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Sports world honors Queen Elizabeth II with postponements, tributes
A minute of silence is held for Queen Elizabeth II during a Europa League match in Switzerland between Arsenal and FC Zurich. (Gian Ehrenzeller/Keystone via AP)
Postponements and moments of silence Thursday marked a widespread reaction in the sports world to the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
The PGA European Tour, rebranded as the DP World Tour, suspended first-round play in the London-area BMW PGA Championship through Friday. It did not immediately clarify when play would resume or whether the tournament’s 72-hole format would be altered. Thirty of the 144 golfers in the field had yet to complete their first rounds.
Describing the late monarch, who died at 96 after reigning over the United Kingdom since 1952, as “an inspiration to people the world over,” the tour stated: “Our deepest sympathies and condolences are with the Royal Family at this time.” Elizabeth has been succeeded by her eldest son and heir, King Charles III.
Among those sharing the clubhouse lead at the BMW PGA Championship is England’s Tommy Fleetwood, who tweeted Thursday, “Rest in Peace Your Majesty, you will be forever in our hearts. God save The King.”
Britain’s most prominent sports entity, soccer’s English Premier League, was reportedly planning to make a decision Friday on whether to postpone its weekend matches. In a statement Thursday, the EPL said it was “deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Her Majesty The Queen” and added, “Our thoughts and condolences are with The Royal Family and everyone around the world mourning the loss of Her Majesty.”
The English Football League, which controls three rungs of professional soccer below the EPL, said it was postponing two matches scheduled for Friday and would decide on fixtures later in the weekend “following a review of the official mourning guidance” and consultations with other sports organizations.
UEFA, soccer’s European governing body, went ahead Thursday with Europa League matches involving English clubs Arsenal, Manchester United and West Ham United. A minute of silence was held at the matches and players wore black armbands.
A moment of silence was also observed by players and fans in Milan at a FIBA EuroBasket game between Great Britain and Italy.
In the United States, moments of silence preceded the NFL’s season-opening matchup between the Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams and the Buffalo Bills, as well as a U.S. Open women’s semifinal match between Ons Jabeur and Caroline Garcia.
The NHL said it “mourns the passing and celebrates the remarkable life of Queen Elizabeth II. She held a special place in the hearts of Canadians and, during her 70-year-reign, connected with our game in memorable ways.”
Peter Forster, captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, said in a statement, “Her late Majesty’s 70-year patronage of the Club was a great honour for its Members. We hold His Majesty the King and all The Royal Family in our thoughts at this time of mourning.”
Elizabeth’s lifelong passion in the world of sports was horse racing. Over the decades, she owned hundreds of racehorses, including 22 winners of races at Royal Ascot.
“My philosophy about racing is simple,” she once told the BBC (via the Associated Press). “I enjoy breeding a horse that is faster than other people’s. And to me, that is a gamble from a long way back. I enjoy going racing but I suppose, basically, I love horses, and the thoroughbred epitomizes a really good horse to me.”
“From her first-ever winner Monaveen, through stars such as Carrozza and Highclere, to the unforgettable Estimate, Her Majesty The Queen has helped to shape the breed and contributed to moments on the track that will go down in sporting folklore,” the British Horseracing Authority said Thursday. It suspended all of its races through Friday.
The agency’s chairman, Joe Saumarez Smith, said in a statement: “Racing owes an incalculable debt of gratitude, not only for Her Majesty’s dedication and commitment to the sport, but for her public advocacy of it, something that doubtless has driven the sport’s popularity and attracted a great number of fans.”
Other postponements involving British athletes included announcements from the England and Wales Cricket Board, Premiership Rugby, the Rugby Football League and the Tour of Britain cycling event. Scheduled for eight stages in as many days, the Tour of Britain was halted after Thursday’s fifth stage and the classification leaders at that point were subsequently declared the winners of those competitions.
Formula One plans to go ahead with Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, which will feature three teams — Aston Martin, McLaren and Williams — with deep ties to Great Britain.
“I’m so sad to hear about the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” George Russell, a British member of the Mercedes Formula One team who is fourth in the driver standings, said in a message shared on social media. “Her devotion to our country and her gracious leadership were inspirational to so many generations of people in the UK and around the world.”
Other prominent British athletes, including Harry Kane, Rio Ferdinand, Mo Farah, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, also paid homage online to Queen Elizabeth.
“My thoughts are with the Royal Family at this very difficult time,” tweeted Kane, the 29-year-old captain of England’s national soccer team. “The Queen was an amazing inspiration and will be remembered for her incredible years of service to this country. Rest in peace, Your Majesty.”
NFL live updates: Rams and Bills tied in third quarter of season opener | 2022-09-09T02:20:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sports world honors Queen Elizabeth II with postponements, tributes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/08/queen-elizabeth-ii-sports-world-premier-league/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/08/queen-elizabeth-ii-sports-world-premier-league/ |
Ons Jabeur realizes the novelty of advancing to the Wimbledon final in July — which made her the first Tunisian, the first African and first Arab woman to make a Grand Slam final — has worn off now in New York. “I just hope I’m getting used to it,” she said after being Caroline Garcia on Thursday night to earn a spot in Saturday's U.S. Open final. (Brian Hirschfeld/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
NEW YORK — On Tuesday, after a late night at the U.S. Open, Ons Jabeur witnessed a funny thing. Someone had sent her a video of folks watching sports in her native Tunisia, a North African nation of 12 million that counts itself as soccer-mad.
Only the television was not showing the Champions League match between Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus, as expected. It showed her quarterfinal win.
“Surprised, to be honest with you,” she said.
Jabeur will be filling screens again Saturday after steamrolling a red-hot Caroline Garcia 6-1, 6-3 on Thursday in the semifinals of the U.S. Open to reach her second Grand Slam final in two months. She will meet top-seeded Iga Swiatek, who rallied to beat Aryna Sabalenka, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4.
As Frances Tiafoe soars, does the pride of Prince George's County tennis fans
Jabeur fell in her first Grand Slam final, at Wimbledon to Elena Rybakina, cracking under nerves and heavy pressure she felt after making history as the first Tunisian, the first African woman and the first Arab woman to make a major final. Wimbledon, with all that, felt like a dream.
Flushing Meadows feels like reality.
“At Wimbledon … I couldn’t believe it. Even just after the match, I was just going to do my things and not realizing it was an amazing achievement already,” Jabeur said. “But now just I hope I’m getting used to it, you know, just happy the fact that I backed up the results in Wimbledon and people are not really surprised I’m in the finals. But just going and going and just doing my thing.”
On Saturday, she’ll face the Swiatek, who earned her 20th win in the majors this season by rallying from a set down and a break down in the third set.
The 21-year-old from Poland he picked up her second French Open trophy in June and has shown, in the past three rounds, the grit and problem solving that helped her capture six titles on tour this season.
“You know, Iga never loses finals,” Jabeur said with a smile.
For Jabeur, the loss at Wimbledon was a lesson in self-belief and managing her emotions. Her time at the All England Club was such a fantasy it took her a while to realize she was the one powering the run. When she got to the finals, she didn’t feel rooted, didn’t go as big as she wanted. Her emotions got in the way.
“Especially when I talk to my coach before the matches, I just feel like now I can do whatever I can do and what I want to do on the court, which is surprising for me and I surprise myself so many times. It’s going very well, especially this tournament,” Jabeur said. “Hopefully I will keep doing that. Managing my stress, emotions also helps me to do whatever I want on the court, for sure.”
Carlso Alcaraz stays up all night to spot in U.S. Open semifinals
If Jabeur was stressed Thursday there was no sign of it. She was so efficient that fans were still taking their seats when she won the first set — after just 23 minutes.
The 28-year-old felled one of the hottest players on tour in 66 minutes total. Garcia carried a 13-match winning streak into the semifinal and hadn’t dropped a set at the U.S. Open.
In those matches, she’d lost just three service games.
But Thursday, as Jabeur could understand, her nerves consumed her from the start. The match was Garcia’s first Grand Slam semifinal and she spent her time between points gulping big puffs of air or furrowing her brow in consternation while Jabeur looked focused and ready.
A cornerstone of Garcia’s aggressive game is she stands well inside the baseline to return, better for taking the ball early and jumping down her opponents’ throats. Jabeur avoided the issue by channeling her idol Andy Roddick — whom she finally met the day prior at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center — and rifling off six aces in the first set.
She had eight throughout the match.
“I didn’t know — should I shake his hand? Hug? I don’t know!” Jabeur said. “But I went for the hug, of course. I told him I was going to fire my team because they all met him and I didn’t meet him yesterday. … I was going to ask him about the serve, but then I forgot. I think he gave me the touch somehow.”
She has less than two days now to prepare for a second Grand Slam final, and Jabeur plans to use the time thinking about her first. She’ll replay how she managed her emotions and what she might to better this time. She’ll follow her team’s tactical strategy better than she did in July, perhaps, after they gave her such good advice about avoiding Garcia’s forehand.
“The most important thing is accept that I’m playing a big final and accept all the emotions that are going to come my way,” Jabeur said. “ … With the way I’m playing, I feel like it’s going to be great final for me.” | 2022-09-09T03:42:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. Open women’s semifinals: Ons Jabeur, Iga Swiatek advance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/08/us-open-semifinals-jabeur-swiatek/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/08/us-open-semifinals-jabeur-swiatek/ |
Carolyn Hax: Their sex life ‘sucks,’ but husband says ‘it’s fine’
Dear Carolyn: I’ve been married for 10 years, together for 14. We — he — waited until marriage for sexual relations because of finishing college, and he wanted to wait to make it more meaningful. He was a virgin the day we got married. I was not. I get that and respected him for it.
However, fast forward, and our sex life sucks. There is just no action happening, and I’ve tried everything, to no avail. I’ve brought it up multiple times, cried about it to him, etc. I get the same old “I’m tired” or “bad day at work.” He says it’s because I go to bed before him and I’m asleep snoring. I’ve tried when he comes home from work, but, nope, he’s tired. I know he’s not having an affair.
When we first got married, sex used to be once a week, then slowly started to taper off. I’m at the end of my rope. I’ve tried different things, always to be turned down with the same excuses, and talked to a professional. He just has a very low drive. I’ve asked him to see a doctor, but he says it’s fine. I just don’t feel connected anymore. What can I do to bring romance to the marriage?
— No Action
No Action: To this marriage? Nothing.
Even if his drive could be fired up, he’d have to want it to be. He’d have to want to learn about remedies. He’d have to want to try them. He’d have to want to do this for you, if not for himself.
Everything you describe, everything you have done, every one of your 14 years, has given you the same answer: No. He does not want more sex. Your no-talk, no-action relationship is what he wants. At least, he wants that more than he wants to be honest with you about how he really feels, or wants to try for something else.
There is one good thing about staring down and accepting, finally, the utter futility of continuing to hope you can have a satisfying sexual relationship with your husband: It tosses all the what-if clutter from your path.
Now all you have is a decision: Stay for this, as is, till death do you part, or leave.
Hi Carolyn! My mother-in-law recently reconnected with her God after beating cancer and has taken it upon herself to “save” the whole family, even going so far as to change her perfume, because it has alcohol in it. I am agnostic, and my husband, her son, is a devout Christian. We get along fine with our religious differences and have a comfortable plan with how to raise our daughter.
However, my mother-in-law cannot have a five-minute conversation, even about weather, without bringing up how it is God’s will or something or another. It is starting to make me very uncomfortable.
I respect her right to practice her own faith, but I think I should also be able to enjoy mine as well without hers being shoved down my throat every time she visits. My husband doesn’t want to make a big deal of it. What should I do?
Anonymous: Nothing, if she is just thanking “her God” for things. She has every right to do that, even if it annoys you. That is a basic exercise of her right to practice her own faith.
If she is asking you to thank her God, then you say kindly, firmly, respectfully that your faith is not up for discussion. Back that up by not engaging, ever. May your patience be with you. | 2022-09-09T04:47:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Their sex life 'sucks,' but husband says 'it's fine' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/09/carolyn-hax-marriage-sex-life-romance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/09/carolyn-hax-marriage-sex-life-romance/ |
She returned the book and departed. It was a bad moment all around, but, I thought, it was her doing. My wife, however, disagrees and thinks my behavior was petty and ill-considered. I would like to know your thoughts.
Having gone out of your way not to accuse your guest of theft, you nearly found yourself the flagrant victim of it anyway.
She texted me and asked whether she could drop it by and have me or my daughter (who has a job, two small children and a husband) return it. The store where it was purchased is far from where my daughter and I live, so I suggested that the daughter-in-law return it herself, so she could see what the store offers and make a suitable exchange.
It is not a matter of her wanting the cash for the dress, because she is employed and financially well-off. I feel as if, because my daughter is extremely busy, she should not be given the additional task of returning someone else’s gift.
Unbeknown to me, the daughter-in-law brought the dress to my daughter anyway, leaving it with her to be returned after I specifically suggested she do it herself. Who is wrong here?
Having had nothing to do with this transaction, your daughter need not be in a hurry to act on carrying it out. In Miss Manners’ opinion, she need not attend to it at all. | 2022-09-09T04:47:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I said she couldn’t borrow a book. She tried anyway. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/09/miss-manners-book-borrow-guest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/09/miss-manners-book-borrow-guest/ |
North Korea codifies right to launch preemptive nuclear strikes
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un addresses the Supreme People's Assembly in Pyongyang this week, in a photo released by the Korean Central News Agency. (Kcna/Via Reuters)
SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared his country would never relinquish its nuclear weapons, as the regime’s leadership codified in law its right to launch preemptive nuclear strikes, state media said Friday.
The North’s rubber-stamp parliament passed the law authorizing the military to use nuclear weapons “automatically and immediately” in case of an imminent attack against its leadership or “important strategic objects” in the country, the Korea Central News Agency said.
The law updates Pyongyang’s rules on when its nuclear arms can be used, including in response to an attack by weapons of mass destruction or in case of a “catastrophic crisis” that threatens the safety of the North Korean people. North Korea’s constitution already proclaims the country to be a nuclear weapons state.
“The utmost significance of legislating nuclear weapons policy is to draw an irretrievable line so that there can be no bargaining over our nuclear weapons,” Kim said in a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s titular parliament that passed the law Thursday.
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, and since then has built up an arsenal of atomic weapons and missiles that can deliver warheads to the U.S. mainland. Officials in Seoul and Washington have warned that Pyongyang could soon resume nuclear tests for the first time since 2017, when the U. N. Security Council imposed economic sanctions on the regime in response to its weapons development.
In 2019, Kim had a second summit meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and called for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for disarmament steps. But the talks in Hanoi broke down due to disagreements over sanctions relief, and negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington have made little headway in the years since.
In recent months, North Korea has ramped up tensions by conducting additional weapons tests, including one of a long-range missile earlier this year. The regime has spurned the Biden administration’s repeated offer to sit down for nuclear talks “anywhere, anytime.”
“Pyongyang is basically saying the only basis for future talks would be ones that recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapons state,” said Chad O’Carroll, CEO of the Korea Risk Group. The regime’s nuclear doctrine poses a question to the Biden administration on whether it can keep its policy of dialogue with North Korea, he said.
North Korea claims miraculous win over coronavirus, says Kim suffered a fever
Kim also addressed domestic issues in the parliamentary speech, saying that North Korea would roll out a vaccine program in November for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. He did not mention the coronavirus, however, referring only to battling a “malicious virus,” and nor did he give details on the type of vaccine or how doses will be administered.
Pyongyang has been ignoring offers of coronavirus aid from the United States, South Korea and international organizations. Gavi, a vaccine distribution network for the U.N.-backed Covax program, said in June it “understands” that North Korea accepted coronavirus vaccines from China.
While ramping up pressure against Washington, North Korea has been strengthening ties with China and Russia, its ideological and political allies. U.S. intelligence said this week that Russia is buying rockets and artillery shells from North Korea as it wages war against Ukraine.
“North Korea likely sees a world that is bending towards its ideals rather than away from it, and that now is the time to make it official that its nuclear weapons are here to stay,” said Karl Friedhoff, a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. | 2022-09-09T04:56:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korea gives itself right to launch preemptive nuclear strikes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-kim-jong-un/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-kim-jong-un/ |
Live updates King Charles III to deliver first remarks as Britain mourns Queen Elizabeth II
From the TV to the pitch, life in Britain comes to a halt
The U.K. braced for the death of the queen. It still came as a shock.
Australia and New Zealand awake to the queen’s death
The Daily Mail first edition reports the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8 in London. (John Phillips/Getty Images)
Britain’s new king, Charles III, will deliver his first address to the nation on Friday — offering the world a taste of what he will be like as monarch. Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned for more than 70 years, died Thursday at 96.
Thousands gathered in the rain Thursday night outside of Buckingham Palace to pay their respects, as tributes poured in from world leaders and people who gathered in distant parts of the Commonwealth to sign condolence books. The Queen was a constant and reassuring figure for decades through major geopolitical and societal shifts, and her death comes at a time when Britain is facing a looming economic crisis.
Charles, 73, immediately became king upon his mother’s death, and chose to be called Charles III. His formal coronation will come at a later date.
On Saturday, an “Accession Council” is expected to convene. A proclamation announcing Charles as the new king will be read from a balcony at St. James’s Palace, and he’ll travel to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to meet with his subjects.
The Washington Post’s obituary for the queen calls her “the seemingly eternal monarch who became a bright but inscrutable beacon of continuity in the United Kingdom during more than seven decades of rule.”
The death of Queen Elizabeth II has shaken the United Kingdom and will bring several parts of British life to a temporary halt as the nation mourns her passing.
Cancellations and postponements range from government activities to football matches and television shows, with countless public spaces posting tributes to the country’s longest-serving monarch.
Presentation of the Mercury Prize, a prestigious music award, was delayed just hours before the event was set to begin Thursday, after nominees had already arrived and rehearsed their sets. The organizers said they will set a new date “as soon as we are able.” After the news surfaced, the BBC cleared its broadcast schedule and replaced it with wall-to-wall coverage of Elizabeth’s life, death and legacy.
By William Booth and Karla Adam
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was awakened to the news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death by a police officer shining a flashlight in her bedroom. In Australia, callers to the national broadcaster recounted waking around the time of the monarch’s passing with a sense of foreboding.
The queen’s death has reverberated around the world, with former British colonies and current members of the Commonwealth of Nations embarking on periods of national mourning.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that Parliament will be suspended for at least two weeks. The sails of the Sydney Opera House will be illuminated Friday night in the late queen’s honor, he said. Flags across Australia have been lowered to half-staff, and condolence books have been opened up. | 2022-09-09T05:23:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II death updates: King Charles III to deliver first remarks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-death-charles-speech/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-death-charles-speech/ |
In this handout photo released by Pakistan Foreign Ministry Press Service, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, center, is received on his arrival by Deputy Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, left, in the airport in Islamabad, Pakistan, Friday, Sept. 9, 2022. Guterres appealed to the world to help Pakistan after arriving in the country Friday to see damage from the record floods that have killed hundreds and left more than half a million people homeless and living in tents under the open sky. (Pakistan Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP) (Uncredited/Pakistan Foreign Ministry Press Service) | 2022-09-09T05:23:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UN chief appeals to world to help badly flood-hit Pakistan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-chief-appeals-to-world-to-help-badly-flood-hit-pakistan/2022/09/09/daecf028-2ff6-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-chief-appeals-to-world-to-help-badly-flood-hit-pakistan/2022/09/09/daecf028-2ff6-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Biden’s mother said not to bow to the queen, so he didn’t. But after meeting Queen Elizabeth II, the president paid her his highest compliment, saying she reminded him of his mom.
Queen Elizabeth II speaks last year to President Biden and first lady Jill Biden. (Matt Dunham/AP)
President Biden grew up with a set of lessons that included a maxim from his mother: Don’t kiss the pope’s ring, and don’t bow down to the queen.
It was meant, he later recalled, as a sign that all people are equal, and no one is superior.
After their meeting last year, he paid her one of the highest compliments Biden can: He compared her to his mother.
“We had a long talk,” Biden said. “She was very generous. I don’t think she’d be insulted, but she reminded me of my mother, in terms of the look of her and just the generosity. She was very gracious.”
Elizabeth, who died Thursday at 96 after a 70-year reign, was one of the few who could rival Biden’s time on the political and international scene. She met every sitting American president since Harry S. Truman, other than Lyndon B. Johnson, making Biden the 13th president to have an audience with her.
He will likely now be the first American president to have an audience with King Charles III.
And there are some similarities between Biden, 79, and the new king, 73. Both are men who late in life assumed a role they had spent decades positioning themselves for, and who took their positions with a deep well of experience after having served as an understudy. They also arguably capture less of the public’s fascination than their predecessors.
Biden first met Elizabeth in November 1982, when he traveled with other senators to a meeting of the British-American Parliamentary Group and was among a group that met with the monarch. It was when Biden told his mother that he was going on that trip that she responded, “Don’t you bow down to her.”
“You’re a Biden,” she said, according to an account in his memoir “Promises to Keep.” “Nobody is better than you. You’re not better than anybody else, but nobody is any better than you.”
A bow or curtsy is not a requirement when visiting the queen — the Obamas also opted for a handshake on a 2016 visit, as did the Trumps in 2019 — but it is the traditional way to greet her.
Still, the queen boasted some of the working-class appeal that Biden has sought throughout his political career, managing to break down traditional barriers between public figures and ordinary citizens.
“Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was more than a monarch. She defined an era,” Biden said in a lengthy statement released after the Royal Palace announced her death Thursday. “In a world of constant change, she was a steadying presence and a source of comfort and pride for generations of Britons, including many who have never known their country without her.”
He also credited her for being the first British monarch to whom people “could feel a personal and immediate connection” and praised her for “an unwavering commitment to duty, and the incomparable power of her example.”
The queen met with almost every American president in recent history. She rode horses with Ronald Reagan and attended a baseball game with George H.W. Bush. Donald Trump was particularly taken with the grandeur of the queen, having often recounted how his mother — an immigrant from Scotland — watched for hours on television as the queen was crowned.
Timeline of Elizabeth's reign
When the Bidens visited Britain last year, they were greeted by a show of pageantry as the queen greeted them in the quadrangle of Windsor Castle. It was her first time in the international spotlight since the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip.
“She charmed us with her wit, moved us with her kindness, and generously shared with us her wisdom,” Biden said Thursday.
After the visit, Biden revealed to reporters that Elizabeth had asked him, as they sipped tea, about China’s leader Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — a disclosure that royal watchers noted was a breach in protocol, since it’s considered improper to recount what was discussed with the queen behind closed doors.
The incident was part of a long pattern of American presidents struggling to adhere to the age-old traditions of the British crown, even as they speak of the strong ties and “special relationship” between the two countries.
Trump walked in front of the queen as they strolled the grounds of Windsor Castle, something that is generally not done. President Barack Obama bungled a toast by speaking over the British national anthem. President George W. Bush, celebrating the queen’s visit to the U.S. in 2007, added two centuries to her age by remarking that she had earlier been to the United States in 1776, before correcting that he meant 1976.
George H.W. Bush had to apologize after his staff failed to adjust the lectern before the much shorter queen spoke during an arrival ceremony, leaving her striped purple hat just visible above the microphones. During a 1976 visit, Gerald Ford escorted the queen, wearing her diamond tiara, to the dance floor as the band in the White House played, “The Lady Is a Tramp.”
Biden, though, brought perhaps a bit more baggage to the relationship than some of his predecessors.
His strong Irish heritage has been a point of pride with him, and he’s often referred critically to the British rule of Ireland, at least in jest. “The BBC?” Biden said when a reporter from that network once tried, unsuccessfully, to stop him for a question. “I’m Irish.”
Biden's Irish identity
On his father’s side, Biden’s family is English and French (his mother’s sister used to tell him, “Your father is not a bad man. He’s just English.”). But his mother’s side has strong Irish roots, with some 10 of his 16 great-great-grandparents having been born in Ireland in a family tree that includes the Blewitts from County Mayo and the Finnegans from County Louth.
When he arrived in Great Britain last year ahead of his visit with the queen, Biden quoted “Easter, 1916,” a poem by William Butler Yeats about an uprising against British rule.
Later, he and the queen spoke about the vastness of Windsor Castle, with Biden remarking that the entire White House could fit in the courtyard.
“She said, ‘What’s it like in the White House?’ ” Biden recalled. “I said, ‘Well, it’s magnificent, but it’s a lot of people.’ ”
It’s also a building that Biden has previously boasted was designed by an Irishman, architect James Hoban. He said he invited the queen to visit, an invitation that will now likely be extended to her son.
“Her legacy will loom large in the pages of British history,” Biden said on Thursday, “and in the story of our world.” | 2022-09-09T06:27:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For Biden, Queen Elizabeth was a motherly figure - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/biden-queen-elizabeth-mother/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/biden-queen-elizabeth-mother/ |
FILE - U.S. player James Brewer is checked after a hard fall during the team’s men’s basketball final against the Soviet Union at the Olympics in Munich, Sept. 10, 1972. Russia won 51-50. Members of the 1972 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team have talked about finally retrieving those silver medals they vowed to never accept and left behind in Germany. No, they still don’t want them for themselves. They believe the medals belong in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, but the latest attempt to get them from the International Olympic Committee has been thwarted. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-09-09T06:54:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Efforts to put '72 Olympic medals in hoop Hall thwarted - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/efforts-to-put-72-olympic-medals-in-hoop-hall-thwarted/2022/09/09/d0ae6196-3000-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/efforts-to-put-72-olympic-medals-in-hoop-hall-thwarted/2022/09/09/d0ae6196-3000-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
ST. LOUIS — Yadier Molina homered twice on a day he paired with St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright to tie the major league record of 324 starts by a battery in an 11-6 loss to the Washington Nationals.
VIRGINIA WATER, England — Play was suspended late in the first round of the BMW PGA Championship on the European tour Thursday following the announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 96.
CINCINNATI — Xiyu “Janet” Lin of China opened with five birdies in six holes, birdied all but one of the par 5s and had an 8-under 64 for a one-shot lead over Nasa Hataoka in the Kroger Queen City Championship.
MILAN — Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 25 points in 19 minutes before leaving midway through the third quarter with an ankle issue in Greece’s 90-69 victory over Estonia in the Group C finale for both teams at the EuroBasket tournament.
RECIFE, Brazil — Norris Cole scored 20 points and the United States rallied past Puerto Rico 85-84 in an AmeriCup quarterfinal game.
EVELETH, Minn. — Longtime NHL goaltender Ryan Miller and Olympic gold medal-winning women’s stars Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando headline the 2022 class of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. | 2022-09-09T06:55:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thursday's Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/09/2177afa6-3001-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/09/2177afa6-3001-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
The task, though, involves more than containing spiraling costs. On all other counts, Truss’s policy falls short. Does it focus on poor and working-class families? Maintain the semblance of a market to curb demand? Identify the cost and a way to pay for it? No, no and no.Instead of targeted support for the needy, Downing Street announced a one-size-fits-all policy that will benefit households below the poverty line and as well as those enjoying Wall Street-sized bonuses. Is there, really, a need to subsidize those making hundreds of thousands of pounds — or more?Instead of nodding toward market forces, the government eliminated them. And it made the situation worse by making no attempt whatsoever to encourage conservation – absolutely critical to avoid supply shortfalls that could result in blackouts. In a 1,267-word speech, Truss didn’t mention the words “demand,” “consumption” or “savings” once. Lower energy bills could have been linked to usage, with more frugal families receiving larger discounts. The result could have been financial relief with price signals still somewhat relevant.Finally, instead of fiscal clarity, Truss offered uncertainty. In what is likely to be one of the biggest-ever fiscal interventions in peacetime history, we know neither the cost (the Treasury will publish an estimate later this month, she said) nor the funding sources. We do know where it won’t be coming from: Truss said there will be no windfall tax on energy companies. The implication is that the government will borrow the entire sum and leave repayment to future generations. How much will it cost? Ahead of the announcement, internal government estimates pegged the tab at £130 billion, plus another £40 billion if help to businesses was included. The £170 billion about equals what the country spends on its public health system. There’s a catch. It involves a potentially very expensive, very risky bet. In freezing energy bills, the UK Treasury effectively took the biggest short position ever in the gas and electricity wholesale markets, without a hedge. In the jargon of the trade, it’s a naked short.
If wholesale prices rise because a cold winter lifts demand or Russian President Vladimir Putin further squeezes supply, the cost would also increase, without a ceiling in place. The UK Cabinet Office wrote in a policy note to ministers: “Cost depends on the forward price of gas and electricity […] If a fixed commitment was made there would be an uncapped liability and overall scheme cost could escalate further.” Of course, if prices drop, the UK Treasury would spend less money. Downing Street could offset the massive cost to taxpayers in two ways. First, it could intervene in the wholesale market, as the European Union plans, capping the profits of renewable-energy and nuclear-power producers, whose prices are linked to gas costs. Their windfall needs to be taxed, preferably via a wholesale price cap on their output. Second, it could have taxed the extreme profits that fossil-fuel companies are making. It could also close some loopholes exploited by the many commodity traders who avoid paying much of their fair share thanks to the use of tax havens.The prime minister is right that consumers are facing sky-high prices because Putin has weaponized energy since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But ruling out a windfall tax is a mistake, if only because it could help Downing Street in its talks with the energy sector. In any negotiation, a stick is required along with the carrot. The British government will now try to arrange fixed long-term deals, so-called contracts-for-difference, with renewable and nuclear generators to reduce the cost of the policy intervention. Without the threat of a windfall tax, the government has weakened its own position. And any deal could permit renewable and nuclear companies much higher prices for years to come, in exchange for a slight reduction now. It’s a short-term win for a lot of long-term pain.Truss has promised to deliver results. Sadly, her first delivery should be returned to sender.
• Commodity Traders Go From Bonanza to Bailout Plea: Javier Blas | 2022-09-09T08:25:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain Goes the Wrong Way on Energy Bailout - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/britain-goes-the-wrong-way-onenergy-bailout/2022/09/09/6a55b68e-3013-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/britain-goes-the-wrong-way-onenergy-bailout/2022/09/09/6a55b68e-3013-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Atlanta is a juggernaut, one that has proven itself capable of outlasting everyone when it matters most. (Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
Something about the National League East warps baseball reality, the way all high flyballs feel like home runs until the outfielder trots in, not back.
Every season since 2018, someone other than the Atlanta Braves made big offseason additions or entered the season with far more fanfare, making it easy to forget that, in the end, this division really hasn’t yielded much actual parity. Because each year, about this time, the Braves remind everyone just how hard it is to outlast them as the division title settles neatly into their gloves.
This week, for the first time since Opening Day, the Braves climbed into a tie with the New York Mets for first in the division, overcoming what was a 10½-game deficit at the end of May. The star-studded NL East race just escalated into the most fascinating of the season, one that sort of also includes the Philadelphia Phillies: Even though the Phillies trail the leaders by 10-plus games, the new playoff format leaves room for them to secure a wild-card spot, too. Philadelphia plays seven games against Atlanta in the next few weeks, and it seems it will have something to play for in all of them.
And like one of those high flyballs, the reality of the NL East looks far different from one angle to the next.
In Queens, for example, some might see collapse, that the finally functional Mets let another chance slip away, though they have yet to endure a losing month and have a higher winning percentage in the second half than they did in the first. Their team on-base-plus-slugging percentage is higher since Aug. 1 than it was in the days before, fifth in the majors in that time. Their ace, Jacob deGrom, returned from injury last month. Their no-nonsense manager, Buck Showalter, has steered their largely veteran clubhouse away from off-field distraction and into consistency. Their eager owner is spending more on his team than anyone but the Los Angeles Dodgers. Their closer, Edwin Diaz, is compiling one of the more dominant seasons in recent history — and doing so with remarkable theater befitting the excitement that has settled in at Citi Field this year.
Mets’ TV broadcast made Edwin Díaz’s trumpet entrance look like a movie
To the extent that there has been a Mets collapse at all, it consisted of losing two out of three games to the lowly Washington Nationals, then getting blown out by the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday. That streak was enough to reportedly force a team meeting Wednesday before they swept those Pirates in a doubleheader. If they are falling apart, they are doing so gently.
But their road to the playoffs got more difficult this week all the same. Max Scherzer, who required four brief stints on the injured list during his seven years with the Nationals, landed there Wednesday for the second time this season with what the Mets called “left oblique irritation.” Scherzer missed six weeks with a strain in that oblique earlier this season, though all indications are that this time is more like those quick IL stints of old than a major issue. Scherzer has a long history of taking brief breaks to avoid longer ones, and Showalter said he believes Scherzer will be activated when eligible.
In Atlanta — and certainly to those in the industry who have seen the Braves in recent years — it will look like a course correction. It is not so much an indictment of the Mets but rather an inevitable and overdue Atlanta ascent. The Braves are 63-24 since June 1. The Mets are 53-34. The Braves have the third-highest OPS in baseball in the second half, .784. The Mets have the fourth highest at .766. Atlanta strikes out far more than the Mets, but the Braves homer more, too. Atlanta starters have a 3.11 ERA in the second half. Mets starters enter Friday at 2.98.
But what the Braves have that always seems to kick in this time of year, that will seemingly be available to them for a decade or more to come, is collective experience. They have signed nearly every star in their starting lineup to a long-term deal, meaning Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley and Matt Olson — all of whom, besides Olson, were key parts of last year’s World Series run — will play together for years to come.
They are buoyed by young talent in the form of Michael Harris II and Vaughn Grissom, both of whom are experiencing rare rookie success. Their rotation lost struggling Ian Anderson but gained fireballing Spencer Strider, one of the season’s breakout pitching stars. Atlanta is a juggernaut, one that has proved itself capable of outlasting everyone when it matters most — one that looks like it is preparing to do so again.
So while the NL East script is familiar in that way, the stakes are not: When the postseason begins in less than a month, it will start with four never-before-seen, best-of-three wild-card series. Either the Mets or Braves will be hosting one of them. The team that does not will land in a more familiar best-of-five division series, waiting to see who will join it there. Both will play September with distinct narratives, one as the collapsed, one as the revived. Both probably will enter October with the same perspective: that their reality was never going to be determined until then anyway. | 2022-09-09T08:25:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NL East race escalates with surging Braves, Mets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/mets-braves-nl-east-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/mets-braves-nl-east-race/ |
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II died on Sept. 8 after 70 years on the throne. Here's a look back at her life and legacy as the longest-serving British monarch. (Video: Alexa Juliana Ard/The Washington Post)
LONDON — Speeches from Britain’s longest-reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday, punctuated key moments of her 70 years on the throne — giving insights into her family, faith and sense of duty.
Her remarks provide snapshots into what was going on in her personal life and British public life. Here are some of the most memorable.
On her 21st birthday: April 21, 1947
Princess Elizabeth was on a tour of South Africa, with her parents and younger sister Margaret, when she turned 21 years old. In a speech broadcast on the radio from Cape Town, she first dedicated her life to the service of the Commonwealth, in one of her earliest public addresses.
“This is a happy day for me; but it is also one that brings serious thoughts, thoughts of life looming ahead with all its challenges and with all its opportunity,” the young Elizabeth said.
Still a princess, she went on to make a profound royal pledge: “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”
On her Coronation Day: June 2, 1953
The queen succeeded to the throne on Feb. 6, 1952, after the death of her father, King George VI, but her coronation took place in 1953 when she was age 27. Her husband, Philip, had encouraged the event to be televised for the first time, with millions in the United Kingdom and abroad watching the broadcast by the BBC from London’s Westminster Abbey.
Following the event that placed the royal family firmly in people’s living rooms, Elizabeth gave a broadcast in the evening to the nation where she reflected on the day’s momentous events.
“Although my experience is so short and my task so new, I have in my parents and grandparents an example which I can follow with certainty and with confidence,” she said. “As this day draws to its close, I know that my abiding memory of it will be, not only the solemnity and beauty of the ceremony, but the inspiration of your loyalty and affection. I thank you all from a full heart.”
‘Annus Horribilis’: Nov. 24, 1992
In 1992, the queen gave a speech in London to mark the 40th anniversary of her accession to the throne, wherein she famously defined the year in Latin as an ‘annus horribilis’ — or a horrible year.
She remarked: “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis.’ I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so.”
Her speech came days after a major fire at Windsor Castle, a royal residence, as well as a year that saw the collapse of three of her children’s marriages, including that of Prince Charles and Diana, and reams of tabloid headlines that cast a critical spotlight on British royal life.
Maintaining a quintessential British stiff-upper lip, the monarch welcomed scrutiny of her role, saying that “criticism is good for people and institutions that are part of public life. No institution — City, Monarchy, whatever — should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don’t.”
She added, “But we are all part of the same fabric of our national society and that scrutiny, by one part of another, can be just as effective if it is made with a touch of gentleness, good humor and understanding.”
She did not repeat the Latin phrase again publicly but some royal pundits speculated that she may have been tempted to do so in 2019, after her husband was involved in a public car crash, her grandsons Princes William and Harry publicly fell out and her second son Prince Andrew became entangled in links to the disgraced American, financier Jeffrey Epstein.
On the death of Princess Diana: Sept. 5, 1997
After the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris shook the world, the queen spoke to the nation live from Buckingham Palace.
“Since last Sunday’s dreadful news we have seen, throughout Britain and around the world, an overwhelming expression of sadness at Diana’s death. We have all been trying in our different ways to cope,” she said.
“I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness. I admired and respected her — for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys,” the queen said in an effort to comfort a stunned nation and facing media criticism for being slow to publicly react.
“No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her. I for one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death,” she added.
Diana died at age 36 and left behind two young princes who have both since spoken about how her death impacted the way they shape their royal roles and public life.
On the death of Prince Philip: April 9, 2021
Buckingham Palace announced the death of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, on April 9, 2021.
“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen announces the death of her beloved husband,” the palace statement said. Philip died at Windsor Castle and his funeral just days later and during the coronavirus pandemic was televised globally. The event saw moving images of the elderly queen, now a widow, starkly sitting alone in keeping with pandemic restrictions.
Elizabeth, whom Philip affectionally called Lilibet, had spoken of him in 1997 when the couple celebrated their golden wedding anniversary calling him her “strength and stay.”
At the time, she recounted events over the 50 years of their marriage, including the end of the Cold War, the Beatles, humans traveling to the moon, the onset of television, mobile phones, the internet and England winning the soccer World Cup as well as “the joys of having children and grandchildren,” together, she said.
“All too often, I fear, Prince Philip has had to listen to me speaking. Frequently we have discussed my intended speech beforehand and, as you will imagine, his views have been expressed in a forthright manner. He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.”
After her husband’s death, she did not directly address the nation but a phrase resurfaced that the queen had previously sent in a message to the United States following the 9/11 attacks: “Grief is the price we pay for love,” she said.
Annual Christmas speeches
The queen gave thousands of speeches at royal engagements to heads of state, diplomats, when inaugurating buildings and boats and annually at Christmas. The latter grew to become a social staple and British holiday tradition, as her yuletide speeches were peppered with words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections from the nonagenarian.
“In the old days the monarch led his soldiers on the battlefield and his leadership at all times was close and personal. Today things are very different,” she said in her first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957. “I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”
In 1974, her Christmas message alluded to violence in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East, and she encouraged people globally to seek the path of peace and reconciliation. “We may hold different points of view but it is in times of stress and difficulty that we most need to remember that we have much more in common than there is dividing us,” she said.
In 2002, despite celebrating 50 years on the throne during her Golden Jubilee, she also mourned the death of her mother and sister within a few weeks of each other. In her Christmas message that year, she reflected on the need for humanity amid crisis.
“Our modern world places such heavy demands on our time and attention that the need to remember our responsibilities to others is greater than ever,” she said.
And finally, perhaps for many, a quip that the queen made to her aides, as reported by her royal biographer, may be her most charming comment, when she joked: “I have to be seen to be believed.”
Queen Elizabeth delivered her annual Christmas speech on Dec. 25, encouraging hope and unity during a holiday season challenged by coronavirus pandemic. (Video: Reuters)
Celebration of her Platinum Jubilee: Feb. 6, 2022
In February, the queen reached a historic milestone becoming the first British monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years of her reign. The United Kingdom celebrated with a four-day holiday in June with pomp and ceremony, street parties, musical concerts and military parades.
It was the last time the queen would publicly stand on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, alongside her family, waving to millions of people who had flocked to see her.
“I continue to be inspired by the goodwill shown to me,” she said, adding, “and hope that the coming days will provide an opportunity to reflect on all that has been achieved during the last seventy years, as we look to the future with confidence and enthusiasm.”
Elizabeth previously celebrated her Silver Jubilee in 1977, Golden Jubilee in 2002 and Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
She died at her home in Balmoral Castle, Scotland, age 96. | 2022-09-09T08:47:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II, in her own words: Speeches from her reign - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-death-memorable-speeches/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-death-memorable-speeches/ |
A missing Wash. teenager was found — and then charged with murder
Two teenagers accused of murder in Washington pleaded not guilty in court on Tuesday. (KIRO)
On Sept. 1, authorities found a 16-year-old boy near a quiet, wooded road in Thurston County, Wash., wearing no shoes, socks or shirt.
The high-schooler had been reported missing a day earlier, setting off an intense search that included bloodhounds and assistance from the FBI.
The day the teen reappeared, detectives in the nearby city of Orting found 51-year-old Daniel McCaw dead inside his home. He had stab wounds to his body and a bullet wound to his head.
Now, the teen and his 16-year-old friend have been charged with first-degree murder in McCaw’s death. They are also being charged with second-degree murder, burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm. Both are being charged as adults, according to the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which filed the charges. The two were arraigned on Tuesday, and bail was set at $1 million each. The two have pleaded not guilty, the News Tribune reported.
Attorneys representing both teens declined to comment to The Washington Post. The Post is not identifying the boys because it does not typically name juvenile defendants.
What began as a case of a missing student-athlete has transformed into a complex homicide case, with law enforcement authorities alleging that the teen staged his disappearance after he and his friend sneaked into McCaw’s house and killed him. McCaw once had a relationship with the missing teen’s mother, according to an arrest affidavit. The couple and the boy lived at McCaw’s house for several years, the News Tribune reported, citing court records.
While prosecutors listed the victim only as D.M. in court records, the medical examiner identified McCaw as the man who had been killed.
Prosecutors said the victim died in the early hours of Aug. 28. Around that time, the two teens were camping with friends and family at Panther Lake, according to the affidavit. The family of one of the boys told a detective during the missing-person investigation that the teenagers left their cabin just after midnight on Aug. 28 and returned around 6:30 a.m., the affidavit states.
Just before 2 a.m., according to the affidavit, surveillance footage from the victim’s home captured two “young skinny males” crawl into the house through the dog door. About 40 minutes later, the affidavit states, the footage shows the two running back and forth between the main residence and a detached garage before fleeing around 2:50 a.m.
Days later, on Aug. 31, one of the teens went “missing under suspicious circumstances,” the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office said. He had left his house that afternoon for football practice but never showed up. Deputies later found his vehicle 14 miles away from his school in nearby Tenino. It had “exterior damage, and suspected blood was found on the steering wheel and driver’s door panel,” an affidavit for the teen’s arrest states. His phone was also found smashed near the vehicle, and a resident reported seeing the teen walking in the area, according to the affidavit.
Authorities found him about 10 p.m. the next day. The 16-year-old was wearing only shorts, and he told a Thurston County detective he could not remember what had happened to him. He later said he couldn’t say what happened to him because he feared people were going to hurt him, the affidavit states. He allegedly added that he damaged his cellphone because “he was afraid that the police were going to find what was on it.”
Earlier that day, Pierce County sheriff’s deputies had responded to a welfare check at McCaw’s residence in Orting, where they found his body in the laundry room, according to the affidavit. He had a gunshot wound to his head and stab wounds to his stomach and chest. Detectives also found two empty gun holsters in the house, according to the affidavit, which said that investigators suspect the teens stole the weapons.
The affidavit also states that a person who knew McCaw told them that the man once had a relationship with the mother of one of the teens, and detectives began to investigate whether there was a connection.
A day after authorities discovered the body, that boy’s father contacted a Thurston County detective, saying that his son had been “involved” in McCaw’s death, according to the affidavit. He said the man’s “biker buddies” had threatened to hurt his son if he didn’t steal an unspecified item from the man’s house, the affidavit states, so the teens plotted to break in. Authorities have not specified whether there are additional suspects.
The teens were arrested Sept 2. One of them showed detectives where he and his friend hid the firearms they had allegedly stolen from the residence, according to the affidavit. Investigators said the holsters they found at the house matched the guns, according to the affidavit. Both were registered to McCaw. | 2022-09-09T09:43:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teen who went missing in Wash. charged with murder of Daniel McCaw - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/09/washington-teens-killing-daniel-mccaw/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/09/washington-teens-killing-daniel-mccaw/ |
Georgian house in Woodland Normanstone on market for $10.9 million
The eight-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 10,100-square-foot house was built in 1929
The 1929 Georgian house was designed by architect T.J.D. Fuller and built by Davis, Wick & Rosengarten. The formal living room has a wood-burning fireplace and 10½-foot ceilings. (HomeVisit)
This Georgian house in the Woodland Normanstone neighborhood of Northwest Washington has had a long line of notable owners.
The 1929 house was designed by architect T.J.D. Fuller and built by Davis, Wick & Rosengarten. Fuller was known for designing an extension to the Cosmos Club in 1909 when it expanded its location at the former Dolley Madison House on Lafayette Square. (The Cosmos Club now resides in the Townsend mansion on Massachusetts Avenue NW.)
The original owner of the house was Walter F. Chappell, who served in the Navy in World War I and II. In the second war, he was assigned to the office of naval intelligence. For four years, he liaised with British naval intelligence. For his services, he was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire. When he returned to civilian life, he joined the State Department, where he became acting director of the Office of Consular Affairs.
Woodland Normanstone house | The 1929 Georgian house was designed by architect T.J.D. Fuller and built by Davis, Wick & Rosengarten. It is listed at just under $10.9 million. (HomeVisit)
Frederick S. Wynn bought the house in 1935. He was a vice president of the Southern Railway company. In 1941, Wynn sold the house to Charles D. Drayton, a lawyer and descendant of William Henry Drayton, the first chief justice of South Carolina. Charles Drayton was special counsel to the Association of American Railroads and specialized in interstate commerce law. He also served as president of Children’s Hospital for 10 years.
Henry S. Morgan and Catherine Adams Morgan owned the house from 1941 to 1946. He was co-founder of Morgan Stanley. She was a descendant of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Her father, Charles Frances Adams III, was secretary of the Navy during the Hoover administration.
Alfred and Winifred McCormack purchased the house from the Morgans. Alfred, a lawyer, served as a high-ranking official in military intelligence during World War II. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he joined the War Department at the request of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. According to his 1956 Washington Post obituary, he was a central figure in reorganizing Army intelligence.
Alfred also arranged for the exchange of information with British Intelligence agencies during the war. In 1944, he was made director of intelligence of the Military Intelligence Service. For his service, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and made an officer of the Order of the British Empire. After the war, he returned to private practice, specializing in corporate law and representing clients such as Bethlehem Steel and Ford Motor Co.
William McChesney Martin Jr. and his wife, Cynthia, lived in the house the longest. The Martins took possession of the house in 1947 after he became chairman of the federal Export-Import Bank. Martin, who became the first paid president of the New York Stock Exchange at age 31, spent three years at the Export-Import Bank before becoming an assistant treasury secretary in the Truman administration.
In 1951, Truman appointed Martin chairman of the Federal Reserve. His 19-year tenure in the job spanned five administrations. Martin is best known for saying the role of the Federal Reserve was “to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.” An avid tennis player, he served as president of the National Tennis Hall of Fame and chaired the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Prentis B. Tomlinson Jr., chief executive of Calibre Energy, bought the house in 2005. He sold it to the current owners in 2013.
A gated entry and a steep set of stairs lead to the front of the house. The entrance door opens to a stately foyer with formal living and dining rooms on either side, each with a wood-burning fireplace and 10½-foot ceilings.
On the left side of the house, the kitchen is connected to the dining room by a butler’s pantry. The kitchen has marble countertops, marble backsplash, a walk-in pantry, two dishwashers, a double wall oven and a six-burner gas range. A breakfast room is attached to the kitchen and overlooks the backyard. The wood-paneled library has a wood-burning fireplace and built-in shelving and cabinetry.
The owner’s suite takes up most of the left side of the house on the second floor. The bedroom has a sitting area and a wood-burning fireplace. There are two walk-in closets and a bathroom with two vanities, a marble soaking tub and a separate marble shower with a steam feature. Two additional bedrooms with en suite bathrooms are on this level.
The top level has four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a family room.
The lower level has a bedroom with en suite bathroom, a temperature-controlled wine cellar with two wine refrigerators and an exercise room. The garage, which can fit two cars end-to-end, is also on this level.
An elevator runs to all four levels.
The backyard has a large flagstone patio for entertaining, a covered porch, a grilling area, a fountain and terraced landscaping. Plantings include hollies, magnolia, crepe myrtles, boxwoods, azaleas, camellias, roses and hydrangeas.
The eight-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 10,100-square-foot house is listed at just under $10.9 million.
2861 Woodland Dr. NW, Washington, D.C.
Approximate square-footage: 10,100
Features: The 1929 Georgian house was designed by architect T.J.D. Fuller and built by Davis, Wick & Rosengarten. The house has detailed trim, wainscoting and molding. An elevator runs to all four levels. The lower level has a temperature-controlled wine cellar with two wine refrigerators, an exercise room and an attached two-car garage. The backyard has a large flagstone patio for entertaining, a covered porch, a grilling area, a fountain and terraced landscaping.
Listing agents: Chuck Holzwarth and Nick Hazelton, Washington Fine Properties | 2022-09-09T09:43:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woodland Normanstone house on market for $10.9 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/09/georgian-house-for-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/09/georgian-house-for-sale/ |
What do Africans think about the proposed East African Federation?
An Afrobarometer survey suggests citizens aren’t aware of the plans for regional integration
Analysis by Mercy Kaburu
Carolyn Logan
Vendors sort vegetables at a market in Eldoret, Kenya, on Aug. 12. (Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images)
The East African Community (EAC) took its first major step toward integration in 2005, forming a customs union that allows for free trade within the community and common tariffs on external trade. The next milestone, a common market with free movement of goods, services and labor, launched in 2010. The EAC’s ultimate goal is full federation of the seven member states — Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — that would install a single central government with common foreign and security policies.
On the way toward this goal, the EAC plans to establish a confederation in 2023 that would begin unifying foreign and security policies without yet forming a central governing body, and to form a monetary union with a single currency by 2024. Proponents believe that the unified market and shared strategic security will create an “African powerhouse.”
But how do ordinary citizens feel about “eastafricanization”? Achieving full federation would eventually require a referendum in every partner nation. Would the people be on board?
Findings from Afrobarometer’s face-to-face interviews with 2,400 Kenyans in November 2021 suggest that ordinary citizens may not support the march toward federation. Most Kenyans are not familiar with federation plans. A slim majority support the customs union and common market, which already exist. But backing for moves to a common currency and a single government appears to lag well behind the governments’ plans.
EAC ‘relatively well integrated’
EAC member states have long been joined by cultures and languages (especially Kiswahili) that cross national borders. Since formally re-establishing the EAC in 1999, two decades after its predecessor collapsed in 1977, they have advanced significantly on the path toward integration. The appeal of federation is evident in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s decision to join as the seventh member in April 2022.
In addition to the customs union and common market, in 2018 the EAC introduced a common, machine-readable East African e-passport to replace national passports and boost free movement of people within the community.
The 2019 Africa Regional Integration Index Report rated the EAC as “relatively well integrated,” identifying the free movement of people and macroeconomic integration as the areas of greatest progress. It ranked Kenya as the best-performing member state.
Lack of popular awareness
The EAC says it has “people-centered” goals that focus on East African citizens as the primary beneficiaries of integration, an approach that is aligned with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, a strategic framework for inclusive growth and sustainable development.
Yet our survey found that a majority of Kenyans have either heard “nothing” (36 percent) or just “a small amount” (22 percent) about the proposed East African Federation (EAF); 8 percent said they “don’t know” enough to even comment on the question.
More educated Kenyans are more likely to be aware of the EAF. More than four in 10 respondents with post-secondary education (43 percent) have heard “some” or “a great deal” about the federation. That’s more than three times the proportion among those with no formal education (14 percent), as you can see in the chart below. Men (41 percent) are much more informed than women (27 percent). The government appears to have done an especially poor job of building awareness among youth, where only 28 percent have heard of it, compared to 42 percent among the oldest cohort.
Percent who have heard ‘some’ or ‘a great deal’ about the proposed East African Federation | by demographic group | Kenya | 2021
Weak popular support for the pillars of integration
Although the common market’s free movement of goods, services and labor — intended to help East Africans prosper by promoting trade and economic freedom — has been in operation for more than a decade, only a slim majority (52 percent) of Kenyans approve of this policy, while 42 percent reject it. Support has dropped substantially since Afrobarometer asked similar questions in 2008, when 64 percent favored free movement of goods and services and 63 percent wanted free movement of labor in the region.
A 2019 survey finding is consistent with an ambivalent attitude toward free trade: Kenyans were sharply divided on whether the country should pursue open trade (49 percent support) or protect domestic producers (48 percent).
Other aspects of integration are even less popular, as you can see in the figure below. Only 49 percent of Kenyans support adopting a single currency. Just 44 percent endorse the “formation of a unitary government, including having one East African president.”
Views on various aspects of integration | Kenya | 2021
The East African Legislative Assembly: An opportunity for greater engagement?
One way to engage Africans more in the integration process might be through the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), an EAC institution responsible for legislation, oversight and representing citizens’ rights and interests at the regional level.
Each partner country has nine EALA representatives, nominated by political parties and elected by national parliaments in proportion to each party’s share of parliamentary seats. But many parties do not make these selections in open and democratic ways. As a result, the representatives selected may be more interested in serving the personal interests of party leaders than in representing their nation’s citizens. In fact, during Kenya’s recent election campaign, the EAC Secretariat warned political parties not to use EALA seats as consolation prizes for candidates who lost their elections.
Letting member nations’ citizens directly elect their EALA representatives could have two benefits. First, the election campaigns could raise awareness among East Africans about what the EAC is doing. And second, citizens might select more effective and suitable representatives.
Currently, only three in 10 Kenyans say they have heard “some” (20 percent) or “a great deal” (9 percent) about the EAC’s legislative body. Perhaps because so few have heard of it, only 47 percent say ordinary Kenyans should directly elect EALA representatives, while 44 percent say they prefer the current system in which parliamentary parties select those representatives.
Awareness of the East African Legislative Assembly | Kenya | 2021
While the EAC has achieved important integration milestones, its citizens remain uninformed and unconvinced of the benefits. To bolster support for monetary union and confederation, governments may wish to build awareness among East Africans about what’s to come.
Professors: Check out TMC’s new index of classroom topic guides.
Mercy Kaburu (@Mercy56770229) is an assistant professor of international relations at United States International University-Nairobi, Kenya.
Carolyn Logan (@carolynjlogan) is director of analysis for Afrobarometer and associate professor in the department of political science at Michigan State University. | 2022-09-09T09:56:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is the East African Federation? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/eac-east-african-federation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/eac-east-african-federation/ |
Judge Aileen Cannon is seen in a still image from her video interview with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2020. (Committee on the Judiciary)
Her profile soared this week after she intervened in the Justice Department investigation into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified information and agreed to grant his request for an independent review of the material that FBI agents have seized. Trump sought the appointment of what’s known as a special master to assess whether the government took anything from his Florida residence that may be protected by attorney-client privilege or his status as a former president.
Cannon’s controversial ruling, which she called necessary to “ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances,” temporarily bars investigators from using the documents removed last month from his Mar-a-Lago residence. The order has been criticized by legal experts for seeming to extend special treatment to Trump and for disrupting the probe before anyone has been charged with a crime. On Thursday, the government said it would appeal Cannon’s decision.
With less than two years on the bench, she does not have an extensive record to review. The Trump dispute has put a spotlight on her while presenting untested questions about the extent to which assertions of executive privilege — usually invoked by sitting presidents to shield sensitive communications from disclosure — may be applied to past occupants of the White House in conflict with their successors.
Former senator Russ Feingold — who leads the liberal American Constitution Society, which closely tracks judicial nominations — said Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate sought out judicial nominees like Cannon, showing an “overwhelming preference” for individuals often lacking the experience “previously considered necessary to sit on the bench.”
“We’re now seeing the impact of this, with an alarming disregard of the rule of law by some,” he said in a statement.
Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican whose office asked Cannon to apply for the position in 2019, rejected any suggestion that her decision in the classified-documents case was politically motivated and noted the support Cannon received from Senate Democrats. Twelve voted in favor of her confirmation.
“Judge Cannon is a great judge who I am very proud to have enthusiastically supported,” Rubio said in a statement. “The attacks against her are just the latest example of hypocrisy from leftists and their media enablers who believe the only time it is acceptable to attack a judge is if that judge rules against what they want.”
Why did Trump have these files at Mar-a-Lago? The Post answered your questions.
Cannon’s confirmation hearing took place six months into the coronavirus pandemic, in July 2020, and she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee by Zoom. She had the backing of the Cuban American Bar Association, which praised her “temperament and academic credentials” and pointed to her “legal mind and demeanor.” By choosing Cannon, the group told lawmakers, “you enhance the diversity on the bench and help appoint a great candidate for the position.”
In follow-up questions, Democrats pressed Cannon about her record as a prosecutor, her judicial philosophy and her membership in the Federalist Society, the conservative organization that played a major role in advising Trump on his judicial picks. In response to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Cannon said she considers herself an “originalist” and a “textualist,” referring to methods of legal interpretation that look to the general understanding of the Constitution at the time it was written, an approach most often associated with the late conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.
Cannon quoted Elena Kagan, the liberal justice who quipped at her confirmation hearing, “We are all originalists.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked Cannon specifically whether she had any discussions during the nomination process about “loyalty to President Trump.”
“No,” Cannon responded in writing.
She was one of 14 nominees confirmed after the November 2020 election, amid the tumultuous aftermath of Trump’s defeat, an appointment that will now stand as a notable part of his legacy. Over four years in the White House, he installed more than 200 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices.
Until last week, one of Cannon’s most high-profile cases in 20 months on the bench involved sentencing a man who pleaded guilty to making death threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Cannon, now 41, was born in Colombia, the daughter of a Cuban immigrant mother, and grew up in Miami. She spoke at her confirmation hearing about the lasting influence of her mother, who at age 7 “had to flee the repressive Castro regime in search of freedom and security.”
“Thank you for teaching me about the blessings of this country and the importance of security and the rule of law for generations to come,” Cannon said.
As an undergraduate at Duke University, she worked one summer for the Spanish-language newspaper Nuevo Herald, writing on diverse topics including Flamenco and prenatal yoga. At the University of Michigan Law School, she joined the Federalist Society, because, as she explained in response to Senate questions, she appreciated the “diversity of legal viewpoints” and discussion of the “limited role of the judiciary to say what the law is — not to make the law.”
Before joining the bench, Cannon spent much of her career in the courtroom as a litigator. She was a law clerk for appeals court judge Steven M. Colloton, who was on Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court picks, and an associate for three years in D.C. at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
In 2013, as a new prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida, Cannon handled major crimes, including drug, firearm, and immigration cases. Soon after she moved to the appellate division, Cannon was assigned to defend the government’s conviction in a large-scale, complex fraud case. She was up against an experienced appellate lawyer and appearing before a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Richard Klugh, the veteran lawyer on the other side, was impressed.
“She was coming in against an old hand with a tremendously complicated record in an important case, but she seemed to handle it with ease,” Klugh said in an interview. “She’s quick, talented and bright. There’s no getting around it. She’s very effective.”
Cannon prevailed, sustaining the conviction of a Florida lawyer in the life insurance scheme that affected thousands of investors.
Howard Srebnick, an attorney in Miami who attended the same high school as the judge, also was on the opposing side during Cannon’s tenure as a prosecutor and now has a case pending before her.
In court, Cannon is polite and process-oriented, he said, asking a lot of questions while making sure litigants can fully air their views. Srebnick submitted a letter to the Senate in support of Cannon’s nomination, signed by more than a dozen alumni of the private Ransom Everglades High School who also are attorneys.
She has “strength of character,” the letter said, characterizing Cannon as “personable and trustworthy, a genuinely caring person who treats others as she would want to be treated herself.”
In June, Cannon ruled against Srebnick’s client, upholding the government’s decision to freeze the defendant’s bank account in a Medicare fraud case.
“She clearly spent considerable time and thought in deciding the question presented,” Srebnick said. “We just disagree.”
Srebnick, however, said that he agrees with Cannon’s decision to appoint a special master in the Trump case even though the Justice Department has claimed to have already set aside potentially privileged records.
“She is spot-on correct that a special master, not a government-led filter team, should be handling those materials,” Srebnick said. “No one from the government should be looking at a client’s communications with counsel.”
Cannon’s ruling may not be the final word. The Justice Department on Thursday asked the judge to reconsider and temporarily suspend part of her order before it formally asks the appeals court to step in. | 2022-09-09T09:56:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled for Trump in Mar-a-Lago search? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/who-is-judge-aileen-cannon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/who-is-judge-aileen-cannon/ |
Jaguars guard Brandon Scherff has been named a team captain in his first season in Jacksonville. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
Brandon Scherff dropped his phone in a lake.
It happened sometime in mid-June, so he had to reach out to Keith Ismael to get a few phone numbers back from his years in Washington.
“My phone wasn’t backed up for two years, so that was a big problem for me,” Scherff, 30, said Thursday by phone. “I went to text them during camp, and all of a sudden I didn’t have anymore contacts left. I said, ‘Oh, [shoot], I don’t have anybody’s number.’ ”
Deshazor Everett sentence to three months house arrest after fatal crash
After seven years in Washington, where he earned five Pro Bowl honors and an all-pro section, Scherff started anew in Jacksonville when he signed a three-year deal worth close to $50 million.
The Iowa native now lives on Jacksonville Beach and weathers the accompanying heat and humidity year-round, an adjustment for him and his family. Despite the watery phone issues, he has maintained contact with many of the players he worked alongside.
To kick off the season, his acclimation to Jacksonville will be interrupted with a return to Washington, where the Commanders host the Jaguars at FedEx Field on Sunday.
“I’m excited to see all the guys that I’ve been with for seven years or the last two years,” Scherff said. “But all the friendships that I made, I’m excited to see the coaches that have helped me get to where I am and just excited to play again.”
The change has offered him some familiarity. Scherff chose Jacksonville in part because of the coaching staff. Phil Rauscher, the Jaguars’ offensive line coach, was hired to the same title in Washington in 2018. he was promoted the following season and led the offensive line for 11 games while Scherff played right guard.
Scherff’s time in the NFC East also made Doug Pederson a familiar sight from his days coaching the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I knew a couple of people that played with Doug, and they loved him, too, so I would say those two people had a big say in it,” Scherff said.
“It’s kind of the exact same as when Coach [Ron] Rivera took over [in Washington]. It all looks the same, but you just have to put different terminology together. So it’s been, obviously, a challenge for me during OTAs, learning all that stuff, but Phil Rauscher has done a heck of a job with the O-line. … We’re getting in the rhythm of things right now.”
Coming out of Iowa, Scherff was rated by multiple analysts as the top offensive lineman in the 2015 draft when Washington selected him fifth overall. He immediately became a staple on the interior of the line.
But the last time he played a full season was 2016, his second year in the league. Over the years he’s dealt with myriad injuries, including a torn pectoral muscle that cut short his 2018 season, elbow and shoulder injuries that prematurely ended his following season, and MCL sprains that cost him games in 2020 and 2021.
Washington franchise-tagged him in his final two seasons, giving way to his inevitable exit in free agency.
Scherff admitted that leaving Washington was “hard,” and though it appeared for months that he probably wouldn’t return, he said it “was all uncertain to me.”
For years, Washington’s quarterback situation was uncertain, too.
During Scherff’s tenure, the team had 11 quarterbacks start at least one game. In Jacksonville, he could stick with one, should second-year player Trevor Lawrence meet expectations and remain healthy.
Scherff said the young quarterback has already impressed him with the way he collaborates with the offensive line on play calls and both fielding and asking questions.
“He’s a great quarterback for a second-year [player],” Scherff said. “To have the kind of knowledge and communication skills that he has in the locker room is amazing. And he’s been a big help to us in learning a new offense.”
Scherff has taken to Jacksonville just as much as Lawrence. The lineman was voted a team captain, an honor he held in Washington but was nonetheless grateful to earn at his second NFL stop.
“He taught me how to be a pro,” Washington tackle Sam Cosmi said. “He’s a very hard-working guy, one of the most hard-working I’ve seen. I learned a lot from him. I learned how to practice. I learned how to do recovery, how to come back from an injury. I learned a lot from him. He went to Jacksonville and got named captain for a reason. He was a great teammate and a great player.”
His Washington return has Scherff reflecting on some of his top memories with Washington, including his “welcome to the NFL” moment as rookie in 2015 when he took on then-Miami defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh in the opener. And of course later that year when Washington hosted the Packers in a playoff game at a packed FedEx Field and winning the NFC East in 2015 and again in 2020.
“I’ve had a lot of amazing memories and met a lot of amazing people in that organization,” he said, “and I’m so grateful for every one of them.”
Although Scherff left as a Washington Football Team player and will return to face the Washington Commanders, the reunion at FedEx Field on Sunday will be a battle for both sides, he says. And maybe he will get to leave with an updated contacts list.
“We’re excited to go against probably one of the best D-lines that we’re going to be going up against,” Scherff said. “They’re a heck of an opponent for us, and I know how they practice. I told the guys that they practice [all] out. So it’s going to be a heck of a challenge for us.” | 2022-09-09T10:09:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A D.C. return awaits Brandon Scherff, a Jaguar who has changed his spots - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/commanders-jaguars-brandon-scherff/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/commanders-jaguars-brandon-scherff/ |
Frances Tiafoe celebrates after defeating Andrey Rublev in the U.S. Open quarterfinals. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
Anyone who has watched even 10 minutes of the 2022 U.S. Open knows it has been a significant event. It began on a profound note with Serena Williams making one last fierce run before retiring at the age of almost 41 as the sport’s greatest women’s champion and a cultural transformer who commanded a television audience of nearly 6 million on ESPN. It hit a competitive crescendo at 3 a.m. Thursday, when 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz defeated 21-year-old Jannik Sinner after more than five hours in the latest finish to an Open match ever, heralding a rivalrous transition to a brilliant new generational morning.
In the middle of all that comes 24-year-old Tiafoe, threatening to live up to his own huge young promise with a sonic-strike serve, crafty game and a gaptoothed grin, the first American man to reach the semifinals since 2006 — and easily the most irreverent.
“I just want to put on a show,” he says, beaming.
Between points he moves with a casualness, as if he’s almost surprised by his own burgeoning body, the huge quadrants of muscle he has worked hard to develop. But when the ball goes up, he is a torquing blur. He hits forehands like a pancake flipper showing off his skill with a spatula. His backhand is a swinging door slammed by a heedless boy. His touch volleys are handsy, palming little drops, which he then celebrates with a strutty rub of his thumb and forefinger together, as if to say, “Put a little spice on that.” He radiates the sense of original pleasure that kids do when play is still just that: play.
He defies excessive solemnity. Back at the 2019 Australian Open, when he made his first Grand Slam quarterfinal, he couldn’t help a joke at the expense of the elderly, somnolent 84-year-old Australian great Rod Laver. When asked how it felt to be watched by the Hall of Famer, Tiafoe replied teasingly: “I thought it was cool. Saw the eyes close at one point. ‘Don’t fall asleep on me.’ I was about ready to say something, you know what I’m saying?”
Others demand to play tennis in reverential silence enforced by shushing chair umpires, but Tiafoe likes a little rustling in the stands and finds the insistence on quiet overbearing for paying fans.
“Some players are complaining about someone in the absolute nosebleeds,” he says. “Are you really worried about what that person is doing?”
He has managed his dramatic career expectations with a similar sense of unworried ease. Is he a year or two late living up to his Grand Slam potential, discovered as a child at the USTA Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., where his father toiled as a janitor while his mother worked double nursing shifts through the nights? Maybe so. Or perhaps he’s just right on time. Perhaps he instinctively refused to ruin his lovely temperament with undue pressure before he was fully ready to handle it.
If he showed some baby fat, ate junk food, let himself have chocolate and desserts and often skipped breakfast, if he wasn’t quite ready to deal with the crush of attention and responsibilities that come with winning Grand Slams, if “he wasn’t, in my opinion, really professional enough,” as his coach Wayne Ferreira says, if he took some time to mature like most people his age, well what about it?
“You go through different stages of your life,” Tiafoe said this week with a verbal shrug. “Took me a long time to kind of just get myself together.”
It wasn’t such a bad thing for people to take their eyes off him for a while, while the Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were so regnant in the game anyway.
“Didn’t really matter where you’re from, what was your name. You ran into those guys, and they just said, ‘See ya,’ ” he observed.
Between 2019 and 2020, he was content to grow at his own pace and earn a few “cheeky wins,” as he called them. “I think during that time the cameras weren’t on me, attention wasn’t on me,” he says. “I was able to just kind of get better and do my own thing. I stopped trying to be ‘the guy.’ Like when things were going to happen, it was going to happen. I was fine with it. I was comfortable with myself.”
Now that it’s happening, it seems like a natural and sensible progression. What has happened with Tiafoe’s game this season is that he simply became fully professionalized. In the spring of 2020 he hired Ferreira, a former top-10 player who in his day was as tough and lean as beef jerky. Tiafoe bowed to Ferreira’s demands to give up the cookies and candy, start eating decent training meals at regular times and step up his effort on the practice court.
“It’s not about playing great tennis; it’s about competing your ass off, and I think that goes a long way,” Tiafoe said at the end of 2020. “You can win a lot of matches just putting it all on the line … I’m trying to strive to do more of that instead of just trying to always, you know, be on ESPN top 10. Going to meat and potatoes and get busy.”
He has spent the Open dining quietly in his room, on takeout meat and potatoes from Morton’s Steakhouse, and getting his rest. “I’m still eating well; don’t worry about that,” he says with laughter. “I’m not eating Chick-fil-A or nothing like that. We still getting them good eats. It’s just in the crib. You know what I’m saying?”
In short, Tiafoe is just getting started. The second half of this Grand Slam season has seen him sharply accelerate: After reaching the round of 16 at Wimbledon, he metamorphosized in New York into a newly formidable match-closer, winning 15 of 16 sets.
“It’s the mental capacity,” Tiafoe said self-appraisingly this week. “Rafa is there every point. I’ve been known to have some dips in my game at times, where it’s like you’re watching, ‘What’s that?’ That was my thing: match intensity.”
His defeat of Andrey Rublev to reach his first Grand Slam semifinal was everything he has been seeking, at once a matter of match intensity yet also a tumultuous showman’s display that ended with him breathing in the crowd roars as if they were his own oxygen.
So many young aspirants in tennis can seem overburdened to the point of buckling — it was impossible to miss the gaunt hauntedness and red-rimmed eyes of Rublev, also just 24, who is struggling to hold his place in the top 10. Which called to mind some early words from Vesa Ponkka, the longtime director of the Junior Tennis Champions Center, about Tiafoe when he was still a teenager:
“His love of the game is so deep and so pure,” Ponkka said. “Some players love winning. Some players love money. Some players love traveling. He loves everything about this game. He loves even the smell of the new balls. He loves how the ball sounds on the strings. He loves these things that actually are much more important than money or that stuff. He plays the game for the right reasons. And none of us taught him that.”
Let’s hope he holds on to it forever. | 2022-09-09T10:09:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Frances Tiafoe is bringing noise and fun to this U.S. Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/frances-tiafoe-us-open-semifinals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/frances-tiafoe-us-open-semifinals/ |
Ron Johnson’s same-sex marriage reversal, and what it portends
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) leaves a GOP luncheon in March. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
If the Senate ultimately decides not to join the House to codify a right to same-sex marriage in America, Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) new comments might be viewed, in retrospect, as the turning point.
In a newly reported video of Johnson’s comments to supporters last week, the senator from Wisconsin said that he would not support the bill “in its current state,” after previously saying he saw “no reason to oppose” it.
The reversal not only deprives the effort of one of the few Republicans who had suggested they were leaning in favor of the bill — Democrats need the votes of 10 Republicans to clear a filibuster — but it also comes from someone who seemingly had plenty of reason to vote for it, as Johnson’s own previous comments make clear.
Johnson is seeking reelection in a competitive race — the most competitive of any GOP incumbent, in fact. In addition, he won’t face GOP primary voters again until at least 2028 (if ever, given that he wasn’t certain about seeking another term this year). He has also struck a pragmatic tone in his past comments, saying in 2014, even before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage that, “if the voters decide that they want same-sex marriage, I’m not going to oppose it.”
Americans have decided they want same-sex marriage, with 71 percent supporting it in the most recent Gallup poll. But Johnson still says he won’t support this bill. (Johnson blamed his previous comment on a desire “to get [the media] off my back.”)
The House passed the bill in July, and at the time it seemed to have fair to good prospects in the Senate.
Fully 47 House Republicans crossed over to vote with Democrats, even as their votes weren’t required to pass the bill. They also did so even as their colleagues decried the vote as unnecessary, since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. Democrats argue that the vote is necessary and wise because the Supreme Court recently overturned an even longer-standing precedent: the right to an abortion.
The 23 percent of House Republicans voting for it, if replicated in the Senate, would be sufficient to clear the filibuster. And the comments of GOP leadership back in July — particularly the party’s Senate No. 2, Sen. John Thune (S.D.) — suggested that the bill might ultimately pass without much fuss.
“As you saw, there was a fairly significant vote — bipartisan vote — last night in the House of Representatives,” Thune said at the time. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case in the Senate.”
Precisely where those votes might come from is another matter — as are the political calculations involved. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) have said they’ll vote for the bill; Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have indicated they’ll probably support it, too. Some had assumed Johnson would be a fifth yes vote, based upon his past comments.
And that quintet made sense. Collins and Murkowski are moderates, Portman is retiring (and has a personal connection to the issue), Tillis comes from a competitive state, and Johnson is the most vulnerable incumbent Republican.
But others who might seem to have latitude to get to yes have been reluctant. Retiring Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) haven’t weighed in definitively. (Burr did clarify that he’s leaning against it, after it was previously reported he would oppose it.) The second-most vulnerable Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), has mostly focused on how allegedly unnecessary the bill is, at one point labeling it “a stupid waste of time.”
Some Republicans like Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.) have indicated they could vote for the bill if it adds a religious liberty amendment. Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) haven’t ruled out supporting the final product. Others could also be in play, up to and including Thune and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), if you believe their public comments.
Those last two are notable. We shouldn’t expect senators from Kentucky and South Dakota to support the bill. But just as 47 House Republicans saw this vote as the right thing to do or at least politically advantageous, GOP leadership might ultimately decide that killing a bill codifying something 7 in 10 Americans support is a bad look for the party.
They might also see what has happened to their party’s political fortunes after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and decide that, however unlikely the court might be to reverse itself on same-sex marriage too, it’s better to take that off the table as even a perceived prospect. The trajectory on this issue — support has increased sharply in recent years, at a faster rate of change than almost any social or political issue in modern political history — is such that there’s an argument for putting it to bed and not having to keep reliving this debate.
On the flip side, the GOP as a whole is still very much split on same-sex marriage. Some polls have shown a majority of Republicans support it, but that’s not where the loudest voices in the party are. The party might also worry about being perceived as legitimizing a vote they’ve cast as wholly unnecessary, and perhaps encouraging Democrats to line up similarly fraught votes on issues such as contraception (which the House also forced a vote on, but with very few GOP crossovers).
If Republicans think they can explain these votes by convincing people that same-sex marriage isn’t in any way threatened — rather than that they necessarily oppose same-sex marriage itself — they might prefer that, given the number of issues (such as contraception and interracial marriage) that could similarly back them into a corner. A case in point: Johnson, for one, said Thursday that Obergefell v. Hodges would never be overturned, due to the doctrine known as stare decisis that stands by precedent — and that Democrats “can’t let sleeping dogs lie.”
But ultimately, whatever leadership truly desires to come out of this vote isn’t the only factor; it’s also what those who have to cast the votes and own them are comfortable with. Most of them have more to fear from GOP primary voters than anything else. And the fact that even those who are retiring, or who in 2022 will need the support of moderate voters who back same-sex marriage, aren’t on board shows the math could be as difficult as the politics. | 2022-09-09T10:14:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Johnson's same-sex marriage reversal may mean for other Republican votes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/ron-johnson-marriage-vote-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/ron-johnson-marriage-vote-republicans/ |
Alfred Hitchcock, maker of the film classics “Vertigo,” “Psycho” and “Rear Window,” is the director most assigned in college syllabuses. (CBS/Getty Images )
The movies most often assigned in college, and more!
Films most often assigned in college
Cities with the most bike commuters
Winners and losers of brain drain
Data’s greatest calling may be to describe the planet from angles we otherwise would never consider. This week, we’re celebrating a data’s-eye-view of the world by exploring three overlooked and underappreciated data sets. Welcome to the Data Dive.
Dziga Vertov’s “Man With a Movie Camera” claims top honors over more widely celebrated fare, including Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.” Rounding out the top five are another Eastern Bloc fan favorite, Sergei Eisenstein’s “The Battleship Potemkin,” and Fritz Lang’s futuristic sci-fi drama, “Metropolis.” (Vertov, formerly known as Denis Kaufman, is said to have chosen the first name Dziga because it recalled the sound of cranking an old-fashioned movie camera.)
When you consider a director’s entire oeuvre, prolific British suspense peddler Alfred Hitchcock emerges as the most-assigned director thanks to three top-25 films: “Vertigo,” “Psycho” and “Rear Window.” He’s followed by three Americans: Welles (who cracked the top 25 solely on the strength of his ubiquitous 1941 debut), Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. The only woman in the top 25 is Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.
“Women were there on the set, ready to do all kinds of jobs,” said Jane M. Gaines, author of “Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?”
Gaines, a film professor at Columbia University and an expert on the history of documentary filmmaking, said the work of cinema heavyweight Sergei Eisenstein overshadowed “Man With a Movie Camera” for the better part of a century. But the latter has been recognized as a cinema classic, she said, culminating in its commemoration as a top-10 film — and the top documentary of all time — in the most recent version of the definitive Sight & Sound rankings.
“The reason is that you can teach film style with ‘Man With a Movie Camera,’” Gaines said. “It’s got freeze frames, it’s got tracking shots. It’s a compendium of the basics of film cutting — an irresistibly charming homage to cameras and camerawork.” (Story-wise, it’s a vision of “the emerging industrialization of this agricultural peasant society,” she said. “It’s very upbeat about the Soviet revolution!”)
Gaines doesn’t assign the film in her own classes: “It’s mostly about style,” she said, which makes it less resonant than Eisenstein’s crowning achievement, “The Battleship Potemkin.” That movie is technically innovative in its own right, having pioneered key techniques such as montage, but also “is powerful as a narrative of revolutionary overthrow,” she said.
For the record, Eisenstein was not impressed by Vertov’s work, with its use of such showy techniques as split screens, superimposed footage and slow motion. Upon its release, he dismissed “Man With a Movie Camera” as “pointless camera hooliganism.”
Places like Davis, Calif., have long been cycling oases amid America’s daily motorized madness. As many as 1 in 5 workers once commuted by bike in Davis, where a major University of California campus sits in the fertile lowlands west of Sacramento. Census asks about pedaling to work, not class, but almost all the top 10 cities for bicycle commuting are classic college towns, including Corvallis, Ore. (Oregon State University); Boulder, Colo. (University of Colorado); and East Lansing, Mich. (Michigan State).
Davis now risks losing its cycling-capital title to Key West, Fla., one of the few top cycling towns not best known for its colleges. Folks on the narrow island bike to work because everything’s close, gas is expensive and parking is scarce. The weather helps too.
“It’s not Duluth,” said Dane Iseman, longtime Key West resident and co-owner of Island Bicycles. “Unless there’s a hurricane whipping through here, unless there’s coconuts flying sideways around the island, you can ride pretty much anytime.”
Fortune is working to reverse Davis’s decline, both as a board member of Bike Davis and as a candidate for city council. But it’s an uphill climb. Aging bike infrastructure, parking, theft and safety concerns all play a role, but, like so many problems in modern-day California, it appears that bike commuting is at least partly a housing issue.
“Davis has built out rather than building up,” Fortune said. “Housing growth has not kept up with the growth of our community.”
“There’s about 10,000 people (net) coming into town for work and then leaving every day,” Fortune said. “And unfortunately, these commutes are not by bike.”
The biggest losers of that kind of brain drain are small, rural states — Vermont, West Virginia, New Hampshire — places lacking the urban hubs that offer opportunity to newly minted Bachelors, according to an innovative new data source that uses LinkedIn to estimate how many college graduates stay in-state.
The nation’s capital produces relatively few graduates of its own but draws heavily from the rest of the country, making it one of brain drain’s biggest winners, according to the analysis by economists at the University of North Carolina, the W.E. Upjohn Institute, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. The District appears to draw in six times as many graduates as it produces, but data limitations mean that could be an overestimate, the report’s authors say.
While the District is an extreme outlier, it sets a pattern. The other winners are primarily states with cities as large, dynamic and regionally vital as D.C. That would include New York, Washington, California, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, Minnesota and Massachusetts.
Cities such as New York, Atlanta and San Francisco draw graduates from around the region, and — just as importantly — provide the jobs necessary to keep local graduates from looking for greener pastures out of state. Our research shows California, Texas and Florida are best at retaining local graduates, though Florida doesn’t do as well as the others in terms of poaching graduates from elsewhere.
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To get every question, answer and factoid in your inbox as soon as we publish, click “sign up” on this page. If your question inspires a column, we’ll send an official button and ID card. | 2022-09-09T10:57:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The movies most often assigned in college, and more! - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/09/films-assigned-college/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/09/films-assigned-college/ |
Death of queen means King Charles III to be on U.K.'s money, anthem and more
A tribute in the form of 1st class stamps bearing the image of Queen Elizabeth II is pictured stuck to railings outside of Buckingham Palace in London on Sept. 9, 2022, a day after the queen died at the age of 96. (Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images)
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned for 70 years, is arguably the most recognized face in the world. Her name — and insignia — are on display throughout Britain, looming large on buildings or subtly present on coins inside pockets.
But with the death of the queen on Thursday, Britons will need swiftly to adjust to seeing the face of King Charles III on national symbols.
The Bank of England’s governor Andrew Bailey offered his condolences on Thursday and reassured the public that “current banknotes featuring the image of Her Majesty The Queen will continue to be legal tender.”
Elizabeth was the first monarch to feature to appear on Bank of England banknotes, with her image being updated five times as she aged. Her “iconic portraits are synonymous with some of the most important work we do,” he added. The bank said it would offer more updates on future currency once a period of mourning of at least 10 days had been observed.
“In the past, coins of various monarchs would circulate for decades, even centuries after their passing,” said Chorney, a specialist in ancient coins. “The approval of new coins takes time,” he added, with designs authorized by a Royal Mint committee, which was once chaired by the late Prince Philip, Elizabeth’s husband.
During Elizabeth’s reign, the image of her profile faced to the right. Charles’s profile, as the new monarch, will probably flip and face toward the left, in keeping with a tradition that dates to the 1600s. There has been just one exception to this quirk in British history. During the coinage of Edward VIII, who, after taking the throne in 1936 — and before abdicating the same year — insisted that coins featuring his image face to the left. John Richardson, an emeritus professor at Britain’s Open University, has said it was unclear whether Edward’s insistence was “an expression of rebellion against convention, or vanity, to show what he regarded as his better profile, containing his hair parting.”
“God Save The King” was first publicly performed in London in 1745 and was commonly heard in play houses and to greet entering monarchs. But the version referring to a king has not been used since 1952, when the queen’s father, George VI, died. A number of Commonwealth countries and territories also use the song.
Each mailbox on the country’s roadsides features the insignia or cipher of the monarch reigning at the time it was erected. Many carry the letters “E” (for Elizabeth II) and “R” (for “regina,” which is Latin for “queen”). This probably will be updated once Charles is on the throne, to “K.R.” although fewer new mailboxes are being placed as more communication moves online and private delivery companies grow.
In 1966, Elizabeth approved an Arnold Machin-designed image of her to be used on postage stamps, and it has since appeared on more than 220 billion and in more than 130 different colors, according to the Royal Mail. She also featured on numerous stamps created to mark special royal occasions and anniversaries. In 2004, the Royal Mail launched Britain’s first digital stamp, which also features her profile. | 2022-09-09T11:02:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. coins, national anthem to flip from Queen Elizabeth II to King Charles III - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/uk-coins-notes-stamps-anthem-queen-king/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/uk-coins-notes-stamps-anthem-queen-king/ |
Maren Morris, Jason Aldean and the very rare country music public feud
In a genre that does its best to avoid bombshells, Aldean’s PR team dumping him after 17 years was shocking news. And it shows that Nashville’s “one happy family” image is getting tougher to uphold.
Country musician Jason Aldean and his wife, social media influencer Brittany Aldean, have been in a public battle with Maren Morris over Brittany's comments about transgender kids on Instagram. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images; Sanford Myers/AP)
Over the past decade, country musician Jason Aldean has been no stranger to controversy. He endured a very public cheating scandal while married to his first wife, fought against allegations of racism after wearing a blackface Halloween costume, and most recently has drawn criticism for dressing his toddlers in T-shirts that read “Hidin’ from Biden.” The GreenRoom, a Nashville-based publicity firm, helped him navigate all these incidents while maintaining his status as one of the genre’s top stars — until last week when, to the shock of many in the industry, the company dropped one of its biggest clients.
“Music has always been and remains The GreenRoom’s core focus, so we had to make the difficult decision after 17 years to step away from representing Jason,” Tyne Parrish, co-owner of GreenRoom PR, whose clients include multiple top country acts, told Billboard on Sept. 1. “We aren’t the best people for the gig anymore, but will always be big fans of his music — he is one of the greatest live entertainers in country music.”
Though Parrish did not specify why the firm was parting ways with Aldean, the statement came shortly after Aldean’s wife, social media influencer Brittany Aldean, made national headlines when she wrote: “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life,” as the caption to an Instagram video where she displayed a full face of makeup to her 2.3 million followers. Jason Aldean commented with the cry-laughing emoji: “Lmao!! Im glad they didn’t too, cause you and I wouldn’t have worked out.”
When others criticized Brittany’s post as transphobic — notably country star Maren Morris, who also dubbed Brittany, a vocal Donald Trump supporter, as “Insurrection Barbie” — she both doubled down and said her words were taken out of context as she announced that she was launching a line of Barbie-themed shirts that read “Don’t Tread On Our Kids,” referencing the Gadsden flag that has become a favorite symbol for many right-wing groups. The episode soon became prime culture war fodder, with Brittany appearing on Fox News, Tucker Carlson referring to Morris as a “lunatic,” and Morris embracing the situation by selling shirts that said “Lunatic Country Music Person” with proceeds going to groups that support transgender people.
Amid the public feuding, the news about GreenRoom qualified as a bombshell in a genre that works diligently to avoid bombshells. It wasn’t just that the company dropped Aldean, one of modern country’s most successful acts who just sold his recorded music catalogue for a reported $100 million. The most surprising fact was that they announced the news at all — this rarely happens, industry experts say; PR firms drop clients all the time without a word — and included language that it was their decision.
Multiple country music professionals spoke to The Washington Post under the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly, and all said they, along with people in their professional and personal circles, were genuinely surprised. (Parrish declined to comment for this article.)
“I was shocked that a company that would do that,” said one staffer. “Clearly, they have to work a lot for Jason … and from a financial standpoint, at the end of the day, we’re here to make money. But I was also like, ‘Oh s---, yes. Finally, somebody’s taking a stand.’ ”
The fact that the GreenRoom’s steadfastly neutral statement was interpreted as taking a stand against Brittany’s comments — a move that earned them much applause from the industry along with backlash from Aldean’s fans — showed how rare it is for the political and social divide in Nashville to spill into public view. While these divides have quietly existed for decades, they deepen by the day — and it’s turning into an increasingly fraught issue in country music, which desperately tries to avoid lightning-rod topics so as to not alienate its traditional conservative listeners while trying to cater to a newer, more liberal fan base.
Cassadee Pope, former “Voice” winner and Nashville singer, was one of the first to publicly criticize Aldean, and the back-and-forth continued as others jumped in and battle lines started to emerge. Kassi Ashton, Joy Oladokun, Lindsay Ell and Ryan Hurd (Morris’s husband) slammed Brittany’s comments and urged inclusivity in country music, and singers such as RaeLynn, Whitney Duncan and Chuck Wicks (whose wife, Kasi Rosa Wicks, is Jason’s sister and sold the shirts alongside Brittany) commented approvingly on Brittany’s posts.
“This has all gotten to a boiling point. Those two women especially have been very outspoken of their beliefs, so in that sense it wasn’t surprising,” another staffer said, referencing Brittany’s frequent posts about her love of Trump and Fox News, almost always co-signed by her husband. Morris has become one of the most outspoken country singers on the subject of the lack of diversity in the majority-White genre. “But a lot of times, it’s not actually communicated the way this back-and-forth was,” the staffer added.
Country music’s public-facing image is that of one big, happy family. The majority of the billion-dollar industry operates within a few square miles in Nashville. This leads to close relationships, but also creates tension in these polarized times. Those who work in the industry generally have a good idea — through gossip, group chats, conversations overheard backstage at concerts and social media interactions — who falls where on the political spectrum.
“I think there’s a lot of whispered conversations where you learn where [country singers] stand on certain issues — stances that have been made behind closed doors that haven’t been made publicly,” one staffer said. “So the fans and public don’t have any idea.”
But even if someone has views or behavior that one might find heinous, they would likely be compelled to stay quiet, both for business reasons and awkward personal ones — a few cited that the Southern way is to sweep unpleasant topics under the rug. But in a town that small, lives will inevitably overlap.
Morris (whose publicist did not return multiple requests for comment; neither did a label representative for Aldean nor an email address on Brittany’s brand website) discussed this dynamic last year at the annual Country Radio Seminar, revealing she saw pushback for calling out country star Morgan Wallen on social media after he was caught on video saying the “n-word.” Some people seemed more upset by the disregard of the genre’s guiding principles of, as Morris put it, “we’re different, we’re country, we protect our own, we don’t go after people in public.”
For some, the instinct to stay quiet has grown more difficult. Chris Gelbuda, a Nashville songwriter who runs the popular Instagram page Music City Memes, likes to keep the account lighthearted for his 46,000 followers, many of whom work in the industry. But he was taken aback by what he called Brittany’s “mean-spirited” words about transgender children. “I had a lot of friends that were hurt by it, and I was hurt by it,” he said. “It makes my blood boil.”
So he published a critical post, sparking a deluge of DMs and rare fights in the comments. He estimates that supportive responses were “100 to 1,” though he lost about 1 percent of his followers. (Singer Fancy Hagood left celebratory emoji and publishing executive Rakiyah Marshall wrote “LOUDER!"; Naomi Cooke, former lead singer of the trio Runaway June, announced her plan to #unfollow.) Gelbuda said if anything, he views the lost followers as “spring cleaning.” In his post, he wrote that he wasn’t holding his breath that others in the industry would speak up. Later, he compared it to the situation with Wallen, who after a brief suspension from his label and award shows is more popular than ever.
“A lot of people that were definitely appalled by what Morgan did definitely kept quiet about it for fear of pissing people off, because everybody knows everybody here,” Gelbuda said, noting that he includes himself in that category because he has close friends who work with Wallen. “So I’m not perfect either. … But every time one of these things happens here, it’s generally like, ‘Let’s lay low until it blows over and get back to selling records.’”
Another part of the equation that can be overlooked, particularly when casual observers assume all country music is conservative, is that Nashville’s Davidson County is predominantly Democratic. “It’s a little blue oasis in the middle of Tennessee,” said one longtime manager, who estimated that 65 percent of country music executives lean liberal. Yet even if they’re often at odds with the views of their artists — this manager advised at least one of their singers to say nothing about the Aldean/Morris situation — they generally keep that quiet.
“There might be a high-level executive and an artist’s manager who are really against something … and they might have internal conversations that they are outraged and don’t agree,” one staffer explained, “but don’t necessarily speak out because that could affect the business aspect.”
For those who don’t follow country music, the fact that Brittany’s comments got so much attention might seem surprising — after all, she’s not the one who’s a famous singer. But in a genre that prides itself on authenticity, family is in an inextricable part of an artist’s brand, and the wives of Nashville stars have become their own cottage industry as influencers.
The millions of followers of the Nashville wives also call more attention to the political divides in the industry, thanks to the subtle but often telling Instagram activity. There was little overlap between the artists who supported certain posts. Sara Evans and Summer Pardi (wife of Jon Pardi) clicked like on Brittany’s original video, and Cole Swindell, Lauren Alaina, Chris Janson, Michael Ray, Parmalee and Taylor Young (wife of Brett Young) liked her posts about the “Don’t Tread On Our Kids” shirts. RaeLynn, a former “Voice” contestant, posted her own “Insurrection Montana Barbie” video.
Meanwhile, on Morris’s post about her “Lunatic” shirts, she saw likes from singers including Tenille Townes, Kalie Shorr, Lucie Silvas, CMT executive Leslie Fram and host Cody Alan, as well as songwriter Lori McKenna and Hayley Hubbard (wife of Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard). Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town left a series of clapping-hand emoji to express support.
Multiple industry executives agree that one reason the incident exploded in the media is that these issues are so rarely discussed out loud in country music. They are also wary of country’s reputation outside of Nashville, from observers who see these headlines and think they confirm all the worst stereotypes about country music.
“If country music wants to be considered an equitable and humanity-filled genre, we have to start walking the walk and talking the talk,” one staffer said. “We can’t just want to be whoever we want to be but make sure our numbers hit.”
“We were on the shortlist for a ‘Real Housewives’ franchise for a long time,” the staffer added. “We’re still on that list, but keep getting bumped — and this is probably why.” | 2022-09-09T11:15:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maren Morris, Jason Aldean and the very rare country music public feud - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/09/maren-morris-jason-brittany-aldean-nashville/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/09/maren-morris-jason-brittany-aldean-nashville/ |
‘This Fool’ is a singular, authentic TV depiction of South Los Angeles
Chris Estrada as Julio in Hulu's “This Fool.” (Tyler Golden/Hulu)
In the well-reviewed debut season of “This Fool,” there’s a scene in which protagonist Julio (played by series co-creator Chris Estrada) sees a stranger stealing his family’s recyclable cans from their backyard. He yells at the man to stop. His mom turns them in for money, Julio says. “We’re poor. We need those cans!”
“You’re not poor; you’re broke. There’s a difference,” the man says, before posing what seems like a no-brainer question: “You ever been late on your utility bills?”
“Yeah,” Julio says, “all the time.”
“Well, I’ve never been late on my utility bills,” the man says. “You know why? Because I don’t have a … house to live in because I’m poor. I wish I was broke enough to even have a bill. Must be nice.” The exchange sufficiently guilts Julio into not only letting the man take his own family’s cans, but also helping him to take cans from a neighbor. Classic Julio.
“This Fool” is loosely based on comedian Estrada’s stand-up and his upbringing as a first-generation Mexican American in Inglewood, Calif., and South Central Los Angeles. The Hulu series, set in the latter, is anchored by the return of Julio’s cousin Luis (Frankie Quinones), a former gang member who has just been released from an eight-year prison bid. It’s a setup that influences several storylines, including Luis’s participation in a rehabilitation program called Hugs Not Thugs, which happens to be where Julio works.
Conspicuously one of few series that center on Latinos, “This Fool” has arrived amid a recent resurgence of working-class sitcoms. “Los Botes” (“The Cans”) is a standout episode that reflects the subtle themes that make “This Fool” a singular show — even as it evokes other smart slice-of-life comedies (“Atlanta,” “Ramy”) and gives nods to other pop-culture efforts (the cult-favorite 1993 crime drama “Blood In, Blood Out” and the 2007 psychological thriller “Funny Games” among them).
“I wanted to show nuances in class,” Estrada said in a phone interview. “I think people who may be upper-middle-class or rich may view the world as a binary. It’s either you’re poor or you’re rich in this country. And the truth is that there’s working-class people who might be house-poor or are surviving paycheck to paycheck. They’re not necessarily on-the-street poor.”
“This Fool” offers the rare authentic depiction of South Central, mining comedy from the coexistence of African Americans and Latinos. (One elevator pitch for the show was like if “Friday” was made by the Coen brothers.) In one episode, Luis bumps into a former rival, Davonte (Hassan Johnson), who challenges him to a fight. Luis recruits Chef Percy (Jamar Malachi Neighbors), one of the cupcake-baking former gang members in Hugs Not Thugs, to help him and Julio in the brawl. When Percy, who is Black, learns who their target is, he is stunned. “Wait, there’s a Hispanic dude out there named Davonte?” he asks.
“No,” Luis says. “He’s Black.”
“I’m not gonna help two Mexicans beat up a Black dude,” Percy says. “I’ll still roll with you, but when we fight, I’m going to have to fight on his side.”
“Okay,” Luis says. “I can respect that.”
Luis and Davonte agree to let bygones be bygones, especially since their go-to allies have both died. In an ironic twist, the gang members were killed not by gun violence but in car accidents related to texting and driving. “An epidemic,” Luis laments.
The goal, Estrada said, is to “show that these two groups live together and sometimes they get along exceptionally well and sometimes they don’t.”
“I don’t have a message about it,” he added. “I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, but I just wanted to portray it honestly and comedically in a way that felt authentic to somebody who might come from that world.”
Estrada mined more personal parts of his world for the series, too, on which he is also a writer and executive producer. Julio’s mother Esperanza (Laura Patalano) speaks Spanish exclusively, one of several cues the character takes from Estrada’s own mother, who worked as a janitor and would often bring home household essentials and other supplies from the office. In “This Fool,” Esperanza does the same, bringing home scratchy rolls of toilet paper because she refuses to buy softer brands — or allow anyone else to — when there is a free option available. It’s a rule that angers the family, including abuelita Maria (Julia Vera), who shares her contraband single rolls with Luis on the condition that he take her to McDonald’s.
But the series doesn’t shy away from potentially more uncomfortable realities: “Los Botes” opens with Esperanza quietly cleaning in a corporate office building where mostly White employees ignore her completely as she does her job. “I think especially working-class Latinos — people expect them to fade into the background, and so I wanted to show that,” Estrada said. But again, “it’s not a message. It’s portraying something accurately.”
The show, like life, gets surreal sometimes. One memorable scene plays off the running joke that Esperanza loves Ronald Reagan — a Republican, she’s shocked to discover — because of the amnesty granted to illegal immigrants during the 40th president’s administration. Reagan appears to Esperanza in a vaguely sexual dream in which the former actor confesses (in confident, if Anglicized, Spanish) to destabilizing Central America and that he “may have had a hand in creating the crack epidemic.” (The episode’s final credits run over a Reagan diss song by Canadian punk band D.O.A.)
And while the crew behind “This Fool,” created by Pat Bishop, Jake Weisman and Matt Ingebretson of Comedy Central’s “Corporate” — one of the few TV credits Estrada had before this breakout role — generally likes to stick to the script, they were not afraid of experimentation. Executive Producer Fred Armisen, who attended meetings with the creators in support of the project as they pitched it to networks, appears as a guest star alongside Eliza Coupe in the penultimate episode.
“We feel very confident in our writing,” Estrada said of himself and the showrunners. “But we also understand that we have Armisen and Coupe, who are incredibly talented. and funny, and it would be a shame to not let them improvise.” They did a few takes of the script as written and a few that were more off the cuff. The final scene was “a mix of both,” Estrada said. “It was having our cake and eating it, too.”
The show, while boisterous in its comedy and high jinks, succeeds just as much in its quiet observations about everyday life. Julio struggles with codependency in both his family and his on-off relationship with his high school sweetheart Maggie (Michelle Ortiz). In crafting his protagonist, Estrada was inspired by director Charles Burnett’s 1978 drama “Killer of Sheep,” which depicts working-class African Americans in the South L.A. neighborhood of Watts. Julio is “not a villain or a bad guy by any means,” Estrada said. “But he’s also not a perfect guy and he’s a little existential and depressed and he’s kind of stuck in life.”
“I thought that would be such a cool way to depict the character,” he added. “You never get to see a dude from, for lack of a better word, the 'hood, be existential or depressed.”
Julio makes some really bad decisions, but the show doesn’t judge him or other characters for their flaws. “I wanted to make sure that we didn’t create a show that felt like a morality play,” Estrada said. “The last thing I ever want to do is justify my existence to anyone.” | 2022-09-09T11:15:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘This Fool’ is a singular, authentic TV depiction of South Los Angeles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/09/this-fool-chris-estrada/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/09/this-fool-chris-estrada/ |
What to expect from the 2022 Emmy Awards
(Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)
What should you expect from Monday’s Emmy Awards? Nothing too wild, according to host Kenan Thompson.
Nodding to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars earlier this year — somehow, not the last awards show to ever air on television — Thompson said in a recent interview that such a scandal “won’t happen again.”
“Even if I am roasting [someone], it shouldn’t come across as any sort of malice,” he told the Associated Press.
Thompson’s approach falls in line with the friendly style of comedy he has showcased as the longest-tenured cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” which accounts for five of his six total Emmy nominations (including one win in 2018). Despite all the recognition, this is Thompson’s first time hosting the Emmys ceremony, which he said he hopes to maintain as “a night of appreciating artistry and creativity and removing the stress of it all out.”
Keep reading for a closer look at how the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards seem likely to shape up. | 2022-09-09T11:15:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Your 2022 Emmys questions, answered - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/09/when-are-emmys/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/09/when-are-emmys/ |
Gary Schroen’s death came after decades of service to the CIA, including being one of the first Americans into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks
Gary Schroen, a former CIA officer and the author of the book “First In,” speaks with Tim Russert on NBC's 'Meet the Press' in 2005. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Inside her Northern Virginia home, Anne McFadden keeps an informal shrine to her late husband Gary Schroen, a fellow spy and one of the CIA’s most revered and longest-serving officers.
A staircase wall shows the cover of “First In,” Schroen’s book that chronicles his mission at the age of 59 leading the agency’s first officers into Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. An adjacent photo features Schroen and his colleagues on that team — its code name was “Jawbreaker” — sporting black-and-white keffiyehs next to their helicopter, tail sign: “91101.” On a sideboard, 11 CIA medals, most emblazoned with the agency’s seal of an eagle and a 16-point compass star, sit open in square-shaped wooden cases.
“You know, he didn’t talk that much about what he got the medals for," McFadden said on a recent day inside their home, where the counterintelligence specialist granted her first interview since her husband’s death last month. “He had these in a drawer. I put them out.”
Schroen worked for the CIA as an operations officer and contractor for more than 50 years before dying Aug. 1 after complications from a fall outside their Alexandria home. He was 80.
At the CIA, he managed case officers and recruited foreigners as spies and collaborators, paying them with hard cash and running covert actions against enemies abroad.
Even though Schroen wrote an acclaimed memoir about his most legendary operation — and even though McFadden herself has worked as a CIA employee and contractor for more than 35 years — her husband’s modesty and penchant for secrecy meant she only knew so much.
Three brothers went to war in Afghanistan. Only one returned.
The operation also helped make Schroen famous at Langley, where the Russian-made (and CIA-modified) Mi-17 that choppered the Jawbreaker team over the Hindu Kush Mountains into Afghanistan was dedicated in a ceremony in 2019 as an agency museum exhibit outside on its campus.
When Schroen died — shortly after a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri — agency director William J. Burns released a statement, hailing him as a “legend and inspiration to every Agency officer."
The acknowledgment was a rare gesture. Typically, the CIA announces the death of an officer when they have been killed in the line of duty and awarded a black star engraved on its lobby’s Memorial Wall. Even then, the agency only names them if their identities are deemed no longer sensitive.
But Schroen, a main character in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Ghost Wars” by Steve Coll, was well-known to the world, at least among spy services, reporters and other national security types. At a memorial service at their church later this month, McFadden said, she expects several hundred to attend, many of them Langley friends or mentees.
“Gary said [Jawbreaker] was the best thing he did in his career. It was the culmination of everything he’d been trying to do,” McFadden said. “There” was a little bit of vengeance, but mostly, he just said, ‘I was the right person to go.’ I once asked him if he was afraid and he said, ‘Not really.’ ”
‘Off to a Bad Start’
Sitting on her couch, McFadden pulled out her husband’s papers.
The Illinois native, born Nov. 6, 1941, joined the Army Security Agency in 1959 at the age of 18.
But Schroen’s career almost blew up as soon as it began, according to an unpublished story he wrote, “Off to a Bad Start.” When a beer bottle he had left on top of his barracks mailbox in Germany spilled all over outgoing Christmas cards and other correspondence, his enraged commanding officer threatened him with a court-martial and 25 years in prison. He was accused of “tampering with the U.S. mail,” Schroen wrote.
The court-martial never happened. Instead, he got busted back one grade to private E-2. Soon, after an honorable discharge in 1962, he was off to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. During college, where he worked side jobs as a janitor and unloading trucks for UPS, he got a letter in the mail from another three-letter agency.
He entered the CIA in June 1969 when the agency, led by Richard Helms, was combating the Soviets and running clandestine operations in southeast Asia.
The accused spy knew stealth was crucial from his work on submarines. He surfaced anyway.
But Schroen was dispatched to another part of the world. In the early 1970s, he and his first wife, Pat — their first date was seeing “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold” — settled in Iran with their only child at the time, Christopher.
Around then, members of the Mujahideen-e Khalq had launched several attacks against Americans in Tehran, Schroen wrote in another of his biographical stories. Under high alert, several CIA officers in Tehran were issued concealed-carry weapons.
So, one night in September 1975, Schroen wrote, he began his seven-block walk home from the embassy — armed.
“He looked like any other young diplomat at the Embassy, except a closer examination would have revealed a Browning 9mm Hi-Power automatic tucked under his belt on his left side, hidden by the suit jacket,” Schroen wrote of himself in the third person.
When Schroen was about four blocks from home, he saw two Iranian men in suits, standing by a sedan. One man reached his hand into a small bag — the “perfect size for a handgun,” he wrote.
Then, Schroen pulled out his Browning. He was going to shoot, but one of the men shook his head no, and the second man nodded. Schroen took off in a sprint.
“In looking back over the years, it is clear to me that this was an MEK assassination operation targeting me,” Schroen wrote. “The fact that I was alert and armed, and I drew my weapon before they could react, I am sure saved my life.”
It wouldn’t be the last time Schroen was nearly killed. On Nov. 21, 1979, student protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, setting it on fire and trapping Schroen and many others inside. A Marine was fatally shot, but Schroen outlasted the rioters in a code room vault and left the compound physically unscathed.
“If there aren’t 3,000 students coming over the fence, then it’s not an emergency,” McFadden said her husband used to say.
Nearly two decades later, as the chief of station in Islamabad, he helped lead a 1997 CIA-FBI operation that captured Mir Aimal Kansi, an FBI “Top Ten” fugitive. On Jan. 25, 1993, Kansi had fatally shot two CIA employees and wounded others while they were waiting in their cars at a stoplight to enter agency headquarters.
“Kansi’s arrest wouldn’t have happened without Gary,” said a former CIA colleague on contract with the agency and who helped with the planning. “Gary was the one who had a good relationship with Pakistan’s intelligence service. He nurtured it over years. To try to do something like that unilaterally, in western Pakistan, in no man’s land, would have been, in my view, difficult to do without Pakistan’s assistance.”
He thought he was out
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2o01, Schroen drove to the CIA. He had recently completed a stint as the deputy chief of the agency’s Near East Division, helping oversee covert operations.
But now, he was a little less than two months away from turning 60, and he had entered a retirement transition program. His plans changed that morning when he saw people congregate around a television, he wrote in “First In.” One of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan had been hit by a plane.
Then, another aircraft struck the second tower, followed by a plane plowing into the Pentagon.
In the shadow of the towers: Five lives and a world transformed
Days later, Schroen met with the CIA’s counterterrorist center director, Cofer Black. The agency was now assigning the near-retiree the mission of a lifetime: to captain a team of CIA officers and lead them into Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, where they needed to collaborate with the Northern Alliance, defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and hunt down Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Their team would soon get a code name: Jawbreaker.
“I want bin Laden’s head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice,” Black told him, Schroen recounted in his book.
The hunt for Osama bin Laden: For almost a decade, U.S. intelligence officials were stymied by Osama bin Laden. That is until CIA analysts at Langley changed their focus to the al-Qaeda leader's secret courier network. (Video: The Washington Post)
Shortly after Schroen and his fellow Jawbreakers arrived in late September in Afghanistan, they generated hundreds of intelligence reports that allowed U.S. military aircraft to strike Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds, he wrote. After about six weeks — an intense period of paying off warlords, dealing with demands from headquarters, and suffering multiple bouts of stomach issues — Schroen was summoned home, just days before his 60th birthday. Later that month, one of his CIA colleagues, Johnny “Mike” Spann, became the first American killed in Afghanistan.
Hank Crumpton, the special operations chief of the agency’s counterterrorist center at the time, spoke to Schroen nearly every day while he was in Afghanistan. “He had a huge impact in my planning with the agency director [George Tenet] and even directly with President George W. Bush,” Crumpton recalled in an interview. "I took what he said as gospel.”
CIA memoirs offer revelations and settle scores among spies
‘My dad was so many things’
Though Schroen retired from the CIA in November 2001, he couldn’t resist the pull of coming back as a contractor.
By 2007, he was teaching new CIA officers in tradecraft. That is when he met McFadden, an agency colleague. Gary’s second marriage was falling apart, and now, he wanted to date. On their first outing, McFadden recalled, he was waiting for her at the hostess stand of a steak house, dressed in a suit and holding a martini.
“I asked him, ‘Are you trying to do a James Bond?’” McFadden said, laughing.
The two married on Nov. 27, 2009 at Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria. McFadden, whose career spanned a range of subjects from Iran to chemical and biological counterproliferation, was always surprised that someone of Schroen’s standing treated her with such respect.
“I just felt cherished, there is no other word,” McFadden said. “It astonishes me every day that Gary Schroen fell in love with me.”
About 18 months later, they were asleep when their home phone rang in the middle of the night. It was a reporter, McFadden said, and this was how he learned that bin Laden had been killed in a Navy SEAL raid on May 2, 2011, at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
“He was happy, really happy, that it was done, and that what he and his colleagues started so long ago was accomplished,” McFadden said.
Schroen worked into his 70s. Recently, he had been retained as an expert by the law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, which is representing relatives of the Sept. 11 victims in a suit against Saudi Arabia alleging the kingdom abetted al-Qaeda in the run-up to the terrorist attacks.
He also dealt with his share of heartbreaks. His son, Christopher Schroen, died of cancer in 2017, at the age of 47.
One of his daughters, Jenny Schroen, said that, growing up as the child of a spy, they were taught a certain secrecy: "He made it clear and said that, ‘If anyone asks where I worked, just say the government. If they press, then say, the State Department.’”
His other daughter, Kate Cowell, posted on her Instagram account a photo from the 1980s of herself as a teenager next to her father. The spy wore a white sweater and a polo shirt with a popped collar, and glasses with huge rectangle-shaped lenses.
“My dad was so many things. At his core he was truly a badass. Really an American hero,” Cowell wrote in her Instagram caption. “He made America safer and 99% of you never knew it. On a deeply personal level, he was my dad...And I’m absolutely shattered.”
Back at their Alexandria home, where Schroen enjoyed tending to their rescue dog, Gracie, and watching cardinals flock to the bird feeders by the crepe myrtle, McFadden walked into her bedroom. There, on her dresser, next to a framed photo of the two of them by a Christmas tree, she picked up one of her husband’s most prized possessions. It was a Rolex. Blue, gold, and silver.
The timepiece was a gift he bought himself nearly 21 years ago — a gift for his 60th birthday and an award for his safe return from Jawbreaker’s mission.
“He said, ‘I’ve always wanted a Rolex and I survived Afghanistan and I am buying one,’” McFadden recalled. "He wore it all the time.” | 2022-09-09T11:15:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gary Schroen, CIA legend pursued Osama bin Laden after 9/11, dies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/gary-schroen-cia-bin-laden-9-11/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/gary-schroen-cia-bin-laden-9-11/ |
What to watch with your kids: ‘Pinocchio’ and more
“Cars on the Road.” (Disney Plus)
Cars on the Road (TV-G)
Zippy series has a few scares, but mostly whole-family fun.
“Cars on the Road” follows Cars franchise-favorite characters Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) and Mater the Tow Truck (Larry the Cable Guy) as they take an epic cross-country road trip to the wedding of Mater’s sister. They have lots of adventures and mishaps along the way — crashes, run-ins with dinosaur-like monster trucks with big teeth, etc. — but they always come out okay. One episode set in a haunted house has some spooky stuff, including jump scares, ghosts and references to real horror movies like “The Shining” (kids may not get those references, but they’re still creepy). Beyond that, these short episodes are a fun pick for whole-family viewing. (Nine 22-minute episodes)
Barbie: Mermaid Power (TV-Y)
Sweet animated musical promotes friendship, acceptance.
“Barbie: Mermaid Power” is an animated musical in the Barbie movie franchise. It follows Malibu Barbie (voiced by America Young), her sisters and Brooklyn Barbie (Tatiana Varria) as they transform into mermaids and learn how to wield their mermaid powers and prepare for the once-every-100-years Mermaid Moon. Animated violence includes characters bullying and speaking unkindly to one another. Two mermaid characters are sometimes boastful and rude to younger mermaids, as well as to the visiting “land dwellers” who are different from them. There’s brief peril when an underwater vehicle begins to break down and flood. Expect clear, strong messages about acceptance and finding your talents. One character was born without a tail fin and has a “fin difference.” She’s strong-willed and shares how she doesn’t want people to treat her differently. Characters also learn that it’s important to take care of the planet. (65 minutes)
Frequent peril in live-action/CGI version of classic tale.
“Pinocchio” is a bit more intense than the animated classic (which itself has some fairly dark moments). Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) is kidnapped, imprisoned, nearly turned into a donkey and swallowed by a sea monster. One beloved character appears to die in one scene, and other characters are tossed around, threatened, hit over the head, captured and locked up, set on fire, teased, chased by the sea monster and enslaved. Some of the situations, evil characters and bad behavior could prove upsetting for younger or more sensitive viewers. But the messages are solid: Pinocchio must learn to follow his conscience; distinguish right from wrong; resist temptation; and prove himself brave, honest and unselfish. His maker/dad, Geppetto (Tom Hanks), and his minder, Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), already model these qualities. There are quite a lot of taunts (like “stupid,” “loser,” “idiot,” “jerk” and more) and some teasing. Other language includes “jackass,” “h-e-double hockey sticks,” “bollocks,” “blimey” and “crock.” (105 minutes)
Welcome to Wrexham (TV-MA)
Feel-good reality show is a sports underdog tale.
“Welcome to Wrexham” is a reality show about a low-level football (soccer to Americans) team in Wrexham, Wales. It’s been purchased by celebrities Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, who have an eye toward improving the team’s chances. Strong messages of optimism, perseverance and teamwork prevail, and the overall tone is light and positive. Players and owners alike are shown pulling together for a common goal, and they are supportive of one another. Language and cursing includes “f---,” “s---,” “hell” and British expressions such as “t--s up” (a failure). We see participants drinking in social situations (i.e., at a pub), and frequently see logos and other imagery associated with various sports teams. This uplifting show is suitable for whole-family viewing, if the unbleeped cursing is not an issue for your family. (Eight half-hour episodes) | 2022-09-09T11:15:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common Sense Media’s weekly recommendations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/09/common-sense-media-september-9/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/09/common-sense-media-september-9/ |
Offerings include the Met premiere of ‘The Hours,’ Bernstein’s ‘Kaddish,’ Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O22 and Berliner Philharmoniker in the U.S.
Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the National Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Arts Society of Washington's performance of Mahler's “Resurrection” symphony at the Kennedy Center. (Kyle Gustafson for The Washington Post)
For all of the shutdowns and setbacks endured by the performing arts over the past few years, the 2022-2023 season feels like the rubber truly hitting the road to recovery. Masked but undaunted, orchestras, ensembles and opera companies are forging forward with busy seasons that I can barely scratch the surface of here. (Among the more exciting returns to normal: Touring orchestras are back!) What follows are 10 highlights near and not-too-far that piqued one critic’s interest. (For more local and regional classical picks, be sure to take regular peeks at the Weekend section on Fridays through the season.)
Washington Bach Consort
Pardon the easy pun, but it’s hard to imagine a nicer way to get “Bach” to business than an afternoon with the Washington Bach Consort, whose three-tier season of Director’s Series, Chamber Series and Noontime Cantata concerts is well worth marking up your calendar. The consort’s 45th season opens Sept. 18 with a balance of new and old: The world premiere of Trevor Weston’s “A New Song” will be paired with Bach’s “Geschwinde, geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde” (BWV 201) in a performance featuring soprano Sherezade Panthaki. Sept. 18 at National Presbyterian Church, 4101 Nebraska Ave. NW. bachconsort.org.
With the vanishing of composer Philip Glass’s still-in-progress “Symphony No. 15” from the NSO calendar (it was to receive its already postponed world premiere in October), the season feels a bit loaded toward the spring, when music director Gianandrea Noseda and Co. resume the orchestra’s ongoing symphonic cycles of Beethoven and George Walker. But this fall still sports plenty of highlights.
Lovers of Prokofiev get two symphonic servings when John Storgårds leads the composer’s “Classical” symphony (Sept. 29-Oct. 1) and Noseda follows up with the rarely played “Symphony No. 6” (Oct. 22-23). A procession of talented soloists pay a visit to Kennedy Center, including violinists Leila Josefowicz (Sept. 29-Oct. 1), Julian Rachlin (Oct. 27-29) and Anne Akiko Meyers (Nov. 10-12); pianist Cédric Tiberghien (Nov. 17 and 19); soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha (Dec. 1-3); and NSO cellist David Hardy, who takes on Britten’s “Cello Symphony” (Oct. 22-23). The opening gala on Sept. 24 features work by composer-in-residence Carlos Simon as well as the return of Daniil Trifonov, who is owed a proper audience after his last appearance to a scant and socially distanced assembly of listeners in May 2021. Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW. kennedy-center.org.
Opera Philadelphia returns with its ambitious Festival O22, which features a staging of Rossini’s rarely performed “Otello” (starring tenor Khanyiso Gwenxane in his U.S. debut and tenor Lawrence Brownlee), as well as Toshio Hosokawa’s Noh-inspired vision of Poe’s “The Raven.” But I’m most excited for “Black Lodge” — a William S. Burroughs-inspired multimedia opera with music by composer David T. Little and a libretto by poet Anne Waldman. Billed as “part film screening and part industrial rock opera concert,” this vision of a ghostly bardo unites glam-opera band Timur & the Dime Museum with musicians from the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra for a night of I-have-no-idea-what. Sept. 21-Oct. 2, various times and locations. operaphila.org.
‘Requiem for the Enslaved’
If you’ve never taken in a concert at Boston’s sui generis Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, this might be the season to give it a go. On Sept. 18, New York Polyphony stages an afternoon musical “installation” in the museum’s lush courtyard devoted to music composed for England’s first queen, Mary I. On Oct. 23, the Boston-based Black arts institution Castle of Our Skins holds a 10th-anniversary celebration featuring music by Derrick Skye and Yaz Lancaster and world premieres by Bongani Ndodana-Breen and Renée C. Baker. But D.C. listeners may be most piqued by the Oct. 9 world premiere of Carlos Simon’s “Requiem for the Enslaved,” performed by the Boston-based Hub New Music, hip-hop artist Marco Pavé, trumpeter Jared Bailey and Simon on piano. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston. gardnermuseum.org.
22 for ’22: Composers and performers to watch this year
‘Kaddish’
Those moved by Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” — or those unable to score a ticket for the Kennedy Center revival — might consider taking in another of Bernstein’s large-scale spiritual explorations. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under conductor James Conlon, takes on Bernstein’s “Kaddish,” featuring speakers Judith and Leah Pisar, soprano Diana Newman, the University of Maryland Concert Choir (led by Jason Ferdinand), and the Maryland State Boychoir (led by Stephen Holmes). Bernstein composed “Kaddish” in 1963 while still at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, dedicating it to President John F. Kennedy after learning of his assassination. The piece’s blend of sacred and secular, as well as the grief and hope churning at its core, make it an arresting counterpart (and counterpoint) to “Mass.” Oct. 6 and 9 at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore, and Strathmore music hall, Bethesda. bsomusic.org.
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra names Jonathon Heyward music director
The New York Philharmonic christens its super-spruced-up home at Lincoln Center’s new-and-improved David Geffen Hall with a powerhouse season. It opens with the world premiere of Marcos Balter’s “Oyá” (a “fantasia of sound and light” composed specifically for the hall). The orchestra then takes the acoustics of the hall for a spin with works by Respighi, John Adams and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Stride” by composer Tania León, who will receive her Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 4. Oct. 12-18 at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York. nyphil.org.
George Clooney, U2, Gladys Knight among next Kennedy Center honorees
São Paulo Symphony Orchestra
In addition to her roles as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, chief conductor of Ravinia Festival, music director of the National Orchestral Institute and Festival, and music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop is conductor of honor for the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. In October, she and the orchestra embark on a short run of dates in the United States, performing “Floresta Villa-Lobos” — a program of six composers interspersed with compositions by the Brazilian master Heitor Villa-Lobos. “The Amazon Concert” comes to Strathmore on Oct. 12 and proceeds to Carnegie Hall for a two-night engagement (with two programs) Oct. 14 and 15. Strathmore Music Hall, Bethesda. strathmore.org.
If conductor Marin Alsop’s done it, it’s probably because someone told her she couldn’t
Washington National Opera
The WNO kicks off the one-two punch of its fall season with a new production of Verdi’s “Il trovatore” (Oct. 22-Nov. 7) directed by Brenna Corner and featuring an exciting cast (Latonia Moore as Leonora! Raehann Bryce-Davis as Azucena! Ryan Speedo Green as Fernando!). But I’m already bracing for the 100-minute thrill ride that is Richard Strauss’s “Elektra” (Oct. 29-Nov. 12) arriving via a brand-new production by WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello and starring Christine Goerke in the title role. Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW. kennedy-center.org.
If classical music keeps one thing from the pandemic, let it be the opera short
Hang onto that airfare, as conductor Kirill Petrenko brings the Berliner Philharmoniker to the United States for a limited string of appearances this fall: Carnegie Hall in New York (Nov. 10-12), Symphony Hall in Boston (Nov. 13), Chicago Symphony Center (Nov. 16), Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Mich. (Nov. 18-19) and Hayes Hall in Naples, Fla. (Nov. 21-22). Depending on where and when you catch the orchestra, you’ll get one of two programs. One gathers Mozart’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in B flat (played by violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley) and music by Andrew Norman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The other program presents Mahler’s sprawling Symphony No. 7 in its glorious five-movement entirety (i.e. it’s a lot of Nachtmusik). berliner-philharmoniker.de/en.
‘The Hours’
Those who instinctively associate Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer-winning 1998 novel “The Hours” with Philip Glass’s undulating melodies from the 2002 film of the same name will have a bit of deprogramming to do before taking in the Metropolitan Opera’s world-premiere production. Pulitzer-winning composer Kevin Puts puts his own orchestral spin on the story of three women disconnected by time but united in turmoil, Greg Pierce supplies the libretto, and “Akhnaten” visionary Phelim McDermott directs. As for the core of the cast, it’s a power trio: Renée Fleming takes on the thoroughly modern Clarissa, Kelli O’Hara sings the desperate housewife, Laura, and Joyce DiDonato transforms into Virginia Woolf. I’d pack extra tissues. Nov. 22-Dec. 15 at the Metropolitan Opera, 30 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York. metopera.org. | 2022-09-09T11:15:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Met premiere, ‘Kaddish’ and Berliner Philharmoniker among highlights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/09/fall-preview-classical-music/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/09/fall-preview-classical-music/ |
Lou Reed’s earliest transformation
With ‘Words & Music: May 1965,’ some of the rock legend’s best-known songs are heard in their earliest forms. Far removed from the noise and confrontation of the Velvet Underground, they show a songwriter finding his way.
By John Lingan
Lou Reed in January 1966. A new collection released by Light in the Attic Records explores some of the earliest work of Reed’s career, right before he formed the massively influential Velvet Underground. (Adam Ritchie/Redferns/Getty Images)
In the spring of 1965, Lou Reed was barely 23 and less than a year removed from his college graduation. He had just experienced his first musical success, fronting a hastily thrown-together band called the Primitives on a written-to-order garage rock single called “The Ostrich,” but he was also still in thrall to the writer Delmore Schwartz, his Syracuse University teacher-mentor who insisted that literary art should reflect the blood and guts of real-life emotional struggle.
That dichotomy — blunt rock-and-roll catharsis and stark lyrical realism — would define Reed’s staggering career, which spanned decades of continual aesthetic reinvention from his first act with the Velvet Underground all the way to his death from liver disease in 2013. But a new collection, “Words & Music: May 1965,” the first of a planned archival series from Light in the Attic Records, captures this perpetually evolving, consistently transgressive artist in the unlikeliest guise of all: folkie tunesmith.
The release comprises acoustic demos of some of Reed’s best-known songs, including “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” a couple of lesser-known treasures such as “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” and a handful that have never been released in any form. Though they feature his Velvet Underground partner and on-and-off musical foil John Cale on harmonies and accompanying instrumentation, these homemade recordings predate the duo’s earliest full-band sessions and have none of the Velvets’ fearless spaciousness and avant-garde ambitions. This is an intimate document of two newfound friends discovering a sound that would shape countless musicians and styles in their wake. For fans, and for the multiple generations who revere Reed as a creative, even philosophical lodestar, “Words & Music” is something like a previously undiscovered early draft of “Romeo and Juliet.”
“When I listen to these ’65 demos, it feels like such a poetic entrance, the roots of what came next,” Light in the Attic founder and co-owner Matt Sullivan says. “You can hear the beat generation, you can hear him and John merging. But you can hear elements of punk rock, too. When you hear ‘Heroin’ or ‘Waiting for the Man’ broken down, it’s a reminder of Lou’s songwriting, the mix of street poetry with rock-and-roll.”
“Words & Music” was produced in partnership with Reed’s archivists and his widow, the esteemed musician and theater artist Laurie Anderson. She and Reed met in the 1990s and became a kind of living New York landmark for the final two decades of his life — inseparable twin geniuses representing entirely different realms of the Manhattan creative world. Speaking by Skype, Anderson says the May 1965 tape “sounds exactly like the Lou I knew. It’s the ghost of a very ambitious young man who was working songs out. He’s laughing, he’s poking around. It’s the same person. You can hear someone taking chances.”
Reed was an exemplary chance-taker in his life and art, which is why “Words & Music” can’t be dismissed as mere juvenilia. Yes, it features the earliest iterations of his defining work, but it also captures him at a moment and in a setting that even the deepest devotee has never experienced. And with Reed, moments and settings are everything. Before he was a black-clad denizen of the Warhol demimonde, a punk progenitor, a dog-collared violator of sexual boundaries, a critic-baiting chronicler of New York deviancy, a defiantly “average guy” stadium rocker, a collaborator with Metallica, an interpreter of Edgar Allan Poe, and finally, an elder statesman with a yen for tai chi and meditation, Reed was simply a young man with a guitar and an armload of disparate influences. He was an English major, a Dylan fan and, above all, a writer.
When Reed biographer Anthony DeCurtis first heard the “Words & Music” recordings, it was Reed’s writing that struck him most forcefully. “He’d been playing in bands since he was 14,” DeCurtis says, and the tape shows him “mimicking so many kinds of songs. But on this, the lyrics are infinitely farther along than the music.”
From DeCurtis’s 2017 book “Lou Reed: A Life,” we know that early 1965 was an uncertain but decisive period in the man’s life. He lived with his parents on Long Island, but he spent much of his time in Queens, writing countless tunes for the teen-song factory Pickwick Records, and in Manhattan, consorting with Cale, a Welsh experimental-classical prodigy who joined the Primitives to effectively slum as a rock-and-roller.
The common, reductive origin story of the Velvet Underground says Reed brought the pop songcraft and seedy lyrical vision, while Cale introduced droning ambiance and exploded the musical boundaries of pop altogether. But that doesn’t explain why an arch ultramodernist like Cale would take so fondly to a doo-wop fan like Reed in the first place, to the point where folk-averse Cale could soon be found busking with his songwriter friend in Harlem. A mutual affinity for drugs certainly played a role, but “Words & Music” makes their connection clearer: Reed’s writing was so grippingly unique that Cale saw the overlap in their sensibilities.
Take “Heroin,” for example, a wellspring of what would later be called punk or alternative, the “Like a Rolling Stone” of commercially insouciant rock music. On 1967’s “The Velvet Underground & Nico,” Reed’s proper debut as a recording artist, the song is an incantation, a sense-journey through the languorous rapture and nightmarish rush of an opioid high. But the harrowing lyrics, we now know, were basically complete well before the duo met their benefactor and protector Andy Warhol, and more than a year before they recorded the epochal version with Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison on percussion and guitar, respectively. The “Words & Music” rendition has a similar if much less dramatic musical structure; Reed and Cale speed up and slow down. But they otherwise treat it like a campfire singalong. The world-changing musical vision was still to come.
On the other hand, a 1965 version of “Pale Blue Eyes” is musically similar to the crystalline ballad that eventually appeared on the Velvet Underground’s 1969 self-titled album (their first without Cale), but the lyrics here are entirely different except for its chorus. The song originated at Syracuse, where Reed wrote it for his most important early girlfriend, Shelley Albin. In 1965, it was an almost childish ditty about jealousy. By this point, Albin had already left him following his borderline abusive treatment; when she married after college, he remained besotted, often begging her to leave her husband. Now we can see that he carried the skeleton of this heartbreaking song in his head for years, rewriting its verses until it became vexingly self-incriminating and rueful, a high point of Reed’s gentlest, most complex tendencies.
“Words & Music” is truly a demo in the sense that the young songwriter appears to have recorded it mainly for copyright purposes. The tape survived because he mailed it to himself and held on to the unopened package for the rest of his life, almost a half-century. If that sounds oddly fastidious, Reed’s archivists, Jason Stern and Don Fleming, say he retained an enormous amount of documentation across his entire career, from stage costumes to tollbooth receipts. (His sister Merrill apparently thinks this was the influence of their accountant father.)
Nearly all this material was donated by Anderson to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, where an immersive multimedia exhibition, “Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars,” is running through March 2023. Between this free celebration, the newly inaugurated series from Light in the Attic, a recent Velvet Underground documentary from filmmaker Todd Haynes and even DeCurtis’s doorstop, Reed has become the subject of serious mainstream study and preservation in a way that his mercurial art and confrontational reputation made difficult during his life.
Anderson has insisted, however, that her husband’s posthumous legacy be as immediate and accessible as the emotions in Reed’s songs. “I want this and the NYPL exhibit to be open to everyone,” she says. “Not a white-glove thing. Any kid starting a band, anyone, can now hear him searching around.”
For Anderson, the most important track on “Words & Music” is “Men of Good Fortune,” which shares a title and nothing else with a track from Reed’s 1973 junkie-romance concept record “Berlin,” occasionally cited as the most depressing album ever made. Instead of that record’s grandiose production and lurid lyrics, the 1965 “Men” resembles a Child Ballad, the kind of British story-song that inspired early American folk music and its 1960s revivalists. It’s a sad waltz sung by a young “maiden” who misses her chance at marriage because of her mother’s warnings about wayward men.
What could be less in character from the man who wrote “Walk on the Wild Side,” let alone “Sex With Your Parents”? But as Anderson notes, Reed would go on to write gorgeously from a female perspective in songs like “Stephanie Says” and “Candy Says.” Like everything on “Words & Music,” “Men of Good Fortune” foretells his future as much as it resembles the past.
“He became a little girl to write that song, in his little red outfit,” Anderson says. “He was Shakespearean: He could step into people’s minds. He didn’t self-pity in his songs, he went outside. He saw all these people, he impersonated them, went into their minds. This is a very unique songwriter. The importance of this record is you see he always was.” | 2022-09-09T11:16:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lou Reed's earliest ‘Words and Music’ show an artist’s earliest incarnation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/09/lou-reed-words-music-1965/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/09/lou-reed-words-music-1965/ |
How disability advocate Alice Wong turned her anger into action
Review by Anna Leahy
In July 2015, Alice Wong, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, visited the White House and President Barack Obama via robot to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act. (Pete Souza/White House)
Alice Wong was born with muscular dystrophy, which hampered her ability to walk by the time she was 7 or 8 years old. As a first-grader, she had to make her way slowly down the hall, lagging behind her classmates. One day, her teacher took Alice’s hand. Side by side, they led the class through the school. “Walking together, in tandem — adult-child, nondisabled-disabled, teacher-student — we set the pace for the entire class,” Wong writes in “Year of the Tiger.” “I have not felt that seen, safe, or cared for by a teacher since.”
Much of Wong’s education was filled with “enraging, traumatic, discriminatory, bullying, and embarrassing experiences,” but this teacher made young Alice feel as if she were brimming with potential.
While some of those enraging experiences are among the topics Wong explores, that’s only part of the story in “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life.” Wong, who now uses a wheelchair and breathes with the assistance of a ventilator, was born more than a decade before the Americans With Disabilities Act would go into effect. Only two years into the ADA era, the private Quaker school she attended, Earlham College in Indiana, had “to create an accessible bathroom in the one dorm that didn’t have steps.” She had access to a single restroom on campus. After respiratory failure required a break in her studies, she transferred to the nearby public university, where she commuted from home.
Ultimately, she found her way to graduate school in the Bay Area, where she would flourish within the disability rights community. Even as Wong’s surroundings continued to present barriers, her self-advocacy expanded into activism, including founding the Disability Visibility Project, which collects oral histories.
“Year of the Tiger” is the wide-ranging story of this activist’s life. Wong warns, “You will not find any pithy themes,” and it will not “be neatly digestible with sentimental generalizations about the meaning of life.” Instead, drawing from principles of sociology, Wong chronicles her circumstances and intellectual growth, including how her agitation and dissatisfaction led her “to become more of an advocate and to use that individual anger to help other people.”
This collection is part playbook, part scrapbook. It includes transcripts of enlightening and sometimes topically overlapping interviews, tips for conducting interviews based on her experiences, and personal photographs and drawings, including a collaborative graphic essay about the “truth universally acknowledged that cats know how to live.”
The short essay is Wong’s go-to form. “Essays are my jam,” she proclaims, and that’s where incisive critiques, humor, practicality and optimism become compellingly inseparable. In a different context, the jumps from essay to interview to comic strip might seem disjointed, and the occasional recasting of events within different forms or from different vantages might feel repetitive, but in the story of Wong’s activist life as a disabled Asian American woman, this expansive structure serves as a version of her first-grade teacher’s hand. “Year of the Tiger” demonstrates an individual mind at work, as one might expect from a good memoir, and encompasses something larger.
Wong’s anger and her humor permeate this book. In the wake of a friend’s death, for instance, she is “horrified to see media outlets … get the details about Stacey’s [Stacey Park Milbern’s] life wrong,” both at the time of her death and a year later. When Wong receives a direct message from a journalist asking for intimate details, “anger boiled forth.” Whether in response to her own experiences or the broader cultural thoughtlessness toward the disabled community, Wong conveys an “impulse to be gentle” mingled with “the need to make clear in no uncertain terms that some people need to” back off. There are plenty of lighthearted moments as well. The “Proust-ish Questionnaire” chapter reveals not only Wong’s greatest fears, which include spiders as well as power outages that could put her life in peril, but also her favorite lipstick colors, coffee roasters and songs. She has fun with her self-proclaimed nerd status, shares inside jokes with friends and admits that she uses coffee instead of yoga to center herself.
While very much the story of one life, “Year of the Tiger” is also about collective power and collective responsibility. A family tree of her deceased disabled friends, for instance, visualizes Wong’s connection with others. There are also social media memes and text message exchanges that manifest the crucial role the internet plays in Wong’s life as a social and intellectual space. She speaks often about collective care, collective effort, collective values, collective liberation and “a collective force holding everyone together with bonds of interdependence.”
It is in this context of interdependence that Wong is a self-declared oracle. As she puts it, “My body, which the state calls ‘broken,’ I call an ‘oracle.’” As someone who uses a machine to assist breathing, she writes, “it’s not just the distant flames that I can see before you. But it’s the cold math that calculates the value of my life, an algorithm of expendability that — whether you realize it or not — can come for you as well.” One in four adults in the United States has some kind of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and any of us might become disabled.
In fact, Wong suggests that a post-pandemic future in which the expertise of people with disabilities drives decision-making can better support the restructured, precarious lives we all live. “If there’s anything to come out of this pandemic,” she writes, “I hope that people realize that, for many of us, we have always been here, we have always survived. And in many cases, we have the solutions.” Rather than fool ourselves into trying to return to a pre-pandemic normal, Wong argues, this moment is our chance to “re-envision the world, a world centered on justice, liberation, interdependence, mutual care, and mutual respect,” especially because pandemics, climate turmoil and economic crises are unlikely to subside.
In an especially lively oracular move, the last piece in this book is an obituary upon Wong’s future death in 2070 at the age of 96. This obituary serves not as self-tribute but, rather, as a list of goals and possibilities that are both individual and collective: “a disability-centered imprint at a major U.S. publisher”; “the abolition of carceral institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons”; a punk rock band called Rage Against Ableism; a Crips in Space program — the list of proposed achievements for herself and humanity goes on.
This book is purposefully no feel-good story of triumph. Instead, memoir will be redefined for many readers by Wong’s candid voice, tenacious spirit and necessary truths. “Year of the Tiger” welcomes each of us as a potential advocate, offers a kaleidoscopic understanding of interdependence, and encourages us to be more activist, individually and together.
Anna Leahy is the author of “Tumor” and directs the MFA program in creative writing at Chapman University.
An Activist’s Life
Vintage. 400 pp. $17 paperback | 2022-09-09T11:16:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life,” by Alice Wong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/how-disability-advocate-alice-wong-turned-her-anger-into-action/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/how-disability-advocate-alice-wong-turned-her-anger-into-action/ |
In one memoir, stories of two outsiders in small-town Louisiana
Review by Charley Locke
Roy Hudgins, an enigmatic figure in Delhi, La., was rumored to be a woman living as a man. Author Casey Parks set out to discover more about Hudgins’s life. (Casey Parks/The Washington Post)
By the third page of Casey Parks’s memoir, “Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery,” she’s shown how and where she doesn’t belong. Unable to console her mother about how her gayness jeopardizes her family’s fate in small-town Louisiana, the teenager retreats: “The rest of the day passed in a blur. I ate banana pudding alone in the carport. I read Beowulf in the backyard.” The day may have felt foggy, but Parks recounts it with acutely vivid details that will resonate with anyone who’s felt that they don’t fit in.
Parks’s facility as a vivid storyteller comes as no surprise. Readers familiar with her work in the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine know her as a thoughtful, precise journalist who communicates her characters’ humanity and the stakes of a story through evocative details. In her debut book, she focuses on her complicated relationship with the family members who passed on to her their skill with storytelling — and the challenging character who first made her want to use it. While both narratives are compelling, Parks’s writing shines in the story that she can meticulously report: her own.
Despite its title, “Diary of a Misfit” is about two misfits: Parks herself and Roy Hudgins, an enigmatic character who lived in the town of Delhi (pronounced “Dell-HIGH”), La. In the 1950s, the story goes, a neighbor made a deathbed confession to Parks’s great-grandmother: Her son, Roy, was “a woman who lived as a man.” Hudgins was a self-described town misfit, mowing lawns, playing music on his porch, living and dying alone. (Throughout the book, Parks questions how to gender Hudgins; following her lead, this review uses male pronouns.)
When Parks’s grandmother first tells her about Hudgins as a response to her sexuality, the story fascinates the young aspiring reporter, now a staff writer at The Washington Post. Over the next decade, she returns again and again to Hudgins’s story as a proxy for her own fears: Did his family love him? Was he happy? How can you preserve faith and community in an unaccepting church? Is home where we always belong?
Parks is an exceptional chronicler of her family and experience. She leans into the beats of stories she’s expertly honed over the years, like the indelible image of her mother, a pregnant bride, throwing up on the preacher at her wedding. She manages the rare feat of writing about her family with both an awareness of its flaws and a respect for privacy. She chooses revealing anecdotes carefully, alluding to family challenges that aren’t hers to share. A self-described listener, she chronicles her pain at a remove; when she writes about being whipped as a kid, it’s as a detached reporter. Some scenes feel straight out of Mary Karr, but without the raw rancor. She ends a chapter on her engagement with a quietly devastating kicker: “All I remember about what I’d imagined would be the biggest day of my life is dialing my mom’s number over and over again, listening to a robot tell me she had no space available.”
To find the details that make her story such a compelling read, Parks relies on her extensive journals, audio recordings and videos. She shares her obsession with self-documentation with Hudgins, who kept meticulous journals for decades. These spiral-bound journals are the white whale of “Diary of a Misfit,” the key to unlocking Hudgins’s story and, ostensibly, to providing answers to the questions Parks asks herself. Early on, she learns that Hudgins left his notebooks to his former neighbors, Mark and Cheryl. When she approaches them, they refuse to show the writing to her out of respect for his privacy.
Over a decade of visits to Delhi, Parks earns their trust. These return trips are ostensibly about Hudgins, but in her painstaking work to build relationships with largely suspicious Delhi residents, Parks shares her own evolution, as a reporter and a person comfortable with her sexuality and in her own skin. She shares her discomfort with pushing sources; her position as a local turned outsider; her gradual, earned confidence. On her trips from Portland, Ore., to Delhi, Parks often visits her family in nearby West Monroe, and she weaves together her reporting efforts and her evolving relationship with her mother with grace.
Parks struggles to bring that grace to Hudgins’s story. Some of it is the challenging source material — there are scant memories or details of his life to work with. Yet although she conducts ample historical research, combing through census records and newspaper microfiche, she isn’t comfortable conjuring the setting and conditions of Hudgins’s life. As a reader, I longed for a sense of what his life would have been like.
When Parks finally does get hold of the journals, the reveal is anticlimactic. After years of withholding them, Mark and Cheryl let her read them for a few hours, and she reckons with the quotidian sadness of Hudgins’s life. Clearly she hoped for more. After such a prolonged buildup, I wanted more, too: reflection not from Hudgins but from Parks, who occasionally seems like the reluctant subject of her own memoir.
“People write, I think, because they want to be understood and remembered,” Parks writes. At the end of “Diary of a Misfit,” despite the reveal of his journals, Hudgins’s life remains an incomplete contour. When it comes to his story, Parks raises questions that she ultimately shies away from. But while her commitment to reported detail leaves Hudgins’s story a mystery, it makes Parks’s memoir a compelling triumph.
Charley Locke is a writer who often covers elders and kids.
Diary of a Misfit
A Memoir and a Mystery | 2022-09-09T11:16:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of “Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery,” by Casey Parks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/one-memoir-stories-two-outsiders-small-town-louisiana/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/one-memoir-stories-two-outsiders-small-town-louisiana/ |
The remarkable career, and long-hidden pain, of satirist Art Buchwald
Review by Eric Weiner
Humor columnist Art Buchwald in his Washington office in 1977. His satirical strategy: “The writer must be careful he is not accused of being a hater of mankind. The best way to do this is to abuse people and make them laugh while you’re doing it.” (Charles Bennett/AP)
Asked if he ever read the humorist Art Buchwald, Richard Nixon replied: “No, no I don’t think he is funny. He is certainly not serious.”
Nixon was wrong — on both counts. Buchwald was funny and serious. In the tradition of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, he concealed deep wisdom in the seemingly silly and farcical. As for Nixon’s potshot, Buchwald was not the least perturbed. “As a humor columnist, I need Nixon,” he said. “He’s been great for me. I’m going to run him for a third term.”
Over the decades, Buchwald was equally grateful for many other presidents, including Jimmy Carter (“I worship the very quicksand he walks on”) and Bill Clinton (for obvious reasons). Only George H.W. Bush let him down. “Nothing to write about, everything was dull,” Buchwald is quoted as saying in Michael Hill’s brisk and engaging biography, “Funny Business: The Legendary Life and Political Satire of Art Buchwald.” Meticulously researched and delivered in a taut, almost staccato style, “Funny Business” glides along the surface of Buchwald’s remarkable life, venturing wide but not especially deep.
In his column, published for decades by The Washington Post and, at its peak, syndicated to 550 newspapers around the word, Buchwald often crafted creative, tongue-in-cheek solutions to the nation’s problems. Gun violence out of control? Impose a federal mandate to cut off all Americans’ trigger fingers at birth. (“The Constitution gives everyone the right to bear arms. But there is nothing that says an American has to have ten fingers.”) Bogged down in the Vietnam War? Instead of dropping bombs, drop American autos that had been recalled. The unsuspecting North Vietnamese “would proceed to kill each other” with the faulty cars, he quipped.
Some of Buchwald’s satires were so spot on they were mistaken for truth. When in 1964 he wrote a column titled “J. Edgar Hoover Just Doesn’t Exist,” many Americans believed him. Hoover, clearly not amused, called Buchwald “a sick alleged humorist.” John F. Kennedy briefly canceled all White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune, at the time the newspaper that carried Buchwald’s column. Lyndon Johnson, irked by Buchwald’s criticism of the Vietnam War, ordered the National Security Agency to secretly surveil the humorist. Buchwald took heat from both ends of the political spectrum, but he found “the extreme Left” pricklier. Satirizing them, he said, “takes a little more guts.”
For the most part, though, those on the receiving end of Buchwald’s “Buchshots,” as his barbs were called, took it in stride, or even played along. Buchwald’s satire was biting, but the bites were delivered so slyly that recipients rarely objected — or even knew they had been bitten.
A young Buchwald articulated the satirical strategy that he stuck with throughout his long career: “The writer must be careful he is not accused of being a hater of mankind. The best way to do this is to abuse people and make them laugh while you’re doing it. It indicates that the writer is just having a good time and he’s really your friend. The abuse will stick.”
The first two-thirds of “Funny Business” reads like a journalistic fairy tale. There is Buchwald in Paris dining at the city’s finest restaurants and rubbing elbows with Lauren Bacall and a young Robert Redford. There he is at the Playboy Mansion in Chicago, and on Broadway, watching “Sheep on the Runway,” the play he wrote. There he is receiving the Pulitzer Prize. And, all the while, there he is hunched over his trusty Olivetti typewriter, chomping on a cigar and making it look oh so easy. Life was good, or so it seemed.
The truth is that Buchwald, like so many comedians, had a dark side. When the black dog, as Winston Churchill called his depression, nipped at his heels, Buchwald turned to humor, “the greatest defense in the world.” And it worked. Until it didn’t.
In 1962, he suffered a debilitating bout of depression and was briefly hospitalized the following year. For many decades, he kept his struggle secret. Finally, in 1991, he went public, teaming up with fellow celebrities and depressives Mike Wallace and William Styron — the “Blues Brothers” they called themselves — to raise awareness about the disease.
Hill skillfully chronicles Buchwald’s ups and downs, relying heavily on a treasure trove of correspondence he unearthed: letters between Buchwald and A-list celebrities on both coasts, including Ted Kennedy and Charlton Heston. Some of these missives are more illuminating, and funnier, than others. At times, the book reads less like a biography and more like a document dump.
“Funny Business” contains plenty of laughs but also elicits pangs of sadness. The reader feels sad for Buchwald, who for so long felt compelled to hide his struggle with depression. Sad for the passing of an era when the nation had a common conversation, even if it was one conducted in raised voices. And sad for today’s comedians, inheritors of the Buchwald tradition, who must find ways to be funny when the news satirizes itself.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Buchwald suffered several setbacks, including a bitter and protracted lawsuit over the movie “Coming to America,” a film that Buchwald claimed was his idea. Next followed a series of painful health crises until, in 2006, he entered a Washington hospice. His days were numbered, but that number turned out to be much higher than anyone suspected.
Weeks, then months, went by, and Buchwald was still alive and funny. His kidneys began functioning again. He actually gained weight. From his hospice bed, he conducted radio interviews (“I had nothing else to do”) and welcomed visitors to what became known as Buchwald’s hospice salon.
When he finally did die more than a year later, Washington A-listers gathered to honor him. But it was fellow humorist Dave Barry who best captured the big-hearted comic genius that was Art Buchwald. “He talked funny, he wrote funny, he lived funny, and damned if he didn’t find a way to die funny.”
Eric Weiner is the author, most recently, of “The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons From Dead Philosophers.”
The Legendary Life and Political Satire of Art Buchwald
Random House. 307 pp. $28 | 2022-09-09T11:16:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of “Funny Business: The Legendary Life and Political Satire of Art Buchwald” by Michael Hill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/remarkable-career-long-hidden-pain-satirist-art-buchwald/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/remarkable-career-long-hidden-pain-satirist-art-buchwald/ |
Free College in America Is a Bad Idea. Just Look at Europe.
The Tuck School of Business on the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S., on Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. Dartmouth Colleges endowment returned 47% in the fiscal year that ended in June, the latest university to post some of the strongest investment gains in decades. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Even fans of student debt relief will admit it doesn’t solve the core problem of crushing higher education costs. For that, debt-forgiveness proponents such as Bernie Sanders and education economist Sue Dynarski have a long-term solution: free college.
They have a point. If we’re going to burden the tax base to pay for the nation’s college students through debt forgiveness, we might as well be more upfront about it. Just be prepared for the result. Free college will not only worsen the quality of American universities, currently the best in the world, and mean fewer resources for students, it would also be more regressive and would deepen inequality compared with a system where students pay or take out debt.
Free college, like universal health care, is one of those things that exist in Europe that Americans love to idealize. In Europe, most universities are public and France, Germany, Sweden and Scotland don’t charge fees to domestic students. But like just health care, nothing is ever really free. Free college is paid for with taxpayer money, which is always in short supply, and that often results in lower-quality services in the form of over-crowded classrooms and crumbling buildings. It’s popular to make fun of the plush facilities on American college campuses, but a lot of the spending on students is valuable. More spending per student is one big reason why British and American universities dominate global rankings.
Limited resources also means rationing. And when capacity is limited, places tend to go to students from higher-income families. They get better secondary educations and appear more qualified when it comes to admissions in competitive schools. In Germany, about three-quarters of adult college graduates send their children to college, while only 25% of adults without degrees have children in college.
The figure below shows the share of the population (25 and above) with a bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in different countries between 2016 and 2020. The countries that offer free or very cheap college have much lower graduation rates than the higher-cost US and UK.
Perhaps lower graduation rates would be fine, since it seems like too many people go to college anyway. But free college doesn’t mean more vocational training. Germany briefly charged fees starting in 2006. But after lots of protest it returned to free college in 2014. Once they removed fees, more students went to university, and this reduced the number of students who enrolled in vocational schools.
The United Kingdom also offers a useful case study. Until 1998 college was free for English students. At first fees were modest, but they now exceed £9,000 per year (typically about $12,000 — more than many state schools in the US), which are financed with loans that graduates pay back based on their income when they start work. One study found that charging fees resulted in more students attending university; it narrowed the participation gap between students from high- and low-income families and more resources were spent per student.
Meanwhile, Scotland went tuition-free for Scottish and European (until the UK left the EU) students. A study by Lucy Hunter Blackburn of the University of Edinburgh estimates that the result was many low-income Scottish students ended up taking on more debt than their English peers because they had to get loans to pay for living expenses. Up until 2016, English students from low-income families could also get grants to pay for living expenses (now living expenses are also covered by loans) while Scottish students had to take out loans or rely on their families. She concludes that free tuition in Scotland amounted to a £20 million (at the time, $30.9 million) transfer from low-income to high-income families. And while enrollment of students from low-income families increased all over the UK in the last 25 years, England experienced more growth despite charging fees.
Free college might look different in the US because of the extensive network of private institutions. We could limit free tuition to public universities and let private schools such as Harvard and smaller liberal arts colleges continue to charge fees. In some ways that would make the education system better — odds are many private colleges, especially the low-value ones, would close because fewer students would be willing to pay fees when they have a free option.
The only private universities that would survive would have to offer very high value or have very large endowments. But fewer colleges leaves fewer spots for students overall, and even more competition for the few places available at high-quality state schools — especially for students who are barely qualifying now, but end up benefiting from their education through much higher lifetime earnings. When it comes to completion and getting some value out of education, Dynarski points out that the quality of the school is what matters. Yet free college undermines quality because it means less spending per student and doesn’t necessarily lead to higher completion rates .
Free college at public universities risks further entrenching inequality by worsening what is already a two-tier system in US higher education. Inequality will only be exacerbated if the high cost of free public education means there’s less government money to subsidize loans for lower-income students who want to attend good quality, private schools that still charge tuition.
One of the benefits of university for students from low-income families is the exposure they get to students from more privileged backgrounds . A more disparate two-tier system undermines that process and further segregates our economy and society.
The US higher education system, which charges fees and offers need-based aid and loans is clunky and often wasteful. There needs to be more scrutiny over needless spending, tuition inflation, how loans are structured and schools that offer no value.
But the current system largely works and is better than most other countries. The overwhelming majority of people who graduate from college are rewarded with higher lifetime earnings, and many Americans do go to college. Moving to free college would mean students would still have lots of debt to pay their living expenses and the quality of public education would decline. The better solution is to reform student loans and keep university fees.
Five Financial Tips for New College Students: Teresa Ghilarducci | 2022-09-09T11:28:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Free College in America Is a Bad Idea. Just Look at Europe. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/free-college-in-america-is-a-bad-idea-just-look-at-europe/2022/09/09/aa835d40-302e-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/free-college-in-america-is-a-bad-idea-just-look-at-europe/2022/09/09/aa835d40-302e-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
One person dead after tractor-trailer and RV crash in Virginia
One person died and several others were hurt when a tractor-trailer and an RV collided in Fauquier County, officials said.
The Virginia State Police said the vehicles collided around 8:30 p.m. Thursday as they were headed east on Interstate 66 just west of the town of Linden. Police said the RV went off the highway, hit a guardrail and went down an embankment.
The extent of the injuries of the surviving crash victims was not clear. | 2022-09-09T11:28:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | One dead after crash with SUV and tractor trailer in Fauquier County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/one-dead-crash-fauquier-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/one-dead-crash-fauquier-county/ |
It might surprise people to know how long women have coached football
Dating back to the earliest days of the sport, women have coached — despite the game’s emphasis on masculinity.
Perspective by Katie Taylor
Katie Taylor is lecturer in sport sociology at Nottingham Trent University. Her PhD thesis uncovered the history of female American football players between 1890 and 1960.
Amanda Ruller, an assistant coach for the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, passes a football during practice on June 8 in Renton, Wash. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
During the 2021 season, the NFL had 12 women working as coaches. At the same time, Sam Rapoport, the NFL’s senior director of diversity, equality and inclusion, continues to increase opportunities for women in the league while lauding those blazing trails. She and journalists covering the changes have celebrated Natalie Randolph as the first female coach of a male high school team when she began coaching the Calvin Coolidge High School team in 2010.
The recognition is important. But they’ve gotten the history wrong. Indeed, there is a much longer history of women serving as football coaches, and reviving and celebrating this history can help normalize women holding these roles. Stereotypes about masculinity and power in this hypermasculine sport have helped erase women’s longtime contributions to the game.
Football was formalized in the 1870s when representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia met to develop a standard set of rules. The new sport had an essential role in being a site for proving manliness, something many public commentators worried was at risk with the closing of the frontier, increasing levels of immigration and concerns that the White, Anglo-Saxon male had become effete.
Yet from the earliest years of this manly sport, women stepped in as coaches. For instance, “Father of Football” Walter Camp regularly missed practices, so his wife, Alice, went in his place. She made meticulous notes and tactical suggestions to help her husband coach the team, and her contributions were so valuable that the undefeated 1888 Yale team considered her as much a coach as her husband. In fact, at the 25th anniversary dinner for the 1888 team, the menu included a photograph of Alice and Walter, titled “Head Coaches, 1888.”
Other women followed Alice Camp. Lillian Merrell, Annie Bragdon, Estelle Sherwin, Carrie Burckhardt and Cozette Brannon all coached male football teams in the years before World War I. Bragdon and Burckhardt’s teams had undefeated seasons in 1909 and 1913, respectively.
They did this work at a time in which high school football, like the collegiate game, was notably violent. The Journal of the American Medical Association, between 1900 and 1935, regularly wrote about the sport’s violence, including injuries and deaths at both the collegiate and high school levels because of its competitiveness and a lack of fair play. Thus, these pioneering women were coaching a highly violent sport, contrary to gender norms.
Most women coached school-age teams. Brannon coached the second team at the State Agricultural College in Arkansas. Brannon wasn’t necessarily the school’s first choice; her appointment was due to a lack of money and absence of anyone else willing to take on the role.
This was typical. School officials often only sought out female coaches as a last resort. The football field was a place for boys and men to prove their manliness; women’s involvement would undermine this. Women’s traditional role was as spectators, where their attendance would be a civilizing influence.
Nonetheless, while women were not the most celebrated or well-paid staff, they were in the mix. That became more true with world war.
When men went to fight or work in production to support the U.S. war effort during World War I, many more schools and colleges hired female coaches. Miss Iker (first name unknown) from Washington, D.C., and Anna Hurd from Oregon coached high school teams in 1917.
Similarly, during World War II, as millions more men were drafted, women again stepped into coaching roles typically unavailable to them. Pauline Rugh, Mrs. Joe Ward (first name unknown), Pauline Foster, Madeline Bell, Irene Stewart and Mary McMichael coached school teams in Pennsylvania, Texas and Louisiana in the early 1940s. Ward, a coach at Woodlawn Hills Elementary School in Texas, won titles with her team in 1940 and 1941.
As in the case of manufacturing, engineering, construction and other traditionally male jobs that women filled during wartime, most employers pushed women out or urged them to leave their posts to make room for men after the war. Those pressures affected women football coaches as well, with many leaving their positions. But not all of them did. Of those who coached during World War II, Ward stayed on for seven years, Bell for four years and Stewart for 16 years.
One thing remained constant over these decades — many found the idea that women might know about coaching football difficult to believe.
Reports about Hurd and Iker in 1917, for example, stated that their appointments were “radical” and “strange,” even if they were necessary because of the war. Articles about Brannon in 1916, Lambert in 1933 and Stagg in 1942 mentioned their husbands to reassure readers that the women were paired with men and thus fit into their expected domestic roles, at least at home. Sometimes, the mention of men was meant to explain the woman’s talent. The media attributed Lambert’s knowledge to her husband, Fonsa Lambert, a national football rules committee member, reassuring readers that true football leadership and expertise remained firmly masculine.
When Foster won her first game in 1942, newspaper reports mentioned that the opposing coach would “never live it down” that a woman beat his team. Such coverage was typical, as male football coaches shaped how journalists framed their coverage of female coaches, frequently emphasizing shock and amusement.
While articles did praise women for their efforts, knowledge and successes, they also included details about female coaches’ physical appearances. The media described Merrell as “beautiful,” Burckhardt as “most attractive” and Mary McMichael as a “buxom blonde.” These comments undermined these women by emphasizing their looks over their coaching achievements, reassuring readers that they were not masculinized by their roles.
While there is little evidence of many female football coaches in the 1950s and 1960s, the women’s liberation movement of the next decade sought to change this. The enactment of Title IX in 1972 required schools’ athletic programs to create greater opportunities for women and girls, and organizations like the National Organization for Women fought for women’s sporting rights. Karen Small in New Jersey, Jane Robinson in South Carolina and Judy Manthorpe in California are just some of the examples of women coaching football in these years.
However, negative attitudes toward the prospect of female coaches remained, preventing some women from taking on these roles. For example, Candy Hisiro asked the Maryland State Board of Education to overturn a 1978 ruling that prohibited her from becoming an assistant football coach in the state, an appeal that failed.
Since then, most women have been stuck in similar assistant positions at the high school level, but some women have become high school head coaches and even coached at the collegiate level. In 1984, Dot Easterwood Murphy started coaching wide receivers at Hinds Junior College in the National Junior College Athletic Association. NFL films followed Murphy in 1995 for a segment on “Football America.” In 1986, Carol White became a graduate assistant at Georgia Tech, where she worked with their kickers, making her, arguably, the first woman to coach in NCAA Division I football.
This progress happened despite football’s continued associations with masculinity, few playing opportunities for women and a lack of coaching pathways for female football coaches.
That’s why the fact that women are now coaching in the NFL is critically important. These women represent the few managing to reach the sport’s pinnacle, despite the large number of women who have come before them. Women have proved they can coach football well, yet their numbers at the professional rank remain small.
As we recognize women breaking barriers in sports today, it remains important that we also uplift those who came before to shed light on the many barriers women have managed to topple and to reveal the obstacles that still remain. | 2022-09-09T11:28:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | It might surprise people to know how long women have coached football - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/09/it-might-surprise-people-know-how-long-women-have-coached-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/09/it-might-surprise-people-know-how-long-women-have-coached-football/ |
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) greets people at a United Steelworkers of America Local Union 2227 event in West Mifflin, Pa., on Sept. 5. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) suffered a massive stroke in 2012. He had to relearn how to walk, write and speak. It took him nearly a year before he was able to return to the Senate. He suffered permanent paralysis on his left side and used a cane and wheelchair. The stroke left him with halting speech — and in 2016, USA Today reported that he “blurted out a series of gaffes last year that he later walked back, leading some to question if his stroke was to blame.”
Yet during his 2016 reelection campaign, Kirk participated in two debates with his Democratic opponent, then-Rep. Tammy Duckworth. In the first, the Chicago Tribune reported, Kirk “delivered short answers … and sometimes offered non sequiturs in response to questions.” In the second, he mocked Duckworth’s ethnicity and family history of military service.
This history is worth recalling as Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) runs for the U.S. Senate after suffering a stroke right before the Democratic primary in May. Fetterman’s stroke does not seem to have been as serious as Kirk’s, though his campaign has not released his medical records and waited two days before informing the public he was in the hospital. He disappeared for months, and since his return he has occasionally struggled on the campaign trail.
In one recent appearance, Fetterman at times spoke haltingly and dropped words mid-sentence: “What is wrong with demanding … for … an easy, safe … kind of … their income … a path to a safe place for them to win … excuse me, to work,” he said. It was painful to watch and raised legitimate concerns about whether his campaign has been upfront with voters about his medical condition.
His Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, has not handled the situation well. After Fetterman ridiculed Oz for referring to a vegetable platter as “crudité,” Oz’s campaign responded by declaring that “if John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke.” It was unseemly for Oz — a cardiothoracic surgeon — to mock the health of a stroke victim.
But that’s no excuse for Fetterman to duck debates before voters begin casting mail-in ballots on Sept. 19. Oz has agreed to five debates. Two — one hosted by Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV, and another by WFMZ-TV and the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce — already had to be canceled because Fetterman said he would not attend. After weeks of rebuffing Oz’s debate challenge, this week Fetterman finally agreed to one — but not, he said, until “sometime in the middle to end of October.”
That is long after mail-in voting begins. At a time when Democrats are championing early voting — and labeling those who oppose it as advocates of “Jim Crow 2.0” — that’s not good enough. Fetterman and Oz should debate before the start of the election — Sept. 19 — so that voters can have a chance to judge the candidates for themselves before they are allowed to cast a ballot.
Health is not the only thing Fetterman would have to explain on the debate stage. He was asked in an interview last year, “If you had a magic wand and you could wave it and fix one thing, what would it be?” He answered: “Life without parole in Pennsylvania.”
If you ask Pennsylvania voters what they would fix if they could wave a magic wand, I suspect inflation, gas prices, crime, and deaths from deadly fentanyl coming across our unsecured southern border rank higher on their lists than releasing convicted murderers. Fetterman has advocated releasing one-third of Pennsylvania’s prison population. He needs to explain and defend this, as well as other controversial left-wing positions he has taken.
Fetterman is undoubtedly reluctant to appear in more than one debate because he is leading in all the polls — in some by double digits. That lead could evaporate if many Pennsylvania voters were to decide he is not healthy enough to serve in the Senate. Oz needs to be careful, and treat Fetterman with dignity if he stumbles. Because voters are compassionate — and for many the only thing worse than a potentially impaired Senate candidate would be someone who makes fun of an impaired Senate candidate.
Debating is part of a senator’s job. It is true many senators have suffered cognitive decline in office and still been reelected. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) was reelected long past his prime at the age of 93 (but promised not to run again at 99). His Democratic colleague, Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (S.C.), famously said “the best nursing home is the U.S. Senate.” But Thurmond was already a legendary figure in South Carolina politics, and voters were fully aware of his mental and physical state before reelecting him.
It is perfectly legitimate to make reasonable debate accommodations for Fetterman, should he need them. His campaign says he would struggle with “auditory processing” in a noisy debate hall. Kirk, for example, was allowed to debate sitting down.
But Fetterman’s campaign insists he is healthy and up to the job he is seeking. Pennsylvania voters deserve the chance to judge for themselves before they start casting ballots in less than two weeks. If Kirk could hold more than one debate, so can Fetterman. | 2022-09-09T11:28:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Fetterman should debate Oz before mail-in voting starts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/fetterman-oz-debate-pennsylvania-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/fetterman-oz-debate-pennsylvania-health/ |
Biden’s legacy is already coming into focus
President Biden during a speech in Philadelphia on Sept. 1. (Matt Slocum/AP)
Whether Joe Biden decides to run for reelection in 2024 or not, the central achievement of his presidency is already clear. He is the person who moved decisively to stop Donald Trump — first at the ballot box and now through his administration’s steady, unblinking application of the rule of law.
If Biden and his team can succeed in that mission over the next two years, I would bet that he will do what any chief executive around his age does, which is to think carefully about finding a successor who can carry on his policies and preserve his accomplishments.
Some presidents struggle in office to frame their legacy. But for Biden, it’s easy. His core mission from the beginning was to prevent Trump from destroying American democracy.
For all his ups and downs, Biden has been consistent in framing that goal. When he entered the 2020 presidential race in April 2019, he said bluntly: “We are in the battle for the soul of this nation.” If Trump won another term, he warned, “He will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
Biden was right, and he set his course to stop Trump. He recognized that only a centrist Democrat could win enough independent votes to displace the incumbent, and he held fast to that position despite withering fire from the left. The political class often echoed Trump’s line that Biden was too old and inarticulate to be president. Biden’s wry retort, way back in December 2018: “I am a gaffe machine, but, my God, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth.”
Biden’s victory at the polls in November 2020 was a hinge moment in U.S. history. Trump, as we now realize with shocking clarity, was willing to do anything to cling to office. But he failed, thanks partly to principled Republicans who refused to join a coup — and thanks even more to Biden, who ran a disciplined campaign as a centrist who would restore normal order.
Biden’s inaugural speech on Jan. 20, 2021, focused on this basic mission. “Democracy has prevailed,” he said. He used the word “unity” eight times in the speech. And he seemed to understand his place in the American story, replacing Trump’s “carnage” with something decent. “We answered the call of history,” he said toward the end of the speech. “We met the moment.”
Biden at first hoped that Trump would accept defeat and go away. He avoided mentioning him by name for most of his first 18 months, referring to him as “the former president.” He must have hoped that Trump, starved of publicity to feed his ego, would shrivel to normal ex-presidential size. But Trump couldn’t adjust to reality. His stationary bore the presidential seal, he treated super-secret government documents as his personal property, and he insisted that he had never lost the election at all.
Ignoring Trump wasn’t going to work. It only made him clamber for attention more loudly and recklessly. And Trump’s supporters amplified the danger. So during a Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia, Biden changed tone. He stated bluntly the idea that brought him into the presidential campaign back in 2019: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Biden’s language was tougher, but the message was the same one he delivered in his inauguration speech. If Trump’s extremism could be stopped, he said, “then ages still to come will say … we kept the faith. We preserved democracy. … We heeded not our worst instincts but our better angels.”
Biden’s sharp warnings about the threat to democracy might seem out of character for a career politician whose genial, back-slapping style was refined by decades in the Senate. But as Sen. Christopher A. Coons, the president’s close friend and fellow Delaware Democrat, told me, Biden got his start trying to dampen the politics of rage. His first elected office was as a member of the city council in a Wilmington, Del., torn by racial violence and occupied by the National Guard. “He has seen this moment,” explains Coons.
After a ragged 12 months, Biden seemed to rediscover the art of politics this summer, breaking the political impasse (within his own party as well as with Republicans) to pass significant legislation on climate change, technology investment and gun control. He convinced progressive House Democrats that half a loaf was better than none. It helped that he looked like a commander in chief in supporting Ukraine and the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. And his wise decision to make Merrick Garland his attorney general has been validated by Garland’s slow and steady — but unyielding — pursuit of possible criminal actions by Trump and his supporters.
Biden has found a better groove, politically, in recent weeks. His approval ratings are up, and Democrats are hoping they can retain control of the Senate in the midterms, though an all-but-assured Republican takeover of the House will shift the balance of power in Washington.
Biden might have difficulty governing after the midterm elections, and 2024 remains a mystery. But as Trump’s political death spiral accelerates, Biden’s presidential legacy is nearly complete. | 2022-09-09T11:28:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In taking on Trumpism, Biden has already established his legacy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/joe-biden-legacy-fighting-trumpism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/joe-biden-legacy-fighting-trumpism/ |
For Democrats, the Respect for Marriage act is about elections
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) walks to a vote on Capitol Hill on Sept. 8 in D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A bill purporting to codify same-sex and interracial marriage law is coming to the Senate floor. Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised a vote on it. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) have argued in The Post for the bill. Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), appearing on Fox News’s “Special Report with Bret Baier” this week, also pledged their bipartisan efforts to get the bill passed.
I would probably vote for this bill were I a member of the U.S. Senate — the exact language on religious liberty will be crucial — even though I argued long and hard that the law of marriage belonged to state legislatures. Since the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, tens of thousands of Americans entered into same-sex marriages, just as huge numbers of Americans have entered into multiracial marriages. Stare decisis operates with particular weight on cases the decisions of which led people to rely on the court’s holdings in significant ways. Stare decisis also looks to whether the court’s opinion has “settled the issue” in the country abroad.
The issue of limits on abortion was never “settled” in any way that the ordinary use of the term means. The cases kept coming, year after year. State legislatures kept passing new laws attempting to regulate the procedure, sometimes successfully in front of the Supreme Court, sometimes not. Roe and Casey weren’t even remotely settled or persuasive precedents because the active legal and legislative debate over abortion never ended.
By contrast, Obergefell and 1967′s Loving v. Virginia, which found constitutional grounds for interracial marriage, decisively and conclusively ended the debates on same-sex marriage and interracial marriages. Some people still object, of course. Some state legislators may yet introduce attempts to reverse those precedents. But it isn’t going to work because, unlike Roe and Casey, the questions are settled, in the courts and around the country.
Why then is Schumer bringing the issue to the Senate floor in a rush? Obviously, as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told me Thursday, to distract from the issues dominating the midterm elections in 2022.
Democrats are in danger of losing control of Congress. They are very likely to lose the House to the GOP. There’s a good chance the Senate will revert to the Republican control if the past is any guide. The GOP, as the real campaign season began, is pleased with the issue set dominating voters’ minds: affordability of everything from groceries to gas, soaring crime and an “open border.” Democrats have set their hopes on Dobbs energizing their base, and perhaps it has.
But President Biden’s ham handed attacks on millions of Donald Trump voters as “semi-fascists” are already being seen as an unforced error if not political malpractice. Biden’s speech last week in Philadelphia, with the harsh red lighting and the ill-used Marines in the shadows, has become the occasion for second-guessing from both right and left about the wisdom of attacking Republican voters two months before the election. The student loan bailout backfired. Interest rates, meanwhile, and the cost of nearly everything just keep rising.
So, Schumer has launched another attempt at a political rescue of Democrats from the Senate, this time with consideration of the same-sex marriage bill. If he holds his 50-vote caucus and the four Republican senators who support it, he still needs six more. His calculation is that even if he cannot find the 60 votes he needs, it is always better for his party’s chances in November if it is caught trying to pass the measure.
Johnson had a different perspective. He calls consideration of the bill the politics of purposeful division. The left, he said, “simply, they cannot let any wound remain healed. ”
“They’ve got to pick the scab,” he told me, “and they’ve got to continue to push these wedge issues.”
Johnson, who is in a close Senate race this year, appeared not to oppose the measure earlier this summer. He is now under attack for waiting until he can see the final language of the proposed law. It is a prudent reservation given the high stakes not just for marriage but for the future of religious liberty.
Having to explain such nuanced positions on the campaign trail takes up time, and diverts attention from the issues Johnson would prefer to be discussing. A distraction, yes, but one that must be dealt with. Which is why Schumer has said there will likely be a vote in the coming weeks.
In doing so, Schumer alarms some people needlessly. He confuses others. It’s great politics. It’s terrible lawmaking. | 2022-09-09T11:28:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Do we really need to codify marriage into federal law? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/marriage-equality-new-law-unnecessary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/marriage-equality-new-law-unnecessary/ |
Who would truly benefit from student loan forgiveness? Teachers.
By Ayindé Rudolph
Teachers touch hands during a workshop designed to help cope with stress and burnout on Aug. 2 in Concord, N.H. (Charles Krupa/AP)
Ayindé Rudolph is superintendent of the Mountain View Whisman School District in Mountain View, Calif.
Opponents of President Biden’s proposal for student loan forgiveness paint a grim picture. They imagine privileged students picking pricey, elite universities and assuming mountains of debt, only to earn degrees with zero job prospects. When we forgive student loans, they argue, society pays the penalty for these individuals’ shortsightedness. Financial responsibility plummets. Universities keep pumping out low-value degrees.
But pundits might want to consider debtholders who don’t match this narrative: teachers.
In the education field, debt is often the price of entry. Nearly half of all teachers in pre-K-12 and higher education take on debt to finance their education. They do so not out of thoughtlessness but out of necessity.
I earned my degree in education 23 years ago with funding from a Pell Grant. Pell recipients come overwhelmingly from families that earn $60,000 a year or less, and in 2015 more than 70 percent of Black students were recipients. Back then, I selected a small liberal arts school that made financial sense and that provided me with the degree and credentials I needed to teach. Yet I still had to borrow $23,000, the maximum allowable amount for federal undergraduate student loans.
Megan McArdle: Biden’s student loan ‘fix’ will likely make the problem worse
After college, some educators find it necessary to take on even more student debt. When I entered the classroom in 2000, teachers who didn’t have a bachelor’s degree in education were required to have a master’s in education — or to be pursuing one. Over the years, some states have required educators to earn a master’s degree within their first five or 10 years of teaching, or have offered salary incentives for them to do so. In other instances, teachers need an advanced degree to cover the bills, because teacher-pay tiers are based on education and years of experience.
My first job, with Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools, offered a starting salary of $24,000. To make ends meet, I tacked on extra jobs, coaching in the afternoons and working nights and weekends at a local learning center.
Even then, it was a financial struggle to provide for my family and pay back my student loans. I had to request a forbearance for several months when I simply wasn’t generating enough income. Often I had no discretionary funds left after paying my monthly bills and my loan payment.
Now, Biden has proposed student loan forgiveness for people like my younger self, extending up to $20,000 in forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for other borrowers. For those who go into teaching, it’s a proposal that seems long overdue.
Education degrees don’t lead students to the middle of nowhere. They direct young people into a field that desperately needs them. Right now, schools across the country can’t find enough teachers to meet demand, leaving leaders to scramble for solutions. Yet every year, superintendents like me say goodbye to teachers who have excelled in the classroom but are exhausted by financial struggles.
Paul Waldman: Biden’s new student loan forgiveness plan is a good start
It’s agonizing but understandable. The average teacher in public schools makes only about $63,000. Most teachers could make more money babysitting or bartending than they do educating the next generation of Americans. Part of the solution is to increase teacher pay. As a country, however, we must also find other ways to make it more comfortable and more feasible for young people to go into education.
This should include reducing debt loads for early-career teachers. By decreasing average monthly payments, as the president’s plan would do, the program would free up more of educators’ monthly income to cover the rapidly rising costs of housing, groceries and other necessities. Biden’s plan would also go a long way toward keeping many teachers motivated to stick with the profession and stay in the classroom.
Bear in mind that our country aggressively subsidizes a host of other industries — farming, airlines, electric-car manufacturers. Let’s ask ourselves: Aren’t teachers as deserving as Tesla? If return on investment is driving the conversation, let’s talk about how it’s teachers who will produce the next generation of farmers, pilots and engineers.
By asking educators to mold our most precious resource — our children — we generate our own debt of gratitude. Why not reduce their student loan debt to demonstrate that our society values them? This is the kind of forgiveness that could truly pay dividends.
Opinion|Why Biden’s student loan bailout will backfire on him | 2022-09-09T11:28:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Who would truly benefit from student loan forgiveness? Teachers. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/student-loan-debt-forgiveness-teachers-benefit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/student-loan-debt-forgiveness-teachers-benefit/ |
Post Politics Now Biden heading to battleground state of Ohio to tout semiconductor law
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Today, Pressident Biden is headed to the battleground state of Ohio, where he will speak at a groundbreaking ceremony for Intel’s new $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility. The event offers Biden a chance to tout the $280 billion Chips and Science Act passed by Congress in July that subsidizes domestic semiconductor manufacturing and invests in science and technology innovation.
The event is expected to draw politicians from both parties, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). It also has political implications as Democrats try to sell voters on their accomplishments ahead of the midterm elections in November. Ohio has a marquee Senate race this year between Rep. Tim Ryan (D) and J.D. Vance (R), a candidate backed by former president Donald Trump. The contest will help determine which party controls the Senate in Washington next year.
9 a.m. Eastern time: Biden departs the White House en route to Licking County, Ohio. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will speak with reporters on Air Force One. Listen live here.
10:55 a.m. Eastern (9:55 a.m. Central): Vice President Harris speaks with astronauts on the International Space Station from NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. Watch live here.
12:15 p.m. Eastern: Biden delivers remarks at the groundbreaking of the new Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility in Ohio. Watch live here.
Have a question about politics? Submit it here. After 3 p.m. weekdays, return to this space and we’ll address what’s on the mind of readers.
President Biden is headed to Ohio on Friday for the groundbreaking of Intel’s new $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility, an event that offers him a chance to tout the $280 billion Chips and Science Act passed by Congress in late July that subsidizes domestic semiconductor manufacturing and invests billions in science and technology innovation.
The groundbreaking for the Intel facility near Columbus, Ohio, had been planned for July, but the company delayed it amid uncertainty over whether the bipartisan legislation would pass. Friday’s event is expected to draw politicians from both parties, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
The Post’s Ann E. Marimow writes that her profile soared this week after she intervened in the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified information and agreed to grant his request for an independent review of the material that FBI agents have seized. Per Ann:
The Post’s Katie Shepherd and Caroline Kitchener report that antiabortion lawmakers could not gather enough support for a ban beginning at fertilization that did not carve out exceptions for victims of rape or incest after two days of contentious debate. Per our colleagues:
President Biden grew up with a set of lessons that included a maxim from his mother: Don’t kiss the pope’s ring, and don’t bow to the queen. It was meant, he later recalled, as a sign that all people are equal, and no one is superior.
The Post’s Matt Viser writes that for a man such as Biden who respects institutions, Queen Elizabeth II was, to him and the world, as much of an institution as anyone in modern history, however. So while Biden — an Irishman to his core — may not have revered the queen as much as some, and did not bow to her as many do, he honored her in his own way.
Former president Donald Trump has failed to win another vote — this time by the shareholders of an investment ally that his social network, Truth Social, had been counting on for cash.
The Post’s Drew Harwell reports that Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company, said Thursday it had not yet gained enough shareholder votes to extend its deadline for merging with Trump’s start-up — a necessary step to unlock $1.3 billion in raised funds. Per Drew:
Federal prosecutors on Thursday asked a judge to restore their access to classified material seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, saying their ongoing criminal probe needs to determine whether there are sensitive government papers that have not been found yet, and signaling that they plan to appeal the issue to a higher court in the interest of national security.
The Post’s Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett report that Justice Department lawyers told U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon that if she does not grant their requested stay by Sept. 15, they would file their appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. Per our colleagues:
RELATEDSpecial masters and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents: What you need to know | 2022-09-09T11:29:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden heading to battleground state of Ohio to tout semiconductor law - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/biden-ohio-chips-intel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/biden-ohio-chips-intel/ |
A new survey suggests many in Kosovo don’t approve of the E.U.’s efforts
Analysis by Cameron Mailhot
Members of a peacekeeping force patrol the area near the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje, Kosovo, on Sept. 1. (Laura Hasani/Reuters)
The E.U. hosted further talks between the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia last month, though representatives of both sides once again left Brussels without a deal to normalize the countries’ relations. Attempting to capitalize on any remaining momentum, E.U. and U.S. envoys visited both countries in late August, with minimal success.
Why has the E.U. struggled to bring about a final agreement between the two countries on normalizing relations? My research suggests there’s an overlooked factor: what the people of Kosovo want. While an array of international organizations is involved in peacebuilding, many Kosovars disapprove of the E.U.’s role in these efforts. This suggests that who mediates the process matters for citizens — perhaps as much as what’s being mediated.
What’s happening between Kosovo and Serbia?
The relationship between Kosovo and Serbia has remained tense for the past 20 years. Formerly a province of Serbia — within Yugoslavia — Kosovo came under U.N. administration in 1999 following the two-year Kosovo War and a NATO bombing campaign designed to end the widespread violence against ethnic Albanians.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008 with Western backing, though Serbia refused to recognize it. At that time, the E.U. deployed a mission to take over the U.N.’s duties of helping to rebuild Kosovo’s government institutions, and to mediate the dialogue process. The first major breakthrough in normalizing relations took place in 2013 with the signing of the E.U.-brokered Brussels Agreement.
But progress since then has stalled. Although the Kosovar parliament ratified the agreement, it wasn’t implemented following widespread protests — and Kosovo’s Constitutional Court issued a partial annulment of the agreement in 2015. Two years later, the E.U. led the establishment of an unpopular court to try Kosovo War crimes committed by the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.
A special Kosovo war crimes court will try its ex-president. So how do ‘hybrid’ courts work?
Following a brief hiatus, the E.U. reinvested in the dialogue process in 2020. If anything, however, the situation has grown more tense. Last September, the Serbian government mobilized its military in response to ethnic Serbs’ protests against the Kosovar government’s decision to require documentation to cross the border. A month later, the Kosovo police arrested a number of suspected smugglers in Serbian-majority North Kosovo, prompting criticism from the E.U. for “unilateral action.”
Tensions flared up this summer as Serbia resumed its campaign to encourage countries to “de-recognize” Kosovo — and the Kosovar government again pushed ethnic Serbs in Kosovo to apply for Kosovar license plates and show identification documents at the border. The two sides reached a temporary moratorium on Aug. 27 on the registration issue.
What do Kosovars think?
To understand what people in Kosovo think about the E.U.’s efforts, I implemented a 20-minute telephone survey of 1,608 adults in June and July. A team of independently trained, experienced researchers used random digit dialing methods to select Kosovar citizens (or permanent residents) to interview. All contacted respondents agreed to participate.
The survey sample is similar in age, gender, education and socioeconomic status to the broader Kosovar adult population. However, the survey’s ethnic demographics are slightly skewed toward Albanians, who constitute about 93 percent of Kosovo’s population.
I asked respondents a series of questions regarding their attitudes towards the work of the E.U. in Kosovo, as well as that of NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Response options ranged across a five-point scale.
Are Kosovars satisfied with E.U., NATO and OSCE contributions to peace and stability?
The results suggest that Kosovars systematically disapprove of the E.U.’s role, both in relative and in absolute terms. While 42 percent of respondents were satisfied with E.U. contributions to peace and stability, 44 percent were unsatisfied. This stands in contrast to how they view NATO and the OSCE’s contributions — 94 percent of respondents were satisfied with NATO’s efforts, while 73 percent felt similarly toward the OSCE’s endeavors.
Similarly, a sizable 64 percent of respondents believe that the E.U. is partial in who it serves, a finding in line with the charges made by many Kosovars of the E.U. mission’s “anti-Albanian” and “pro-Serbian” tendencies.
These findings are further reflected in the responses to a broader question: “How successful or unsuccessful have the following been at performing their tasks in Kosovo?” While the vast majority of respondents believe that NATO and the OSCE have been successful (95 percent and 78 percent, respectively), just 42 percent feel similarly about the E.U.
Do Kosovars believe the E.U., NATO and OSCE perform their tasks successfully?
This finding is noteworthy, given each organization’s duties in Kosovo. While the E.U. has taken the lead on the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo and institutional reforms, NATO is primarily tasked with preventing further conflict and inter-ethnic violence, yet the threat of both has risen substantially in the past 12 months. Despite difficulties faced by both missions, it appears as though Kosovars have become increasingly and disproportionately hardened in their negative attitudes towards the E.U.’s efforts.
What does this mean for the E.U. mediation efforts?
While these data come from Kosovo, other survey results demonstrate similar levels of distrust in Serbia. A Eurobarometer survey found Serbian citizens are more distrustful of the E.U. than other citizens in the Western Balkans. And as Serbia seeks E.U. membership, a recent IPSOS poll found Serbians have become increasingly disillusioned with its promises, instead looking towards Russia for peace, security and stability.
These trends matter. The E.U.’s ability to broker a lasting agreement between Serbia and Kosovo hinges on how the two parties perceive its effectiveness and impartiality. This is especially true as efforts to mediate the confrontation between Kosovo and Serbia become increasingly protracted.
Despite the recent defeats, the E.U. continues to place high hopes on its ability to mitigate increased threats to peace and stability in the Balkans. However, these findings may serve as a warning: the E.U. may have to overcome more challenges than solely crafting the appropriate terms of an agreement if it is to bring about a durable end to the dispute between the two countries. This is particularly important as the E.U. reinitiates the dialogue this week.
Professors: Don’t miss TMC’s expanding list of classroom topic guides.
Cameron Mailhot (@crmailhot) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at Cornell University. | 2022-09-09T11:29:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can the European Union broker a deal between Serbia and Kosovo? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/kosovo-serbia-conflict-border-eu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/kosovo-serbia-conflict-border-eu/ |
Has time run out for Thailand’s prime minister?
Prayuth helped engineer a new constitution. Its term limits now complicate his political future.
Analysis by Ken Mathis Lohatepanont
Allen Hicken
Joel Selway
Thai caretaker Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan presides over a cabinet meeting in Bangkok on Aug. 30 while sitting next to the chair where suspended Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha normally sits. (AFP/Getty Images)
Thailand’s Constitutional Court, the country’s highest judicial body, temporarily suspended Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha from his duties on Aug. 24. After launching a military coup in 2014, Prayuth presided over the kingdom of 70 million people. But the constitution he helped engineer after the coup limits prime ministers to eight years in power — a limit he may have hit last month — prompting the court to step in.
What happens now? For the former general, the court ruling is one of the most serious challenges to his grip on power yet, and his ambitions for an additional term as prime minister could implode as a result. Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan assumed the role of acting prime minister and their relationship is not without friction.
Even if he survives the court ruling, the increasingly unpopular Prayuth also faces a number of other challenges ahead of elections slated for no later than spring 2023. These include a sagging economy, a third year of student protests and potential opposition from the strongly royalist and ascendant Wongthewan military faction.
Thai protesters don’t like what the king and government are doing. Can they make them change?
Thailand’s coup maker became prime minister
Prayuth previously served as commander in chief of the Royal Thai Army. In May 2014, after a series of mass protests against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra brought Thailand’s politics to a standstill, Prayuth announced a military coup that toppled the Yingluck administration. He then suspended the constitution and appointed himself as prime minister.
The military junta set to work at writing a new constitution. Having learned from the mistakes of the previous junta following the previous coup in 2006, the drafters included a number of features designed to make military influence a more permanent feature of Thai politics. Though the 2017 constitution paved the way for a general election in 2019, a combination of post-election interpretations of the new electoral rules by the Constitutional Court and the weight of a 250-member Senate appointed by the junta to help select the prime minister saw Prayuth continuing in that role.
As the face of the 2014 coup, Prayuth is deeply unpopular with the more liberal and progressive segment of Thailand’s populace, especially the younger generation. Blunders over the handling of coronavirus outbreaks and less-than-impressive economic growth throughout his eight years in power prompted four no-confidence motions in parliament since 2019.
Ironically, the 2017 constitution drafted under military rule has become a key obstacle to the continuation of Prayuth’s rule. The constitution states that no prime minister may serve for more than eight years. The clear target of this provision was Thaksin Shinawatra — Thailand’s former prime minister and bogeyman of the conservative establishment who was ousted in the 2006 coup. Prayuth now finds himself struggling against the term limits his allies imposed, as he reached the eight-year mark on Aug. 24. That’s why Thailand’s opposition petitioned the Constitutional Court to rule that Prayuth must step down.
In a leaked court argument, Prayuth’s legal team made the case that he has not breached the term limit because he came to power under a temporary constitution drafted as a stopgap during military rule, and as such the 2017 constitution’s term limits could not be retroactively applied. Another leaked legal opinion, provided by Meechai Ruchupan, the former chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, provided a similar view. According to these interpretations, Prayuth’s tenure would have started in 2017 — giving him three more years to serve.
Why Thailand’s top court dissolved a political party
How deep is Prawit’s base of support?
While the Constitutional Court deliberates on Prayuth’s tenure, Prawit Wongsuwan serves as acting prime minister. Prawit wields massive influence behind the scenes of the ruling party, according to Paul Chambers of Naresuan University. Hailing from the same Eastern Tigers faction of the Thai army, Prayuth and Prawit share close ties. However, events since the 2019 general election indicate that all is not well in their relationship — a faction allied with Prawit attempted to engineer a no-confidence vote against Prayuth last year, for instance. In a surprising move, the cabinet recently amended the law to grant Prawit greater power over budget and personnel appointments than caretakers previously had.
Should Prawit’s ascension to power be made permanent, it would end an unusual arrangement in Thailand’s parliamentary democracy. Prayut was never a member of the ruling Palang Pracharath Party, while Prawit has served as its leader. Party members often criticized Prayuth for being aloof and inattentive to party affairs — Prawit, in contrast, has played a key role in holding the coalition together. A new party, the Ruam Paendin Party, recently suggested that it may support Prawit for the premiership at the next election if he is healthy enough.
Don’t count Prayuth out
Despite these challenges, the chances are good that Prayuth could cling to power. After all, the court has ruled in his favor in the past. Notably, in 2019, a controversy arose over whether Prayuth had violated the law, as a section of the constitution prohibits a current state official from running for the premiership. The court found that Prayuth as head of the National Council for Peace and Order, the military body that supervised the government was known at the time, was not a state official.
In addition, Prayuth still has a trump card in Thai establishment politics as the most well-known political figure — and he remains somewhat popular with the conservative base. In contrast, Prawit’s advanced age and greater unpopularity with the public makes it doubtful that he would succeed as a long-term prime minister.
No other frontrunner has emerged as a clear choice for successor, though the rival Wongthewan military faction, or King’s Guard, which is seen as especially royalist and has ties to big business, could seize its chance at the top government post. More than likely, however, Prayuth will be running for another term in office next year.
Ken Mathis Lohatepanont is a PhD student in political science at the University of Michigan.
Allen Hicken is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan and co-author of Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Joel Selway is an associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University and author of “Coalitions of the Well-being: How Electoral Rules and Ethnic Politics Shape Health Policy in Developing Countries” (Cambridge University Press, 2015). | 2022-09-09T11:29:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thailand's highest court will decide if Prayut can run again. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/thailand-prayut-prawit-court-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/thailand-prayut-prawit-court-election/ |
The White House's plan for protecting abortion rights
Good morning, Early Birds. Thanks to all of readers who weighed on the Obamas' new White House portraits. Some of you love the new ones, while others much prefer the ones in National Portrait Gallery. Now we await Donald Trump and Melania Trump's portraits …
Enjoy the weekend, and keep those tips coming: earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us.
In today's edition … Matt Viser on President Biden's complicated relationship with Queen Elizabeth II ... Who is Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who agreed to appoint a special master in former president Donald Trump's fight with the Justice Department? Ann E. Marimow has the details ... An abortion ballot measure will be put to Michigan voters in November… but first …
'I always take issue with the premise that we haven't pushed the envelope'
Seven questions for … Jennifer Klein: We spoke with the executive director of the White House Gender Policy Council, who's taken the lead on the Biden administration's response to the fallout from the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
The Early: It’s been nearly two months since President Biden created an interagency task force on reproductive health care services, which you co-chair. What’s the most important step the task force has taken to safeguard abortion rights so far?
Klein: The president said when the decision came down that the only way to restore the right that had been protected by Roe for nearly 50 years is to pass national legislation. I don't know if I could point to one thing because, sadly, when you take away a fundamental right, it's not an easy fix. There's not one executive action that can be taken to restore that right.
One of the things that I think has been very important in this moment is working to ensure that people are getting the care that they need. You've seen the secretary of health and human services issue guidance making clear to health care providers, including pharmacies, that they can't discriminate against people — women, in particular — when they come to get health care services. The Department of Justice brought a suit against the state of Idaho, seeking to enjoin Idaho’s state abortion ban on the grounds that Idaho's law conflicts with and is therefore preempted by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
The Early: A federal judge last month blocked part of the Idaho law for criminalizing abortions performed solely to protect a woman's health, but a Texas court ruled in a separate case that federal law doesn't require states to allow such abortions. Does the administration expect to sue other states that ban abortion to protect women's health?
Klein: I can't speak to additional enforcement actions and legal actions that the Department of Justice might take. But I will say we're getting numerous reports of this kind of thing happening across the country, and the attorney general has been really quite clear that he will remain vigilant to monitor those kinds of cases.
The Early: “Yes, there are limits to executive branch power, there are limits to what the president can do,” Andrea Miller, the president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, told the New York Times last month. “But this just feels like you’ve got to push the boundaries right now. This is a time to pull out all the stops. This is a time to take risks.” What further steps is the White House considering?
The Early: Is the White House still considering declaring a public health emergency, as dozens of House Democrats urged Biden to do?
Klein: Nothing is off the table. When we considered that earlier this summer, what we learned was that as good as it sounded — because it is a public health crisis, what is happening out there — we didn't want to do anything that was actually going to put the people we're trying to help at risk. We're worried in particular about doctors and other health care providers, and we're worried about the women that they serve. So on that ground we decided at that point not to pursue the idea of declaring a public health emergency.
The Early: Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra last month invited states to apply for Medicaid waivers that would allow them to use federal funds to expand access to abortion. What specifically would these waivers allow states to do?
Klein: Well, the waivers are granted on a case-by-case basis, so the details would have to be worked out between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the individual state. But the idea is that HHS could allow states to serve women traveling from other states to receive care in a state that has applied for a Medicaid waiver.
The Early: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker told The Post a few weeks ago that he had urged Biden to make clear that abortion providers in states controlled by Democrats could ship abortion pills to women seeking abortions in any state in the country. Is that under consideration?
Klein: The president directed [Becerra] to protect access to medications approved by the [Food and Drug Administration] for reproductive health care, including drugs used for medication abortion, for miscarriage management and contraception. What is happening right now is that the FDA is going through their evidence-based scientific process to ensure that medication abortion is made available.
Under previous FDA rules, mifepristone [— a pill taken to terminate a pregnancy —] could only be prescribed to patients by a provider in person. But in April of 2021, the FDA announced that it would allow mifepristone to be mailed to patients for the duration of the covid-19 public health emergency, and that is still in effect. In December, FDA determined that it would make this change permanent, which would allow mifepristone to be dispensed from regular brick-and-mortar pharmacies and to continue to be mailed. The agency is in the process of finalizing these modifications, which we expect will take several additional months to complete.
The Early: Do you anticipate Biden will issue another abortion-related executive order?
Klein: At the moment we're focused on implementing the two that he issued, which really provide a pretty aggressive roadmap for actions we can take.
For Biden, Queen Elizabeth II was a motherly figure
The Irishman: “Biden grew up with a set of lessons that included a maxim from his mother: Don’t kiss the pope’s ring, and don’t bow down to the queen,” our colleague Matt Viser writes. “It was meant, he later recalled, as a sign that all people are equal, and no one is superior.”
Biden’s “strong Irish heritage has been a point of pride with him, and he’s often referred critically to the British rule of Ireland, at least in jest. ‘The BBC?’ Biden said when a reporter from that network once tried, unsuccessfully, to stop him for a question. ‘I’m Irish.’”
But “after their meeting last year, he paid her one of the highest compliments Biden can: He compared her to his mother.”
Happening today: King Charles III, Elizabeth’s eldest son, is expected to address the United Kingdom today. On Saturday, the Privy Council will formally name Charles, 73, the kingdom’s new monarch during a televised meeting. Check out The Post’s live blog for all the latest coverage.
More Queen Elizabeth II reeeads
From our colleagues:
Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned over the U.K. for 70 years, dies at 96. By The Post’s Adrian Higgins.
Covert plans, fake news: How the news of Queen Elizabeth’s death broke. By The Post’s Adam Taylor.
Death of Queen Elizabeth II means U.K.’s money, anthem and more must change. By The Post’s Jennifer Hassan and Adela Suliman.
Queen Elizabeth II and the end of Britain’s imperial age. By The Post’s Ishaan Tharoor.
From across the pond:
Lunches, chats and laughter — her last weeks were full of fun. By the Times’s Ben Ellery.
King Charles III: The history behind the regnal name. By the Telegraph’s Daniel Capurro and Hannah Furness.
From the archives: Prince Philip will be buried in his final resting place after the Queen dies. Bythe Telegraph.
And beyond:
Queen Elizabeth’s death revives criticism of Britain’s legacy of colonialism. By NBC News’s Janelle Griffith.
Decision day: “Federal prosecutors on Thursday asked [U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon] to restore their access to classified material seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, saying their ongoing criminal probe needs to determine if there are sensitive government papers that have not been found yet, and signaling that they plan to appeal the issue to a higher court in the interests of national security,” our colleagues Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett report.
Mark your calendar: “Justice Department lawyers told Cannon that if she does not grant them their requested stay by Sept. 15, they would file their appeal in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.”
By the way … who is Aileen Cannon? “Cannon was not yet 40 years old when the federal prosecutor won decisive bipartisan support in a bitterly divided U.S. Senate to claim her seat on the district court in South Florida, in what would be Trump’s final push to fill the federal bench with young conservative lawyers before leaving the White House,” our colleague Ann E. Marimow reports.
“Her profile soared this week after she intervened in the Justice Department investigation into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified information.”
But “with less than two years on the bench, she does not have an extensive record to review.”
More from Trumpworld: Meanwhile, the DOJ “is seeking details about the formation and operation of Trump’s post-presidential political operation, according to three people familiar with the probe, sending a raft of subpoenas in a significant expansion of the criminal investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” per our colleagues Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf.
🗳️: “The Michigan Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a proposal enshrining the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution be added to the November ballot, ending a partisan feud that unexpectedly erupted when a state board refused to approve the question last week,” our colleague Kim Bellware reports.
New Ukraine military package is largest yet, Pentagon says. By The Post’s Karoun Demirjian.
Meet the artists who painted the Obama White House portraits. By The Post’s Kelsey Ables.
Truth Social in limbo as merger partner grapples with another failed vote. By The Post’s Drew Harwell.
Bannon charged with fraud, money laundering, conspiracy in ‘We Build the Wall.’ By The Post’s Shayna Jacobs.
David Shor, a data guru for Democrats, throws one last bash. By the New York Times’s Joseph Bernstein.
S.C. Democrats call on their party’s US Senate nominee to quit. By AP News’s Meg Kinnard.
Utah rep. told Mormon bishop not to report abuse, docs show. By AP News’s Michael Rezendes and Jason Dearen.
Official’s DNA linked to Las Vegas reporter’s stabbing, police say. By The Post’s Praveena Somasundaram.
Jeff German’s investigative work related to Robert Telles. By the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
How book bans turned a Texas town upside down. By the New York Times Magazine’s Erika Hayasaki. | 2022-09-09T11:29:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The White House's plan for protecting abortion rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/white-house-plan-protecting-abortion-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/white-house-plan-protecting-abortion-rights/ |
With Francis’s blessing, Italian church transforms trans community
The Rev. Andrea Conocchia talks with Claudia Salas at the Church of the Immaculate Blessed Virgin in Torvaianica, Italy. (Federico Manzoni/RNS)
VATICAN CITY — The Church of the Immaculate Blessed Virgin looks out onto the Mediterranean from Torvaianica, a beach town 20 miles from Rome that’s known more for its Mafia incursions, drugs and sex trafficking than its scenery. On a recent gray morning, after a celebration for the Assumption of Mary, a handful of middle-aged parish volunteers were at work cleaning up.
The Rev. Andrea Conocchia, the pastor, showed up in sweatpants and a T-shirt reading “God is great and Jesus loves me,” a gift for his 25th anniversary of celebrating his first Mass. He apologized for his voice, still worn out from guiding the Mary procession down the town’s windy beach.
Conocchia said he’s a big fan of liturgies, Masses and processions, but he prefers ministry that is immersed in his community. His cellphone erupts constantly with WhatsApp messages. His favored office is the coffee shop overlooking the beach just off Torvaianica’s main square.
“I’m not just a priest at the altar. I am a priest right now,” he explained as he loaded up on espresso and chunks of jam tart in the coffee bar for the team tidying up.
In the past two years, Conocchia has gained fame for serving a particular community that found him shortly after he arrived at Blessed Virgin: a group of trans women, whose lives he has changed both practically and spiritually.
Since April, at the invitation of the Vatican, Conocchia has brought four groups of LGBTQ people to meet Pope Francis and receive needed medical care. And since becoming known for his work in Torvaianica, he has started conducting prayer sessions via Zoom with disenfranchised LGBTQ Catholics across Italy.
The trans women in Torvaianica sought out Conocchia for basic needs. Most of them sex workers, they had been left without clients, and therefore income, by the coronavirus pandemic. Because many are HIV-positive, they are at higher risk for serious illness. As immigrants, they could not take advantage of Italy’s health-care system.
“When the pandemic hit, we as trans people had to knock on doors because we had nothing to eat,” said Claudia Salas, in a mix of Italian and her native-Argentine Spanish. “When I went to [one nearby] church, they closed the door on me. They suggested to go to the parish of Torvaianica. Don Andrea was the only one to bring God to us.”
Pope Francis compares work of U.S. priest whose ministry affirms LGBTQ people to the work of God
Conocchia had arrived at Blessed Virgin months before from a small chapel in Lido dei Pini, a half-hour down the coast, where he had spent much of his time preaching on the streets. As the pandemic descended on Italy in 2020, the Italian government demanded that churches close. Conocchia obeyed until one morning, after saying Mass to the nuns who live at the church complex, he saw a line of people in the church’s piazza. “They were families, people dependent on undeclared or seasonal work, migrants, and in the crowd there were three trans women,” he said.
Despite fears of spreading covid-19, not least to his aging mother who lives with him, Conocchia opened the doors. The second day, there were four trans women, he said; the next, there were eight.
At first, he offered the women food and money through the local chapter of Caritas, the Catholic charitable organization. He helped Salas get documented and find work as a cleaner, seamstress and cook to get her off the streets.
As the group continued to grow, Conocchia came up with the idea of having the women write to Pope Francis. Some told him they would be ashamed to describe their lives to the pope.
But the letters went to Rome, and in April 2020, the pope sent money and food to Blessed Virgin through Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, the official dispenser of Francis’s philanthropy.
Since early in his pontificate, Francis has taken a novel approach to LGBTQ issues. In 2013, in response to a question about gay priests, he replied, “Who am I to judge?” He has met with a Spanish trans man and his partner at the Vatican and praised the work of the Rev. James Martin, the American Jesuit who advocates for inclusion for LGBTQ Catholics.
Last year, not long after the Vatican’s office of doctrine issued a document calling the blessing of same-sex couples a sin, Francis overhauled the office and removed those responsible.
Pope Francis calls for civil union laws for same-sex couples
Francis has stopped short of definitively changing Catholic teaching, which still regards homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered.” He has called gender theory a form of “ideological colonization,” especially when taught in schools. Measured against this doctrinal stance, the pope’s steps toward openness to the LGBTQ community are mere gestures, but outside Vatican circles they have been seen as earthshaking.
At Easter 2021, Krajewski called Conocchia to tell him to bring the trans women and others in need to the Vatican to receive coronavirus vaccination and health checkups. When Conocchia arrived at the Vatican City gates with two busloads in tow, Vatican officials asked the pope whether they should be allowed inside. Francis ordered them to be admitted, saying, “Ask for their names, ask for anything they need, but do not ask them about their sex,” according to activist Juan Carlos Cruz, a friend of the pope’s.
The next day at the papal audience, Conocchia ushered the women forward to meet the pontiff. “When I touched his hand, I was lost for words,” Minerva Motta Nuñes said. She offered him a traditional leather cup from Peru, where she was born.
Afterward, Conocchia said, the pope told him: “Keep going, continue in this ministry, you are doing well.”
Conocchia said he has been reinvigorated by the pope’s approval, especially after the pastor’s efforts to open the church to the LGBTQ community have led to pushback. Some in Torvaianica were angry that the trans women received vaccination before other residents. Conocchia said it’s not uncommon for disapproving members of his flock to ask him how long he thinks he will be stationed at the parish.
Two local priests, both from Africa, support the pope and his message of inclusion but say focusing on questions of sexuality seems out of touch with the demand for food, medicine and financial independence in their native countries. The Rev. Blaise Mayuma Nkwa, from Congo, where there are more Catholics per capita than any other nation in Africa, won’t go on Conocchia’s trips in the company of the trans women. When the subject came up at lunch, the otherwise cheerful priest turned quiet.
The Rev. Omero Mananga, Conocchia’s deputy, worried about explaining Francis’s vision to the die-hard core of older women at Blessed Virgin. “What will happen when our little old ladies die?” Conocchia asked in reply, before answering, mostly to himself: “It will be all over … preaching to no one in empty chapels.”
Transgender people can’t be baptized unless they’ve ‘repented,’ Catholic diocese says
According to 2021 data from Italy’s statistics agency, more than 30 percent of those who attend Mass once a week are older than 75. The same report found that even in Catholic Italy, only 19 percent of people attend religious services regularly.
The trans women say Francis’s message of inclusion is slowly changing the church. “He moves forward as the world moves forward,” said Marcella Demarco Muniz, who met Francis at a general audience in April.
Pope Francis writes to controversial nun, thanking her for 50 years of LGBTQ ministry
Blessed Virgin is moving forward with him, setting a new standard for LGBTQ Catholics in Italy wishing to be reconciled with the church. After Conocchia’s efforts appeared in several newspapers, groups from all over the peninsula have asked him for advice.
“We cannot go back,” Conocchia said one afternoon, after presiding at back-to-back funerals. “Pope Francis has pushed the church in a new direction.” | 2022-09-09T11:29:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pope Francis, Catholic parish help transform Italian trans community - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/09/pope-francis-catholic-church-trans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/09/pope-francis-catholic-church-trans/ |
Friday briefing: The death of Queen Elizabeth II; Trump investigations; abortion on the ballot; NFL kickoff; and more
Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday after seven decades on the throne.
The 96-year-old was Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. In fact, 9 in 10 humans alive today were born after she took the throne in February 1952.
Her legacy: She was a symbol of stability and continuity — even through scandals, the shrinking of the British Empire and massive change around the world.
What happens now? Her son Charles is now King Charles III, and his son Prince William is heir to the throne. The queen’s funeral is expected to be on Sept. 18.
The legal fight over the Trump documents investigation continued yesterday.
What to know: The Justice Department appealed an order that’s keeping prosecutors from looking at classified material taken from former president Donald Trump’s home.
What order? A judge this week said a court-appointed special master must review the items before they can be used in the government’s criminal investigation.
Rising seas could swallow millions of acres of land within decades.
Where? Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina and Texas are the states most at risk, according to research published yesterday. High tide waters could cover 8.7% of Louisiana by 2050.
Why is this happening? Warming temperatures tied to climate change. Scientists are clear: Seas are rising and communities should start planning and adapting now.
Michigan will vote on making abortion a state constitutional right.
This was in doubt: Some state officials didn’t want the question on November’s ballot, but Michigan’s Supreme Court overruled them yesterday.
Why this matters: The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, leaving abortion rules up to individual states. It’s legal and likely to be protected in 20 states, plus D.C.
Sunday marks 21 years since the 9/11 attacks.
What happened that morning in 2001: Terrorists hijacked four planes, flying two into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and crashing another. 2,977 people were killed.
On Sunday: President Biden will speak at a Pentagon ceremony and Vice President Harris will be at the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York.
The Bills won the first game of the NFL season.
What happened: Josh Allen threw three touchdown passes and Buffalo shut down the defending Super Bowl champion Rams, winning 31-10 in Los Angeles.
The rest of Week 1: Sunday offers a full slate of 14 games, highlighted by the Raiders and Chargers at 4:25 p.m. Eastern time, followed by the Broncos and Seahawks meeting on Monday Night Football.
The U.S. Open finals are this weekend.
On the women’s side: Ons Jabeur, who made history at Wimbledon as the first Arab woman and first African woman to make a Grand Slam final, will play Iga Swiatek tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern time.
On the men’s side: Two matches today, at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. (featuring Frances Tiafoe, the last American man standing), will decide who goes to Sunday’s final.
And now … what to do this weekend: Start planning a fall trip, using this map of when and where to find peak foliage; or brush up on sports betting as the NFL season kicks off. | 2022-09-09T11:30:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Friday, Sept. 9 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/09/what-to-know-for-september-9/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/09/what-to-know-for-september-9/ |
The crowd watch a film of Queen Elizabeth II having tea with Paddington Bear on a big screen at the Platinum Jubilee concert taking place in front of Buckingham Palace, London, Saturday June 4, 2022, on the third of four days of celebrations to mark the Platinum Jubilee. (Victoria Jones/AP)
LONDON — James Bond knew it. Paddington Bear knew it. Even her bodyguard chatting to the clueless American hiker knew it.
Queen Elizabeth II had a wicked sense of humor.
One of the favorite stories about the queen doing the rounds on social media involves the time when the queen was asked by an American tourist who was hiking near her Balmoral estate in the Scottish highlands, “have you ever met the queen?”
“No,” said the queen. Then she pointed at her protection officer, Richard Griffin, and said, “but he has.”
After the hiker grilled Griffin on what the queen was like — “oh, she can be very cantankerous at times, but she’s got a lovely sense of humor,” he replied — the hiker asked for a photo with the bodyguard and handed the queen a camera. (She happily obliged.)
The queen had a sense of humor. Oh boy, did she ever. She stole the show at the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games in a James Bond skit that had her “jumping” out of a helicopter.
And let’s not forget the time when she teamed up with grandson Prince Harry to trade mic drops with Barack and Michelle Obama in a video promoting her grandson’s Invictus Games for wounded veterans. Boom. “Oh, really, please,” the queen deadpanned.
These sketches alone would be enough to endear her forever in the hearts of Brits. But it’s not only the big showstopper events where she allowed her humorous side to show.
She was also said to be a very good mimic.
The queen’s dresser, Angela Kelly, once said, “the queen has a wicked sense of humor and is a great mimic. She can do all accents — including mine.”
The queen could also dish out quick quips and one liners.
Take her interactions at the G-7 summit in Cornwall last year. During a group photo of the leaders, including President Biden, the queen broke the silence by reminding everyone they were “supposed to be looking as if you’re enjoying yourself.”
At another G-7 event that year, she went to cut a cake with a ceremonial sword and was offered a conventional knife instead. She refused it, saying that the sword was “more unusual.”
The humor was apparent from the very earliest days when a young woman was suddenly thrust into the limelight of the crown. At her coronation in 1953, which was televised and watched by millions around the world, the queen wore very heavy state robes. As the ceremony was about to begin, she asked if the archbishop of Canterbury could give her a tiny push to “get me started.”
It continued throughout her reign, especially as the world leaders she met grew younger and younger. In 2018, upon meeting a 43-year-old Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau she remarked, “thank you, prime minister of Canada, for making me feel so old,” after he said in his toast that she had first appeared on a Canadian postage in 1935 at the age of 9.
Which isn’t to say the queen could be described as overly informal — in most situations she was very serious as befitting the gravity of her position.
“You don’t get matey with the queen,” the former prime minister Tony Blair recalled. “Occasionally she can be matey with you, but don’t try to reciprocate or you get The Look,” he wrote in his autobiography, “A Journey.”
As the British monarch and head of the Commonwealth, the queen was indeed a figure of dignity and authority, writes Karen Dolby, in her book, “The Wicked Wit of Queen Elizabeth II,” yet “as anyone who has ever met with her will tell you, in person she is very warm and human with a well-developed sense of humour.”
Dolby recalls how, at one Buckingham Palace summer garden party, the queen was standing next to a party guest when their cellphone rang. “You should answer it,” the queen said. “It might be someone important.”
It was thus entirely appropriate that her 2022 Platinum Jubilee celebration featured a comedy skit with Britain’s beloved fictional character, Paddington Bear.
In the course of the tea party at the palace, the queen reveals to the gaffe-prone bear that she keeps a stash of marmalade sandwiches in her handbag. And then the two of them tapped out “We Will Rock You” with their spoons on china teacups.
The crowd watching the prerecorded show outside Buckingham palace swooned.
With the announcement of the queen’s passing on Thursday, Paddington Bear’s Twitter account echoed his final line from the sketch: “Thank you Ma’am, for everything.”
Rachel Pannett in Sydney contributed to this report. | 2022-09-09T11:30:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The queen was wickedly funny, as James Bond and Paddington Bear found out - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-england-humor-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-england-humor-death/ |
Lefty Jake McGee knew he would probably face Albert Pujols at Busch Stadium this week. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
ST. LOUIS — During a pre-series meeting at Busch Stadium on Monday, reliever Jake McGee heard the name Albert Pujols and smiled to himself. Pujols, the 42-year-old designated hitter/first baseman/future first-ballot Hall of Famer for the St. Louis Cardinals, has absolutely crushed lefties throughout the season’s second half. And with starter Patrick Corbin not pitching for the Washington Nationals against the Cardinals this week, McGee was the only lefty who could face Pujols, who is getting most of his at-bats in lefty/righty matchups.
Normally, that would mean another chance for McGee to square off against a legend, whatever that’s worth to a 36-year-old pitcher in the twilight of his career. This month, though, Pujols is on the edge of history, just a homer away from tying Alex Rodriguez on the all-time list with 696 — and just five away from 700. So when Pujols reached the on-deck circle Tuesday night, when the fans rose in a standing ovation, when he readied to see McGee as the leadoff batter in the eighth inning, McGee took a deep breath.
“If this was 10 years ago, if I’m a lot younger, maybe I pick around the zone and try to avoid it,” McGee said Wednesday afternoon. “But at this point, I mean, whatever happens happens. I have given up my share of homers. If I wind up on a Cardinals highlight reel for the rest of my life, so be it. I think he knew that as a veteran I was going to go right at him."
Three pitches later, on a low-and-in fastball, Pujols flied out to Lane Thomas in left-center. All in all, the Nationals held Pujols at bay, a combined effort from Aníbal Sánchez, Mason Thompson, McGee, Josiah Gray, Andrés Machado and Carl Edwards Jr. Pujols finished 0 for 10 in the four-game series. In his first at-bat Monday, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the first, a sold-out crowd stood before Sánchez got him swinging. In his second at-bat, he crushed a ball that landed in the third deck but on the wrong side of the left field foul pole.
Entering Thursday’s 11-6 win, Washington’s pitchers had allowed homers in 3.8 percent of plate appearances, the highest rate in the majors. Gray, their starter for the series finale, had yielded a homer in a club-record 11 consecutive starts. The 36 homers against him, including a pair for catcher Yadier Molina on Thursday, is tops among pitchers in 2022. But after hitting his 400th and 500th homers against the Nationals, Pujols will have to use another team for this milestone.
“When you’re on the mound and Albert steps in, you know full well what’s going on," said McGee, who almost faced Pujols again Thursday but was hooked after recording one out and loading the bases in the ninth. In their nine matchups, Pujols is 2 for 7 with two homers and a walk. McGee’s season ERA is 6.81 among time with the San Francisco Giants (24 appearances), Milwaukee Brewers (six) and Nationals (12).
“It was sort of funny because the game was at a lull, we were trailing late, and then all of a sudden everyone is screaming. I had a feeling he would pinch-hit and it wouldn’t be for [Paul] Goldschmidt or [Nolan] Arenado, who were coming up after that spot. So I just had to get him out.”
Simple enough, right?
Throughout the series, there was Pujols chatter in and around the Nationals’ clubhouse. On Tuesday, Thompson, a 24-year-old reliever who retired Pujols three times, walked beneath a TV displaying Pujols, Rodriguez, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds in order. The night before, after he finished a win by inducing a flyout from Pujols, he joked about waving to the camera if Pujols took him deep.
Relievers are well-trained in gallows humor about public failure. No other players appear less and have to talk more about their screw-ups.
“I mean, my goal and my thought process was just to go after him," Thompson said. “You know, whatever is going to happen is going to happen. And I can control everything up until the ball leaves my hand.” | 2022-09-09T11:49:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Albert Pujols has quiet series as Nationals pitchers avoid the spotlight - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/nationals-pitchers-albert-pujols/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/nationals-pitchers-albert-pujols/ |
Aaron Judge is blasting his way into the record books. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
For three decades after he hit the 61st home run of the 1961 season in the last of the New York Yankees’ 162 games, Roger Maris’s record (in)famously carried an asterisk. Since that single-season record has since been blown by — six times in a four-season stretch that spanned the turn of this century — the controversy surrounding one of baseball’s most revered records has been not about the length of the season but the means by which the standard was attained.
Into that morass, by no doing of his own, strides Aaron Judge, who wears the same pinstripes as Maris and Babe Ruth, and is doing things in the summer of 2022 that are as unusual as his predecessors did in the 1920s and ’60s, respectively. Judge had 55 homers through Thursday, and with the Yankees only 24 games from the conclusion of the season, it’s unlikely that he’ll reach Barry Bonds’s (murky) mark of 73. Unlikely. But don’t take your eyes off him.
There’s ink to be spilled about what the rightful home run record should be, because Bonds was on “the cream” and “the clear” and whatever else he took to artificially build himself into the all-time home run champ, both for one season and a career. The only other players to have hit more than Maris did in that summer of ’61 are similarly stained — Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in both 1998 and ’99, and Sosa again in 2001, the year Bonds established the record.
Home run hitting, like anything in baseball, is normally a product of where the sport is at a particular point in time: the dead-ball era, the year of the pitcher, the steroid era, the juiced ball of 2019 and so on. In 2022, Judge is an absolute outlier, spitting on the belief that the ball has traveled less this year by launching shot after shot over the fences.
When Maris surpassed Ruth’s record of 60 — a number the Babe reached in the 154-game season of 1927 — he was pushed by teammate and icon Mickey Mantle, who finished with 54. That fits with history. More often than not, there is a Robin riding alongside Batman. Not up for some severe baseball nerdiness at the moment? You may want to put down this column. The rest of you, come along.
The only seasons in which more than two players smacked 50 homers were 2001, the year Bonds set the existing mark; and 1998, the year McGwire and Sosa created what seemed like magic by tracking down and passing Maris. In each of those seasons, four players reached 50 — Bonds, Sosa, Luis Gonzalez and Alex Rodriguez in ’01; McGwire, Sosa, Ken Griffey Jr. and Greg Vaughn in ’98. Remember the days when chicks dug the long ball?
There have been 13 seasons before this one in which a player hit at least 55 homers. Nine of those years, at least one other player hit 50. That was true during the Bonds-McGwire steroid era, of course. But it was true, too, in 1938 for Hank Greenberg (58) and Jimmie Foxx (50). It was true in 2017, when Giancarlo Stanton, now Judge’s teammate, hit 59 for Miami while Judge smacked 52 as a Yankees rookie. It was true for Maris and Mantle.
Separating yourself from the power pack, as Judge is doing, is something that really hasn’t happened since Ruth’s days, which we’ll get to. Judge will almost certainly stand alone beyond 50 when the season ends in early October. Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber would have to hit 14 homers in his team’s final 25 games to reach 50; St. Louis’s Paul Goldschmidt and Atlanta’s Austin Riley have around the same number of games in which to hit 15 to get to that mark.
What it amounts to is that Judge is outpacing the league at a rate not seen since Ruth, who basically played a different sport from his contemporaries. In 1920, Ruth hit 54 homers when his closest pursuer, George Sisler, managed only 19. (That year, Ruth homered more times than all but one other team.) The following season, Ruth clubbed a then-record 59 homers when the next best in the league — Ken Williams and Bob Meusel — each hit 24.
Judge’s 19-home run lead on Schwarber? It would be the most since Ruth hit 54 and the next-best duo of Hack Wilson and Jim Bottomley managed 31 in 1928. In the 93 seasons since, only Jimmie Foxx — who beat Ruth by 17 homers in 1932 and 14 homers in 1933 — has approached such a gap.
The season’s not over, and it will be fascinating to see when and if Judge reaches Ruth at 60, Maris at 61, Sosa’s 63 from 1999 or his 64 from 2001, McGwire’s 65 from ’99 or Sosa’s 66 from ’98. Those are all reachable landmarks.
Through Thursday, Judge had homered in a staggering 9.29 percent of his plate appearances. (Ruth’s best, it’s worth mentioning, was 8.75 percent in 1920.) If he gets the same number of plate appearances he has averaged thus far, and homers at the same rate, for the rest of the season, he’ll hit 10 more and finish with 65 — which would tie him for the fourth-most all-time.
But as notable as that blast toward history will be, what he’s doing in relation to the rest of the league better defines the impressiveness of his season.
There is time, over these final three-plus weeks, to reconsider what the rightful single-season home run record should be. I’ll be honest: I’m torn. I’m not into criminalizing Bonds, McGwire and the rest, because who knows if everyone’s clean — even now, with a rigorous drug-testing program long in place? But it’s hard to deny that the top of the most-homers-in-a-season list reads as dirty. I’ll leave it as a fun barroom discussion, and respect both views.
What’s undeniable, though, is Aaron Judge is distancing himself from his power-hitting peers in a way even Bonds and McGwire didn’t in their most prolific seasons. That gives his season a distinction that is decidedly devoid of controversy. | 2022-09-09T12:24:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Aaron Judge is chasing the home run marks of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/aaron-judge-home-runs-babe-ruth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/aaron-judge-home-runs-babe-ruth/ |
In ‘The Godmother,’ mafia women are just as fearsome as the men
The term “mafia” evokes specific images: men wearing nice suits and hats wielding guns. These associations arise mostly from popular culture, including “The Godfather,” “The Sopranos” and, for true fans, the Italian series “Gomorrah.” Women, though, are never front and center in these depictions and, as journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau explains in her new book, “The Godmother,” they are rarely discussed by those who study the mafia. And yet, as Nadeau demonstrates, these women exist and act within the various crime syndicates that the Italian government considers to be mafias, including the “only one true Mafia … the Cosa Nostra in Sicily.” The other major crime groups are the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Neapolitan Camorra in Campania.
Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women | 2022-09-09T12:59:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Godmother by Barbie Latza Nadeau book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/09/godmother-mafia-book-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/09/godmother-mafia-book-review/ |
It’s time: Congressional Democrats need to get the ball rolling on ending the risk of defaulting on the nation’s debt. If they don’t tackle this before the current term ends, we run the risk that a Republican House majority will be irresponsible enough to allow a default to happen. That’s why the Democrats should seize the opportunity during the lame-duck period after the Nov. 8 midterms to eliminate the borrowing cap entirely.
The reason this is so pressing is that the US has a law limiting the amount of debt the government can borrow. Since the federal government almost always runs a deficit, the total amount of debt is almost always increasing, which means that periodically the limit must be raised as well. But because the government sets the limit, and the government also decides how much to borrow, the law is entirely superfluous; it’s as if credit card limits were set by the cardholder and not the card issuer.(1)
The problem is that raising the limit takes an act of Congress, and many in Congress fear that voters will punish them based on a mistaken belief that it’s a vote to increase the deficit (even though there’s no evidence that voters would do such a thing). But if Congress fails to increase the limit, the US would default, leaving the government unable to pay its bills or fund crucial programs.
Which brings us to the threat: the possibility of a Republican House majority driven by the most extreme members of the party. We don’t know exactly what would happen if Republicans win a majority in November. But it does seem clear that the percentage of radicals — those who oppose compromise on principle and increasingly reject democratic norms and values — keeps growing within the House Republican conference and that those who are radicals are becoming more extreme.
How this will play out will depend on the size of the Republican majority (assuming there is one, which appears highly likely but not quite as certain as it did a few months ago) and how GOP leaders manage things. It’s possible that they will be surprisingly disciplined, focused on damaging President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election but avoiding actions that could make them look bad. It’s also possible they will turn on each other, perhaps even failing to elect a speaker and organize the House for some time, or splintering so badly that they wind up losing their majority to some sort of coalition of Democrats and dissident Republicans.(2)The majority in the Senate will matter, too, although radicals appear to have less influence there than in the House. And when it comes to must-pass items such as the debt limit it only takes one chamber to cause a problem.
Greg Sargent, writing in the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, has a good rundown on some of the parade of horrors a radical Republican House could unleash, from bogus impeachments to government shutdowns. Some of these would likely be terribly unpopular (I can’t imagine very many voters would welcome a government shutdown aimed at stopping the Department of Justice from investigating former President Donald Trump). Other steps Republicans could take range from nuisances to huge distractions. Seeking impeachments of Biden or other administration officials wouldn’t produce convictions — and might even be immediately dismissed by the Senate — but they would certainly tie up the administration’s time.
Yet the move that would do the most damage to the nation, and to Democratic chances in 2024, is also the one that Democrats could solve right now. A debt limit crisis could be put off — for a year, for two years, or permanently — if Congress acts before the year ends. In fact, as the New York Times reported Thursday, at least some Republicans would prefer that the debt limit be raised now so that their party wouldn’t have to deal with it if they have majorities in both the House and the Senate. After all, plenty of radical Republicans have pledged to never vote for a debt limit increase, regardless of the consequences. That means the Republican leadership could wind up needing to strike a cross-party alliance that would give Democrats a fair amount of leverage.
Unfortunately, Senate Republicans who want to see the debt limit jettisoned are surely in the “vote no, hope yes” camp. They not only wouldn’t vote for a debt limit increase due to political considerations but would also join a filibuster to block a vote to raise the limit. That means either another convoluted procedural compromise like the one that yielded only a short-term fix last year, or that Democrats will have to use reconciliation, the budget procedure that allows them to act with only a simple majority in the Senate. They should choose the latter. And this time, they should permanently put an end to the threat of default by eliminating the debt limit for good.(3)
• Natalie Jackson has an excellent primer on reading midterm polls.
• David A. Hopkins at Bloomberg Opinion on Dr. Fauci and partisanship.
• Jack Santucci on the Alaska system.
• Mallory E. SoRelle and Serena Laws at the Monkey Cage on the details of Biden’s student loan plan.
• Matt Glassman on student loans and working around Congress.
• Robert Farley on Biden’s speech defending democracy.
• Josh Putnam on changes to the Democratic presidential nomination rules.
(1) Using personal finance analogies to government debt is generally a mistake, but it’s helpful in this particular case.
(2) The latter should be highly unlikely given the successful purge of moderate conservatives and most Republicans who objected to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, but there will still be at least some Republicans in the next Congress who are uncomfortable with the most extreme radicals in the conference.
(3) Technically, the rules of reconciliation would prevent a full repeal of the debt limit law. However, Senate experts believe that setting the limit at a preposterously large number would be acceptable. I still support raising the limit to 1787 to the 1787th power, a very large number indeed that won’t be reached for many centuries, and calling it the Constitutional Option. | 2022-09-09T12:59:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dump the Debt Ceiling Before Republicans Win the House - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dump-the-debt-ceiling-beforerepublicans-win-the-house/2022/09/09/3e4265a6-303b-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dump-the-debt-ceiling-beforerepublicans-win-the-house/2022/09/09/3e4265a6-303b-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
I’m in my late 50s and I’m on the job. So are more than 70% of Americans aged 55 through 59, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, my age group’s labor-force participation rate was approaching record levels earlier this year before undergoing its usual summer decline.
As a result, I tend to bristle a little whenever I read about the big drop in labor-force participation among Americans 55 and older and its supposed adverse effects on the labor market and the economy. It is true that, as of August, the labor-force participation rate for the entire 55-plus age group was, at a seasonally adjusted 38.6%, down 1.7 percentage points from just before the pandemic in February 2020 and near its lowest level in 15 years. But as I’ve already demonstrated, those of us in our late 50s aren’t the problem. We’re still working at record rates!
Americans in their early 60s are pretty close to record labor-force participation, too. The big declines are all among those 65 and older. But — and here’s where things get really weird — those declines are still smaller in percentage-point terms than those for the 55-and-older group overall. This strange data quirk is the result of so-called composition effects, caused by the shifting age distribution within the age group, which I’ll discuss a little later. First, though, let’s get around the strange quirk by looking at labor market changes for smaller age groups.The reason the 55-and-older numbers get so much attention is that it’s the one of the few age groups for which the BLS provides seasonally adjusted labor market data. The unadjusted numbers come with big seasonal swings and, especially when you’re looking at narrow age groups such as 55 through 59, a fair amount of month-to-month statistical noise. Still, there are ways to deal with both, such as comparing three-month averages from this summer with those from before the pandemic in 2019.
The labor-force participation rate is the estimated number of Americans who have paid jobs (not counting active-duty military) or are looking for work, divided by the civilian, non-institutionalized working-age population. Another key metric, the employment-population ratio, is those with paid jobs divided by population, also excluding active-duty military and the institutionalized. Both are expressed as percentages, so why one is called a rate and the other a ratio is a mystery to me. After this chart I’ll just refer to both as rates.
One thing that stands out here is the apparently limited labor market impact of Long Covid. Lingering effects of Covid-19 are real, and may afflict millions of Americans, but the fact that every under-60 age group but two has higher labor-force participation and employment rates than before the pandemic seems to indicate that Long Covid isn’t keeping significant numbers of working-age Americans out of the workforce.As for the two under-60 age groups that haven’t returned to or surpassed their summer 2019 participation and employment rates, those in their early 20s may be staying in college longer to make up for pandemic gap years and other delays, or still struggling to recover from the many disruptions to the job market and society in general in 2020. For those in their late 30s child-care complications could be a culprit, although curiously, women in that age group are back to pre-pandemic levels while men are not.
For workers 60 and older, who in the decades before the pandemic had been experiencing steady gains in labor-force participation and employment, it makes sense that a disease that was far deadlier for the elderly drove many out of the labor force — because of either fear of catching Covid-19 or struggles with Long-Covid complications after catching it. The remarkable performance of stocks and other assets in 2020 and 2021 may also have led some affluent older workers to retire earlier than planned.But again, members of the 60-to-64 age group left only briefly. Their labor-force participation rate hit an all-time high in March 2020, when low response rates amid lockdowns may have skewed the data, and came close to that again last November. (“All-time” for these numbers only goes back to June 1976, but statistics available back to 1948 for the broader 55-to-64 age group indicate that recent rates are the highest over that period too.)
Participation among those 60 through 64 was down this summer relative to summer 2019, but that could be evidence of changing seasonal hiring patterns rather than a sustained decline in labor-force attachment. Teenage labor-force participation collapsed in the 2000s, leading traditional teen employers such as McDonald’s to recruit senior citizens for summer jobs. Now hordes of 16-and-17-year-olds are entering the labor force, reducing the need for such efforts.
Those 65 and older have in fact seen a clear drop in labor-force participation after decades of gains. But 65-plussers made up only 6.6% of the labor force in August, compared with the 16.4% share accounted for by those 55 through 64. Their 1.1 percentage point labor-force participation decline since summer 2019 works out to 626,835 missing would-be workers — not nothing, but also not that huge a deal in a labor force of almost 165 million.
The labor-force participation decline for the broad 55-and-older category is 1.7 percentage points whether measured in seasonally adjusted data from February 2020 or in unadjusted summer-2019-to-summer-2022 comparisons, as I did with the other age groups. How can this be bigger than the decline for those 65 and older, not to mention those in their late 50s and early 60s? Well, the youngest baby boomers are turning 58 this year, meaning that the younger end of the 55-and-older group is now being replenished with the less-numerous members of Generation X.
Because of this, the average age of Americans in the 55 and older category rose even through the ravages of Covid-19 and will continue doing so.(1) Meanwhile, labor-force participation tends to peak around age 40, and decline as people age beyond that. So with each passing year, the 55-plus labor-force participation rate will drop even if the rates for every year of age within the group remain the same. The reverse transpired as the baby boomers began to enter the age group two decades ago, as will also be the case for the 75-plus age group that they started joining last year.
The aging of the baby boomers and the US population in general is real and will have a lot of economic consequences, but the seeming mass exodus of 55-and-older workers during the pandemic is to some extent a statistical mirage. That is, many older Americans did leave the workforce, but the irreversible process of aging was as much to blame as the possibly reversible consequences of the pandemic. Those looking to bring more people into the labor market should probably focus on solving the problems that are keeping away would-be workers in their early 20s and late 30s rather than worrying about the oldsters.
Then again, there is another composition effect at work in these statistics that I haven’t discussed. While women’s labor-force participation rates rose from the 1950s through 1990s, men’s fell. So while the current labor-force participation rate for all Americans in their late 50s and early 60s is near an all-time high, for men it’s well below the rates that prevailed before the mid-1970s
The puzzle of why labor-force participation fell so much among US men of all ages was a major topic of economic discussion in the 2010s that’s probably due for a revival. For those in their late 50s and early 60s the decline wasn’t all bad news, as generous early retirement packages surely drove some of it. Those are less common than they used to be, while boosting male 55-64 labor force participation back to, say, the August 1970 rate of 82.6% would add 2 million would-be workers to the US job market. Bringing the participation rate for so-called prime-age men (25-54) back to 1970 levels would add another 4.5 million. Reversing changes that happened half a century ago is surely a lot harder than reversing those of the past couple of years. But maybe it’s the next frontier.
How the US Can Make the Apprenticeship Model Work: Robert Lerman
Young People Won’t Find Life’s Meaning at Work: Allison Schrager
(1) It fell in the Census Bureau’s data from mid-2019 to April 2020 because the 2020 Census found that there were fewer 70-and-older Americans than the bureau had previously estimated, but that’s another story. | 2022-09-09T13:00:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 55-and-Older Labor Market Exodus Is a Statistical Mirage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-55-and-older-labor-market-exodus-is-a-statistical-mirage/2022/09/09/e1816018-3032-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-55-and-older-labor-market-exodus-is-a-statistical-mirage/2022/09/09/e1816018-3032-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Sir Anthony Van Dyck, triptych portrait of King Charles I of England. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)
Shortly after the death Thursday of Queen Elizabeth II, a royal announcement said her heir, her eldest son Charles, would be known as King Charles III. He will speak as king for the first time Friday.
King Charles III ascends to throne, will speak today
There had been speculation for years that Charles might choose a different name (he could have chosen any of his four names — Charles, Philip, Arthur or George — according to the BBC) if and when he took the throne.
His dad had already been having trouble with Parliament for years, and that continued in Charles’s reign, especially after he married a Catholic. Here we will skip a lot of complicated and still-disputed history — Puritans! Spain! Ship money! Ireland! — and cut to the chase: By 1642, Parliament had booted the king from London, and England descended into civil war.
There really was a war on Christmas. It was waged by Christians.
King Charles II oversaw the Restoration, a period defined by bawdy comedy, sexy clothes and general post-Puritan debauchery. Even so, the king still had some hard times — there was the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London in 1666, and parliament continued to annoy and constrain him as they had his father and grandfather.
During the Great Plague, Isaac Newton had to work from home. He used the time wisely. | 2022-09-09T13:00:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who were King Charles I and II as King Charles III begins reign? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/09/king-charles-i-ii-iii-queen-elizabeth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/09/king-charles-i-ii-iii-queen-elizabeth/ |
What parents can do when schools ban books
Advice by Kristen Mei Chase
When I decided to move back to my hometown of Philadelphia after many years in the South, the only thing I really cared about were the schools. As a newly single mom with four young kids, I knew public education was going to be our family’s best option. And when I polled family and friends in the area, some of whom were educational professionals themselves, one district kept coming up over and over again: Central Bucks.
An online search afforded me various high ratings and rankings of “top this” and “best that,” and along with the recommendations from trusted people in my life, and a location close to my children’s family on both sides, I found a home and we all settled in.
But fast forward almost nine years and this school district is why I want to move away. The most recent reason? The school board recently passed a “library materials policy,” which many parents in my community are calling a book ban.
This new policy will allow books that an as-yet-to-be determined committee deems inappropriate to be pulled from shelves and will focus on “age-inappropriate content.” The policy says that for middle-schoolers, for example, the superintendent will “seek to prioritize” books that “do not contain other sexualized content, such as implied descriptions of sexual acts or implied depictions of nudity.”
The policy allows any resident to challenge a book in a school district library, at which point, this committee will determine whether the book is “inappropriate” and should be removed.
The superintendent and the director of the school board said in an email sent before the vote that this is not a book ban, but rather is “intended to prioritize materials that support and enrich curriculum and/or students’ personal interests and learning.”
Chris Kehan, a 32-year veteran teacher-librarian in the Central Bucks School District, told me librarians now have to submit their book list for approval from the superintendent or designee to determine whether any of the policy’s specified sexualized content is present before those titles can be added to the school library. “We’re worried we won’t be able to get the books to the teachers in a timely manner so that they can do their jobs,” Kehan said, after sharing the extensive process she uses to choose the books for the children in her elementary school.
According to Jonathan Friedman, director of Free Expression and Education at PEN America, the Central Bucks School District “library materials policy” isn’t technically a book ban. But based on what he’s seeing in school districts across the country, “these policies are designed to try to speed up and ease the facilitation of the removal of books,” he said.
Asked to comment for this story, Abram Lucabaugh, superintendent of the Central Bucks School District, said in a statement from the school district that they “strongly believe in the integrity of prioritizing age-appropriate and non-gratuitous content for our students, aligned with curriculum and pedagogy, that reflects the diverse experiences and interests of our students, no matter where they are on their own scholarly, cultural, and personal journeys.”
But what is deemed age-appropriate and non-gratuitous, and more importantly, by whom?
“We really need to consider the kind of tools we are handing over to school officials,” Friedman said. “Librarians have professional ethics, extensive training, professional association membership, and a code of conduct that guides how they develop collections. What we’re seeing undermines the power and discretion of teachers and librarians, and replaces it with the decision-making of a limited number of people based on their narrow ideological precepts.”
As a biracial Asian American mother raising multiracial kids, two of whom are LGBTQ, I will do whatever I can to make sure they see themselves in the books at their schools. I want my children to read a variety of books to both see themselves in literature, and to see how others live, how the world actually works. I want books to challenge them. I don’t want their books to be challenged.
There are actions parents can take to help navigate this situation, which is popping up all over the country. I spoke to the experts about what caregivers should do if their school is banning or appears to be heading that way.
Get to know the policy. Kehan suggests carefully reading the policy so that you fully understand what is being proposed or has been passed. These policies should be available on your school board’s website. In reading the policy closely in my own school district, I learned much more than if I had simply listened to the chatter around town. The more I know, the easier it is to ask the right questions and know what we’re facing.
Speak up. After becoming familiar with the new policy, email your school board members with your questions and concerns, specifically asking for clarification about parts that are unclear or vague. Show up at your school board meetings to share your concerns. It’s important that the school board understands that the policy does not represent the values of the community.
Look for support. Miah Daughtery, the Northwest Evaluation Association’s vice president of academic advocacy and literacy, suggests that you rally like-minded individuals in your community to show up in different ways. “How parents can advocate is different than the teachers and librarians; the community’s voice is important,” Daughtery said. This is not just about your public school library. While a book ban or library materials policy may have already passed, “we have to realize that this is part of a chipping away at a suite of democratic liberties that are slowly becoming more at risk,” Friedman said.
Read at home. There’s a reason why school librarians and educators pick the books that they do, so I will ensure that my kids will be reading them, whether they end up in the school library or are removed and replaced. And at the suggestion of Kehan, I’ll be reading them, too. Books can create the opportunity for kids (and their parents) to have hard conversations about important topics. And, as Daughtery says, seeing characters who look like you can help reflect your lived experience and make you feel not alone. But they can also help you understand, exist with and talk to people whose lives reflect a dissimilar experience than your own.
As a parent of four soon-to-be adults, that’s an important part of living in this world. If my public school isn’t going to do the job they should be doing, then I will make sure I’m doing it. | 2022-09-09T13:00:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What parents can do when schools ban books - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/09/book-bans-parents-advice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/09/book-bans-parents-advice/ |
In Bengaluru and elsewhere, shady land deals and the effects of climate change are a disastrous mix
Analysis by Malini Ranganathan
A motorcyclist rides through floodwaters in Bengaluru, India, on Sept. 8. Weather officials are predicting further bouts of severe weather. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News)
Last week, one-third of Pakistan was submerged due to catastrophic monsoons, and the city of Jackson, Miss., announced a health emergency after heavy rains damaged a water treatment plant.
In India, the city of Bengaluru was also reeling from flooding. Lifeboats rescued residents from inundated apartments in this metropolis of 13 million in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. And fish appeared on highways as rain continued to batter the city.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called the extreme rains this summer “a monsoon on steroids.” News stories spotlighted the fact that vulnerable countries are not major drivers of global warming. Pakistan, for instance, accounts for no more than 0.5 percent of global carbon emissions, yet 33 million people have been impacted by this year’s heat waves and heavy rains, with authorities predicting secondary disasters like disease outbreaks and food shortages.
But this narrative tends to focus primarily on torrential monsoons and droughts, and excludes how rainfall events interact with local political and economic factors — especially those to do with real estate capitalism and corruption. My research suggests this mix can also have disastrous effects.
Rapid economic gains encouraged risky real estate moves
Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, is “India’s Silicon Valley.” English-speaking engineers drive India’s tech industry, and a call center workforce drawn from across the country provides cheap services for hundreds of multinational companies headquartered in Europe and America. Indian policymakers actively promote the city’s “IT/BT” (information technology/biotechnology) economy — and that’s had an outsize effect on the local housing market. White-collar workers helped make Bengaluru’s real estate sector one of the most profitable in the country, but also largely unaffordable for the city’s majority working-class residents.
The city’s residential and commercial development has a longer history of agrarian caste and class power relations — which means feudal landowners were able to cash in on rapid urbanization by converting farmland and wetland into urban real estate. The undulating and rain-fed Deccan region is traversed by centuries-old lakes and wetlands (keres) connected by a gravity-fed latticework of rivulets and canals (raja kaluves). Technically, the government owns the area in and around these canals, known as kharab-B land (literally, wasteland). For all practical purposes, however, anyone with the right connections and muscle power can claim and build on this land.
Developers and land brokers were thus able to grab “free” parcels of watery land, aiming to cover the waterways and storm drains and sell off the land, often informally and without the requisite permissions.
City engineers that I spoke to explained that often residents are not aware that their houses are sitting on or blocking a storm water drain. Developers leveled the land and covered drains with mud, increasing the area to be sold off. This is how an area becomes flood prone.
Through this process, developers constructed both higher-end apartment buildings and IT parks, as well as substandard subdivisions without municipal infrastructure largely for the city’s lower-class buyers and renters. The Karnataka government itself legally drained and concretized dozens of wetlands and canals throughout the 20th century for sports stadiums and other public projects. This encouraged private developers to follow suit, despite efforts since the early 2000s to ban lake conversion and conserve wetlands.
‘Land mafias’ profited from these deals
For the past decade, I have been researching informal urbanization and the real estate “mafias” that deal in Bengaluru’s (wet)land and water markets. This isn’t about gun-toting gangsters, necessarily — instead, the term describes the close collaboration, colloquially referred to as a corrupt “nexus,” between bureaucrats, builders, landowners and other intermediaries involved in urban real estate deals in flood-prone areas.
It’s an approach to land development that has become common throughout much of the world: developers literally conjure property from water. In Bengaluru, even moderate rainfall can cause overflowing lakes that overwhelm the city’s storm water drainage and flood the streets. Residents of these areas are particularly vulnerable to flooding — and to the subsequent government efforts to address the flooding.
Watchdog groups claim that government development boards actively sanction development on sensitive lake land by bypassing environmental and infrastructural clearances. When activists and lawyers bring infractions to light, officials legalize the projects after the fact. Other critics claim the “land mafia” is working at the highest levels to thwart fines for bending the rules and to pay off politicians and judges to rule in developers’ favor.
The urban poor pay the price
The city government quickly announced an encroachment removal drive after Bengaluru’s latest round of flooding, which typically results in the demolition of the homes of poorer and less politically connected groups. With its roots in colonial law, the term “encroachment” in India describes an illicit advance on government land, including lakes and wetlands. In the aftermath of the economic development wave since the early 1990s, when the Indian government pursued increasingly liberal policies to boost economic growth, officials strategically avoid encroachment removal efforts aimed at the wealthy, and instead direct them at less politically connected groups. This results in the demolition of slums and housing inhabited by Dalit (oppressed caste) workers, slum dwellers and migrant laborers. It effectively calls out these groups, their actions and, indeed, their personhood, as illegal “encroachers.”
But land grabs and land development are very much an organized process involving powerful private and government organizations — not India’s urban poor. Analysts point out that global corporations and developers created the Orion Mall, Bagmane Tech Park and Mantri Special Economic Zone — all located in areas with heightened flood risk. These types of projects could not have happened without the involvement of government officials, and their luxury developers are seldom punished for any encroachments.
There is a parallel here in terms of this week’s disaster response: Much of the media attention in India has focused on flood-related losses within the city’s tech corridor, with less coverage of the plight of some 1,500 slum dwellers nearby in need of shelter and assistance after their homes flooded in a second round of heavy rains.
The disasters of summer 2022 point out the inequalities of global climate change at the national level. The Bengaluru story sheds light on the uneven nature of climate-related culpability and vulnerability at the local level. It also tells us that efforts at the local and national level to address flood risk will benefit from a better understanding of how climate factors intersect with the history and political economy of real estate capitalism.
Malini Ranganathan (@maliniranga) is associate professor in the School of International Service at American University. She is the co-author of the forthcoming “Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City” (Cornell University Press, 2023). | 2022-09-09T13:00:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Devastating floods point out the inequalities of global climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/flooding-pakistan-india-development/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/flooding-pakistan-india-development/ |
Permitting bill could pass over objections of liberals, activists
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we're reading this E&E News article about how Queen Elizabeth II, who died yesterday at 96, spent decades advocating for climate action. (As a former E&E News reporter, Maxine appreciates that the publication always finds a climate angle.) But first:
Liberal lawmakers and activists are blasting Manchin's permitting bill. It could pass anyway.
During a defiant speech on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed a controversial deal that Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) struck to overhaul the permitting process for energy infrastructure, saying it would hasten a climate catastrophe.
Outside the Capitol, meanwhile, hundreds of Appalachian and Indigenous climate activists held a boisterous rally to protest a natural gas pipeline that the permitting deal aims to expedite.
Despite the chorus of opposition from progressive lawmakers and activists, however, the stark political reality is that Democratic leadership plans to attach the permitting bill to a stopgap funding measure, giving it a good chance of passing.
The details: After staying mostly mum on the permitting push for weeks, Sanders came out against the effort in a fiery speech on the Senate floor.
Sanders blasted the agreement as “a huge giveaway to the fossil fuel industry” that would undermine President Biden's goal of halving the nation's emissions by 2030. He added that “at least 59” House Democrats plan to release a letter opposing the permitting bill.
A spokeswoman for House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who is leading the letter, confirmed to The Climate 202 that the missive has more than 50 signatures.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) has signed the letter, according to an aide.
Meanwhile, climate activists traveled to Washington from as far away as Alaska for the rally against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would transport natural gas about 300 miles from West Virginia to Virginia, our colleague Ellie Silverman reports.
The activists also held more than 50 meetings with congressional staff, including Manchin's, according to Jessica Sims, Virginia field coordinator for Appalachian Voices, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a swift transition to clean energy.
Still, the permitting bill appears on track to pass as part of the legislation to avert a government shutdown, said Alex Herrgott, president of the nonprofit Permitting Institute, who is providing technical assistance on elements of the permitting package to Manchin's staff and other staff on both sides of the aisle.
“The years of gridlock, unexpected delays and escalating project costs are shared pain on all sides,” Herrgott told The Climate 202. “Permitting reform will happen this year. The status quo benefits no one.”
Herrgott added that while critics have focused on the bill's benefits for fossil fuel projects, the measure would also accelerate the construction of more than $700 million worth of wind and solar projects experiencing up to three years of unexpected delays.
Manchin echoed that sentiment when confronted by an anti-pipeline activist outside the Capitol on Thursday. “We want renewable investment, and basically you have to have permitting reform in order to get it done,” he said.
Tallying votes
Even if Sanders votes against the funding bill, the measure could still pass the Senate with at least 11 votes from Republicans. And several GOP senators signaled this week that they were eager to revamp the permitting process, a longtime conservative priority.
“I'm an incrementalist. If we can get an increment that's in the right direction, I'm good. I'm happy,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told reporters Wednesday.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she would lean toward supporting a permitting bill that helped the Mountain Valley Pipeline in her home state, although she cautioned that she had not seen final legislative text.
“The MVP pipeline is one specific I've seen, and I'm all in on that,” Capito told The Climate 202 on Thursday.
On the other side of the Capitol, some House progressives worry about rushing through the permitting bill without adequate time to review its potential consequences, according to a House Democratic aide.
“It merits more time to get the policy right,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Even if 50 House Democrats oppose the funding measure, it could still clear the lower chamber with at least 39 votes from Republicans. Herrgott expressed confidence that House GOP lawmakers would back the bill rather than risk a government shutdown over an arcane issue like permitting reform.
A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not respond to a request for comment.
Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the United States could slip below tidal lines over the next few decades as global warming accelerates sea level rise, according to an analysis published Thursday by the research nonprofit Climate Central, The Washington Post's Brady Dennis reports.
Here are the major takeaways from the research, which underscores the consequences of failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions for the most vulnerable people and places:
Sea level rise will shift coastlines — and property lines — with more than 4.4 million acres of land projected to fall below changing tidal boundaries by 2050. That number could jump to 9.1 million acres by 2100.
The Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast stand to lose the most. The report concluded that an estimated 25,000 properties in Louisiana could slip below tidal boundary lines by 2050, amounting to 8.7 percent of the state's total land area. Florida, Texas and North Carolina also face the most widespread economic threats, in that order.
It’s not just about flooded homes; it’s about eroding the revenue that governments need to operate, since there will be fewer properties to tax. The result could be less money to fund schools and fire departments, fix roads, and maintain sewers or other essential services.
Other major costs include the removal of destroyed or abandoned structures and repairs of roadways damaged by floods.
Yellen calls out fossil fuel industry, touts climate law
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen promised to end fossil fuel dependence in the United States during a speech Thursday at Ford's Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Mich., touting the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act for its potential to cut domestic emissions by 40 percent compared to 2005 levels and jump-start the deployment of renewable energy.
“It will put us well on our way toward a future where we depend on the wind, sun and other clean sources for our energy,” she said. “We will rid ourselves from our current dependence on fossil fuels and the whims of autocrats like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Yellen’s remarks came a week after Group of Seven nations threw support behind her proposal to cap the price of Russian oil, which she has said will help tamp down inflation and ease the energy crunch caused by the war in Ukraine.
Before her speech, Yellen toured the Ford plant where the F-150 Lightning is manufactured, although she did not drive the electric truck herself, according to our colleague Jeff Stein.
This summer was Europe’s hottest on record
Europe just recorded its hottest summer ever amid scorching heat waves, severe drought and widespread wildfires, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, The Post's Sarah Kaplan reports.
For the past three months, the continent has experienced temperatures 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set just last year. August was especially intense, surpassing the 2018 record by a whopping 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.44 degrees Fahrenheit).
Officials have attributed thousands of deaths to the oppressively hot weather across the continent. Scientists have found that the record-shattering season was made significantly worse by human-caused climate change — a trend that is consistent across the globe.
The heat wave that has been covering the American West for 10 days and counting is the hottest and longest ever recorded in September, with nearly 1,000 heat records being broken in the past week alone, The Post's Jason Samenow reports.
Although the region's heat wave peaked Tuesday, it is expected to last through Saturday — a 12th consecutive day. So far, California has seen the most extreme temperatures for the longest stretch of time, with Death Valley hitting 125 degrees on Tuesday — just 1 degree shy of the September California and world records.
The National Weather Service expects that more records will be broken in the remainder of the hot spell, as excessive heat alerts are still in place for 45 million people. Heat waves like this one are predicted to become more common because of human-caused climate change.
Farewell, octopus. Hello, lionfish: Lebanon’s warming seas change fishing — Sarah Dadouch for The Post
How U.S. ethanol plants are allowed to pollute more than oil refineries — Leah Douglas for Reuters
World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds — Damian Carrington for the Guardian
Climate change could worsen supply chain turmoil— Ana Swanson and Keith Bradsher for the New York Times
Badgers are passionate about their digging!
Found throughout the west, American badgers have long front claws that they use to dig burrows and search for food. These animals are mostly solitary and feast on a wide variety of prey.
Photo by Tom Koerner / @USFWS pic.twitter.com/YjOvWALsJT
— US Department of the Interior (@Interior) September 8, 2022
Analysis: Michigan could be bellwether on protecting abortion rights | 2022-09-09T13:00:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Permitting bill could pass over objections of liberals, activists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/permitting-bill-could-pass-over-objections-liberals-activists/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/permitting-bill-could-pass-over-objections-liberals-activists/ |
The Terrapins will take on Charlotte at 3:30 p.m. Saturday
Maryland running back Roman Hemby ran for 114 yards on seven carries in the opening win over Buffalo. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
“He’s exactly the poster child of what you want out of a Terp. …,” Locksley said. “Here you have your starting tailback running down on kicks and doing all the dirty work and little things that a lot of people don’t want to do. To me, that’s kind of the DNA of what we’re developing as a team, a bunch of guys that are like Roman Hemby when it comes to unselfishness.” | 2022-09-09T13:01:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roman Hemby made strong impression for Maryland in 1st start - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/roman-hemby-maryland-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/roman-hemby-maryland-football/ |
Hi Damon: Is dating someone who was kind of mean to you a smart idea? Context: We went to the same college together +10 years ago and had mutual friends. This guy and another friend of his were mean but sometimes chill, and he gave me a ride home from the grocery store (one time … lol). He did call me a very mean name, and I can’t let it go. What are your thoughts? Thank you!
— Should I?
Should I?: I am probably not the best person to answer this question, because I bind onto an old grudge like a wet tongue on dry ice. I still wish broken shoelaces and sticky shower curtains on people who cut me in lunch lines in middle school. I don’t particularly enjoy conflict, but the ceaseless possession of simmering grudges keeps my teeth white, and I’d rather date a dead gnat than someone who was unkind to me in college. But you did not ask “the best person” for advice — you asked me! So let’s get rolling.
Actually, let’s stop rolling. Without more context from you, I don’t know if I can answer this without a DeLorean and a drone. “Mean” can mean so many things, because the spectrum of what constitutes meanness is arbitrary and limitless. Let’s say, for instance, that he teased you for wearing neon pink socks with medium blue shoes, and started calling you “SK” — short for “sentient kaleidoscope.” To a self-conscious 20-year-old, hearing this from someone you might have had a crush on could’ve felt mean. Even meaner if he knew you liked him. I wouldn’t consider it unforgivable, though.
But then let’s say he was dissatisfied with your relationship, and then he faked his own kidnapping and murder just so you’d be charged with it. (And then, on a whim, killed Doogie Howser!) Yes, this is the premise of Gone Girl. It is also unforgivably mean.
Wait, I was wrong. I can answer this! It doesn’t matter if I consider the meanness to be unforgivable, or where it falls on the spectrum of mean. What matters is that, a decade later, you’re still bothered by it, which means it was hurtful enough for the wound to still smart. And you know what? I’m not going to tell you to get over it. I mean, I think you should, for your own sake and on your own time. But I don’t think it’s a great idea to fast track your healing just so you can date the man who caused the hurt. A better idea? Maybe get a pen and some paper, write down the names of all the men who have been mean to you before, and then … don’t date them. You don’t even need to accept rides from them anymore. Just Uber.
Also, I’m curious why you’re even entertaining this. There are many unflattering characteristics a person can have. Most can be explained, excused, or ignored if you squint hard enough. When a person reveals a habit of meanness — particularly when they’re mean to people who have less status and power than them — that should be the reddest possible flag. And not just with romance, but in any interpersonal relationship. Let me ask — would you be friends with this guy if you weren’t interested in dating him?
(And I may have read your letter too quickly, but I didn’t see any mention of an apology from him. Let me reread it. Yup. No mention.) | 2022-09-09T13:17:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Damon: Should I date someone who was mean to me in college? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/09/ask-damon-date-mean-college/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/09/ask-damon-date-mean-college/ |
Navy looking to limit self-inflicted mistakes after sloppy opener
The Midshipmen host Memphis at 3:30 p.m. Saturday (CBS Sports Network)
Navy quarterback Tai Lavatai (center) struggled in the season opener against Delaware. (Nick Wass/AP)
Clay Cromwell was concerned with B.O. this week, but it had nothing to do with personal hygiene. The Navy defensive tackle was describing a metric kept by the program called “beat ourselves.”
The Midshipmen had an alarming amount of B.O.’s last week in a 14-7 loss to Delaware — the program’s first loss to a Football Championship Subdivision opponent since 2007.
“We gave them gifts, essentially,” Cromwell said.
The mistakes came early and often.
Quarterback Tai Lavatai and fullback Anton Hall Jr. lost a fumble at the mesh point on the first snap from scrimmage of the season for the Mids. Rayuan Lane was called for pass interference on the first defensive snap and Delaware scored a touchdown on the next play.
The Mids would go on to lose three of four fumbles, miss a field goal and experience a few crucial defensive miscues that accounted for those 14 points. It was the third straight loss in a season opener for Navy, making things even more frustrating. The previous two years, Navy struggled with preparation during the pandemic and lost by a combined 104-10 to BYU and Marshall. But 2022 was supposed to be different. Coach Ken Niumatalolo was able to get back into his normal offseason and training camp routines and there was a feeling that the start to this season would be much different.
“Guys are still down,” Niumatalolo said Monday. “We’re in the tank and we’ve got to find a way to bounce back. … That’s definitely not the start we wanted.
“Our guys are hurt, which is a good sign. If they came in jovial to the meeting and joking around, I’d be pretty concerned. But it was pretty quiet in there today.”
Navy will attempt to right the ship in the conference opener against Memphis (0-1) at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on Saturday. The Tigers should bring a more physically challenging team to Annapolis and have defeated their American Athletic Conference rival three years in a row. Memphis won, 35-17, last season led by quarterback Seth Henigan’s 215 passing yards on just eight completions while the Tigers piled up 204 rushing yards. The sophomore quarterback is back for his second year as a starter.
A long season is just beginning, so Navy can’t panic after a disappointing opener, but the Midshipmen remain optimistic because of the nature of the loss. The majority of those mistakes were self-inflicted and those issues are easier to correct than other scenarios.
“If it was a personnel issue or something like that, there’s not a lot you can do about that, right?” Navy defensive coordinator Brian Newberry said. “But if it’s something that you have control over, that’s what we talk about all the time. There’s things we can control, things we can’t. Certainly, want to be great at the things that we control. And we know it’s hard to win around here and you can’t win games beating yourselves, especially the close ones.
“The margin for error is very, very small. It’s not to say we’re not going to make mistakes, but we can’t make the kind of mistakes where we give people gifts. And we did that a couple of times Saturday.”
Outside of the unforced errors, Niumatalolo was frustrated with the amount of “loafs” from his team. There’s a certain level of energy not only expected but needed inside a developmental program. Navy isn’t a program with highly ranked recruiting classes that can get wins by simply being bigger and faster than its opponents.
Additionally, the Midshipmen need Lavatai to be a bigger threat in the run game after averaging 1.9 yards on 18 carries against Delaware. The junior signal-caller was expected to make significant strides as a returning starter. Niumatalolo specifically mentioned the fullbacks, offensive line and quarterback that all need to take steps forward in a run game that averaged 2.9 yards on 63 attempts last week.
“That’s our biggest emphasis, minimizing our missed assignments and our loafs, which is just effort in playing,” Niumatalolo said. “I don’t know if guys recognize the standard. They think they’re playing hard, but that’s not the standard of what we’re looking for. The type of effort level that we’re looking for was not met.
“Some of it guys don’t recognize that’s not the standard that we play here at Navy football. It’s definitely been addressed. … Hopefully it will be crystal clear to guys. This is the standard and nothing else is acceptable. And there’s no compromising it.” | 2022-09-09T13:25:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy takes on Memphis with focus on limiting mistakes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/navy-football-memphis-turnovers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/navy-football-memphis-turnovers/ |
Virginia ready for a hostile environment and the Illinois fight song
The Cavaliers will take on the Fighting Illini at 4 p.m. Eastern on Saturday (ESPNU)
Virginia will head to Illinois for its first road game of the season. (Mike Kropf/The Daily Progress/AP)
Virginia first-year football coach Tony Elliott requested the sound system inside the Cavaliers’ practice facility early this week be cranked up so high that offensive players barely could hear quarterback Brennan Armstrong hollering signals at the line of scrimmage.
The music blaring through the speakers over and again was the Illinois fight song to provide the Cavaliers a taste of the hostile environment they’ll be facing Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Ill., for their first road game of the season.
In addition to instructing players on how best to manage potential crowd noise, Elliott indicated he and his staff are deploying tactical tweaks in hopes of averting the offense bogging down again on the heels of four consecutive touchdown drives against the Spiders bridging the first and second quarters.
Jones is one of five players at Virginia to have rushed for at least 100 yards in his first career start. The last player to accomplish the feat was quarterback Bryce Perkins (2018), who set a number of notable school records for offense Armstrong since has surpassed.
“Just continuing to take the next steps,” said Jones, who played high school football for Bishop Ireton before transferring to Episcopal as a junior. “You know be consistent. That’s the key. Not falling off, not having just one good performance and going down. It’s just continuing to build on the performance and getting better and better every week.” | 2022-09-09T13:25:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia football prepares for first road game at Illinois - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/virginia-football-illinois/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/virginia-football-illinois/ |
Wayne Rooney took over as coach of D.C. United midseason. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Wayne Rooney has been in the Washington area for about two months, and he is already bored.
That’s exactly how he wants it.
“Even when you go home, it’s full-on work,” D.C. United’s coach said this week. “It’s quite boring — a boring life to live but doing what I love. The main thing is, we’re here to put the work in.”
He lives deep in the suburbs, a five-minute drive from the Loudoun County training center. The job of reshaping a wayward MLS club consumes all hours. He hasn’t had time to golf or watch many movies. His family is back in England, where the eldest of four sons, Kai and Klay, are pupils in Manchester United’s youth academy.
Morning practices in Leesburg spill into afternoon video sessions and meetings with the front office and his staff in offices that overlook two fields behind the one-level structure located in the back of a regional park.
He’s both preparing for opponents and plotting offseason moves, evaluating who will return and who in the vast global soccer marketplace belongs on their transfer wish list.
His deputy, Pete Shuttleworth, a fellow Englishman whom Rooney hired, is living in Rooney’s house. Shuttleworth typically drives them to and from work, though he is new to the right side of the road.
“He trusts me,” Shuttleworth said, grinning. “Six weeks in, and we’re still here.”
They are here implementing an ambitious project. More than three years after Rooney (the famous striker) left, Rooney (the lightly experienced coach) is using the final stage of United’s lost season to lay the foundation for 2023.
He has jettisoned players, such as Edison Flores, and recommended acquisitions, such as Ravel Morrison and Christian Benteke. He’s brought teenage prospects, such as Jackson Hopkins and Kristian Fletcher, into the fold and experimented with formations.
The results have not changed — United is 2-5-2 since Rooney debuted July 31 — but the structure is beginning to take hold.
Svrluga: There was magic in Wayne Rooney’s feet. Is there magic in his mind?
Fitness levels have improved, he said, and confidence has gradually been restored. Players seem to understand what he wants. And while the team has scored only six goals in those nine games, it has conceded more than one goal just three times.
When you’re last in a 28-team league — with a 7-17-5 record, the second-fewest goals for (32) and the most against (59) en route to missing the playoffs for the third consecutive season — incremental steps are treasured.
“There's a level of ownership and responsibility with him,” forward Miguel Berry said. “That's the first building block. What he's done is establish a strong base, and we’re going to build from there.”
Rooney has been encouraged by the players’ response.
“We’ve definitely moved forward from when I first came in,” he said during a 30-minute interview. “Even some of the games which we’ve lost, I have found positives. The lads are starting to understand more what I want from them both in training and on matchday. Slowly, I am seeing the team develop.”
At times, he has also stepped back and allowed players to reveal themselves. In the second half of a 6-0 home defeat to the Philadelphia Union on Aug. 20, Rooney purposely remained quiet on the sideline to see who would take responsibility and show leadership under adverse circumstances. (Midfielder Chris Durkin was the only one, he said.)
He’s also made a concerted effort to learn about players who weren’t with the team when he played here in 2018 and 2019.
Two days after arriving in a trade with the Columbus Crew, Berry was planning to join Morrison in an Uber from Audi Field to temporary housing in Loudoun County. Rooney overhead them and offered a ride.
For 45 minutes, they talked about soccer and their backgrounds.
“He's just a guy who has stories like everyone else,” said Berry, 24. “The difference is his stories are about [the Champions League and World Cup] and my stories are about under-16 youth soccer.”
Berry added, “He commands respect for who he is as a player, but he also earns it day-to-day with just being a good person and a good coach.”
Striking a bond with players is part of Rooney’s mission. He also wants them to buy into his plans.
“It’s always difficult when you come in halfway through season, trying to get the team to change the way they play and the mentality to change,” he said. “It's really important for me to get all the messages [through to] the team to understand the identity I want from the team.”
He wants his team to become more possession-oriented “but with a purpose and to take more risks.” Defensively, he said, “I want my teams to be horrible to play against.”
The lack of success has tested Rooney, who, as a Manchester United superstar, won five Premier League titles and one Champions League trophy. He also faced an uphill climb in his previous coaching assignment, with England’s Derby County.
Shuttleworth, though, called him “the most patient manager I’ve ever worked with.” “He accepts that, to get to a place where we can be successful consistently, you have to go through these rocky bits in the road,” he said.
Svrluga: The USWNT won Tuesday night, then celebrated a much greater victory
Rooney has not given up trying to win this season, but with the playoffs out of reach, he is looking ahead.
“You'll see over the last five games some of the young lads getting a bit of game-time, which is an opportunity for me to see how they handle it,” he said.
Rooney also wants to evaluate experienced players — a tryout, of sorts, to determine their futures with the club. The roster is almost certain to undergo major changes this winter as the organization seeks to build around Benteke and all-star attacker Taxi Fountas.
“We're already looking at players,” Rooney said. “We've got players in mind who we want to bring in, but that might take a bit of time. There’s work getting done behind the scenes and we have to find out if those players want to come.”
He declined to specify players or positions but promised that “no stone will go unturned.”
“I know the European market quite well,” he said. “Not so much the South American market [which will fall to others on the staff]. I think we need to do more on the African market.”
Identifying players is one thing; affording them is another. Asked whether ownership, headed by Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien, is committed to spending what’s necessary, Rooney said, “I've already had those discussions before I came in. With any manager, you wouldn’t be doing your job if you weren’t pushing your owners for more. That’s normal. I'll keep pushing them.”
Less than two years since retiring, Rooney said he has embraced coaching.
“It’s like solving a puzzle, and I love it,” he said. “You have your identity and how you want to play, but you see the game developing and what changes you can make, so you're constantly thinking.”
Rooney’s contract is unusually short; it runs only through the 2023 season, with a club-held option in 2024. Part of that decision was tied to his ambition to coach at a high level in England.
Part of it also had to do with being apart from his family. In 2019, he cut his D.C. playing deal short because his wife, Coleen, didn’t like living here. The family was in Bethesda while the team trained in the District. This time, his wife and children stayed behind.
Rooney said he speaks to them every day. They came stateside a few weeks ago and took a getaway to Delaware. He plans to visit during a pause in the MLS schedule this month. In the offseason, he said he will probably shuttle back and forth.
“Of course, I miss them but it’s part of the job,” he said.
Whether his D.C. tenure lasts 18 months or several years, Rooney said he’s committed to the cause.
“I know wherever I go as a manager, people are always going to look at what I’m doing and what I’ve done,” he said. “I’m not going to come in and take it lightly. I’m giving everything I can to try to develop myself as a manager but also develop the club.” | 2022-09-09T13:51:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wayne Rooney settles in with D.C. United - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/wayne-rooney-dc-united-coaching/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/wayne-rooney-dc-united-coaching/ |
Southern California running back Raleek Brown (14) broke out a Heisman pose during a 66-14 win over Rice. (Ashley Landis/AP)
Technically, Saturday’s 66-14 rout of Rice marked the start of Southern California’s latest attempt to reclaim its spot of significance in college football.
The Trojans have been there and done that plenty in the last decade and a half, long before Lincoln Riley showed up in Los Angeles as the program’s fourth full-time head coach since Pete Carroll decamped back to the NFL.
(USC’s actually been there and done that even before Riley emerged as a wunderkind offensive coordinator at East Carolina. Yeah, it’s been a little while).
While a lot of things have changed since the Carroll/Matt Leinart/Reggie Bush heyday of the mid-Aughts, the Trojans have consistently found themselves sidetracked by Stanford — whom Riley will face in his first conference game Saturday.
The Cardinal has won 10 of 16 against USC since 2007, and it has inflicted a disproportionate amount of damage to the Trojans and its various coaching regimes in that span.
There was Stanford’s 24-23 victory as a 41-point underdog in 2007, which did more than any other result to illustrate USC had some vulnerability after years when it seemed there was none. A 55-21 thumping at home in 2009 effectively dropped the hammer on the Carroll era.
Lane Kiffin went 0-3 against the Cardinal, but he was fired on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport almost two months before the Trojans ended a four-game slide to Stanford in 2013 (Ed Orgeron, the $17 million man himself, was USC’s interim coach for that game).
Steve Sarkisian’s second and final season with the Trojans? It featured a loss to Stanford. Successor Clay Helton fared a bit better, even leading USC to a Pac-12 title game victory over the Cardinal in 2017. But there was Stanford last year, posting a 42-28 victory at the Los Angeles Coliseum in the second week of the season. Less than 48 hours later, Helton was unemployed.
Riley might not have to worry about the Cardinal for too long. The Trojans are heading to the Big Ten in 2024, and it’s anyone’s guess when and whether conference realignment wackiness will lead Stanford elsewhere. But the Cardinal (1-0) is an issue for now, and it represents the first big obstacle for this edition of Southern Cal.
In fairness to Riley and the Trojans, there is a lot that has changed since this time last year. Riley left Oklahoma and brought quarterback Caleb Williams with him. USC started nine transfers in its opener last week (including Williams and ex-Pitt wideout Jordan Addison), having gone all-in on the transfer portal to quickly regroup after last season’s 4-8 nosedive.
And while Stanford hasn’t been especially memorable for a few years, it does have an older team and predictably had little trouble dusting Colgate, 41-10, in its opener.
Saturday marks the Trojans’ first game as a top-10 team in the Associated Press poll since its Cotton Bowl loss to Ohio State after the 2017 regular season. That’s progress. Winning at Stanford, which Southern Cal has done just once since 2010, would be another sign things really are trending in a different direction for one of the sport’s traditionally prestige programs.
Seminal moment for Seminoles?
The running social media joke as Sunday bled into Monday was that Florida State was “back” as a result of a 24-23 victory over LSU secured by a blocked extra point on the final play of the game.
Aside from some exuberant Seminole players (who had every reason to be thrilled) about escaping New Orleans with a victory, no one with any hint of perspective would suggest Florida State is on the cusp of resuming its traditional ways of winning 10 or more games a year. Beating an LSU team that went 6-7 last year by 50 wouldn’t have done that.
Nonetheless, the Seminoles had already won their first season opener since 2016 with a Week 0 defeat of Duquesne. With a victory next week over Louisville, Florida State could be off to its first 3-0 start since 2015.
Anyone who watched Florida State huff and puff its way through everything since then — the waning days of the Jimbo Fisher era, the entire season and change of Willie Taggart’s tenure, the first two years of Mike Norvell’s rebuilding attempt — can recognize Sunday’s game as one the Seminoles would have lost a lot more often than not over the last five seasons.
There was real progress at the end of a 5-7 season last year. There had to be, considering there was an 0-4 start featuring a loss to Jacksonville State on the final play of the game. Florida State went 5-3 from there including a defeat of in-state rival Miami, and led Clemson in the fourth quarter of one of the losses.
The next logical step is to finish on the right side of .500, maybe make a run at eight victories and preferably pick off Miami and/or Florida. Fending off LSU, even if it wasn’t in the cleanest fashion, makes it more likely the Seminoles can do at least some of those things this fall.
1. Florida. The No. 12 Gators might have found their way onto a list of teams on the spot this week regardless of their opening week outcome. Had it lost to Utah on Saturday, Florida might be staring at an 0-2 start with a trip to Tennessee looming later in the month.
Instead, the Gators got a stellar showing from Anthony Richardson and a late interception in the end zone to foil Utah’s attempt to win in the Swamp. Florida remains at home this week against Kentucky, which has taken two of the last four against the Gators and went on to 10-win seasons both times it won (2018 in 2021). The Wildcats eventually put away Miami (Ohio) 37-13 in their opener last week.
2. Alabama. A lot of Texas fans won’t see it this way, particularly those with deep pockets, but here it goes: The Longhorns have little to lose and plenty to gain with Nick Saban and No. 1 Alabama coming to town for an 11 a.m. local time kickoff. Texas very well might prove interesting this year, but it shouldn’t be considered a playoff contender right now.
That obviously isn’t true of the Crimson Tide, which debuted with a shellacking of Utah State and is (as usual) in line to chase a spot in the semifinals. This could be a statement moment for Alabama, but it also represents a chance to trip up and give up any wiggle room in the playoff chase. Best to save that for, say, the three-week stretch featuring Arkansas, Texas A&M and Tennessee early next month.
3. Baylor. The No. 9 Bears head to No. 21 BYU for the back end of a home-and-home series against a future Big 12 rival that started with a 38-24 triumph over the Cougars in Waco last season. Baylor routed Albany like it was supposed to Saturday, but this is a tricky nonconference game. There are enough chances for a Big 12 team to stumble that the Bears probably don’t want to remove their margin for error in the playoff chase this early in the season.
4. Oklahoma State. The No. 11 Cowboys did not impress on the defensive side with their Thursday night shootout victory over Central Michigan. So, will there be a Week 1-to-Week 2 jump in Stillwater? And just how good is visiting Arizona State (1-0), which has had an NCAA investigation looming the entire offseason but still is a threat to be a spoiler?
5a. Tennessee and 5b. Pittsburgh. Pitt won by a touchdown in Knoxville early last season, a victory that indicated the Panthers and then-QB Kenny Pickett could be pretty good (even if they fell to Western Michigan their next time out). Tennessee makes the return trip to the Steel City to salvage a split in the home-and-home with No. 17 Pitt, and this could be a hint as to whether the No. 24 Volunteers are ready to be a credible threat to win nine or 10 games.
1. QB Bryce Young, Alabama. The defending Heisman winner will benefit from name recognition. But if he churns out games like Saturday’s — 195 passing yards and five touchdown tosses against Utah State — his numbers will do all the talking for him.
2. QB C.J. Stroud, Ohio State. Stroud actually had to deal with a more challenging opener than most high-end quarterbacks, and he was a solid 24 of 34 for 223 yards and two touchdowns against Notre Dame. It’s certainly nothing that will damage his Heisman stock for the rest of the season.
3. QB Caleb Williams, Southern California. Williams burst upon the scene in the middle of last season at Oklahoma, and the sophomore had a glittering debut in Los Angeles, completing 19 of 22 for 249 yards and two touchdowns as the Trojans smashed Rice.
4. QB Anthony Richardson, Florida. Here’s some pretty good company: Richardson became the third Gator to rush for three touchdowns and throw for 150 yards in a game, joining Jesse Palmer and Tim Tebow. Richardson helped Florida upend Utah, 29-26, in one of the week’s most impressive victories.
5. QB Stetson Bennett IV, Georgia. Bennett is going to get Heisman attention after quarterbacking the Bulldogs to a national title. He’ll continue to receive it with more games like Saturday’s: 25 of 31 for a career-high 368 yards and two touchdowns in a 49-3 thumping of Oregon.
6. OLB Will Anderson, Alabama. The guy who was probably the nation’s best player last season (regardless of Heisman finish) had five tackles (one for loss) as the Crimson Tide had little trouble dispatching Utah State on Saturday. | 2022-09-09T14:31:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Week 2 college football preview: Is USC back? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/college-football-best-games-heisman-watch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/college-football-best-games-heisman-watch/ |
Among the many crowd-pleasing elements of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Joe Biden last month, is a measure that will cap the cost of insulin for Medicare recipients. Lawmakers of both parties now want to widen that benefit to millions of other diabetics of all ages who rely on the life-saving drug. They should think twice: Limiting how much patients pay out of pocket for insulin has obvious political appeal, but does nothing to contain the overall price of the drug. There are better ways to help consumers.
The cost of insulin, which regulates blood sugar, has surged in recent years. Americans pay roughly eight times more for the century-old drug than the rest of the developed world, making diabetes the country’s most expensive chronic condition. Insulin has become so unaffordable that a quarter of diabetics report rationing their supply, which can cause serious complications or even death.
Drugmakers bear some responsibility for these costs. Just three manufacturers — Eli Lilly & Co., Novo Nordisk A/S and Sanofi — control 90% of the global market, giving them significant pricing power. But they’re only part of the problem. To ensure their products are covered by insurers — critical to gaining and securing market share — manufacturers pay middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers (or PBMs), a rebate on the sale of prescription drugs. Drugmakers have found it more advantageous to raise prices and fatten rebates than to lower costs to stay competitive.
Congress is finally making an effort to fix this system. Unfortunately, its primary solution risks making it worse. Just as capping out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries increases government spending, extending the $35-a-month limit to privately insured patients would force insurers to cover a larger share of the cost of insulin. The result would be higher premiums for people on private health plans, and no help at all for those without insurance.
A better approach is to try to stimulate competition in this market. Congress is on the right track in trying to constrain the ability of PBMs to demand extortionate rebates and impede new entrants. Simply forcing more transparency into their opaque pricing practices would be progress. An investigation into PBMs started in June by the Federal Trade Commission — which aims to “shine a light on these companies’ practices and their impact on pharmacies, payers, doctors, and patients” — is likewise welcome.
With fairer rules in place, competitors should be able to force down the cost of insulin overall, to the benefit of consumers and taxpayers alike. Civica Rx, a nonprofit, aims to make three generic-like insulin products by 2024 at no more than $30 a vial, or $55 for a box of five prefilled pens. Efforts by private companies to develop cheap biosimilars, previously stymied by PBMs’ bullying tactics, also look promising. Wherever possible, the goal should be removing impediments to such alternatives and making it harder for the major manufacturers to maintain the status quo.
Rather than attempting to artificially manipulate prices, Congress should focus on minimizing red tape, funding relevant research, and otherwise freeing the forces of supply and demand to do their thing.
• Here’s One Good Way to Lower the Cost of Insulin: Lisa Jarvis
• College Kids and Pet Owners Should Beware Monkeypox Too: Therese Raphael and Sam Fazeli
• Scientists Love Warnings. Here’s One for Them: Faye Flam | 2022-09-09T14:31:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Insulin Spending Caps Won’t Work. Here’s a Better Idea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/insulin-spending-caps-wont-work-heres-a-better-idea/2022/09/09/232c45ac-3040-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/insulin-spending-caps-wont-work-heres-a-better-idea/2022/09/09/232c45ac-3040-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
There are better ways to save. (Photographer: Bloomberg)
As more US workers start new jobs, they should take a closer look at their employers’ options for retirement savings. An underused account called a Roth 401(k) could help minimize taxes in the long run and multiply how much savers eventually have.
Unlike a traditional 401(k), contributions to a Roth 401(k) aren’t tax-deductible, but withdrawals are tax-free in retirement. A helpful way to think about it: With a Roth 401(k), the balance is what you’ll actually get in retirement (since you’ve already paid income taxes on what’s in there) whereas with a regular 401(k), a chunk of that balance will go to paying income taxes when you’re retired and withdraw money from it.
Roth 401(k)s are a no-brainer when you’re young, in a low tax bracket and expect to earn a lot more in the future. Sure, you won’t get the tax deduction upfront, but it probably doesn’t matter if you’re not paying much in taxes in the first place. Plus, you’re likely to more than make up for it given the tax-free growth in your investments over decades.
But even some workers who are older and earning more should consider mixing it up and putting money into a Roth 401(k) too, especially given their higher contribution limits relative to traditional IRAs or Roth IRAs. Contributions to IRAs are capped at $6,000 ($7,000 for those 50 and over), while total 401(k) contributions can go all the way up to $20,500 ($27,000 for those 50 and up). Proposals under consideration in Congress would increase those 401(k) contribution limits even more for older savers and potentially treat them as after-tax.
Almost 80% of companies’ 401(k) plans offered a Roth option as of June 30 compared with 62% five years ago, according to Fidelity Investments. But just 14% of workers who were offered one were contributing compared with 10% five years ago. Data from Vanguard shows a similar story: 77% of plans offered a Roth 401(k) option in 2021 but just 15% of workers were participating.
Part of the problem may be auto-enrollment. Many plans just default workers into traditional 401(k) plans. That’s not a bad thing since it does encourage savings, but it would be better if employees were forced to make an active choice — especially given how much younger workers stand to benefit.
For higher earners, the conventional thinking has always been that a Roth 401(k) is pointless since they’re likely to earn less in retirement and therefore be in a lower tax bracket (so pay less in taxes when they take money out). There are a few reasons why that’s worth revisiting.
First, while you might feel confident that you’ll be earning less in retirement, it’s risky to assume tax rates in general will be lower. Personal income tax rates are relatively low now and given the increasing federal deficit, there’s a good chance they’ll be heading north at some point in the future. Also, if you’re in a high bracket now, you may still be in one even after you stop working thanks to other streams of income.
It’s also prudent to give yourself different types of retirement accounts to tap, tax-wise. Then you have more flexibility around your taxable income, especially if you’re concerned about hitting the thresholds for higher taxes on Social Security benefits or certain Medicare costs. You might contribute to both types of 401(k) accounts, or alternate which account you’re contributing to from year to year.
As with traditional 401(k)s, Roth 401(k)s require you to take a certain amount out each year once you hit 72 — called required minimum distributions — but with Roth 401(k)s, the money won’t be subject to income taxes. There are also some ways around those distributions. If you’re still working for your employer at 72 you may not have to take them. Alternatively, if you meet certain requirements, you can roll the balance over to a Roth IRA before turning 72 since Roth IRAs don’t have distribution requirements.
If you’re sold on the idea of a Roth 401(k), you can roll over some or all of your money from a traditional 401(k) to a Roth 401(k) in what’s known as an in-plan conversion — but you’d better be sure, because there’s no way to roll it back. Nonetheless, this is an especially good time to do a conversion because your account has likely lost money amid the stock market downturn, so you’ll pay less in upfront tax.
Still, there are some caveats. You’ll be subject to taxes and a 10% withdrawal penalty if you take investment earnings (not your contributions) out of a Roth 401(k) before you’ve had the account for five years and if you’re not yet 59 and ½. So avoid setting one up if you’re planning to retire soonish and counting on that money.
Also: Employer matches. Most companies will match the dollar value of their workers’ contributions up to a certain point, but they’ll put that money into their regular 401(k)s, even if the employee is contributing to a Roth 401(k). So be aware that whatever your employer is matching, along with earnings, will be subject to tax in retirement. In that case, even with a Roth 401(k), you won’t be able to fully escape the taxman.
• Don’t Pay Your Spouse’s Student Loan Without a Prenup: Erin Lowry
• Don’t Sweat a Housing Crash as Long as Wages Are Rising: Conor Sen
• Retirement Expenses Are Too Hard to Predict: Teresa Ghilarducci | 2022-09-09T14:31:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Love Yourself Some Roth 401(k) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/love-yourself-some-roth-401k/2022/09/09/a2b7587c-3043-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/love-yourself-some-roth-401k/2022/09/09/a2b7587c-3043-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
The US Congress appears close to approving legislation codifying the federal government’s embrace of same-sex marriage. The right to such unions is the law of the land throughout the US today but only because of a 2015 Supreme Court decision. And civil rights advocates fear that ruling is in danger of being reversed by today’s more conservative panel of justices. Should that happen, the proposed new law in Congress would maintain some of the rights of same-sex couples but would fall short of preserving the status quo.
The House of Representatives in mid-July easily passed the legislation on a 267-157 vote, with 47 Republicans voting with every Democrat in support. In the Senate, which is split 50-50 between the two political parties, every Democrat backs it, but it will need 10 Republican votes to prevent the bill’s opponents from killing it using the filibuster, a prerogative to demand never-ending debate on legislation. Two Republicans -- Susan Collins of Maine and Rob Portman of Ohio -- are cosponsoring the bill in the Senate, and bipartisan talks are underway on an amendment that could bring more Republicans on board. The language under discussion would seek to clarify that the legislation does not take away religious liberty or conscience protections that individuals and organizations currently have. | 2022-09-09T14:31:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the Same-Sex Marriage Bill in Congress Would and Wouldn’t Do - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-same-sex-marriage-bill-in-congress-would-and-wouldnt-do/2022/09/09/3f6a8298-3049-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-same-sex-marriage-bill-in-congress-would-and-wouldnt-do/2022/09/09/3f6a8298-3049-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
He said he had ‘vision’ of his fiancee’s death. It wasn’t what it seemed.
Prosecutors say James Christopher Johnson hired a man to kill Andrea Cincotta, and his ‘vision’ was meant to trick police. His defense says that makes no sense.
Andrea Cincotta at the Takoma Park Library, where she worked, in 1985. She was found slain in her apartment in August 1998. (Family Photo/Kevin Cincotta)
Early on Aug. 22, 1998, James Christopher Johnson called 911 and told the Arlington County police that he’d found his fiancee, Andrea Cincotta, dead in their bedroom closet. Homicide detectives quickly zeroed in on Johnson as their suspect.
After about 25 hours of interrogation in which he repeatedly denied any involvement, a police video shows, Johnson slumped down in his chair and said, “It’s all very hazy. Just an image … I see me holding her and she slips out of my hands and she goes down to the floor … I fell on top of her. She hit her head on the desk.” Johnson said he was describing “images,” part of a “vision” in which he ultimately put Cincotta in a closet. The police called it his “vision statement,” and Johnson supplied a written version, too.
Cincotta, however, died from strangulation — not a blow to the head, an autopsy found. The detectives believed what Johnson had described didn’t happen, and released him. Then, 23 years later, Arlington prosecutors indicted him for murder and alleged he hired another man to kill Cincotta. In July, that man pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, but Johnson maintains his innocence.
Now, prosecutors want to use Johnson’s statement — that he had a vision of himself killing his fiancee — against him at his upcoming murder trial, to show the jury that his testimony isn’t credible.
“I believe the statement is a lie,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Abhi Mehta said in a hearing last week. “I believe it was a lie to police to throw them off for 20 years … and it worked. That’s why it’s relevant and that’s why it’s admissible.”
Johnson’s lawyers were incredulous.
“It was a statement that he committed the murder, to derail the investigation?” said defense attorney Libbey Van Pelt. “It makes no logical sense. How did it benefit him?”
Johnson’s lawyers moved to suppress the “vision statement” from being used at trial. They argued it was irrelevant, unreliable and coerced. But after a day long hearing last week, Arlington Circuit Court Judge Judith Wheat ruled the statement was admissible.
Wheat said that even though Arlington detectives lied to Johnson, telling him falsely that his fingerprints were found on Cincotta and her time of death was determined to be after he had arrived home, Johnson hadn’t been coerced into making the statement. The judge noted that Johnson wasn’t under arrest and was free to leave. In fact, the judge said, he had gone home twice and returned voluntarily, each time without a lawyer, to speak to detectives and take a polygraph test, which the police said he failed.
“The court finds that there is no evidence that the confession was coerced,” Wheat said. “It’s up to the jury to determine what Mr. Johnson’s state of mind was. The parties can argue the value of those statements.”
Johnson, now 60, faces a three-week murder trial beginning Sept. 12. He lived with Cincotta, a librarian in Arlington, for seven years. She was 52. Johnson told The Post in 2002 that he was innocent and his statement was “based entirely on information that they gave me.”
The case raises the issue of false confessions, a phenomenon in which people admit to crimes they didn’t commit. Arlington prosecutors don’t believe it was a false confession, merely a deceptive statement by Johnson to fool the police, Mehta wrote in response to the suppression motion.
But Arlington police and prosecutors were concerned about what to do with Johnson’s statement. Soon after he was released, detectives sent the videotape to Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia, and then met with him, one detective’s notes show. He provided them four research articles on false confessions and repressed memories. Retired Detective Cynthia Brenneman, then the lead detective, said she had no memory of contacting Cornell.
And earlier this year, prosecutors contacted a local expert in false confessions, former D.C. police Detective James Trainum, Van Pelt said during the hearing. Trainum, who wrote a book titled “How the Police Generate False Confessions,” also spoke to the defense and told them after watching the video that Johnson’s 1998 statement was an “internalized false confession,” Van Pelt wrote in a defense filing.
Arlington had been burned by a false confession before, in a case involving a detective who also worked on the Cincotta investigation. In 1984, Det. Robert Carrig helped elicit a confession from David Vasquez, a Manassas janitor, to the rape and murder of Carolyn Hamm inside her home. In that case, Carrig also falsely told Vasquez that his fingerprints were found at the scene, and Vasquez confessed as part of “a horrible dream,” The Washington Post reported in 1989.
Facing the death penalty, Vasquez entered an Alford plea and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. DNA later identified another man as the killer and Vasquez was released in 1989 and paid a $117,000 settlement. Carrig spoke to The Post in 1989 but declined to discuss the interrogation of Vasquez.
Carrig, who retired in 2000, was closely involved in the questioning of Johnson. He did not take the stand during the Cincotta hearing, and so wasn’t asked about whether the Vasquez case played a role in police seeking an outside opinion on Johnson’s statement. Instead, Mehta read a stipulation into the record in which Carrig said, “We knew the ‘vision statement’ wasn’t true. It was laughable. I knew early on that he wasn’t telling the truth.”
Carrig said he falsely told Johnson that his fingerprints were on Cincotta’s body “to get a reaction out of him,” according to the stipulation. It is legal for police to lie to suspects. “Mr. Johnson responded to police deceit,” Mehta wrote, “with deceit of his own.”
Johnson told police that he left for work at Home Depot on the morning of Aug. 21, 1998, and when he came home around 6 p.m., Cincotta was not there. He said he presumed she was with a friend, so he watched TV, did his laundry and went to bed. He said he awoke shortly before 1:30 a.m. because he realized the closet door was closed and Cincotta always wanted it open, Brenneman said, though he hadn’t realized that while he was home all night. Her body was cold to the touch, Johnson told police.
Johnson, then 36, was questioned throughout the morning hours of Aug. 22, then went home. Later that day, when he drove to Cincotta’s parents’ home in Maryland, he spotted her missing car on the shoulder of Interstate 295 in the District. “They’re going to think I did it because I found the car,” Johnson told Cincotta’s son, Kevin Cincotta, at the time.
On Aug. 23 and Aug. 24, Johnson was questioned by Brenneman, Carrig and Det. Romie Holmes, who the video shows hooked Johnson up to a polygraph machine. Holmes repeatedly asked Johnson whether he was involved in Cincotta’s death, and Johnson repeatedly denied it. Police said Johnson failed the “lie detector” test.
The results of a polygraph exam are not admissible in court, but Wheat ruled that the video of the exam itself could be shown to the jury.
Holmes and Brenneman can be seen in the videos pressing Johnson to tell them the truth. Finally, on both Aug. 23 and 24, he made statements about seeing images of himself arguing with Cincotta, which he called “a vision.” He said that he lowered his hands during an argument and hit Cincotta on the neck, knocking her into the desk. He said he checked for a pulse and found none.
Meanwhile, Kevin Cincotta and a private investigator, Pat Brown, focused on finding another suspect, a man who had taken a personal computer from Andrea Cincotta four weeks before her death. He had been working at Andrea Cincotta’s apartment complex, and when she asked if his company took discarded computers, he said no, but he would take it for himself.
That man was Bobby Joe Leonard. And in 2000, he was convicted in Fairfax County of raping and attempting to kill a 13-year-old girl. He received a life sentence. Kevin Cincotta, convinced then of Johnson’s innocence, pushed the Arlington police to investigate Leonard.
Arlington police told The Post in 2002 they checked deeply into Leonard and there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him. Leonard told The Post then that he had nothing to do with Andrea Cincotta’s death, as did Johnson.
But in 2018, Arlington cold case detective Rosa Ortiz went to speak to Leonard in prison. Leonard confessed to killing Cincotta, and claimed that a White man he didn’t know, but suspected was Cincotta’s boyfriend, had called him and offered him $5,000 to commit the murder, according to the plea agreement entered in Leonard’s case.
In his guilty plea in July, Leonard said that he strangled Cincotta in her apartment and placed her body in the closet, but the $5,000 was not there. Leonard told authorities he took Cincotta’s car and abandoned it on I-295.
Ortiz continued to investigate, and last November an Arlington grand jury indicted both Leonard and Johnson. Leonard is expected to testify at Johnson’s trial, where his credibility — and Johnson’s — are likely to be critical issues for the jury. | 2022-09-09T14:31:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge rules 'vision statement' can be used in murder-for-hire trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/cincotta-murder-vision-statement-confession/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/cincotta-murder-vision-statement-confession/ |
The D.C. area is grateful for the migrants Texas is sending
By Gary Sampliner
Ordalis Rodríguez, 26, a migrant from Venezuela who was transported by bus from Texas with her family, holds her 1-year-old daughter Luciana on April 13 outside of D.C.'s Union Station. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Gary Sampliner is a director of Jews and Muslims and Allies Acting Together and a member of the Bethesda Jewish Congregation, which with Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church and the Maqaame Ibrahim Islamic Center is working to assist arriving migrants and asylum seekers. JAMAAT is a member organization of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition.
Gratitude might not be the reaction Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) was expecting when he began sending frequent busloads of migrants and asylum seekers to the greater D.C. area. But gratitude, warmth and a renewed sense of collective responsibility are the responses I have seen as D.C.-area organizations and faith communities (and, most recently, its government) step up to welcome and support newcomers. have stepped up to welcome and support newcomers.
With Abbott’s bus initiative — a costly venture likely to be funded in large part by Texas taxpayers — we’ve seen an apparent strategy to inflict maximum pain on our region and score political points, using vulnerable people as weapons aimed at pressuring the Biden administration into taking more drastic measures to seal our nation’s southern border.
But, despite the deeply cynical nature of Abbott’s plans, we might actually owe him a debt of gratitude.
We know that providing transportation is one part of establishing a dignified reception system for people seeking safety, and we’ve witnessed repeatedly the long-term payoffs to our communities and nation when we offer support to those in need of refuge.
The D.C. area has been generous in welcoming migrants fleeing persecution. With community and government support, Virginia has been the third-highest recipient of recent Afghan refugees to the United States, and Maryland is not far behind. My own synagogue and the church and mosque with whom we share our building have been active in helping welcome Afghan refugees to the area since 2017. The Jewish-Muslim community organization I help to direct has been working to get other interfaith partnerships involved in similar efforts.
Afghan arrivals are not the only ones receiving a warm reception. With the help of some heroic community and faith groups — many of which are part of the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network — our area has mobilized quickly to welcome the migrants being bused here from the southern border. These tremendous efforts have demonstrated, yet again, the area’s commitment to extending welcome and hospitality to those in need.
As with the public-private, multisector approach used in Afghan and other refugee resettlements, we need all hands on deck to welcome new arrivals to the area. We need as many available resources as possible, including the support of local, state and federal governments, faith groups, nonprofit organizations and community volunteers.
It is heartening to see D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) now stepping up to the challenge and opportunity posed by the arriving migrants. On Thursday, she announced the establishment of an Office of Migrant Services, with an initial allocation of $10 million, to meet the needs of the migrants who are moving elsewhere or intending to reside here. As an official “Welcoming City,” D.C. government assistance should be an essential element of the response to welcome migrants to our region — especially considering that, as a majority of the D.C. Council has told Bowser, D.C. is expected to have a surplus of around $500 million in fiscal 2022 — even though D.C. has good reason to request Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursement to help satisfy the overriding federal responsibility over immigration matters.
But the need for private and community support for the incoming migrants remains critical for their successful integration into our community. Though my organizations’ work with the Afghan community continues, we’ve begun to provide various types of assistance to the newcomers being bused here. We are pleased to see and strongly encourage fellow faith communities and groups around the area to join us in this important work of welcome and are pleased when they do. This is an opportunity to demonstrate the best of who we are in the face of unprecedented levels of forced dislocations worldwide.
The bottom line is this: If we want to continue to live up to our values, many more of us need to step up to assist the new arrivals. And if we can meet this challenge, we will set an example for the rest of our country to follow. | 2022-09-09T14:32:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The D.C. area is grateful for the migrants Texas is sending - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/dc-grateful-texas-migrants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/dc-grateful-texas-migrants/ |
The Kennedy Center should stop promoting Big Tobacco
By Rebecca Perl
A view from the Roosevelt Bridge of the Reach, a new multiuse complex at the Kennedy Center in D.C. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Rebecca Perl, a former health and science reporter for The Post, is vice president of partnerships and initiatives for Vital Strategies, a partner in tobacco industry watchdog, STOP and advises governments and nongovernmental organizations on communication strategies for tobacco control campaigns around the world as part of the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use.
On Sept. 17, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will launch a new exhibit dedicated to its namesake. Advance media coverage praises the center’s investment in its social impact, in line with Kennedy’s ethos and values. But as is often the case when organizations talk about being good citizens, there are gaps between the rhetoric and the reality.
For the Kennedy Center, some of the world’s largest tobacco corporations. Instead of rejecting hundreds of thousands of dollars gained through the sale of products linked to addiction, preventable disease and premature death, the center recently added global cigarette giant Philip Morris International (PMI) as a new corporate sponsor, alongside its long-standing relationship with PMI’s former parent company, Marlboro-maker Altria Group. Combined, they are contributing at least half a million dollars annually — a testimony to a never-ending dance of the underfunded arts with deep-pocketed corporations looking to burnish their reputations.
Yet, despite funding challenges, especially post-coronavirus, other world-class venues are making an ethical choice to end sponsorships from problematic donors. For example, when the Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis was exposed, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York ended its 50-year relationship. The Louvre in Paris and the Guggenheim in New York and many others also dropped the Sackler name. The opioid epidemic claims more than 68,000 lives a year in the United States. The tobacco epidemic? More than 480,000.
The Kennedy Center’s commitments to better serving youths and people of color ring especially hollow while it’s helping the tobacco industry reach groups who have been targeted for decades with deceptive and even racially targeted marketing. Menthol cigarettes, promoted heavily in Black media and in predominantly Black neighborhoods, have caused disproportionate harm to Black people. Products such as nicotine pouches and e-cigarettes are believed to be hooking a new generation.
Health advocates are rightly outraged about Altria sponsoring an upcoming theatrical production of “Bluey,” a hugely popular animated TV show for preschoolers. I’m not surprised: Visiting the Kennedy Center to see “The Nutcracker” last winter, I could see the Altria-sponsored 50th-anniversary theater season was packed with family- and teen-friendly productions. Attaching Altria’s name to productions for schoolchildren reminds me of Chinese tobacco companies sponsoring schools in China and other countries.
What will it take to break the Kennedy Center’s addiction to tobacco dollars? The revelation that industry executives stood before Congress a few miles away, claiming that nicotine wasn’t addictive when the companies knew that wasn’t true, wasn’t enough.
The Kennedy Center didn’t drop Altria when it invested heavily in Juul, after the Food and Drug Administration named the company as a leading player in the United States’ youth vaping epidemic. Nor when Altria spoke out against the FDA’s proposed menthol ban, which could help save up to 6,000 Black lives each year.
Instead, Altria’s brands remain etched into the center’s marble walls, including at the newest Kennedy Center venue, the Reach, which aims to embody “President Kennedy’s vision” and reach a diverse audience through education, youth programs and community outreach. Altria and PMI are on the Kennedy Center’s website, and Altria is splashed across its 50th-anniversary materials, in social media posts, newsletters and performance programs, even celebrated as “a donor that makes a difference” in the 50th-anniversary magazine. Altria’s chief executive is a vice chair of the Kennedy Center’s Corporate Fund Board, alongside PMI’s president of the Americas.
It’s easy to see why the Kennedy Center’s youth-friendly 50th season and the Reach’s youth and community audience appeal to Altria and PMI. As more smokers die or quit, the companies need to tap into the next generation. Altria’s Marlboro and Juul brands are already popular with young Americans. Both companies might also hope to influence D.C. stakeholders in their favor — and that’s potentially bad news for health.
There is, however, something especially insidious about aligning the tobacco industry with performances aimed at preschoolers, children and other youths. Perhaps it is because such shows capture the dreams of little girls and boys and the ambitions of so many young people, who continue to be targeted by cigarette companies.
President Kennedy believed the arts should be a positive force in American life. With all we know now about the tobacco industry’s tactics, discriminatory marketing, targeting of youths and addictive, deadly products, what would he think about the institution bearing his name promoting cigarette companies? The Met and others brought down the curtain on their Sackler sponsorships. If it’s serious about its social impact, it’s time the Kennedy Center ended its dance with Big Tobacco. | 2022-09-09T14:32:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Kennedy Center should stop promoting Big Tobacco - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/kennedy-center-should-stop-promoting-big-tobacco/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/kennedy-center-should-stop-promoting-big-tobacco/ |
Former U.S. attorney dishes on how he held line against Trump White House
In detailing ouster from the Southern District of New York, Berman says Barr ‘was desperate,’ cites attorney general’s interference in other investigations
Review by Barbara McQuade
Geoffrey Berman, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, speaks during a news conference on April 23, 2019, in New York. In his book, Berman provides a cautionary tale about how political forces can undermine the quest for justice. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
When former Attorney General William Barr bungled the firing of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in 2020, we all knew there was more to the story. Now, in his new book, “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department,” Berman dishes on that clumsy episode and on a range of conflicts he encountered with the Department of Justice during his tenure leading the Southern District of New York. Berman names the former DOJ officials who exerted political pressure that he found inappropriate, including Edward O’Callaghan and Jeffrey Rosen. Ultimately, Berman was ousted for the sin of refusing to obey what he believed to be partisan DOJ leadership. “The Department of Justice was not a private law firm dedicated to the president’s personal interests,” Berman writes, “and it was shameful when they operated as if they were.”
With the storytelling skills of a trial lawyer, Berman describes the episode in which Barr summoned him to Manhattan’s Pierre hotel, “a swanky place where even standard rooms can cost a thousand bucks a night or more.” Barr told Berman that he wanted to replace him at the Southern District of New York with Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Barr even offered Berman a job he apparently thought would be an enticing sweetener — head of the DOJ’s Civil Division, which represents the United States in all civil lawsuits, a big job, but far from the criminal fray. With that job, Barr told Berman, he could “attract clients and build a book of business” for whenever Berman left the DOJ for the private sector. Only after offering him the job did Barr ask whether Berman had any experience in civil law, revealing that the attorney general was not always concerned with the best interests of the department he was entrusted to lead.
Though Berman refused to resign, Barr still issued a press release announcing that Berman was “stepping down,” and that until President Donald Trump could nominate Clayton, the Southern District of New York would be led by Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Barr bypassed Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, the presumptive choice to serve as acting U.S. attorney. Berman responded with a press release of his own, noting that he was not resigning. His main goal, he writes in “Holding the Line,” was to preserve the office’s independence. The next day, Barr backed down on Carpenito and inserted Strauss into the role of acting head of the office. With Strauss in place, Berman agreed to resign. Berman concludes: “The truth was that Barr was desperate to get me out of the job I was in, and it was not to put a better US attorney in place. The reasons were perfectly obvious. They were based in politics.”
Berman knew all along he was living on borrowed time at the Southern District of New York, given his numerous earlier run-ins with the DOJ over what he deemed were inappropriate orders from department officials. In one episode that predates Barr’s tenure as attorney general, Berman was investigating Gregory Craig, a former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. About two months before the 2018 midterm elections, O’Callaghan called Berman and told him to indict Craig and to do so before election day. Berman’s office had recently filed charges in separate cases against a Republican congressman and Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. According to Berman, O’Callaghan had engaged in a heated exchange with SDNY over the reference in the Cohen indictment to “Individual-1,” which, in context, was an unmistakable reference to Trump. Berman had refused demands to remove it. Now, O’Callaghan said of the Craig case, “it’s time for you guys to even things out.” Berman’s office ultimately declined prosecution. The DOJ sent the case to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, which filed the charges. Craig was acquitted at trial.
In another incident, Berman tells of the DOJ’s pressure to indict former secretary of state John Kerry for violating the Logan Act, a law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. A call from the DOJ came after a Trump tweet blasting Kerry, who had negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump later scrapped. The Southern District of New York found no viable legal theory for charges. Several months later, a morning tweet by Trump on the topic was promptly followed by an afternoon call from the DOJ, complaining about delay in charging. When the Southern District of New York told the DOJ it was declining to prosecute, the department sent the case to the District of Maryland, which would later come to the same conclusion.
Barr’s tenure as attorney general, beginning in February 2019, made things even worse. In September of that year, Berman refused to sign the DOJ’s legal briefs in Trump’s subpoena battle with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. Vance was investigating the role Trump and the Trump Organization played in payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal shortly before the 2016 election. The DOJ was planning to file a statement of interest containing the audacious argument that a sitting president could not be criminally investigated, a view the Supreme Court would later reject. Insisting that his office was not “Trump’s personal lawyer,” Berman refused to sign the statement of interest, but the DOJ persisted. Berman writes that he dealt directly with Rosen, the deputy attorney general, but believed it was Barr who was calling the shots. The DOJ relented only after Berman threatened to tell the court that he did not endorse the arguments in the statement of interest. Rosen later summoned Berman to Washington for a dressing down, telling him that in the future, “he expected the Southern District to follow orders and sign whatever he put in front of us.” Rosen later testified at the January 6 Committee hearings about his own standoff with Trump when Rosen refused to allow the DOJ to be used to legitimize claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Berman reserves his strongest criticism for Barr, calling him a bully and his behavior “thuggish.” Upon taking office, Barr tried to “kill” the Southern District’s ongoing investigations relating to the campaign finance crimes to which Cohen had pleaded guilty. The reference in plea documents to “Individual-1” made it apparent that Trump faced potential criminal exposure in this investigation. In fact, Barr even discussed dismissing Cohen’s conviction in the same way he would later dismiss the false statements charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In both cases, the defendants had pleaded guilty in open court.
Berman recounts interference by Barr in other investigations. In October 2019, SDNY charged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, members of “the inner circle of Rudy Giuliani,” for fraud and campaign finance violations. SDNY was conducting further investigation into their conduct. To Berman’s surprise, Barr proposed that information on Ukraine – some of which could relate to Parnas and Fruman – be funneled through other U.S. attorney’s offices. Berman called the system “utter nonsense,” and suggested it was “really an effort by Barr to keep tabs on” SDNY’s investigation into Parnas and Fruman. Berman believed Barr wanted to keep SDNY “segregated from potentially helpful leads or admissions being provided by Rudy”and that Barr wanted to control U.S. attorneys to advance Trump’s personal and political agendas.
Berman also cites Barr’s interference into SDNY’s investigation into the Turkish bank Halkbank for potential violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran. Trump was close with Turkish President Recep Erdogan and had a property in Turkey known as Trump Towers Istanbul. Initially, Barr pushed Berman to give Halkbank a non-prosecution agreement, which Berman resisted. Later, Barr did a complete about-face. After Trump had a falling out with Erdogan, Barr called Berman and told him to indict Halkbank. As Berman puts it, “Barr, always eager to please his boss, appeared to be doing Trump’s bidding.”
Berman’s book provides a cautionary tale about how political forces can undermine the quest for justice. He’s concerned that power has become centralized in Washington, providing an opportunity for politics to influence decisions. To protect the independence of the 94 U.S. attorney’s offices, he offers some suggestions for reform. For example, he recommends prohibiting DOJ leadership from granting requests by defense counsel to overrule charging decisions made by U.S. attorneys. He further suggests forbidding the DOJ from shopping cases to other districts after they have been declined for prosecution by a U.S. attorney. He also proposes to eliminate prior approval requirements that U.S. attorneys’ offices must obtain from the DOJ for sensitive investigative steps.
Fortunately, most U.S. attorneys know that their job is to exercise independent judgment and to refuse to take action based on politics. Berman reminds us that to do the job right, you must be willing to resign.
Or in some cases, refuse to do so.
Barbara McQuade is a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department
By Geoffrey Berman | 2022-09-09T14:32:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department” by Geoffrey Berman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/former-us-attorney-dishes-how-he-held-line-against-trump-white-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/09/former-us-attorney-dishes-how-he-held-line-against-trump-white-house/ |
Slovenia’s Lana Golob, left, and Wales’ Ceri Holland battle for the ball during the Women’s World Cup Qualifying, Group I soccer match at the Cardiff City Stadium, Cardiff, Wales, Tuesday Sept. 6, 2022. (Simon Galloway/PA via AP)
NYON, Switzerland — Scotland and Portugal were handed the advantage of playing at home throughout the European qualifying playoffs for next year’s Women’s World Cup. | 2022-09-09T14:32:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scotland, Portugal get home path in Women's WCup playoffs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/scotland-portugal-get-home-path-in-womens-wcup-playoffs/2022/09/09/b9b26806-3047-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/scotland-portugal-get-home-path-in-womens-wcup-playoffs/2022/09/09/b9b26806-3047-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Victims of unprecedented flooding from monsoon rains receive relief aid organized by the Edhi Foundation, in Ghotki District of Sindh Pakistan, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022. (Fareed Khan/AP)
KARACHI — The United States is ramping up support for Pakistan and beginning a days-long U.S. military airlift into the country as it struggles to battle devastating floods that are expected to take years to recover from.
The U.S. military began airlifting supplies into Pakistan this week as part of the additional $20 million the Biden administration is providing for humanitarian aid here, announced Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, on Friday.
The announcement comes as it is increasingly clear Pakistan is incapable of providing even the most basic relief to the more than 33 million people affected by the crisis. The majority of those who have fled their homes are living in makeshift shelters, and many report they are not receiving food, clean drinking water or medical attention.
The airlift will establish a “beachhead” inside Pakistan’s flood zone, Power said during a visit to affected areas on Thursday. She said the plan is to begin staging operations closer to those in need so humanitarian supplies can be distributed more efficiently.
“It may go beyond this, but for now we are looking at shelter supplies to accommodate 300,000 people,” she said. She admitted the number is a small fraction of those affected, but hoped other countries would follow suit and move operations inside Sindh province, one of the worst hit areas.
The airlift is expected to last just over a week with two to three U.S. C-17s — massive cargo planes — landing daily in Sukkur, a town in Sindh province nearly encircled by floodwaters. The planes will bring tens of thousands of pounds of tents, field rations and kitchen sets into the country.
Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan leaves families stranded without aid
“I think during the war in Afghanistan, there was an impression among some Pakistanis that the U.S. saw Pakistan only through the prism of Afghanistan,” she said. “Hopefully this is a chance through this cooperation [with the Pakistani government] to strengthen the relationship between the two countries.”
At a news conference announcing the additional funding in Islamabad, Power said the aid will address Pakistan’s “immediate needs,” but added “it is clear that recovery from these historic floods will require a concerted effort by the donor community and international financial institutions for the coming years.” | 2022-09-09T14:33:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. ramps up aid to Pakistan floods - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/pakistan-usaid-aid-flood-relief/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/pakistan-usaid-aid-flood-relief/ |
From the beginning it’s been tough to root against Tiafoe, who will play Friday night in the U.S. Open semifinals.
Perspective by Kelyn Soong
Frances Tiafoe playing in the junior tennis tournament Battle in the Burg in Fredericksburg, Va., in 2011. (USTA Mid-Atlantic)
My opponent on the tennis court that day was about a foot shorter than me. His baggy T-shirt and shorts dangled loosely on his body. I had been playing tennis for the past few years with friends and felt my game improving with each match. But as I went up 3-1 and then 4-1 in a game to seven points, the player across the net laughed and flashed his gapped-tooth grin. Then, before the next point began, something in his demeanor. He stopped softly tapping the ball back over the net and started ripping winners.
“Every time I win, I just want to inspire a bunch of people to just know that you can — I mean, anything is possible,” Tiafoe told reporters Wednesday in his post-match news conference. “For me to do this and talk about how I feel about being in the U.S. Open from my come-up is crazy. At the end of the day I love that because of Frances Tiafoe, there is a lot of people of color playing tennis. That's obviously a goal for me. That's why I'm out here trying pretty hard.”
Tiafoe’s tennis story begins with his parents, both immigrants from a war-torn Sierra Leonne. As the Post’s Liz Clarke wrote in 2015, Tiafoe’s father, Frances Tiafoe Sr., signed on as a day laborer to help construct the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., in 1999. Tiafoe Sr. took on multiple responsibilities as a maintenance worker, cleaning the complex during the day and maintaining the courts during the evening. He would sleep and shower at the complex. Tiafoe’s mother, Alphina Kamara, worked night shifts as a licensed practical nurse, and his parents’ schedules meant that Tiafoe and his twin brother, Franklin, would sometimes sleep in a spare room at the tennis facility, so Tiafoe Sr. could watch them.
That year, Vrabel stayed in the same house as Tiafoe during a travel tournament and discovered Tiafoe’s fun-loving personality. Tiafoe would make the other guys laugh by repeating random quotes from TV shows, Vrabel recalls, and he always seemed to be enjoying himself. The following year the two played again in the final of the 18-and-younger division at a local tournament. Vrabel went into the match extra motivated, and beat Tiafoe, 6-3, 6-1. He remembers that Tiafoe became “pretty upset" with the lopsided loss, but just a few minutes later, Tiafoe got over his frustrations and started cracking jokes.
I feel the same way. | 2022-09-09T14:48:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I lost a tennis game to Frances Tiafoe. I was 24, he was 13. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/09/frances-tiafoe-soong-tennis-usopen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/09/frances-tiafoe-soong-tennis-usopen/ |
Britain's Prince Charles meets guests during a reception in Clarence House, central London, on Oct. 24, 2013. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
LONDON — Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland on Thursday, the United Kingdom is swiftly readjusting to the ascension of her eldest son, Charles. According to Buckingham Palace, he will take the sovereign title King Charles III, and his wife, Camilla, will be known as the queen consort.
Here’s what to know about the new king.
What title will Charles’s wife Camilla take?
Who were Charles I and Charles II?
What happens next after Queen Elizabeth II’s death? | 2022-09-09T14:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles III: What to know about Britain's new monarch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/uk-king-charles-iii-what-to-know/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/uk-king-charles-iii-what-to-know/ |
Readers critique The Post: There’s more to that story
The headline on the Aug. 21 Metro article “VMI’s male cadets were berating her. The 1997 Hell Week photo went viral.” and the photograph that accompanied the article telegraphed the image of a young, innocent woman being viciously harassed by a band of hateful misogynists bent on ruining the careers of the entering freshman female class. That’s not what was happening.
As Megan Portavoce, the woman in the photograph, said, “Hell Week” at Virginia Military Institute is part of a long regime intended to cull only really tough and dynamic individuals, including George C. Marshall, George S. Patton and Lewis “Chesty” Puller. She said, “I think the photo is often taken out of context. It’s used as proof of harassment towards women. But it was equal-opportunity harassment that day.”
I firmly hail the women who have entered VMI and know they will achieve the success of past graduates.
Edward R. Russell, Ijamsville
The missing distinction
The Sept. 2 Metro article “Fired nurse in N.Va. files suit” referred to a “fired nurse” and “former nurse practitioner.” Nurses and nurse practitioners are related but distinctly different professions; the titles are not interchangeable. The fact that CVS fired Paige Casey makes her a former employee, not a former nurse practitioner.
Nick Reynolds, Arlington
A respectful descriptor
The Aug. 27 Free for All letter “A dreadful error” expressed indignation at use of the term “in grave condition” (referring to Anne Heche’s medical status at the time), citing Mercutio’s dark joke in “Romeo and Juliet”: “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.” The objection is based on an assumption that the term “grave condition” is therefore “thoughtless” and a “dreadful, unconscious gag.”
However, the word “grave” is a variation of the word “gravity.” “Gravity” refers not only to the physical law that forces us to the lowest level of the ground, but is also defined as “of extreme or alarming seriousness.” “Grave,” as an adjective, means “life-threatening” and of “extremely serious consequence.” Thus the term “in grave condition” is a poignant and respectful descriptor of one who is mortally ill or wounded.
Dalal Musa, Falls Church
A mistaken promotion
The caption on the photograph that accompanied the Aug. 27 Federal Insider column, “Vitriol from GOP leaders puts democracy in peril,” included an improper description. The caption stated, “Demonstrators protest outside FBI headquarters in Boston after agents searched former president Donald Trump’s estate.” In fact, the FBI headquarters is at 935 Pennsylvania Ave. NW in D.C., according to the official FBI website.
According to the site, there is a Massachusetts field office at 201 Maple St., Chelsea, Mass., which is a far cry from a “headquarters.”
Each federal government agency, department, commission, etc., has only one headquarters, and most are in or near D.C. Field offices, regional offices, etc., are elsewhere across the country. Labeling Boston as the FBI “headquarters” is both incorrect and confusing.
William B. Menczer, Washington
Wait, when did the 21st century begin?
I’m deeply dismayed that the perennial paragon of pedantry, George F. Will, failed at either simple arithmetic or calendar history. In his Aug. 28 op-ed, “In Colorado, an appealing Republican steps forward,” he wrote, “Colorado has voted Republican in presidential politics only twice in this century’s six elections.” As the 21st century began on Jan. 1, 2001, even I need only one hand to count all the elections so far.
Kevin Dopart, Washington
Getting under the skin
I read with interest the Aug. 28 news article “How the U.S. is stretching supply of monkeypox vaccine.” However, as a dermatologist, I did notice several errors in the article. First, the diagram intended to show intradermal injection actually (incorrectly) showed intraepidermal injection. The needle should have been shown to extend down to the thicker underlying layer labeled dermis. Second, the intradermal injection technique is quite simple to learn. And third, the “bleb” formed by the intradermal injection is not, in fact, a blister (pocket of fluid), but local swelling from fluid spread around the skin’s collagen fibers. Anyone who has had an intradermal tuberculosis test on the forearm is familiar with the “bleb.”
Jeffrey Schuldenfrei, Gaithersburg
A failed balancing act
Is it now The Post’s policy to have authors’ worst enemies review their books? That might explain the choice of Elizabeth Spiers to review Jared Kushner’s book, “Breaking History.” [“Jared Kushner’s memoir is short on insight, long on ego,” Aug. 28, Book World]
Spiers began her review by outlining why she really can’t stand Kushner. As she described it, he bought the New York Observer in 2006, when — get ready for this — he was “25 … [and] ostensibly a Democrat” and then “starved the Observer of funding and ran it largely as a vanity project” for the next 11 years. Spiers was editor in chief of the Observer in 2011 and 2012. Spiers then used her “book review” to malign Kushner in nearly every paragraph, calling him “a hypothetical worst superhero” (a gratuitous, unprofessional insult unrelated to the book, whatever it even means), an “Olympic-level social climber,” a guy with a “demagnetized” moral compass, and someone who is not likely to be “honest,” to name just a few of her many barbs. This character hit job masquerading as a book review did a disservice to Kushner, whose book (which might be good or bad, but we cannot judge from Spiers’s one-sided polemic) deserved a serious, balanced review. Readers were subjected to a breathtaking and disgraceful level of get-even pettiness from Spiers.
Pat Kaufman, Fort Washington
After perusing the Aug. 28 Book World review of Jared Kushner’s “Breaking History” by Elizabeth Spiers, “Jared Kushner’s memoir is short on insight, long on ego,” I was struck by the inclusion of a particular word in the one-sentence author’s biographical note at the end of the article. Why was it necessary to designate Spiers as a “liberal” digital strategist and writer? I reviewed every other writer’s biographical note in the Outlook section and did not see any other political designations made. Not once.
Regina Cornelius, Severna Park
Recognizing a moment of ugliness
I really enjoyed Philip Kennicott’s Aug. 28 Arts & Style column, “In Philadelphia, a monument to end all monuments,” about “Monument in Waiting” at Drexel University. I learned a lot about “anti-monumentality,” and it was interesting to consider the question “What is a real hero?”
Kennicott’s piece was missing only one thing: some slight recognition that “Monument in Waiting” is so hideously ugly that it hurts your eyes. It ruins an otherwise perfect area of green grass. It’s going to do nothing but collect bird droppings. Better to have left the area open and to have erected a plaque with an essay explaining that “no one is a hero, if we look close enough.” I would like to read that piece.
Michael I. Goldman, Hudson, N.H.
Local icon Ken Mease deserved better
In my retirement years, I have developed the habit of looking at the paid death notices in The Post. There are many biographies of wonderful folks whose deaths would not be otherwise noted by the paper. I was shocked, however, to see such a notice for Washington sportscaster Kenneth Webster “Ken” Mease. I checked other portions of my hometown paper and found no other news notice.
Mease was one of several great sportscasters in the D.C. area in the 1980s and 1990s, a special era in Washington sports history for a young guy. The Washington Redskins could never be counted out as Super Bowl contenders, Sugar Ray Leonard was a boxing champion, the Washington Bullets had the “Beef Brothers” and the NHL had recently come to town.
Mease was a low-key guy, especially as he worked with the legendary Glenn Brenner. But as Post reporter Leonard Shapiro noted in November 2000: “For years, Ken Mease, a solid, veteran sportscaster with great knowledge of the local sports scene, has offered a comprehensive weekend report.”
Mease was very much part of the fabric of the Washington community. He deserved more recognition from The Post.
Jim Cassedy, Hyattsville
Make The Post boomer-friendly
I’m wondering why The Post must continually vex its most reliable readers — those born before and during the Kennedy administration. Three recent cases in point:
The Aug. 21 Date Lab, “He was a ‘pleasant surprise,’” informed us that 28-year-old Logan is “a UX designer.” What in Sam Hill is that?! Either explain it or find Logan an occupation your loyal readership has heard of.
Ann Hornaday’s film reviews typically are littered with big words that readers are forced to look up. I would cite some specific examples, but right now I’m eyeing a kid who I can see is just itching to tread on my newly mowed lawn.
In a former life, I was a newspaper reporter myself. The Aug. 27 Style section featured an article about a kid who’s famous for having a mullet, “Locks of attention for 8-year-old ‘Mullet Boy.’” Thank God I left print journalism before such “achievements” were deemed newsworthy. Stop glamorizing people who are big on social media. Who keeps up with all that nonsense? Not me. Not most of my contemporaries to whom I write grammatically correct texts and emails.
Which brings up another point: It’s not like I’m a Luddite. My 90-year-old mother doesn’t even own a computer or a smartphone. I have both! Why, I am a veritable George Jetson compared with her.
Hey, come to think of it, maybe hire more reporters who are old enough to know who George Jetson is.
Eric Ries, Bethesda
A disappointing realization
Huzzah! Andrew Wyeth lives! Maybe?
The ever-engaging Sebastian Smee’s Aug. 28 Great Works, In Focus column, “The simple yet startling vision of Andrew Wyeth,” [Arts] was headed with Wyeth’s birth year. It seemed odd to me that the great artist’s name and birth year — but not death year — were used as the lead-in to the article. I usually take this to mean that the subject of the article lives on. That appears to fit The Post’s styling.
Quick research revealed that Wyeth is more than several years deceased. This inattention is an injustice to an accomplished columnist’s work.
Peter G. Wyatt, Silver Spring
Crossword puzzles for whom exactly?
It might be time for The Post to reconsider the objectives and the target audience of the Sunday crossword puzzle in The Washington Post Magazine. There is no doubt that Evan Birnholz is a brilliant professional cruciverbalist, who deserves a more focused and sophisticated audience with respect to crossword puzzles. For me at least, however, his puzzles have become incomprehensible and unmanageable. We had more than one letter squeezed into a square; we had words that went over the boundaries of the puzzle; we had words dogleg into words below, above, right or left. On Aug. 28, we had letters in black squares. Why bother?
The topics with which one had to be knowledgeable included, and this is not an exhaustive list: TV, movies, music (classical, pop, jazz, etc.), science, math, sports, geography, history, religion, medicine, French, German, Spanish and, finally, English.
And on Aug. 28, one had to go back to The Post’s website to be able to continue with the puzzle. That everyone does not have internet access was not considered.
The questions that arise for The Post are:
What is the objective of the Sunday crossword puzzle? One would expect that in a glossy magazine one looks for fun and not the frustration of a “mission impossible,” as it was put by Birnholz.
And who is the target audience? As is, it would appear that the target is not the average Post reader but a “meta” puzzle solver with wide skills and knowledge.
Kutlu Somel, Rockville
We also tripped over these breaks
There appears to be a glitch in The Post’s editing. The Aug. 31 news section contained yet more absurdly hyphenated words. In “GOP candidates scrub polarizing topics online,” we read “updated pos-t-primary.” And in “Garland bars Justice Department’s political appointees from partisan activity,” we read “by the-n-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.”
These strangely placed breaks cause stumbling during reading. Whether real people or AI are behind the proliferating hyphens, I believe some retraining or reprogramming based on an English dictionary is warranted. Or birth control for hyphens?
Marie Hoffman, Washington
Not just for emphasis!
In the fourth paragraph of her Aug. 26 op-ed, “The $1.6 billion man,” Ruth Marcus commented on the “10-figure” check but then added “(10!)” for emphasis.
However, in mathematics, 10! has its own well-established meaning. It is called “10 factorial” and stands for 10 × 9 × 8 × 7 × 6 × … × 1, or 3,628,800, a seven-digit number, hardly in the same ballpark as the enormous donation.
Joan Reinthaler, Washington
Opinion|Readers critique The Post: Freya’s death was not a mercy killing | 2022-09-09T14:52:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Readers critique The Post: There’s more to the Megan Smith VMI photo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/reader-critiques-megan-smith-vmi-photo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/reader-critiques-megan-smith-vmi-photo/ |
The Chips Act is already a boon to the U.S.
A crew works near the construction site for a new Intel semiconductor manufacturing plant in Johnstown, Ohio, on Aug. 5. (Paul Vernon/AP)
Companies such as Panasonic and Intel seem to be tripping over themselves to announce that they will build new plants in the United States to manufacture car batteries and semiconductors. The recently passed Chips and Science Act and other government subsidies are a big reason for these decisions. That’s good news for national security and for American workers.
Semiconductors are the bread and butter of high technology. Made from incredibly thin silicon wafers, semiconductor chips carry electric charges to help power our phones, computers and cars. Without a steady supply of semiconductors, any advanced economy would come to a standstill.
Anything that valuable is crucial to a nation’s security. If a hostile nation obtained control over a large portion of chip factories, it could economically blackmail its foes, much as the Arab oil embargo in the mid-1970s wrought havoc on the global economy.
As with other crucial manufacturing capabilities, the United States has steadily outsourced semiconductor fabrication to plants in Asia over the past 30 years. Even though the semiconductor was invented in the United States, only about 11 percent of global production takes place here. Fully two-thirds occurs in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan — which are all threatened by China’s rise. Given that Communist China is trying to create its own semiconductor industry to dominate global production, it’s not hard to imagine a future in which Chinese power threatens our advanced economy.
That’s why the passage of the Chips bill was vital to our national security. It allocated $52 billion in government money to help semiconductor firms build plants in the United States, offsetting much of the cost disadvantage that had driven production away. Ten new chip foundries are already planned for the United States within the next three years, and many more will surely be announced in the coming months.
These plants won’t make the United States self-sufficient in semiconductors; our firms will still import many more chips for their use than can be produced domestically for the foreseeable future. But all good things start small. The first fracking well didn’t make global news, but within a few years, so many had been drilled that the United States had gone from a large oil importer to an exporting nation again. That makes the country more secure because it no longer must depend on imports for the crucial commodity from volatile regions such as the Middle East.
The climate provisions in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act will do the same thing for battery production for the surging electric vehicle market. It offers car buyers tax credits of up to $7,500 per electric vehicle, but to get the most money from the credit, the batteries must be assembled in North America and critical minerals used in the process must come from here or a nation with which we have a free-trade pact. Almost all EV batteries currently come from China, and even those that don’t are substantially dependent upon materials found in China.
Jump-starting the EV battery industry in the United States will also help national security. One can argue whether the federal government should be pushing for carmakers to switch to EVs, but it makes no sense to make our vehicle fleet dependent upon our biggest adversary. Well-to-do consumers are increasingly buying EVs even without federal support. The industry leader, Tesla, now holds nearly 4 percent of the entire U.S. car market even though purchasers do not qualify for the current federal tax credit. If the car market is moving to EVs, we need to ensure that China can’t stop our auto industry by cutting off battery shipments.
The new EV tax credit could also lead to a big uptick in mining. Some of the materials used in the batteries will clearly come from other countries, but the United States has substantial, mostly untapped, reserves of lithium. It also has unused reserves of nickel, another metal used to make EV batteries. Increasing domestic production of these metals would produce plenty of high-paying jobs.
The boon to U.S. workers will be substantial even without large increases in mining. Jobs at LG Energy Solution’s new battery plant in Michigan are expected to average $65,000 a year, while jobs with Intel’s planned Ohio semiconductor plant will average $135,000 a year. Many of those will surely be taken by college-educated workers, but that will also have positive ripple effects for workers without college degrees in the surrounding communities.
The United States has been served well by its relatively free market, but there are times that other interests should prevail. The national security rationale behind the new subsidies for semiconductor and EV battery manufacturing meets that test, to workers’ benefit. | 2022-09-09T14:53:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Chips Act is already a boon to the U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/semiconductor-chips-act-intel-panasonic-plants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/semiconductor-chips-act-intel-panasonic-plants/ |
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels on Sept. 9. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
BRUSSELS — The Biden administration believes European nations can navigate a looming energy crisis accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine without eroding continent-wide support for the war, a top official said on Friday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who touched down in Brussels for talks with European and NATO officials, touted European unity as a key factor in Ukraine’s success to date in countering the offensive launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February. But he also acknowledged the campaign to isolate Russia was now taking a toll on the finances of ordinary Europeans, potentially testing resolve.
Blinken expressed confidence that new measures being considered by the European Union and steps being taken by the United States would prove effective in mitigating rising energy prices — and that Europeans would understand that the costs of inaction would be greater.
“We won’t leave our European friends out in the cold,” Blinken said in a news briefing alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “We can, we will, emerge stronger and in a better place and that’s why it’s so vital that we stay the course, that we stay united.”
Blinken spoke as E.U. ministers met in Brussels to discuss a mounting energy crisis facing the continent, where a longtime reliance on Russian fossil fuels has combined with global inflation to create surging prices for consumers.
Six months into the war, the E.U. has taken significant steps to reduce its reliance on Russian energy. But prices continue to spike and the bloc is increasingly split on how to respond. The European Commission has asked member states to mull drastic measures, including a windfall tax on some energy producers, a price cap on Russian gas and mandatory targets for reducing energy consumption. In an attempt to tame inflation, the European Central Bank this week raised interest rates for the second time this year.
“In the coming months our unity and solidarity will be tested, with pressure on energy supplies and the soaring cost of living caused by Russia’s war,” Stoltenberg said.
Officials in Ukraine have sought to head off any erosion of European support for the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky last week warned that Russia is preparing for a “decisive energy attack on all Europeans” this winter. The only way to fight back, he said, was to stay united on sanctions to limit the Kremlin’s oil and gas revenue.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, reminded Britons that high prices are nothing compared to what Ukrainians are going through. “The prices are going up in Ukraine as well, she said, “but in addition our people get killed.”
"So when you start counting pennies on your bank account or in your pocket,” she continued, “we do the same and count our casualties.”
Putin has replied to Western attempts to limit Russian income with defiance, threatening to further cut energy supplies. Despite Western sanctions, high prices have allowed Russia to reap significant profits.
Blinken cited steps the Biden administration had taken to temper energy prices at home and abroad, including authorizing a major release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and redirecting natural gas toward Europe. He said Russia’s decision to cut off gas supplies via the Nord Stream I pipeline provided further evidence of the need for Europe to wean itself off Russian energy.
“Is there going to be a cost to this? Is it going to be challenging? Yes,” he said of Europe’s energy outlook. He said he hoped the moment would prove an opportunity to make Europe’s energy outlook more diversified and climate-friendly.
“The challenge is to get through the coming winter,” he told reporters in Poland before arriving in Brussels.
Western nations will also face heightened urgency in coming months on military support to Ukraine. Data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks pledges of weapons and money, has shown significant gaps between what countries have promised and what they have actually delivered to Ukraine. In July, Europe’s major powers offered no new bilateral military aid, the institute found, deepening concern about follow-through.
E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned this week that weapons stocks in the bloc are running dangerously low. “The military stocks of most member states has been, I wouldn’t say exhausted, but depleted in a high proportion,” he said, “Because we have been providing a lot of capacity to the Ukrainians.”
U.S. officials described Blinken’s talks in Brussels, and a visit to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian leaders earlier in the week, as setting the stage for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly later this month, where U.S. officials will attempt to project global unity in support of Ukraine.
In Kyiv, Blinken announced more than $2 billion in U.S. security aid for Ukraine as Ukrainian fighters seek to recapture territory now controlled by Russia.
A senior State Department official, who spoke ahead of Blinken’s Kyiv visit, said that Russia’s steps to reduce energy flows — including halting Nord Stream — were having the effect of hardening European sentiment against Russia rather than turning them against the war. The coming months will prove how lasting that feeling will be.
“It’s not going to be cold and dark,” another senior State Department official said of the coming winter. “It’s going to be expensive. That’s the main thing that they have to grapple with.” | 2022-09-09T15:06:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Antony Blinken visits E.U. and encourages it to stand fast under Russian pressure - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/09/blinken-eu-russia-ukraine-winter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/09/blinken-eu-russia-ukraine-winter/ |
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II inspects the guard at the Royal Military College Duntroon in Canberra, Australia. During the same trip in October 2011, she spoke about women and girls achieving their full potential. (Alan Porritt/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II was head of state and commander in chief of the British armed forces for more than seven decades. Her late husband gave up his career to support her and dutifully walked a few paces behind her in public. Her staff called her “The Boss.” Her face is on the money.
Perhaps the closest the queen came to a public statement about women’s rights or gender equality was at a 2011 British Commonwealth summit in Australia, where the theme was “Women as Agents of Change.” The queen said: “It reminds us of the potential in our societies that is yet to be fully unlocked, and encourages us to find ways to allow girls and women to play their full part.”
Although that might not sound particularly provocative, her words were taken as an endorsement of changes in royal succession laws that year that gave daughters of future monarchs equal right to the throne. Before then, women were clearly considered second-best royals: They could become monarchs, but only in cases like hers, if a male heir was unavailable.
The queen also periodically dispatched congratulatory comments about women breaking barriers in realms such as sports. Last summer, when England’s women soccer team won the Euro championship — achieving what no male English team had done before — the queen praised the Lionesses for having “set an example that will be an inspiration for girls and women today, and for future generations inspiration for girls and women.”
Yet Elizabeth held fast to the custom that the head of Britain’s constitutional monarchy should not wade into politically-tinged subjects. And so, regardless of her personal beliefs, she would have considered an active role in the women’s liberation or women’s equality movements off-limits.
“When you talk about feminism, there’s an implication of campaigning which isn’t appropriate, especially for someone who is supposed to be politically neutral,” said Robert Lacey, a royal biographer.
She certainly never went as far as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who in 2018 declared herself a “feminist” on the royal family website.
Actor Olivia Colman, who portrayed the queen in the Netflix series “The Crown,” said she considered Elizabeth II “the ultimate feminist.”
“She’s the breadwinner,” Colman told Radio Times magazine in 2019. “She’s the one on our coins and bank notes. Prince Philip has to walk behind her. She fixed cars in the Second World War. She’s no shrinking violet.”
As a princess, Elizabeth joined the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service and worked as a driver and a mechanic in World War II.
But Guardian columnist Zoe Williams was among those who objected to the “ultimate feminist” characterization. Being supported by British taxpayers is not breadwinning, she wrote. “Fixing cars in the second world war is neither feminist nor unfeminist,” she added, “it would have been feminist to continue to fix cars once the war had ended.”
Elizabeth became queen in 1952 — after a run of four male monarchs, and at a time when gender stereotypes portrayed women as homemakers, wearing aprons in the kitchen and dutifully waiting for the return of their working husbands.
At the age of 25, the queen was suddenly the head of state and a symbol of a woman holding status and influence. She was reading government papers, meeting with prime ministers, entertaining world leaders — almost all of them men.
Photos: The life of Queen Elizabeth II, from princess to longest-reigning monarch
She was a working mother who left her kids at home for work. After her coronation, she embarked on a six-month tour of the Commonwealth, leaving young Charles and Anne at home.
“For me personally, the Queen has become a feminist icon, whether she wanted to or not, simply by never letting gender define her,” Emma Barnett, host of the BBC’s “Woman’s Hour,” wrote in the Telegraph in 2015. “Her gender has always been irrelevant to her capacity to do her job,” wrote Barnett, and “by doing that job stoically and with the utmost dedication, she’s inadvertently done a great deal to normalise the idea of having a woman in charge.”
“She fits into this tradition of ruling queens who are very useful to feminism, more through their deeds than their words,” said Arianne Chernock, author of “The Right to Rule and the Rights of Women: Queen Victoria and the Women’s Movement.”
The women’s movement started to gain traction in the late 18th century, during the reign of Queen Victoria, Elizabeth II’s great-great grandmother. Victoria was opposed to women’s rights. “We women are not made for governing,” she once wrote in a letter to her uncle. She thought women voting was a “mad, wicked folly.” But much of this was found out through private correspondence later. At the time, Victoria was a model to many leaders in the women’s movement in the 19th Century, Chernock said.
During Elizabeth’s reign, among her many overseas trips, her 1979 tour of six nations in the Gulf States made headlines around the world. In a region where women’s participation in public life was far below men’s, here was a female monarch, shaking hands with rulers in the Gulf, as an equal.
David Owen, who was then the British foreign secretary, told The Washington Post in a recent interview that the Gulf trip was a great success and, referring to the elderly Saudi monarch King Khalid, he said, “the old king fell in love with her.”
Photos: The queen and 13 presidents
He recalled an incident when the Saudi king had joined the queen and Prince Philip on the royal yacht for a banquet. “I’ll never forget him driving away in his Rolls-Royce and the queen was up there on the bridge and he started waving and suddenly he puts a stick out the window and whirls it around, and you just knew, the trip had been a winner. It was everything I could have wanted in terms of foreign relations.”
He said of the queen, “She doesn’t make a great female emancipation speech, but it's the way she conducts herself. You need for people who are prepared to actually go out and take the case and argue and write about it, and you also need people who will just do it by example — you need both.”
Rosie Campbell, director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, said the queen occupied the role with “incredible grace and dignity and can only have a positive impact on how we view women leaders.”
“We know that women role models matter,” she said. At the same time, she added, “it’s not a job that little girls can easily step into.”
Elizabeth didn’t become queen through merit, and the monarch’s role, on the public stage, a relatively silent one. “She seems to me to understand her role,” Campbell said. “She makes the distinction between being elected and unelected, but it means that she doesn’t have a voice except on rare occasions.”
Royal observers say that, behind-the-scenes, the queen played a traditional role within her own family. “She was very keen early on to say, ‘yes, I’m the queen. I’ll do the constitutional stuff. But Philip was the head of the family,’” said Robert Hardman, author of “Queen of our Times.” He also questioned whether the queen would have viewed herself as a feminist. “There are feminist traits but I’m not sure she’d see it like that,” he said.
“She would probably be a feminist in the same sense as Margaret Thatcher was the feminist,” he said of Britain’s first female prime minister. “Feminists may not regard either as a feminist figures, but they’ve undoubtedly helped reshape the way that society views women and women were empowered by their leadership roles.”
Other commentators have wondered if a different royal might one day be dubbed the “ultimate feminist.” Feminist Julie Bindel suggested in the Daily Telegraph: “I don’t think it is too much to suggest that Camilla could one day be described as the most feminist Queen we’ll ever have.” Camilla, queen consort, has long worked with charities that campaign to end violence against women and is president of the Women of the World (WOW) festival.
But there may have been occasions when the queen has tried, in her own queenly way, to score a point for feminism.
During a 2003 state visit by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who would later become King Abdullah, queen reportedly terrified him by zipping around in a royal Range Rover. Sherard Cowper-Coles, the former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, shared the anecdote in his memoir, saying that the queen had invited Abdullah for a tour of the grounds at Balmoral, her royal estate in Scotland. “To his surprise, the Queen climbed into the driving seat, turned the ignition and drove off,” Cowper-Coles wrote in his book, “Ever the Diplomat.” “Women are not — yet — allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah was not used to being driven by a woman, let alone a queen.”
According to the diplomat, it wasn’t a particularly calming experience as the queen “accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time.”
Cowper-Coles wrote: “Through his interpreter, the Crown Prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.” | 2022-09-09T15:06:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Was Queen Elizabeth II a feminist? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-feminism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-feminism/ |
From typography to tumult: Michigan as battleground over democracy
Abortion rights supporters gather in downtown Lansing, Mich., on Sept. 7, 2022. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images)
Whether Michigan women can obtain an abortion legally came down to an unexpected question: Does a space count as text? In this sentence, for example, are the spaces part of the text, or not?
Over the course of more than a dozen pages, Michigan Supreme Court Justice David F. Viviano argued that they were. He invoked experts, including quotes such as: “In Western scripts, spatial organization is a determinative element in the effect of different transcription systems on the cognitive processes required for lexical access.”
Thanks to this exhaustive consideration, Viviano found himself with little choice but to dissent from the majority’s opinion on the case at hand: one allowing a constitutional amendment on access to abortion to appear on the November ballot. The amendment had been blocked by a state board ostensibly because some of the text of the amendment appeared on petitions without visible spaces, sortoflikethis.
In a footnote, Justice Richard Bernstein, who voted with the majority, disagreed with arguments like Viviano’s.
“As a blind person who is also a wordsmith and a member of this Court,” he wrote, “I find it unremarkable to note that the lack of visual spacing has never mattered much to me.”
The fact that Bernstein dismissed the spaces-between-letters argument in a footnote, and that Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack spent very little time on it in her majority opinion, reflects an understandable view of why so much attention was paid to the spacing in the first place: It wasn’t about ensuring comprehension of the proposed amendment but, instead, about blocking it from the ballot by any means necessary.
“While I accept the assumption in the Court’s order that the challengers’ argument is arguably a challenge to the ‘form and content’ of the petition,” McCormack wrote in a footnote of her own, “I believe there is good reason to question whether this is the appropriate standard, and if so whether the challengers’ argument is truly such a challenge.”
In other words, she doubted whether the argument was being offered in good faith.
“Even though there is no dispute that every word appears and appears legibly and in the correct order, and there is no evidence that anyone was confused about the text, two members of the Board of State Canvassers with the power to do so would keep the petition from the voters for what they purport to be a technical violation of the statute,” McCormack wrote in concluding her opinion. “They would disenfranchise millions of Michiganders not because they believe the many thousands of Michiganders who signed the proposal were confused by it, but because they think they have identified a technicality that allows them to do so, a game of gotcha gone very bad.”
“What a sad marker of the times,” her opinion concludes.
That addendum is potent. It is a marker of the times, certainly, that the Board of State Canvassers should use technicalities to block multiple proposed amendments from the ballot. The other amendment rejected by the board last month would expand access to voting itself — meaning that the two Republicans who caused the board to deadlock on placing the amendments declined to allow voters to vote on whether it should be easier to vote.
This same board, you may recall, was in the spotlight after the 2020 election when certification of the state’s not-close vote for Joe Biden was at risk of being blocked by Republican objections. Ultimately, one of the board’s Republicans announced that the board had no power to block the certification even if it wanted to and voted to certify. The other Republican abstained; the state Republican Party later declined to renominate the one who backed certification to the board.
This is often what the right’s struggle for power looks like these days: introducing obstructions to voting or undermining election results.
There was another development on that second front this week as well. Matthew DePerno, the Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general in November, is under investigation for having participated in a plan to obtain and “investigate” voting machines in several counties. Because the investigation involves the state attorney general — an office held by his Democratic opponent — a special prosecutor was appointed to continue the probe.
DePerno seeks election as attorney general not despite his involvement in a scheme to question voting machines but largely because of it. He gained national attention in the wake of the 2020 election, including from Donald Trump, by elevating dubious and debunked claims about election fraud and the security of election systems. He excoriated state officials and the media as biased and corrupt in harsh terms, although no evidence of any significant fraud or malfeasance has ever been shown. A Republican-led committee in the state Senate even dismissed DePerno’s claims by name as “demonstrably false and based on misleading information and illogical conclusions.”
And then Republicans nominated him to serve as the state’s top law enforcement agent.
It’s clearly true that it’s advantageous for Michigan Democrats to have an abortion amendment on the ballot in November. An effort to allow the state to ban abortion access on the ballot in Kansas lost by a huge margin after turnout surged; Democrats would certainly like to see similar energy as the midterms approach. (Particularly since the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Tudor Dixon, has a hard-line position on access to abortion.) But that doesn’t detract from the fact that more than 700,000 people signed those petitions to have the opportunity to vote on the amendment.
None of them, it seems, were fazed by the lack of spaces — often, one might assume, for the same reason that people rarely object to the terms and services offered by software companies. Presented with the opportunity to vote on an amendment protecting access to abortion, about 1 out of every 13 Michiganders expressed a desire to do so. It took only two Republican bureaucrats to stand in their way.
Democracy is littered with chokepoints where norms and good faith keep the public will moving forward. In multiple ways, Michigan is being tested on how freely democracy in the state can flow. | 2022-09-09T15:14:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | From typography to tumult: Michigan as battleground over democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/michigan-abortion-ballot-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/michigan-abortion-ballot-elections/ |
The queen’s beloved corgis were always near. What happens to them now?
Queen Elizabeth II stroking Candy, one of her corgis, at Windsor Castle in February 2022. (Steve Parsons/AFP/Getty Images)
The many corgis owned by Queen Elizabeth II over her seven-decade reign were furry little monarchs in their own right, as iconic as her flamboyant hats and her wicked sense of humor. She had more than 30 of the squat herding dogs in her lifetime, with names like Plover, Disco and Mint. A gaggle of them trotted ahead of her wherever she went, in what Princess Diana once described, perhaps not so affectionately, as “a moving carpet.”
Her love for the pups was long celebrated, playing a central part in the apparent corgi renaissance social media has helped fuel over the past decade. Three of her corgis were featured in a James Bond skit with the queen and Daniel Craig that aired at the 2012 Olympics. The dogs also made frequent appearances in the 2016 Netflix series “The Crown,” which depicted Elizabeth’s early years as head of state.
As approached her 90s, Elizabeth decided to end the decades-long corgi breeding program she oversaw at Windsor Castle, where 14 generations of dogs were raised and trained.
The program seemed to quietly slow down around 2002, following the death of her mother, according to the American Kennel Club.
In 2012, Monty Roberts, the queen’s equine adviser, told Vanity Fair that the death of one of her dogs — a corgi that co-starred in the James Bond skit — had deeply affected her.
“She didn’t want to have any more young dogs,” he said. “She didn’t want to leave any young dog behind. She wanted to put an end to it. I understood that we would discuss it further at a later date.”
Candy, an elderly corgi, was with her until the end. She also had two younger pups, Muick and Sandy. Her cocker spaniel is named Lissy.
According to the BBC, the royal family had a term for the calming effect the corgis had on the queen over the years: “the dog mechanism.”
“If the situation becomes too difficult she will sometimes literally walk away from it and take the dogs out,” wrote Penny Junor, author of “All The Queen’s Corgis.” “Prince Andrew is said to have taken three weeks to fight his way past the dogs to tell his mother that his marriage to Sarah Ferguson was in trouble.”
“Dogs and horses are her passion,” Junor wrote, “and it is with them, and the people who share that passion, that she truly relaxes.” | 2022-09-09T15:23:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What happens to Queen Elizabeth’s corgis? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-corgi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-corgi/ |
Her mental health plummeted as a result of this rejection and isolation, so she finished her senior year online and has been receiving therapy ever since. She has college plans, and we are all trying to move forward after this painful year.
One in particular is clueless about how her daughter treated mine even though this behavior went on for years.
Had Enough: This is a tough situation for your daughter and your family, and I hope that her transition to college life goes smoothly.
I feel there is no way to compete with what he is watching. He refuses to talk about the subject at all. Should I feel “not good enough” compared to the women he sees in these films?
Unwanted: I wish you didn’t ask if you “should” feel the way you feel.
Your feelings are your feelings — they belong to you, and you get to have them! And the way you report feeling, “not good enough,” is the natural response when your partner is addicted to porn.
You have your own life to consider, and you have decisions to make about your relationship with your husband.
She writes them out to her family and my son writes to our family. I think this is a perfect solution, and maybe what they are doing too!
Grateful: Even better would be if spouses were assigned to thank their in-laws. It would go a long way to promote closeness. | 2022-09-09T15:53:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I don’t want to be friends with the mom of my child’s bully - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/06/ask-amy-bully-child-mom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/06/ask-amy-bully-child-mom/ |
Flash flooding is likely in parts of interior southern California, western Arizona and southern Nevada.
Satellite view of Tropical Storm Kay Friday morning. (NOAA)
Tropical Storm Kay has begun to unleash strong winds in southern California and will bring multiple days of flooding rain to the Southwest in a rare instance of a tropical weather system affecting the region.
Howling winds entered southern California early Friday, with gusts as high as 109 mph clocked in the high terrain. Weather radar also showed bands of rain moving into San Diego.
Kay, which was a Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall Thursday on Baja California in Mexico, weakened to a tropical storm early Friday but it is still expected to generate strong winds and draw a surge of tropical moisture northward over southern California, western Arizona and southern Nevada.
The rainfall will be beneficial over the drought-stricken region but its intensity will result in substantial runoff presenting a significant flood threat.
The National Hurricane Center wrote that flash, urban and small stream flooding is probable in Southern California on Friday, especially in the mountains, and that such flooding could occur in southwest Arizona later in the day.
Strong winds associated with the storm are also expected to buffet parts of southern California and extreme southwest Arizona through Friday before gradually easing by Saturday as the storm curls farther offshore and loses tropical characteristics.
Multiple locations in the mountains of San Diego County reported gusts between 60 and 100-plus mph early Friday while they reached 35 to 60 mph in inland valleys. Along the coast, gusts were 40 to 50 mph.
Effects from tropical systems in the Southwest are not unprecedented but infrequent. Even though Kay will not make landfall in California, the wind and rain generated on the storm’s north and east flank will be substantial.
The National Weather Service has hoisted widespread flood watches for the region — from just east of San Diego to around Las Vegas, affecting nearly 15 million people.
In the interior of far Southern California, a general 2 to 4 inches of rain is predicted, with isolated totals of 6 to 8 inches possible. The highest totals are most probable along the east facing slopes of the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego.
In the mountains, flooding rains may lead to “dangerous debris flows near burn scars, landslides, rapidly flowing streams of runoff, and flooded/washed away roads,” the Weather Service wrote.
Precipitable water, a measure of atmospheric moisture, is forecast to be 2 to 2.25 inches across parts of Southern California by late Friday. That is five standard deviations above the norm for the region at this time of year, meaning it is very rare.
Amounts are forecast to be less near the coast.
In San Diego, an inch or less of rain is expected, mostly falling Friday into Saturday morning.
In Los Angeles, the Weather Service is predicting 0.25 inches of rain at the coast and progressively more inland, with 1 to 2 inches in the mountains to its east, with most of the rain falling Friday night into Saturday. A flood watch has been issued for the mountains.
Southwest Arizona is set to pick up 1 to 2 inches of rain, with isolated 3-inch amounts, with the latest forecast increasing the flooding risk across Arizona and southern Nevada.
Precipitable water is forecast to be around 1.5 inches in the Mojave Desert and near Las Vegas, approaching all-time records for the area, according to the National Weather Service. Saturday brings the highest chance of downpours to Las Vegas, which twice saw water pouring into casinos during floods in July and August.
Flood watches extend as far north into California as Death Valley, which flooded earlier this August when parts of the National Park picked up roughly 75 percent of their yearly rainfall in a day.
Rainfall is expected to continue in the Southwest on Saturday but will become less organized. Still, heavy showers and thunderstorms are possible considering the high amount of moisture available, creating a flood risk falling on terrain saturated by Friday’s rains.
Kay also brings with it strong winds that are triggering an unusually blustery day in San Diego and its nearby mountains.
At the coast, the Weather Service is warning of dangerous rip currents and an elevated surf of 3 to 6 feet, along with the possibility of gusty winds up to 40 miles per hour.
A high wind warning has been issued for the San Diego area, stretching as far north as Riverside, Calif. The warning, which runs until midnight local time, says that east winds of 20 to 40 mph are expected, with occasional gust to 60 mph.
The winds may be strong enough to down trees and power lines, especially further east toward the mountains. The strong downsloping breeze has also kept temperatures in the San Diego area warm, and an excessive heat warning remains active for the city and surrounding areas.
Gusts on the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego could exceed 70 mph, which could help fuel any active blazes or blazes sparked by downed power lines or by cloud-to-ground lightning in thunderstorms associated with Kay’s remnants — though any downpours from Kay may help quash active fires, too.
Past tropical systems to affect California | 2022-09-09T16:02:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rare tropical storm bringing heavy rain, strong winds to California - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/09/kay-california-southwest-flooding-storm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/09/kay-california-southwest-flooding-storm/ |
For several decades now, education policymakers have been obsessed with data-driven accountability — usually with standardized test scores as the key metric. The approach has failed to achieve any of the goals supporters have championed, such as closing the achievement gap, and has instead brought us things like pep rallies to get students excited to take standardized tests and schemes to evaluate teachers based on the scores.
Such accountability schemes need to be reevaluated now as a new school year begins and millions of students and teachers are still trying to work through the academic and mental health setbacks caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This piece looks at the one-size-fits-all metrics and what could be used instead.
This was written by Simone Ispa-Landa and Wendy Espeland, both of Northwestern University. Ispa-Landa is a Northwestern sociologist and a former Public Voices fellow through the OpEd Project, an effort to widen the range of voices and ideas heard in the public square. Espeland is also a Northwestern sociologist and the author (with Michael Sauder) of the award-winning book “Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability.”
What you don’t know about the schools at the top of these high school rankings
By Simone Ispa-Landa and Wendy Espeland
These days, accountability means metrics. We are a nation obsessed with lists and rankings, and not just for dishwashers and other consumer products. We track our steps, rate our sleep, and go to hospitals with the “best ratings.”
In the world of education, school leaders in a few lucky towns can proudly announce that their school has been “ranked as the best in the state” by U.S. News & World Report. But for most of the other 91,328 public school communities in the United States, falling lower in the rankings can be a source of shame and chagrin — even if educators are providing students with the most excellent education possible.
In education, it’s not just committed, creative public school teachers who complain they are being punished by quantitative accountability schemes. Law schools live and die by rankings based on metrics that may not match their mission or capture how well they serve their students and the public good. When they cater to underrepresented students or focus on public interest law, they may fall in the rankings despite accomplishing their goals. Professors may try to write in ways that will boost the number of “likes” on Twitter, even if no one actually reads their work.
In public schools, poor test scores can result in school closure, lower home values, and teacher layoffs. Trying to evaluate complex and varied institutions according to a universal metric that seems neutral and objective is a trend that has long alarmed experts, who warn that accountability measures can create perverse incentives.
In our research, we find that, across institutions, school leaders are pressured to devote enormous time and energy to “improving the numbers,” even when this comes at the expense of making changes that, in private, they acknowledge would be far more impactful for students. Because rankings and other measures change how school leaders do their work and make decisions, current accountability policies have far-reaching implications for school discipline and student mental health at a moment of intense national crisis in child and youth well-being.
Despite the problems of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 K-12 education law which punished schools with poor metrics, the use of performance metrics has spread. Schools are now evaluated by a series of quantifiable standards of success that now incorporate everything from test scores to school discipline. The State of Illinois illustrates the dilemma that many schools face. In Illinois, the State Board of Education created a single metric to capture a school’s use of problematic and racially biased discipline.
This tactic may sound like an excellent solution to the pernicious problem of school pushout for students from racially minoritized backgrounds, and activists whom we admire fought hard for such measures.
Yet, the metric is based on just three factors: the rate of out-of-school suspensions, out-of-school expulsions, and the differences in these rates for White students and students of color. Since its adoption in 2015, Illinois has ranked all public schools according to how they do on this one metric. Schools that fall within the top 20 percent are put on a highly publicized “bad” list and must submit plans to remediate the problem. Local news outlets are eager to report the results, often to the embarrassment and dismay of hard-working administrators.
Harvard flunks in this college ranking system
Since the rankings are based on these measures only, school leaders are incentivized to engage in tactics to “bring the numbers down.” Transferring students to alternative schools that provide an inferior education can become an attractive option, as can switching to in-school suspension, which is not counted in the metrics, but is still likened by many teachers to a “jail” or “prison” within the school. Teachers may also be incentivized to “look the other way” when students act out since this will inevitably bring down the numbers of students who are referred to administrators and thereby become eligible for suspension. Yet, ignoring distracting behavior further weakens learning and the bonds of trust that can occur when a teacher shows concern for an adolescent student’s missteps.
In addition, the metric does not capture all the times when a sensitive teacher is able to help a student process the trauma of being racially profiled, navigate a potentially explosive conflict with a peer, or handle the disappointment of romantic rejection. Yet, all these can powerfully affect students’ mental health and the likelihood that they will react to stressors in ways that put them afoul of school rules.
What are savvy administrators to do? In the schools we have studied, smart, caring administrators engage in intense and time-consuming efforts to create data systems that will force their fellow educators to mark, measure, and quantify the good work they are doing — work that is not included in the metric, but can be used in school board meetings and media bulletins. Inevitably, the data systems they create will confine and quantify qualitatively different kinds of interactions with students into narrow, prearranged categories with positive labels that are sure to impress outsider evaluators — things like “preventive intervention” or “social-emotional learning.” These data systems will also add to the workload of already overburdened educators, who will have to learn yet another system for data entry.
To be sure, such efforts can look disingenuous; it can seem like administrators are cynically and singularly focused on their image. But, it’s understandable that administrators do these things; in many cases, they are acting to preserve their institutions.
Experts at the American Academy of Pediatrics have been warning that children’s mental health has been worsening for years. Recently, they declared child and adolescent mental health a national emergency. Knowing the toll that untreated mental health issues can take on students’ learning and behavior, school administrators are desperately looking for ways to help. And they are right to do so: youth who lack supportive mental health services are more likely to fall victim to harsh and exclusionary school discipline and school pushout.
Some administrators are coming up with promising and creative ways to improve student mental health — but these don’t factor into the rankings, leading them further into the spiral of time-consuming efforts to mark, measure, and quantify.
At one school, administrators are offering students a way to clear detentions by going to art therapy, changing the schedule so students are less rushed and stressed during passing periods, and urging deans of discipline and social workers not to punish students for passionately “venting” in colorful language in private office hours. Such efforts may ultimately help “reduce the numbers” in school discipline, but even if they do not, it would be a pity if they had to be scrapped, all because they do not manage to make their way into a single metric to which everyone is now beholden.
We should acknowledge that one-size-fits-all metrics do not fairly measure what matters most in many schools. Right now, what matters most is finding ways to address and improve students’ mental health so they can get back on track with learning. We should reward schools for innovation, for creating programs that will take time to evaluate.
Simple numbers promote simple solutions and can prevent promising programs with long-term positive implications from taking root. Before we head into another school year, let’s look at dismantling the ranking systems that are burdening our administrators with busywork and preventing authentic improvement.
Let’s have the new school year be one in which educators can focus on cutting-edge, evidence-based improvements to meet students’ needs instead of catering to the rankings. | 2022-09-09T16:02:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why one-size-fits-all metrics for evaluating schools must go - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/09/schools-accountability-faulty-metrics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/09/schools-accountability-faulty-metrics/ |
BYU completed its investigation into an alleged racist incident at a volleyball match last month. (iStock)
Brigham Young University announced Friday that a school investigation found no evidence that a fan at a women’s volleyball match against Duke on Aug. 26 yelled racial slurs toward a Blue Devils player.
Lesa Pamplin, an attorney in Fort Worth, tweeted after the match that her goddaughter, Duke outside hitter Rachel Richardson, was called a racial slur “every time she served” during the match. Pamplin also said Richardson, a sophomore from Ellicott City, Md., who is the only Black starter on the team, was “threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus.”
Richardson described the scene on Twitter, writing that “my fellow African American teammates and I were targeted and racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match. The slurs and comments grew into threats which caused us to feel unsafe. Both the officials and BYU coaching staff were made aware of the incident during the game, but failed to take the necessary steps to stop the unacceptable behavior and create a safe environment.”
Richardson’s father, Marvin, also said that a student was yelling racial slurs toward his daughter but was allowed to remain at the match. He said a police officer was later placed on the Duke bench.
But BYU said Friday its investigation did not find “any evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event.”
“We reviewed all available video and audio recordings, including security footage and raw footage from all camera angles taken by BYUtv of the match, with broadcasting audio removed (to ensure that the noise from the stands could be heard more clearly),” the school said in a statement. “We also reached out to more than 50 individuals who attended the event: Duke athletic department personnel and student-athletes, BYU athletic department personnel and student-athletes, event security and management and fans who were in the arena that evening, including many of the fans in the on-court student section.”
BYU initially apologized to Duke after the incident and banned the student who was accused of yelling racial slurs toward Richardson, but the ban was lifted Friday. The school “sincerely apologizes to that fan for any hardship the ban has caused,” it said in the statement.
“There will be some who assume we are being selective in our review,” the school said. “To the contrary, we have tried to be as thorough as possible in our investigation, and we renew our invitation for anyone with evidence contrary to our findings to come forward and share it.”
Neither Richardson nor Pamplin have commented after Friday’s announcement.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, BYU police spoke to the man who allegedly yelled the slurs after the match, identifying him as a student at Utah Valley University. The man denied yelling the slurs, telling police that the only thing he yelled was that the players “shouldn’t hit the ball into the net.” In a police report, an officer who reviewed video footage wrote that the man was not observed yelling racial slurs when he was alleged to have done so by Richardson’s family and Duke officials.
After the incident, the South Carolina women’s basketball team canceled a home-and-home series against the Cougars. The Gamecocks were scheduled to start the season at home against the Cougars on Nov. 7, then play in Provo, Utah, during the 2023-24 season.
“As a head coach, my job is to do what’s best for my players and staff,” South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley said in a statement released by South Carolina last week. “The incident at BYU has led me to reevaluate our home-and-home, and I don’t feel that this is the right time for us to engage in this series.” | 2022-09-09T16:04:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | BYU says probe found no evidence of racial slurs toward Duke volleyball player - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/byu-investigation-racial-slurs-duke/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/byu-investigation-racial-slurs-duke/ |
A shot and a beer with locals can instantly make your feel at home
Perspective by Gregory Wakeman
(Min Heo/for The Washington Post)
Arriving in a new city can be stressful.
You’re on alert, worried about looking like a tourist and wary of being ripped off. Lugging bags around while finding your way can leave your mind and body on the brink of exhaustion.
But there’s a shortcut that can solve some of these problems: A trip to a local dive bar.
There are two approaches to finding such an establishment. If you plan your trips meticulously, you can research before you arrive. That way you’ll know why Jimmy’s Corner and Rudy’s can be an escape from the suffocation of midtown Manhattan, why to look for Sam Smith’s pubs in London, and why you should ask for a “city wide” — a shot and a beer — at a dive bar in Philadelphia.
That was my approach during a visit to Mexico City in February 2019. When it was time to explore, I had already made a long list of potential establishments.
While there were many trendy options to pick from, one bar immediately stood out. La Nuclear is tiny, narrow and dark — and proud of all three. Once through its saloon doors, you’re confronted by the bar and a pack of people queuing for drinks. Most are there for the same thing, too.
A local's guide to Mexico City
Pulque is a traditional central Mexican beverage, made from the sap of the maguey plant.La Nuclear has pulque in a variety of flavors, including pina, mango, and celery. It’s made in the morning, and the bar regularly runs out later in the day.
As I sat and drank my pulque — which looks like milk, but tastes more like kombucha - I realized that La Nuclear was the perfect place to not just people watch, but to get a sense of the true Mexico City.Being in such close confines with a mixture of locals and tourists, I felt at home — not just in the bar, but in Mexico City.
But other times, you just want to fly by the seat of your pants. In Valparaiso, Chile, Cerro Concepcion’s cobbled hills, beautiful street murals, and colorful houses is a place where you can walk for hours and never feel bored.
I was ecstatically lost among its labyrinth of streets during a visit in July 2017. In need of rejuvenation, I popped into a half-packed local bar, where the paint was falling off and the chairs and tables were all different sizes.
At the airport bar, rules don't apply
Then, just a few sips into my beer, some patrons stood up, their brass instruments in hand. Instantly, the room was full of blaring live music. Everyone in the bar soaked it up with a reverence usually reserved for Mass. The next morning, hung over and on the brink of tinnitus, I basked in the memory of the previous evening, without realizing that I didn’t know the bar’s name or even where it was, exactly.
Yet the thought of going back there never even crossed my mind. My main rule when exploring dive bars is: Never return. There are too many unseen corners of the city and unconsumed beer-and-shot deals for repeated visits.
Of course, if there’s a great happy hour to be had, though, there’s always room for exceptions.
Born and raised in Northern England but now based in Philadelphia, Gregory Wakeman writes on entertainment, travel and soccer. | 2022-09-09T16:04:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dive bars show you a city in its truest form - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/dive-bars-travel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/dive-bars-travel/ |
Justice Department leans in on Trump and the empty folders
An image provided by the Justice Department shows partially redacted documents with classified markings, including colored cover sheets indicating their status, that FBI agents reported finding at Trump's office in Mar-a-Lago. (Courtesy of Department of Justice)
One week ago, we learned an intriguing detail about the search of Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago: Along with the roughly 100 classified documents recovered, the government also found 48 folders with banners marked “classified” but which were nonetheless empty.
What we didn’t know was how significant the government considered that finding; the empty folders were merely listed on an inventory list.
On Thursday, though, the Justice Department served notice that the empty folders are of significant interest. And it argued that tracing them to specific classified documents is among the urgent reasons that its review should be allowed to continue.
The Justice Department’s filing urges Judge Aileen M. Cannon to stay part of her ruling this week halting the Justice Department’s review of documents while a special master is allowed to examine them. The government narrowly requests that it be allowed to keep examining only the classified documents, not the many others recovered. It argues that the Justice Department’s criminal probe and the intelligence community’s risk assessment — the latter of which Cannon allowed to have continued access to the documents — are “inextricably” linked.
Among the handful of reasons mentioned: the empty folders. And the Justice Department implies that it might indeed be able to use the folders to determine whether there are larger issues than Trump merely having possessed classified documents. Specifically, it cites the possibility that classified documents might have been “lost” or “compromised.”
“The FBI would be chiefly responsible for investigating what materials may have once been stored in these folders and whether they may have been lost or compromised — steps that, again, may require the use of grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, and other criminal investigative tools and could lead to evidence that would also be highly relevant to advancing the criminal investigation,” the DOJ’s filing states.
Later in the filing, the Justice Department again returns to the idea that classified documents might still be missing.
“In addition, the injunction against using classified records in the criminal investigation could impede efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored — which itself presents the potential for ongoing risk to national security,” it says.
The idea that the government hasn’t recovered all classified documents is hardly far-fetched. Trump, after all, failed to return all the documents when they were subpoenaed months ago, even as his lawyer asserted that all requested documents had been returned, federal prosecutors said last month.
The disclosure of the empty folders last week, though, raised the possibility that the government might have an avenue to answering that question. It’s not clear what detail might have been on the folders or how they could be traced to specific documents, but experts have said it’s possible to make such connections, as we reported last week:
The government, notably, recovered the empty folders in its search on Aug. 8, and Cannon’s order halting its review came Monday. That provided nearly a month to try to connect the folders to the classified documents that had been recovered — either in the search itself or among documents previously returned by Trump and his legal team.
The National Archives in its February referral to the Justice Department noted that some documents Trump returned in January were “unfoldered” — a fact it listed among things that were “of most significant concern.” A plausible explanation would seem to be that those documents might be connected to the empty folders.
What the new filing suggests is that it wasn’t so simple to connect them, and the government says its efforts on that front should thus be allowed to continue. It says the reasons for that aren’t only the criminal investigation, but also national security. And it says the FBI needs to continue its review because its role in the process is central to the intelligence community’s risk assessment.
Specifically, it says the possibility that such information could be “compromised” is a “core aspect” of the criminal investigation. And in a footnote, it says that any such compromised information being identified would allow the intelligence community “to consider this information to determine whether they need to treat certain sources and methods as compromised.”
Trump’s legal team has yet to say much of substance about the empty folders. But in an interview earlier this week, Trump lawyer Alina Habba indicated she didn’t have a ready explanation. She even made a quip about the idea that the documents are “invisible.”
“It could mean anything. I don’t know,” she said. “It could mean that they gave those documents to [the National Archives] and to the FBI prior, as we know, which they had done. It could mean there was nothing in them. It could mean they’re invisible — if you’re in their administration. I truly don’t know.”
Neither, apparently, does the government. It says it’s still trying to find out. And so now it’s challenging Judge Cannon on a ruling that it argues could hamstring a crucial aspect of its review — not just of potential crimes, but also national security.
The latest: Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit against Hillary Clinton over 2016 election | 2022-09-09T16:11:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Justice Department leans in on Trump and the empty folders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/justice-department-cannon-empty-folders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/justice-department-cannon-empty-folders/ |
Lance Mackey, four-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race winner, dies at 52
After the string of wins, he was beset by health scares and drug problems that prevented him from ever again reaching the top of the sport
Lance Mackey with his lead dogs Larry, right, and Maple after crossing the finish line of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on March 18, 2009, in Nome, Alaska, to win his third Iditarod in a row. (Al Grillo/AP)
Lance Mackey, a four-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race winner who was one of mushing’s most colorful and accomplished champions, died Sept. 7 at age 52.
The cause was cancer, his father and kennel announced on Facebook. No other details were provided.
But after the string of wins, he was beset by health scares and drug problems that prevented him from ever again reaching the top of the sport.
The treatment for his throat cancer cost him his saliva glands and ultimately disintegrated his teeth. He was then diagnosed with Raynaud’s syndrome, which limits circulation to the hands and feet and is exacerbated by the cold weather that every musher must contend with in the wilds of Alaska.
After his string of first-place finishes, Mr. Mackey dropped back in the standings, finishing a career-worst 43rd in 2015. The next year he scratched and didn’t race the Iditarod again until 2019, when he placed 26th.
Before the Iditarod began drug testing in 2010, Mr. Mackey also acknowledged using marijuana on the trail.
Last month, Mr. Mackey told the Iditarod website that an examination after a car accident discovered more cancer, and he thought treatment had taken care of it.
When asked if he was fearful, Mr. Mackey responded: “I’m not fearing nothing. You know, it is what it is, but I’m not any different than the rest of the people on the planet. When it’s my bus stop, I’ll get off.” | 2022-09-09T16:28:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lance Mackey, four-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race winner, dies at 52 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/09/lance-mackey-iditarod-winner-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/09/lance-mackey-iditarod-winner-dead/ |
Queen Elizabeth II logged 285 official tours, visiting heads of state and the Commonwealth of former colonies
By Gabe Hiatt
Monique Woo
Queen Elizabeth II on a rainforest walk at Red Peak, near Cairns, Queensland, Australia on March 1, 2002. (Ian Jones/Daily Telegraph Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
Queen Elizabeth II couldn’t help but set a new standard for travel diplomacy.
She was born in 1926, witnessing the world move from steamships to all manner of aircraft. She reached supersonic speed on the Concorde in 1977 and became a regular on Australian airline Qantas. According to records kept by the Royal Family, the Queen logged 285 official tours, including state visits with foreign leaders and jaunts across the vast Commonwealth of former colonies.
Given the length and transportation advancements of her reign, she may be the most-traveled monarch, at once a stoic dignitary and a living symbol of Britain’s imperial history.
We’ve collected a life’s worth of travel photos of the Queen, from Paris, China and Nigeria to the South Lawn of the White House and Camden Yards in Baltimore. | 2022-09-09T16:37:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II's travels abroad, in photos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-travel-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/09/queen-elizabeth-travel-photos/ |
Workers with the Baltimore City Department of Public Works distribute water to residents at the Landsdowne branch of the Baltimore County Public Library on Sept. 6, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Baltimore officials on Friday morning lifted a boil water advisory for all areas in the city but continued to search for the source of E. coli contamination.
“The health and well-being of our residents is our top priority, and we will keep working diligently to determine the source of the contamination and monitor for illness,” Mayor Brandon Scott said at a news conference.
West Baltimore and parts of Baltimore County had been under a boil water advisory since Monday, after the Baltimore City Department of Public Works found E. coli bacteria at three sites in the city. Officials narrowed the affected area Thursday, after two of the three sites tested negative for contamination.
Officials urged residents to flush the water systems in their homes and businesses by letting the tap run for at least 15 minutes and to discard ice trays.
Water distribution will continue until 8 p.m. Friday and until noon on Saturday at one location: 1401 W. Lafayette Ave., Harlem Park Middle/Elementary School.
Jason Mitchell, director of the Baltimore City Department of Public Works, said that the city has ruled out problems with the water treatment plant but that water main breaks, construction and a valve repair in a small section of West Baltimore are “leading candidates” for what might be behind the contamination. Multiple factors could be to blame or the search could be inconclusive, he said.
“We’ll let the science and data lead us to that location,” Mitchell said.
Advocates and elected officials in Baltimore have called for investment in the city’s aging water and wastewater infrastructure to head off problems. City officials will discount water bills 25 percent in the next cycle.
It’s unclear whether the water contamination has sickened any residents, said Baltimore City Health Commissioner Letitia Dzirasa.
Of two cases previously under investigation, symptoms in a minor cleared on their own. The other individual is hospitalized with sickness due to E.coli bacteria, she said, but the case has not been linked to the water. | 2022-09-09T16:50:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baltimore lifts boil water advisory - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/baltimore-water-safe-ecoli-contamination/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/baltimore-water-safe-ecoli-contamination/ |
Britain’s King Charles III is expected to address England for the first time as monarch on Sept. 9, a day after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. (Video: The Washington Post)
LONDON — What sort of King will Charles III be? As he delivers his first speech on Friday, the world is watching to see.
Different from mum. That’s almost certain.
Charles has opinions. He expresses them. He’s 73. He may not be able to turn it off. The heir has spent a lifetime promoting his views. He has established princely think tanks and foundations and trusts to do so — to promote “holistic solutions to the challenges facing the world today.”
He has deep thoughts on fast fashion, hedgerows, parking garages and organic tomatoes.
Charles has conceded that as king, he will have to express his views less openly and often — but his biographers don’t quite believe this is fully possible.
Once dismissed as a nutter by his critics, because he confessed he talks to trees, Charles is right on time for 2022.
He was a rock star at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. He is ardent. He believes the planet is going to hell while the world’s governments fiddle.
Charles could be an ecological warrior-king in a Savile Row suit.
“He will be a different sort of monarch. Charles is a deep thinker, romantic, sentimentalist,” said Robert Hardman, a royal biographer, author of “Queen of Our Times.”
Political neutrality is often understood essential for the monarchy and its survival in modern times. But in Robert Jobson’s 2018 biography, “King Charles: The Man, the Monarch, and the Future of Britain,” the author describes a person who may want very much to “lead as monarch, not just follow.”
The queen? She was hard to pin down, honestly.
We could all see that Elizabeth loved horses and sensible shoes and dogs and handbags and the Church of England and shooting stags and Land Rovers and tradition and Prince Philip and duty and her often stumbling, sometimes dysfunctional tabloid fodder of a family.
But what did she really think about any of the major issues of her time, over the course of a 70-year reign? Apartheid? Feminism? Brexit? The queen believed strongly that the monarch shouldn’t interfere in politics. And so in most cases, royal watchers had to resort to reading the tea leaves to guess her stance.
And yet Britons adored her. Even many people who dislike the monarchy as an institution had a soft spot for the queen.
Pollsters say a lot of Britons don’t love Charles, though they don’t strongly dislike him, either. While some still hold a grudge, many seem to have given him a reprieve, more than 25 years later, for his role is his disastrous marriage to Princess Diana, which ended in tragedy. He was adulterer. But he was also deeply in love. With Camilla, it turned out, now queen consort.
Episodes of the popular television series “The Crown” portrayed him as a cold fish, a cruel man, uncomfortable with himself. But Charles is known to those who know him to be quite warm in person. In a long receiving line at a palace function, the queen kept it moving. Charles lingers.
“His staff always say his investitures always take a lot longer than the queen’s, because she’s quite good at having a few words and the handshake and then, right, that’s off you go,” Hardman told The Washington Post. “Whereas Charles is much more prone to start having conversations and go, “Oh, you’re a sheep farmer. What sort of sheep do you farm?” It’s just a different approach.”
In public, he can be awkward. Tonally off. As when he boasted that his climate-conscious Aston Martin sports car ran on wine and cheese.
Prince Charles says his Aston Martin runs on wine and cheese byproducts
He has adopted some peculiar — and oddly specific — positions over the years, on topics like the best breeds of sheep and the importance of proper joinery carpentry. He also has big ideas about climate change, urban blight, organic farming and the dehumanizing nature of modern architecture.
In the 2018 BBC documentary, “Prince, Son And Heir: Charles At 70,” the future king is asked about accusations of meddling in public affairs. He replies: “Really? You don’t say.”
He explains: “I always wonder what meddling is, I mean, I always thought it was motivating.”
“But I’ve always been intrigued, if it’s meddling to worry about the inner cities as I did 40 years ago and what was happening or not happening there, the conditions in which people were living.”
He said, “If that’s meddling I’m very proud of it.”
Prince Charles says cheap food and industrial farming are ruining the planet
Reaching for Shakespeare, and how young Prince Hal grew up to be Henry V, he told the documentarians: “I won’t be able to do the same things I’ve done, you know, as heir, so of course you operate within the constitutional parameters.”
Asked about fears that his involvement would continue in the same way, Charles said: “No, it won’t. I’m not that stupid, I do realize that it is a separate exercise, being sovereign.”
The interview itself is another point of contrast with his mother. Queen Elizabeth II never gave a press interview in her life, even though she lived through a time when the British press were hem-kissers to the monarch. Charles has spent hours and hours with BBC, despite having faced the media buzz saw, the worst of the worst tabloids in the 1990s.
The queen believed, devoutly, in Jesus Christ as lord and savior. She was a religious figure, as “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England.” Her Christmas messages often got in a mention of Jesus.
Charles is more spiritual than devout. He believes we have fallen from grace, from a more traditional, natural, Edenic state, by succumbing, much too much, to mechanistic, technological, modernist thinking.
In his 2010 book “Harmony,” a 336-page exposition of his princely philosophy, Charles decries how the Age of Convenience produced the Age of Disconnection.
God, for Charles, can be understood in the repeating mathematic pattern of a flower’s petals.
How hippies, farmers and Prince Charles are preserving the ancient art of hedgelaying
The queen had her many charities, and so does Charles. But he has gone much further in using his to express a world view.
As Duke of Cornwall, and overseer of the Duchy of Cornwall, he was responsible 129,600 acres of land across 20 counties in southwest England, focused on “sustainability,” one of his favorite words — and not one the queen dwelled upon.
To promote his ideas on traditional architecture on what he calls “the human scale,” Charles has created — completely from scratch — an experimental planned community for 6,000 residents and 180 businesses, called Poundbury, with low-rise buildings, front gardens, reduced car use, designed upon the “new urbanism” that the king has called his “vision for Britain.”
The Prince’s Trust, too, over four decades, has helped a million young people in Brian and around the Commonwealth, with free courses, grants and mentoring opportunities.
Charles has foundations and he has donors — and that has caused some minor scandals, such as reports of cash donations from a former Qatari prime minister that were handed over in a suitcase and Fortnum and Mason shopping bag. The Charity Commission declined to investigate. Charles said all donations have been legally declared and accounted for.
Charles has said he will return to live in Buckingham Palace in central London, an edifice his mother had mostly abandoned since the pandemic. But the new king also says he wants to slim-down the monarchy, get it on 21st century footing.
One of the queen’s final headaches was what to do about Prince Andrew, who has been largely banished from public life, since his settlement of a lawsuit brought by a woman who says she was trafficked to him by convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Charles appears to have agreed with his mother.
What King Charles does with his son, Prince Harry, remains an open question. Does he work to bring Harry and his wife, Meghan back into the royal fold? After they quit their royal duties, moved to California and then aired their grievances to Oprah? Or keep them distant? Some signals of his intent may emerge in coming days.
There is already, in the first day, signs of change. On Friday, the new king greeted mourners at Buckingham Palace and reached out to grasp hand after hand, until one woman thrust herself forward to bestow kiss. (Recall, nobody was supposed to touch the queen.)
At Buckingham Palace on Thursday night, Jane Gibbs, 58, said her grandmother was a ladies maid to Princess Margaret, the queen’s sister. Speaking from underneath an umbrella, she described the queen as “our ruler” and “better than any president.”
Sitting next to her was Jill Creswell, a retired Londoner, who was carrying a bouquet of flowers. “We cried our eyes out,” she said. She said she approved of Charles becoming king, as he was next in line, but made it clear that it was William who would be “our king.” Moments later, she belted out the national anthem, “God Save the Queen.”
Many people did this, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly, sometimes prompted by a brass band somewhere in the throng of thousands. | 2022-09-09T17:07:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What will King Charles III be like as Britain’s monarch? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/how-will-king-charles-rule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/how-will-king-charles-rule/ |
Lamar Jackson is entering the final season of his current contract. (Kevin Richardson/The Baltimore Sun/AP)
The Baltimore Ravens said Friday they would not be able to reach an agreement with quarterback Lamar Jackson on a contract extension by Sunday’s season-opening game, postponing further negotiations with the NFL’s former most valuable player until after the season.
Jackson is set to play this season on the one year remaining on his current contract. He is eligible for unrestricted free agency in the spring, although the Ravens could use their franchise player tag to restrict his movement or keep him off the market entirely.
“Despite best efforts on both sides, we were unable to reach a contract extension with Lamar Jackson,” Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta said in a written statement issued by the team. “We greatly appreciate how he has handled this process and we are excited about our team with Lamar leading the way. We will continue to work towards a long-term contract after the season, but for now we are looking forward to a successful 2022 campaign.”
There had been skepticism all week about the prospects for the two sides to strike a deal this week. The negotiations were complicated by Jackson’s decision to represent himself without an agent involved and, even more notably, by a standoff over guaranteed money arising from the fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract that quarterback Deshaun Watson signed with the Cleveland Browns in March.
Jackson had suggested that he would cut off negotiations by the season opener. He said Wednesday that he considered Friday the deadline for a deal.
“As of right now, we’re still talking,” Jackson said then. “The week’s not over yet. But soon. Soon [there will] probably be a deadline, probably [will] be cut off after this week.”
Jackson said Wednesday he had “no clue” whether he and the Ravens were closer to a deal at that point than they had been previously, adding: “You have to ask the guy who I’m talking to.”
He is set to make $23.016 million this season under the fifth-year option in his original rookie contract previously exercised by the Ravens.
If the Ravens remain unable to reach a deal with Jackson on a long-term contract, they could use their non-exclusive franchise tag on Jackson after the season. That probably would cost them around $30 million for a one-year deal for the 2023 season. It would allow Jackson to negotiate with other teams and potentially sign an offer sheet with another franchise. But the Ravens would have the right to retain him by matching any offer, and the right to receive two first-round draft choices as compensation from Jackson’s next team if they allow him to leave.
For a higher price, probably at least $45 million on a one-year deal for the ’23 season, the Ravens could use their exclusive franchise tag and prevent Jackson from negotiating with other teams.
Jackson, 25, is believed to be seeking a fully guaranteed contract like Watson’s, and the Ravens are thought to be unwilling to comply. The two major contract extensions signed most recently by prominent NFL quarterbacks — Kyler Murray’s five-year, $230.5 million deal with the Arizona Cardinals and Russell Wilson’s five-year, $245 extension with the Denver Broncos — are not fully guaranteed.
Jackson is handling the negotiations himself with help from his mother and input from the NFL Players Association. A person familiar with the situation expressed the view this week that it would take a dramatic last-minute shift in the negotiations for Jackson and the Ravens to reach an agreement this week. Such a breakthrough didn’t happen.
The Ravens open their season Sunday against the New York Jets in East Rutherford, N.J. They’ll face Joe Flacco, their former Super Bowl-winning quarterback who is filling in for Jets starter Zach Wilson while Wilson works his way back from a preseason knee injury.
The Ravens are attempting to rebound from an 8-9 season in which they lost their final six games and missed the AFC playoffs. They need a bounce-back season from Jackson, who was plagued by injuries and was limited to 12 games last season. He was the league’s MVP in the 2019 season. | 2022-09-09T17:16:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ravens, Lamar Jackson won't reach new deal before season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/lamar-jackson-ravens-contract/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/09/lamar-jackson-ravens-contract/ |
The metaverse-hungry platform is looking for more ways to monetize
(Roblox/Washington Post illustration)
Roblox, the platform with metaverse ambitions that targets tweens, is introducing a host of new features aimed at making its experiences more age-appropriate and profitable for the company. In coming weeks, Roblox will introduce age guidelines for individual experiences or games, chief product officer Manuel Bronstein said, helping its 52 million daily users better navigate the games hosted on the site. The games will be marked as either appropriate for all ages, suitable for those nine and older and those 13-and-older.
“Our platform is aging up now,” said Roblox chief product officer Manuel Bronstein. “More than 50% of our users are 13 plus, and our fastest growing demographic is 17 to 24. So it makes sense for people to have control over what experiences they’re going to access.”
Roblox’s platform comprises user-generated games, many created by children and teens, some of whom have made millions of dollars for themselves. The company declined to share exact percentages of how many users are under the age of 13. Last year, it said 54% were under the age of 13. Roblox notes that about 90% of the developers of its top 1,000 games by earnings are above the age of 18. The platform has over 12 million game developers.
All ages content could contain infrequent mild violence or light unrealistic blood, according to the company, while the gated content for 13 and above could feature moderate violence and light realistic blood. Roblox says it doesn’t allow romantic or sexual content on its platform.
The San Mateo, California-based company went public in March 2021, at $64.50 per share. At the time, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki told The Washington Post he envisioned Roblox helping build and grow the metaverse, or a next version of the internet that’s shared and active, a confluence of music, games, films and more. The company posted a net loss of $176 million in the quarter ending in June, compared to a $140 million loss in the same time period last year.
Roblox has looked to add certain features already popularized by other major tech companies, though the platform faces more challenges given its younger user base. Roblox plans to add a facial animation feature, making avatars change expression based on facial recognition — a feature popularized by Apple’s Memojis. The company said people will be able to chat with each other using the feature in a testing phase soon, and it has plans for a full release early next year. The gaming platform has also been rolling out a spatial voice feature since last November, which works similarly to one offered by Meta, formerly Facebook, via their Oculus headset.
While Roblox looks to expand, it still has to deal with a major threat to its business. Unlike many other games, Roblox titles are often aimed at children under the age of 13, and can be multiplayer, allowing users to interact with strangers online. That opens up the platform to a lot of responsibilities, including setting strong parental controls and giving parents education on how to use them.
“Much of Roblox’s user base is simply too young to understand the nuance of features like these when it comes to data and safety, and I don’t think we should ignore that many children use platforms like Roblox unsupervised, either,” said Alisha Karabinus, a games researcher at Grand Valley State University in Michigan who has children ages nine and 14. “So many children are given the same warning when it comes to navigating online worlds: don’t share personal or private information with strangers. Don’t share photos. But: what’s more personal or private than your face?”
Roblox requires users to verify they are 13 or older to use the voice chat feature by submitting a government ID or verifying their phone number. It relies on users to report bad actors, in lieu of complete real-time moderation from employees or artificial intelligence, which has traditionally been extremely challenging for in-game voice communications. Bronstein points out that users can also mute individuals or everyone.
“In the future, we may have technology that could eventually do some level of real-time filtering, but that’s not in place anywhere in the world right now,” Bronstein said. “So what you can do is do a lot of good real-time moderation and give users control.”
Roblox voice chat checks ID to keep kids safe, but slurs and sex sounds slip through
Voice recordings may be used in the future to support users’ reports of bad behavior. Bronstein said that Roblox was mindful of data privacy.
“First of all, we let people know that when they’re using voice, their voice could be recorded for moderation and abuse reports and then those files after a certain period of time just disappear,” Bronstein said. “We don’t have any plans to store users’ voice for a long period of time.”
Roblox has also been testing a new version of text chat that would give users above age 13 more freedom. The chat filter would keep those under 13 from seeing acronyms like “LMAO,” but allow those over 13 to see the words and acronyms.
Next year, Roblox plans to introduce immersive ads, a way to tap into a new revenue stream in addition to its existing subscriptions and in-game transactions. Warner Bros. and the shoe company Vans have tested ads out on the platform.
“This is going to be our take on what advertising in the metaverse looks like,” Bronstein said. “This is a big area that we’re excited about from an innovation standpoint because I don’t think this has been figured out. We’re thinking about interactive formats, where if there’s a billboard, promoting a beautiful item, like say, a pair of shoes, you can tap on the billboard and immediately you are in the dressing room where you can try on those shoes and complete the transaction.”
The ads will be gated to those 13 or older. But gaming experts cautioned against tailoring ads to children, and the harmful effects that could have.
“Even an aging user base is still a young one, and Roblox’s profits are reaped from children. That merits more attention — or should,” Karabinus said, citing studies showing a link between junk food advertising to children and childhood obesity.
Creators on Roblox can already earn profit by selling items, and sometimes limited-edition virtual items that drive up demand. When asked if this meant Roblox was considering getting into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are also digital and collectible, Bronstein said the company didn’t need to get on the blockchain.
“We are not looking into NFTs right now,” he said. “I read about this space and I like it. I like technology and I like to understand what’s going on. But we think that we get a lot of the value or utility without necessarily having to get into the blockchain. We are the platform where if you buy an item, you will have an avatar or a place to use it. You will have 50 million other people to see it.”
To grow more profitable, the company has expanded into Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Russia and China. It launched LuoBuLeSi, the Chinese version of its platform, in July of 2021, only to shut it down six months later, saying it was working on a relaunch. Last year, the company had listed the venture as a risk factor, as it could be hurt by U.S.-China politics.
“Currently, we have paused services and are focused on making the necessary investments, including investments in our data architecture, in order to realize our long-term vision for LuoBuLeSi,” said Desiree Fish, Roblox global communications vice president.
“We’re hoping over time, more and more of our leading developers are coming from China. … There’s also a lot of really amazing content from our global developer base that we believe will do very well in China,” Baszucki told The Washington Post in March 2021.
Last July, Vice reported on leaked Roblox internal documents detailing how it planned to abide by Chinese censorship rules to launch successfully in China, noting that players had national IDs and real names, making it easier to find child predators.
Roblox said in a statement: “Roblox has been actively investigating a phishing incident, which involved a Roblox employee being targeted by cyber criminals through social engineering tactics and using highly personalized scare tactics. These stolen documents were illegally obtained as part of an extortion scheme that we refused to cooperate with.” | 2022-09-09T17:29:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roblox wants to advertise to gamers ages 13 and up in the metaverse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/09/roblox-ads-metaverse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/09/roblox-ads-metaverse/ |
Why Fracking Won’t Solve the Global Oil and Gas Squeeze
Analysis by David Wethe | Bloomberg
Oil rigs stand in the Permian Basin area of Odessa, Texas, U.S., on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019. In the Permian, America’s busiest oil patch, a producer needs to blast as much as 60,000 barrels of water into a well every day, along with sand and chemicals, to complete the fracking that cracks open the tight, oil-bearing rock about a mile underground. (Bloomberg)
A tsunami of oil and gas from the technique called fracking has made the US the world’s biggest producer of both, giving the country the energy independence its leaders have sought for decades and upending the geopolitics of the world energy trade. Now, with the world crying out for more oil and gas, American frackers are theoretically in a position to provide it. Instead, they are riding the brakes, having changed their business models to focus on generating profits for investors rather than increasing production.
1. What is fracking?
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, was first used commercially in 1949 in the oil- and gas-rich US state of Oklahoma. The technique involves forcing water mixed with sand and chemicals into a well to create fissures in underground rocks known as shale so that oil or gas trapped inside can be captured. Advances in another technique, horizontal drilling, came in the early 1980s and opened up access to thin layers of shale deep underground. The subsequent exploitation of the Barnett Shale formation in Texas proved large-scale fracking was economically viable.
2. How has fracking changed the energy trade?
US oil and gas output has more than doubled in two decades, largely thanks to shale-rich areas such as the Permian Basin, which stretches from Texas to New Mexico and alone pumps more oil than most OPEC nations. That’s enabled the world’s largest economy to export fossil fuels at a pace unthinkable only a few years ago. America’s new dominance undercuts OPEC’s ability to control the oil market. OPEC tried to drive North American frackers out of business starting in 2014 by flooding the market with crude, provoking a price crash. Although some frackers went bust, overall they proved nimble, innovating to reduce production costs and stay alive. The abundance of shale gas has helped the US cut its use of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, nearly in half since 2008. What’s more, American gas is now available on world markets, thanks to a process that enables it to be super-cooled into liquefied natural gas and transported via ship.
3. Why are US frackers holding back now?
Recent oil busts, exacerbated by the pandemic, drove many producers to bankruptcy. Coming out of the wreckage, investors demanded that publicly traded producers show more austerity and return profits to shareholders rather than plow it all back into drilling. Some of the biggest producers in the US are generally keeping annual production growth to 5% or less. The service providers who are hired to do the actual fracking are also embracing the chance to reward their shareholders with greater returns. They are holding off on ordering more gear to avoid being stuck with excess equipment as they were when previous booms ended.
4. Where else is fracking done?
Canada was the first country to thoroughly embrace shale extraction outside the US. It’s also spreading to Argentina, Australia, China and Saudi Arabia. In other places, the practice is controversial, and some countries have banned it outright. In the UK, the government overturned a moratorium on new fracking permits in September amid an energy crisis caused by Russia throttling its gas exports.
5. What are the objections?
Opposition to fracking within communities often focuses on water concerns. The copious amount of water needed for fracking -- as much as 16 million gallons per well in the US -- can threaten local supplies, and concerns have been raised that shale operations may contaminate water sources. Fracking and, more commonly, the pumping of wastewater into wells, have been connected to earthquakes. They’ve been mostly small, but temblors in China’s shale hub in Sichuan province killed two people and damaged 11,000 homes in early 2019. More broadly, critics of fracking say that by making oil and gas more plentiful, it has reduced incentives to invest in a switch to renewable energy, even as climate scientists call for speeding the change.
6. What do defenders say?
They note that a growing number of companies are reusing the water employed to frack a well multiple times and are reducing emissions from their operations by utilizing electric-powered vehicles instead of the diesel-powered fleets typical in the oil and gas industry. They point to the jobs created by fracking and the cleaner air natural gas produces where it replaces coal. Their larger argument is that, compared with coal, gas emits half as much carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas. There’s a robust debate as to how much the carbon savings are offset by leaks throughout the natural gas supply chain of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Supporters tout natural gas as a “bridge fuel” that will ease the transition to renewables, supplying power when wind and solar sources don’t, until sufficient storage capacity is built. | 2022-09-09T17:34:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Fracking Won’t Solve the Global Oil and Gas Squeeze - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-fracking-wont-solve-the-global-oil-and-gas-squeeze/2022/09/09/b6e6f0f8-3063-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-fracking-wont-solve-the-global-oil-and-gas-squeeze/2022/09/09/b6e6f0f8-3063-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Li Kwai-wah, senior superintendent of Police National Security Department, poses with three children's books before a news conference in Hong Kong on July 22, 2021. (Vincent Yu/AP)
What is so frightening and subversive about a children’s book series featuring a flock of sheep? That is a question for Hong Kong authorities, who on Wednesday convicted the books’ creators on charges of sedition.
The outrageous verdict marks another low point for Hong Kong’s degraded justice system. The picture books in question, written for children aged 4 to 7, depict sheep trying to protect their village from a pack of wolves. The series contained indirect references to social issues: One book revolved around a dozen sheep that try to escape, apparently alluding to 12 young Hong Kongers captured by China’s coast guard while fleeing the city on a speedboat. Another seemed to reference Hong Kong’s hesitation over closing the border with China in the early days of the pandemic. Even this implied criticism was too much for prosecutors, who claimed the books “indoctrinated” readers and disseminated “separatist” ideas. The district court judge — who was handpicked by the city’s chief executive to serve as a national security judge — concurred, ruling that all three books were seditious.
The series’ producers — speech therapists Lorie Lai, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan and Fong Tsz-ho — languished in detention for more than a year as they awaited trial. They now face up to two years in prison, with sentences expected on Saturday.
For decades, Hong Kong’s vibrant, open publishing landscape offered a sharp contrast to the tightly controlled industry in the mainland. This was clearly a thorn in Beijing’s side: In 2015, Chinese authorities reached across borders to kidnap and detain five independent booksellers and publishers on bogus grounds. The suppression accelerated in 2020, when China forced through a draconian national security law that criminalized dissent and created a parallel judicial system for vague crimes of “secession,” “subversion,” “terrorism” and “collusion.”
Now, Hong Kong authorities appear to be weaponizing British-era sedition statutes to stifle criticism. A court ruling last December gave police vast investigative powers over sedition cases and raised the threshold for bail. In the following months, arrests and charges under these laws spiked. Among the figures arrested were a 75-year-old man with terminal cancer, who was handed a nine-month sentence for planning a protest against the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and a 67-year-old woman who attended a court hearing for a democracy activist and applauded from the gallery. Authorities also invoked sedition laws against the executives of Apple Daily and Stand News, two fiercely independent media outlets that have been forced to shutter.
Hong Kong’s transformation from a bastion of freedom and rule of law to an authoritarian, closed society has been disturbing to witness. In just two years, Beijing and its puppet administration in Hong Kong have arrested dozens of pro-democracy politicians, compelled unions and civil society groups to disband and put in place a compliant legislature with no opposition. If there were any questions remaining about how far authorities will go to silence dissent, Wednesday’s conviction offers an ominous clue: Not even illustrated children’s books are safe. | 2022-09-09T17:34:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Hong Kong deems children’s books about sheep ‘seditious’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/hong-kong-children-books-sedition/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/hong-kong-children-books-sedition/ |
New York will force Orthodox Jewish schools to meet education standards
Pedestrians outside a grocery store in Borough Park, Brooklyn, home to a large Orthodox Jewish community. (Holly Pickett/For the Washington Post)
New York state officials said Friday they would require private schools to prove they are meeting state education standards, a long-awaited response to allegations that ultrareligious Jewish yeshivas are failing to deliver lessons in core subjects such as English, math and science.
Schools that refuse to comply could lose their designation for meeting the state’s compulsory education requirements. And school districts that fail to monitor the private schools in their boundaries could lose state funding, officials said.
The action comes years after accusations that many ultra-Orthodox schools in Hasidic Jewish communities spent virtually all of their time studying Torah and Talmud, Jewish holy texts, leaving children without the education or skills that state law requires they be offered in English, math, science and social studies, along with a handful of other topics.
State officials said they expect schools and local districts to work together to demonstrate schools are meeting the required benchmarks. That may prove optimistic given the yeshivas’ contention that the entire oversight process is invalid and their resistance to past investigations and questioning.
The new regulations, which are expected to be approved next week by the state Board of Regents, set up a fresh test of religious liberty and schooling, and people on both sides of the debate predicted the dispute will be appealed in court, possibly to the highest levels.
“It’s going to be in the Supreme Court within a year,” said Naftuli Moster, who attended a Hasidic yeshiva in Brooklyn as a child. Angry about the substandard education he said he received, in 2012 he founded the group Young Advocates for Fair Education, or Yaffed, to press for investigations and enforcement.
Analysis: High court opens the door to more public funding of religious schools
The Hasidic community, which has long run its own schools, has lashed out at the effort to monitor its curricula and lessons, calling it an infringement on the right to offer religious education as they see fit. Parents, they say, are entitled to send their children to schools that are consistent with their values and beliefs.
Pearls, a coalition of yeshivas in New York that has been vocal on this issue, described the regulation as an effort to “dictate” curriculum and faculty.
“Those who want State control can choose the public schools,” the group said in a statement. And sounding a defiant note, it added: “Parents in New York have been choosing a yeshiva education for more than 120 years, and will continue to do so, with or without the blessing or support of State leaders in Albany.”
But critics say the system punishes children who are never taught basic skills such as how to read and write in English, do basic math or understand the larger world around them.
In 2019, after a long delay that city investigators found was tied to political interference, the New York Department of Education found 26 of the 28 yeshivas it examined were not meeting standards.
New York state’s efforts have also been drawn out partly because a court required the education agency to put these rules into formal regulations, as opposed to leaving them as mere guidance. Officials said they received some 350,000 public comments, most of them expressing “philosophical opposition” to state regulation of nonpublic schools.
“The regulation respects that parents have a constitutional right to send their children to religious schools, and that we respect the world views of those schools,” said Jim Balwin, senior deputy commission for education policy in New York. “Working together, we are seeking to ensure that all students will receive the education to which they are entitled.”
Since 1895, New York state law has required that children attending nonpublic schools be provided education that is “substantially equivalent” to that given to like-aged children at their local public schools. Private and religious schools are free to offer instruction on additional topics, but they must teach core subjects.
Moster said that in many elementary and middle schools, students at these yeshivas may have 90 minutes of secular education each day. In high school, girls learn some secular subjects, he said, but boys, who attend separate schools, study only ancient Jewish texts. All classes are conducted in Yiddish, with many students graduating without functional English even though they have lived in New York for their entire lives. They know little about secular history, and don’t even study the Holocaust, he said.
Supreme Court says Maine cannot deny tuition aid to religious schools
The logic, he said, is that secular learning is not needed to function and thrive in the insular Hasidic community. “Every boy is groomed and destined to be a rabbi of some sort,” he said.
He estimated there are 160 Hasidic yeshivas, with about half for boys and half for girls. This does not include more than 100 others that are Orthodox, the broader movement of very observant Jews, but not Hasidic, an Orthodox sect where schools are alleged to be focused almost entirely on Jewish learning. Ordinary Jewish day schools, for instance, offer both religious and secular education.
Under the new regulations, nonpublic schools will have several options for demonstrating that they are offering a substantially equivalent education. Schools that are accredited by a recognized agency, for instance, or that participate in the International Baccalaureate program will automatically be considered in compliance.
But the Hasidic schools at the center of the controversy are not likely to qualify under the pathways offered and, if not, the local school districts will be responsible for ascertaining their compliance with the rules. State officials emphasized on Friday that districts have long been tasked with this responsibility under the law, though these provisions were ignored for decades.
“We think enforcement is necessary,” Moster said Friday. He said that yeshivas deemed to no longer be schools would lose funding that they rely on, “so that funding is itself the carrot and the stick.”
The regulations require the instruction be offered in math, science, English language arts and social studies, by a competent teacher and in English. Students with limited English skills must be provided instructional programs.
New York state law also requires instruction in several other areas, and the regulation requires nonpublic schools to show they are delivering it. These include patriotism and citizenship; the history and meaning of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the New York State Constitution; physical education; health education regarding alcohol, drugs and tobacco (though not sex education), and injury prevention. | 2022-09-09T18:08:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Orthodox Jewish schools must meet education standards, New York state says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/09/hasidic-yeshiva-new-york-orthodox/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/09/hasidic-yeshiva-new-york-orthodox/ |
By Ruby Mellen and Kenneth Dickerman | Sep 9, 2022
Heir to the throne since his mother’s coronation in 1952, Charles is now king of the United Kingdom.
At 73, he is the oldest person named king in British history, and a familiar figure in Britain and the rest of the world for a long time. While Charles spent seven decades waiting for this moment, the world now awaits some glimpses into how he may reign.
A look at his life and upbringing indicates he may be more opinionated than his mother — and perhaps any monarch to come before him.
Charles was born on Nov. 14 1948 in Buckingham Palace. Bells tolled in Westminster Abbey and the Royal Horse Artillery fired a 41-gun salute in Hyde Park, for a royal prince was born.
An undated photo shows Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and Queen Elizabeth II with their two children, Prince Charles and his younger sister Princess Anne. (AFP/Getty Images)
Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family, including a young Prince Charles, wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace following her coronation in 1953. (AP)
Charles was the first heir to be educated outside of the palace, attending a prep school in London and then Gordonstoun, a boarding school in Scotland that his father, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, also attended. Charles, who was less athletic and more sensitive than his father, described his time at the austere facilities as a “prison sentence.”
Prince Charles stands in his academic robes as he arrives at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1967. (Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images)
Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Popperfoto via Getty Images
While studying abroad from Cambridge at Aberystwyth University, Charles was named Prince of Wales, a title typically bestowed on Britain’s future kings. His time in Wales was met with frigidity from the local population.
“Every day I had to go down to the town where I went to these lectures, and most days there seemed to be a demonstration going on against me,” he said in a 2019 documentary.
Prince Charles is enthroned Prince of Wales by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on July 1, 1969. (Jack Garofalo/Paris Match/Getty Images)
GAROFALO Jack/Paris Match via Getty Images
His coronation came amid a growing movement for Welsh independence. Charles gave a speech as prince partially in Welsh in a bid to honor the region’s identity.
“It is with a certain sense of pride and emotion that I have received these symbols of office, here in this magnificent fortress, where no one could fail to be stirred by its atmosphere of time-worn grandeur, nor where I myself could be unaware of the long history of Wales in its determination to remain individual and to guard its own particular heritage,” he said.
Prince Charles skis at Isola, a resort north of Nice, France, in 1977. (AP)
Charles was in many ways a typical wealthy Brit — albeit one with a certain set of princely duties. He spent his time skiing, playing polo and donating to charity.
As he grew older, tabloids long obsessed with the lives of royals became bolder, photographing family members outside of formal events.
Prince Charles, right, is followed closely by a member of the opposing team during a polo match in Windsor, England, in 1965. (AP)
Prince Charles, then a member of the Royal Navy, receives a visit from his brother Prince Andrew in November 1976. (AP)
Jeff J. Mitchell/AP
At 31, after a stint serving in the Royal Navy, he married Diana Spencer, 19. Diana’s warmth, beauty and sense of style made her the subject of adoration around the world. Paparazzi often tailed the princess wherever she went. Masses of people gathered to celebrate her on international trips.
The couple had two sons, William and Harry.
A carriage carries Prince Charles and Princess Diana following their wedding on July 29, 1981. (AP)
Princess Diana and Prince Charles welcome home their newborn son, Prince William, on June 22, 1982. (John Redman/AP)
John Redman/AP
But their marriage faltered, then failed after a 1993 separation. Charles gave an interview the next year in which he admitted he had not been faithful, and Diana followed that with a televised interview in which she said, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
She was referring to her husband having resumed his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he dated before his wedding, and the couple divorced in 1996.
Princess Diana and Prince Charles make a rare appearance together in 1993, the year they separated. (Martin Cleaver/AP)
Martin Cleaver/AP
Tragedy struck one year later when Diana was killed in a car crash in France. People mourned her death around the world.
After her separation from Charles, Diana took on an even more prominent role as a humanitarian. She campaigned against land mines in Bosnia and Cambodia, visited orphans in Brazil and advocated for treatment and destigmatization for people sick with AIDS.
Her funeral at Westminster Abbey was viewed by more than 34 million people worldwide.
Guardsmen escort the coffin of Princess Diana during her funeral on Sept. 6, 1997. (Wolfgang Rattay/AFP/Getty Images)
WOLFGANG RATTAY/AFP via Getty Images
Prince Charles, right, with sons Prince Harry, second from right, and Prince William, stand with Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, during Princess Diana's funeral. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Pool/AP)
Charles and Camilla remained together, marrying in 2005 and taking a step back from public life as young and charismatic William and Harry moved into the limelight.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, before the future king's marriage to Diana. (Tim Graham/Getty Images)
Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, were married on April 9, 2005. (Chris Ison/AFP/Getty Images)
As prince, Charles spoke out issues important to him, advocating for action against human-caused climate change. Last year, he was a prominent speaker at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
As a wealthy yachter and private jet passenger, he also has one of the largest individual carbon footprints in Britain.
Prince Charles visits Glasgow Central Station to view two alternative fuel green trains in November 2021. (Jane Barlow/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
On Friday, he was warmly welcomed by a large crowd as he arrived at Buckingham Palace for the first time with a new title: King Charles III.
“We love you, King Charles,” one woman said as he shook hands and waved at onlookers with Camilla by his side.
Karla Adams and William Booth in London contributed to this report.
Editing by Reem Akkad and Ann Gerhart. | 2022-09-09T18:09:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Britain's new king? A visual biography of Charles III - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/king-charles-photos-videos-biography/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/king-charles-photos-videos-biography/ |
D.C. Mayor Bowser promised a ‘sanctuary city.’ Now it’s crunch time.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser announces new resources for migrants being bused to the District from Texas and Arizona on Sept. 8. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser has repeatedly declared Washington a “sanctuary city,” driving home the point, in 2018, by denouncing the Trump administration’s policies, celebrating the city’s “diversity and inclusivity,” and proclaiming “we are not a country of fear and cruelty.” Those were inspiring words, but only in recent months has the mayor been challenged to back them up with policies and resources. Finally, on Thursday — better late than never — she unlocked millions of dollars in city funds through an emergency declaration in the face of a mounting influx of Latin American migrants arriving by bus from the southwest border.
Ms. Bowser’s move was forced by that slow-moving crisis, generated by Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona. The governors, Republicans eager to goad President Biden for immigration policies they regard as a useful electoral cudgel, last spring seized on the stunt of busing migrants to Washington and, later, New York City and, most recently, Chicago — a trickle that has now become an inundation.
In the cacophony of political hyperbole over migrants, whose apprehensions at the border have spiked in recent months, the governors’ gamesmanship rates as little more than a peep. The White House has scarcely taken notice of the hundreds of eastbound buses that have arrived in the District since April, and twice the Pentagon brushed off Ms. Bowser’s request for National Guard troops to help handle logistics arising from the arrival of what is rapidly approaching 10,000 migrants.
Nonetheless, the governors’ caper has been politically effective to the extent that it has posed a growing dilemma for a pair of Democratic mayors, in the nation’s capital and New York, provoking their pique. “Mayors do a lot of things, but we’re not responsible for a broken immigration system,” Ms. Bowser said.
That’s not really right. In fact, state and local officials nationwide must accommodate a flow of migrants — in schools, shelters, streets — impelled to seek refuge in the United States by terrible conditions in their countries and the relative security and availability of jobs in this one. Ms. Bowser’s emergency declaration, enabling her to tap $10 million in city funds, will help fund an Office of Migrant Services to oversee meals, medical care and temporary housing for the new arrivals.
That’s a smart move. It is also a recognition that there is no end in sight to the procession of buses inbound to Union Station from Texas and Arizona. Ms. Bowser, having dawdled till now in hopes the federal government would solve the problem, has left increasingly overwhelmed nonprofit groups to deal with the migrants. Now she needs to formulate a long-term plan that reflects the reality of the migrants’ increasing numbers — whether or not the federal government reimburses the city, as she hopes, and as it should do.
It’s true that a large majority of roughly 9,400 migrants who have disembarked so far in Washington have stayed briefly before heading elsewhere. It’s also true that the share remaining in the city has steadily increased, and now amounts to about 15 percent of the new arrivals. Several hundred are staying at two hotels in the city, and about 70 have enrolled in D.C. public schools.
Ms. Bowser didn’t directly ask for this problem. Nonetheless, it’s hers to solve.
Opinion|Rock Creek Park’s Beach Drive was closed for covid. Should it reopen? | 2022-09-09T18:17:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Migrant buses coming to D.C. test Bowser's 'sanctuary city' promise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/dc-migrant-buses-sanctuary-city-bowser/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/dc-migrant-buses-sanctuary-city-bowser/ |
Curfews in D.C. and Prince George’s may help, but we need to do more
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in February discusses regional public safety initiatives concerning a spate of carjackings. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
On the heels of last week’s column on the rise of youth carjackings in D.C. came a Labor Day news conference by Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D), who drew a sharp focus on growing youth-involved crimes in her jurisdiction just outside D.C.
Statistics provided by Alsobrooks and county Police Chief Malik Aziz tell the story: 438 juveniles arrested so far this year in Prince George’s, a big jump from 207 juvenile arrests through the same time last year. In D.C., youth arrests are up about 12 percent, with two-thirds of this year’s 330 carjacking arrests involving juveniles.
While youth-committed armed robberies, thefts and bloodshed are shared problems in both jurisdictions, the responses of leaders in Prince George’s County and D.C. differ noticeably.
“I cannot stand by and continue to watch children who are shot and killed, who are not only committing crimes but harming others, and do nothing about it,” Alsobrooks said as she announced a curfew for county children 16 and younger. Apparently, the curfew’s been on the books since 1995, but not enforced in decades. This time around, starting Sept. 9 at 11:59 p.m. and continuing for at least 30 days, children are banned from the streets and public areas from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. from Sunday through Thursday. The curfew also applies from midnight to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
D.C. police followed with the acknowledgment that, weeks earlier, they had quietly resumed enforcing the city’s juvenile curfew, which had been suspended during the pandemic. In fact, police said they had picked up 16 people under age 17 for violating curfew since Aug 1.
How many D.C. residents knew their city has been working for over a month to keep children and teenagers off the streets during nighttime hours? Had they noticed any difference?
Which may well be beside the point, because the issue soon became the curfew crackdown itself, not the rise in juvenile violence.
Hear the voices:
“We oppose the county’s decision to put all children under virtual house arrest,” said Yanet Amanuel, public policy director for the ACLU of Maryland. “Criminalizing the innocent behavior of children is also fundamentally ineffective.”
Eduardo Ferrer, a Georgetown University law professor, called the curfew “a really blunt instrument that criminalizes and impedes on the rights of young people, particularly Black youth.” He added, “The risks are high, while the benefits are very low.”
Amid such protests, I can’t help but think about Isreal Akingbesote, 37, an employee of a gas station in the Clinton, Md., area. At about 4:40 a.m. on Aug. 10, Akingbesote was stabbed multiple times, allegedly by boys whom he had confronted about some stolen items. Akingbesote died from his injuries. Two boys, ages 12 and 15, have been arrested and charged with his murder and are in Prince George’s County’s custody.
The incident is tragic on its own. But also: Why on earth were a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy on the streets at 4 in the morning? If only they had been kept at home.
Curfew opponents probably have the facts on their side when they argue that the prime time for youth violence is right after school lets out in the afternoons, and not late-night stretches when curfews are in place. Whether curfews have much effect on protecting children from violent crime hasn’t been conclusively established.
However: Regardless of whether it happened at 4 o’clock in the afternoon or 12 hours later, Isreal Akingbesote lost his life, allegedly at the hands of children.
That is where the focus belongs. It’s the heart of the problem.
As chairman of the D.C. Council’s Judiciary Committee, Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) is the city’s foremost lawmaker on public safety issues. He has spoken about the need for investments to address root causes of violence, to “break cycles that create pain and trauma again and again.”
A not-so-small quibble: “Cycles” don’t create pain and trauma. People, young and old, do that. There were no “cycles” at that Clinton gas station stabbing, or on H Street NE, where Washington Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. was shot in an attempted robbery or carjacking.
Hand-wringing over “root causes” gets us nowhere. Neither does a “lock ’emup and throw away the key” approach. And curfews, however necessary they might or might not be, won’t solve the problem of children leaving home to commit crimes.
We must get into the homes and the communities — the environments in which these troubled youths are being raised. Deal with factors found there: neglectful, irresponsible behavior by parents and other adults; the absence of a consistently supportive family; shaky household finances and bleak outlooks; flimsy attention to children’s emotional and physical needs; and yes, the often-casual presence of guns and drugs. You say changing those conditions is a tall order? Anything short of those steps means more of the same violence on either side of the D.C.-PG border.
“If you see a 13- or 14-year-old out at 2 o’ clock in the morning, something is wrong with that picture,” says D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III. Amen.
Speaking of her predominantly Black and brown county, Alsobrooks said, “We are working to protect children of color, including those who have been victims of violent crime at the hands of other children.”
Would that more of us joined that effort. And if it means keeping our children at home in the middle of the night for their own good, so be it. | 2022-09-09T18:17:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The D.C. curfew battle underscores the sad truths about kids and crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/dc-prince-georges-curfew-crime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/09/dc-prince-georges-curfew-crime/ |
Hawaii Proud Boys founder Nicholas R. Ochs and associate Nicholas J. DeCarlo defaced the U.S. Capitol’s Memorial Door with the name of their social media video collective.
Graffiti on an East Front House outside door on Jan. 6, 2021, reads “Murder the Media.” (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) (The Washington Post)
Ochs, 36, a Marine Corps veteran and unsuccessful 2020 Republican-backed candidate for a state House seat in Honolulu, and DeCarlo, 32, of Fort Worth, Tex., pleaded guilty to one felony count of attempting to impede or obstruct Congress as it met to confirm President Biden’s 2020 election victory. The charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. But each man faces a possible range of 41 to 51 months at sentencing Dec. 9 before Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl H. Howell under federal guidelines in plea deals with prosecutors.
“The steal is in fact right here, and we are going to stop it!,” Ochs admitted shouting on video as the men marched from a rally that morning for President Donald Trump near the White House to the Capitol. Ochs said he traveled to Washington after he heard Trump invite supporters to attend a “wild” rally. | 2022-09-09T18:26:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Murder the Media' associates charged in Jan. 6 Capitol attack - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/proud-boys-murder-media-capitol-jan6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/proud-boys-murder-media-capitol-jan6/ |
Trump’s lawsuit against Clinton was filed in court with judge he appointed
When Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton accusing her of spreading false information about his 2016 campaign and Russia, the former president tried to get the case heard by a judge that he himself had appointed to the bench.
That news was first revealed in April and got renewed attention Friday when a different judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit in a scathing decision, saying that his claims “are not only unsupported by any legal authority but plainly foreclosed by binding precedent.”
“I note that Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the Fort Pierce division of this District, where only one federal judge sits: Judge Aileen Cannon, who Plaintiff appointed in 2020,” Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida wrote in a footnote on a separate motion.
Cannon is the Trump-nominated judge who this week intervened in the Justice Department investigation into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified information, agreeing to grant his request for an independent review of the material that FBI agents have seized.
Trump had sought the appointment of what’s known as a special master to assess whether the government took anything from his Florida residence that may be protected by attorney-client privilege or his status as a former president.
A telephone and text message left for a Trump spokesperson was not immediately returned.
Trump’s lawsuit was filed in March; the following month his team filed a motion to dismiss Middlebrooks, who was appointed to the bench in 1997 by President Bill Clinton.
In releasing his ruling on Trump’s lawsuit, Middlebrooks also released his order denying that he be removed from the case. “The law is well-settled,” Middlebrooks wrote, “that appointment to the bench by a litigant, without more,” is not enough of a reason for a recusal. He added:
I have never met or spoken with Bill or Hillary Clinton. Other than my appointment by Bill Clinton, I do not now have nor have I ever had any relationship with the Clintons.
In the footnote highlighting Trump’s effort to get the lawsuit in front of a judge he himself appointed to the bench, Middlebrooks added: “when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns.” | 2022-09-09T18:26:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s lawsuit against Clinton was filed in court with judge he appointed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/trump-clinton-cannon-special-master/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/09/trump-clinton-cannon-special-master/ |
For some Irish, Queen Elizabeth II’s legacy is complicated
Queen Elizabeth II lays a wreath at Dublin Memorial Garden on May 17, 2011 in Dublin, Ireland. Her visit was the first by a monarch since 1911. (Pool/Getty Images)
Anne Marie Quilligan, a social care worker from Ireland’s Limerick region, said on Thursday that the mixed reactions from Irish and other people whose nations suffered under the British Empire were “collective trauma."
“Unresolved trauma can become generational," she wrote on Twitter. “Colonisation is a trauma.”
“I’m shocked by how many people think the Potato Famine was due to crop failure and don’t know the English EXPORTED food from Ireland to England during that time - enough food to feed all the Irish who died,” Wanebo wrote, referring to the 19th-century famine in Ireland that resulted in the deaths of as many as a million Irish people and the emigration of another 2 to 3 million escaping starvation.
“To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past, I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy,” she said in a speech at Dublin Castle. "With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.”
“The actual response in Ireland is yes, some indifference because it’s not important to everybody," she tweeted of the queen’s death. "But public expressions are overwhelmingly empathetic to our neighbours, friends and in many cases family members.” | 2022-09-09T18:52:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For some Irish, Queen Elizabeth II’s legacy is complicated - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/irish-reaction-queen-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/09/irish-reaction-queen-death/ |
R&B star had more than $27,000 in prison accounts while owing $40,000 to fund for victims, $100,000 in other court fees
Musician R. Kelly leaves the Leighton Criminal Court building in Chicago on June 6, 2019. (Amr Alfiky/AP)
A federal judge ordered the Bureau of Prisons to turn over nearly $28,000 from convicted R&B singer R. Kelly’s inmate account to pay some of his court-ordered restitution — the latest development in a case that illustrates how some inmates keep large balances behind bars while paying very little of what they owe to victims and in court fines.
Kelly, who was sentenced this year to 30 years in prison for sex trafficking, fought to hold on to the money after The Washington Post reported last month that he was keeping thousands of dollars in the Bureau of Prisons account while owing $140,000 in court-ordered fines, including a $40,000 penalty for a fund for trafficking victims. Shortly after that story published, prosecutors moved to seize Kelly’s prison money.
U.S. District Court Judge Ann M. Donnelly agreed in a written opinion Friday, ordering the Bureau of Prisons to send a check for $27,828.24 to the clerk for the federal court in New York, where Kelly — who is on trial in Chicago on additional charges — was convicted.
Donnelly’s ruling comes as senior Justice Department officials are debating changes to long-standing Bureau of Prisons rules governing prisoners’ money, which current and former law enforcement officials say shield the funds from scrutiny and prevent victims from receiving payments they are owed. The prison-account system, which enables inmates to spend money on such things as snacks, emails and phone calls, also helps pay for many jobs at the Bureau of Prisons. Last year it generated $82 million for the bureau’s operating budget, funding 625 positions, according to agency documents.
Boston Marathon Bomber's funds eyed
After Post stories about inmates who kept large balances while paying little to their victims — including Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar — Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco last year ordered a review of the Bureau of Prisons policy. That review is ongoing.
In the Tsarnaev and Nassar cases, prosecutors filed court papers to force the Bureau of Prisons to turn over the inmates’ money.
U.S. prison officials resist making inmates pay more in court-ordered fees | 2022-09-09T19:05:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | R. Kelly prison money to be turned over for court, victims'-fund payment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/09/r-kelly-prison-account/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/09/r-kelly-prison-account/ |
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