the only thing representatives can really promise to their people is what they believe in and what they will fight for, and the way in which they are going to govern in their community. But to tell people, to promise results, I think, is disingenuous.”
Being a liberal member of Gen Z often brings with it some stereotypes, including the presumption Frost will likely join “The Squad,” a group of Millennial liberal lawmakers who have remained unapologetically outspoken against Democratic leadership.
But Frost skirted questions about whether he sees himself joining the group, noting “there is not one way to do everything,” though he admired Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) sitting on the House steps to successfully prevent an eviction moratorium from lapsing. “I’m not saying I’m going to be doing sit-ins every week in Congress. I’m not saying that. But there is a time and place for everything,” he said.
Though he still has to win the general election, where he also plans to play a major role in turning out voters to defeat Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Frost sees himself influencing the party by helping recruit young members like him to run for national office. After what he candidly described as “the hardest year of my life,” Frost wants to make it known how difficult it is for someone without the financial means to run for office.
“I don’t want someone to hop into this and end up with no resources and in a worse position because they just wanted to help their community,” he said. Those trials, however, have helped him understand the tough decision-making many Americans are facing in an unreliable economy. “So maybe it is also important for people to go through it,” he said about future lawmakers.
In the meantime, Frost is preoccupied with questions many face when they are on the cusp of starting a new job. Like how to impress colleagues on his first day. During a recent meeting with House Democratic chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and a member of his staff, Frost noticed both were wearing dress shoes with a sneaker sole, a popular style on Capitol Hill that alleviates standing hours on hard marble floors while also looking professional.
“I have to get some,” Frost decided, before debating whether to just buy comfortable inserts for his dress shoes. “I’m young. I feel like if I show up there in tennis shoes, there is going to be some talk of, ‘Oh the Gen Z-er, disrespecting the decorum of Congress,’” Frost said with a laugh. “I think only time will tell how my presence on the Hill and me being a member of Gen Z is different.” | 2022-09-03T15:16:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maxwell Frost could become the first Gen Z member of Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/03/maxwell-frost-congress-generation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/03/maxwell-frost-congress-generation/ |
Live updates New effort to launch Artemis I is encountering problems with fuel leaks
Launch team recommends a ‘no-go’ for launch of NASA’s SLS rocket
NASA struggling with a hydrogen leak
How NASA determines what days SLS can launch
NASA aims for a second attempt to launch its next-generation moon rocket, five days after a pair of technical issues delayed the initial launch. (Video: The Washington Post)
NASA encountered new problems Saturday with its second attempt to launch its massive Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the moon. Engineers have started, then paused, then restarted the fueling of liquid hyrdrogen to the rocket after a leak developed.
The launch, initially scheduled for last Monday, is a key milestone in the space agency’s attempt to return astronauts to the moon under its Artemis program. If Saturday’s launch attempt succeeds, the rocket will send the Orion spacecraft in orbit around the moon.
“The team is doing what it can to preserve this launch window,” NASA commentator Darrol Nail said.
NASA’s SLS rocket launch team recommended a “no-go” for launch after engineers have been unable to fix a persistent hydrogen leak. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the flight director, is evaluating the recommendation but for now has only paused the fueling process. The launch countdown is holding, awaiting a final decision on whether to scrub today’s launch.
If the rocket does not launch today, NASA has said it could possibly try again after 48 hours. But if it doesn’t launch by Tuesday, the next launch window wouldn’t open until between Sept. 19 and Oct. 4.
NASA is once again struggling with a hydrogen leak as it works to fuel its massive Space Launch System rocket. Early this morning, the NASA launch director called a “go” for propellant loading, and NASA engineers were able to successfully start running liquid oxygen from storage tanks on the ground into the rocket’s fuel tanks.
They also started loading the liquid hydrogen, but at about 7:15 a.m. Eastern, engineers noticed there was a leak. They paused fueling the liquid hydrogen, which is kept at minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit, and attempted to warm the lines, a fix, they hoped, that would strengthen the seal. But when they started to reflow the hydrogen, they noticed another leak.
Unlike recent SpaceX launches to the International Space Station, which had to go at a precise time to rendezvous with the ISS, Saturday’s launch window allows the rocket to be launched at anytime in a two-hour window that begins at 2:17 p.m.
If the rocket does not launch today, NASA has said it could possibly try again after 48 hours. But if it doesn’t launch by the Sept. 6, the next launch window would be between Sept. 19 and Oct. 4.
But NASA officials acknowledge there could be problems meeting that second launch window. That’s because the rocket will need to be rolled back into its assembly building so that engineers can reset its flight termination system, the self-destruct feature that would destroy the vehicle if it veers wildly off course. The reset is required by the U.S. Space Force to make sure the system is certified to work properly.
The Artemis program is NASA’s flagship deep-space human exploration program, meant to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since the last of the Apollo missions in 1972. Created under the Trump administration and carried on by President Biden, it seeks to develop a permanent presence on and around the moon.
Saturday’s flight, known as Artemis I, is the first in a series of test missions. It would send the Orion crew capsule in orbit around the moon for about six weeks without any astronauts on board. The next flight, Artemis II, scheduled for some time in 2024, would send astronauts into lunar orbit but not to the surface of the moon. A lunar landing, Artemis III, could come in 2025 or 2026, if all goes according to plan. | 2022-09-03T15:17:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Artemis I prepares to launch after engine issue delay: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/03/artemis-launch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/03/artemis-launch/ |
Robert Seldin of Highland Square Holdings peers at the removable roof panel in the high-ceilinged Building 5 of the Skyline development in Baileys Crossroads. Could those features have been for missiles? (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
As Robert Seldin showed Answer Man around the top floor of a vacant office building in Baileys Crossroads, a thought came to mind: What this place needs is some henchmen.
Henchmen, henchwomen, henchpeople, minions … Call them what you will, 5111 Leesburg Pike could use dozens of jump-suited underlings scurrying around as the roof slides back and a droning voice counts down ominously.
“It’s an interesting artifact,” Seldin said of the curious space, the cavernous mechanical penthouse of a 1983 building whose original tenants included defense contractors. “It was built in the late stages of the Cold War.”
Seldin is the CEO of Highland Square Holdings, the developers who are transforming most of the office buildings of what’s called Skyline into live/work spaces. (More on that later.) As Seldin’s team inspected their new acquisition, they realized there were some oddities in what’s known as Building 5, a resolutely beige nine-story structure. The concrete floor of the mechanical penthouse — where the HVAC system lives — is nearly twice as thick as would be expected.
“It's designed to hold super-heavy things,” Seldin said.
The ceiling is high, too: 24 feet. And while most of the building’s roof is solid, there’s a large corrugated metal panel over one portion of the penthouse.
“This portion of the roof is very easy to remove,” Seldin said, suggesting that someone wanted to store things here that could be loaded in with a crane.
Those things would be heavy and, Seldin surmised, able to exit the building on their own. All this is why Seldin thinks 5111 Leesburg Pike was designed to accommodate surface-to-air missiles.
“This is the only building in the complex that has this feature,” he said.
Not that it ever actually held missiles. Seldin thinks the original request for proposal included the specifications just in case.
“The government always wants to give itself maximum flexibility,” he said. “It was a time when we were focused on preparedness.”
But were missiles ever really part of the plan? Robert Peck isn’t so sure. Peck served as a high-ranking official with the General Services Administration during the Clinton and Obama administrations and now works for architecture firm Gensler.
“In the Cold War, there were all sorts of weird things going on,” Peck said. But, as a policy, “the government tries to avoid putting huge amounts of extra money into a building it doesn’t own.”
And that applies to Building 5, which was developed and originally owned by the Charles E. Smith Companies. Those area buildings that do have missiles — such as the White House — are government-owned.
Peck thinks the site wouldn’t really work for missiles, anyway. It’s not that high. And you wouldn’t want to fire something like a Stinger through a hole in the ceiling of the enclosed penthouse because of the enormous back blast that would be produced.
At Answer Man’s request, Peck reached out to other GSA old-timers. None had any specific knowledge of a provision for missiles at Skyline.
Said Peck: “There is a possibility somebody wanted to mount some kind of a telescope or maybe some kind of surveillance equipment, if they wanted to look at something. Or secret computers. Those are the sorts of things that do happen in some government buildings.”
As fascinating as these quirky design features may be, what Seldin really wants to talk about is the future of Building 5 and of the concept of the office building in general.
“At its core, an office building is a machine for temporarily storing people and permanently storing information for processing,” he said. “Historically, you would need to go to the building to get the information you needed to do your job. Ever since 2007 — when the iPhone was introduced — most people can now carry in their pockets the sum total of knowledge from human history.”
Building technology, Seldin says, hasn't kept up with information technology. “We have currently a pretty deep schism between what people want to do and the places they're allowed to do it,” he said. “And so what we’ve been trying to do is eliminate that friction.”
That includes working with Fairfax County to change the zoning of the buildings so people can live in them, work in them and run businesses from them. The wide, open cubicle farm floors are being divided into individual apartments. The units are getting more electrical power than traditional apartments, Seldin said. Emergency generators will keep the juice going during an outage.
Similar work was done at the company’s first live/work development, Mission Lofts in Falls Church.
As for that strong-floored, high-ceilinged, possibly (but probably not) missile-ready space in the penthouse?
“We want to put a pool in here,” Seldin said.
Let’s hope the pool at least has sharks with lasers.
Questions, please
Thanks to Zan McKelway for turning Answer Man on to Skyline’s Building 5 and to Chris Barbuschak, archivist/librarian in the Fairfax Virginia Room, for research help. Send your questions about the D.C. area to answerman@washpost.com. | 2022-09-03T16:34:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This 1980s Baileys Crossroads office building has some curious features - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/skyline-buildings-baileys-crossroads/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/skyline-buildings-baileys-crossroads/ |
FILE - Movie theaters reopen after COVID-19 closures on March 5, 2021, in New York. For one day, Sept. 3, 2022, movie tickets will be just $3 in the vast majority of American theaters as part of a newly launched “National Cinema Day” to lure moviegoers during a quiet spell at the box office. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-09-03T16:47:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | On "National Cinema Day," movie tickets are just $3 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-national-cinema-day-movie-tickets-are-just-3/2022/09/03/eb4a1eae-2ba1-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-national-cinema-day-movie-tickets-are-just-3/2022/09/03/eb4a1eae-2ba1-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
There are two types of people in the region right now: Those who know it’s pawpaw season and those who’ve never heard of the fruit.
A pawpaw from Vargas's backyard. (Theresa Vargas /TWP)
If all goes as planned on Sunday, Niraj Ray will lead a group of strangers on a Washington-area hike in search of a fruit that has been called “secret” and “forgotten.”
If all goes as planned, that group will find the fruit resting under trees and dangling from branches, ripe and ready to be cut open.
If all goes as planned, the people in that group will get to taste a fruit that many in their lives don’t know exists.
If you’ve eaten pawpaws, then you know this truth about them: They are a sweet fruit made sweeter by the fact that many people don’t know about them. Some of the most interesting things in the Washington region exist in plain sight but go unseen. Pawpaws are one of them.
During this time of year, pawpaws burst from trees across the region. A person just needs to know where to look to find them and indulge in them. That’s where Ray comes in. The founder of Cultivate the City leads people on pawpaw foraging hikes every year during the short window they drop from trees — and, right now, they seem to be dropping more than usual.
Ray generally schedules two to three group foraging hikes each year, with the expectation that the first walk might not yield any ripe fruit. But this year has surprised him.
“Normally, on the first walk, people just see the fruit, and on the second walk, people get a ton of fruit,” he said. “This year, on the first walk, people loaded up.”
On Sunday, he expects them to load up again. He also decided a few days ago to schedule a third hike for Sept. 11.
“This is my favorite time of year,” Ray said. He described pawpaws as a “gateway” to get people engaged with foraging and urban agriculture. “It has everything we look for in a tropical fruit, and it grows right in our backyard.”
A fox, a mysterious death and the hidden wild side of Washington
If you’ve never heard of pawpaws, you’re far from alone. Mention them in casual conversation with colleagues or friends and you’ll likely get a “What?”
A few days ago on the D.C. Reddit page, a person posed this question: “Any ideas/insider tips on how to get pawpaws? I’d be willing to purchase them, but I’m also curious about trekking into the woods and looking for them myself. Where can I get more info? Thanks!”
One of the responses: “What in the world is a pawpaw?”
I’ve lived most of my adult life in the Washington region, and I hadn’t heard of pawpaws until my husband and I purchased a house in Northern Virginia several years ago. We discovered a handful of pawpaw trees in our backyard. Now, I hear about pawpaws daily during this time of year. My 9-year-old son has declared it his favorite fruit, and for the past few weeks, he has gone outside every morning to check our trees for ripe specimens. He has found more than ever.
My son describes the taste of pawpaws as “mango ice cream.” Others have characterized it as a mix between bananas and mango. A Washington Post headline in 2015 described them this way: “The best-tasting, biggest American fruit you probably haven’t tasted.”
That headline was followed by an excerpt from the book “Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit.” The piece describes the fruit as growing wild in 26 states and having “sustained Native Americans, European explorers, presidents and enslaved African Americans.” It says this of George Washington: “If Washington wasn’t already acquainted with pawpaws as a boy in Virginia, he certainly would have discovered the fruit on campaigns in the mountains of that state, as well as in Pennsylvania. Everywhere he went was — and remains — pawpaw country.”
I reached out to Ray, who used to work for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to learn more about pawpaws. He noted that different types hold names that should sound familiar to people in the region. The name of some pawpaw varieties: Potomac, Shenandoah and Rappahannock.
“They are named after rivers in our area,” he said. “You can choose the name of a river around here and I guarantee you there is a pawpaw named after it.”
He said the thing that naturally keeps people away from wild pawpaws — the way they look when ripe — make them the perfect foraging fruit to teach people about.
“We want to teach people that appearance is just a small part of the value of fruit,” he said. He pointed to passion fruit, which he grows. “It’s all shriveled and doesn’t look good, but that’s when you open it up and it’s the sweetest inside. A good pawpaw should look similar to a banana that has sat on the counter too long. When it looks like what we would think is overripe, that’s when it’s perfect to eat.”
Why these empanadas offer some hope amid the bleak unemployment numbers
Ray said he learned about pawpaws after moving to the Washington region. He and his now-wife first went foraging for them on Roosevelt Island in 2015. It was one of their first dates.
“We found one pawpaw, and it was the size of a small orange,” he recalled. “And I was so ecstatically happy.”
He said he went searching for them again the next year and every year after that. Once he started finding more than his family could eat, he started organizing the group hikes. He usually posts the sign-up for the first hike in January and the slots fill by May. Most of the people who sign up, he said, don’t know much about pawpaws.
“It’s people who have tasted the fruit once or they’ve heard of it,” he said. “It’s couples, families, groups of friends. We had a bachelorette party once.”
The group that went last weekend consisted of about 30 people, and about as many are expected to show up this weekend.
If all goes as planned, they will find pawpaws that are as small as pebbles and as large as mangoes.
If all goes as planned, they will find pawpaws in an array of flavors, because wild ones vary in sweetness and texture.
If all goes as planned, they won’t need Ray to show them where to find pawpaws next year. They will already know.
A D.C. therapist waits (and waits) on mail containing at least $45,000
Serena Williams became a champion again — for working moms | 2022-09-03T18:01:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The secret fruit that makes this time of year in Washington so sweet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/pawpaws-forgotten-fruit-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/pawpaws-forgotten-fruit-washington/ |
George Washington University student Tuana Gitonga rallies outside the White House. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Borrowers began inquiring about refunds after President Biden said he would cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt, and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, for people who earn less than $125,000 per year, or less than $250,000 for married couples. Among the queries: What if they paid off their loans during the pandemic? Would they still qualify for cancellation? How would that even work?
Like this: Say you paid off the $8,000 balance on your loan during the pandemic. You can request a refund of that money and then apply for debt relief to clear the ledger. That way, you get to keep your $8,000 and still have your loans canceled. That is if you meet the eligibility criteria.
Who is eligible for the new plan to cancel $10,000 in student debt?
While most of the nearly 42 million people covered by the pause have not made payments since its inception, about 9 million borrowers in good standing kept sending money, according to the Education Department. Borrowers have one year to apply for a refund. The agency has confirmed that eligible people who paid off some or all of their debt in the last two and a half years could still qualify for cancellation if they meet the income threshold.
Calculate how much of your student loan debt could be forgiven
Last Friday, the Coles called Gray’s servicer who said it would take six to 12 weeks to process the request and return $10,000 of the money they paid toward his debt. “It was a little shocking at first, especially how easy it was,” said Gray, an Army chaplain. “The woman just pulled up the account and said, ‘You are now cleared for the 10 grand to come back your way.’ We will just try to pay it forward the best way we can with our community.” | 2022-09-03T18:18:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Student loan borrowers seek refunds of payments made during pause - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/03/student-loan-payment-refunds-forgiveness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/03/student-loan-payment-refunds-forgiveness/ |
Two things can be true: CFP expansion is good and all about the money
The College Football Playoff will soon include 12 teams, perhaps as early as 2024. (Darron Cummings/AP)
Friday’s announcement that the College Football Playoff will expand from four teams to 12 teams by no later than 2026 was about as surprising as September following August on the calendar.
Expansion was going to happen sooner or later — later as it turned out — not because anyone in charge was concerned about the fairness of the four-team playoff or because it was the right thing to do. Or because of ANY concern for what might be best for the players.
In the end, as always, the presidents and their henchpeople simply figured out that there was much too much money on the table to not expand. Say the word, “billions,” to any college president and you will have that person’s attention instantly.
And so, at some point in the next few years, we will get a 12-team playoff: four first-round byes; four first-round games at home sites; quarterfinals and semifinals at bowl sites and the championship game to the highest bidder.
For the record, this is the right thing to do and should have been done when the playoff was first created. The 11-member board of managers — made up of presidents and chancellors — formally voted unanimously Friday to instruct the conference commissioners to change the format from four teams to 12 teams no later than 2026 but perhaps as early as 2024. Bet on the earlier date.
As you might expect, the quotes coming out of this announcement are comical. The best one might have come from Mark Keenum, Mississippi State president and chairman of the board of managers.
“We’re not naive to understand that there’s additional revenue by having an expanded playoff,” he said, presumably with a straight face. “But I can tell you from being part of the discussions from the very beginning, what motivated the presidents and me as well was that we wanted to have an opportunity for more participation of teams in our nation’s national championship tournament. Having only four teams, we felt like that’s not fair to our student-athletes from a participation standpoint …
“We do recognize the additional revenues that will be available, but that hasn’t been the driving force behind this ultimate decision. It has not been.”
Keenum should have added, “I’ll be here all week. Try the veal and tip your waiters.”
Money wasn’t the driving force behind the decision? Seriously? Money is the ONLY driving force behind the decisions being made in college athletics nowadays. Did Oklahoma and Texas decide to jump to the SEC because their leadership wanted their “student-athletes” to have the chance to visit Tuscaloosa or Starkville? Did UCLA and USC decide to join the Big Ten to make November trips to Columbus or Ann Arbor — or, for that matter, Piscataway or College Park?
Participation of the “student-athletes?” This just now occurred to the presidents?
For years, academics defended the archaic bowl system on the grounds that they didn’t want to ask the “student-athletes,” to extend their seasons or to play too many games. Then the 11-game regular season schedule became a 12-game regular season schedule. Then conference championships became a 13th game and making the College Football Playoff ensured teams competing for the title would play up to 15.
Now, potentially, teams might play 17 — if the conference championship games don’t go away. That’s the same number of regular season games now being played in the NFL.
What really drove this decision was the ACC, the Big 12 and the Pac-12 realizing they’re in serious jeopardy of losing any remaining relevance. The Pac-12 and Big 12 had already taken financial body blows with the impending departures of USC, UCLA, Texas and Oklahoma. The ACC had to be living in fear that the SEC might poach Clemson — the only school in the conference that matters nationally since the downfalls of once-mighty Florida State and Miami.
If Clemson were to leave for (most likely) the SEC and take one of those fallen powers with it, the ACC would spend the rest of eternity sending teams to the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. The mayonnaise bath the winning coach receives would have felt entirely appropriate for the league’s football profile.
Now, with six conference champions guaranteed a slot among the 12 teams in the new system, the three wounded power leagues can at least lay claim to being part of the new tournament. So too, in all likelihood, can Notre Dame, since TV will want the Irish in the tournament as long as they field a team.
As for the little guys — the so-called Group of Five — they will now get at least one bid every year. That’s exactly the same number of total bids they received in the first eight years of the four-team event. Nothing beyond that is guaranteed. As with the basketball committee, you can bet that the third- and fourth-place teams from the power conferences will receive priority over the No. 2 team from the Group of Five.
It took a perfect storm — and a win at Notre Dame — to get a 13-0 Cincinnati team into last year’s playoff. Don’t expect too many storms like that to get a second team in. It’s worth noting that, having met its requirement to have at least one Group of Five team among the “New Year’s Six Bowls,” by giving Cincinnati a playoff spot, no other one was asked to the four non-playoff major bowls.
You can also bet that the Group of Five team will NOT be one of the four seeded teams that gets a bye and, depending on the rules, might very well play on the road in the first round. The only way that might not happen is if a decision is made that the two conference champions who don’t receive byes get to host first round games.
This is a good thing for college football. It will NOT, as some apologists for systems both current and past, make the regular season less important. In fact, the opposite will be true. The top teams will scramble for a first-round bye; everyone else will want desperately to play at home, and the rest will be, to use a beloved basketball tournament term, bubble teams.
The money coming from TV will be mind-boggling. ESPN certainly has right-of-first refusal until its current contract runs out after the 2025 season. After that? The presidents can probably sit back and enjoy a bidding war that will run into the billions since eleven games will be needed to decide a national champion instead of three.
Oh, in case you were worried, the Rose Bowl will still be connected to the Big Ten and the Pac-12. And so, the possibility of a USC-Oregon Rose Bowl still exists. Or perhaps UCLA-Stanford. Classic rivalries.
It’s comforting to know that some traditions remain intact. Because, after all, it’s all about those “student-athletes,” not the money. Just ask the presidents. | 2022-09-03T18:18:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College Football Playoff expansion is both good and only about money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/college-football-playoff-expansion-right-thing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/college-football-playoff-expansion-right-thing/ |
Another update for Dulles
International flights arrive at Dulles International Airport on Nov. 8. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
It was disappointing that the Aug. 28 Metro article about the modernization of Dulles International Airport, “After 60 years, Dulles Airport is laying the groundwork for a makeover,” did not mention getting rid of the archaic, cumbersome and slow system used to transport arriving international travelers from the plane to customs control.
After a long flight, the passengers are packed like sardines into the “people movers,” which don’t move until they are full. Perhaps this was an innovative method when the airport was built, but, with the increased volume of travelers, it is now inefficient and should be eliminated as it was for the domestic travelers.
Alvaro A. Sanchez, Colesville
The Aug. 28 Metro article “After 60 years, Dulles Airport is laying the groundwork for a makeover” reported on recent and coming changes at Dulles International Airport. Before the expansion of Metro’s Silver Line was approved, its opponents (including me) noted the absurdity of its premise. There was no way that sufficient numbers of air passengers were going to drag their luggage through the Silver Line, and there was no reason to spend billions on that line rather than just ensuring adequate bus service for airport workers. The boondoggle to Dulles has always been a sinkhole that required massive subsidies for construction and will require massive operating subsidies forever.
Finally, someone has admitted what every knowledgeable observer has always known. The article quoted airport director Richard Golinowski as saying, “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. ... 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.”
We cannot compete when we throw billions into wasteful vanity projects. Sadly, the Silver Line is not the only ongoing boondoggle sapping our resources.
Ronald Henry, Vienna | 2022-09-03T19:41:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Another update for Dulles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/another-update-dulles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/another-update-dulles/ |
Gorbachev believed the world was worth saving
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. (Margaret Thomas/The Washington Post)
Regarding the Aug. 31 front-page obituary for Mikhail Gorbachev, “Soviet reformer oversaw crumbling of an empire”:
I remember, after the deaths of the brutal Leonid Brezhnev and the forgettable Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, that we weren’t really sure what to expect from Mr. Gorbachev. He might not have realized it himself in the beginning, but he, probably more than anyone else (including the sainted Ronald Reagan), was responsible for the end of the Cold War. He adapted, he reasoned, he understood what was at stake for the world.
It’s terrifying how quickly the reforms he put in place have been wiped out by the fascist Russian President Vladimir Putin. History will remember Mr. Gorbachev as someone who changed the course of the world for the better, because he believed that the world was worth saving — unlike the current occupant of the Kremlin.
Ken Rudin, North Potomac | 2022-09-03T19:41:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Gorbachev believed the world was worth saving - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/gorbachev-believed-world-was-worth-saving/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/gorbachev-believed-world-was-worth-saving/ |
Inaction on future pandemics is a decision
Montgomery County, Md., residents who have an appointment wait in line April 1, 2021, at a mass vaccination site at Montgomery College Germantown Campus in Germantown. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Regarding the Aug. 28 editorial “The coming storm”:
Another pandemic is not just a threat; it is an inevitability. Pandemics are emerging with greater frequency now than at any period in recorded history. Another uncomfortable reality: We were better prepared for the coronavirus than we are for other viral threats. Because severe acute respiratory syndrome and several other deadly coronaviruses preceded this one, the foundational research and development needed for the rapid development of coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccines were in place when the virus surfaced. There are critical gaps in the research and development around other viral families, leaving us vulnerable to an even greater pandemic crisis than with the coronavirus.
The National Institutes of Health developed a pandemic preparedness research and development plan that takes a strategic approach to mitigating the risk across the viral families most likely to breed pandemics. Covid-19 has taken nearly 6.5 million lives across the globe. Knowing we are even less prepared for the next pandemic, why aren’t we funding the NIH plan? Inaction is a decision. In this case, a deadly one.
Eleanor Dehoney, Arlington
The writer is vice president of policy and advocacy for Research!America.
“The ambitious, can-do spirit ... is almost completely absent.” “What’s needed is a sustained, wide-ranging transformation in how the United States handles public health.” “We have the raw material: scientific knowledge, innovation and wealth. But we need better policies, programs and practices to marshal these assets.”
These statements — from the Aug. 28 editorial “The coming storm,” about the United States’ need to improve its public health system — would be just as apt in describing the political indifference regarding the festering but less-noticed pandemic that has been plaguing the nation for many decades: the lack of a health insurance system that would give everyone here affordable health care.
Though covid-19 kills about 400 of us daily (and more than 1 million Americans to date), so too does the chronic pandemic of a broken health insurance system, where, pre-coronavirus, the death toll from those who could not afford timely medical care was 186 each day — nearly 68,000 a year.
A dysfunctional political system might have faltered in its response to the sudden appearance of the coronavirus pandemic, but for decades it has failed miserably in attaining what every other advanced nation has already accomplished: affordable care for everyone.
There is only one program before Congress (and supported by 7 in 10 voters) that would meet that goal: single payer Medicare-for-all. It’s past time for our politicians to enact it — or, if possible, to come up with a better plan that will still provide truly affordable care for everyone.
Jay D. Brock, Fredericksburg, Va. | 2022-09-03T19:41:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Inaction on future pandemics is a decision - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/inaction-future-pandemics-is-decision/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/03/inaction-future-pandemics-is-decision/ |
Kazuo Inamori in Tokyo in 2010. (Koji Sasahara/AP)
Mr. Inamori was often placed alongside Sony’s Akio Morita and vehicle-maker Soichiro Honda as the vanguards of Japan’s industrial rebound after World War II to become one of the world’s top economies.
Kyocera, founded by Mr. Inamori in 1959 with the equivalent of $10,000 and a line of credit, grew into a dominant player in the global semiconductor market, making precision ceramics that are key components in computers and other devices since they resist heat and do not conduct electricity.
In 1990s, Japan’s industrialists helped steer country from recession
In Japan’s inflexible corporate milieu, Mr. Inamori was a singular personality and developed a reputation as something of a Zen master of capitalism.
He set himself apart with a management style that mixed Japan’s work ethic with concepts of higher callings and self-fulfillment, often taken from Mr. Inamori’s own writings. It was lampooned by some as cultish “Inamorism.” Mr. Inamori never wavered in his philosophy of corporate karma: Give excellence and empathy and the universe will smile back on you.
“Most industrialists don’t dream, and most dreamers don’t manufacture things, so I am very lucky,” Mr. Inamori was quoted as saying in “The Next Century,” David Halberstam’s 1991 book.
Mr. Inamori retired in 1997 to dedicate himself to reflection and study in the Buddhist priesthood, shaving his head and keeping to a vegetarian diet. He returned to the boardroom in 2010 at age 77 after Japan’s government asked him to take the helm of the ailing national carrier Japan Airlines (JAL) as it filed for bankruptcy protection. A restructured JAL emerged from bankruptcy in March 2011, aided by state bailouts.
In his signature style, Mr. Inamori noted the painful process of layoffs and pay cuts as the airline clawed its way back, but he framed the ultimate success as aided by a greater power.
“While this not the law of cause and effect as such,” he wrote in an essay posted on the Kyocera website, “I cannot help but think we received a helping hand from a source of universal compassion. I doubt whether such a miraculous recovery and transformation could have been achieved without ‘Divine intervention.’ ”
Kazuo Inamori was born Jan. 30, 1932, in Kagoshima on Japan’s southern Kyushu Island. The printing business of Mr. Inamori’s father offered a comfortable living. But Mr. Inamori said his home was firebombed during World War II, forcing the family into a hardscrabble existence until the war’s end.
He earned a degree in chemical engineering at Kagoshima University in 1955 and became a researcher at a ceramics company in Kyoto. Mr. Inamori once lived in the factory during a workers’ strike — being denounced by unions as “a running dog for capitalism” — to finish a project that he felt was critical for the company’s survival. He said he felt angered when his bosses wanted to give him extra pay for his loyalty.
He broke from the company after he was told he would not advance because he had not attended a more prestigious university. Kyocera (a combination of Kyoto and ceramics) used Mr. Inamori’s techniques developed for ceramic insulators for televisions, trying to catch the wave of surging sales in the United States and elsewhere.
Analysis: Japan’s blurred vision for the future of capitalism
Kyocera’s first U.S. customer was Fairchild Semiconductor, which placed orders for silicon transistor components, according to an oral history Mr. Inamori gave to the Science History Institute in 2010. IBM then placed a large order. Kyocera later diversified into products such as photovoltaic cells, electronics and bioceramics, used for repairing or replacing damaged bone.
In 1962, Mr. Inamori made his first visit to the United States. His personal budget was so tight that, decades later, he still remembered the exact prices of a steak dinner at Tad’s in Times Square: $1.19 and $1.49 with salad. He toured some U.S. ceramics makers but soon realized that Kyocera was crafting higher-quality products.
“All he would talk about when we were together was his belief in what a company should be, what its obligations were,” Richard Nagai, who worked for a New York-based Japanese trading company and served as Mr. Inamori’s guide, recalled in an interview for Halberstam’s book. “I’m not with an engineer, I finally decided. I’m with some kind of missionary.”
During Kyocera’s early years, Mr. Inamori effectively lived at the factory. He gained the nickname “Mr. A.M.” for being on the floor until after midnight and back again at dawn. He joined his employees in morning exercises and began compiling writings that would become an anthology of his views on business and its obligations.
Before being called back to help rescue Japan Airlines, Mr. Inamori had pulled away from the public eye — living a simple life of meditation and chores in a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto. | 2022-09-03T19:46:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kazuo Inamori, Japanese mogul who became Buddhist monk, dies at 90 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/03/inamori-japan-business-buddhist-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/03/inamori-japan-business-buddhist-dies/ |
Maryland running back Roman Hemby (24) had 114 yards rushing and two touchdowns in a win over Buffalo on Saturday. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The Maryland Terrapins entered this season with lofty expectations for what their offense could become, but the unit started the opener against Buffalo with a serviceable, not spectacular, showing. And then Roman Hemby saw an opening: A gaping hole created by his offensive line, 70 yards of turf in front of him and legs that could speed past the defender futility chasing, first to his right and then from behind.
That touchdown by the redshirt freshman offered a spark in an at times lackluster 31-10 win over the Bulls, and it fueled a career-best showing for the young running back that helped quell concerns about his position group.
The Terrapins had an inconsistent running game last season as they primarily leaned on the arm of quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa. This year’s offense — with stability at quarterback, explosive receivers and a veteran offensive line — entered the 2022 campaign with a group of mostly unproven running backs as the team’s most significant question on that side of the ball. But Saturday in College Park, Tagovailoa didn’t generate fireworks in the passing game. Maryland’s third-year starting quarterback recorded 290 passing yards but also had a few miscues, including an interception when he overthrew a receiver.
Hemby, as he leaped into the air with a teammate celebrating his second touchdown of the afternoon, proved he could be a resounding answer — for this game that needed a burst of energy and for the Maryland season that needs a reliable rushing attack.
With 114 yards on the ground, Hemby had the brightest day among the Terps. His big touchdown run just after the second half began marked the longest rush by a Terp since 2019. Only five other Maryland players had rushed for at least 100 yards in a game since Locksley took over the program in 2019, and Hemby has much of his career still ahead.
Hemby announced his arrival as the Terps’ new starter with a 33-yard touchdown run on Maryland's first offensive drive. He stormed throw a hole in the offensive line, escaped a defender and scurried into the end zone — an impressive run until his speedy second score stole the headlines.
Fellow running back Antwain Littleton II quickly joined Hemby in the spotlight. On his first carry of the season, the 235-pound redshirt freshman powered up the middle for a 21-yard gain — capitalizing on Mosiah Nasili-Kite’s third-down sack and Tarheeb Still’s 17-yard punt return that handed the Terps excellent field position. Littleton fell short of the goal line but on the next play, he punched the ball into the end zone.
Early in the fourth quarter — after Corey Dyches’s reception, initially ruled a touchdown, was called back to the one-yard line — Littleton showcased his force again with another score. Fueled by Littleton and Hemby, the Terps mustered 5.7 yards per carry.
The passing attack flashed its ability, too, with Rakim Jarrett opening what could become a standout campaign with a 110-yard showing. Tagovailoa, even amid an up-and-down showing, completed 24 of 34 passes and led an offense that generated 446 yards and had nine Terps catch passes.
Behind Jarrett, Dontay Demus Jr. and Jeshaun Jones made their much-anticipated returns from major knee injuries. Demus only notched 23 receiving yards, but his presence on the field alone is enough to spark optimism.
Jones finished the day with 70 receiving yards. He had only appeared in 10 games since his debut season in 2018. He tore his ACL in the lead-up to the 2019 campaign, returned for the shortened 2020 season, and then tore his other ACL in the sixth game of last season. Now in his fifth year in College Park, perpetually fighting for playing time in a crowded room of talented wide receivers, he has an opportunity to shine.
Maryland’s defense held Buffalo scoreless until Al-Jay Henderson picked up a rushing touchdown late in the second quarter, and the Terps allowed just 3.7 yards per play. Cornerback Jakorian Bennett had a strong showing with five pass breakups and five tackles. The improvement of Maryland’s defense — and how it fares against tougher opposition — will determine how far this team can go as it aims to build off a 7-6 finish in 2021.
The Bulls missed a 41-yard field goal in the first quarter and the Maryland defense delivered a fourth-down stop just inside the 20-yard line during the second quarter, which helped the Terps maintain their distance until Hemby unleashed the long score that lifted Maryland to a 24-7 lead.
The opener served as an introduction of sorts for a handful Terps: Linebacker Jaishawn Barham, a highly touted freshman from St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, earned a start in his college debut, and fellow freshman Octavian Smith Jr., a receiver, returned a late kickoff 41 yards. Chad Ryland, a transfer from Eastern Michigan, made a 45-yard field goal and provided reason to believe in Maryland’s kicking game. And then there’s the pair of young running backs, who rose above the slew of veterans to become the highlight of the day. | 2022-09-03T20:03:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland's young running backs shine in win over Buffalo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/maryland-football-beats-buffalo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/maryland-football-beats-buffalo/ |
Navy fumbles away opener in loss to FCS Delaware
Navy quarterback Tai Lavatai had a long day in a loss to Delaware on Saturday. (Nick Wass/AP)
Navy quarterback Tai Lavatai gathered the snap on the first play of the season from scrimmage and attempted to place the football in the belly of fullback Anton Hall Jr., anticipating a clean exchange in the Midshipmen’s opener against Delaware on Saturday afternoon.
Except the execution was anything but flawless. Neither player was able to control the ball at the mesh point, and it wound up on the turf at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, where the upset-minded Blue Hens recovered at the Navy 21.
One play later, following a defensive pass interference penalty, the Midshipmen yielded a touchdown and never recovered, reeling amid a stalled, turnover-prone triple option that devolved into a one-dimensional rushing attack in a 14-7 loss that left Coach Ken Niumatalolo searching for an explanation.
“That can’t happen,” the winningest coach in program history said. “We start the day off every day, ball security, then we go straight into our mesh stuff. I mean stuff we’ve done for 30 years and been the same process, mesh, perimeter, so those are things our guys can do in their sleep. To have that is just unconscionable.”
The Midshipmen lost three fumbles, all within the first 18 minutes, and turned the ball over three times on downs in their first loss to a Football Championship Subdivision opponent since 2007, also against Delaware. They amassed just 184 yards rushing and averaged 2.9 yards per carry.
Last year over the final eight games Navy committed two turnovers combined, underscoring Saturday’s uncharacteristically sloppy play on offense that doomed Navy to dropping a third straight opener. It also lost just five fumbles in all of 2021.
“We just didn’t have the right attitude today about moving guys off the ball,” said Navy starting right tackle Kip Frankland, one of three team captains. “You practice every day, but you just have to come out in the game and do it. The coaches do a great job of preparing us for the game, and then we didn’t execute on offense.”
Lavatai, a junior, finished with 34 yards on 18 carries and completed 5 of 13 passes for 135 yards. The underwhelming performance came after Niumatalolo had praised the second-year starter for his development at the end of last season and during the most recent fall camp.
His long run was for 14 yards, and Lavatai was indecisive at times on pitches, including once delivering the ball behind the intended slot back on a play around the right side. Lavatai’s hesitancy to draw defenders to him before pitching at the last possible moment compelled Navy to run primarily dives in the second half.
The shift in strategy worked during the Midshipmen’s lone scoring drive late in the third quarter. Reserve fullback Daba Fofana, replacing Hall for good in the second half, had 28 yards on five carries, and Lavatai capped the 56-yard march with a two-yard leap to break the goal-line plane to trim the deficit to 14-7.
The Midshipmen thereafter went three plays and punt, managed two yards on fourth and three and punted on fourth and eight. During their final possession Lavatai threw incomplete on fourth and four from the Delaware 9, with the pass intended for slot back Maquel Haywood in the back of the end zone.
“When you can’t get your triple and some of that stuff going, if you’re worried about the mesh, then you’re going to elements where it’s not always you,” Niumatalolo said. “I mean we had to get out of character.”
The defense, despite remaining on the field for lengthy stretches and being handed short fields, rose up for 12 tackles for loss, the most for Navy since it also recorded a dozen Oct. 22, 2005, against Rice. The Midshipmen added five sacks for their most since 2019.
One of the few defensive breakdowns came when free safety Rayuan Lane III allowed Blue Hens wide receiver Chandler Harvin to get behind him on first and 10 from the Delaware 49. Quarterback Nolan Henderson delivered a strike, and Harvin scored the decisive touchdown for a 14-0 lead with 4:30 to play in the third quarter.
The Midshipmen weren’t helped earlier in the series when officials assessed linebacker Colin Ramos with roughing the passer on second down and nine. Ramos nonetheless finished with a career-high nine tackles, including six in the first half.
Midway through the second quarter Ramos, a starting sophomore on the weak side, dropped Henderson for a four-yard loss on fourth and goal from the 2 to keep the score 7-0.
“I’m never going to hang my head and complain about having to go on the field,” said senior striker John Marshall, who played high school football at Gonzaga in the District. “I play defense. I like playing defense. If there’s an opportunity for me to go on the field and play defense I’m going to be excited about that, definitely no fingers to point. Defense made a couple crucial mistakes.” | 2022-09-03T22:31:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy fumbles away opener in loss to FCS Delaware - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/navy-football-loses-delaware/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/03/navy-football-loses-delaware/ |
Palestinian workers at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank. (Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)
TEL AVIV — Foreign passport holders in the West Bank will be required to report their romantic relationships with Palestinians to Israeli authorities, according to new, hotly contested rules set to take effect on Monday.
The 97-page Israeli ordinance detailing the new restrictions requires foreign passport holders, including, in some cases, American Palestinian dual citizens, in a romantic relationship with a Palestinian resident of the West Bank to “inform” Israeli security authorities “in writing (at a special e-mail address) within 30 days of the relationship’s start.”
“The ‘starting date of the relationship’ shall be considered the day of the engagement ceremony, of the wedding, or of the start of cohabitation — whichever occurs first,” it said.
The new restrictions — which also ask applicants to declare if they have land or are inheriting land in the West Bank — would not apply to the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The territory’s two-tiered legal structure treats Jewish Israelis as citizens living under civilian rule while Palestinians are treated as combatants under military rule, subject to nighttime military raids, detention and bans on visiting their ancestral lands or accessing certain roads.
“One side of this is about control & isolation,” Salem Barahmeh, executive director of Rabet, the digital platform of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, wrote on Twitter Saturday. “The other is: if you can’t be together in Palestine then you will have leave & to do so elsewhere. It’s about driving as many people as they can outside of Palestine to maintain supremacy.”
Ahead of Biden visit, Israel launches biggest eviction of Palestinians in decades
Fadi Quran, campaign director for activist group Avaaz, tweeted that the new rules signal that in the occupied West Bank, “love is dangerous.”
Foreigners visiting the West Bank already face intensive screening. One Palestinian woman, who lives in Germany and is married to a German man, said she worries that the rules will make it even more difficult for her and her husband — and their future children — to visit her relatives in the West Bank. The woman spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid calling the attention of Israeli authorities to her case.
A spokeswoman from COGAT, Israel’s military agency responsible for coordinating with the Palestinians on civilian matters, declined to comment on the new restrictions, but said that a new version of the regulations would likely be published on Sunday.
Israel escalates surveillance of Palestinians with facial recognition program in West Bank
The ordinance describes the “purpose of the procedure” as a way to codify norms that have already been in place for years for foreign passport holders entering the occupied territory. The goal is to “define the levels of authority and the manner of processing for applications from foreigners who wish to enter the Judea and Samaria area through the international crossings, in accordance with policy and in coordination with the appropriate offices,” said the document, referring to the biblical name Israel uses for the West Bank.
Since first announced in February, implementation of the new restrictions has been delayed repeatedly by Israel’s High Court.
In June, HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization, along with 19 individuals, petitioned Israel’s High Court to halt the new rules, arguing that they set “extreme limitations on the duration of visas and visa extensions” that would impede foreigners’ ability to work or volunteer for Palestinian institutions for more than a few months, bar them from leaving the West Bank and returning during the visa period, and in some cases require people to remain abroad for a year after their visa expires before they can apply for another.
The rules would also “deny thousands of Palestinian families the ability to live together without interruption and lead a normal family life,” HaMoked said in a statement in June, as well as make it more difficult for foreign academics to work at Palestinian universities.
The new rules allow 100 professors and 150 students with foreign passports to stay in the West Bank — a substantial blow to Palestinian higher education institutions. They rely on academic collaborations and recruit hundreds of foreign passport-holding students every year. More than 350 European university students and staff studied or worked at Palestinian universities under the Erasmus program, an E.U. student exchange program, in 2020, up from just 51 five years earlier.
“With Israel itself benefitting greatly from Erasmus+, the Commission considers that it should facilitate and not hinder access of students to Palestinian universities,” said Gabriel. She added that E.U. officials have expressed their concerns to Israeli authorities “including at the highest levels.”
Sam Bahour, an American-Palestinian economist, cited Israel’s High Court rulings to delay the new rules’ implementation as proof of their illegitimacy.
He said he has been fielding daily phone calls from Palestinian emigres throughout the world worried that the new procedures could make future visits difficult or impossible. He said the new protocols would be so “absurd” that they would be “impossible to implement.”
But, he said, they have delivered a decades-old message from Israel to the Palestinians: “Stay away.” | 2022-09-03T22:53:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Israeli rules would require foreign passport holders to declare romantic relationships with Palestinians - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/west-bank-israel-rules-relationships-palestinians/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/03/west-bank-israel-rules-relationships-palestinians/ |
NEW YORK — Much like for so many other folks, Serena Williams' last match at the U.S. Open was must-see TV for players still in the tournament, so Jessica Pegula and Petra Kvitova tuned in from their hotel rooms the night before their victories led off Saturday’s schedule and set up a fourth-round showdown. | 2022-09-03T22:54:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena's gone, Open must go on: Kvitova, Pegula set rematch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/serenas-gone-open-must-go-on-kvitova-pegula-set-rematch/2022/09/03/0eeaef8c-2bd4-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/serenas-gone-open-must-go-on-kvitova-pegula-set-rematch/2022/09/03/0eeaef8c-2bd4-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html |
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