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BOCA RATON, Fla. — N’Kosi Perry threw three touchdown passes and ran for another score as Florida Atlantic cruised to a 42-9 victory over Southeastern Louisiana on Saturday night.
Perry was 18-of-30 passing for 259 yards. He threw a pair of touchdown passes to LaJohntay Wester that included a 36-yard, over-the-shoulder catch in the end zone early in the second quarter and a 42-yarder in the fourth. Wester finished with eight catches for 140 yards. Perry's 2-yard TD run stretched the Owls’ lead to 21-3 late in the first half. | 2022-09-11T04:40:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Perry has 4 TDs, Florida Atlantic beats SE Louisiana 42-9 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/perry-has-4-tds-florida-atlantic-beats-se-louisiana-42-9/2022/09/10/1a318a7e-3186-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/perry-has-4-tds-florida-atlantic-beats-se-louisiana-42-9/2022/09/10/1a318a7e-3186-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin will depart the royal family’s Scottish holiday home at Balmoral on Sunday morning bound for Edinburgh, where it will rest in the Throne Room of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland, until Monday afternoon. The first leg of a days-long ceremonial journey, traveling by road from Balmoral Castle to the Scottish capital, is expected to take around six hours.
The United Kingdom is in a period of national mourning until a state funeral, to be held on Sept. 19 at Westminster Abbey. Her final resting place will be in Windsor, next to her husband, Prince Philip, who died in 2021 aged 99.
Two of the queen’s grandsons and their wives visited mourners at Windsor Castle, just outside London, on Saturday. William and Catherine, the new Prince and Princess of Wales, appeared alongside Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, fueling speculation of a rapprochement between the brothers, whose relationship reportedly suffered after Harry and Meghan stepped down from royal duties. In a statement, William thanked his grandmother for “the kindness she showed my family and me” and for her example of public service. “I knew this day would come, but it will be some time before the reality of life without Grannie will truly feel real,” he said.
King Charles III, formally proclaimed as the new monarch of the United Kingdom on Saturday, will hold meetings at Buckingham Palace on Sunday and will visit the U.K. Parliament Monday. “I am deeply aware of this great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty which have now passed to me,” he said at the official proclamation ceremony. “I shall strive to follow the inspiring example I have been set.”
The new king and his wife, Queen Consort Camilla, will lead a procession with the late queen’s coffin on Monday, down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile to St. Giles’ Cathedral, where there will be a service. The public can view her coffin at the cathedral until Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the queen’s coffin will be flown to London. The next day, she will lie in state at the Palace of Westminster, the seat of Parliament, until her state funeral. President Biden told reporters that he plans to attend.
At 10 a.m., the queen’s coffin will depart the Balmoral estate for a six-hour journey to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The hearse will travel through Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth.
At 1 p.m., flags will return to half-staff for the remainder of the national mourning period, after they were flown at full-staff in recognition of the new monarch.
In the morning, Charles will meet the Commonwealth Secretary General at Buckingham Palace and then host the Realm High Commissioners and their spouses.
When is King Charles’s coronation? There isn’t a known date for Charles’s coronation, but it’s possible that it may not take place anytime soon. Elizabeth waited 16 months after her accession for her coronation.
Britain has an unproven prime minister and now a new monarch, can its untested leaders confront its problems?
Camilla is now the queen consort. What does that mean? The key difference between the queen and the queen consort is that the queen is an ascendant to the throne through succession. The queen consort is the wife of the reigning monarch.
After Elizabeth’s death, Britain’s future is uncertain. The queen’s death marks the end of the nation’s second Elizabethan age, and the beginning of the reign of the longest-ever monarch-in-waiting, Charles, who is less popular than his mother. In addition, regional tensions, higher energy costs and an untested new prime minister come at a time of national introspection. “Changes on the horizon have been brought into focus by the queen’s death. Whether welcome or not, they have created a disquiet in the country she led,” Kevin Sullivan and Anthony Faiola write.
What kind of monarch will Charles be? Different from his mum, London correspondents William Booth and Karla Adam write. As king, Charles has said he wants to balance tradition and progress. A crusader at heart, Charles has opinions — on climate change, sheep breeds and modern architecture. He may not be able to turn that off.
During her seven-decade reign, the queen visited more than two dozen cities across the United States. And wherever Britain’s longest-serving monarch went, photographers followed to capture Americans in the throes of royal fever.
Gift stores are selling out of royal souvenirs after Elizabeth’s death, a rush to buy items with her likeness before they are replaced with products featuring her son. The value of those tchotchkes and rare collectibles of the queen will increase — eventually.
It was a rare misstep in the queen’s 70-year reign. But it was a big one. Her son’s glamorous ex-wife, Princess Diana, had died tragically in a car accident, leaving two young boys, the heirs to the throne, without a mother. And for nearly a week, Elizabeth said nothing. But on the day of the funeral, as Diana’s funeral cortege passed by, she bowed her head. | 2022-09-11T06:00:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin to be taken to Edinburgh: Latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-death-king-charles-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-death-king-charles-latest-updates/ |
In sign of possible rapprochement, Harry and Meghan appear with William
Princes William and Harry — together with their wives — made a rare joint appearance on Saturday, greeting well-wishers gathered outside of Windsor Castle, near London, to mourn Queen Elizabeth II.
The brothers have reportedly been estranged since Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, made their highly-publicized split from royal life and moved to North America. Harry and William were last pictured together following the death of Prince Philip in April 2021, and the two couples haven’t been seen together in public for some years.
A spokesperson for William said he invited his brother and sister-in-law to join him and Catherine in meeting mourners and looking at tributes in Windsor, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported.
The two couples spent just over 30 minutes talking with members of the public before leaving in a car driven by William, who became Prince of Wales after his father’s ascension to the throne.
“The Waleses had always been scheduled to greet well-wishers at Windsor Castle, but royal sources say the decision to invite the Sussexes was made in the eleventh hour,” royal watcher Omid Scobie wrote on Twitter. “It is, without a doubt, a significant moment in the history of the relationship between the two brothers.”
It is the latest sign the royals may be repairing ties as they come together to mourn the death of their family matriarch. In his first televised speech from Buckingham Palace on Friday, King Charles III expressed his love for Harry and Meghan “as they continue to build their lives overseas.”
Harry is fifth in line to the throne, despite a controversial decision to step back from royal duties and move to the United States with Meghan where they live with their two children, Archie and Lilibet.
Following the queen’s death and the ascension of Charles as monarch, the two Sussex children are entitled to the titles “prince” and “princess.” That right stems from protocols dating back to King George V in 1917, which state that the children and grandchildren of the sovereign are granted the royal titles automatically. (The official palace succession list still refers to them as Master Archie and Miss Lilibet.)
Among the many jaw-dropping claims the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made in an interview with Oprah Winfrey last year was the allegation that Buckingham Palace planned to refuse Archie the title of prince — a decision that Meghan called hurtful and suggested was driven by institutional racism within the monarchy.
In another interview, Harry said he considered the term “Megxit” — which was coined after he and his wife announced in January 2020 they would be stepping back from their roles as senior members of the royal family and dividing their time between Britain and North America — “misogynistic.”
In recent years, the prince and his wife have frequently highlighted the toll online hatred and misinformation can take on one’s emotional health and mental well-being. Meghan has said that she is the “most trolled” person in the world and one 2021 report found that the Sussexes had been the target of a coordinated Twitter hate campaign.
Harry’s arrival at Balmoral castle in Scotland, alone, and after the death of his grandmother on Thursday had became a talking point. British media reported that Charles had told Harry it was not appropriate for Meghan to travel with him to Balmoral ahead of the queen’s death, as they had apparently intended.
Royal watcher Camilla Tominey said that in reaching out to Harry to join him on Saturday and “set the rift aside,” William — the next in line to the throne — has shown he is living by his grandmother’s example.
She described it as “one of the most remarkable walkabouts in modern royal history” and an episode that would make the late queen proud.
“Queen Elizabeth II famously said that it was “often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change,” Tominey wrote in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
Pannett reported from Sydney. Jennifer Hassan in London contributed to this report. | 2022-09-11T06:22:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Princes William and Harry, with Catherine and Meghan, greet mourners - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-death-william-harry-meghan-kate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-death-william-harry-meghan-kate/ |
South Africa Is Key to Global Net Zero
Analysis by Allegra Stratton | Bloomberg
Chimney flues vent steam at the Kusile coal-fired power station, operated by Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., in Delmas, Mpumalanga province, South Africa, on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. The coal-fired plant’s sixth and last unit is expected to reach commercial operation in two years, with the fifth scheduled to be done by December 2023. (Bloomberg)
Africa’s third largest economy is also the world’s 12th most serious emitter of carbon dioxide. At COP26 in Glasgow last November — where I worked with the British government — the UK, US, France, Germany and the rest of the EU joined together to allocate $8.5 billiion in seed money to South Africa. It’s the world’s first Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), a crucial effort to ease the economic and social disruptions that poorer countries face as they attempt to lower their carbon footprints.
The money is meant to allow South Africa to retire a colossal but creaking (and corruption-riddled) fleet of coal plants. Just as importantly, the funds will support the workers who will need to find new jobs. In the country’s coal belt of Mpumalanga, some 120,000 workers are employed in coal production, mining and transportation. The region already has a 35% youth unemployment rate. The country must focus on concerted reskilling because there’s great skepticism that high-tech jobs in green hydrogen or electrical vehicles will go to former miners.
The coal plants that produce 84% of South Africa’s energy are run by state-owned Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. The gigantic public utility has been failing for more than a decade — and not just financially. Many of the power plants are spluttering to the end of their lives. This year is the worst ever, with South Africans suffering through more outages — called “load shedding” — than before. Considered uninvestable by international finance, Eskom has been a drag on the whole economy as it soaks up huge government subsidies.
That’s exactly what Eskom is trying to do at its Komati power station. For 60 years, Komati was one of South Africa’s largest coal plants. This month, however, its last coal-burning unit will be turned off. A new workshop is already making containerized solar microgrids. These are repurposed shipping crates full of batteries powered by solar panels that will be deployed to far-flung rural communities currently off the electricity grid. Eskom also wants Komati to make agrivoltaics — solar panels erected in fields amid growing crops. Additionally, the utility will lease land around the power plant for solar farms.
But this is still a transition, not yet a termination. The country still faces tough questions about where to focus its climate investment. For example, should it put funds into improving the grid in a poorly-served part of the country that, nevertheless, has the potential for substantial growth in solar and wind power? Or should financing be targeted at mining centers like Mpumalanga, which are already electrified but will need the jobs created by the infusion of cash?
Eskom also has to maintain aging power stations and upgrade younger ones. Coal will continue to have a role, though in gradually declining amounts as wind, solar and green hydrogen are joined by new liquefied natural gas flows. If cheaper energy flourishes, coal will fizzle out quickly.
Until then, South Africa will need more funds — $50 billion to $60 billion in the medium term but, in total, probably a sum closer to $250 billion — to reach its climate goals. Some of the $8.5 billion in JETP funding will be outright grants but more of it will be concessional finance — loans at lower than market value — to pay for projects the private sector won’t. It will be kick-starter cash to build confidence with the intention of leveraging in even more capital.
To help, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has lifted restrictions to allow more private electricity generation. He’s also increased the size of renewable projects to 100 megawatts from 1 megawatt. A South African solar farm should be a no brainer. At COP26, former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero announced $1.3 trillion of private finance ready to back low-carbon projects. If South Africa can improve its energy investment environment, this money should start to flow.
If Eskom and South Africa make progress, Vietnam, Indonesia, Senegal and India are likely to follow. The rest of the world will then have a clearer route to net zero.
How to Reach Net Zero Profitably: Hendrik du Toit
From the Rhine to the Tigris, Rivers Are Warnings: Andreas Kluth
• When the Weather Gets Hot Enough To Kill: David Fickling and Ruth Pollard
Allegra Stratton is a Bloomberg News contributing editor who writes the Readout newsletter. She previously worked in the UK government and is co-founder of Zeroism, a climate and energy consultancy. | 2022-09-11T09:12:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | South Africa Is Key to Global Net Zero - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/south-africa-is-key-to-global-net-zero/2022/09/11/e7c607f0-31a7-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/south-africa-is-key-to-global-net-zero/2022/09/11/e7c607f0-31a7-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Russian forces also have made inroads into the Zaporizhzhia region farther north, where they seized Europe's largest nuclear power plant. The last of its six reactors was shut down Sunday after operating in a risky “island mode” for several days to generate electricity for the plant’s crucial coling systems after one of the power lines was restored. | 2022-09-11T09:12:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine pushes major counteroffensive as war marks 200 days - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-pushes-major-counteroffensive-as-war-marks-200-days/2022/09/11/4a067c78-31a4-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-pushes-major-counteroffensive-as-war-marks-200-days/2022/09/11/4a067c78-31a4-11ed-bcc6-0874b26ae296_story.html |
Baker Mayfield (6) is set to face the Browns, his former team, in his first start for the Panthers. (Brian Westerholt/AP)
Deshaun Watson won’t make his debut for the Cleveland Browns on this first Sunday of the NFL season. The quarterback is serving his 11-game suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct policy.
But four quarterbacks who changed teams in the offseason as part of the fallout from Watson’s trade and suspension — the Browns’ Jacoby Brissett, the Carolina Panthers’ Baker Mayfield, the Indianapolis Colts’ Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons’ Marcus Mariota — will make their first starts for their new franchises Sunday.
Mayfield issued what amounted to a farewell to Cleveland as the Browns pursued a Watson trade in March. He sought to be traded and eventually was accommodated with a July deal to the Panthers.
The Falcons traded Ryan to the Colts, unable or unwilling to repair their relationship with the former league MVP after their failed pursuit of Watson. To replace Ryan, they signed Mariota, the former No. 2 selection in the NFL draft who had been relegated to backup status in the previous two seasons with the Las Vegas Raiders.
The Browns, knowing they would move on from Mayfield, signed Brissett to back up Watson. Brissett has made 37 career starts for the New England Patriots, Colts and Miami Dolphins.
The NFL schedule-makers cannot take credit for setting up a grudge match between Mayfield and the Watson-less Browns in Week 1. The schedule was released in May. But it worked out that way.
“I think it’s a great storyline,” Mayfield said at a midweek news conference. “Obviously there’s history involved. … Any time you’re playing guys you know, it makes it just more interesting, more fun.”
Mayfield said last week he “didn’t have any say” in the design of the “Off the Leash” T-shirts he recently promoted on social media, seemingly a reference to his separation from the Browns and their “Dawg Pound” fans. He maintained this is not a revenge game.
“I’m grateful for the time I had in Cleveland,” Mayfield said, adding that his Browns tenure ended “abruptly and unexpectedly.”
There is quarterback intrigue leaguewide Sunday. Carson Wentz, traded by the Colts and the Philadelphia Eagles in successive offseasons, makes his Washington Commanders debut. Mitchell Trubisky makes his first start as the Pittsburgh Steelers open the post-Ben Roethlisberger era. And second-year pro Trey Lance debuts as the full-time starter for the San Francisco 49ers, with former starter Jimmy Garoppolo surprisingly still on hand as an alternative.
Lamar Jackson takes the field on the final season of his contract after failing to agree to an extension with the Baltimore Ravens. He faces the New York Jets and Joe Flacco, Baltimore’s former Super Bowl-winning quarterback who’s filling in for Zach Wilson.
Jameis Winston returns from the torn ACL in his left knee that cut short his 2021 season with the New Orleans Saints. The Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa and the New York Giants’ Daniel Jones begin make-or-break seasons. Mac Jones’s second NFL season begins after consternation in training camp and the preseason over the lack of clarity about the Patriots’ offensive play-caller.
The Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow and Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert attempt to cement themselves as top MVP contenders. Derek Carr tries to capitalize on the Raiders’ offseason trade for wide receiver Davante Adams. Tom Brady emerges from an offseason in which he retired and then unretired, followed by a Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ training camp in which he turned 45 and took an 11-day hiatus.
But perhaps no quarterback would savor a big performance and a victory Sunday more than Mayfield, no matter how hard he tried to say the right things publicly in recent days.
“It’d mean that I came here and did what I was trying to do,” Mayfield said. “I came here to win ballgames.” | 2022-09-11T10:13:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baker Mayfield vs. Browns headlines a slate of QB intrigue across the NFL - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/nfl-sunday-week-1/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/nfl-sunday-week-1/ |
Monica White, 55, dated Anthony Robinson, who police allege is a serial killer dubbed the “Shopping Cart Killer.” (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Monica White had gone through a painful divorce, but at 53 she was ready to begin dating again in the fall of 2020. She created profiles on dating sites and soon got a message from a potential suitor — a man authorities would allege was a serial killer a year later.
The whirlwind romance that followed was by turns intense, bizarre and menacing. White’s account provides the richest picture yet of a man who has largely remained a mystery since authorities labeled him a serial killer at a news conference that garnered national attention in December.
Police have said little about Robinson, other than that the D.C. man moved frequently and held a range of jobs. His family has never given media interviews. Louis Nagy, an attorney for Robinson, declined to comment for this story.
Robinson is slated for a preliminary hearing on two counts of murder Monday in Harrisonburg, Va., where he is accused of killing 54-year-old Allene Redmon, of Harrisonburg, and 39-year-old Tonita Lorice Smith, of Charlottesville, last fall.
Virginia police say they are investigating man as possible serial killer after four victims found dead
The Post has also learned police are re-examining the 2018 death of a Maryland woman who Robinson was engaged to marry in light of the allegations against him.
White, who lives outside Harrisburg, Pa., said her relationship with Robinson proceeded quickly after that first message. White said Robinson was flattering, telling her what he found attractive about her profile. She said he liked that she was into art and had been a preschool teacher.
The messages soon progressed to video chats. White said Robinson would call her from the Metro as he commuted to or from his job in D.C., where White said he was working removing snow and cleaning streets for the city. At the time, Robinson was living in a friend’s apartment in The District and occasionally stayed with his mother in Maryland.
Robinson told White he had never been married, but he did have a son who died when the child was around 2 years old and a daughter who was around 5 or 6 at the time. White said she never learned much about the children’s mother, but sensed Robinson had a difficult childhood himself.
“When he got here, he said I’m going to have to get a job or something in order to get back home cause I don’t have my ticket money,” White said.
The woman was 30-year-old Skye Allen, who passed away on Valentine’s Day in 2018. Robinson had met Allen online in 2016, and the pair were planning a wedding, her family said. The couple were living with Allen’s mother in Glenarden, Md.
Stacey Allen, Skye’s mother, said she found her daughter barely breathing and with a light pulse in her bed on the morning of Feb. 14, 2018. Skye Allen had spent the night with Robinson in the room the pair shared, Stacey Allen said. Skye Allen was rushed to the hospital, where she died a short time later.
Skye Allen’s death was found to be caused by “fatal cardiac arrhythmia,” according to a copy of her death certificate obtained by The Post. Prince George’s County police said they are taking a fresh look at the case.
“The Prince George’s County Police Department did not open an investigation into Ms. Allen’s death in 2018,” the department said in a statement. “Our agency was not notified of her passing, which occurred at a hospital, and therefore had no involvement in documenting any aspect of her death. She was cremated following her death. In January of 2022, a PGPD Homicide supervisor did speak to Ms. Allen’s relatives. Based on those conversations, the PGPD’s Cold Case Unit is reviewing the facts surrounding her death.”
At White’s house, her relationship with Robinson came to a tumultuous end. White held a birthday party for herself in mid-February 2021. At the party, White said Robinson drank heavily and made sexually suggestive comments toward her son and the teenage son of a friend, which were confirmed by a cousin of White’s who attended.
White said she felt blindsided because Robinson had not been forthcoming about that side of himself and said she couldn’t trust him any longer. “He could be anything,” White said.
A fight ensued, during which Robinson called police before he finally left, White said. Local police confirmed they responded to a call involving White and Robinson. White thought it would be the last she would see of Robinson, but it wasn’t.
Weeks later, White said Robinson messaged her on Facebook and said he was living at a hotel in Harrisburg. Robinson asked her to come to the hotel, saying “I will give you whatever you want.” White said he was also interested in buying “spice,” or synthetic marijuana. White declined to meet him.
Roughly eight months later, in October 2021, police said Robinson killed Redmon in Harrisonburg, about 130 miles south of D.C., after going there for work. Police said Robinson killed Smith in November.
Robinson was arrested on Nov. 23 after both women’s bodies were found in an open lot in a commercial district in Harrisonburg. Police said surveillance video and cellphone records connected Robinson to both victims.
Fairfax County police announced in December they were investigating Robinson in connection with the slaying of two women whose bodies were found in a trash can in a vacant lot in the Route 1 corridor. Robinson has not been charged in the slayings of Cheyenne Brown, 29, of D.C., and Stephanie Harrison, 48, of Redding, Calif.
D.C. police are also investigating Robinson in connection with the killing of Sonya Champ, 40, of D.C., whose body was found in a shopping cart near Union Station in September 2021.
D.C. police identify slain woman linked to accused serial killer
White said she was stunned when a relative forwarded her a story about Robinson being called a serial killer by police in December. She was supposed to be with her niece, who was giving birth, but she couldn’t leave her home. She thought of the women who had been killed and her own experience with Robinson. | 2022-09-11T10:30:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A woman met the alleged "Shopping Cart Killer" on a dating site - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/serial-killer-robinson-shopping-cart/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/serial-killer-robinson-shopping-cart/ |
King Charles’s Belated Reign Can Still Be a Fruitful One
Charles, likewise, has been accused of plotting a “meddling monarchy.” His so-called “black spider memos” (on account of his handwriting), letters sent to cabinet ministers in 2004 and 2005 lobbying on policy issues, created paranoia in the press until a freedom of information request and their subsequent publication showed them to be harmless and well-intentioned, if sprawling. Although some express doubts that he can subordinate his strong views, Charles went on the record in a BBC interview to mark his 70th birthday to declare he would give up campaigning when he becomes king — “I’m not that stupid,” he said pointedly. | 2022-09-11T10:43:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles’s Belated Reign Can Still Be a Fruitful One - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/king-charless-belated-reign-can-still-be-a-fruitful-one/2022/09/11/ede378d0-31b0-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/king-charless-belated-reign-can-still-be-a-fruitful-one/2022/09/11/ede378d0-31b0-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
After Kings Charles I and II, many were surprised that there is a third
The first sparked a civil war and was beheaded; the second was known as the “Merry Monarch,” a party animal and lover of the arts
King Charles III waves to supporters during an impromptu walkabout on the Mall outside of St. James Palace following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 10, 2022 in London. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The death of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest ruling monarch, has heralded the ascension of a new British monarch for the first time in 70 years. Charles, the former Prince of Wales, born in 1948, was formally proclaimed king on Saturday, becoming King Charles III, the oldest monarch to succeed the British throne.
The question of Charles’s regnal name had been a matter of speculation over the last few years, especially after the death of Prince Philip, the queen’s husband of 74 years, in April 2021 hammered home her own mortality. The new king’s full name is Charles Philip Arthur George, leaving several possibilities to potentially choose from, had he rejected the use of “Charles.”
Historically, British sovereigns did not adopt a new name upon their accession to the throne, although this changed during the modern era. Elizabeth’s father and immediate predecessor was born Albert Frederick Arthur George and known as “Bertie.” However, he chose the name King George VI (a homage to his father George V) when he ascended the throne in 1936 after the abdication of his older brother King Edward VIII, who stunningly abdicated after less than a year as king to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson.
Charles’s choice to keep his name may come as a surprise to some historians and royal commentators. They had speculated that he might select a different name to avoid associations with Charles I and Charles II — one viewed as a tyrant and the other a playboy. These common perceptions continue to dominate British popular memory. But in fact, keeping this name evokes two predecessors who each made historic contributions to British history, for better or for worse.
Both of them (a father and son), came from the Stuart dynasty, which ruled England, Scotland and Ireland from 1603-1714. Both had highly significant reigns, with the periods of their rule earning the respective epithets of Caroline (for Charles I) and Carolean (Charles II) based on Latin Carolus, meaning Charles.
King Charles I was the second Stuart sovereign, succeeding his father James I in 1625. Charles was small, shy, awkward and had a speech impediment. Unlike other heirs, he was never raised to rule, and grew up in the shadow of his older brother, Prince Henry. But, when Henry died unexpectedly in 1612 at the age of 18, Charles stepped into the role of heir apparent and later became Prince of Wales.
Charles inherited not just the English throne but also a war with Spain as well as the religious and financial problems of his father’s reign. James I had left the largest peacetime debt in English history. Without experience in government affairs, Charles relied heavily on a favorite of his father George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, for advice. But Villiers, who was widely despised, was assassinated in 1628.
After the death of Buckingham, Charles turned for comfort to his wife Henrietta Maria, who, being a French princess, was thoroughly unpopular with the English populace. Although not originally a love match, the royal couple's relationship deepened to one of genuine affection and loyalty, and together they invested greatly in art and culture. Some historians have considered Charles I one of the greatest connoisseurs of the arts, due in large part to his enthusiastic acquisition of Flemish, Spanish, French and Italian paintings and tapestries.
Yet Charles’s reign was notably marked by intense political and religious turmoil. His rigid adherence to the divine right of kings (the belief that monarchs are chosen by God to rule) meant that he frequently clashed with Parliament over almost every issue. Charles pushed unpopular religious policies and enacted taxes without the approval of Parliament including, most notably, a practice known as ship money, which required counties to provide warships for defense of the realm or pay their equivalent costs in money. By 1642, the tensions between Charles and Parliament erupted into civil war, plunging the entire country into mayhem with those loyal to the king, the Royalists (Cavaliers), squaring off against the Parliamentarians (or Roundheads). Not since the Wars of the Roses (1455-85) had England been so horribly divided. Contemporaries described this time as a “world turned upside down.”
Charles lost the war and — in an unprecedented and historic moment — he was tried and convicted of treason. On Jan. 30, 1649, Charles was beheaded, and onlookers reportedly dipped their handkerchiefs in the king’s blood as a grisly keepsake of the regicide.
Yet not all celebrated his death. After Charles’s death, a cult of mourning grew around him, and his loyal followers began wearing commemorative jewelry with his portrait, beginning the trend of mourning rings.
After Charles’s death, his firstborn son, Charles, did not immediately succeed him. Rather, governance fell into the hands of Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Parliamentarians who ruled as a de facto king. During this period of parliamentary rule, Charles lived in exile in Europe, spending time at the Dutch and French courts with his mother and siblings.
After Cromwell’s death, it became clear that the best option was the “restoration” of the monarchy and negotiations began to recall Charles. On his 30th birthday, Charles returned to London and was formally crowned Charles II in 1661.
In sharp contrast to his father, Charles II was tall, dark and handsome, impressive in both appearance and personality. He had escaped many close calls during the civil wars and even hid in an oak tree to avoid capture by the Parliamentarians after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.
While living in exile at the French royal court, he developed a taste for all things French — art, food, music, clothing. And when he returned to England in 1660, he brought the French cultural influence with him. He often copied the styles that his cousin King Louis XIV of France popularized, even the trend for red-heeled shoes, which appear in his coronation portrait by John Michael Wright. Yet he was a fashion trendsetter as well. In 1666, he introduced a new style of vest aimed at bolstering England’s wool trade. The new plain vest, which was knee-length and worn under a coat, would gradually evolve into the modern three-piece suit, that is, a jacket, trousers and waistcoat.
Charles II’s reign ushered in a new cultural golden age as he reopened the theaters, lifted censorship of the press and reinstituted the celebration of Christmas. He also promoted the sciences by establishing the Royal Society, which is still in existence today. He is often referred to as the “Merry Monarch,” a title that references his now-notorious affinity for fine food and drink, beautiful women and “merry making.” And the moniker is understandable. The king partied with the lower orders and had several mistresses at any given time. He had at least a dozen children with women he was not married to; he acknowledged five children with his longtime paramour Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine.
His reign was also marked by intense religious and political problems, including profound anti-Catholic feeling and xenophobia. Such tensions were further exacerbated by the fact that Charles’s younger brother and heir James (the future James II) was Catholic, as many wished to avoid the throne falling to another papist. Charles contended with political scandals, assassination plots and national disasters including the Great Plague from 1665-66 (the last major outbreak of the bubonic plague) and the Great Fire of 1666, which razed parts of London and killed more than 100,000. When Charles died in 1685 at age 55, the throne passed to his brother, who reigned for a mere three years before he was overthrown by his own daughter and son-in-law (Mary II and William III).
The history of these two Stuart kings explains why some experts thought Charles III might opt for a different regnal name. Some regnal names have never been repeated; there has never been a second King John, a pointed move to avoid any association with the first and only bearer of that name, who is considered one of the worst monarchs in English history. And while Henry is tied with Edward as the most frequent regnal name — eight times each — there has not been a King Henry since Henry VIII, perhaps due to his now immortal status as a serial divorcée. All things considered then, the name “Charles III” is not the worst option for this new modern king, as it invokes the rich cultural legacy of his Stuart predecessors. | 2022-09-11T10:43:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Kings Charles I and II, many are surprised there's is a third - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/11/after-kings-charles-i-ii-many-were-surprised-that-there-is-third/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/11/after-kings-charles-i-ii-many-were-surprised-that-there-is-third/ |
Biden aides have redoubled efforts to increase natural gas exports across the Atlantic but see few obvious solutions
President Biden delivers remarks during an energy and climate forum in Washington in June. White House aides are concerned about Europe's energy supply this winter. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Publicly, Biden administration officials are playing up good economic news at home. Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen embarked on a victory tour last week to tout a string of legislative victories — particularly the Inflation Reduction Act, passed with Democratic votes only — aimed at large-scale changes in the U.S. economy. Their sense of optimism has been buoyed by a dozen consecutive weeks of falling gas prices. Jobless claims have also come down in recent weeks, allaying fears of an imminent recession, and voter anger over inflation appears to be at least somewhat calming, helping Democrats’ poll numbers improve.
White House officials — and most economists — believe the growing likelihood of a recession in Europe is unlikely to change under the current trajectory. One senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal assessments, said the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers estimate that the impact on the U.S. from a European recession would probably be “modest and manageable.” Trade with Europe accounts for less than 1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, and many economists agree a decline in European consumer demand probably would not substantially affect U.S. firms. America also produces enough of its own natural gas not to be significantly affected by Russia restricting its flow into Europe.
U.S. options for helping Europe through its energy crunch may be limited. Already, the Biden administration has overseen a massive expansion in how much liquefied natural gas is shipped from U.S. frackers to Europe, with roughly 70 percent of U.S. export gas now going to Europe, according to administration assessments. The United States is already surpassing its goal of transporting an additional 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe this year. Since March, U.S. firms have delivered 30 billion cubic meters to Europe — more than twice the amount over the same period of time last year, administration officials said.
“If Europe plunges into a depression after Russia shuts off energy exports and oil rises to $150 a barrel — there’s a possible impact to the U.S. there that’s really bad,” said Matthew J. Slaughter, an economist at Dartmouth College.
“Russia will cut off their oil export before they take a big price discount,” said Mark Zandi, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. “That will push the economy into recession. Gasoline prices will go skyward, back over its record $5 a gallon almost overnight. The economy can’t digest $5 a gallon — that would be overwhelming.” | 2022-09-11T10:44:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House alarm rises over Europe as Putin threatens energy supply - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/11/europe-energy-crisis-white-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/11/europe-energy-crisis-white-house/ |
In this Jan. 19, 2021 image taken from Coffee County, Ga., security video, Cathy Latham, bottom, who was the chair of the Coffee County Republican Party at the time, greets a team of computer experts from data solutions company SullivanStrickler at the county elections office in Douglas, Ga. (Coffee County/AP) (AP)
The tale of how rogue actors sought to access voting systems after the 2020 election becomes more convoluted with every new piece of information. Yet the bottom line remains simple: Former president Donald Trump’s allies went to swing states around the country breaching critical infrastructure and damaging democracy even as they claimed to protect it. The “big lie” motivating their efforts is as potent a threat today.
New surveillance video from rural Coffee County, Ga., as reported by The Post’s Emma Brown and Jon Swaine, reveals a hodgepodge of election deniers visited a local elections office in early 2021 as they hunted for nonexistent proof of voter fraud. Most interesting are the activists’ links to each other and similar gambits elsewhere: Some were forensic specialists hired by lawyer Sidney Powell to copy sensitive software — an incident already the subject of a federal lawsuit against Georgia authorities. Others, it now appears, were consultants connected to interference in multiple other states including Michigan, where the same forensic firm also traveled for the same purpose, according to records.
The precise connections between attempts to probe voting systems not only in Georgia and Michigan but also in New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona remain unclear. What’s obvious, however, is the devastating impact of the tampering. Of course, when a password to a machine appears on YouTube, there’s a security risk. Punching a hole in a system also renders it more vulnerable to future hacking, which puts a heavy burden on cash-strapped jurisdictions forced to replace their equipment. Technical safeguards can mitigate some of this danger. But no piece of computer code can restore the public’s trust in the integrity of the country’s elections. That’s true for those who believe President Biden won in 2020 but now worry that hackers can fiddle with results, as well as those who still think, contrary to all available evidence, that Trump was the real victor — whose suspicions the meddlers sought to stoke.
The surest solution to the nation’s crisis of trust in our democracy is for the members of the Republican Party still claiming a stolen election to stop — or, more plausibly, for the country’s citizens to keep these reckless myth-makers out of office. FiveThirtyEight reported last week that 60 percent of Americans will see an election denier on the ballot this fall. This will happen in nearly every state. Some of the candidates, such as Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Arizona, are even up for governor. The Democratic Party bears some responsibility for strategically boosting these individuals in primaries. Now, the American people bear the responsibility for ensuring they aren’t given the platform and power to do even more harm. | 2022-09-11T11:44:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Georgia voting breach reminds us how dangerous Trump's 'big lie' is - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/georgia-voting-breach-trump-big-lie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/georgia-voting-breach-trump-big-lie/ |
‘How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water’ is an ode to human connection
Review by Charmaine Wilkerson
There is a Spanish word for venting one’s feelings, desahogar, which when translated literally means “to un-drown.” To pour one’s heart out. To cry until there is no need to cry anymore.
In Angie Cruz’s fourth novel, “How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water,” an interviewer with an employment assistance program in New York asks protagonist Cara Romero to say something about herself. What follows feels, at first, like an un-drowning.
Cara’s account begins with her move to the United States as a young mother from the Dominican Republic “because my husband wanted to kill me.” What emerges later is that her husband had not touched Cara in two years, turning to other women instead, but when Cara cedes to the tenderness of another man, her husband threatened to “kill me to end the humiliation he felt.”
The story, told in Cara’s unfailingly frank, sometimes hilarious, voice, quickly expands like the bellows of an accordion to release chords of friendship, community and, occasionally, lust, amid the financial stresses, discrimination and personal divisions faced by Cara, her family and friends in their rapidly gentrifying Washington Heights neighborhood.
The structure of the novel is built around 12 interview sessions designed to assess Cara’s job readiness and eligibility for continued unemployment benefits. She fills each meeting with stories of her life’s challenges, including her arrival in New York 26 years earlier, her struggle to support her son and siblings, and the sudden loss of her steady factory job to an overseas facility.
Cara punctuates her anecdotes with clear-eyed observations about contradictions and injustices in the country where she has spent most of her adult life, even as she studies to become a U.S. citizen.
“It will not be easy to say I am American, because when someone says American they don’t imagine me,” Cara tells the government contractor.
Cara, interviewed in the midst of the global economic downturn in 2009, sees through her landlord’s ploys to drive longtime tenants from their Washington Heights apartment building in favor of higher-paying newcomers. Despite her own joblessness, she feels deeply for the lawyer with children who, according to a news report, takes a job at a fast-food restaurant because he cannot find work in his own field. Says Cara, “Now I see that this country is like that fisherman with fast hands on the beach who shows you the big fat fish, but when he cooks, he says it shrink.”
Cara’s deepest disappointments and most fervent hopes are tied to her puzzling relationships with her son, Fernando, who makes a conscious decision to disappear from her life, and her “unfeeling” sister Ángela, who Cara believes is so taken with upward mobility that she does not appreciate the sacrifices Cara has made for her. But Cara is not perfect, and as the story moves forward, her own accounts reveal some of the hows and whys behind the personal divisions that trouble her so.
Through Cara’s memorable voice, images of other characters emerge, including the interviewer, a younger Dominican American who speaks little Spanish and who must somehow compile a list of Cara’s job skills from Cara’s meandering stories. Stories of how Cara cooks and cleans for la Vieja Caridad, an elderly neighbor, after the woman’s partner dies. Of how she babysits for her nephews and nieces, despite criticism of her methods. Of how she keeps an eye on the comings and goings in her building with her envious but loyal friend Lulú, the two of them tuning a television to the lobby’s security camera. Of Alicia the Psychic, who might be an online scammer, or maybe not.
Cruz drew critical acclaim with her previous novel “Dominicana,” a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a coming-of-age story centered around a Dominican teenage bride who immigrates to New York. With “How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water,” Cruz once again offers a fresh glimpse of immigration, womanhood, aspiration and gentrification, but the first-person gaze of the protagonist here takes on a more confessional, stream-of-consciousness tone.
“How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water” is an engaging read, one that invites the reader to look at the world as 56-year-old Cara does, with a mixture of harsh assessment, surprising naivete and, ultimately, a deep current of tenderness. The book also resounds with the sense that Cara loves and believes in herself, despite all she has gone through. In one of the story’s lighter moments, referring to her appearance, Cara says, “I know I was born with sugar in my pockets.” When asked in an employment questionnaire whether she can drive, she doesn’t say no. Instead, she says: No problem, she can learn.
It might seem superficial to call this a feel-good tale and, yet, Cara is a character to love. This is as much a story about Cara’s interior life and the human connections she makes as it is about her external disenfranchisement as an immigrant woman with limited financial and educational resources. “How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water” delivers a sense of the enduring worth of relationships, life experiences and determination as currencies in a difficult world.
Charmaine Wilkerson is the author of “Black Cake.” | 2022-09-11T12:15:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/11/angie-cruz-novel-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/11/angie-cruz-novel-review/ |
The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost anywhere on Earth, putting the ecosystem at long-term risk
Kevin Ambrose
A lobster close-up photo at James Hook & Company in Boston Seaport. (Kevin Ambrose)
The 2022 catch is strong so far, lobstermen told The Washington Post, although they note it’s too soon to know if it will match last year’s record season, when lobster landings exceeded 200 million pounds.
Patrice McCarron, executive director of Maine Lobstermen’s Association said some of the largest lobster populations have shifted northward since the 1970s or to deeper waters as temperatures in the Gulf of Maine rise.
Still, McCarron said, “lobsters are still in southern and Midcoast Maine, where we continue to have a slow but steady increase in landings.”
Adapting to warmer waters
Lobster season in the Gulf of Maine, which runs from the tip of Cape Cod up to Nova Scotia, peaks from June through November. The season was initially established to coincide with tourist season in New England. Years ago, when lobsters did not transport as well to consumers, the season was planned for when the customers could travel to them. With strong demand, Maine lobster products are now transported worldwide, fueling tourism and economic development in the region.
As summers become warmer, the lobster industry has taken steps to adapt to warmer temperatures, something that has so far helped to keep their business afloat amid a rapidly changing climate.
Seaweed helps Maine lobstermen ride the storm of climate change
“The industry has adapted in a variety of ways — from on-boat handling practices to keep lobsters alive and healthier in high temperatures, to more flexible transportation and processing capacities, and to a greater diversity of market outlets for lobster,” said Kathy Mills, a research scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
In addition, many of the lobsters’ primary predators, such as cod and haddock, have decreased due to overfishing, McCarron said.
Size limits are also in place for lobster catches to protect small and oversized lobsters, generally over three pounds. Small lobsters are returned to the water to grow to maturity, and oversized lobsters are protected for life, which allows them to mate. Egg-bearing females are also returned to the water with a notch cut in their tails to indicate to other lobstermen to throw them back if caught again.
The Gulf of Maine also has a unique marine layer called the thermocline, where temperatures abruptly drop to much chillier levels at a depth typically shallower than 50 meters and the lobsters can thrive. While water temperatures at the surface continue to warm, temperatures at the bottom remain cold, reinforced by snow and ice melt each spring. Intense storms and even tropical systems can temporarily mix the warmer water to the bottom, but McCarron says that the lobster can tolerate short periods of warmer water.
Although many lobsters are appearing to fare well this season, the summer heat hasn’t let up. This summer, a temperature of 68.8 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in the Gulf of Maine, an all-time record. According to Gulf of Maine Research Institute, this year’s has been the fourth warmest summer on record overall, coming in behind 2021, 2012, and 2020.
Much of the summer temperature increases can be blamed on marine heat waves — a period of five or more days where sea surface temperatures are in the 90th percentile compared to average.
“A new [marine] heat wave event began on June 25 and has continued through today,” Adam Kemberling, a research technician from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, said in early September. “The recent strong influence of the Gulf Stream will tend to keep temperatures here warmer relative to the past, but this area has a lot of seasonal and interannual variability; fall storms or other weather patterns could disrupt the current heat wave.”
The Gulf of Maine, warming faster than 96 percent of the world’s oceans, is uniquely vulnerable to these marine heat waves, which could portend a concerning future for area lobsters.
Past lobster seasons have already been affected by these heat waves.
In 2012, an early-season marine heat wave caused the lobster catch to ramp up earlier than normal in the spring, leading to a price collapse. The heat wave contributed to the warmest spring and second warmest year on record in the gulf. That summer forced the industry to adapt, and there has not been a marine heat wave-related disruption since.
While this summer’s temperature highs didn’t seem to disrupt the year’s catch, researchers are worried about future seasons.
Katie Wagner, a spokesperson for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, said projected warming over the next 80 years suggests deeper and colder areas of the Gulf of Maine will increasingly become the only areas suitable for lobster habitats. Lobster will be able to thrive to the north, further away from popular lobstering areas right off the coast of southern Maine.
“Warming ocean waters due to climate change are forcing American lobster populations to a deeper and more northerly distribution than ever before,” Wagner said. “Lobster populations are increasing at the cooler (northern) edge of their range, and declining at the warmer (southern) edge of the range due to reproductive failure — fewer juvenile lobsters living to adulthood to reproduce.”
Mills also warns that deeper water layers will also be impacted long-term by temperature rises, which could affect the thermocline layer.
Scientists see stronger evidence of slowing Atlantic Ocean circulation, an ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the climate
“Deep waters in the Gulf of Maine have been warming as well, and in much of the gulf, surface and bottom temperatures are correlated with one another,” Mills said.
In nearby areas without a protective thermocline layer, lobsters have already fled the area. In the coastal waters south of Cape Cod, warming sea temperatures from climate change have dramatically reduced lobster populations, leading to the collapse of the local lobster industry over the past four decades.
According to NOAA, registered lobster landings dipped by 97.7 percent in New York state from 1996 to 2014. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, lobster landings have dipped 96.6 percent and 70.3 percent from their most profitable years, respectively. | 2022-09-11T12:15:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Gulf of Maine is simmering, but its lobsters seem fine — for now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/11/gulf-maine-lobster-warming-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/11/gulf-maine-lobster-warming-climate/ |
Confederates, socialists, Capitol attackers: A 14th Amendment history lesson
How the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause has played out historically — and now
Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin takes in the view from his ranch in Tularosa, N.M. in May 2021. Griffin has been disqualified from serving in office due to participating in the Jan. 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Morgan Lee/AP)
A New Mexico judge ruled this week that a county commissioner was disqualified from holding office because he participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In ordering Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin removed from office, the judge cited a section of the 14th Amendment disqualifying any elected official “who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States,” has then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The advocacy group that filed the lawsuit is also considering attempting to use it to disqualify former president Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential contest, according to the New York Times.
The disqualification clause, as it is sometimes called, was written in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, in the brief period when Radical Republicans — some of the most progressive lawmakers in American history — held a majority and were determined to stop high-ranking Confederate traitors from returning to public office.
The amendment doesn’t specify who’s supposed to be enforcing it, so the responsibility has fallen to different bodies. Griffin was disqualified in court, but historically, Congress itself has sometimes taken votes to prevent elected members from being seated.
Two of those instances highlight the inconsistency of the clause’s application: the last time it was used successfully, nearly a century ago against antiwar lawmaker Victor Berger (who was not, by any standard definition, an insurrectionist), and when it was applied against former Confederate Zebulon Vance — who, like Berger, was allowed to waltz back into office once the political winds had shifted in his favor.
Vance grew up in a well-connected family that struggled financially but still enslaved more than a dozen people. After law school, he rose in the political ranks, first in the state senate and eventually as the youngest member of the 36th Congress, representing Asheville and the surrounding areas.
(Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who currently represents Asheville and was also the youngest member of his Congress, faced a lawsuit trying to disqualify him from Congress under the 14th Amendment. The lawsuit was dismissed as moot after Cawthorn lost his primary in May.)
As the march toward the Civil War escalated, Vance initially opposed secession but eventually served in the Confederate Army. He also served as the Confederate governor of North Carolina.
After the war, in 1870, he was appointed senator from North Carolina, but the Senate refused to seat him, citing the 14th Amendment. After spending two years in Washington trying to get an amnesty, he gave up.
Capitol statue collection gets first Black American, replacing Confederate
But only a few years later, Washington was handing out amnesty like candy, defeating the whole purpose of the clause. Vance got his in 1875 and was elected to the Senate three years later. Not only did he serve until his death in 1894; in a sense, he is still there today: A statue of Vance stands in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, a 1916 gift from North Carolina that Congress cannot legally remove unless the state decides to replace it.
Berger had a very different story, though he ended up in the same pickle as Vance. Born into a Jewish family in the Austrian empire, he immigrated to the United States as a young man in 1878. He became a successful publisher in Milwaukee of both English- and German-language newspapers.
Berger was a leading voice of the “Sewer Socialists,” who believed socialist objectives could be achieved through elections and good governance, no violent revolution necessary. Today, we would call this a “roads and bridges” platform; back then, it was working sewers and clean, city-owned water.
Socialists were winning U.S. elections long before Bernie Sanders and AOC
Berger served one term in Congress — the first-ever Socialist Party member — from 1911 to 1913, the high point being when he introduced the first bill for an old-age pension. (Nowadays we call that Social Security.) He didn’t win reelection, but he stayed active in Wisconsin politics and in publishing.
Then World War I began, and with it came the First Red Scare. Berger was against the war and said so in his editorials, and in 1918 that was enough for him to be charged with “disloyal acts” under the Espionage Act. He was running for Congress again while under indictment, and soon after he won the election that November, he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
The socialist who ran for president from prison — and won nearly a million votes
While out on appeal, Berger showed up in Washington to be sworn in. The House refused to seat him by a vote of 309-1, saying his words had “given aid or comfort” to enemies of the nation, and he was thus barred under the 14th Amendment.
In December 1919, he ran in the special election to replace himself, and incredibly, he won. The House refused him a second time. In 1921, Berger’s conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court, and he returned unfettered to Congress in 1922, where he served three terms, pushing legislation to crack down on lynching and to end Prohibition.
More on Civil War history
A live Civil War explosive was found in Georgia. Does it need to be destroyed?
Let’s get real about Robert E. Lee and slavery
Memphis is digging up the remains of a Confederate general who led the early KKK | 2022-09-11T12:15:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is the 14th Amendment's disqualification clause? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/11/14th-amendment-disqualification-couy-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/11/14th-amendment-disqualification-couy-trump/ |
Distinguished person of the week: America has also lost a beloved queen
Queen Elizabeth II arrives at a state banquet in Berlin on June 24, 2015. (Kay Nietfeld/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
In a world of coarseness, oversharing, self-absorption and flightiness, Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away Thursday at the age of 96, had none of these traits. That partly explains why so many Americans, whose country’s origin story is the rejection of the monarchy, were genuinely sad following her death.
Commentators have used the word “stability” to describe her contribution to the United Kingdom. Stability suggests that nothing changes. That’s not what she offered. Rather, she provided continuity — a sense of connection to the past, a symbol of a shared history. As we see from the shift in her photos from black and white to color, from her brunette years to the decades of dignified gray, she adapted to the modern world. She incorporated radio, television and even the internet to maintain her conversations with her people.
She learned that the modern era required less stiff upper lip and more comforting. From criticism of her initial, stoic reaction to Princess Diana’s passing, she discovered empathy was a royal asset. She displayed it beautifully during the covid crisis, and we saw her family members in their “walkabouts” viewing flowers and condolence notes carry on their role as national consolers.
So it was her ability to adapt to the modern world while maintaining values such as dignity, privacy, service, devotion and hard work that was her great talent. She showed for 70 years that good character and manners do not go out of fashion.
The sheer number of presidents and prime ministers who came and went during her reign invokes awe. Her first prime minister was Winston Churchill; her last was Liz Truss. Just two days before her passing, the queen pulled herself together, dressed nicely and performed the traditional role of accepting one prime minister’s resignation and welcoming a new one, her 15th. One can only marvel that she provided a bridge from a prime minister born in the 19th century to the third woman to hold the post.
It’s funny to say that she was the only British queen most Americans have known, but her reign from the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower to that of Joe Biden is a reminder of the “special relationship” between the two democracies. Our politics may change — not for the best, in many cases — but our ties to Britain remain.
Americans have basked in the pageantry of the queen who wasn’t their own — as one might adopt a beloved neighbor as a surrogate grandmother. They have agonized over scandals involving her family. Through it all, the queen could be counted on to model grace, patience, pleasantness and interest in the world around her. (A woman who traveled more than 1 million miles, met the Beatles and the Apollo 11 astronauts, and hosted the Olympics after participating in a James Bond spoof must have been a curious person.)
Strangely, the most ready comparison to the queen might be tennis great Serena Williams, who retired earlier this month. In her realm, she too was both a revolutionary and a consistent presence in her field for decades. She did what she did with excellence, perhaps better than any other we have watched. Pity the next crop of American female tennis players who will seem small by comparison. There’s a void that won’t easily be filled, if ever.
Likewise, the affection that millions around the world felt toward the queen will not transfer easily to King Charles III (how odd to type “King Charles” without referring to a 17th-century monarch who lost his throne and his head). His marital history and quirky, cold persona will make it challenging to earn the respect and warmth his mother enjoyed. He has the unfortunate task of following the longest-lived and longest-reigning monarch whose sheer endurance earned her respect even among British small-r republicans.
It just won’t be the same. Americans will miss our adopted queen. | 2022-09-11T12:15:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In Queen Elizabeth II, America has also lost a beloved queen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-death-america-britain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-death-america-britain/ |
Tributes to Queen Elizabeth II in London's Green Park, just outside Buckingham Palace. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
LONDON — The big bubble letters in blue crayon seemed to sum up much of the country’s mood: “Miss you,” a child had written on a small notecard, next to a drawing of something that looked a lot like a corgi. It lay between purple tulips and red carnations outside of the gates of Buckingham Palace.
Since the moment Thursday when officials announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II — placing a framed, two-sentence announcement on an easel at the front palace gate — people have flocked there to be part of the collective grief and to pay their respects with flowers, messages, mementos and more.
They’ve left homemade crowns, tea light candles, framed poems, Union Jack baseball caps. They’ve left newspaper clippings and pictures of her majesty from various moments in her 70-year reign. They’ve even left Paddington Bears.
But it’s the handwritten missives that stand out, ranging from the serious to the poignant, the rambling to the funny, many offering a window into how people felt about the queen. Some of the youngest Britons’ scrawl is hard to make out.
“Rest in peace, Queen Kong,” one child wrote beside a picture of the queen, with hat and handbag, climbing Big Ben much like King Kong scaled the Empire State Building.
A woman named Anita thanked the queen “for being my constant and role model for 70 years of my life. Your smile, sense of humour and zest for life lifted my heart everytime.”
Another card referenced the poignant scene of Prince Philip’s funeral last year, when the queen was a solitary figure in her pew and black mask because of the strict pandemic rules in place at the time.
“When you sat alone at your husband’s funeral all those bereaved by covid, during the pandemic, felt a connection,” the note read. “A grieving lady on her own all alone just like us. Leading the nation by example.”
Buckingham Palace looms large in the British psyche. It’s not just the residence of the monarch and headquarters of the royal family. It’s both a scene and a place to be seen — to take a selfie or two and, this weekend, to witness in person a singular event in the nation’s history, the passing of an immensely popular sovereign and, just like that, the installation of a new one.
The people arriving by tube or bus cannot miss the larger-than-life photos of the queen — regal in a white gown, blue sash and stunning diamond tiara — that now adorn nearby stations and kiosk stops. Again and again during the past three days, those gathered at Buckingham have spontaneously belted out the national anthem. It has usually been the version that ends with “God save the queen.” But on Saturday, when the newly proclaimed King Charles III paid a visit, the song was correctly updated.
To the crowd’s delight, the king ordered his driver to stop the royal Rolls-Royce for an impromptu walkabout outside the gates.
His two sons and their wives did the same thing outside of Windsor Castle, the queen’s favorite residence. In a surprising show of unity given the past several years of bruised family relations, Prince William and Catherine and Prince Harry and Meghan greeted people and shook hands for nearly three-quarters of an hour Saturday afternoon.
At both palace and castle, the flowers continued to pile up, bouquets sometimes mounded a couple of feet high. But with officials removing them daily, the accumulation hasn’t become as massive as after Princess Diana died a quarter-century ago. A sign at Buckingham tells visitors that the tributes will be collected every 12 hours and displayed in Green Park just across the road.
“Even if you’re not a royalist, you still have respect for the monarch,” said Lynsey Pilgrim, 36, who laid a bouquet of roses and daisies along the gilded wrought-iron fence. She said she was struck by how many of the cards were in foreign languages, possibly written by people for whom Elizabeth II wasn’t even their ruler.
The last time the palace drew such throngs was in June, for the queen’s jubilee, and the mood was exuberant and celebratory — especially when the queen stepped out onto the famous balcony and waved at her subjects. Everyone went wild.
This weekend’s mood is a mixture of sadness and curiosity. The crowds have stayed late into the night.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be here, to be part of history, to show our respect,” said Ewan Forbes, 60, a retired police officer who had come with his son. He described the queen as “the mother of the country,” adding that “although millions never met her, everyone knew her. She spoke wisely; she spoke sense.”
Early this week, the focus will shift to the north. The queen died at Balmoral Castle in the Scottish highlands, and her oak coffin will be taken to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. On Tuesday, it will be flown to London and travel first to Buckingham Palace and then to the Palace of Westminster, where the queen will lie in state until her funeral at Westminster Abbey on Sept. 19.
But Buckingham Palace will not lack for attention after that. Charles is expected to move in soon. | 2022-09-11T12:15:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II tributes line Buckingham Palace in poignant scene - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-ii-buckingham-palace-remembrance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-ii-buckingham-palace-remembrance/ |
This is part two of a condensed and lightly edited transcript of an interview with Soviet and Russian energy specialist Thane Gustafson. In part one, he described the evolution of the Russian energy industry under President Vladimir Putin until the eve of the war in Ukraine. Part two picks up with him describing the impact of the war on Russia’s oil industry.
Denning: You say Putin’s war has set in motion a process that will drag down the long-term competitiveness of Russia’s oil industry. How so?
Gustafson: The big question is the long range effects, beginning about five years out. How the withdrawal of the services companies; the interruption of supply lines, of equipment; the exit of the Western majors; and the financial difficulties that the Russian government is going to have — all of those are going to act as drags on the ability of the Russian oil industry to continue modernizing. And yet it must continue modernizing because, like all natural resources, the initial resource gradually gets used up and you have to move out to increasingly marginal development opportunities, while constantly using new technology
The traditional core of the oil industry in West Siberia is clearly in decline. The Russians even now are fighting a rearguard action there. Hence the importance of those three techniques I mentioned earlier. But the big thing to focus on as an example of the tests that lie ahead is [Rosneft CEO] Igor Sechin’s favorite project, Vostok Oil.
LD: Why is Vostok so important and what makes it so challenging?
TG: Vostok is a mixture of things, but the main thing to know is that it lies outside the administrative boundaries of West Siberia in a place called the Taymyr Peninsula, but it is the northeastern edge of the geology of West Siberia. Some of that, such as the Vankor field, is already producing. The big question concerns the fields now being explored, of which one of the best known is the Payakh field. Sechin has said to Putin: If you grant me the full support of the state, I will produce for you a hundred million tons of oil a year from Vostok Oil — two million barrels a day — by 2030, and I’ll keep going from there.
But here’s the thing: Vostok Oil is a pile of challenges. It’s virgin territory. You’ve got to build a new port system to be able to export the oil to Asia by tanker. So that’s tied to the rate of global warming. You have to build an entire infrastructure with buildings that have to be reinforced against permafrost melting. Novatek sank 60,000 piles into the ground to support the buildings at Yamal LNG [another Arctic project].
Then you need a whole network of new pipelines to bring the oil to that new port on the Arctic coast. But those pipelines and the port don’t yet exist. You’ve got to bring in maybe a hundred thousand workers. Now, the good news is that’s a hundred thousand jobs, but the bad news is that’s a hundred thousand people you’ve got to induce to go up there either full-time or part-time. And you realize that all of this adds up to infrastructure — and investment. It’s not so much the impact of the sanctions per se, directly.
The one place where the sanctions probably have a direct impact is in the supply of oil tankers and such. Sechin’s got a plan for that, too. He’s directly responsible for the development of a new shipyard called Zvezda, or “star.” He had, until the invasion, support from South Korean shipbuilders. They are now pulling back and the project is behind schedule. No Zvezda, no tankers; no tankers, no Vostok Oil.
LD: Back to gas. Another theme of The Bridge was that Europe expected the far-reaching changes it enacted in its own gas industry would give it an advantage in dealing with Gazprom. Now, those expectations are pretty much dashed. Can you talk about what things look like beyond this war?
TG: In retrospect, you can fault the European Union and the Germans for three major things. One, I think the EU had too much faith in the power of its new regulatory and market mechanisms. Take, for example, the doctrine of the Single European Market, which took the concrete form of three far-reaching gas and power directives. I think the EU believed that if you enforced those directives — with the Russians kicking and screaming the whole way, by the way — and applied the whole panoply of regulatory, neoliberal weapons, that Europe would have the advantage in any bargaining relationship. That the burden of risk would shift onto the supplier and that Europe would be able to control the show.
You have to give the Russians credit for having been very candid on this. Gazprom explicitly warned the EU, saying: Are you sure that you want me to be on my computer screen every day, setting the level of Russian gas exports to Europe on the basis of the day-ahead spot price? Be careful what you wish for.
Number two is the Germans had too much confidence in the Energiewende [Germany’s energy transition program] and the rate at which they would be able to shut down nuclear, and ultimately coal, and increase renewables. And then, in the fullness of time, cut their dependence on gas. Exhibit A is the way they waved away all talk of an LNG terminal in Germany up until just recently. But their strategy depended crucially on the continued availability of Russian gas.
Third is the over-optimism of the European business community, particularly in Germany. Ever since Soviet times, there had been a strong faith, shared with much of the German political establishment, in the power of “Wandel durch Handel,” or “Change through Trade.” That good business relations would favor the transition of Russia to a “normal” political system. The depth of that relationship [with Russia] was extraordinary. There’s a whole generation of people whose entire careers in Germany were built — think of Wingas, for example — on the reality of partnership; close, intimate, friendly partnership. They couldn’t believe that the Russians would just commit gas suicide.LD: In a way, given the gas relationship began under the Soviet Union, you could almost understand that the Germans might look at that experience and say: look, we were able to do business even with those guys. So surely these are the same people, just a different government. What did they get wrong about that?
TG: What they got wrong is that they held onto those three items of faith too long. Basically, all three come out of the neoliberal view of the world, despite the growing signs by about the mid-2000s that Putin himself and the Russian political center of gravity were shifting away from collaboration, cooperation and friendship, toward a stance of hostility and resistance. The key date is 2007 when Putin made his famous speech at the Munich security conference and his bitter denunciation of the US and secondarily of Europe. That should have been a wake-up call.
And yet, think of the major Western projects in the automotive sector, Renault, think of the partnership between Total and Novatek in LNG, think about Siemens modernizing the Russian locomotive system. All of those were at the express invitation and encouragement of Putin himself. He made himself the ambassador for these projects, so you were getting dual messages out of Russia.
LD: There was a great line in your last book, “ Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change,” where you said Russia is already one of the chief causes of climate change but, as time goes on, it will also be one of its chief victims. You published that a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine. What did you mean by that, and how does the invasion, this new landscape, interact with or change that thesis?
TG: That book is very much a thought experiment about a set of hypothetical futures. The central question is: what if peak oil demand turns out to be real and it is followed by a decline? What would be the impact on Russian revenues and, by extension, the budget of the Russian government and the whole political system that is underpinned by those revenues?
So I went on a systematic tour of all the possible alternative money earners. There’s a chapter in there on nuclear power, on agriculture, coal, renewables. And then I added it all up and you come to totals that don’t even compare with the last peacetime — and pre-pandemic — revenues from oil and gas. Oil accounting for four fifths of the hydrocarbon revenues, by the way, and gas, only one fifth at the time.
As to benefits of climate change, the one Putin keeps talking about is opening up the Arctic Ocean, the Northern maritime passage. That is the basis of Russia’s policy on LNG, and also Sechin’s Vostok Oil. Putin also talks about possible benefits of climate change for agriculture. The jury’s very much out on that. The biggest question concerns Russia’s grain exports. But even at their best, Russian agricultural exports are unlikely to add up to more than $40 billion a year — that’s Putin’s target — and that’s far less than the roughly $425 billion that oil and gas generated in 2019.
Based on the various modeling exercises of the oil companies and others, the consensus on the eve of the pandemic was that Russia’s hydrocarbon revenues would remain strong during the 2020s. But that the impact of a possible peak in oil demand, and a possible leveling-off of gas demand by 2040, would start to kick in by the beginning of the 2030s. So you have two periods: one of reprieve, so to speak, and the second of increasing stress on the system.
How does the invasion affect that? The first consequence is the self-destruction of Russia’s gas market in Europe. The second is the likely decline in Russia’s oil exports to Europe, as the embargo kicks in, forcing Russia to accept discounts and higher costs to move its oil to other markets. Both of these will affect Russia’s revenues in this decade.
There has been a good deal of talk that the sanctions aren’t working because the price spike has more than offset any decline in export volumes. It is true that the immediate result of the spike has been an increase in Russia’s dollar revenues, but that is turning out to be a mixed blessing for Moscow, causing the ruble to appreciate. That’s awkward because if you sell your oil in dollars but your ruble is overvalued, you get fewer rubles. And the revenues of the Russian budget are in rubles. So you get indirect financial hits that arise in the wake of the invasion and the sanctions.
I think the net effect of all that will be seen in retrospect as having blown a good deal of that favorable decade of the 2020s. And Putin will have only himself to blame.
Then the final question, and this brings us back into the orbit of Klimat: For the time being — say, the next two to five years — energy security will be the main priority. But at what point does climate change come back to the fore? I think Germany is ground-zero on that question.
LD: In what sense?
TG: Take LNG. For years the Germans rejected LNG, saying we won’t need it because Europe’s gas system is nicely interconnected and, besides, we’re not going to need gas for very much longer. Now they’re saying, wow, we’ve got to build some LNG terminals here and some new pipeline connections. And we’ve got to rent some floating LNG re-gas vessels. All that investment is, in effect, locking in a long-term dependence on LNG, which is driving the German greens crazy.
So there, you have a good example of the competition between the green agenda — God save us from global warming — and then the energy security agenda, which is God save us from the Russians. Which of those two agendas is going to win out? And when?
We know the answer for this winter: It’s all energy security all the time.
But meanwhile, very quietly in the background, Brussels keeps on pushing its climate change agenda with things like reform of the emissions trading system. That has inched its way through the endless European labyrinth. It’s gone through the parliament. Now it’s going to be submitted to the “trilogue.”(1) And then that will have to go back to Brussels for coordination. Then it’ll be resubmitted. But the point is that the climate-change agenda keeps inching along. It is not dead. Will it ultimately be strengthened or weakened by the measures taken to improve energy security? That’s not yet clear.
LD: Coming back to where we started, Gorbachev is regarded by many as the perhaps unwitting undertaker of the Soviet Union. Will Putin be remembered as the unwitting undertaker of the Russian energy sector, and the political system that it supports?
TG: Certainly on the gas side. Revenues from LNG are not going to come close to replacing what Gazprom will be losing. It’s hard to construct a scenario under which Gazprom’s business is reborn in Europe.
LD: Can China compensate?
TG: Partly that’s an infrastructure question. The pipeline capacity doesn’t exist yet. Nor, it would seem, does the political will, for all the professions of no-limits friendship between [Chinese president] Xi Jinping and Putin.
The test question is whether the [proposed gas pipeline] Power of Siberia 2 goes forward. The current Russian plan is to run it from West Siberia, through Mongolia and into China. And every time you turn around, there’s a press release from Gazprom saying hurray, hurray, we’re on our way. And the Mongolian government has adopted policy arrangements that point in the same direction.
Not one word from the Chinese. Until you see a fast-track Power of Siberia 2 project actually putting pipe on the ground, I think there’s your answer to the prospects for a serious pivot to the east of Russian gas exports. At best, it’s 10 years away, and probably more. As Putin ruefully admits, the Chinese are tough negotiators.
LD: And oil?
TG: The core answer is the same for both gas and oil: that Putin had a tremendous opportunity to use the reconsolidated and modernized production of energy, and to put those revenues to work in reshaping the Russian economy in a modern direction and reversing the misshapen Soviet economy, which is still the essential structure of the Russian economy today.
Exhibit A on this point: Look at a map of the distribution of Russian cities compared to, say, Canada. You’ve got over a hundred cities with populations of one million, and they’re all separate dots. They’re like the pimples in a bad case of chicken pox. Those are what the Russians call millionniki; they are there mainly because of the military-industrial facilities they supported in Soviet times. They have no viable economic function in a market economy. They are capitals of cold. Places in the Urals like Chelyabinsk or Perm, or even worse, in Siberia, like Omsk or Novosibirsk.
This is ironic, of course. The world is worried about global warming, and rightly, but Russia still suffers from the curse of cold, and from the pattern of urban settlement inherited from Soviet times. Nothing has been done to change that structure. Instead, Putin mostly encouraged investment on the far Arctic Ocean coastal frontier. This will worsen that imbalance.
LD: How so?
TG: Because all of that new investment is concentrated up there in the capitals of cold. If those oil and gas assets end up as stranded assets, that’s more Soviet-style wasted investment. So I think the bottom line is that Putin has blown, economically speaking, the tremendous opportunity afforded by the remaining energy endowment, to say nothing of the geopolitical legacy.
(1) An ad-hoc group made up of representatives of the national governments, the Parliament, and the Commission. | 2022-09-11T13:46:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Putin Has Squandered Soviet Energy Legacy, Part 2 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/putin-has-squandered-soviet-energy-legacy-part-2/2022/09/11/73577b8a-31d2-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/putin-has-squandered-soviet-energy-legacy-part-2/2022/09/11/73577b8a-31d2-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
The global obesity epidemic is getting worse, especially among children, with rates of obesity rising over the past decade and shifting to earlier ages. In the US, roughly 40% of today’s high school students were overweight by the time they started high school. Globally, the incidence of obesity has tripled since the 1970s, with fully one billion people expected to be obese by 2030.
To Tackle Hunger, We Need to Fix Food Subsidies: David Fickling:
Menu Calorie Counts Are a Nudge, Not a Panacea: Therese Raphael
Go Ahead, Order That Cheesesteak: Faye Flam | 2022-09-11T13:46:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Plastic Might Be Making You Obese - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/plastic-might-be-making-you-obese/2022/09/11/73c0f132-31d2-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/plastic-might-be-making-you-obese/2022/09/11/73c0f132-31d2-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
By Everett Eaton, The Virginian-Pilot | AP
This Jan. 30, 2009 photo shows Knitting Mill Creek near Colonial Place in Norfolk, Va. The Elizabeth River Project’s latest work doesn’t fight the rising tide. It will roll with it. The environmental group is constructing a 6,500-foot resilience lab along Colley Avenue and Knitting Mill Creek. The building has an intentional life span of about 30 to 50 years; when sea levels reach a certain height, the structure can be disassembled and moved to allow a living shoreline, that’s part of the design, to take its place. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot via AP) | 2022-09-11T13:47:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New research facility shows how to live with rising tides - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-research-facility-shows-how-to-live-with-rising-tides/2022/09/11/e0f6dff6-31d1-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-research-facility-shows-how-to-live-with-rising-tides/2022/09/11/e0f6dff6-31d1-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Decades-old rules say the British monarch’s grandchildren are entitled to be called prince or princess. Buckingham Palace has not yet clarified Archie and Lilibet’s status.
Prince Harry and Meghan with their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, in Cape Town, South Africa, three years ago. (Toby Melville/Pool/Getty Images)
LONDON — The appearance in Britain this week of Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who very publicly split from royal life two years ago, raised a flurry of questions for many royal watchers: Will their kids be officially named prince and princess after the death of Queen Elizabeth II?
While Harry’s grandmother reigned, the Mountbatten-Windsor children, Archie Harrison, 3, and Lilibet “Lili” Diana, 1, were too far down the line of succession to be automatically entitled to royal titles. (The queen, namesake of little Lilibet, had the power to change that but did not, much to the chagrin of Harry and Meghan fans.)
Under King Charles III, Archie and Lilibet as his grandchildren traditionally would be given new honorifics — but it is not clear whether they have gotten them yet.
“I would expect the situation to be clarified. It hasn’t been,” royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said Sunday.
In a list of those in line to succeed the monarch published by Buckingham Palace, Archie and Lilibet — respectively sixth and seventh in line to the throne — were referred to as “Master” and “Miss,” not “Prince” and “Princess.”
This fueled speculation that Charles, who has famously said he wants the ranks of the monarchy to be “slimmed down” around a core set of full-time working royals, might break with precedent and decline to offer his grandchildren royal titles. The palace did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment from The Washington Post.
The question of Archie and Lilibet’s status took on new urgency last year when the couple said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that the royal family treated their firstborn child, Archie, differently, including by denying him the title of prince — a move Meghan, whose mother is Black, suggested was driven by institutional racism within the monarchy.
In 1917, King George V, Harry’s great-great-grandfather, issued a legal document known as Letters Patent laying out which royals were entitled to the title of prince or princess and of HRH, his or her royal highness, and the regal trappings that come with them, which can include financial compensation and patronages.
Harry and Meghan gave up their own HRH titles as part of an agreement with the royal family when they retreated into more private lives and moved to North America. (As The Post has reported, the couple and their children have moved into a $14.7 million home in Montecito, Calif.)
“The grandchildren of the sons of any such Sovereign in the direct male line (save only the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales) shall have and enjoy in all occasions the style and title enjoyed by the children of Dukes of these Our Realms,” the 1917 document reads.
This means that while Elizabeth reigned, of all her great-grandchildren, only Prince William’s eldest son, Prince George, was entitled to be called his royal highness. However, she issued a patent to allow George’s siblings, Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte, to have HRH titles.
With the accession of Charles to the throne, Archie and Lilibet “should’ve been offered [royal titles],” Fitzwilliams said.
In her interview with Winfrey, Meghan said that while she was pregnant with Archie, she learned that Buckingham Palace “didn’t want him to be a prince or a princess” and that “he wasn’t going to receive security.”
In the face of extreme media scrutiny of her and her family, Meghan said, she was concerned her son would be less safe if he didn’t enjoy the full protection she felt came from a royal title. She also said she and Harry didn’t make the decision not to give Archie the title of prince, as some media reports at the time had suggested.
Why isn’t Meghan and Harry’s son a prince? A look at how royal titles are bestowed.
When asked why she thought the royal family didn’t make Archie a prince, Meghan said conversations were happening “in tandem” about how Archie wouldn’t be given a title and about “how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
“The implication was that they weren’t offered titles and that was linked to racism,” Fitzwilliams said. “That was extremely damaging.”
Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, spoke with Oprah Winfrey about turning away from life as senior royals in an interview that aired on March 7, 2021. (Video: The Washington Post)
Not all royals choose to take a title, and it’s not clear whether Harry and Meghan will want their children to have them even if they are offered, Fitzwilliams said.
Princess Anne, the daughter of Elizabeth, chose not to give her children, Peter and Zara, HRH titles. She spoke about her decision in a 2020 interview with Vanity Fair. “I think it was probably easier for them, and I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles,” she said. “So I think that was probably the right thing to do.”
While there are many advantages to being a titled member of the royal family, a major downside is the lack of privacy that comes with an elevated status in the eyes of the press and the public. “On the other hand, if Harry and Meghan are desperately sensitive about this issue, as it appeared on Oprah they were, it’s very important of course [that Archie and Lilibet] be offered them, because that’s the 1917 edict,” Fitzwilliams said.
If they weren’t offered titles, “obviously it would be seen as a deep snub,” he added. “If they were and if they decided not to take them, that’s an individual choice.”
William Booth, Karla Adam and Jennifer Hassan contributed to this report. | 2022-09-11T14:56:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Are Harry and Meghan's kids, Archie and Lilibet, prince and princess? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/harry-meghan-archie-lilibet-queen-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/harry-meghan-archie-lilibet-queen-death/ |
The hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped with the Royal Standard of Scotland, passing through Aberdeen, Scotland, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022 as it continues its journey to Edinburgh from Balmoral. (Paul Campbell/PA via AP)
As her coffin made its way from royal holiday home Balmoral Castle to the Scottish capital Edinburgh, where it will remain until it’s transported to London ahead of the funeral, throngs of people lined the route to pay their respects along the six-hour journey ceremonial journey.
“National Mourning is a period of time for reflection in response to the demise of the Sovereign,” it read. "Nevertheless, mourning is very personal and we anticipate individuals, families, communities and organizations may want to mark Her Majesty’s demise in their own way.”
In that vein, Fortnum & Mason stopped its clock. The Premier League is cancelled. A planned labor strike was called off.
Stories about the war in Ukraine reaching a critical new phase, or about flood waters leaving a third of Pakistan's habitable land under water, are far from the headlines.
The BBC and ITV have cancelled some of their flagship programming in favor of news and analysis about the royal transition. Apple News’s algorithm is turning up a solid stream of stories about what comes next.
"Bombarding us with hours of repetitive rolling content that breezes past the colonial legacy of Queen Elizabeth’s reign is counterproductive and unnecessary," online and print magazine gal-dem wrote on its Twitter account.
In the days following the queen’s death, campaigners and politicians have from former colonies in the Caribbean have renewed calls to remove the monarch as their head of state and for Britain to pay slavery reparations. On Sunday, the hashtag #notmyking was trending on Twitter.
"Respect, decorum and questioning are not incompatible,” wrote columnist Kenan Malik in the Observer newspaper. “Interrogation isn’t an expression of anti-Britishness. There is more than one way of wanting the best for this country.” | 2022-09-11T14:56:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II's coffin on final journey but restaurants, pubs are open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-coffin-britain-mourning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-coffin-britain-mourning/ |
Data suggests it’s wrong for so many to wait until ninth grade for that class
A math teacher helps an eighth-grader with an algebra lesson at Spring International Middle School in Silver Spring, Md., in 2010. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Why do eighth-graders make us nervous? They can be difficult. Dealing with puberty is no fun for them or us. But our discomfort with that age group shouldn’t get in the way of teaching them something important: algebra.
A report by the U.S. Department of Education in 2018, just before the pandemic, found that only 24 percent of eighth graders were enrolled in Algebra 1. Most have to wait until ninth grade, even though starting algebra earlier, the report said, would allow more time in high school “to take the more advanced courses that are often prerequisites for postsecondary STEM majors.”
Many public school districts appear to doubt that 13-year-olds with raging hormones can handle the study of mathematical symbols and their use in formulas. A 2013 report by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area found that many students were forced to retake Algebra 1 in ninth grade despite having passed the course in eighth grade. “Minority students are being disparately impacted by these improper placements,” the report said.
The report did not give a reason for students being made to take algebra again but said “failure to master the subject area was not the reason.” It said more than 60 percent of those forced to repeat the course had already scored proficient or advanced on the state algebra exam.
A 2006 study of 2,634 students in a large southeastern school district by researcher Frances R. Spielhagen found that those who took Algebra 1 in eighth grade did as well as similar students who took it in ninth grade. Those taking the course in eighth grade “stayed in the mathematics pipeline longer and attended college at greater rates” than similar students who took it in ninth grade, Spielhagen said.
Our education system tends to discount what’s happening in middle school. We try to keep those kids happy but fear pushing them too hard. We comfort them, and ourselves, by saying colleges don’t care about their courses and grades until they are in high school.
That laid-back attitude can cause trouble. Middle school parents who think their children are ready for Algebra 1 encounter confusion, resistance and an assumption by some teachers that parents don’t understand the subtle educational issues involved.
Can honors and regular students learn math together? A new approach argues yes.
I know a math teacher whose daughter was in a large suburban district that he thought was keeping many middle-schoolers out of Algebra 1 because low scores on a required state algebra exam might make the school look bad. His daughter had a 96 average in seventh-grade math, but she was never good at standardized tests. The school wanted to place her not in algebra but in pre-algebra in eighth grade.
“I told the school that the recommendation was ridiculous,” the father told me. “They responded that the teacher knew my daughter better and I would have to fill out a form overriding the recommendation. They also said if my daughter didn’t do well in Algebra 1, it would basically be my fault.”
He filled out the form. His daughter got a 99 average in Algebra 1 and passed the state test. “I knew what my daughter was capable of,” he said. “But think about some parents who are new to the country or who never went to college or who took Algebra 1 in ninth grade like so many did 20 or 30 years ago. Would they have gone against the recommendation of the seventh-grade teacher and school?”
A math reform movement is underway that includes new course names and less tracking of students into accelerated courses like Algebra 1 in eighth grade. There is resistance to the reforms from experts who support acceleration and parents who find the proposed changes hard to understand and lacking in control group research. Even reform advocate Jo Boaler, a math education professor at Stanford, told me “all students should be given the opportunity to take algebra in eighth grade, if that is the course the district offers.”
Many schools have daunting rules for who does and does not get into accelerated middle school math. One small, affluent California school district I know well doesn’t even use the term “Algebra 1” in its list of acceleration options, although it does teach that subject in those classes.
Here are its rules for eighth-graders posted online: “To be considered for Accelerated Math, students MUST meet 3 out of the 4 criteria below. … 1. Math Placement Test score of 88% or above for part 1 (7th grade content) and 80% or higher for part 2 (8th grade content). 2. CAASPP [California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress] score in UPPER HALF of STANDARD EXCEEDED Range. 3. Average of 4.00 in Math for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Quarter Report Card. 4. Teacher Recommendation score of at least 13 out of 15.”
Many public charter middle schools focusing on disadvantaged students train teachers to prepare students for Algebra 1 and make sure most or all of them take the course by eighth grade. Many regular public middle schools are more comfortable relying on standardized test score hurdles to keep allegedly unready students out of Algebra 1 rather than work to prepare them for the challenge.
That emphasis on sorting rather than teaching is one of the great weaknesses of American education. The low eighth-grade Algebra 1 participation rate indicates not much is being done about it. Recovering from the learning losses of the pandemic will be hard, but opening up algebra to more middle-schoolers can’t hurt.
One of the most experienced teachers in this subject is Mike Feinberg, co-founder of what is now the nation’s largest charter school network, KIPP. From its beginning in the 1990s, its middle schools, serving mostly impoverished students, have tried to include as many students as possible in Algebra 1 by eighth grade.
“Enrolling eighth-graders into algebra from a high-expectations standpoint and knowing there is the safety net of ninth-grade algebra is a good plan,” Feinberg said, as long as the eighth-grade course is not what he called “a soul-crushing experience” in which students lose confidence and love for math. “Another way to do this,” he said, “is to slow-roll algebra into a two-year course where the material is covered more completely and slowly to help ensure the kids are mastering it.”
That’s not happening in many places. Given this era’s emphasis on getting more students into the STEM professions (science, technology, engineering and math), it’s a good time to show some confidence in middle-schoolers and see what they can do when well taught. | 2022-09-11T15:18:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taking algebra in eighth grade may offer students the challenge they need - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/10/algebra-in-eighth-grade/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/10/algebra-in-eighth-grade/ |
The set of the Great Hall from the TV show “Game of Thrones” is seen early this year in Banbridge, Northern Ireland. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)
I was clicking through the various TV streaming services the other night in search of “House of Thrones” when I realized there isn’t a show called “House of Thrones.” The HBO “Game of Thrones” prequel is called “House of the Dragon.”
“Good thing it isn’t ‘House of Thrones,’ ” I said to Ruth, My Lovely Wife. “Can you imagine how awkward that would be? A house full of thrones? You’d be bumping into them all the time.”
Ruth made a sound that was sort of like a laugh, but may not have been. Perhaps she remembered when I’d briefly confused “House of Cards” with “Game of Thrones” 10 years ago and tried in vain to find “Game of Cards.”
“Of course, even the one throne is bad enough,” I continued. “It’s made out of a bunch of swords.”
I do wonder about that throne. So unsafe. Forget “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Uneasy is the bottom that sits on the throne!
Frankly, Westeros is an Occupational Safety and Health Administration nightmare. Not a single eyewash station. No protective eyewear on the dragon keepers. I doubt employers provide stand-up desks.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission would have a field day, too. You think the Iron Throne is bad, the bassinets in the Seven Kingdoms are probably made out of old razor blades and hypodermic needles.
Still, I love visiting. The show gives me a sense of perspective. Things are bad in America now — climate change, political unrest, pandemic, a vast wealth gap — but at least people aren’t being flambéed by dragons. Yet!
These days, I find myself watching a lot of escapist television. I haven’t yet had time for the new J.R.R. Tolkien “Rings of Power” show on Amazon Prime. It seems to occupy a similar niche as “House of the Dragon.” I’m hoping the two programs will do a crossover episode. With their blond wigs, half the cast of “House of the Dragon” already looks like elves. (Oh, and by the way, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
I’ve lost track of all the streaming services I subscribe to. Too many, probably. I have at least three that specialize in British shows: BritBox, Acorn and one from PBS that’s heavy on “Masterpiece Theatre.” Then there’s Apple TV Plus, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Netflix.
This can’t be sustainable, can it? And the other day I was looking at my Netflix subscription and noticed with horror that I’ve been paying 10 bucks a month for DVD rental. I haven’t watched a Netflix DVD for two years. I canceled that right quick.
All those services — all those shows — and when we plop down in front of the idiot box it still takes us 20 minutes to decide what to watch.
We like foreign shows — German ones about the Cold War are a current infatuation — but if we’re eating in front of the TV we don’t want anything with subtitles. (I don’t want to miss any dialogue while I’m looking down at my plate for another forkful of grub.)
There are only so many prestige miniseries we can follow at a time. I can’t remember the names of all my cousins let alone the names and backstories of all the characters in yet another dystopian sci-fi program. We have to finish the previous dystopian sci-fi program before launching into the next one.
And, of course, there’s mood. Do we want something that will help us relax or that will key us up? Do we want thoughts provoked or thoughts blunted? Do we want to laugh or do we want to cry? Do we want brief violence, no violence or excessive, gratuitous violence? Do we want a heapin’ helpin’ of nudity or do we want people to just keep their clothes on for once?
Or do we want baseball? Even that’s gotten complicated. The other day I wanted to watch a baseball game and it was on YouTube. Is that allowed?
You know, maybe I should just read a book. | 2022-09-11T16:36:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The choices are endless — and confusing — in the age of streaming - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/dragon-tv-shows/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/dragon-tv-shows/ |
One dead in tractor-trailer crash on I-495 in Fairfax County
Virginia State Police are investigating a single-vehicle crash that left one person dead Sunday morning.
A tractor-trailer traveling north on Interstate 495 ran off the road, then struck the guardrail and a pole near Exit 44/Georgetown Pike in Fairfax County, police said. Officers responded around 6 a.m. The driver of the tractor-trailer died at the scene, police said.
Dispatch workers said Sunday morning the northbound right lane remains closed at mile marker 43. Officers are still investigating and working to confirm the driver’s identity. | 2022-09-11T16:36:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | One dead in tractor-trailer crash on I-495 in Fairfax County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/fatal-crash-i495-fairfax-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/fatal-crash-i495-fairfax-county/ |
Exxon Valdez captain, Joseph Hazelwood, left, and third mate Gregory Cousins, at right rear, leave Coast Guard offices in Valdez, Alaska, on March 28, 1989. (Rob Stapleton/AP)
The death was confirmed Sept. 10 to The Washington Post by a family associate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to respect the wishes of Mr. Hazelwood’s widow, Suzanne Hazelwood, not to make comments to the media. The New York Times cited a nephew, Sam Hazelwood, confirming the death.
No other details on the death were given, including the date and location. Mr. Hazelwood lived on Long Island in Huntington, N.Y. The maritime website gCaptain.com first reported his death on July 22, but gave no further information. Another shipping website, maltashipnews.com, citing a “source close to his family,” reported Mr. Hazelwood died July 21.
The ship hit a reef less than two miles from shore amid crucial ecosystems for sea birds and marine life including nearby salmon breeding grounds. About 200 miles of coastline were “heavily or moderately oiled” as the spill spread across 1,300 miles, according to the Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, a federal-state group that tracked the cleanup and aftermath.
A few minutes after midnight on March 24, 1989, the Coast Guard received a radio call from Mr. Hazelwood, who was not on the bridge when the ship went aground.
Opinion: President Biden, please save our Native village's life-sustaining waters
The disaster helped shape sweeping changes the following year to bolster the Environmental Protection Agency’s oil transport regulations — including phasing out single-hulled tankers like the Exxon Valdez — and strengthen the EPA’s ability to respond to spills in U.S. waters. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 took a direct swipe at the Exxon Valdez (pronounced Val-DEEZ), banning from Prince William Sound any ship that had “spilled more than 1,000,000 gallons of oil into the marine environment after March 22, 1989.” That effectively blocked the vessel from Alaskan waters.
Mr. Hazelwood, meanwhile, faced court battles and became — with his full beard and fisherman’s cap — the face of the disaster and the questions over potential neglect, appearing in newspapers and magazines around the world. A Time magazine cover from July 1989 had an illustration of Mr. Hazelwood with the headline: Fateful Voyage.
In March 1990, Mr. Hazelwood was acquitted of a felony charge of operating a vessel while intoxicated. He was, however, convicted of a misdemeanor charge of negligently discharging oil, ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service, including helping clean oil-fouled beaches, and pay a $5,000 fine.
Mr. Hazelwood was not on the Exxon Valdez bridge when the 987-foot ship hit the reef, hours after beginning a voyage bound for Long Beach, Calif., with nearly 60 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude. He had set a bypass route through Prince William Sound to avoid drift ice from a glacier.
Mr. Hazelwood left the bridge at 11:50 p.m., turning it over to the third mate, Gregory Cousins. At 11:55 p.m., Cousins phoned Hazelwood that he was beginning the turn back to the original route after clearing the ice, according to court testimony and records. The helmsman apparently did not make the turn fast enough to avoid collision with the reef.
“There was no reason to do what I did that evening,” Cousins testified. “I shouldn't have allowed myself to become inattentive.”
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in March 1990 that the third mate had failed to “properly maneuver the vessel because of fatigue and excessive workload.” Mr. Hazelwood, the report said, “failed to provide a proper navigation watch because of impairment from alcohol.” The Exxon Shipping Co., the NTSB added, “failed to provide a fit master and a rested and sufficient crew.”
In an interview with an Alaska state trooper taped hours after the ship ran aground, Mr. Hazelwood said he had a beer before he sailed and a “phony beer” once underway, a reference to a nonalcoholic brand.
After the 1990, Joseph Hazelwood leaves Alaska for home
In 2014, Mr. Hazelwood joined a CNN correspondent at a simulator to revisit the moments before the 1989 grounding. He said he altered the normal course through Prince William Sound after reports of ice floes from the Columbia Glacier entering the shipping lanes. Mr. Hazelwood said that he notified the Coast Guard of the new bearings and that it was acknowledged.
‘Heartfelt apology’
Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood was born Sept. 24, 1946, in Hawkinsville, Ga., and later moved to Long Island when his father, a pilot for Pan American World Airways, took up a new base. Mr. Hazelwood received a bachelor’s degree in marine transportation in 1968 from Maritime College.
Survivors include Mr. Hazelwood’s wife, Suzanne; daughter Alison; a brother, Joshua, and two grandsons.
“I would like to offer an apology, a very heartfelt apology, to the people of Alaska,” Mr. Hazelwood said in an interview for the 2009 book “The Spill: Personal Stories From the Exxon Valdez Disaster.” But he remained defensive, saying he had been unfairly vilified even though “the true story is out there for anybody who wants to look at the facts.”
Mr. Hazelwood kept alive a smoldering resentment. In a 1997 interview with Outside magazine, he showed off a framed collage of newspaper and magazine clippings of the coverage. “Drunk at sea,” read one headline. “Skipper’s rise and fall,” said another.
“What court do I go to get my reputation back?” he said. | 2022-09-11T16:49:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joseph Hazelwood, Exxon Valdez captain in 1989 Alaska spill, dies at 75 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/11/hazelwood-exxon-valdez-spill-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/11/hazelwood-exxon-valdez-spill-dies/ |
Post Elizabeth: As royal family mourns, William and Harry make headlines in Windsor
Among the many titles Charles III inherited when he became king is one that dates to Henry VIII: defender of the faith. No need to do a deep dive here on the Tudor king’s complicated history with the church. But the new king has had his own controversies with religion. Charles made headlines in the 1990s when he suggested that as king he would like to be a defender of faith (note: no “the”). He later clarified that his point was “the inclusion of other people’s faiths and their freedom to worship.” While being Defender of the Faith, he told the BBC, “you can also be protector of faiths.” At other times, Charles garnered attention for his affinity for Orthodox Christianity as well as his praise for Islam and Judaism. What does all this mean? He sounded the theme of spiritual inclusion in his inaugural address, saying that his new role has a “particular relationship and responsibility toward the Church of England — the Church in which my own faith is so deeply rooted” but pledged that “whatever may be your background or beliefs, I shall endeavor to serve you with loyalty, respect and love.”
The walkabout that made the front pages across the UK: Princes William and Harry and their wives greeted mourners outside Windsor Castle on Saturday, their first public outing as a foursome since Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, opted out of royal duties and spoke critically of the palace and media treatment of Meghan. Some quickly speculated that the brothers may be repairing a rift. It’s too soon to know, and a forthcoming memoir by Harry could easily generate negative headlines. For now, it’s clear the royals are a family grieving. Two of the queen’s granddaughters were seen wiping away tears Saturday in Scotland as relatives viewed tributes outside the monarch’s residence there.
Before the appearance in Windsor, William issued a statement noting that much would be said about his grandmother’s reign but that his was also a personal loss: “She was by my side at my happiest moments. And she was by my side during the saddest days of my life. I knew this day would come, but it will be some time before the reality of life without Grannie will truly feel real.”
On Sunday, people lined streets in Scotland to watch the procession of the queen’s coffin as it was driven from her home at Balmoral Castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. As the queen makes her final journey, many are thinking about her life. If you’re watching (or re-watching) “The Crown” on Netflix to get familiar with the queen, here’s a Post video that summarizes how the Netflix series humanizes Elizabeth.
Keep in mind: The show is not a documentary. Historian and royal biographer Robert Lacey is a consultant and has authored two companion books to the series. (The first book, with a chapter for each episode, has much more substance about the history of the periods depicted on the show and where the drama differs from reality.) Some inconsistencies are small: In the first episode, for example, then-Princess Elizabeth is shown in Malta with her husband, Prince Philip, and their two oldest children. In reality, the children were left behind in London while Elizabeth and Philip lived abroad. Later in the episode, the new queen is shown wondering why then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill wants to delay her coronation. In real life, there was no delay. If you find more faux “facts,” tweet at me (@Autumnsan1) and let me know what you’ve spotted.
“Now, we wonder, ‘Who are we? And where are we going?’ ” With the end of the Elizabethan age, questions about the future loom, write Kevin Sullivan and Anthony Faiola. “Her passing comes as this island nation of 67 million was already mired in dire and complicated times, with the question of national identity — fraught and unanswered since the end of World War II — blurred and divisive.”
“Rest in peace, Queen Kong.” People have flocked to Buckingham Palace — “both a scene and a place to be seen” — since her death was announced Thursday, writes London correspondent Karla Adam. Among the flowers, pictures, Union Jack baseball caps and even Paddington Bears, “it’s the handwritten missives that stand out, ranging from the serious to the poignant, the rambling to the funny, many offering a window into how people felt about the queen.” (Note: Tributes are being moved into nearby Green Park every 12 hours to reduce buildup at palace gates.)
Let’s speak honestly about Britain’s “powerful and historically brutal empire,” says Post Opinion writer Karen Attiah. “In the global north’s imagination, the queen is a symbol of decorum and stability in the post-World War II world. But to people of places that Britain invaded, carved up and colonized over centuries,” views are radically different. “In the wake of the queen’s death, propaganda, fantasy and ignorance are being pitted against Britain’s historical record and the lived experience of Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, the Irish and others.”
Remember the controversy about Harry and Meghan’s children not having titles? Now they’re entitled to them. Here’s an explainer from London reporter Annabelle Timsit.
Yes, souvenirs commemorating the queen are selling fast. But their value hasn’t spiked — yet, reports Jaclyn Peiser.
A share from Getty Images royal photographer @chrisjacksongetty
Have questions about Britain’s royal transition? Submit them here. | 2022-09-11T16:49:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Post Elizabeth: As royal family mourns, William and Harry make headlines in Windsor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/post-elizabeth-newsletter-royal-family-transition-grieving-charles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/post-elizabeth-newsletter-royal-family-transition-grieving-charles/ |
Tom Brady's arm, like the rest of him, might be 45, but he says there's plenty of life left in it. (Chris O'Meara/AP)
On the morning of the first game of his 23rd season, Tom Brady sought to put to rest any lingering questions about the offseason drama in which he retired and then, 40 days later, un-retired.
“I can give you a long speech,” Tampa Bay’s 45-year-old quarterback said in a video posted to Twitter Sunday morning, “but the answer is actually pretty simple. We’ve got a hell of a team.”
Never mind that the Buccaneers’ offensive line was stricken with injuries during preseason while Brady’s most-beloved receiver, Rob Gronkowski, has stuck to his decision to retire.
“I’m still feeling pretty good and an arm is a terrible thing to waste,” Brady continued in the video. “I’ve been reminded for almost a decade now [that] you’re headed for extinction. And maybe so, but not today. I’ll see you in Dallas.”
Brady and the Bucs open their season as slight favorites Sunday night against the Cowboys, and the quarterback has justifiable reason for confidence. Over his career, Brady is 6-0 against Dallas, with five of those wins coming during his time in New England. The two teams met in the NFL’s season opener last year when the Bucs were coming off a Super Bowl win; Brady completed 32 of 50 passes for 379 yards and four touchdowns in Tampa Bay’s 31-29 win.
But the Bucs have a tough season-opening stretch with the next three games at New Orleans, home against Green Bay and home against Kansas City. Three of those first four opponents, including Dallas, were in the playoffs a year ago. | 2022-09-11T16:50:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tom Brady responds to doubters with Twitter video before Bucs-Cowboys - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/tom-brady-bucs-cowboys/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/tom-brady-bucs-cowboys/ |
This undated photo provided by the Merced Police Department shows suspect Dhante Jackson, of Merced, Calif. Police have arrested Jackson, a suspect in the death of an 8-year-old girl whose body was found last March inside a central California home after the child was reported missing, authorities said. After a months-long manhunt, Dhante Jackson was taken into custody Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022, in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Newark on suspicion of killing Sophia Mason, the California attorney general’s office said.(Courtesy of Merced Police Department via AP) (Uncredited/Merced Police Department) | 2022-09-11T18:21:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mother’s boyfriend arrested in killing of California girl, 8 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mothers-boyfriend-arrested-in-killing-of-california-girl-8/2022/09/11/283e816e-31f7-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mothers-boyfriend-arrested-in-killing-of-california-girl-8/2022/09/11/283e816e-31f7-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Nebraska coach Scott Frost walks off the field after the team's loss to Georgia Southern on Saturday. (Noah Riffe/Lincoln Journal Star/AP)
One of the most promising college football coaching hires of the late 2010s reached its thudding end on Sunday, when Nebraska fired Scott Frost three games into his fifth season. His 16-31 record at the alma mater for which he played quarterback in the 1990s would have startled anyone present at the outset.
That was December 2017, when Frost had just completed an unbeaten regular season at Central Florida, and when Nebraska football dignitaries gathered to greet him as a coach bound to lead the Cornhuskers from merely pretty good back to routinely great.
Instead, the program with the decorated past never reached any bowl game under Frost, and developed a remarkable penchant for losing close games. It ended with a 45-42 home loss Saturday to Georgia Southern, whose new coach, Clay Helton, had met the same fate in the second weekend in September last year at Southern California.
“Earlier today I met with Coach Frost and informed him we were making a change in the leadership of our football program, effective immediately,” Athletic Director Trev Alberts, formerly one of Frost’s Nebraska teammates, said in a statement. “Scott has poured his heart and soul into the Nebraska football program both as a quarterback and head coach, and I appreciate his work and dedication.
“After the disappointing start to our season” — a 1-2 record counting a loss to Northwestern in Ireland and a win over North Dakota — “I decided the best path forward for our program was to make a change at our head coaching position. Associate head coach Mickey Joseph will serve as our interim head coach for the remainder of the 2022 season.”
Joseph, 54, himself a former Nebraska quarterback, has coached at 14 different high schools, colleges and NFL team, including LSU from 2017-2021, which counted its national championship year of 2019. | 2022-09-11T18:21:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nebraska fires Scott Frost three games into his fifth season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/nebraska-fires-scott-frost/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/nebraska-fires-scott-frost/ |
What Chief Justice Roberts misses
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sits during a 2021 group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington. (Erin Schaff/Pool/AP)
“Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court,” Roberts told a judicial conference in Colorado on Friday.
What liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor has aptly termed a “restless and newly constituted court” could finally work its will, and so it did. That is the very definition of an “activist court,” as Vice President Harris recently described it.
Ruth Marcus: The soul-crushing lot of a Supreme Court liberal
“If the court doesn’t retain its legitimate function of interpreting the Constitution, I’m not sure who would take up that mantle, and you don’t want public opinion to be the guide about what the appropriate decision is,” Roberts said Friday. “Lately the criticism is phrased in terms of ‘Because of these opinions, it calls into question the legitimacy of the court.’ I think it’s a mistake to view those criticisms in that way.”
“The way the court retains its legitimacy and fosters public confidence is by acting like a court,” she said. “By doing the kind of things that do not seem to people political or partisan. By not behaving as though we are just people with individual political, or policy or social preferences that we are making everybody live with, but instead we are acting like a court, doing something that is recognizably law-like. That is where we gain our legitimacy.” | 2022-09-11T19:43:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What Chief Justice Roberts misses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/roberts-remarks-misunderstand-court-anger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/roberts-remarks-misunderstand-court-anger/ |
Super Bowl hangover? Joe Burrow, Bengals have a miserable first half
Alex Highsmith of the Steelers sacks Joe Burrow, a familiar experience for the Bengals' quarterback in the first half. (Joshua A. Bickel/Associated Press)
The 2022 season didn’t start kindly for the two teams that appeared in the Super Bowl seven months ago. After the Los Angeles Rams, the reigning NFL champions, lost 31-10 in their season opener Thursday night, the Cincinnati Bengals had a ragged start of their own on Sunday.
Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow’s first pass of the season was intercepted and returned for a score by the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Minkah Fitzpatrick, and Burrow finished the half with four turnovers as the Steelers took a 17-6 lead into the locker room.
Burrow’s terrible half came with a dubious distinction. He became only the second quarterback in the last 20 seasons with four or more turnovers in the first half of a season opener, according to ESPN Stats & Info. (The other was Buffalo’s Josh Allen in 2019 against the Jets.)
Burrow, who has never before had a four-turnover game, also lost a fumble and was sacked four times in the half behind an offensive line that had been revamped in an attempt to reduce the battering he has taken since entering the NFL. Another potential interception was nullified by a penalty.
FIRST TOUCHDOWN OF THE DAY IS A PICK 6!
Minkah picks off Joe Burrow and takes it all the way!
(via @NFL) pic.twitter.com/4o51mQNFkN
The Bengals’ only points of the half came on two Evan McPherson field goals, with the second coming when a drive fizzled with 18 seconds left. Burrow completed 11 of 17 passes for 109 yards in the half, but the Bengals were still in the game at the half.
Burrow, though, had some elite company with his dismal first-half showing: the man who topped him in the Super Bowl. The Rams’ Matthew Stafford was intercepted three times and sacked seven times by the Buffalo Bills.
“There’s no way to put it other than ‘didn’t do a good enough job,’ ” Rams Coach Sean McVay said after the game. “It starts with me and then we can overall execute better in a lot of areas.”
The Bengals managed to do that in the second half, with Burrow taking the team 46 yards on 10 plays for a two-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Boyd not long after halftime. With a two-point conversion from Burrow to Mike Thomas, the Bengals closed within 17-14, making it easier to forget the miserable beginning.
NFL Sunday primer: Baker Mayfield, Panthers struggle in first half vs. Browns | 2022-09-11T19:52:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joe Burrow has turnovers and trouble against the Steelers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/joe-burrow-turnovers-bengals-steelers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/joe-burrow-turnovers-bengals-steelers/ |
FILE - In this Sept. 1960, photo, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and their children, Prince Charles, right, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew, pose for a photo on the lawn of Balmoral Castle, in Scotland. When the hearse carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s body pulled out of the gates of Balmoral Castle on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022, it marked the monarch’s final departure from a personal sanctuary where she could shed the straitjacket of protocol and ceremony for a few weeks every year. The sprawling estate in the Scottish Highlands west of Aberdeen was a place where Elizabeth rode her beloved horses, picnicked, and pushed her children around the grounds on tricycles and wagons, setting aside the formality of Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-09-11T19:53:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Beloved Balmoral: Elizabeth leaves Highlands for last time - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/beloved-balmoral-elizabeth-leaves-highlands-for-last-time/2022/09/11/8b617da2-3204-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/beloved-balmoral-elizabeth-leaves-highlands-for-last-time/2022/09/11/8b617da2-3204-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Two men fatally shot in D.C. within 24 hours this weekend
Stephon Jenkins, 50, and Lonzo Malcolm, 18, have died, according to D.C. police.
Two men were fatally shot in Washington within 24 hours this weekend, according to D.C. police.
Lonzo Malcolm, an 18-year-old from Southeast Washington. died from gunshot wounds Saturday afternoon. He was shot inside a residence in the 1300 block of Congress Street SE at about 2:30 p.m., police said, and was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Another man was shot in the incident but survived with non-life-threatening injuries.
Early Sunday morning, Stephon Jenkins, a 50-year-old from Northwest Washington, was shot and killed. Police officers heard gunshots just before 4:15 a.m. on the 700 block of T Street NW. Jenkins died on the scene, police said.
No arrests have been made in connection to the deaths, which police are actively investigating. | 2022-09-11T21:10:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two men fatally shot in D.C. within 24 hours this weekend - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/homicides-investigations-september-weekend-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/homicides-investigations-september-weekend-dc/ |
PM Update: Muggy tonight with showers and storms probable late Monday
Watch out for areas of fog early Monday
Most of the precipitation fell in the overnight hours last night into this morning, leaving much of this afternoon cloudy but dry. I wouldn’t call it very comfortable weather though, as a tropical air mass is keeping things quite muggy. After a foggy morning tomorrow, the next round of heavy rain showers and thunderstorms will develop in the afternoon and into the evening. But that should be the end of it, as a refreshing air mass moves in by Tuesday.
Through tonight: Skies will remain overcast and humidity levels will stay elevated overnight. Some isolated showers may pop up, but most of the organized shower activity should occur outside of the immediate Washington area. Temperatures will settle right around 70 degrees, with 100 percent humidity and areas of fog.
Tomorrow (Monday): A foggy and muggy start to the day. The fog will eventually lift, but skies should remain mostly overcast, with some possible breaks in the afternoon. Highs will be in the mid-80s, with continued high humidity. Showers and thunderstorms are likely to develop in the mid- to late afternoon. A few storms could be severe. Heavy rain will be the main threat and some isolated damaging wind gusts cannot be ruled out. Scattered showers and a stray storm or two continue tomorrow night, with lows in the mid-60s.
The big what-if: It’s been talked about before, but since today is the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s worth mentioning again. Skies were so clear on that fateful morning because a huge high pressure system had parked itself over the East Coast, and in doing so, shunted the massive Hurricane Erin out to sea. What if this storm had been able to track closer to the coast? | 2022-09-11T21:10:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PM Update: Muggy tonight with showers and storms probable late Monday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/09/11/pm-update-muggy-foggy-overnight-heavy-showers-tomorrow-afternoon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/09/11/pm-update-muggy-foggy-overnight-heavy-showers-tomorrow-afternoon/ |
Queen Elizabeth II’s royal family tree visualized: George V to Lilibet
The monarch’s parents, siblings, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren
The queen’s ascendants
Antony Armstrong-Jones
Particia
Tuckwell
Henry Lascelles
Angela Dowding
Elizabeth Collingwood
van Deurs Henriksen
Katharine Worsley
Princess Marina of Greece
Angus James Ogilvy
Maria Christine von Reibnitz
Prince Michael
Jonh
Before King George VI’s reign, his brother King Edward VIII ruled for less than a year and was never crowned. He stepped down to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American woman, after realizing she would not have been acceptable as queen. In 1936, he abdicated the throne and any future children he might have had were excluded from the line of succession. King Edward VIII inherited the throne from his father King George V, Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather.
The Queen's final journey: mapping the plans for the coming days
Out of the queen’s seven first cousins, four are still alive: Prince Richard, Prince Edward, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael.
The queen had four children with Prince Philip: King Charles III, Princess Anne, The Duke of York, Andrew, and the Earl of Wessex, Edward, who are 58 to 73 years old. Together, they gave her eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Out of the 23 royals in King Charles III’s succession line, 13 of them are under the age of 15.
Tracing Queen Elizabeth's steps through the U.S.
At 73 years old, Charles III is the oldest British monarch to take the throne. Previously, William IV had been the oldest. He ascended to power in 1830 at 64 years old.
Photos from AP, Reuters, Getty Images and EPA-EFE/Shutterstock and the government of the United Kingdom. | 2022-09-11T21:23:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II had 4 children, 8 grandchildren: Her family tree - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-ii-children-grandchildren/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/queen-elizabeth-ii-children-grandchildren/ |
The future of tennis (finally) appears
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz, right, embraces Frances Tiafoe of the United States after winning their 2022 U.S. Open semifinal match in New York on Sept. 9. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)
In London’s Sunday Telegraph, McEnroe wrote that the sisters lacked respect and humility. “Would it kill them to say hello to people in the locker room,” he asked.
I was traveling Friday, so I wound up watching the men’s semifinal match between Alcaraz and Tiafoe in crowded hotel bar. Alcaraz is a 19-year-old phenom from Spain. Tiafoe, 24, is the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone who spent his childhood sleeping at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., where his father worked as a custodian. Sometimes he spent the night there, because his mother worked nights in a hospital. From hardship came something special. | 2022-09-11T22:29:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S. Open shows diversity is good for tennis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/us-open-tennis-diversity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/us-open-tennis-diversity/ |
Primary season concludes with bitterly contested GOP races in N.H.
Candidates aligned with GOP state and congressional leaders are running against provocative far-right rivals in three closely watched contests
Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc speaks during a campaign rally at an American Legion Hall in Laconia, N.H. (Josh Reynolds/for The Washington Post)
LACONIA, N.H. — Six months of bitter and expensive Republican primaries will come to an end on Tuesday with a trio of contests in New Hampshire pitting candidates aligned with GOP state and congressional leaders against provocative far-right rivals seen in both parties as less electable.
The year’s final primaries will be decided in Rhode Island, Delaware and here in the Granite State, where the stakes for November’s battles for control of the House and Senate are highest. For Republicans, the finale to primary season is in line with how it has unfolded in many other states: with divisive intraparty fights and a last-minute burst of campaign spending from both parties designed to tilt the outcome.
One missing factor: former president Donald Trump, who through Sunday had not made an endorsement in any of the three most closely watched contests. His absence had left the candidates to make their own sales pitches to his supporters, blurring some of the ideological battle lines.
While President Biden won New Hampshire by seven points, the competitive primaries have been influenced by the right, with Republicans venting about GOP congressional leaders, restrictions imposed during the pandemic and the vote count in the 2020 election.
The Republican primary for U.S. Senate is seen as a significant factor in the larger battle for control of the upper chamber next year. The race includes retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who has said that he “concurred with Trump’s assessment” of the election, meaning his false claims that he was the winner, and co-signed a letter raising questions about the vote. Bolduc has also endorsed closing the Department of Education, and he asked whether America should “get rid of” the FBI in the wake of last month’s search of Mar-a-Lago.
“I have taken the arrows from my fellow Republican candidates, and I’m standing strong,” Bolduc told supporters at a Saturday afternoon town hall here. “When God made Bolducs, he made oak trees, not willow trees!”
New Hampshire Senate President Chuck Morse (R) is opposing Bolduc. Morse is supported by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has called Bolduc a “conspiracy theorist.” At a campaign stop in Rochester, Morse defended the integrity of the 2020 election in the state, but he did not oppose the effort by most House Republicans, and some Senate Republicans, to challenge Biden’s electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.
A University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll conducted late last month showed Bolduc leading Morse 43 percent to 22 percent in the Republican primary, with other candidates in the single digits.
National Republicans tried and failed last year to convince Sununu to run against Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan; after he declined, he urged the 61-year-old Morse to run, according to both men. Last week, when Trump called Sununu about the race, the governor said that he made a pitch for Morse, and Morse met with Trump to discuss a possible endorsement.
“I answered his questions, and he told me what he believed,” Morse said in an interview after touring local businesses in Rochester. “He certainly has some strong opinions.”
An outside group whose treasurer has past ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee put $4.6 million behind ads to help Morse. That is three times as much as Morse himself has been able to raise for his campaign, worrying Republicans, who have watched Hassan raise more than $30 million and go on the air with early TV ads.
National Democrats, apparently wagering Bolduc would be easier for Hassan to defeat in November, have spent millions to boost Bolduc. Senate Majority PAC, a group aligned with Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), has spent $3.2 million on ads that call Morse “another sleazy politician” who is being propped up by “Mitch McConnell’s Washington establishment.”
“What a sign of weakness,” Sununu said of the Democratic meddling, after greeting voters at a weekend seafood festival. “I think it’s unethical, frankly. I think it should be banned, somehow, in the political system.”
Three weeks ago, according to the candidates’ final pre-primary campaign finance reports, Hassan had $7.4 million left to spend; Morse had less than $600,000. The Senate Leadership Fund, the chief McConnell-aligned outside spending group, has reserved $23 million in ad spending for the general election.
Public polling, which had found Hassan struggling in a potential race against Sununu, has found her ahead of either Morse or Bolduc, but below the 50 percent mark — often a danger sign for incumbents. On Saturday, after talking with Democratic volunteers in Dover, Hassan declined to take a position on the Democratic spending for Bolduc.
“I can’t control what outside groups do,” Hassan said before criticizing Morse as a threat to abortion rights, should he be sent to Washington. Morse helped usher in a more restrictive abortion law in New Hampshire, though the procedure remains legal, with limitations, in the state.
While Morse has promised to complete building “Trump’s wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border, and has echoed Trump’s evidence-free claim that the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate was a political attack, both his rivals and Democratic meddlers have accused him of being a party loyalist who would undermine Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda by siding with Republicans such as McConnell.
“You’re a rubber stamp,” cryptocurrency investor Bruce Fenton told Morse in a summer debate hosted by NHJournal. “You’d go down [to Washington] and vote the way they tell you to vote.”
In debates, other Republicans have spent less time attacking Bolduc, who never stopped running after his 2020 Senate race loss, than they have criticizing Morse over issues such as the state’s 2020 covid-19 restrictions.
Sununu, who said he had waited to endorse Morse until voters were finally tuning in, called him the Republican with the best shot to beat Hassan. But if Bolduc prevails Tuesday, he is ready to endorse him. “Look, primaries are primaries,” Sununu said. “Go back to 2016 and all the things that were said about Donald Trump. At the end of the day, it’s about what’s best for the country.”
New Hampshire’s September primary has frequently caused headaches for the out-of-power party. While incumbents build their reelection campaigns, challengers have seven weeks to refill their war chests and reunite their voters.
That was a source of Republican headaches in 2020, when Bolduc narrowly lost the party’s U.S. Senate nomination and refused to endorse the winner, accusing national Republicans, including the Trump campaign, of “rigging” the race against him. It’s a crucial element of the Democratic strategy this year, as Hassan, as well as Reps. Chris Pappas and Annie Kuster face voters who have frequently punished the incumbent president’s party in midterm elections.
In the 1st Congressional District, which is represented by Pappas and encompasses the Atlantic seacoast and the conservative Boston exurbs, 33-year old Matt Mowers has been endorsed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as a “tough and tested conservative.” A GOP operative and former Trump campaign aide who narrowly lost to Pappas in 2020, Mowers is supported by the main outside group aligned with House GOP leadership, the Congressional Leadership Fund.
That didn’t stop Mowers’s opponents from pounding him over his ties to Washington and for casting a vote in New Jersey’s 2016 state primaries after voting in New Hampshire’s 2016 presidential primary. (Mowers had moved to New Hampshire as a presidential campaign operative for then-Gov. Chris Christie.)
Karoline Leavitt, a 25-year old former staffer for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and the Trump White House’s press shop, has spent nearly $1.5 million and campaigned with conservative stars such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), portraying Mowers as a D.C. “swamp” creature.
“The establishment is so afraid that I’m going to beat their handpicked puppet ,” Leavitt told voters at a Thursday rally with Cruz in Londonderry.
Leavitt has campaigned as a New Hampshire native who, despite her own endorsement from Stefanik, is not beholden to D.C. Republicans. She has echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged for Biden. Mowers has said there were “irregularities” in the count.
In an interview, Mowers dismissed the criticism he has received. “They’re just using talking points,” he said. He added: “It’s a few days out from an election — folks who are down in polls will say a lot of crazy stuff.”
While Trump has not weighed in on the race, Mowers has sent mailers to voters highlighting that the former president endorsed his 2020 run against Pappas.
Polling has found Mowers ahead, with Leavitt close behind, and other Republicans are hoping to take advantage of the fracas. Another candidate, Gail Huff Brown, a former TV news anchor and the wife of Scott Brown, a former senator of Massachusetts, has run ads promising to support New Hampshire’s abortion law “and the choice it guarantees.” Democrats point out that the law added restrictions that the state never had before, and plan to run against any Republican as a potential vote to ban abortion.
On Saturday, Pappas predicted that the bruising primary would take a toll on his eventual opponent. “Whoever the nominee is, they’re certainly going to be banged up by this process,” Pappas said.
In the 2nd District, which is represented by Kuster, a fierce Republican primary is also being decided. Sununu has endorsed Keene Mayor George Hansel. As the Republican mayor of a town that backed Biden by 40 points, Hansel has shown an ability to appeal to Democratic voters.
“I am the only one that can win in November, the only one Kuster is scared of,” Hansel said at a recent debate hosted by WMUR.
Former Hillsborough County treasurer Robert Burns has gotten help from a Democratic PAC, with some seeing him as easier to defeat in November. At the debate, Burns accused Hansel of governing as a liberal, attacking a pro-immigrant “sanctuary city” resolution passed by the city council and characterizing Hansel’s appearance at a 2020 racial justice rally as “marching with BLM [Black Lives Matter].”
Sununu, Burns said in an interview, had backed a weak Republican who couldn’t unite their party. “His candidates are going to lose, and he needs to get over it,” Burns said.
State Rep. Tim Baxter, who is endorsed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and is running in the 1st Congressional District, said in an interview that his opponents were “fake MAGA candidates.” Any Republican who wouldn’t rule out voting for McCarthy for leader would, he said, “stab a new president, with an America First agenda, in the back.” | 2022-09-11T22:55:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Primary season concludes with bitterly contested GOP races in New Hampshire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/11/new-hampshire-bolduc-morse-senate-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/11/new-hampshire-bolduc-morse-senate-house/ |
For his return to geopolitical frontlines after almost three years of Covid-19 isolation, Xi Jinping has chosen something of a victory lap.
The Chinese leader is set to visit Central Asia, starting in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and then moving on to a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan. There he’ll meet Vladimir Putin for their first encounter since the Russian president traveled to the opening of the Beijing Olympics in February, shook hands with his counterpart, declared a friendship with “no limits” — and then launched an assault on Ukraine. It’ll be a week of political theater, and one from which Moscow, under growing pressure on the battlefield, should expect few substantial gains.
Xi’s itinerary has not been chosen by chance. Russia’s invasion of its western neighbor and the motivations laid out in Putin’s disquieting pre-attack speech — a rambling intervention that dismissed Ukraine’s right to exist and post-Soviet reality — sent a shudder through the region sitting to its south, where there are significant ethnic Russian minorities. Not only that, but Moscow’s unimpressive and ill-disciplined military performance has been duly noted by nations for whom the country is supposed to act as a security guarantor.
Central Asia’s red lines are being redrawn, its spheres of influence recast. China isn’t about to sit that out, even with a Party Congress weeks away.
The year started badly for Beijing in this part of the world. Chinese officials were caught off-guard by unrest in Kazakhstan, initially dismissing the protests as an “internal affair.” Putin, by contrast, was swift on his feet, answering President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s appeal for help by sending in troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a loose Russian-led group. He helped salvage the regime and restore order, and reinforced the Kremlin’s role as protector. For all the talk of Beijing’s growing economic influence in the region, it was Russia that demonstrated a real understanding of the crisis in January and was able to drive events, as Temur Umarov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it to me. Beijing understood it needed to pay closer attention.
Then came the war, with its implicit threats. In August, in a rapidly deleted social media post (later attributed to hackers), former-Russian president-turned-superhawk Dmitry Medvedev called Kazakhstan an “artificial state.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was clearer in an interview with an Uzbek newspaper last week: “I want everyone to understand that if we lose, then you will be next.”
Kazakhstan has been strikingly reluctant to fall into line behind Moscow, sending humanitarian support to Ukraine and remaining in contact with Kyiv. On stage next to Putin in June, Tokayev said that he would not recognize the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk peoples’ republics of eastern Ukraine. The country is seeking alternative routes for its oil exports and has agreed to advance military intelligence collaboration with Turkey, a NATO member. Apart from anything else, Russia’s economy is a dead-end, leaving even crucial migrant remittances less reliable than they once were.
So while Xi’s visit isn’t a provocation — Kazakhstan was also where he chose to launch the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, and the country has long balanced its relationships with China, Russia and the US — it certainly lends welcome visible support to Tokayev. It’s a reminder to Moscow that resource-rich Central Asia has other neighbors. No wonder Putin, a man in search of friends, has his own travel plans in the region.
But of course, a friend in need is a friend indeed, and Xi isn’t about to abandon Putin. The two are still autocrats, aligned in their opposition to Washington, fresh from joint military exercises. Both could use a little geopolitical showmanship — the trip was announced after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Moscow is struggling to resist a Ukrainian offensive. But will anything come of their confab?
By meeting in an ostensibly neutral venue — not Moscow, say — and speaking on the sidelines of the SCO, Beijing suggests expectations should be low. The SCO is a vast grouping, representing more than two-fifths of the world’s population now that India and Pakistan have joined, but it amounts to less than the sum of its parts. As Jakub Jakobowski, who researches China’s foreign economic policy at the Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw puts it, the SCO isn’t able to provide a coherent response to any international development, but it is an opportunity for a propaganda-friendly performance that will resonate in the Global South. That just doesn’t imply any substantial economic, let alone military, commitment.
Ukraine’s rapid advances over the last few days have certainly left China in an uncomfortable position. Xi has been unwilling to take costly or risky steps to support Putin, and yet Beijing also does not want to see an embarrassing defeat for the Kremlin, which would reflect badly on Xi and create unwelcome instability.
But Russia is down, not out. For now, expect China to continue to do what it has done since February — exclusively what is best for China. Over the past months, it has turned up the rhetoric but limited actual face-to-face diplomatic contact with Russia, with No. 3 official Li Zhanshu’s stop in Vladivostok for the Eastern Economic Forum the most senior visit since the invasion. It hasn’t significantly challenged the West’s financial and other measures, particularly in tech and military supplies — forcing Russia to go to North Korea and Iran. Instead, it has pragmatically bought up cheap raw materials, as India has. In a tender that closed last week, the Sakhalin-2 LNG export plant, struggling to sell to South Korea and Japan, sold several shipments to China at nearly half the current spot price.
All of this ensures profits continue to flow for Russia’s commodity giants. But it’s keeping the economy afloat at the cost of increased dependence on Beijing, left holding all the cards. Russia’s exports to China rose by 50% in the first eight months of the year, according to Kommersant, while Russia’s imports from there grew 8.5%.
Xi will come under pressure in Uzbekistan. The Chinese leader’s balancing act is more uncomfortable than ever — but it isn’t over yet. Not least because Beijing knows all too well that Putin has nowhere else to turn.
• China, Russia and Iran Are Ganging Up on the US: Hal Brands
• China and Russia Have a Central Asia Problem: Clara Ferreira Marques | 2022-09-11T22:55:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China Is Winning the Post-Ukraine Game, at Russia’s Expense - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/china-is-winning-the-post-ukraine-game-at-russias-expense/2022/09/11/32a3a6fe-321d-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/china-is-winning-the-post-ukraine-game-at-russias-expense/2022/09/11/32a3a6fe-321d-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
The requests for records related to the 2020 election have complicated preparations for November, which some officials say may be the point
Patrick Marley
Voters cast their ballots inside polling booths at East Stonewall AME Zion Church on Election Day near uptown Charlotte on Nov. 3, 2020. (Logan Cyrus/For The Washington Post)
In nearly two dozen states and scores of counties, election officials are fielding what many describe as an unprecedented wave of public records requests in the final weeks of summer, one they say may be intended to hinder their work and weaken an already strained system. The avalanche of sometimes identically worded requests has forced some to dedicate days to the process of responding even as they scurry to finalize polling locations, mail out absentee ballots and prepare for early voting in October, officials said.
In Wisconsin, one recent request asks for 34 different types of documents. In North Carolina, hundreds of requests came into state and local offices on one day alone. In Kentucky, officials don’t recognize the technical-sounding documents they’re being asked to produce — and when they seek clarification, the requesters say they don’t know, either.
The use of mass records requests by the former president’s supporters effectively weaponizes laws aimed at promoting principles of a democratic system — that the government should be transparent and accountable. Public records requests are a key feature of that system, used by regular citizens, journalists and others. In interviews, officials emphasized that they are trying to follow the law and fulfill the requests, but they also believe the system is being abused.
“When you are asking for every single document under the sun, it becomes difficult for us to do our job,” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.
Many administrators said they suspect that may be the point.
They believe that those organizing the effort are not out for information but rather are trying to cause chaos as their fall crunchtime approaches, making it more difficult to run smooth elections and giving critics new openings to attack the integrity of election administration in the United States. They point to the identical nature of the requests as well as the number of duplicates individual counties have received — each one of which they must respond to, by law.
“It’s the public’s right to transparency, and I understand that,” said Chuck Broerman, the Republican clerk of El Paso County, Colo., who has hired an additional employee for the 10-person elections division to handle public records requests. “But at the same time, it’s been reported to me that some of this has been done perhaps deliberately to break the system. And you have to ask yourself, why do they want to do that?”
The surge of inquiries reflects the latest example of the extraordinary pressure that election officials have faced since the 2020 election. Since then, state and local election administrators have dealt with the fallout from a concerted campaign by Trump and his backers to undermine confidence in U.S. elections, including a barrage of threats and personal attacks. Hundreds of officials have left their jobs as a result, administrators say.
Many of those submitting the requests say they are following the call of several leading election deniers allied with Trump, including MyPillow founder Mike Lindell. Some claim that there is more to be known about voting machine use in the 2020 election, and the data they are requesting will provide one piece of the puzzle.
“We believe those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing,” said Carol Snow, one such activist in Burke County, N.C., in text exchanges with The Post. “Their lack of transparency causes distrust of the electronic voting systems we are required to use to cast our ballots.”
Trump contested the election in numerous battlegrounds nationwide, with state and federal judges rejecting dozens of lawsuits claiming the result was not valid. Post-election audits failed to identify widespread fraud. Since then, dozens of election-denying Republicans have won their party’s nominations for elected office with authority over election administration.
The latest flood of requests began immediately after Lindell, a prominent Trump ally, exhorted his followers at a mid-August gathering in Springfield, Mo., to obtain copies of what’s known as “cast vote records” from every election office in the country. Lindell live-streamed his “Moment of Truth” summit on his own social media platforms and got a boost of viewership from former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who broadcast his podcast from the event on both days.
A cast vote record shows how an individual voted across the ballot. Ballots themselves are cast vote records, but some voting machines can also generate the data in report form — enormous spreadsheets that academics have long used to track split-ticket voting and other voting patterns.
Lindell, who has spent the last two years spreading unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, said in an interview he learned about cast vote records this summer and soon after began urging people to request them and send him copies, so that he could make the case that voting machines should be abolished.
Federal law requires governments to keep election records for 22 months, and Lindell said he was trying to obtain as many of the cast vote records as he could before that period expired for the 2020 cycle over the Labor Day weekend. He said copies of the records have “poured in by the thousands” since he put out his call to action.
“These machine companies have played out the clock, so to speak,” Lindell said. “But people can request them and then obviously we can preserve them.”
Lindell disputed the claim that the blast of requests was intended to disrupt election offices — and questioned whether administrators were trying to keep information from the public.
“This is to save our country,” Lindell said. “They don’t want to do work? That’s what they’re paid to do.”
Inside the 'shadow reality world' promoting the lie that the presidential election was stolen
Election officials and their advocates said they are dispirited that Lindell continues to encourage his followers to distrust the voting process. Many counties have already published electronic images of their ballots, giving skeptics all they need to conduct their own hand recount of the 2020 election. The fact that offices are nonetheless being inundated with requests, some officials said, raised questions about the true motives of those who are instigating them.
“The only way to look at it is as a denial-of-service attack on local government,” said Matt Crain, who leads the Colorado County Clerks Association, using the term for an intentional bombardment of a computer network for the purpose of shutting it down. “The irony is, if Lindell wanted the cast vote records, he could have just put in a request to get them. They don’t do that. They put out this call to action for people to do it, and they know it’s going to inundate these offices, especially medium and small offices who are understaffed and overwhelmed already. They know exactly what they’re doing.”
Many of the requests include demands that counties retain the records because the requester is contemplating litigation. In one such email sent Friday to the elections director in Forsyth County, N.C., a woman who identified herself as Mona Faggione wrote: “I AM CONSIDERING SUING YOU FOR YOUR AND/OR YOUR ORGANIZATION’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS THAT WILL SOON BE PROVEN TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE SINCE 2017.”
That same phrase, written in capital letters, appears in several other requests sent to other North Carolina counties and provided to The Post by the state board of elections. The requests, including the names and email addresses of the senders, are public records in North Carolina and some other states. Faggione did not respond to a request for comment.
“We’ve gotten hundreds of requests today alone across the state,” Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in an interview on Friday. “It’s overwhelming.”
Gannon said local election officials are already deep into their election preparations: hiring poll workers, securing polling locations, mailing absentee and military ballots and finalizing plans for early voting, which begins Oct. 20.
Trump defeated Biden in North Carolina by less than two points — his narrowest victory in any state.
Around the country, requests for election records began to surge when Trump contested the 2020 result. The Pennsylvania secretary of state’s office has received nearly four times as many requests for election records this year compared to the same point in 2018, according to that office. Michigan’s Bureau of Elections has spent 600 hours processing records requests this year, which it estimates is triple the time it has spent on them in the past. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has received an average of 17 records requests a month this year — four times its monthly average in 2020.
Milwaukee’s Woodall-Vogg said she has been swamped with requests over the last two years, including one that came in asking for 34 types of documents, such as poll books, voted ballots, spoiled ballots, remade ballots, absentee voter forms and voter registration applications.
In Canton, outside Detroit, township clerk Michael Siegrist (D) has contended with a string of records requests from former state senator Patrick Colbeck (R), who spoke at Lindell’s summit and has written a book contending the 2020 election was stolen. Siegrist rejected one request from Colbeck for computer log files that Siegrist said would have put future elections at risk.
“Predatory FOIA requests like this that really are designed to kind of bully, intimidate or potentially gain access to information that legally you’re not entitled to,” he said, using shorthand for the state’s Freedom of Information Act. “This really does take away my staff from doing their legitimate job.”
Colbeck said by email that he did not trust that Siegrist had protected the township’s systems from malware and accused Siegrist of “gross negligence.”
The deluge of requests has not been limited to battleground states, extending to reliably Republican places such as Kentucky. Secretary of State Michael Adams (R) said that in some cases, the requests use seemingly technical terms that the clerks can’t decipher. When the clerks ask for clarification, he said, those making the requests can’t always explain what they’re looking for.
“There’s some decent people, too, that just want to have information and I respect that, so we certainly accommodate those people,” he said. “But I think some of these really intend to disrupt the process. And no matter what you do, they will move the goal posts.”
“It just proves that the statement these people make that all they want is to ensure a fair election, all they want is to ensure public confidence in the integrity, that’s a lie,” Adams said of some of those making requests to county clerks. “Their whole goal is to destabilize our system.”
Some of the requests have come with an attachment called “CVRs for Dummies” — an instruction sheet modeled after the popular how-to series that explains to activists what a cast vote record is and how to request it. Election administrators who received the attachment speculated that the requesters assumed it would be helpful for officials, too.
“Cast Vote Records (CVRs) have proven to be one of the most useful, readily available forms of election records,” the instructions say. “Analysis of CVRs along with comparing CVRs from different states and counties has helped to identify election fraud all over the country. We ask that everyone submit a public records request to their home county requesting the CVRs for the 2020 election, and any subsequent election.”
Election officials say the premise behind the requests is flawed, and cast vote records don’t provide any evidence of fraud.
The attachment appears to have been circulated by two election deniers, Draza Smith and Jeff O’Donnell, who have given speeches around the country with other prominent leaders of the movement, including Lindell, claiming without evidence that millions of votes for Trump were switched to Biden in 2020. O’Donnell, who calls himself the Lone Raccoon online, took credit during Lindell’s summit for helping get people to file records requests.
“I have one of the best groups of followers in the world, Raccoon Army,” O’Donnell said from the stage. “I set them out to start making public records requests everywhere for this information and, lo and behold, over time and working together they managed to get hundreds and hundreds of these cast vote records and we’re still getting them today.”
O’Donnell and Smith run a website featuring a tally of the cast vote records they have collected, and social media posts show that they began encouraging others to gather them as early as May. According to the site, they have collected the records from 23 states since mid-August, including 54 from Georgia, 36 from Ohio and 28 from Texas.
The how-to guide instructs activists not to request a CVR if their county is already on the list, but hundreds of activists appear not to be following that advice. Neither Smith nor O’Donnell responded to emails seeking comment, but Smith posted on the social media site Telegram a critique of election officials who are complaining about the crush of records requests.
“This is not ONLY about 2020, but about the problematic system we have in place that needs to be rectified,” Smith wrote. “We will continue gathering information and doing research on all of the elections about which we have data: past, future and present.”
The slew of requests is particularly complicated in Texas, where the office of the Secretary of State has instructed county administrators that ballots and cast vote records are not public until after the 22-month period expires. As a result, counties are preparing to provide the 2020 records, but they assumed they could not do so until this week.
“There’s a lot of concern that we’re going to destroy this stuff. We’re not,” said Chris Davis, the election administrator in Williamson County, Texas, outside of Austin, who said he has received three dozen requests since Aug. 18.
An opinion issued by Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) just days after Lindell’s conference is adding to the confusion. The opinion contradicts the secretary of state’s guidance by declaring that all ballots are public records immediately after a county tallies the unofficial result — typically, the night of the election. Election administrators say the ruling has unleashed a flurry of consultations with state election officials and county attorneys about whether they will be required to make ballots available for inspection the day after the November vote.
“There is language in the election code that these are sealed for 22 months and you can’t get into that box without a court order from a district judge,” said Trudy Hancock, the elections chief in Brazos County and the head of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators.
“Paxton’s opinion definitely goes against that,” she said. “My concern is the integrity of those ballots if we have a recount if we have an election contest or anything of that nature. We have to make sure those ballots are exactly what they were when they voted. Someone could alter that ballot.”
Paxton’s office did not respond to repeated emails seeking comment. Lindell called Paxton’s opinion a “blessing.”
One complication of the slew of requests is how widely records laws vary from state to state. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections has offered guidance to counties that neither ballots nor cast vote records are public. However, some of those making the requests have disputed that guidance and filed a public-records complaint.
Sara LaVere, the elections director in Brunswick County, N.C., said the requests are coming in “hot and heavy” — 10 to 15 since mid-August.
LaVere emphasized that none of the requesters have been hostile, but she said some of their requests have been challenging. One person asked for the entire recount of a contested state Supreme Court race from 2020 — a very long paper record resembling an adding machine tape that took days for one employee to copy.
Another request for absentee ballot envelopes led LaVere to send one of her employees to the office’s warehouse to dig out the relevant boxes. That person also manages the county’s polling places — a busy job with the election fast approaching.
“Today, he had to go to a polling place,” LaVere said. “But yesterday he spent the whole day in the warehouse.” | 2022-09-11T22:55:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump backers inundate election offices with requests for 2020 records - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/11/trump-election-deniers-voting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/11/trump-election-deniers-voting/ |
Panthers quarterback Baker Mayfield is tackled by Browns defensive end Myles Garrett during Sunday's game in Charlotte. (Jacob Kupferman/AP)
CHARLOTTE — The Cleveland Browns without Baker Mayfield were better than Mayfield without the Browns, at least on the opening Sunday of the NFL season. And just barely.
It was decidedly inelegant football on a mostly cloudy afternoon at Bank of America Stadium. But it ultimately was captivating, and it served the Browns’ purposes, as they prevailed in the opening-day grudge match with their former quarterback. Cleveland came undone in the fourth quarter but managed to beat Mayfield’s Carolina Panthers, 26-24, on a 58-yard field goal by rookie kicker Cade York with eight seconds to play.
“I’d have loved to have bragging rights against those guys,” Mayfield said. “But we didn’t finish.”
With Jacoby Brissett at quarterback in place of Mayfield’s intended successor, Deshaun Watson, the Browns did not always resemble a smoothly functioning championship contender. They fell behind in the late stages of the game even after leading 14-0 in the first half, 20-7 early in the fourth quarter and 23-14 with just more than six minutes left. But they did what was needed.
Kareem Hunt had a touchdown catch and a touchdown run. Fellow tailback Nick Chubb had 141 of the Browns’ 217 rushing yards. York provided four field goals. Brissett passed for only 147 yards but didn’t commit a turnover.
NFL Sunday takeaways: Baker Mayfield, Bill Belichick, Joe Burrow have work ahead
The Cleveland defense was in control for most of the game, limiting Mayfield to 235 passing yards in a 16-for-27 performance. Mayfield fumbled four times, although he recovered all four. He threw an interception and took four sacks, two of them by standout Browns pass rusher Myles Garrett.
The Panthers pulled to within 20-14 with just under 13 minutes remaining on a seven-yard touchdown run by Mayfield, which he celebrated by throwing the football forcefully into the padded wall behind the end zone. After the Browns replied with a field goal drive, Mayfield promptly threw a 75-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Robbie Anderson.
The Panthers forced a Browns punt and drove for a 34-yard field goal with 1:13 to play to move in front, 24-23. But the Browns benefited from a roughing-the-passer call on the Panthers and moved into position for York’s long kick. That came after Panthers Coach Matt Rhule yelled and gestured from the sideline at the officials, seeking an intentional grounding penalty on a third-down spike by Brissett.
“Just a lot of things there at the end that didn’t go our way,” Rhule said afterward.
The Browns opened their season without Watson, who is serving his 11-game suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct policy based on allegations of sexual misconduct made by women in more than two dozen civil lawsuits. Watson is not eligible to play for the Browns until a Dec. 4 game in Houston against his former team, the Texans.
“Cade came through,” Browns Coach Kevin Stefanski said of his kicker. “We knew he was going to come through for us at some point. Here it is in Game 1, and the kid just knocks it down the middle. … I did remind them in there this counts as one. It’s one game.”
Mayfield spent four seasons with the Browns after they picked him first in the 2018 NFL draft. He led them to the playoffs in the 2020 season but suffered through a disappointing, injury-plagued 2021. He issued what amounted to a public farewell to Cleveland and Browns fans in March amid the team’s pursuit of a trade for Watson. Mayfield requested a trade, and the Browns finally accommodated him with a July deal to Carolina.
Mayfield avoided inflammatory statements in the buildup to this Week 1 meeting, which the NFL scheduled long before he was traded to the Panthers. He said this wasn’t a revenge game.
Plenty of Browns fans were in Charlotte for the game. A good number of Mayfield jerseys could be spotted in the stands, both Browns and Panthers versions. The crowed greeted Mayfield loudly in the pregame introductions, with a few boos mixed among the cheers. He interacted warmly with his former Browns teammates when the captains met at midfield for the coin toss before the opening kickoff.
“Everybody made this out to be the Super Bowl,” Mayfield said. “But despite what everybody is going to make this, there’s 16 more games. The Super Bowl is not until February. It’s the beginning of September. … We’re going to flush this. We’re going to learn, and we’re going to be better.”
The Panthers left the field to some boos after a first half in which they trailed, 17-7. Mayfield had very little time to acclimate himself to his new team after the trade, and it showed. He threw a second-quarter interception to Browns safety Grant Delpit. That led to a one-yard touchdown pass from Brissett to Hunt.
“To me, it comes down to us not starting fast,” Mayfield said. “And it started with me.”
Hunt, who reportedly asked to be traded before the season, added a 24-yard touchdown run to extend the Browns’ lead to 14-0. Mayfield’s 50-yard completion to tight end Ian Thomas set up a one-yard touchdown run by tailback Christian McCaffrey less than two minutes before halftime. But the Browns responded with a 26-yard field goal by York with 21 seconds to go.
York added a third-quarter field goal to stretch the lead to 20-7 before Mayfield and the Panthers made things interesting in the fourth quarter.
“I think he, like the rest of our offense, just kind of settled down,” Rhule said. | 2022-09-11T22:55:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baker Mayfield and the Panthers fall just short against the Browns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/browns-edge-panthers-baker-mayfield-with-long-field-goal-final-seconds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/browns-edge-panthers-baker-mayfield-with-long-field-goal-final-seconds/ |
ZALIZNYCHNE, Ukraine — In the end, the Russians fled any way they could on Friday, on stolen bicycles, disguised as locals, abandoned by their units. Hours after Ukrainian soldiers poured into the area, hundreds of Russian soldiers encamped in this village were gone, leaving behind stunned residents to face the ruins of 28 weeks of occupation.
On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that Russian forces had retreated from the Balakliia and Izyum area in the Kharkiv region, saying a decision was taken to “regroup.”
On Sunday, Ukraine’s commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhny, said Ukrainian forces had retaken more than 3,000 square kilometers (1,864 miles) of territory, a claim that could not be independently verified, adding that they were advancing from the east, south and north.
The Russian Defense Ministry’s own daily briefing Sunday featured a map showing Russians retreating behind the Oskil river on the outskirts of the Kherson region. | 2022-09-11T22:57:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Kharkiv, towns liberated by Ukraine rejoiced in a Russian retreat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/kharkiv-liberated-retreat-izyum-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/kharkiv-liberated-retreat-izyum-russia/ |
Carson Wentz did a lot of bit of everything in his Washington Commanders debut. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The takeaway advice from Sunday’s season-opening, nickname-christening, they-might-blow-them-out-no-they-might-lose 28-22 victory for the Washington Commanders over the Jacksonville Jaguars comes from none other than Ron Rivera, the head coach himself, about the quarterback he both traded for and tied his future to, Carson Wentz. Take note, all you fans who filled the lower bowl at FedEx Field and raised newly issued “Take Command” banners. This is sage stuff on how to get through the Sundays to come.
“I’ll take antacids,” Rivera said.
It was framed as a joke, and it got the deserved chuckles. It is absolutely reality. On any given Sunday night for this new team and its new quarterback, the Tums might have to be followed by Tito’s.
“It is hard to win in this league,” Wentz said after his first start for another new city. “It doesn’t matter how it looks.”
Because as it turns out, it can look like a kaleidoscope of things in a single three-and-a-half-hour window.
After one wild Sunday — in which Wentz tossed interceptions on back-to-back throws in the fourth quarter, then responded with the two scoring tosses that won the game — there really can be no hard-and-fast conclusions, right? Wentz did his best to lose the game before he went out and won it. He became the first Washington quarterback to throw four touchdown passes in a game since 2015, the first to throw four in his debut ever — and yet his performance was in danger of being defined by the mistakes, because they were that bad.
In some ways, this is exactly what Rivera and his front office signed up for when they traded two draft picks to Indianapolis for Wentz and his $22 million salary. He can do things other recent Washington quarterbacks weren’t physically capable of. That’s how he hit Terry McLaurin on a perfect go route down the right side, a 49-yard touchdown executed with ease.
But he can also do things that make your eyes bleed and your cranium throb. That’s how he stared down rookie Jahan Dotson — who announced his presence with two touchdown catches, including the game-winner — for enough time to bake a cake. It was as if, on the second play of the fourth quarter with Washington nursing a 14-12 lead, he thought: “Well, I usually throw an inexplicable interception here, so why not lean into that?”
Ulcers, it seems, are to be expected. Get used to it.
“We’re going to ride with him,” Rivera said. “No matter how you look at it. We’re going to ride with him. We’ll go with the good and we’ll go with the bad.”
So, Washington, you have heard so much about the Carson Wentz Experience — and even seen it in Philadelphia and Indianapolis. Now try living it. There are reasons this guy was once the second pick in the draft — and why two franchises decided to part ways with him in the past two years.
“I’ve played a lot of football,” Wentz said. “I’ve seen the ups and the downs. I think just knowing from the past trying to do too much in those situations can come back to haunt you. I think it’s going [on] to make the next play.”
And the next play could bring almost anything. His stat line of 27 for 41 for 313 yards with the four scores and the two picks contains both the productivity and the danger he has come to represent. Expecting both explosiveness and consistency from this character in Week 1 was so unwise as to be almost foolish. Maybe it will happen as he gets more comfortable in the offense of coordinator Scott Turner and more familiar with his weapons. But the egregious plays Sunday didn’t arrive because Wentz didn’t know a play call or understand the tendency of a receiver.
They came because, first, he stared at Dotson like he was trying to recognize a long-ago high school sweetheart from across the mall. They came because, second, he tried to execute a screen in the midst of Beltway-like traffic deep in his own territory, and Jaguars linebacker Travon Walker made an athletic interception.
Those two plays led to the field goal that helped Jacksonville erase the last of what had been a 14-3 halftime lead and the touchdown that gave the Jaguars a 22-14 advantage with just under 12 minutes left. Those two plays changed the tenor from the announced crowd of 58,192 from supportive and excited to angsty and nervous.
“That’s an ugly stretch, obviously,” Wentz said.
So give him this: He doesn’t run from accountability. He embraces it. In those situations, he can’t throw those picks, and he knows it. But Sunday shows he knows something else: He can move on from plays that are as ugly as you will see and still harness the talent he has — which is sheer arm strength, the ability to almost effortlessly flick a ball downfield and let what looks like a dangerous and diverse group of receivers make plays.
“The real key point,” McLaurin said, “is the way he responded.”
Because it’s Week 1, and because the Commanders are 1-0, let that be the takeaway, then. After the second interception, Rivera said Wentz came to the sideline “and kind of beat the ground a little bit.” The frustration lasted seconds, not minutes. When Rivera offered, “You’re going to have to go win this,” Wentz said directly, “I will.”
“And just walked away,” Rivera said.
He won it not just with the bomb to McLaurin that cut the deficit to 22-20, but then with a third-and-10 throw to tight end Logan Thomas that was both necessary and perfect. He did so with the 24-yard toss to Dotson in the end zone with 1 minute, 46 seconds left — a play that grew directly off the interception on which Wentz stared down Dotson for too long.
This time, Dotson set up cornerback Tyson Campbell with a double move. This time, Wentz lofted a ball to a spot only Dotson could catch it. This time, Dotson made a play — with sure, strong hands — that shows why the Commanders believed he was worthy of the 16th pick in the draft.
This time, Wentz was the hero. About 10 minutes after he was the goat.
It came down to it Sunday. Now wait a week to see what will be next.
Washington, perhaps, has its team name for the future — though a not-tiny portion of the fan base chanted, in the closing minutes, “Let’s go, [old name]! Let’s go, [old name]!” But any notion that it has its unquestioned, no-brainer quarterback for the future is premature at best. The Commanders, as a franchise, are 1-0 in their history, and Carson Wentz has enough good, positive tape to watch until next week’s trip to Detroit. Who knows what that’ll bring? Grab the antacids, and hang on. | 2022-09-11T23:16:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Carson Wentz Experience led to Commanders’ harrowing Week 1 win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/carson-wentz-jaguars-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/carson-wentz-jaguars-commanders/ |
Aces forward A'ja Wilson gets inside of Sun center Brionna Jones in the first half Sunday in Las Vegas. Wilson had 24 points and 11 rebounds as Las Vegas took Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. (L.E. Baskow/AP)
LAS VEGAS — The party got started early Sunday. A sold-out, record crowd of 10,135 waved towels and roared as pyrotechnics shot fire in five directions during introductions and “We Be Clubbin’ ” blared. Screams rained down as A’ja Wilson was presented her second MVP trophy at center court.
And all of that came before Wilson convinced the crowd to offer multiple standing ovations with a spectacular performance in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. The “M-V-P! M-V-P!” chants came regularly.
Wilson put up a gaudy stat line of 24 points, 11 rebounds, four blocks and two steals as the Aces prevailed, 67-64, to take a 1-0 lead over the Connecticut Sun in the best-of-five series. She turned the Michelob Ultra Arena stands into a raucous scene that seemed right at home on the Strip.
“It was a game we needed,” Wilson said. “It was a game we needed not necessarily because, oh, it’s our first win. It’s because ... this is huge for us. These are statement games in a way, and when you are playing a good team like [Connecticut], you have to really lock in at all costs.”
Chelsea Gray added 21 points and three assists and Jackie Young had 11 points for the Aces, who shot just 39.7 percent. Alyssa Thomas led the Sun with 19 points, 11 rebounds, five assists and three steals. Jonquel Jones scored 15 points to go with nine rebounds, and Brionna Jones had 12 points off the bench.
Before the game, Aces guard Kelsey Plum put it plainly: “Don’t tiptoe into a bar fight.”
The Aces stepped into the ring swinging — and stormed to a 21-9 lead as Wilson, Gray and Young scored all 21. But the Sun, which loves to muddle up the game, managed to hang around after that initial, emotional push from the Aces. Offensive rebounds and points in the paint gave Connecticut the spark it needed to go on a 19-7 run in the second quarter and take its first lead. The Aces, who had the league’s top scoring offense, managed just nine points in the second quarter, and their 76 points for the game were 14 fewer than they averaged during the regular season.
The Sun outscored the Aces 40-22 in the paint and grabbed 13 offensive rebounds. Wilson and Coach Becky Hammon — who said she was “lit” at halftime, when Connecticut led 38-34 — made sure that wasn’t enough.
“Everything we had talked about, we didn’t do any of it,” Hammon said of the first half. “And true to form, they just step up and do it then. I don’t even yell in my real life, but when you feel so strongly about how you have to play a certain way — and I feel very strongly offensively and defensively about how we have to play — when you go out there and you don’t execute it, it’s frustrating. But at the end of the day, they know it. They are smart. They get it. But they had beat us in every hustle category, and that can’t happen. You can’t lose a championship or a game or a quarter on hustle. That can never be the case.”
The Aces regained their footing after halftime, when Wilson went back to work. An 11-3 stretch to close the third quarter gave Las Vegas a 55-53 lead heading into the fourth.
“Halfway through the third, I felt still really we were in a good position,” Sun Coach Curt Miller said. “In the second half of that third quarter, they started to make some difficult shots, and we could not find any kind of offensive rhythm and missed some shots we were certainly capable of, forced some shots, and got stagnated by their defense.”
Las Vegas pushed its lead to 66-58; the arena was deafening when Young hit a floater with 2:40 left. A pair of steals and layups by Thomas cut the Sun’s deficit to three with 34.2 seconds left, but DeWanna Bonner missed a three-point attempt on the final possession would have tied it.
The were defensive lapses from the Aces, but Gray took a key charge down the stretch that seemed to energize her teammates.
The Sun was disappointed with the results but happy with the way it played with Game 2 up next Tuesday night.
“We have to have a lot of confidence,” Thomas said. “I mean, this is a three-point game, and we had a chance to tie. I think we are very confident, and we know that all you need is one — and then there’s two games at our place.” | 2022-09-11T23:17:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WNBA Finals Game 1: A'ja Wilson, Las Vegas Aces beat Connecticut Sun - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/wnba-finals-game-1-las-vegas-aces-aja-wilson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/wnba-finals-game-1-las-vegas-aces-aja-wilson/ |
Korean War veterans pose for a group photo at the newly expanded Korean War Memorial at the National Mall on Sept. 10, 2022. (Courtesy of Fred Lash)
These veterans — many of them in their 90s — showed up from across the country with cheek-to-cheek smiles, not knowing whether this year’s gathering would be their last. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger and Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang, who contributed $100,000 of her own money to cover the veterans’ travel costs, also were there.
Behind the reunion’s festivities, the veterans struggled to hide a muted sense of frustration, borne of the perception that their military service is appreciated more overseas than at home by fellow Americans. To these men, the 1950-53 Korean War remains America’s “forgotten war.”
“They have a special place in my heart,” he said.
Before a dinner banquet, retired Marine Col. Warren Wiedhahn addressed the gathered veterans, saying that when he returned to Korea for the first time after the war in the early 1970s he saw a sign that read “We will never forget.” He had no idea what that meant. He found out later that the South Koreans were trying to say thanks to U.S. and other foreign veterans.
Berger, who spoke to the veterans after Wiedhahn, said that “you are never forgotten.” Of the four pictures that hang in his office, he said, three depict the Marines fighting in Korea.
Juan Balleza, a 90-year-old Marine infantryman, choked up when asked about the Battle of Chosin. A Catholic, Balleza carried a Bible in his left chest pocket and prayed every night. “I asked God to forgive me for the Chinese I had killed that day, and for those that I would kill the next day, knowing that they all had mothers at home who wanted them to come back,” the Mexican American said. “Just like my mama.”
“I will never forget her. We prayed for her soul as we fought our way out,” he said. “I still pray for her.”
Nancy Weigle, whose father, Gerald F. Weigle, had served as a corpsman with the Marines, said her father would obsess over his children’s footwear and winter gear — perhaps because he saw so many of his Marines suffer from frostbite and freeze to death in the 20-below weather of North Korea’s mountains. He died in 2018.
The Korean War appears to be better remembered in China, America’s main adversary during the Korean War, said Jiyul Kim, a retired Army colonel who teaches history at Oberlin College in Ohio.
In Chinese schools, children learn about the Korean War with a prominence matching lessons on Bunker Hill or Gettysburg in America, Kim said. In the United States, the war isn’t necessarily forgotten, he said, as much as largely ignored.
Also ignored has been the war’s significance on race relations within the armed forces, historians say. Although President Harry S. Truman had ordered the U.S. military to desegregate in 1948, many units remained all-White or all-Black in 1950. Only as the war progressed did the U.S. military truly embark on integration, they say.
“The Korean War starts with a segregated Army. Black people are in segregated units with White officers,” said Adrian R. Lewis, a professor of military history at the University of Kansas. Some local Koreans were recruited and integrated into all-White units before African Americans because the Army in the first weeks of the war was dangerously short of personnel, Lewis said.
“We did our part, too,” he said. | 2022-09-12T00:09:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Korean War veterans from Chosin gather for reunion near Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/korean-war-reunion-veteran-chosin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/11/korean-war-reunion-veteran-chosin/ |
Commanders tight end John Bates (87) lifts up wide receiver Jahan Dotson (1) in celebration during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s win over Jacksonville. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The Washington Commanders finally may have found a reliable complement (or two) for star receiver Terry McLaurin. The combination of Curtis Samuel and Jahan Dotson — who totaled 16 touches, 134 yards and three touchdowns Sunday — sent a clear message from the receivers room to McLaurin: Help is here.
The improvement was stark. In a 28-22 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, offensive coordinator Scott Turner highlighted Samuel’s versatility by often using him as a running back and receiver, as well as in motion. Samuel showcased his athleticism by turning short throws into long gains with ooh-worthy jukes and spins. Dotson showed his impressive hands by reeling in two touchdowns, including the game-winner.
Coach Ron Rivera said he saw quarterback Carson Wentz’s chemistry with the receivers “coming together” and was most impressed by Samuel.
“That’s what we’ve been hoping for,” he said. “That’s the guy that we know and what he is capable of.”
Curtis Samuel had five catches and two rushes for a goal of 54 yards and a TD in the first quarter.
He’s breaking ankles and laughing about it. pic.twitter.com/Gv3MvCOqb0
Other offensive skill players, such as running back Antonio Gibson and tight end Logan Thomas, helped ease the burden on McLaurin. But Samuel’s and Dotson’s performances stood out because, for the first three years of his career, McLaurin often succeeded despite the receivers around him. They weren’t dangerous enough to distract defenses, so he regularly faced top corners and bracket coverage as the pass game had to rely on tight ends such as Thomas or running backs such as J.D. McKissic, Chris Thompson and Gibson.
In three seasons, only one of the receivers playing alongside McLaurin broke 35 catches (Adam Humphries in 2021 with 41), and only one exceeded 400 yards (Cam Sims in 2020 with 477).
Terry McLaurin is ready to lead as he and the Commanders celebrate new deal
This preseason, receivers coach Drew Terrell told his players the team needed them to help jump-start the offense, but he refrained from making grand proclamations in public.
“You definitely think about the potential of the room, but … it all sounds good until you go do it,” Terrell said in August. “You can be humbled Week 1.”
If Dotson and Samuel emerge as reliable weapons, it would be a big boost. Even if they don’t produce big stats every week, it would force defenses to account for them and help Turner and Wentz find the best matchups to exploit.
“We have a lot of talent on the offense, and it’s not just the receiving corps,” Thomas said. “We are very talented, and we know we’re talented, and let’s just put it on the table every single week and try to find mismatches.”
Sunday’s game held special significance for each receiver. For Samuel, it was a chance to prove his injury-plagued last season was a fluke, that he could still be the versatile, dynamic receiver Washington had hoped he’d be when it signed him to a three-year, $34.5 million deal.
At the end of the first drive, when Samuel took his third touch and scampered into the end zone, he screamed: “I’m back! I’m back! I’m back! I’m back!”
“It’s been so long since I have been able to make dudes drop like that,” Samuel said of his jukes. “I wouldn’t say I impressed myself, but I did what I knew I could do, and I was just like I said I was.”
For Dotson, the game was the realization of a lifelong dream. It was a chance to show the franchise it had been wise to use the 16th pick on him. Dotson was the first rookie in franchise history to record two or more receiving touchdowns in a Week 1 contest, according to Stathead.
“I devoted all my time throughout high school, throughout college making sure that I was ready for this moment,” he said. “You guys saw it today. I made a couple plays, but that’s not all I can do. I’m ready to make even more plays for this team.”
Commanders rookie Jahan Dotson is a calm, steady and fast presence
McLaurin’s performance was perhaps the best testament to the value of Samuel and Dotson. The star receiver was relatively quiet — two catches on four targets for 58 yards — but both catches were critical. The first was a catch-and-run to convert on third and eight. The second was a 49-yard bomb down the right sideline in the fourth quarter that gave Washington back the lead it had just given up.
In the past, two plays alone likely wouldn’t have been enough. McLaurin seemed to acknowledge that after the game, when he noted the team won because “a lot of guys made a lot of plays.”
“We [have] a lot of talent in that room, especially between us three,” Dotson added. “You guys kind of saw a glimpse of that today. There’s just so much more that we can do.” | 2022-09-12T00:26:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders' Jahan Dotson, Curtis Samuel take burden off of Terry McLaurin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/mclaurin-dotson-samuel-commanders-jaguars/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/mclaurin-dotson-samuel-commanders-jaguars/ |
Carlos Alcaraz became the youngest winner of the U.S. Open men's singles title since Pete Sampras in 1990. (Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
NEW YORK — In all the times over the past few days that he was asked about the possibility of taking the No. 1 world ranking, the teenager responded with a version of the same thing: He could feel it at his fingertips, as if it had a physical shape, but at the same time it felt so far away.
Carlos Alcaraz reached out and grabbed what he had dreamed of for more than half his life Sunday at the U.S. Open, defeating Norway’s Casper Ruud, 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (7-1), 6-3, to capture his first Grand Slam title and the top spot in the world. On Monday, the 19-year-old from Spain will become the first teenage No. 1 since the ATP began its ranking system in 1973.
His preternatural talent places him among some of his sport’s brightest starts: Alcaraz is the youngest winner of a Grand Slam since his countryman, Rafael Nadal, claimed the first of his 14 French Open titles in 2005, also at 19. He also joins Pete Sampras, another 19-year-old when he did it in 1990, as the only teenagers to win the U.S. Open men’s singles title in the open era.
But in a final that capped a thrilling two-week run, Alcaraz showed the world a game that is all his own. He fell flat on his back with his limbs spread wide hitting a service winner to claim the trophy, covering his face and rolling on his stomach before jumping up to celebrate with his team.
“This is something I dreamed of since I was a kid, to be number one in the world, to be a champion of a Grand Slam,” the No. 3 seed said, losing his words for a moment. “It’s tough to talk right now. A lot of emotions right now.”
Live updates and analysis from Arthur Ashe Stadium
Alcaraz had won three breathtaking five-set matches in a row to reach the final, and his last stand, though shorter, was just as gripping. He hit 55 winners thanks to top-tier fitness and never-say-die mentality, pairing with Ruud to construct rallies that lifted the crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium to its feet.
Ruud, 23, will take the No. 2 spot in the world, a fitting conclusion to a U.S. Open that doubled as a good, long look at the future of the sport.
It was the second Grand Slam of the year that Novak Djokovic, 35, could not contest because of regulations prohibiting unvaccinated people from entering the host country; he also missed the Australian Open in January but rebounded by winning Wimbledon.
Rafael Nadal, 36, won the first two majors of the year before an abdominal tear forced him to withdraw from Wimbledon and hampered him here, where he lost in the round of 16 to American Frances Tiafoe. Roger Federer, 41, did not play a major all year.
Their absences (or early exits) left a Grand Slam for the taking, but it did not decrease the quality of the matches. Alcaraz enthralled the crowds with late-night, five-set blockbusters that showcased some of the best shot-making there is to see on tour.
The Spaniard is at his best under pressure, taking advantage of his speed and impeccable timing to hijack would-be winners into clips for his own highlight reel. In his quarterfinal against Jannik Sinner, he hit a behind-the-back shot midair at the baseline and won the point. He triumphed in a 21-shot at the start of the fourth set Sunday.
Alcaraz entered the view of mainstream audiences at the perfect time. His game feels futuristic, but his relentlessness — and those fist-pumping, Nadal-esque bellows of “¡Vamos!” — is classic.
Ruud’s father, Christian, is a former pro from the 1990s who held the record as the highest-ranked Norwegian player at No. 39 — until his son came along. Ruud was seventh entering New York after reaching a career-high fifth in June.
He lost his first Grand Slam final to Nadal at this year’s French Open. It was the first time he had made it past the third round at a Grand Slam.
But the capacity crowd of 23,859 at Arthur Ashe Stadium was decidedly in Alcaraz’s corner from the start.
He got the fans out of their seats in the third game with spectacular hitting and an early break of serve; chants of “¡Olé, olé olé olé!” broke out between points. Between the crowd noise and the celebrities in attendance — actress Anne Hathaway, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, NBA star Devin Booker and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, a big-match stalwart — the match felt like an anointing.
Alcaraz took ownership of the favorable atmosphere in the third set, waving his palms to ask the crowd to get louder and pointing to the court while shouting “¡Vamos!” after fighting off two set points to force and then win the tiebreaker.
One key for Ruud in taking the second set and keeping up in the third was his return game. Alcaraz steps into the court on his groundstrokes and likes to take the ball early to disrupt his opponent’s timing; his precision makes him dangerous from the baseline. Ruud had done well to push the Spaniard deep into the court — until the end of the third set, when Alcaraz saved both set points with volleys, flaunting deft hand and all-court game.
Alcaraz won 34 of 45 net points during the match.
Ruud’s return game faltered again in the third-set tiebreak, and Alcaraz took control after that. All he needed was one break of serve to cruise to the trophy. | 2022-09-12T01:36:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carlos Alcaraz wins U.S. Open and secures #1 world ranking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/carlos-alcaraz-us-open-world-ranking/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/11/carlos-alcaraz-us-open-world-ranking/ |
Harry Styles, from left, Emma Corrin, and David Dawson attend the premiere of “My Policeman” at the Princess of Wales Theatre during the Toronto International Film Festival, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022, in Toronto. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
TORONTO — With just as much fanfare but a tad less drama, Harry Styles took the Toronto International Film Festival by storm on Sunday, premiering the tragic gay romance “My Policeman” less than a week after the much-talked-about debut of “Don't Worry Darling” in Venice.
Throngs of fans followed Style’s every move in Toronto, a whirlwind day that included a staged interview with the movie's filmmakers and cast, a quick stop to pick up an ensemble award given by the festival to the “My Policeman” stars and the premiere, itself, in which the usual post-movie Q&A was shortened and trimmed of questions from the audience. | 2022-09-12T03:30:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Harry Styles hits Toronto for 'My Policeman' premiere - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/harry-styles-hits-toronto-for-my-policeman-premiere/2022/09/11/88145296-3245-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/harry-styles-hits-toronto-for-my-policeman-premiere/2022/09/11/88145296-3245-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Dear Amy: My wife and I have been married for almost 25 years. We are now almost empty-nesters with one daughter in high school.
Part of this is my wife’s fault because she will always answer their calls no matter what we are doing — and then she will chat about whatever the day’s topic might be. I know that if I try to bring this up my wife will get mad, and the situation will only get worse.
Frustrated: This isn’t “partly” your wife’s fault/responsibility. The choice to take a call in the evening and converse with a sibling over nothing in particular is entirely her responsibility.
During the course of the proceedings a constant string of text updates and comments were issued. In each case, I refused to participate and announced that I would stay home and await the traditional phone call. One time, the birth was announced with only a text!
Disgruntled: I can well understand your own impulse to let these babies be born without your presence crowding the room, but I think it might help you to understand that for many centuries and in many cultures, birth has been a community event, attended by relatives, friends, doulas, elders and children.
Three Strikes: I like your solution. | 2022-09-12T04:13:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My wife’s siblings call her every day to talk about nothing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/12/ask-amy-wife-daily-calls-siblings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/12/ask-amy-wife-daily-calls-siblings/ |
Dear Miss Manners: I’d like to have a party for my daughter’s 4th birthday. However, I’d like to avoid getting a bunch of plastic junk that she’ll look at once and then throw in a corner and never play with.
1. I could request that anyone who’d like to provide a gift contribute $5 in advance of the party, then I could get her one gift that I know she’d enjoy. (I’d love it if someone requested this for their kid’s party, because it would mean I wouldn’t have to go shopping. And it would cost significantly less than a junk toy!)
Then accept graciously whatever people choose to give, and teach your daughter to do the same.
It is not insulting for one spouse to represent the couple by signing both their names to a card. Miss Manners suggests that before you complain, you ask your son if he writes separately to his mother-in-law.
Dear Miss Manners: I moved 1,500 miles last year and have developed a wonderful circle of friends in my new town. We enjoy church activities, dining out and community activities like concerts.
One at a time, as you choose. Miss Manners supposes that when you are handed a menu at a restaurant, surely you do not feel obliged to eat everything that is listed. | 2022-09-12T04:13:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I don’t want excessive gifts at my kid’s birthday party - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/12/miss-manners-kids-gifts-birthday/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/12/miss-manners-kids-gifts-birthday/ |
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona criticizes rankings based on prestige as ‘a joke’
Usually highly ranked, Columbia did not submit data this summer to U.S. News & World Report for its annual college rankings because school officials are reviewing questions raised about information they provided in previous years. (Mark Lennihan/AP)
Mocking the chase for prestige in higher education, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona declared last month any system of ranking colleges that values wealth, reputation and exclusivity more than economic mobility and return on investment is “a joke.”
Cardona didn’t mention U.S. News & World Report. He didn’t have to. Anyone paying attention knew the target of his critique: the “best college” lists from U.S. News that have shaped the hierarchy of higher education since 1983.
Those data looked particularly suspect in July, when U.S. News bumped Columbia University from the lofty No. 2 perch among national universities to the hazy status of “unranked,” after questions were raised about accuracy of figures from the Ivy League school in New York. Columbia said in June it would not transmit data this year as it reviewed the matter.
On Friday, the university acknowledged reporting inflated figures for the share of undergraduate classes with fewer than 20 students and the share of full-time professors with terminal degrees. Columbia insisted that the “undergraduate experience is and always has been centered around small classes taught by highly accomplished faculty,” but expressed regret for “deficiencies” of its data reporting.
“By far, the most influential of the rankings, still, is U.S. News,” Colin Diver, former president of Reed College in Portland, Ore., said. He calls it the leader of a “rankocracy” that rules higher education.
Gary S. May, chancellor of the University of California at Davis, is keen to elevate its profile and likes to joke that his favorite list “is always the one we rank highest in.” UC-Davis ranks 10th this year in the U.S. News analysis of public universities, tied with the universities of Texas at Austin and Wisconsin at Madison. But May pointed to another list, from Washington Monthly magazine, that focuses on social mobility, research and public service.
“We just came out as the No. 2 public,” May said, “so that’s fresh in my mind.” May said he is struck by how different approaches to data can “really shuffle the deck for schools that wind up at the top.” The university also follows rankings from The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education, Forbes, Money and elsewhere.
Research shows rankings can sway college-bound students. A 2019 survey of college freshmen by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found 15 percent said rankings in national magazines were “very important” in choosing their school. That was up from about 10 percent in 2000.
Michael Itzkowitz, who directed the College Scorecard under Obama, said the platform’s data has cast a new spotlight on outcomes for students who go to college. Itzkowitz, an analyst for the center-left think tank Third Way, himself created an economic mobility index that ranked California State University at Los Angeles tops in the nation for value it provides to students from low-income families.
“We’ve seen a steadily increasing focus on whether students are graduating, getting a decent-paying job and are able to pay down their loans,” Itzkowitz said, “rather than just exclusivity and test scores. There’s a momentum shift.”
“I see a lot of virtue in the discipline of the rankings,” said the president of one highly regarded university, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a candid assessment. This president, despite misgivings over the formulas, said the rankings help focus internal discussions about school performance. “It’s in the back of everyone’s head.”
The U.S. News ranking formula has evolved, but an enduring element is a survey it sends every year to more than 4,000 college presidents, provosts and admission deans, asking them to rate the academic quality of peer schools on a scale of 1, or “marginal,” to 5, “distinguished.” This counts for 20 percent and ensures that prestige, or lack of it, always weighs significantly.
MIT resumes mandate for SAT or ACT scores. Many other colleges have not.
“We’re very focused on making sure that universities are doing what they say they would do,” Eric J. Gertler, executive chairman and chief executive of U.S. News, said. “Our mission is to make sure that students make the best decision for themselves.”
U.S. News said about 40 million users visited its Best Colleges website in 2021. A Google search of “college rankings” one recent day turned up U.S. News at the top.
“Their influence is waning, no question about it,” said Luke Skurman, chief executive of Niche. He said rankings are useful but not all-important. “Rankings are, in some regard, a relic of media companies,” Skurman said. “We’re a modern platform that does many things, but we’re not a media company.”
Cardona’s speech on Aug. 11 ridiculed what he called the “whole science behind climbing the rankings.” He derided competition among colleges for affluent students with high SAT scores, and efforts among elite schools to curry favor with peers, using “expensive dinners and lavish events” to score reputational survey points.
On Wednesday, Cardona confirmed that he had meant to zing U.S. News rankings and others that “prioritize prestige and exclusivity.” The federal government, he said, would rather spotlight colleges with other strengths.
Villanova University’s provost, Patrick G. Maggitti, said the Catholic institution near Philadelphia drew significantly more interest from potential students after it was reclassified in 2016, from a master’s university to a doctoral research university. That led U.S. News to move Villanova from a regional list to a national one. It debuted in the top 50. Applications for 2017 rose more than 20 percent, Maggitti said. The school also reaped publicity benefits from an NCAA men’s basketball championship in 2016.
“We don’t play to the U.S. News ranking, but we’re not immune to looking at them,” Maggitti said. “It’s increased our recognition in the marketplace.”
Villanova suffered mild embarrassment this year when it disclosed to U.S. News that it had submitted erroneous information about its financial aid. The magazine in July temporarily removed Villanova from a “best value” list. Maggitti described the error as a “one-year blip.” This year Villanova ranks 51st overall among national universities.
Some schools rebel against U.S. News. Reed, a well-regarded liberal arts school, has long been known for boycotting the surveys. U.S. News ranks it anyway — now at 72nd among liberal arts colleges — using publicly available information. If Reed cooperated, experts say, it probably would rank higher.
Christopher L. Eisgruber, president of Princeton University, a perennial rankings leader, said he is among those who skip the survey. When he was Princeton’s provost 15 years ago, Eisgruber said, he found himself wondering one day how to rate a very prominent Southern university he had never visited. “I felt utterly unqualified to make the judgment,” he said. He said he set the questionnaire aside and hasn’t filled one out since. Nor do Princeton’s current provost or admissions chief, the university said.
Eisgruber: I lead America’s top-ranked university. Here’s why these rankings are a problem.
Gertler defended the survey, saying the data it yields is solid and worthy of inclusion. “Reputation is important,” he said. Employers care about it, he said, and so do faculty, parents and students.
Critics say seeking to measure reputation is an empty and self-perpetuating exercise. Paul Glastris, editor in chief of the Washington Monthly, said the U.S. News list has always been closely identified with powerful, private and highly selective universities. “Its reputation is protected by their reputation,” Glastris said, “and vice versa.” | 2022-09-12T05:01:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. News college rankings face questions and competition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/12/us-news-college-rankings-2023/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/12/us-news-college-rankings-2023/ |
Kenan Thompson attends Press Preview Day for the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022, at the Television Academy in Los Angeles. The awards show honoring excellence in American television programming will be held on Monday at the Microsoft Theater at L.A. Live. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
They’re actually taking a page from last year's scaled-down ceremony and its club-style table seating for nominees.
Although HBO’s “Succession,” which won the best drama series award in 2020, and “Ted Lasso” from Apple TV+ are considered the frontrunners for top series honors, there's potential for surprises. Netflix’s “Squid Game,” a global sensation, would be the first non-English language drama series to win an Emmy.
On the comedy side, ABC's acclaimed newcomer “Abbott Elementary” could become the first broadcast show to win the best comedy award since the network’s “Modern Family” in 2014. It’s also among the few contenders this year, along with “Squid Game,” to field a substantial number of nominees of color. | 2022-09-12T05:01:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Squid Game,' 'Succession,' 'Ted Lasso' vie for Emmy Awards - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/squid-game-succession-ted-lasso-vie-for-emmy-awards/2022/09/12/33c06a54-3254-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/squid-game-succession-ted-lasso-vie-for-emmy-awards/2022/09/12/33c06a54-3254-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Live updates Queen’s coffin travels to Edinburgh cathedral; King Charles III to hear condolences
The royal family tree, visualized: George V to Lilibet
Queen’s coffin begins final journey with normal British life on hold
Children and families were out in large numbers as the coffin carrying Queen Elizabeth II arrived in the Scottish capital Edinburgh on Sept. 11. (Video: Reuters)
Monday marks the second leg of Queen Elizabeth II’s ceremonial journey to her final resting place in Windsor. Her coffin will travel from the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the monarchy’s official Scottish residence, to St. Giles’ Cathedral, where it will stay for 24 hours of public viewing. King Charles III and his wife, Queen Consort Camilla, will hear condolences from both houses of the United Kingdom’s Parliament at Westminster Hall before flying to Edinburgh to hear condolences from the Scottish Parliament.
The United Kingdom is observing a period of national mourning, which will last until the queen’s funeral on Sept. 19 at Westminster Abbey. Thousands of people have lined the Scottish procession route to catch a glimpse of the queen’s coffin, paying tribute and bidding farewell to the long-standing monarch.
Queen Elizabeth’s 500-mile ceremonial journey stretches from Balmoral Castle in Scotland to Windsor Castle, just outside London. She will be laid to rest beside her husband, Philip, who died last year, at St. George’s Chapel.
William and Catherine, the Prince and Princess of Wales, appeared over the weekend with Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, a rare occurrence for the brothers, whose relationship has reportedly been strained since Harry and Meghan split from royal life. The sighting made waves in the British press.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will attend the queen’s funeral in London next week.
By Júlia Ledur and Chiqui Esteban
By Louisa Loveluck and Miriam Berger
Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin travelled from the royal family's home at Balmoral Castle to the Scottish capital of Edinburgh on Sept. 11. (Video: The Washington Post)
LONDON — The coffin of Queen Elizabeth II began a carefully choreographed 500-mile journey Sunday to its final resting place, moving from Balmoral Castle through the crowded streets of the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, where it will remain until it is flown to London ahead of the funeral Sept. 19.
And while Britain was mostly consumed by mourning and ceremony, some people were missing their canceled soccer matches and regular television programming. | 2022-09-12T05:18:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles III, Camilla travel to Westminster, Edinburgh: Updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/queen-elizabeth-death-king-charles-iii-camilla/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/queen-elizabeth-death-king-charles-iii-camilla/ |
Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is hit by Buccaneers linebacker Shaquil Barrett after throwing a pass in the fourth quarter Sunday night. (AP Photo/Michael Ainsworth)
A dreary start to the season Sunday night for the Dallas Cowboys became far more costly when quarterback Dak Prescott suffered an injury to his right hand that will require surgery and keep him out of the lineup for an unspecified period.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told reporters following the 19-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Arlington, Tex., that Prescott suffered “an injury above his joint in his thumb.” Prescott’s injury will require surgery and he’ll be sidelined “for several weeks,” Jones said.
“Dak will be out for a little while,” Jones said. “And so we’ll be dealing with that as well. So this was a really tough night for the Cowboys and a really surprising night…. We’ll see more about how many weeks that may be.”
Prescott said the surgery could take place as soon as Monday.
“I’ve just got to go see the doctor tomorrow,” Prescott said in his postgame news conference. “The plan is to see him, surgery tomorrow and let me know once they get in there [and] they see everything. I was told it was much cleaner than it could have been.”
Prescott, who had a brace on his right hand after the game, said he initially thought the injury was less severe. His throwing hand struck the hand of Buccaneers pass rusher Shaquil Barrett on a fourth-quarter pass.
“I’ve hit my hand on helmets or bodies a lot in my career and never really had anything, maybe a jammed finger here,” Prescott said. “I actually thought that’s what it was [but] just the next play, realized I couldn’t grip the ball [and] let the sideline know. And then when I got off [the field], I told the trainers the same thing. I was just like, ‘I can’t grip. I feel like if you yank it, I’ll be okay.’ I came in and got X-rays, and things were different.”
Prescott threw an interception and completed only 14 of 29 passes for 134 yards before exiting the game. He was replaced by backup Cooper Rush. Now, as the Cowboys attempt to fix all that went wrong Sunday night, they’ll have to do so without their two-time Pro Bowl quarterback.
“It’s very disappointing,” Prescott said. “But injuries happen. You can’t necessarily control it. [It’s] just unfortunate. I’m obviously going to miss some time, not be there for my team. And that’s what hurts more than anything, especially after the start that we just put out there. I wanted to be able to respond. And not necessarily having that opportunity for several weeks—yeah, it’s unfortunate. But I’ll do what I’ve always done any time adversity comes: Take it on headfirst. And I’ll give my best, and I’m sure I’ll come out of this thing better.”
Cowboys Coach Mike McCarthy said that Prescott suffered a “significant injury,” and added: “Once we get all the facts, we’ll get that to you…. He hasn’t even seen a doctor yet.” | 2022-09-12T05:31:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott will undergo surgery for hand injury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/cowboys-dak-prescott-injury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/cowboys-dak-prescott-injury/ |
Prince Charles and his companion, Camilla Parker Bowles, leave the Ritz Hotel in London in January 1999, the first time the couple appeared in public together. (Alastair Grant/AP)
Harry and Meghan’s exit
While Queen Elizabeth II was a constant presence in British life during her record-long tenure, the monarch fought to keep her family’s private affairs out of the public eye, attempting to avoid controversy.
Even so, the royal family weathered several scandals during Elizabeth’s 70-year reign — drama that inevitably captured worldwide attention. Here’s a look back at some of the biggest dust-ups of the queen’s decades on the throne.
Charles, who succeeded to the throne after Elizabeth’s death last week, married Diana in 1981 in a ceremony that was televised around the world. Over the next three years, Diana gave birth to Prince William and Prince Harry.
But soon after, the public watched the fairy-tale couple’s relationship crumble through revelations of infidelity, a leaked phone conversation between the prince and his alleged mistress and a separation turned divorce at the queen’s urging. During this time, Diana — who said in an interview that she wanted to be a “queen of people’s hearts” — had the public’s favor.
Some Britons blamed Camilla Parker Bowles, whom Charles would marry in 2005 and who is now queen consort, for the breakdown of the marriage. “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana said in a 1995 interview.
Their anger toward Charles mounted when Diana died in a car accident in 1997, which shocked the world and drew scrutiny to the responses from the prince and the queen. The sovereign’s subjects thought she was too quiet, as the rest of the world, it seemed, was visibly devastated by Diana’s death.
Ultimately, in a breach of royal protocol, Elizabeth bowed her head when Diana’s coffin passed by the palace.
Prince Andrew, Elizabeth’s third child, has been the subject of numerous controversies, but none larger — or more damaging for the royal family — than the revelation in 2011 of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who have both been convicted of sexually exploiting teenage girls. One of their victims, Virginia Giuffre, said Epstein trafficked her to Andrew when she was 17 years old.
Andrew has denied the sexual abuse allegations and has not been criminally charged. In 2019, he gave a disastrous interview to the BBC defending his relationship with Epstein, causing a number of organizations to cut ties with him and forcing him to step back from his public duties as a royal. A month later, the BBC aired an interview with Giuffre, in which she described the alleged encounters with Andrew and said: “He knows what happened. I know what happened and there’s only one of us telling the truth, and I know that’s me.”
What’s next for Prince Andrew? Exile from public life and a tainted image, royal-watchers say.
In 2021, Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit against him, accusing the prince of assault. Andrew’s lawyers unsuccessfully sought to dismiss the suit, and when a judge ruled that it could proceed, the royal family distanced itself from him. Soon after, Buckingham Palace announced that he would be stripped of his military affiliations and royal patronages, and that he would be “defending this case as a private citizen.”
The statement came after more than a decade of scandalous headlines, and it represented the result of frantic damage control during the biggest crisis for the House of Windsor since Diana’s death. In February, Andrew settled with Giuffre for an undisclosed amount. In a one-page statement to the court, the parties agreed that Epstein “trafficked countless young girls over many years.” It said Andrew “regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others.”
When the interview aired the next month, the reasons they did so came to light, including allegations of racism from the U.K. tabloids as well as the monarchy. Meghan, whose mother is Black and whose father is White, told Winfrey that there were conversations at the palace about the skin color of her son, Archie, while she was pregnant with him.
At one point after her marriage, Meghan said in the interview, “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.” And in response to her requests for help, royal human resources told her there was nothing they could do because she was not a “paid employee of the institution,” Meghan said.
Many noted the parallels between the couple’s tell-all and the 1995 BBC interview with Harry’s mother, Diana, when she spoke about Prince Charles’s affair, her struggles with bulimia and the lack of support from the royal family.
The 2021 interview was a first look inside the treatment Harry and Meghan received from the media and the monarchy that subsequently led them to relinquish their royal responsibilities.
Two days after the interview aired, Buckingham Palace said in a statement that the royal family was “saddened” to learn about Harry and Meghan’s experience.
“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning,” the statement said. “While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”
Asked for the “simplest answer” for why they left, Harry replied, “Lack of support and lack of understanding.”
Years before Prince Harry removed himself from official royal duties, his antics as a young adult drew intense scrutiny from the press and his family. Perhaps the most memorable of Harry’s scandals was his costume at a 2005 party, where he came dressed as a Nazi, donning a uniform with a swastika on the armband.
Harry, then 20, was caught after a photograph taken at the party was sold to a British tabloid, the Sun, which headlined its front page, “Harry the Nazi.” A royal statement attributed to Harry said: “I am very sorry if I have caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize.”
He previously drew criticism for public intoxication, including a tussle with a paparazzo outside a nightclub, and for smoking marijuana. He was made to go to rehab over the latter incident — but only to observe the consequences of drug use.
Live updates: Queen’s coffin travels to Edinburgh cathedral; King Charles III to hear condolences | 2022-09-12T06:28:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The royal family scandals of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/royal-family-scandals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/royal-family-scandals/ |
NEW YORK — Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova won their third major in 2022 and completed a career Grand Slam on Sunday, rallying late to beat Americans Caty McNally and Taylor Townsend 3-6, 7-5, 6-1 in the U.S. Open women’s doubles final.
SAN DIEGO — Justin Turner hit a grand slam and a solo homer for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who emphatically became the first team to clinch a playoff spot this season with an 11-2 victory over the San Diego Padres.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Bubba Wallace won his second career NASCAR Cup Series race and denied the playoff field an automatic spot in the next round for the second straight week when he held off championship contenders Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell to win at Kansas Speedway.
MONTEREY, Calif. — Will Power was pushed to the brink by Team Penske but withstood the internal challenge from his teammate to close out a season of consistency and win his second IndyCar championship.
VIRGINIA WATER, England — Shane Lowry tapped in for birdie at the 18th hole and then had to wait to see if Rory McIlroy could produce something special to force a playoff at Wentworth.
LAS VEGAS — ’ja Wilson had 24 points and 11 rebounds and the Las Vegas Aces beat the Connecticut Sun 67-64 in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. | 2022-09-12T08:04:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weekend Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/09/12/b1408bcc-3267-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/09/12/b1408bcc-3267-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
President to sign executive order Monday outlining goals for investment and training
Visitors look at a model of the production line for the vaccine against the coronavirus at Sinopharm's China National Biotec Group booth during the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing on Sept. 1. (Florence Lo/Reuters)
President Biden will issue an executive order Monday intended to boost the domestic biotechnology industry, which encompasses everything from pharmaceutical manufacturing to plastics to innovative fuels, according to White House officials.
Speaking on a background call Sunday, administration officials said the executive order is partly a reaction to competition from China, which they said has a robust development program in biotechnology. The United States needs to safeguard against losing dominance in biotech manufacturing as it did in manufacturing of semiconductor chips, said one of the officials.
“The United States really has the best biotechnology innovators in the world, but we risk falling behind” unless the government helps ensure growth in the sector with targeted investments, including training programs for skilled workers, the official said.
Biden is expected to discuss the executive order during a trip to Boston Monday where he is scheduled to outline efforts to fight cancer, which is a particular personal interest of the president.
Biden’s son Beau, the former Delaware attorney general, died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46 and Biden has championed a “cancer moonshot” program since his time as Barack Obama’s vice president. Biden is scheduled to deliver his remarks at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. The event is timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of a 1962 Kennedy speech that touched on his goal of putting a man on the moon.
The White House did not disclose funding levels for the new push Sunday, saying a dollar amount would be part of announcements later in the week. Biden is scheduled to host a summit on Wednesday with industry representatives.
A biotechnology initiative was included in a broader science and technology bill that featured $52 billion to subsidize semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States, which Biden signed into law in August. The United States fell far behind in chip manufacturing and domestic industry has been hobbled by the short supply. The U.S. auto industry is suffering a shortage of cars to sell, for instance, because of a lack of computer chips.
Experts who closely follow China’s biotech manufacturing goals say concerted government support is needed to avoid a similar situation with advanced medical and biotech manufacturing. The initiative is not just to boost research and development of drugs, which is already heavily subsidized by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
White House officials said it also will target efforts in agriculture feed supplies as well things like biomass fuels.
A report in July by the Center for a New American Security, a left-leaning, pro-defense think tank, warned of the dangers of falling behind China in biotechnology.
China already dominates global production of active pharmaceutical ingredients for generic drugs. Western nations continue to lead in biotechnology, but the United States needs to “focus on improving access to equipment at the core of the bio revolution: computing and data sources used in genomics, and hard infrastructure used in DNA synthesis and fermentation,” the CNAS report said. | 2022-09-12T09:31:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chinese biotechnology competition spurs Biden executive order - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/12/china-biotechnology-national-security/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/12/china-biotechnology-national-security/ |
Multiple wildfires burned throughout Oregon and Washington on Sept. 10, prompting evacuations in some areas. (Video: The Washington Post)
The Cedar Creek Fire in central Oregon, which has scorched more than 86,000 acres, forced rural residents to flee their homes over the weekend before officials slightly curbed evacuation orders Sunday night for just one of dozens of wildfires burning across the West.
The blaze about 60 miles east of Eugene, Ore., forced evacuations in Lane and Deschutes counties. It was one wildfire among 21 burning in Oregon, according to the state. Nearly 1,500 Oregonians had been ordered to evacuate their homes, and nearly 6,500 more were told to be “set” to evacuate.
Gov. Kate Brown (D) invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act on Friday in response to the fire, allowing the state fire marshal’s office to assist in the area. She called the growth potential over the weekend “troubling,” concerns that came to fruition.
Fire officials said Sunday that several days of “extreme fire growth” had occurred both to the fire’s east and west, and that firefighters were “focused on protecting homes and infrastructure” in the communities of Oakridge and Westfir.
Lane County Sheriff Cliff Harrold said in a video update Sunday that information from firefighters had allowed authorities to lift evacuation orders in many parts of Oakridge and Westfir and move to a Level 2 “set” notice.
The fire began Aug. 1, the result of a lightning storm in the Willamette National Forest.
Harrold told residents that “the reality is, the fire’s going to be out there for a little while,” cautioning people with mobility challenges or pets to consider erring on the safe side. “Maybe it’s best” for those people to remain evacuated, he said.
The weekend evacuations follow warnings last week of “extremely critical” weather in a large swath of the northwestern United States, as well as a busy summer for wildfires. Two people were killed in the Mill Fire in Northern California early this month. In August, four people were killed in the McKinney Fire, California’s largest blaze this year, including a longtime fire lookout.
Forest fires accounted for a quarter of global tree loss in the past 20 years, according to the World Resources Institute. And with greenhouse gas emissions rising, uncontrollable wildfires are expected to intensify. Even with deep cuts to emissions, a U.N. analysis this year projected, the risk of extreme wildfires would rise 14 percent by 2030 and 30 percent by 2050. | 2022-09-12T09:31:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cedar Creek Fire in Oregon burns 86,000 acres, forces evacuations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/12/cedar-creek-fire-oregon-evacuations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/12/cedar-creek-fire-oregon-evacuations/ |
For issues including investigations and judicial appointments, control of the Senate will be critical to Biden’s legacy. His travel schedule is starting to reflect that.
President Biden delivers a prime-time speech in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Sept. 1, 2022, address threats to American democracy. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., recently, President Biden excoriated “MAGA Republicans” who refuse to condemn political violence. In Philadelphia two days later, he said they have pushed American democracy to the brink. And in Pittsburgh, he told union workers that anyone who refuses to accept the outcome of a democratic election is not a patriot.
The visits to Pennsylvania in particular suggest the critical nature of the Senate control, since that state probably represents the Democrats’ greatest opportunity to flip a seat in the chamber. “It’s probably Democrats’ best — though not only — chance at a Senate pickup so far in this cycle,” said Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist based in New York.
Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said in an interview that he views Biden’s recent visits as not just crucial to the midterms, but also as a form of early campaigning for his own reelection. “Midterms, I think he helps, because I think turning out the base is most key to this,” Rendell said. “But, yeah, they’re looking; the White House is looking to 2024.”
Although Democrats’ prospects for keeping the House in November have improved in the eyes of operatives on both sides, most still believe Republicans are more likely to capture it. That would leave the Senate holding the balance of power between the president and House Republicans.
What is less clear is whether Biden’s visits actually are boosting the Democratic candidates whose campaigns he hopes to promote. His approval ratings remain relatively low, although they have risen in recent weeks as he has racked up legislative accomplishments.
During Biden’s trips to Pittsburgh and Milwaukee on Labor Day, some Democratic hopefuls appeared by his side, while others were absent. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat vying for a U.S. Senate seat, joined Biden at a union hall, although gubernatorial hopeful Josh Shapiro was elsewhere.
“If I have to be in a foxhole, I want John Fetterman in there with me,” the president told the crowd.
Fetterman is leading Republican nominee Mehmet Oz in the polls, and his unconventional image — he sports tattoos and favors hoodies — has Democrats hoping he can pull together a broad coalition. But his recent stroke has thrown the campaign into uncertainty, while Oz, a multimillionaire television personality, has struggled to connect with blue-collar voters.
Fetterman’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But Reinish said the frequency of Biden’s visits to Pennsylvania suggests his campaign considers them beneficial. “People will take very seriously what his campaign says, and if there is any indication that it wouldn’t be helpful, that would probably force some rethinking at the White House,” Reinish said.
“Joe Biden and Senate Democrats’ agenda is hurting American families,” the National Republican Senatorial Committee said in statement on Labor Day. “Prices are at record highs, there’s a crisis at the Southern Border, and Democrats are hiring 87,000 new IRS agents to go after middle-class Americans. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin literally can’t afford to send two more radical senators to Washington.”
When Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was last majority leader, he took the unorthodox step of denying nominee Merrick Garland, who was put forward by President Barack Obama, a hearing or vote for confirmation to the Supreme Court. He could take an equally hard-line approach if a Supreme Court vacancy arose in the second half of Biden’s term.
Republicans would sit atop all Senate committees, setting the agenda and issuing subpoenas. They have made clear their intention to investigate Biden’s handling of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and — more personally for the president — his son Hunter’s dealings in China and Ukraine. (A GOP-led House would conduct such investigations regardless, but Senate probes on top of that would be even more daunting.)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) would chair the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and he has pledged to subpoena and investigate Anthony S. Fauci, a longtime target, for his actions as Biden’s chief medical adviser on the pandemic.
A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said Biden’s trips to Pennsylvania were about his presidential agenda rather than the midterms. “All I can say is: Pennsylvania is close and dear to his heart, and he is glad to be traveling there,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
But Democrats’ political focus on Pennsylvania is clear. The Democratic National Committee has invested heavily in the state, more than quadrupling its spending over the 2018 election cycle. The DNC also gives $12,500 per month to the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, a 25 percent increase over the base funding levels of 2020.
In Wilkes-Barre on Aug. 30, Biden criticized “MAGA Republicans in Congress” for refusing to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol or denounce threats against the FBI after it searched the home of former president Donald Trump.
“Did you ever think in the United States it would happen?” Biden asked, referring to the insurrection. “What I find even more incredible is the defense of it. … Police lost their lives as a result of that day.”
Biden added in Philadelphia that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” And in Pittsburgh, he told union workers, “This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is a totally different party, man.”
The White House hopes Pennsylvania will be different. Biden won the state by more than 80,000 votes and has made his “Joe from Scranton” identity a central part of his political image.
“There is a unique connection between Joe Biden and Pennsylvania,” Rooney said. “It’s a bond between the state and the president.” | 2022-09-12T09:31:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden turns in earnest to critical task of holding the Senate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/biden-pennsylvania-senate-race/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/biden-pennsylvania-senate-race/ |
Members of the Switzerland County High School football team in Indiana pose for a group photo. When flash flooding damaged a private bridge leading to the home of the grandparents of a teammate, they came together on Labor Day to repair it. (Todd Hagan)
About 30 people congregated on their property before 9 a.m., “both of us were just speechless,” Hagan said. “Tears were coming out of our eyes.”
Meanwhile, the boys collected the damaged boards and threw them on Hagan’s trailer, which he used to haul the discarded wood to a burning pile.
“I was very moved,” he said. “If somebody goes down, our community is there to pick them up.” | 2022-09-12T10:31:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Flooding destroyed an Indiana bridge. A football team rebuilt it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/12/indiana-bridge-flood-rebuild-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/12/indiana-bridge-flood-rebuild-football/ |
The world’s funniest former NASA roboticist will take your questions
Randall Munroe, creator of the popular webcomic “xkcd” and author of a new book, applies true research to wild ideas (rogue dinosaurs in New York City!)
Author and “xkcd” creator Randall Munroe provides research to answer readers’ absurd and bizarre science questions in his new book, “What If? 2.” (Randall Munroe/Riverhead Books)
Several decades ago, it took a stand-up comedian like Steven Wright to work in shades of the brilliantly surreal when he deadpanned: “It’s a small world. But I wouldn’t want to paint it.”
Today, it takes a humorous NASA roboticist turned popular cartoonist to finally tackle the question: But what if you did want to paint it?
Imagining such a hypothetical sparks the ever-curious mind of Randall Munroe, the brain behind the webcomic “xkcd” — beloved by math and science geeks the unpainted globe over — who also answers readers’ bizarre and quirky queries on his blog. His replies yielded the best-selling 2014 book “What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions.”
This week, the Massachusetts-based author follows that up with the equally entertaining “What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions,” which combines Munroe’s true research and truly funny prose with his signature stick-figure illustrations.
In the new book, reader “Josh of Woonsocket, R.I.” poses the potential stumper: “Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth?” Munroe fields the question with his characteristic wit, even while turning to the art of “Fermi estimation” to arrive at some ballpark numbers. Munroe’s guess: We wouldn’t have enough paint for such a global decorator project till the end of this century, soonest.
Other “What If? 2” situations ring of the perilous: What are your chances of death-by-geyser at Yellowstone Park? What would the daily caloric human-intake needs be for a modern T. rex gone rogue in the boroughs of New York? And how catastrophic would it be if, as the children’s tune goes, all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?
Some concepts are less deadly, such as: What if we launched planes by catapult to save fuel? The author’s response: Such takeoffs in the nation’s capital, say, would require a nearly five-mile runway at Reagan National Airport that “would cross the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument … and then continue through the city, ending somewhere near Dupont Circle.”
It’s easy to see why Munroe’s span of fans includes Neil Gaiman and Bill Gates — and why Serena Williams happily helped the author conduct an experiment to discover: How accurately could you demolish an airborne drone with a tennis ball? (The results appeared in his 2019 book, “How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems.”)
“The reason Munroe’s approach is a great way to learn about science,” Gates wrote in 2015, “is that he takes ideas that everybody understands in a general way and then explores what happens when you take those ideas to their limits.”
Munroe slyly engages with write-in inquiries while either “doing the math” himself or reaching out to field experts.
“When I see a question that’s really interesting, I get sucked in to trying to answer it,” Munroe says last month via Zoom from his home near Boston, where he lives with his wife (whose journey of surviving breast cancer has been depicted poignantly in such “xkcd” strips as “Ten Years”).
“Often what really drives me to pick a question is when there’s one I think I know what the answer is, but I’m not sure if I’m right or not,” he adds. “Because then I feel like I want to go and look it up to find out if my instinct was right or not. Because either then I get to validate myself — ha! I called it — or I learn something surprising and then have to dig into more to figure out why I was wrong.”
Munroe’s blog-adapted books can have a distinct format of setup questions and generally extended answers. So befitting that spirit, The Washington Post offers a similar format to highlight what else you should know about Randall Munroe.
Q. What is the impact to your life’s direction if a college adviser tells you: “You can’t have all the candy in the candy store.”
If the subject of the study is Munroe, then the impact is substantial.
He majored in physics and minored in math and computer science at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. While Munroe considered continuing his studies in 2006, an adviser told him he would need to “narrow in on” what he would pursue in graduate school.
“You can’t keep working at these different things,” he recalls being told, despite his passion for a multivaried, “all the candy” approach — so he decided against graduate study. In 2005, he had landed an internship at NASA Langley Research Center. He ended up working there in 2006, too, focusing on robotic navigation until his contract ran out.
Q. How does a stick figure-drawing scientist suddenly become a viral cartoonist?
Munroe began posting his comics online in the fall of 2005. He soon had a burgeoning following. Fan letters would say: “I’m so excited to know that there’s somebody else out there who’s into this one thing,” he recalls.
Munroe also names several other people who studied physics before switching to cartooning, including Bill Amend (“Foxtrot”) and Zach Weinersmith (“Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal”).
He laughs with humility. “In fact, of all of the people who got degrees in physics but did a career change into cartooning and who were born on Oct. 17, I am the second most successful.” Okay, who’s No. 1? He grins: “Mike Judge.”
Q. If you ask scientists their age, will they tell you without double-checking the numbers first?
In the case of Munroe, at least: No. He takes a second to do some “mild subtraction,” he says wryly, to absolutely confirm his reply: He is 37.
Q. A child is born into a Pennsylvania Quaker family. He has a father who is an engineer and marketer, as well as two siblings. Who will influence him the most?
“It was really my mom where I got a lot of kind of interest in maps and patterns,” Munroe says of the parent who excelled at charting the family driving routes during his boyhood spent in Easton, Penn. (where he was born) and Massachusetts before he graduated high school in Midlothian, Va.
Munroe recalls once being allowed a snack in bed when he was age 5. He told Mom he’d previously been permitted to eat in bed once, when he was 2. Her reply: “So you can do it again when you’re 8. It’s only when you’re one less than a multiple of 3.”
To young Randall, such math somehow was fair. His mother also kept a record of his boyhood questions like: “Are there more hard or soft things in the world?” Munroe credits the PBS series “Square One Television” for helping to foster such thinking — and “Calvin and Hobbes” and Dave Barry for helping to shape his appreciation of humor.
Q. Why do kids seem to ask the best “What If?” questions?
In Munroe’s new book, children younger than 6 want to know how to build a billion-story building, or wonder what would happen if our solar system were filled with soup all the way out to Jupiter? (In this “Soupiter” scenario, the author responds, this “black hole of soup” would exert a gravitational pull.)
Elsewhere, a ninth-grader asks how long it would take for a person to fill a swimming pool with their own saliva, and a 5-year-old wonders about the physics of a firefighter’s pole running from the Earth to the moon.
When adults pose a “What If?” question, they frequently “frame it in a way that they think will be and sound interesting and have an interesting answer,” Munroe says. An adult might write in: “What if I took a nuclear bomb and I put in on a train and then the train was going at near the speed of light … and what if the train is in a vacuum,” the author says. “They’ll construct this whole scenario where they’re trying to make it cool.”
Kids, by contrast, will “just ask actual questions they want to know the answer to.” A billion-story building scenario is “a much better question than a train-vacuum-nuclear bomb question would be.”
Plus, the kid questions are “ultimately much more destructive,” he says, so their imaginative inquiries “win on both counts.”
Q. Many of the “What If?” scenarios end badly for those who happen to be human. Can Munroe’s research provide any reassurance?
“There are just so many things that can go wrong in the world,” the author says. “It’s so hard to think about it all in a psychologically healthy way.”
And analysis doesn’t necessarily anesthetize us. “I once heard a microbiologist online say something like: If you study the microbiome, you eventually become either a total [germ-]obsessed person who won’t shake hands, or you’ll eat food off the floor.”
“For me, these ways of thinking about things and trying to quantify stuff and try to figure out how does it fit into a bigger picture, I don’t know that it’s necessarily a good or bad coping mechanism,” Munroe says. “It’s just how I do it.”
Randall Munroe will appear in-person and virtually on Wed., Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. at Sixth & I in Washington. | 2022-09-12T10:32:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The world’s funniest former NASA roboticist will take your questions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/09/12/randall-munroe-xkcd-what-if/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/09/12/randall-munroe-xkcd-what-if/ |
At the Academy Museum, a resurrection of Black film history
‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ illuminates a world of creativity and passion that’s been hiding in plain sight
Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas in “Stormy Weather” (1943). (Margaret Herrick Library/Twentieth Century)
A man pleads. The woman refuses. He implores again, only to be rebuffed. Now he’s down on his knees, to her miffed indifference. Finally, he steals the kiss he’s been asking for, gets playfully pushed away and the give-and-take continues: flirtatious, sensuous, uninhibited.
The scene is from “Something Good — Negro Kiss,” a film made in 1898 starring vaudeville luminaries Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown. But this isn’t the clip that resurfaced at the University of Southern California in 2017. Unlike that 19-second fragment, this version of “Something Good — Negro Kiss” — identified at the National Library of Norway soon after the USC discovery — is more than twice as long.
At 48 seconds, it also includes more dramatic action, emotional tectonics and nuances to un-tease. Which makes it altogether fitting that both iterations of “Something Good — Negro Kiss” greet visitors to “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971,” a retrospective of Black filmmaking that opened recently at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The exhibit, which runs through April 9, traces a history beginning at the dawn of cinema through the civil rights and Blaxploitation eras. Centered around film clips, artifacts and photos of famous and not-so-famous Black filmmakers and actors, “Regeneration” could be interpreted as an exercise in double consciousness, the term author W.E.B. Du Bois coined to describe the cognitive dissonance African Americans were forced to adopt in a society they were both inextricably bound up with and violently excluded from.
DuBois’s sense of “two unreconciled strivings” clearly pervaded the dominant narrative form of that society as it entered the 20th century, when African Americans eagerly embraced emerging photographic technologies as a chance to tell their stories and celebrate their humanity, even as White popular culture profited from images of their denigration. Depending on which not-quite-mirror version you’re watching, “Something Good — Negro Kiss” can be read in a number of ways: as a prototypical romcom or tense drama of consent; as a fight or a dance; as an act of assimilation or pointedly specific celebration of Black beauty and joy. The multiplicity of interpretations is encouraged by the only other piece that appears with it in “Regeneration’s” first gallery: Glenn Ligon’s sculpture “Double America 2,” whose neon text reading “America” provides yet another opportunity to prioritize complex ideas over simplistic ones.
All seven galleries of “Regeneration” seem to be animated by similar tensions. Throughout the exhibit, viewers learn how Black artists have navigated a medium that wasn’t created for their expressive needs — in fact, it was as often deployed in direct opposition to them. Nonetheless, it was a medium they were eager to master, for their own viewing pleasure and to claim their rightful social space as subjects worthy of the spotlight, literal and figurative.
That duality — pure entertainment versus political and social empowerment — clearly informed the conception of “Regeneration,” which was co-curated by Academy Museum vice president of curatorial affairs Doris Berger and National Portrait Gallery director of curatorial affairs Rhea L. Combs. Some of the most potent displays include clips from “race films” — movies made expressly for Black audiences — that were traveling the country at the same time that D.W. Griffith’s racist 1915 screed “The Birth of a Nation” was becoming a box office hit (a vitrine of artifacts includes an invitation to the famous White House screening where then-president Woodrow Wilson was said to have compared the film to “writing history with lightning”). In the exhibition’s black-box projection space, clips from “lost films” play, reminding viewers that Black filmmakers and viewers were innovating genres like Westerns (“The Bronze Buckaroo,” 1939), gangster pictures (“Dark Manhattan,” 1937) and showbiz fables (“The Duke is Tops, 1938) contemporaneously with their counterparts in White Hollywood. The mini-theater is located next to Gary Simmons’s 2017 piece “Balcony Seating Only,” a re-creation of a segregated theater stairway on which the word “Colored” is emblazoned in white oil paint blurred to look like fading chalk, as if Jim Crow were always on the verge of — but not quite — being gone with the wind. (Works by contemporary artists recur throughout “Regeneration,” which also includes pieces by Kara Walker and Theaster Gates.)
Of course, Black artists also excelled in musicals, many of them migrating from established careers as singers, dancers and instrumentalists. A room dedicated to the relationship between music and cinema is dominated by an outsize portrait of the preternaturally gifted diva Josephine Baker, while a series of “soundies” — precursors to music videos and visual albums — play on a jukebox-like video monitor.
Nowhere is the slippage between the richness of African American artistry and an indifferent American culture more sobering than in a gallery dedicated to “Stars and Icons,” where an entire wall is taken up with headshots of some of the most famous actors of African descent, many of whose legacies endure today. But for every Diahann Carroll or Sammy Davis Jr., there are many more Fredi Washingtons, Daniel Haynes, Diane Sands and Mantan Morelands: groundbreaking performers whose names, when “Regeneration” was first conceived, might otherwise have been forgotten forever.
In seeking to stave off that forgetting, “Regeneration” can occasionally feel more didactic than immersive: Taking advantage of the outstanding restoration work of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library, Berger and Combs include a plethora of posters, lobby cards, stills and other cinematic curios that aren’t nearly as interesting as the movies they represent. “Regeneration” begins to lose propulsion in its final two galleries, dedicated to filmmaking during the 1950s and 1960s — when the likes of Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte demonstrated how to bridge art and activism — and the 1970s, when figures like Melvin Van Peebles (“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song”), William Greaves (“Symbiopsychotaxiplasm”) and documentarian Madeline Anderson (“I Am Somebody”) helped usher in a new era of expression and commercial viability.
Luckily, “Regeneration” is bolstered by a handsome catalogue that provides much deeper dives into the groundbreaking artists it celebrates, and the Academy Museum has mounted an impressive program of films that will be shown in its auditorium through Sept. 29. (Last month, the museum presented the world premiere of the newly restored 1939’s “Reform School,” a morality tale starring Louise Beavers as a crusading probation officer that was thought to be lost.)
If “Regeneration” feels thin or perfunctory at times, that’s more a reflection of grim realities than curatorial omission: Film stock has always been notoriously vulnerable to destruction, decay and neglect, a fact that goes double (there’s that word again) for works by Black artists. “Regeneration” is as powerful for its presence as for the absence it obliquely emphasizes. To paraphrase “Nope,” Jordan Peele’s quirky valentine to Black film history that just became a bona fide blockbuster, this long-overdue survey acknowledges a plain but often overlooked fact: When it comes to the most important narrative medium of the 20th century, Black filmmakers always had skin in the game.
“Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” continues at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles through April 9. academymuseum.org. | 2022-09-12T10:32:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At the Academy Museum, a resurrection of Black film history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/12/academy-museum-black-cinema-regeneration/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/12/academy-museum-black-cinema-regeneration/ |
Somewhere between ‘Give It Away’ and the present day, they became the defining band of an era that rejects definition
Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea performs at Nationals Park in Washington on Sept. 8 on the band's Global Stadium Tour. (Kyle Gustafson for The Washington Post)
When the Red Hot Chili Peppers play “Give It Away” in 2022, it’s so easy to know where you are. You’re in your body, feeling all your neurons and ligaments transform into the same elastic superball stuff that they did the very first time you got smart, got down with the powwow.
What’s trickier is figuring out when you are. These men onstage? They are not young. But they don’t seem old, either. And if you fully commit your body to their music, you might feel the same. Anthony Kiedis wears a schoolboy haircut and a math teacher mustache, so when those giveitawaynows come rolling out of his mouth, they’re like muscle cars accelerating out of a carwash. Flea has the physique of a 20-something gym bro and a face that belongs on a coin, and he still plays his bass like he’s electrocuting himself with his own greatness. Chad Smith is keeping time in his paradoxically timeless way, playful and unflappable, boing-boing, bam-bam. And in the song’s final spasms of happiness, John Frusciante — dressed in loose ’90s skater clothes — gives the music a vivid twist, adding a descending sequence of chords that feels feathery and colorful, like a peacock pushed down the playground slide. It’s like he heard Kiedis do his carpe diem rap for the umpteen-hundredth time — “Never been a better time than right now!” — and decided to press a cool new wrinkle into the fabric of reality.
All music is made out of time, but the Chili Peppers might argue that theirs is made out of love. Don’t be afraid to wade into this metaphysical quicksand. You will touch bottom. On their fine new album, “Unlimited Love” — and live at Nationals Park in Washington on Thursday night — the band’s sincerity has become so bedrock that their cultural durability feels like a foregone conclusion. Frusciante, forever the group’s melodic nucleus and spiritual nomad, is back in the mix after a 10-year absence, explaining in interviews that he was “born to be in the band.” That feels true, at least within the group, who, as a unit, resolutely believe in the concept of destiny. They talk about it all the time. They need a way to explain this inexplicable thing to themselves.
How do we explain it to ourselves? The Red Hot Chili Peppers are the defining American rock band of our era — which feels not exactly right, but also undeniable. They bum-rushed our collective consciousness roughly 30 years back alongside the more austere noise of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden, but as a band, they’ve stood taller for longer.
Still, their music continues to embody contradictions that don’t easily reconcile: vitality and vulgarity, tears and testosterone, life force and death drive. After so many years goofballing around the trapdoor to the void, they ultimately kept themselves from falling through it, and that feels like something to be honored. We just can’t decide whether to do it through dancing or crying.
Go ahead and search the rock-and-roll history books for some kind of precedent. At first, everyone said “Under the Bridge” was the “Stairway to Heaven” of the ’90s. Yeah, fine. But with 1999’s “Californication,” the Chili Peppers began to more closely resemble the Doors, channeling the Californian dark side into sumptuous melodies and bruise-purple poetry. And in recent years, they’ve become more like an echo of the Rolling Stones, borrowing the funk the same way the Stones borrowed the blues, living perilously for many years and surviving with a smile. By this logic, 2006’s “Stadium Arcadium” is their “Tattoo You” — not their last good album, but the last one to offer songs that felt zeitgeisty and inescapable.
When they played the best of them on Thursday night, “Dani California,” the word “California” formed in Kiedis’s mouth gradually and powerfully, like a rising wave, conjuring all of the hope and dread that repeatedly crashes on the shores of the Golden State, flooding the greater American psyche with fragmented visions of our collective future. California remains a vast and frightening idea inside the space of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, as well as a beautiful, capacious, highly musical word. (Did Arnold Schwarzenegger become governor just because people liked hearing him say it?) Maybe the Chili Peppers have been the dystopian Beach Boys all along.
Obviously, there’s no single template for this band. From the moment they formed in Los Angeles in 1983, their genealogy was all over the place. The band’s two founding principals, Kiedis and Flea, loved the Ohio Players, the Circle Jerks, Gang of Four and Grandmaster Flash, and they smooshed their tastes together to create a dialect of hybridized neo-funk more loquacious than hip-hop or hardcore punk.
Listen to the first three Chili Peppers albums in quick succession, and your thoughts will rhyme for a week. Kiedis is a self-described control freak, which is the best and only way to understand his unrepentant rhyming — a tic that instantly became a permanent component of the band’s musical architecture. His tongue has been in a race with Flea’s fingers ever since, and when your id moves faster than your mouth, those forced rhymes must become something like steppingstones.
Or, if their music wasn’t moving at id speeds, it was moving at punk speeds. During the regrettably titular refrain of “Catholic School Girls Rule” from 1985’s “Freaky Styley,” they’re essentially barking the guitar riff of Black Flag’s “Thirsty and Miserable.” Nearly four decades later, “Catholic School Girls Rule” sounds both thirsty and miserable, but if punk was about telling the truth, here was some music about telling the truth about how horny you are.
It would be obscene to say the Chili Peppers needed to experience tragedy to gain depth, but that’s how it went. When founding guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose in 1988, the band regrouped with Frusciante and Smith and set about penning more introspective songs — an approach that eventually produced one of the most vibrant rock albums ever put to tape, 1991’s “Blood Sugar Sex Magik.” Here, the foursome had mastered two antithetical modes, balancing gonzo funk (“Give It Away,” “Suck My Kiss”) with brutal balladry (“I Could Have Lied,” “Under the Bridge”) during which Frusciante routinely made his Stratocaster weep on Kiedis’s behalf.
Then Frusciante quit the band the following year, beginning his strenuous on-off relationship with the Chili Peppers, coming back from the depths of addiction for an astonishing three-album run — “Californication,” “By the Way,” “Stadium Arcadium” — and then after a decade away producing electronic music, making his second return on this year’s “Unlimited Love,” as well as the upcoming companion album, “Return of the Dream Canteen.” Whenever Frusciante is in this band, he sounds like the greatest rock guitarist drawing breath — born to be in it (destiny again) and hopefully born to stay in it this time, too.
And so these Chili Peppers remain instantly legible and profoundly complicated, totally visceral and borderline mystical. In Kiedis’s 2004 midlife memoir, “Scar Tissue” — its tales of misadventure and addiction probably making it the most salacious and tragic rock-and-roll story ever published — the frontman said this music was about “dancing and energy and sex.” Exactly right. Jump ahead to Flea’s 2019 memoir, “Acid for the Children,” and listen to how he describes his path as a “lifelong meditation on the concept of groove” and a search for an answer to “the question of how it relates to all of existence.” That’s exactly right, too. (The book is also filled with maxims you could spend your whole life trying to live by. Here’s one: “Everything that is not love is cowardice.”)
Onstage now, the band is all love, all courage, so deep in their life-groove, so tightly tucked in the pocket. They play their fast songs a little faster and their slow songs a little slower, making every moment feel realer than real. During an exquisitely patient rendition of “Soul to Squeeze,” Frusciante smears liquid melodies beneath his fingertips, translating explosive Jimi Hendrix language into something softer than melted bossa nova. Kiedis, surrounded by virtuosos, never blinks. Go ahead and have a laugh when he sings, “Doo-doo-doodle-dingle-zing-a-dong-bomp-ba-dee-ba-dah-ba-zumba-crunga-cong-gong-bad,” but don’t miss how he steps out of those nonsense syllables like some kind of lesson in fearlessness.
A heavier lesson: When Flea, Frusciante and Smith zip into the locomotive, Morse-coded riff of “Parallel Universe,” the video screen towering behind them flashes animated blobs that appear to be Calabi-Yau manifolds — complex mathematical models of extra-dimensions that are theoretically around us all the time. “Deep inside of a parallel universe,” Kiedis sings from the back of his lungs, “it’s getting harder and harder to tell what came first.”
He’s either singing about anything or everything, both of which include the possibility that he’s singing about a band wrongly defined by its contrasts instead of its concurrences; a band that continues to create something crass and poetic, insatiable and wise; a band no longer at their highest heights, but certainly at their broadest breadth; the definitive band of an era when rock-and-roll might be dead and life’s chaos refuses definition. | 2022-09-12T10:32:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Red Hot Chili Peppers became this era's ultimate American rock band - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/12/red-hot-chili-peppers-concert-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/12/red-hot-chili-peppers-concert-review/ |
Minnesota to face largest private sector nurses strike in U.S. history
“I can’t give my patients the care they deserve," one nurse says.
An ICU nurse helps to prepare medicine for a covid patient in St. Cloud, Minn. Nurses in the state are planning to go on a three-day strike starting Monday. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
About 15,000 nurses in Minnesota are poised to walk off the job on Monday to protest understaffing and overwork — marking the largest strike of private sector nurses in U.S. history.
Slated to last three days, the strike spotlights nationwide nursing shortages exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic that often result in patients not receiving adequate care.
The nurses are demanding a role in staffing plans, changes to shift scheduling practices, and higher wages.
Survey finds nurses are leaving over coronavirus stress
“I can’t give my patients the care they deserve,” said Chris Rubesch, the vice president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and a nurse at Essentia Health in Duluth, Minn. “Call lights go unanswered. Patients should only be waiting for a few seconds or minutes if they’ve soiled themselves or their oxygen came unplugged or they need to go to the bathroom, but that can take 10 minutes or more. Those are things that can’t wait.”
Paul Omodt, a spokesman for the Twin Cities Hospital Group, which represents four hospital systems in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, said that nurses have not done everything they can to avoid a strike.
Conny Bergerson, a spokeswoman for Allina Health, another hospital system in the Twin Cities where nurses are expected to go on strike, said “rushing to a strike before exhausting all options such as engaging a neutral federal mediator does not benefit our employees, patients or the communities we serve.”
The Minnesota Nurses Association, the nurse’s union, said hospital administrators have “refused solutions” on understaffing or safety in contract negotiations. It said that nurses have increasingly been asked to take on more patients for bedside care to make up for labor shortages, exacerbating burnout and high turnover.
The union has proposed new mechanisms for nurses to have a stronger say in how wards are staffed, including a committee made up of nurses and management at each hospital that would determine appropriate staffing levels. They’ve also proposed protections against retaliation for nurses who report understaffing. Striking nurses at some hospitals said their shifts are often short five to 10 nurses, forcing nurses to take on more patients than they can handle.
Omodt, said that while there was a rise in understaffing reports during the height of covid, conditions have improved and nurses have made contradictory claims when it comes to staffing at their hospitals since then.
In the lead-up to the strike, Minnesota hospital groups filed unfair labor practices charges against the union for refusing to go to mediation, and asked the National Labor Relations Board to block the strike for failing to provide enough notice. The NLRB has thrown out some of those charges.
Hospitals facing strikes have been recruiting traveling nurses from across the region, and plan to maintain staffing levels during the strike, though they are preparing for reduced operations, according to some of the hospital groups facing strike activity.
For years, hospitals in the United States have faced understaffing problems. A surge in demand and increased safety risks for nurses during the pandemic accelerated those trends. The number of health care workers in the United States has still not recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, down 37,000 workers compared with February 2020.
At the same time, demand for health-care services has steadily increased during the pandemic, with a backlog of people who delayed care now seeking medical attention. During the covid-19 wave that swept across the United States this summer, states such as New York and Florida reported the worst nursing shortages in decades. Research shows that patients are more likely to die for preventable reasons when health care providers are overworked.
Nurses, who risked their lives during the pandemic, are quitting and retiring early in droves, because of increased work loads caused by short staffing and demanding schedules that make finding child care and having a life outside of work exceedingly difficult. The understaffing crisis is pronounced in Minnesota in part because of its aging population and its record low unemployment rate.
The Minnesota Nurses Association recorded a 300 percent increase in nurses’ reports of unsafe staffing levels on their shifts since 2014, up to 7,857 reports in 2021.
While the nurses say their main impetus for striking is staffing levels and not pay, they are also at odds with hospitals over wages. The Minnesota Nurses Association has proposed a 30 percent pay increase over the next three years, noting inflation is at 40-year highs, while health care groups have proposed a pay increase of 10 to 12 percent.
“The union’s wage demands remain at 29 and 30 percent increases over 3 years, which we’ve told them is unrealistic and unaffordable,” Omodt said, noting that the average Minnesota nurse makes $80,960 a year.
“We’re really sad and disappointed that it has come to a strike,” said Brianna Hnath, a nurse at North Memorial in Robbinsdale, Minn. “But we feel like this is the only thing we can do to show administration how incredibly important a strong nursing core is to a hospital. Hospitals tell us it’s our fault, but we’ve been actively involved and getting nowhere.” | 2022-09-12T10:45:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Minnesota faces largest private sector nurses strike in U.S. history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/12/minnesota-nurses-strike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/12/minnesota-nurses-strike/ |
To clean up the Potomac, engineers are digging a 2-mile tunnel under it
Workers lower the 100-ton front shield of “Hazel,” a tunnel-boring machine, into a shaft in Alexandria on Aug. 18. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
A crucial race against the clock to dig a tunnel under the Potomac River depends on a powerhouse player: a 15-foot-wide, 380-ton machine named “Hazel.”
This round, metal device, a custom-made tunnel boring machine that’s decorated with colorful handprints, was lowered into a 138-foot shaft weeks ago and is now preparing to dig a two-mile sewer tunnel in Alexandria.
This mission — the largest infrastructure project undertaken in this Northern Virginia community — is meant to address the city’s most glaring pollution problem: the millions of gallons of raw sewage that it puts into the Potomac every year.
“This is really driven by the goal of improving the health of our city’s waterways,” said Justin Carl, a program manager at Alexandria Renew Enterprises, or AlexRenew, the local wastewater authority. “We’re building this mega-project in a very historic area, and we’re doing it on an unprecedented timeline.”
The vast majority of homes and businesses in Alexandria have separate pipes for storm water and sewage, but the city’s historic Old Town relies on a combined sewer system with just one pipe for both.
That means that when heavy rains strike the city — which they do about 70 times per year — those combined pipes overflow into outfalls around the city, bringing along as much as 140 million gallons of untreated human waste into the Potomac and two of its tributaries, Hooffs Run and Hunting Creek.
It’s an issue faced by more than 700 other U.S. cities, which also have dense neighborhoods that urbanized before the turn of the century and depend on these combined sewer overflows (CSOs).
Environmental lawsuits and state legislation have forced many of these communities to undertake remediation efforts similar to Alexandria’s: D.C. has largely finished on a 13-mile network of sewage tunnels under the Anacostia River, and cities like Seattle, Columbus, and Pawtucket, R.I. have embarked on their own projects.
Like many other tunnel boring machines, Hazel is named after a woman — in this case, the “mother” of the modern environmental justice movement, Chicago activist Hazel Johnson — in accordance with 16th-century mining lore of tunnel-diggers looking to Saint Barbara for protection.
But unlike other machines, Hazel faces an especially tight timeline: The machine has 14 months to connect two of the city’s outfalls back to its wastewater treatment plant, so the sewage can be captured, treated and then pumped back into the river.
Lawsuit alleges Alexandria has been polluting Potomac with coal tar
The entire remediation project must be completed by 2025, thanks to a deadline imposed by state lawmakers — few of whom knew about the issue until environmental groups began sounding the alarm.
Virginia State Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax), who represents an area just downstream from Alexandria, said he was “completely shocked that we were dumping raw human waste into the Potomac River on a regular basis.”
While Richmond and Lynchburg also rely on CSOs, he pointed out that Alexandria has a reputation as a community of environmentalists — it was the first in Virginia to adopt an “eco-city charter” — and enjoys one of the wealthiest populations in the Commonwealth, meaning it has the money necessary to remediate the issue.
“This is something most people thought should have been taken care of 30 years ago,” Surovell said. “If the city of Alexandria couldn’t find the resources to plug the raw sewage discharge into the Potomac, I’m not clear how we could expect anybody to do it.”
Carl, the program manager working on the RiverRenew Tunnel Project, said Hazel is trying to solve what he called a “150-year-old problem.”
Around the time of the Civil War, engineers in Alexandria built a CSO to direct human waste away from the homes and businesses of Old Town and into the nearby river. The system was considered a huge improvement from outdoor latrines, which discharged sewage into the ground, polluting the city’s drinking water and getting residents sick.
“When they were initially built, they were innovative. It was considered a huge leap for human health,” Carl said of CSOs. “Obviously, we’ve learned a lot since then with the impact that has on our waterways, and the fish and wildlife in our waterways.”
Although modern wastewater treatment — starting in the 1950s — has helped clean up a polluted river that newspapers once declared was “too thick to drink” but “too thin to plow,” heavy rainfall continued to overload the CSO system. That has at times led to dangerous levels of E. coli and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution.
Caitlin Feehan, AlexRenew’s director of communications and external programs, pointed out that Hazel will only address one of three flooding-related issues in Alexandria.
Outside the CSO area in Old Town, some storm water pipes — particularly in low-lying neighborhoods like Del Ray and Rosemont — cannot handle the rain from more frequent storms and fill the streets with water. And closer to the Potomac, rising sea levels mean that king tides will sometimes flood the riverbank in Old Town.
Alexandria already needed to fix its storm pipes. But climate change is making it worse.
The $615 million project is being funded through grants from the American Rescue Plan Act and low-interest loans from a Virginia clean water fund and the Environmental Protection Agency, which will eventually need to be paid back by local taxpayers.
Monthly wastewater rates for customers in Alexandria have already risen by about $12 for an average resident since the RiverRenew project started and are expected to increase to approximately $75 when it is complete in three years.
RiverRenew engineers and construction crews last month lowered Hazel — split into two massive, round metal shields — down one of two shafts they had dug at a site near the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
Hazel is expected to actually begin work on the tunnel in October, when it will dig through Potomac clay soil and send it back up to the plant while simultaneously building a concrete-lined 12-foot-wide sewer tunnel.
The machine’s destination is at an outfall at the end of North Pendleton Street in Old Town, near Oronoco Bay Park. Although the machine could have dug a tunnel under Old Town, the area’s historic status and the potential for some disruption — as well as its more difficult soil conditions — made it an easy choice to route it under the Potomac instead, Carl said.
“It’s both engineering and community-driven,” he added. “We didn’t sit here in an office and come up with a tunnel route totally based on technical decisions.” | 2022-09-12T10:53:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The race begins to dig a 2-mile sewage tunnel under the Potomac River - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/12/alexandria-sewer-tunnel-potomac-river/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/12/alexandria-sewer-tunnel-potomac-river/ |
Scooby-Doo’s Velma branded a ‘Karen’ for calling police in video game
In an update to the ‘MultiVersus’ game last week, Velma was stripped of her police-calling powers
The Velma Dinkley character, second from left, would call the police on her opponents in a new Warner Bros. video game. Developers have changed that. (Warner Bros. Pictures/Business Wire/AP)
It’s been a hallmark plotline in the “Scooby-Doo” show and franchise for nearly five decades: The Mystery Inc. gang solves a crime and alerts the police to the bad guy. And in the new Warner Bros. fighter game “MultiVersus,” that theme lived on — as a move by Velma Dinkley, the squad’s bespectacled problem solver.
If Velma collected enough evidence while fighting an opponent, she could hold up a wanted poster, point in her opponent’s direction, and a police car would come and whisk away her foe. Velma’s character has been praised as one of the best in the crossover fighting game for her unique skills. But having a White woman call the police on Black characters such as LeBron James of “Space Jam”?
That gave some players “Karen” vibes.
Now, the game has changed: Velma has been stripped of her police-calling powers. Instead, the Mystery Squad responds in their van and takes away Velma’s adversaries. The change was announced Thursday amid a host of other tweaks to the game, which was released in July to much fanfare. The free-to-play game, which features characters from various Warner Bros. Discovery-owned properties fighting each other in the style of “Super Smash Bros.,” surpassed 20 million users in its first month, VentureBeat reported.
‘MultiVersus’ is a real contender for Nintendo’s platform fighter crown
Warner Bros. Games did not give a reason for the change to Velma’s move, and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Sunday.
But the update comes after some “MultiVersus” players criticized the Scooby-Doo character’s move as being tone-deaf to ongoing concerns about police brutality, as well as instances in which Black people doing ordinary activities — such as watering flowers, barbecuing or requesting that a dog be leashed — have the police called on them.
Black pastor arrested while watering a neighbor’s flowers, video shows
Some White women who have been recorded making such calls have been pejoratively dubbed “Karens.” The term is also used to describe a woman feeling entitled to get her way, such as sternly asking to speak to someone’s manager.
There is even a Change.org petition to have the move changed. It recognizes that, traditionally, the Scooby-Doo characters turned people in to the authorities but argued that the police car wasn’t necessary in the video game.
“For decades, and especially in recent times, Black & Indigenous people of color around the world have suffered under police brutality and this cop car is ignoring the problem of police brutality in this day [and] age,” the petition reads.
Renata Price, who writes about the gaming community for Vice’s Waypoint, wrote that while the change to Velma’s character is small, it “highlights the developer’s willingness to respond to player feedback.”
“And the game is better for it,” Price added. | 2022-09-12T10:58:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'MultiVersus' game changed so that Velma no longer calls the police - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/12/velma-multiversus-police/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/12/velma-multiversus-police/ |
Steps to take to obtain property of loved one who died without a will
Updated September 12, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT|Published August 29, 2022 at 12:35 p.m. EDT
If your son died intestate, or without a will, you still need to go to probate court and have an executor appointed to handle the affairs of your son’s estate, including the sale of the condo. (iStock)
Q: My single son died two years ago. He had no children. His only assets were his condominium and the money he had in his 401(k) plan. His condo is worth around $100,000 and his 401(k) plan has about $10,000.
For the past two years, we continued to make his mortgage and tax payments on his condo and, of course, we paid for his funeral expenses. No creditors have opened probate or made a formal claim against his estate. Once he died, his credit card companies stopped sending letters requesting payment on the amount he owed on his cards. He had around $20,000 in credit card debt.
Can we (his parents and his only sibling) now place the condo up for sale without probate and being named executor? Can we get access to the 401(k)?
A: We are so sorry for the loss of your son. We know that his passing must have been hard for you and your entire family.
You didn’t mention in your question whether your son had written a will or if he had taken any steps to build an estate plan. We’re guessing that he didn’t have one, but knowing for sure whether he had a valid will is critical and will determine your next steps.
Let’s start with your son’s 401(k) account. If your son designated a beneficiary for the account, you shouldn’t have any issues closing the account and having the person or persons designated as beneficiaries receive the funds. The key is finding out if your son designated you, your wife or your other child as a beneficiary under the account.
If your son never designated a beneficiary for his 401(k) account, the account administrator cannot legally give the money to you, even if you’re a close relative. The account administrator needs a court order to send the funds to a specific person. Usually, this process requires the probating of a will.
The will should indicate who your son designated as the executor of the will. That person would then become the court-appointed person to handle your son’s affairs and distribute your son’s assets as provided under the terms of the will. You should also know that the executor would also have the obligation to pay off any debts owed by your son, including the credit card debt and any mortgage remaining.
Once an executor is appointed by the court, the executor can then reach out to the 401(k) company to have them distribute the funds in accordance with the terms of the will or as instructed by the court.
If your son died intestate, or without a will, you still need to go to probate court and have an executor appointed to handle the affairs of your son’s estate, including the sale of the condo. The only exception to this would be if there is a co-owner of the condo, who is a joint tenant with rights of survivorship. If there is a co-owner and the property’s title is held as joint tenants, then that person would have inherited the property outright upon your son’s death.
Assuming he owned it alone, the executor of his estate (whether named under the will or appointed by the court) could then list the home for sale and distribute the proceeds from the sale after settling any debts owed by your son’s estate.
We’d urge you to talk to a probate attorney close to where your son lived and the condo is located. Your state may offer different options if your son is deemed to have died owing more than he was worth.
Based on the information you provided, it’s unclear how much equity is in the property. You indicated that the condominium is worth around $100,000, but if your son still owed $80,000 on the mortgage, that amount would need to be repaid to the lender. Still, you should be entitled to reimbursement for the property tax and mortgage payments you made for your son’s estate. After you’ve been repaid, and the closing costs for the sale of the condo have been paid, there may not be much left to distribute.
In particular, if the estate needs to settle up with your son’s lender and various credit card companies, there might be nothing left other than the funds in the 401(k) account. Make sure you talk to the probate attorney and understand what fees you’ll incur in settling your son’s estate.
Ask the 401(k) company if your son designated a beneficiary for his account, how to handle the transfer of funds and what documentation they need. More important, if your son died intestate, ask them what the options are if the 401(k) account is the only real asset left in this estate.
You have some work to do to figure out the best course of action. We do think, however, that you’d benefit from consulting with a probate attorney on your situation. And, if you don’t see eye to eye with the attorney, find one that you feel comfortable with and gives you a sense of what you can get out of the estate without spending all of the estate’s money on attorney fees and probate costs. | 2022-09-12T11:06:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to obtain property of loved one who died without a will - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/29/steps-take-obtain-property-loved-one-who-died-without-will/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/29/steps-take-obtain-property-loved-one-who-died-without-will/ |
As climate anxiety spikes, these campuses are pioneering solutions
There is a critical need for climate stress services for young people, experts say, but many therapists aren’t trained to provide this specific type of support
By Ta'Leah Van Sistine
(Guang Lim for The Washington Post)
“I think that this is the case in a lot of different arenas where it’s not as informed care as it could be,” she said.
“You don’t have the space to have that kind of change unless you have that degree of privilege, which leaves you with time and energy to work on it,” Haase said.
Those involved in creating climate stress resources say it’s critical to acknowledge perspectives from communities of color and marginalized communities, including those who have long had fundamental worries about how environmental realities impact their lives.
Dan Murphy, a former post-doctoral fellow in professional psychology at the University of Michigan, said he’s hopeful that growing research will give leadership at the institution the authority it needs to say in an "evidence-based way, we need you to address climate stress in the student population.”
First-of-its-kind study finds Hurricane Harvey hit Latinos the hardest
From February to April, Murphy and Carolyn Scorpio, a staff social worker for the University of Michigan’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), created and facilitated a 10-week pilot therapy group for climate stress through CAPS. For an hour once a week, five students joined them on Zoom.
During the meetings, there was an emphasis on building connections among the students in the group, allowing them to bond over shared feelings and experiences surrounding the climate crisis. Conversations also centered on how students can talk to family and friends who don’t have the same level of concern about climate change. They talked about how to manage despair and grief related to the future of the planet, but also how to find joy and gratitude when immersed in nature.
With climate stress counseling, Scorpio said rather than just consoling, it helps to provide coping strategies to assist students in calming their own nervous systems, and to think about the issues from a different perspective.
Murphy said he began thinking more about addressing climate stress while doing field work for his doctorate in Pittsburgh. Some clients described how thoughts about the climate crisis and dire future of the planet exacerbated existing struggles with severe depression or suicidal thoughts — and he worried he didn’t have the specific training to address some of those concerns.
The American Psychiatric Association does not currently require mental health professionals to have training on climate-related issues. For now, experts say therapists interested in offering climate-specific resources need to seek out tools to do so themselves.
A group of instructors will soon launch a climate psychology certificate in an effort to equip more mental health and allied professionals with the training they need to provide this care. Leslie Davenport, a climate psychology educator and consultant, and Barbara Easterlin, a clinician and consultant specializing in climate psychology, will co-lead the five-week program that begins this month.
Climate disasters will strain our mental health system. It’s time to adapt.
At Michigan, students in counseling services told Scorpio they struggled to focus on homework and career goals.
“This idea of, ‘What’s the point of doing all this if the world is on fire?’” Scorpio said.
Scorpio and Murphy had the idea for a therapy group on climate stress after consulting with each other about what their clients had been experiencing.
Even as people expressed interest in the possible program, there were challenges: busy college students couldn’t commit to hour-long sessions, and it was hard to ensure they’d find a secluded space every week.
When they did meet, Scorpio said the feedback from students was “overwhelmingly positive.” Students valued the sense of community in the group and relished having an intentional space to share their feelings. Some wished the sessions could have lasted longer. | 2022-09-12T11:07:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Colleges and students are pioneering ways to address climate stress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/12/climate-change-stress-college-therapy-programs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/12/climate-change-stress-college-therapy-programs/ |
How Gregory ‘Sugar Bear’ Elliott would spend a perfect day in D.C.
By Stephanie Williams
When Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliott released one of his first singles with E.U., “Peace Gone Away,” more than 40 years ago, he hoped the song would bring awareness to the increasing gun violence in his native D.C. He didn’t anticipate that its message would still be relevant today.
“I’m using my platform to bring awareness of these situations,” says Elliott, who recently rereleased the song with a new music video to ring in Experience Unlimited’s birthday. “When people come in multitudes to see our shows, I do let them know and go down [from the stage] to talk to them and say, ‘Violence is not the answer, you don’t have to do that.’ ”
E.U. puts a fresh spin on an old cut for a new generation of fans
Born and raised in Southeast D.C., Elliott sees himself not just as the frontman of one of D.C.’s most revered musical acts, but as a spokesperson for change in his community, where he still resides. The kind of go-go music E.U. makes is more than just heady percussion-led hits to get folks moving on the dance floor — it’s the kind of live show that’ll ignite people to step up on bigger issues, too.
Getting that face time with fans is key for Elliott, and on his dream day in D.C., he would put on a big show with his longtime bandmates. Plus, he’d squeeze in time to visit the local businesses that make the city still feel like home for him.
I get up and pray every day, asking the Lord to protect me and protect our community and our children and our streets and our family. And then I would go to my day job, which is teaching special ed children at Alexandria City High School. From there, in my downtime, I love going to movies, and usually, I like catching some sort of action movie. I patronize the Regal Gallery Place and the AMC Georgetown 14. Back in the day, I would go to Union Station.
From there, I would go to Ben’s Chili Bowl. I wouldn’t get the half-smoke. I would get a cheeseburger with mustard, onions and relish and french fries.
I love patronizing the Howard Theatre, especially entertaining there. I love the sound and the love we get from there. And the Hamilton, love playing there. The vibe at both spots is very festive, and when people come there, they know that they’re going to get a good show and a big party. And that’s what I like — everyone knows what to expect. And they don’t expect anything less when they see E.U.
When I have free time, which is very rare, I love going to a game. On this day, I would probably go see the Wizards play at Capital One Arena. I love supporting the home team.
For dinner, I would go to Ruth’s Chris Steak House and get the stuffed chicken. Always the stuffed chicken. The chicken is usually stuffed with some type of herbs and spices and cheese. The cheesy base is just unbelievable.
Then I would go to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. E.U. played there during its grand opening, and we were able to get a private tour of the museum, and it was very emotional. There was happiness, there was sadness — just a great time in my life. There’s so much stuff to see there. From where we [Black people] were then to where we are now, we still have a long way to go. | 2022-09-12T11:07:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. Dream Day with Gregory "Sugar Bear" Elliott of E.U. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/12/gregory-sugar-bear-elliott-dream-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/12/gregory-sugar-bear-elliott-dream-day/ |
Schuyler Colfax testified four times before the House committee investigating the Credit Mobilier scandal.
Schuyler Colfax. (Library of Congress.)
Republicans dumped him in June as their candidate for vice president. His mother died in August. He lost the chance to take the helm of one of the nation’s most influential newspapers at the end of the year. And on top of everything, he was implicated in September in a notorious influence-peddling scandal involving Credit Mobilier of America, the profitable construction company formed to build the Union Pacific Railroad.
Almost 150 years later, former vice president Mike Pence – another Indiana Republican — incorrectly asserted last month that “it would be unprecedented in history for a vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill.” In fact, Colfax was so eager for exoneration that he testified four times before the investigative committee led by Rep. Luke Potter Poland (R-Vt.) and on several occasions questioned witnesses.
A blockbuster scoop on Sept. 4, 1872, by the New York Sun named Colfax, who was speaker of the House at the time of the stock sales, and a handful of prominent Capitol Hill Republicans as beneficiaries of Ames’s largesse. Ames admitted — first to a fellow investor and later to the committee — that he sold the Credit Mobilier shares to his colleagues well below market value because the Union Pacific needed friends in Congress.
It made sense for Ames to approach Colfax, an amiable lawmaker nicknamed “Smiler.” A former newspaper editor from South Bend and an ardent opponent of slavery, he was elected to Congress in 1854 and swiftly ascended to leadership positions in the House — first as chairman of the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads and then as speaker.
“Genial and cordial, with unfailing tact and aptitude, skillful in cultivating friendships and never provoking enmities, he had in a rare degree the elements that insure popularity,” Republican bigwig James G. Blaine wrote. But Blaine noted something else — a lack of “the more rugged and combative qualities which diminished his force in the House.”
In the aftermath of the Sun’s scoop, Colfax professed to be unconcerned about the allegations. He had been replaced on the Republican ticket in June by Sen. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts (who, like Colfax, would be implicated in the scandal), and he seemed delighted to be out of the fray. But when Horace Greeley, the longtime editor of the New York Tribune running for president as a Democrat, campaigned in Indiana and cited Credit Mobilier as an example of corruption in Washington that required “purification,” the scandal could no longer be ignored.
Colfax told a hometown crowd in South Bend that in his years in public life, “no man ever dared make me a dishonorable proposition" and that “neither Oakes Ames nor any other person never gave or offered to give me one share, or twenty shares, or two thousand shares in the Credit Mobilier.”
Greeley’s death in November opened a road to redemption for the embattled vice president and onetime newspaper editor. Colfax was a front-runner to succeed Greeley at the helm of the Tribune but faced resistance from his wife and hesitated to seek the job, which went to distinguished correspondent Whitelaw Reid while Colfax dithered.
Suddenly, the Poland committee offered Colfax his only remaining chance to resuscitate his reputation. He testified under oath to the committee on Jan. 6, “I state explicitly that no one ever gave, or offered to give me, any shares of stock in the Credit Mobilier, or the Union Pacific Railroad. I have never received, nor had tendered to me, any dividends in case, stocks, or bonds, accruing upon any stock in either of said organizations.”
Nevertheless, he conceded things were more complicated than he had indicated in South Bend. Ames had, in fact, approached him about buying Credit Mobilier shares, and he told his Massachusetts colleague that the stock “looked like a good and safe investment for one of limited means.” Several weeks later, he said, he paid Ames $500 but backed out of the deal after hearing rumors of “unpleasant controversies” among Credit Mobilier stockholders that were likely to lead to litigation. He said he told Ames, who he thought was facing financial difficulties, to keep the $500.
“Instead of being enriched" by Credit Mobilier, Colfax said, "I am voluntarily out of pocket five hundred dollars, and have been for nearly five years.”
Some found his testimony credible. “Told by Mr. Colfax, it is not a story to be doubted,” Harper’s Weekly concluded. Others were more skeptical. The Nation dismissed Colfax’s testimony as an example of “explanations which make a thing appear worse than it really is."
After examining his records, Ames said he had paid Colfax $1,200 in dividends with a check marked with the initials “S.C.” “I could not have had $1,200 added to my income without remembering it very positively,” Colfax told the committee on Jan. 24. But that assertion appeared to be contradicted four days later by testimony that revealed Colfax made a $1,968 deposit at a Washington bank, with $1,200 in cash, three days after Ames wrote him a check in the same amount.
Although family members corroborated his story, few believed it. The newspaper he might have led was particularly skeptical. “If Mr. Colfax’s statement is true,” the Tribune concluded Feb. 12, “he is the victim of a train of circumstantial evidence almost unparalleled in judicial history.” The Nation was even more damning: “On the whole, as far as Mr. Colfax is concerned, the affair wears a very hopeless outlook.”
The Poland committee’s investigation ended inconclusively. It recommended the expulsion of Ames and Rep. James Brooks of New York, the only Democrat implicated in the scandal. (The House voted to censure Ames and Brooks instead.) Everyone else was exonerated on the grounds that they believed Ames was offering an innocent business proposition rather than a bribe.
About Colfax, the committee made no official finding. But the verdict of public opinion weighed heavily on him. On March 4, the day Grant was sworn in for a second term, Colfax gave a valedictory address in which he defended his conduct in office. But Grace Greenwood of the New York Times noted his “pale, careworn, and sad” appearance.
“Mr. Schuyler Colfax has looked very much worn as of late,” the National Republican editorialized. “To a great extent we express the sentiments of all shades of politicians when we state our sincere regret” that Colfax leaves office “under such painful and pitiful circumstances. To all human appearances the shadow which now darkens his future can never be removed.” | 2022-09-12T11:07:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Contra Mike Pence, this vice president testified before Congress four times - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/12/schuyler-colfax-vice-president-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/12/schuyler-colfax-vice-president-congress/ |
Today’s book bans might be more dangerous than those from the past
The right’s purge is targeting books children choose to read, not works they are assigned
Perspective by Jonna Perrillo
Jonna Perrillo is an education historian and associate professor of English education at the University of Texas at El Paso and the author of "Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity."
Mitzi's books, where the five books that have been banned are available. Friday, June 17, 2022 in Rapid City, SD. (Dawnee LeBeau for The Washington Post)
Last year, Texas state Rep. Matt Krause (R) made national news when he released a list of more than 800 books that he wants to prohibit schools and libraries from carrying, inspiring conservative school districts across the nation to step up their own efforts. The majority of these books feature characters who, like many young Americans, are people of color, LGBTQ or both. Nationally, we are experiencing what many educators, librarians and journalists accurately have dubbed an unprecedented wave of censorship.
Of course, this is not the first time politicians and citizens have mobilized to ban books. During the Cold War, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) and his allies waged a variety of censorship campaigns, with some Americans even participating in book-fueled bonfires. Political officials and mobilized parents, with conservative organizations like the Daughters of the American Revolution and the American Legion, pulled “subversive” books from library and store shelves in the late 1940s and early 1950s and intimidated librarians, teachers and store managers to keep them from stocking them.
But beyond a shared tenor of anxiety, Cold War book-banning campaigns and those of today differ substantially in strategy and effect. McCarthy-era book censorship was part of a much larger, coordinated campaign that used the federal and state governments to restrict other “subversive” art, including film and television. And, such efforts were international. In fact, one of the most successful efforts was the removal of books from Overseas Libraries, a network of American libraries under the jurisdiction of the State Department that served as an arm of cultural diplomacy.
But through it all, young people’s literature often escaped the attention of censors and, in fact, grew more diverse and more focused on young adolescents as an audience, anticipating the genre that we now call “young adult literature.”
This is because McCarthy-era book bans often focused on mass-adopted textbooks as the easiest way to control what students read. They cared most about two issues: anti-communism and race. Often, the two went hand in hand as civil rights activists were accused of holding communist beliefs. Textbooks, particularly social studies textbooks, that critiqued capitalism, economic equality or the health of American democracy were withdrawn from the classroom throughout the 1950s, and their publication was stopped entirely at times.
The truth about the history education wars in 2022
After McCarthy’s downfall and as civil rights campaigns expanded in the 1960s, censors loosened their standards in Northern states when it came to race. Still, thanks to powerful textbook commissions and school boards, books that questioned segregation remained unpublishable in the American South. Northern textbooks that portrayed children of different races were published in “whitewashed” versions there, absent of any references to or illustrations of Black Americans. While Detroit children started to encounter Dick and Jane’s Black counterparts Larry and Debbie, children in New Orleans continued to read solely about children who were White.
Everywhere, parents were less likely to object to books that were part of their own education than recently published textbooks written by liberal college professors they had never heard of. And so, students in grades seven through 12 continued to read novels in English classes (“Silas Marner,” “Great Expectations” and “The Red Badge of Courage” were the three most commonly taught), along with plays and poetry. High school students read “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar” more than any other literary works. Adolescent literature instruction, in other words, consisted of literary classics steeped in familiar civic and ethical messages — about industry, integrity and self-sufficiency — that many students’ parents had also read when they were in school.
But the outsize attention to textbooks, combined with an often traditional literature curriculum, actually created a space in which liberal writers could thrive. Take Langston Hughes, for example. When Hughes was interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953, he had just published his juvenile book “The First Book of Negroes” and was about to begin his “Famous Negroes” series, both of which advanced ideas about Black achievement and racial equity for the age group we now call “tweens.”
Even as the State Department ordered America House Library in Berlin to burn or remove Hughes’s poetry for its subversive ideas about race and capitalism in the early 1950s, he continued to write juvenile biographies containing many of the same ideas that flew under the censorship radar and opened young Americans’ eyes about racism. Works like “The First Book of Negroes” shaped many young readers’ thinking about democracy and civil rights — as confirmed by letters that adolescents wrote to writers like Hughes.
This trajectory was true for other writers, as well. While some publishing houses terminated their relationships with authors who came under fire, many — including Knopf, Harpers and Golden Books — published books that challenged political and scientific orthodoxies. Censors obsessed over monitoring what teachers now call “class texts” or “whole class readings,” but students were still able to access an increasingly wider range of newly written books on their own. And they did.
What we are experiencing today is in many ways radically different because of one key historical intervention: the creation of young adult literature as a genre over the last 40 years. According to the recent PEN report “Banned in the USA,” of the 1,145 titles pulled from school libraries or classrooms from July 2021 through March 2022, nearly half were young adult books. Of the 10 most challenged books in 2021, all but three were published since 2015. At the same time, LGBTQ young adult literature sales have surged over the past two years.
Yet few teachers own classroom sets of Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” or Alex Gino’s “George,” a fact guided by curricular standards, textbook economics and teachers’ frequent discomfort at teaching texts. Instead, the most frequently challenged books are ones that students are reading on their own accord, even if they are accessing them through a school or classroom library. Bans are targeting books that young Americans want to read, not texts that a teacher tells them they must.
As a result, teachers and librarians have once again found themselves in the crosshairs, even as today’s campaigns are more truly a directed assault on adolescents’ right to read.
They represent a different kind of policing: one that is in many ways far more personal and, potentially, more damaging. This is not just because of the nature of what is being banned but also of how and why students seek out these books, which is often for their own enjoyment and edification. Killing this impulse in young readers is something whose costs, too, could be unprecedented.
This essay is the third in the Freedom to Learn series sponsored by PEN America, providing historical context for controversies surrounding free expression in education today. | 2022-09-12T11:07:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Today’s book bans might be more dangerous than those from the past - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/12/todays-book-bans-might-be-more-dangerous-than-those-past/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/12/todays-book-bans-might-be-more-dangerous-than-those-past/ |
What celebrities get wrong about a famous Teddy Roosevelt speech
“The Man in the Arena” speech urges collective action to protect democracy, not individualism.
Perspective by Michael Patrick Cullinane
Michael Patrick Cullinane is professor of U.S. history and the Lowman Walton Chair of Theodore Roosevelt studies at Dickinson State University and the Public Historian for the Theodore Roosevelt Association.
Theodore Roosevelt campaigns for the presidency in 1904. Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for negotiating peace in the 1904-1905 war between Russia and Japan. (AP)
An old Theodore Roosevelt quote has become an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. Pop star Miley Cyrus has it tattooed on her arm. Basketball legend LeBron James emblazons an adaptation of it (“Man in the Arena”) on his sneakers before big games. Cadillac made a paraphrase of it (“Dare Greatly”) the basis for its advertising campaigns.
The 1910 speech they reference was a memorable one. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly,” Roosevelt said. The quote concludes, “If he fails, at least [he] fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
It’s easy to see why sports superstars like it. These powerful words contain two doctrines essential to sporting success.
First, victory requires energy. Roosevelt’s “man in the arena” strives, works and toils. Throughout his lifetime, the former president venerated “the man who embodies victorious effort.”
Second, the speech celebrates one’s ability to cast off failure, to develop resilience and rebound from shortcomings. In the sports world, the capacity to forget a bad game or performance makes an athlete stronger. A Tom Brady career retrospective documentary series was called “Man in the Arena” and referred to Roosevelt’s speech as a guiding principle — to get back out there and try again.
Yet, the speech rarely elicits careful reading. Most of the time we refer to it as the “man in the arena” speech. Roosevelt called it “Citizenship in a Republic,” and the short passage we know so well has overshadowed his broader point about the need for collective responsibility in a democracy. In today’s political milieu, the speech has a profound relevance.
Roosevelt did not advocate individualism. Whether on the field of play or in the political arena, he acknowledged that a single person had tremendous power and potential, but that any individual effort paled in comparison to the power of a group of like-minded people. “I am a strong individualist by personal habit,” he admitted, but he added: “It is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.”
Roosevelt made the speech in Paris. After he left the presidency in 1909, he took leave of Washington and sailed to Africa to hunt game. After the safari, he traveled to Europe and lectured the Old World on empire, international relations and peace. He gave dozens of talks in Europe, with his “Citizenship in a Republic” speech in Paris deviating from these themes.
His inspiration came from the streets of the Rive Gauche — the Left Bank, which Paris’s avant-garde artists and writers called home. Roosevelt slipped out of his hotel and anonymously blended into the throngs of bustling window-shoppers and passersby along the quays of the Latin Quarter. In the early 20th century, many famous Americans resided in these neighborhoods. Artists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso met in writer and poet Gertrude Stein’s apartment. Novelist Edith Wharton lived only a few blocks from Stein, and the American dancer Loie Fuller perfected her serpentine dance at the Odéon.
Roosevelt wandered in and out of the rare-book shops thinking about the historical parallels between the United States and France. Each nation shared the same system of government, and France was the only stop on his European tour without a monarch. The benefits of democracy seemed apparent to him, as they always had. Democracy provided citizens with self-determination, and popular sovereignty gave rise to personal liberty. The cultural parade he saw on the Left Bank was the product of democracy.
As he walked on, democracy’s weaknesses became equally apparent. Roosevelt plodded north, across the River Seine, through the Place Vendôme. In this part of Paris, towering monuments to Napoleon and the Paris Commune caught his attention, telling the story of the city’s dalliances with revolution and dictatorship. Democracy required vigilance and morality to survive these inevitable crises.
Such conclusions did not come to him as an epiphany. Roosevelt had preached about civic responsibility throughout his storied political career. But the Parisian experience reinforced his convictions and influenced the speech he made the following day at the Sorbonne, the city’s oldest university. There, a huge crowd clambered into an auditorium to hear the most famous American leader to talk in Paris since Ulysses S. Grant had visited the city more than 30 years prior.
The speech did not disappoint. The crowd cheered ceaselessly while members of the French academy huddled around and congratulated the former president on a rousing lecture. Still, Roosevelt could not have expected it would make the impression it did. He certainly could not have imagined it would become a sound bite for future American athletes and celebrities.
When read as a whole, the speech calls for citizens to work together to bring about social justice. Equality was the ultimate goal of democracy. Good citizens “see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own” and in the optimum case, each person would contribute to this common good.
“The best test of true love of liberty,” Roosevelt related, “is the way in which minorities are treated in the country.” Even though he didn’t fully practice what he preached in his own political career, Roosevelt’s speech implied that race hatred, misogyny, ableism, classism, ageism and discrimination of any kind diminished the democratic experiment.
It was perhaps this passage that inspired Nelson Mandela to give a copy of the speech to South Africa’s rugby captain, François Pienaar, before the 1995 World Cup. In the film “Invictus,” Hollywood swapped Roosevelt’s speech for a British poem. That creative license obscured Mandela’s purpose. He did not give it to Pienaar to inspire victory in the game. It was meant to inspire unity off the pitch. When Mandela became president, he inherited a divided nation. These divisions were obvious in rugby, a sport dominated by White players. While in prison, Mandela applauded for any team other than the South African Springboks. Cheering the opposing team was an act of defiance in protest of his country’s apartheid practices. As president, however, Mandela sought opportunities for social cohesion and he gave Pienaar the speech in an attempt to renew South African democracy. That was Roosevelt’s intention, too.
Roosevelt’s case for good citizenship has been corrupted. Now a pithy affirmation of individualism, the frequent citations ignore the real “man in the arena” whom Roosevelt identified as the ordinary person. In Paris, he exclaimed that the heroes of a republic go to work every day. Yet, Roosevelt pointed out that the most important work is “non-remunerative in character.” Caring for children, volunteer activism, charity, helping a neighbor and other similar acts are the greatest contributions to the health of the republic — and to the vitality of democracy more broadly.
“It is not the critic who counts,” Roosevelt said in the speech. “Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.” The critic he referred to was anyone who “expresses contempt” or is “hostile to other citizens of the republic.” Beware the demagogue who breeds factions among us, Roosevelt warned.
As we move into a busy political season, and the mudslinging ramps up, it would serve us well to remember all of Roosevelt’s speech. It does not fit neatly on a pair of shoes or make for a neat tattoo, but the whole speech offers a lesson on the strengths of our democracy. It also points out where the threats exist. | 2022-09-12T11:07:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What celebrities get wrong about a famous Teddy Roosevelt speech - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/12/what-celebrities-get-wrong-about-famous-teddy-roosevelt-speech/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/12/what-celebrities-get-wrong-about-famous-teddy-roosevelt-speech/ |
Sri Lanka can’t count on China to solve its debt problems
The country owes a lot of money to a lot of creditors
Analysis by Layna Mosley
B. Peter Rosendorff
Police officers use a water cannon and tear gas to disperse anti-government protesters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Aug. 30. (Eranga Jayawardena/AP)
Can Sri Lanka pivot away from its deep economic and political crisis? A decade of fiscal mismanagement has led to diminishing foreign exchange reserves and government debt that jumped from 91 percent to 119 percent of gross domestic product in just three years. The coronavirus pandemic cut tourism revenue and remittances from Sri Lanka’s diaspora — while rising global fuel and food prices only made things worse. Inflation reached a record high of 60.8 percent in July, making it hard for Sri Lanka to pay for imports.
The result has been widespread protests and a government decision in April to suspend payment on sovereign bonds — an important way in which governments borrow money. Sri Lanka owed $6 billion in external debt service (interest) payments for the remainder of 2022, but it had only $1.9 billion in foreign currency reserves. This was the first default in the country’s history.
In the past, Sri Lanka looked to the Chinese government to help address its debt burden. Can it do this again?
When things got tough, Sri Lanka turned to China
Past Chinese assistance has allowed Sri Lanka to service its debts and bolster its reserves of foreign currency. In 2017, the Sri Lankan government granted China Merchants Port Holdings a 99-year lease for the Hambantota International Port in then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s home district, in exchange for money used to repay short-term government debt and shore up reserves. In 2020, Sri Lanka received a $3 billion loan from China to help pay off existing debts. In January, the president once again appealed to China for help restructuring its debts to Chinese entities.
Sri Lanka’s multiple crises just came to a head
Now, Sri Lanka has a new president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, tapped by Parliament in July to take over after his predecessor, the increasingly unpopular Rajapaksa, fled the country. Wickremesinghe has continued to rely on China — but has also enlisted the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
On Sept. 1, Sri Lanka reached a tentative deal with the IMF staff mission. Once approved by IMF leadership, the deal should provide a $3 billion loan, conditional on changes in economic policies.
Unlike the IMF, China doesn’t demand economic policy changes
China now plays an increasing role as a global creditor. Beijing has become embroiled in current and brewing debt crises in countries such as Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, offered significant loans to developing countries’ governments to finance infrastructure projects. The China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China — China’s “policy banks,” funded by Chinese government resources and with staff accountable to Chinese government officials — issued many of these loans.
Many debtor countries preferred China’s approach, which didn’t demand policy changes or austerity measures as the World Bank and IMF do, although Chinese loans often involved higher financing costs, and sometimes allowed China greater control of strategic assets (what some people have called “debt-trap diplomacy”). And countries found it convenient that China could issue emergency loans far more quickly than institutions like the IMF, because Beijing didn’t insist on negotiating cuts to government spending or other types of economic belt-tightening with recipient governments.
The G-7 wants to mobilize new global financing as an alternative to China’s multilateral push
When countries found it difficult to repay these loans, China sometimes was willing to restructure debtors’ obligations. Last month, for instance, China announced that it would forgive 23 interest-free loans to 17 African nations. Chinese officials had previously restructured approximately $15 billion of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019.
So why worry about Chinese loans?
China isn’t Sri Lanka’s biggest creditor. The largest share (36 percent) of Sri Lanka’s external debt is to private-sector bondholders, many of them U.S.- and Europe-based institutional investors. China is only the fourth-largest creditor, after the Asian Development Bank and Japan.
But many commentators worry more about China because of geopolitics. They fear that China may turn debt into influence and power. Other countries have expressed concerns that China will use its debt, as well as the possibility for debt relief and currency swaps, to claim a strategic foothold in the region. China has kept its distance from the most important international multilateral arrangements for rescheduling debt, although it has begun working, through the Group of 20, of which China is a member, on rescheduling efforts for Zambia. Of course, other countries also use loans as well as aid for strategic reasons.
It isn’t clear how Sri Lanka will resolve its debt crisis. Sri Lanka owes money to many kinds of creditors, complicating efforts to reach agreement among them. Although Japan offered recently to host talks among all Sri Lanka creditors, it’s unclear whether those talks will move forward — and whether China will participate.
Unless its various creditors agree to act quickly, Sri Lanka is in for a long economic crisis. The agreement with the IMF requires politically unpopular austerity measures in exchange for a loan. But without implementation of IMF-agreed changes, most creditors will be reluctant to move forward. That may tempt Sri Lanka to apply to China for assistance once more, in the hope that Beijing’s demands will be less onerous.
Still, China’s domestic politics may limit its freedom of maneuver. Chinese economic decision-makers disagree over whether they should participate in multilateral financial institutions and debt restructuring, and whether they should take losses on outstanding loans. China’s central bank and finance ministries have mostly supported debt relief efforts, but the policy banks want to avoid writing down debts and taking losses.
And, after years of Belt and Road Initiative expansion — and in light of the recent downturns in the domestic economic outlook — the Chinese public may be getting tired of its leaders granting debt relief unilaterally.
Layna Mosley (@LaynaMosley) is professor of politics and international affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs, and the Department of Politics, at Princeton University. Her current book project with B. Peter Rosendorff, “Game of Loans,” explores the domestic political economy of sovereign borrowing and restructuring.
B. Peter Rosendorff (@PeterRosendorff) is professor of politics at New York University. | 2022-09-12T11:07:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China is not Sri Lanka’s biggest creditor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/sri-lanka-debt-china-imf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/sri-lanka-debt-china-imf/ |
Monday briefing: Russian retreat in Ukraine; Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral; NFL Week 1; how to watch the Emmy Awards; and more
Ukraine has forced Russia into a big retreat.
What to know: Ukrainian troops have retaken dozens of towns and villages in the northeast over the past several days, potentially over a thousand square miles of land total.
What this means: The war isn’t over by any means — Russia still holds about a fifth of Ukraine. But this is a major Russian setback and could mark a turning point, experts said.
The U.K. continued to mourn Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
There will be ceremonies all week: Her coffin is in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital, until tomorrow. Then it will lie in state at the seat of Parliament in London for four days.
When is the funeral? Sept. 19 at Westminster Abbey. The queen, who died Thursday at 96, will be buried at Windsor Castle.
What else to know: Charles III was officially proclaimed king on Saturday, and his sons, Princes William and Harry, made a rare public appearance together.
Congress gets back into full swing this week.
What to know: The Senate returned from its summer break last week; the House is back tomorrow.
What you’ll hear about: Same-sex marriage protections (Senate Democrats want to pass the bill approved by the House this summer); coronavirus and monkeypox funding; election reform; and more.
One big deadline: Congress must agree on how to fund the government by Oct. 1, when the new fiscal year starts.
Dozens of wildfires are burning in the West.
In Oregon: The Cedar Creek Fire, one of 21 in the state right now, grew rapidly over the weekend to 86,000 acres, forcing some evacuations. The fire started Aug. 1.
The big picture: Last week’s combination of record heat, dry weather and severe thunderstorms created extremely dangerous fire conditions.
15,000 nurses in Minnesota are planning to strike today.
Why? They’re protesting understaffing and overwork and asking for specific changes. It would be the largest such strike in U.S. history and is expected to last three days.
The big picture: Understaffing has been an issue at hospitals for years, but the coronavirus pandemic has made the problem much worse.
The first Sunday of the NFL season was full of mayhem.
Key moment: The Dallas Cowboys lost both their game (19-3 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and their quarterback, as Dak Prescott will need hand surgery.
What to know: Eight of yesterday’s 14 games were decided by just one score; and the Packers, Patriots and Bengals all have work to do.
Tonight: The Denver Broncos play the Seattle Seahawks at 8:15 Eastern time.
The 74th Emmy Awards are tonight.
What to know: “Saturday Night Live” star Kenan Thompson is hosting. HBO’s “Succession” and Apple TV Plus’s “Ted Lasso” have the most nominations of the year, and Netflix’s “Squid Game” could make history.
How to watch: The ceremony (held on a Monday because of Sunday Night Football) will air at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC and stream on Peacock.
And now … The Post has a new home for trustworthy health-and-fitness news and advice: Check out Well+Being and our first “Ask a Doctor” column. | 2022-09-12T11:08:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Monday, Sept. 12 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/12/what-to-know-for-september-12/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/12/what-to-know-for-september-12/ |
Midwestern factory fires up again, on front lines of electric car revolution
A sweeping retooling of the U.S. auto industry is underway, as companies modernize old factories and break ground on new ones
Workers assemble a Rivian electric pickup truck at a manufacturing facility in Normal, Ill., in April. (Jamie Kelter Davis/Bloomberg)
NORMAL, Ill. — When Mitsubishi closed its auto factory here in 2016, residents worried it would become another symbol of American manufacturing decline. Six years later, the plant is back in business with a radical Silicon Valley makeover.
A fancy coffee bar and blond-wood furnishings decorate the entryway, where a wide staircase surrounded by ferns leads to the second floor. There, engineers carrying laptops hustle along a corridor lined with glass that overlooks the humming factory floor below, a scene resembling the tidy busyness of a tech start-up more than a traditional auto plant.
The factory, now owned by electric-vehicle maker Rivian, employs 6,300 people — nearly twice as many as it did under Mitsubishi — and is aiming to produce 25,000 trucks, SUVs and vans this year. Its explosive and sometimes rocky growth will help determine how well one of the nation’s most important manufacturing sectors transitions to a new era of technology and global competition.
Ensuring that the United States makes the leap to electrification is a key goal of the Biden administration, which sees rewarding high-tech jobs and lower carbon emissions on the other side. The White House and Congressional allies have backed the sector with new legislation that subsidizes EV purchases and charging infrastructure and incentivizes domestic manufacturing of the vehicles and batteries through tax breaks. Many states, including Illinois, are doing the same.
The measures are accelerating a sweeping retooling of the U.S. auto industry as manufacturers modernize old factories and break ground on new ones for the electric era. The outcome will decide which states maintain thriving manufacturing industries, and whether the United States remains one of the world’s auto powerhouses in the face of new competition from China and others.
The transition is “one of the most economically significant things happening in our region and in the country, potentially, maybe in 100 years,” Kristin Dziczek, an automotive policy adviser hired recently by the Federal Reserve’s Chicago branch to track the shift, said in a Sept. 2 interview. “I mean, this is a really, really huge thing.”
Big hurdles on the road to moving millions of U.S. drivers into EVs
Rivian’s mixed success in its first year of manufacturing illustrates the challenges. It is rapidly expanding its factory and racking up orders, including a contract to build 100,000 vans for one of its biggest shareholders, Amazon. But its production ramp-up has been slower than investors expected as Rivian struggles with component supply. The company, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., has yet to turn a profit and was recently forced to lay off about 800 employees in nonmanufacturing positions. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post).
On a recent afternoon, more than 50 trainees shuffled down a corridor carrying newly issued steel-toed boots, while Shawn Middlebrooks sat at a laptop nearby, trying to hire more. To meet its production targets, Rivian is adding a second shift, for which it needs to recruit 700 to 800 people in a hurry — a difficult task amid a national labor shortage. In the meantime, many existing employees are working mandatory overtime, which pays time-and-a-half, but risks burnout.
“I think it’s really more efficient that way, honestly, because we do need a lot of people," said Middlebrooks, a former furniture mover and small-business owner who has worked his way up at Rivian. “It’s not like we need four people — we are hiring for a whole entire shift for every single line.”
The people who apply come from all walks of life, he said. Some are looking for their first job, while others have been in manufacturing their whole careers. New hires get a crash course and have detailed instruction manuals to follow to learn their jobs.
“Some people have never even touched a power tool before,” Middlebrooks said. “That’s really why the [training manuals] are so important. You could have graduated high school, and you could have a master’s degree, and you can come in and you can read the [manuals] and interpret them in the exact same way.”
Joe Fanelli, 22, started two months ago after bagging groceries at Hy-Vee. He earns $21 an hour on the 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift, using a robotic claw to move motors from a conveyor belt to a stack of pallets. He has an undergraduate degree in digital media and said he’d like to work his way up to a more skilled role.
That would likely require more training, for which Rivian is working with nearby Heartland Community College. Last fall, the college started an electric vehicle and energy storage program, which aims to train 360 students over the next five years. Rivian donated vehicles and equipment to the facility, which is expanding with state funding.
Interest in the program was high enough that Heartland added a second cohort of students. But Rick Pearce, the college’s provost, worries that factory work is still unfairly stigmatized in the eyes of young people — a concern echoed by manufacturers nationwide.
“Our community is the worldwide corporate headquarters for State Farm,” the insurance company, Pearce said. “And so a lot of people, local kids, for instance, growing up, they look at their parents and they are white-collar workers and college graduates so they think that that is my path ... and they view manufacturing as dirty.”
Rivian officials say they have tried to counter that belief by making its factory tidy and welcoming, and tying it into the engineers’ office space. The white- and blue-collar workers share the same cafeteria, which serves hot food under a canopy of houseplants. Artwork decorates the hallways surrounding the factory floor, and vending machines serve free sparkling water.
“I thought, why are we polishing the concrete?” he said. Later, he realized that the step “creates an environment that’s inviting. And people want to come here."
Maintaining strong auto manufacturing in the electric era is vital for the industrial Midwest, where vehicle and parts manufacturers are bedrock employers and taxpayers. Newer auto-manufacturing states such as Kentucky and Alabama also have a lot on the line.
"It’s a really big change in technology. It requires a whole lot of investment, and depending on where that is made, there could be important shifts in the United States in where autos are made,” said Brad Setser, an economist in the Obama and Biden administrations who is now senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The next China trade battle could be over electric cars
General Motors this year pledged to spend $7 billion — its largest investment ever — on four Michigan manufacturing sites for battery cells and electric vehicles. It’s also making big investments in EV and battery factories in Ohio, Tennessee, Canada and Mexico.
Ford and South Korea’s SK Innovation plan to invest $11 billion in new manufacturing campuses in Tennessee and Kentucky that will employ 11,000 people to make vehicles and batteries. Tesla recently opened a giant factory in Austin; Stellantis and Samsung are spending $2.5 billion on a battery plant in Indiana, and Mercedes-Benz in the coming months will start producing electric SUVs at its retooled facilities in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
In an interview, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Illinois is prioritizing workforce training and other support for the industry, because of the direction things are heading. The state last year adopted a law that provides new tax credits to EV and battery manufacturers, and allows local governments to abate property taxes for such projects.
“The old Rust Belt manufacturing is going to be around for quite a while, but that is not where the significant growth is going to be,” Pritzker told The Post while attending an event last month at the Lion Electric factory. “It’s going to be in advanced manufacturing and high-skilled labor and robotics.”
For Normal and the surrounding region, the benefits of EV manufacturing have been clear. Rivian is now the county’s second-largest employer, behind State Farm. The manufacturer has drawn new residents from out of state, including Chief Executive R.J. Scaringe, who bought a home in the area. That, and the rapid hiring of local employees, has sparked a boom in house prices, with Rivian employees sometimes competing for the same homes, said spokesman Zach Dietmeier.
Duzen’s husband works at the factory and is currently putting in twelve hours a day, six days a week. He earns $20 an hour, with time-and-a-half for overtime and $40 an hour on Sundays, she said. In the coming months, Rivian is going to pay for him to return to school for more training, she added. | 2022-09-12T11:08:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The auto industry is retooling to get ahead of the EV revolution - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/12/auto-industry-electric-car-ev-revolution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/12/auto-industry-electric-car-ev-revolution/ |
Vitamin D isn’t the panacea some believe it to be. But it has shown promise in a few key areas.
Advice by JoAnn E. Manson, MD
JoAnn E. Manson is the preventive medicine chief at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Q: I keep hearing about the benefits of vitamin D and am worried I’m not getting enough of it. Is taking a supplement really necessary?
A: For years, people have thought of vitamin D as a miracle supplement that could lower the risk for developing cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, broken bones and a long list of other chronic diseases.
But large randomized clinical trials over the last few years have shown that vitamin D isn’t the panacea some believed it to be. The bottom line: The vast majority of Americans are already getting all the vitamin D they need from their diet and the sun.
Is it necessary for you to spend money on the supplement? For most healthy adults, the answer is no. We need only small-to-moderate amounts of the vitamin, and more is not necessarily better.
The shift on vitamin D has left a lot of people confused. To understand how this happened, let’s start with the difference between observational studies and randomized trials. Observational studies do exactly what their name suggests: observe what people do and analyze data. Randomized trials are experiments that alter what people do, similar to a flip of a coin deciding who gets vitamin D pills and who gets a placebo, then checking to see who does better. Past observational work had shown a link between vitamin D levels and risk of chronic diseases, but this correlation could not prove causation and may have been due to other factors.
In 2009, my colleagues and I started a study to help fill in the gaps, looking for clearer answers on whether supplementation can prevent heart disease, stroke and cancer. The nationwide randomized trial, called the VITAL Study, recruited nearly 26,000 adults and followed them for five years. Participants agreed to receive either a placebo or 2,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day, without knowing which one they were taking.
The first results, published in 2019, found no statistically significant reduction in cardiovascular disease or cancer. Other randomized trials have also found no clear benefits of vitamin D supplements for these diseases. For example, we published a meta-analysis looking at vitamin D supplements and cardiovascular risk in 21 randomized trials featuring more than 83,000 people. This analysis did not find a single trial showing cardiovascular benefit.
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My colleagues and I have conducted further studies from VITAL showing that vitamin D supplements do not decrease the risk of cognitive decline, depression, macular degeneration, atrial fibrillation or several other health conditions. The most recent report showed no reduction in the rate of bone fractures — once the vitamin’s most commonly touted benefit.
In other words, vitamin D is no cure-all. But it did show promise in two key areas.
In VITAL, we found that vitamin D supplements may have benefits for reducing autoimmune diseases and advanced (metastatic or fatal) cancer. Supplementation appeared to reduce the risk of developing autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis by about 22 percent and advanced cancer by 17 percent (without decreasing other cancers). Our team is doing further research to delve more deeply into these findings, as well as exploring whether the effects of vitamin D vary by genetic factors.
Other studies have indicated that vitamin D may improve immune function and help tamp down inflammation, which may help explain the possible link between the vitamin and better covid outcomes. My colleagues and I are leading a randomized trial of 2,024 participants nationwide to find out whether vitamin D affects the likelihood of covid-19 infection, risk of severe symptoms and development of long covid. The findings are expected to be published later this year.
In the meantime, as the pandemic drags on, it’s reasonable (but not essential) for healthy adults to supplement with low-to-moderate amounts of the vitamin — around 1,000-2,000 IU per day. These amounts have been shown to be safe long-term. Taking very high doses, or “mega-dosing” (such as taking more than 6,000 IU daily), has not been studied long-term and may increase the risk of high calcium levels in the blood, kidney stones and other health issues.
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If you’re part of a high-risk group for vitamin D deficiency, then talk to your doctor about taking a supplement and being tested for vitamin D blood levels. That includes those living in nursing homes, where there may be little sun exposure; those with certain dietary restrictions such as severe lactose intolerance; those with malabsorption conditions such as Crohn’s or celiac disease; and those being treated for osteoporosis or other bone health problems.
Otherwise, if you feel fine and are healthy, testing for vitamin D is likely a waste of money. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force didn’t find enough evidence to recommend routine screening because no study has clearly shown that it’s tied to better health outcomes. Thresholds for deficiency and recommended blood levels vary across organizations, countries and labs, casting further doubt on the test’s usefulness. For example, while the National Academy of Medicine suggests a level at or above 20 ng/ml, some organizations recommend higher levels.
If you’re still concerned about your vitamin D levels but not in a high-risk group, try taking a few simple steps to boost your intake instead.
The National Academy recommends 600 IU of vitamin D per day for adults up to age 70 and 800 IU above that age. In the United States, foods such as dairy products, cereal and orange juice are often fortified with vitamin D. (Countries that don’t fortify foods have higher rates of vitamin D deficiency.) Checking nutrition labels can help you make better decisions about which foods to purchase. Wild mushrooms and fatty fish, such as salmon, sardines and tuna, are other sources.
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Also, going out for a 15-minute walk a few times a week at midday is usually enough sunlight for the skin to synthesize vitamin D. This can even be incidental sun exposure, such as while running errands. An even better idea for your health would be to exercise outdoors, such as playing sports or going for a jog. Wearing sunscreen does lessen sunlight absorption but is crucial for preventing skin cancer and premature skin aging, if sun exposure is extended.
Although it’s much easier to pop a pill than to be physically active outdoors and eat healthfully, the latter two will do more to keep you healthy and lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. Taking a supplement will never be a substitute for a healthy diet and lifestyle. | 2022-09-12T11:08:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How much vitamin D do I need, and should I take a supplement? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/12/vitamin-d-supplement-deficiency-covid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/12/vitamin-d-supplement-deficiency-covid/ |
Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla leave after attending the presentation of addresses by both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall, Sept. 12, 2022. (Pool/Reuters)
LONDON — King Charles III addressed both houses of parliament and received condolences from British lawmakers on Monday — the first time he has done so as sovereign and head of state of the United Kingdom.
The ceremony, held under the hammer-beam roof of the imposing Westminster Hall, is an important one in cementing the relationship between government and the monarch.
Speaking at a gilded lectern, the new king said that he was “deeply grateful” for the condolences — given by the speakers of both houses of parliament — which “so touchingly encompasses” what his “darling late” mother meant to everyone.
King Charles III live updates
The new king referenced William Shakespeare in his speech, saying: “As Shakespeare says of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, she was ‘a pattern to all princes living.’”
Around 900 members of Parliament and members of the House of Lords were in attendance to watch the address.
The ceremony in Westminster reaffirms the relationship between the sovereign of the United Kingdom and the Parliament where true power lies in a constitutional monarchy.
“As I stand before you today, I cannot help but feel the weight of history which surrounds us and which reminds us of the vital Parliamentary traditions,” Charles said, invoking the nearly 1,000 year old history of the building. “Parliament is the living and breathing instrument of our democracy.”
Like so many people remembering the queen since her death, he praised her dedication to duty and promised to emulate her to the best of his ability.
It was the start of a busy day for the new king, who is embarking on a four-nation tour of the United Kingdom.
The queen’s coffin, currently in Edinburgh, will eventually make its way to London, where the public will be able to view the late monarch’s lying in state in Westminster Hall over the course of four full days for 24 hours a day.
Westminster Hall, built in 1097, is a place of huge significance in Britain. Addressing both house of there, as Charles did on Monday, is a special honor. Queen Elizabeth II was the last royal to do so in 2012, on the occasion of her diamond jubilee when the national was celebrating 60 years on the throne. Barack Obama gave an address in the hall the year before — the first U.S. president to do so.
While this is Charles first address to Parliament as monarch, he did stand in for the queen earlier in the year when he delivered the ceremonial State Opening of Parliament.
That address — like the one on Monday — was not given in the House of Commons. Indeed, monarchs aren’t allowed into the House of Commons, a tradition dating back to the 16th Century when to King Charles I tried to break in and cause chaos.
Prince Charles opens Parliament, but it’s still the Queen’s Speech
While there were only two short speeches from lawmakers on Monday, Parliament did gather last week in a special session where they offered heartwarming tributes, highlighting the queen’s devotion and duty, but also her wit and humility.
In arguably one of the best speeches of his career, the former prime minister Boris Johnson described the queen as “Elizabeth the Great,” the “person who, all the surveys say, appears most often in our dreams.”
He noted her humility: “I can tell you as a direct eyewitness that she drove herself in her own car, with no detectives and no bodyguard, bouncing at alarming speed over the Scottish landscape to the total amazement of the ramblers and tourists we encountered.”
She was, he said, so “unvarying in her pole star radiance that we have perhaps been lulled into thinking that she might be in some way eternal.”
Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, shared a funny anecdotes from spending time with the queen, as all prime ministers do, during the summer holidays in Balmoral.
“I am sometimes asked who, among all the world leaders I met, was the most impressive. I have no hesitation in saying that of all the Heads of State and Government, the most impressive person I met was Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” May said.
Liz Truss, who became the queen’s 15th prime minister on Tuesday, after meeting with the queen in Balmoral, said that the queen was “rock on which modern Britain was built.” | 2022-09-12T11:37:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles III addresses parliament, promises to emulate queen's example - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/king-charles-parliament-westminster/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/king-charles-parliament-westminster/ |
Roberts joins the chorus of Supreme Court whining
Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., center, arrives on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol for Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony as the 45th president on Jan. 20, 2017. (Win McNamee/AP)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has joined the list of other right-wing justices (Samuel A. Alito Jr., Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas) whining about public criticism of the court.
Let’s begin by recalling that no court was more heavily criticized than the Warren court. Yet you did not hear a constant drumbeat of complaints from the justices themselves. They let their opinions and history do the talking — an approach the current court, which is widely and correctly seen as partisan and peevish, would do well to follow.
Appearing at a legal conference Friday, Roberts declared, “You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is. And you don’t want public opinion to be the guide of what the appropriate decision is.” He continued: “Yes, all of our opinions are open to criticism. In fact, our members do a great job of criticizing some opinions from time to time. But simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court.”
He really doesn’t get it. The degree to which this court is utterly and completely tone-deaf to its role in the destruction of its own integrity remains a powerful reason for court expansion or term limits.
“Roberts’s failure to understand why the court has lost credibility with so many Americans smacks of ‘Let them eat cake,’ ” Joyce White Vance, a former prosecutor and a distinguished professor of the practice of law at the University of Alabama law school, told me. “The Supreme Court has a proud history of defending our rights, not taking them away. The Roberts court will go down in history as the first one” to strip away people’s rights.
University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman said: “I would be be embarrassed to say something that naive and divorced from reality if I had said it as a first-year law student. For the chief justice to say it is just an insult to the intellect of everyone who knows anything about the court, American democracy and politics.”
Let’s start with the obvious. It’s a fact, not an accusation, that the court is losing the public’s confidence. One need only look at a slew of polls to see that the court’s self-image as a nonpartisan institution does not match public perception. The question that remains is whether Roberts and the other five conservative justices will make it worse.
Roberts would rather not address the root of the court’s credibility crisis: its conservative members’ blatant disregard of nearly 50 years of precedent, their misuse and abuse of facts and history, their penchant for delivering public screeds in political settings, their misleading answers in confirmation hearings, their improper use of the shadow docket, their prior placement on the shortlist of potential justices by right-wing dark-money groups attempting to transform the judiciary, their opposition to adhering to a mandatory code of judicial ethics — and a refusal by Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, despite the anti-democracy activism of his wife, Ginni.
And let’s not forget: The court got its 6-3 supermajority largely through GOP hypocrisy and Congress’s refusal to take up the nomination of Merrick Garland in the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency.
There is a price to be paid for such shenanigans.
If Roberts and the conservative bloc were to engage in just a tiny amount of self-reflection, they would understand that their own actions have brought them to this point. Law professor Stephen I. Vladeck, of the University of Texas school of law, asked me rhetorically: “If the court’s legitimacy doesn’t come from public acceptance of the principled nature of its decision-making, where does it come from?”
While Roberts might not have written the most egregious opinions, he has joined in them, from the abortion ruling in Dobbs, to the prayer-in-schools ruling in Bremerton, to a Brnovich decision on voting rights, written by Alito, that “blatantly ignored the plain language of the law and rewrote it to fit his partisan and ideological views,” as political scientist Norman Ornstein told me. Moreover, Ornstein said, it is Roberts who has “ignored Clarence Thomas’s blatant conflicts of interest and continues to oppose applying the judicial code of ethics to the Supreme Court, even as its credibility plummets.”
He concluded: “John G. Roberts Jr. is far from the worst justice undermining the fundamental legitimacy of the court, but he is surely culpable.”
The court has failed to regulate itself and instead has abused its power. None of the six right-wing justices acknowledge, nor do they signal they want to halt, the conduct that has lost the public’s confidence.
So it’s up to Congress and the president to shore up the court’s credibility. Allocating more seats to correct the damage done by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s court-packing, imposing term limits on all justices and enacting a mandatory code of ethics would be good places to start. | 2022-09-12T12:03:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Roberts joins the chorus of Supreme Court whining - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/roberts-criticism-supreme-court-whining/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/roberts-criticism-supreme-court-whining/ |
Consumer Credit Is Soaring in the US. So What?
Americans have driven up their credit balances at a record pace this year. The doomsayers say this clearly shows that households are struggling in the face of the highest rates of inflation since the early 1980s and have no choice but to go into debt to make ends meet. The reality is not as dire. In fact, consumers’ finances are near the best shape ever, giving them a long runway until rising debt obligations become a problem.
It’s easy to understand the worry. Four of the biggest monthly jumps in consumer credit on record have come this year, with outstanding balances growing by an average of $33.1 billion a month over the past six months, according to Federal Reserve data. To put that in context the monthly average in all of 2019 was a little less than half that amount at $15.4 billion. The numbers are certainly shocking, but there are indications that they are mostly healthy and normal.
First, consider revolving credit, which includes credit cards. That form of credit contracted dramatically early in the pandemic as consumers had fewer options to spend and used excess savings and stimulus checks to pay down balances. Now, consumers are mostly just playing catchup, as the amount of revolving credit outstanding remains below the pre-pandemic trendline. If it blows past trend, that would indicate broader inflation-induced distress, but the financial system broadly isn’t even close to that point. Of course, many lower income households are suffering from the spike higher prices and are being forced to reach for their credit cards. But there’s no sign of a debt problem brewing broadly that could damage the economy.
Non-revolving credit is a slightly different story. That’s mostly education and car loans, but it also includes financing for other big-ticket goods such as boats and trailers that surged in popularity during the pandemic. That category has seen a pandemic-era expansion that exceeds trend, and automobiles, which account for 39% of non-revolving credit and 30% of consumer credit, seem to be the main culprit. Chalk that up to the extraordinary runup in car prices in 2021 and, perhaps to some degree, the extra interest in car ownership due to public health concerns. Many people who once used public transportation have preferred to opt for the better social-distancing of a vehicle.
Although much smaller than the auto segment, the real juggernaut of loan growth was the “other” category of non-revolving credit, including the aforementioned maritime toys. Early in the pandemic, coastal communities saw an explosion of interest in boating in response to social distancing guidelines. But that category is too minor to have a broad impact. Moreover, boat owners typically aren’t living paycheck-to-paycheck as a general rule, so cross that off the list of would-be drivers of a structural leverage crisis. If there was cause for concern in the consumer credit data, it would be found in the nonrevolving credit section. But growth in that segment peaked earlier in the year and showed some signs of moderation in the most recent report. The latest month’s increase was the smallest since January.
Finally, the household debt service ratio -- the ratio of debt payments to disposable income -- is near historic lows. That’s thanks to opportunities to refinance debt at low rates in 2020 and 2021 and to the influx of trillions of dollars of government cash during the Covid-19 pandemic. As painful as inflation is, homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages, which account for the vast majority of home loans, may have benefitted from wage increases while their biggest liabilities remained the same or were renegotiated at lower rates. Taking consumer debt and home loans together, the total burden remains extremely modest.
None of this means that there’s no cause for concern. The economy faces elevated odds of a recession due in part to the Fed raising rates quickly to get inflation back under control, and many economists predict unemployment may increase in the process. No job means no income, and debt service ratios that look so low today could rapidly surge if the labor market stumbles. No group would suffer more than lower-income households that have already started to spend their cash stockpiles to keep up with inflation. But from a systemic perspective, household finances appear to be starting from a position of strength. For now ,at least, the runup in consumer credit looks like much ado about nothing. | 2022-09-12T12:38:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Consumer Credit Is Soaring in the US. So What? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/consumer-credit-is-soaring-in-the-us-so-what/2022/09/12/3ec2770a-3293-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/consumer-credit-is-soaring-in-the-us-so-what/2022/09/12/3ec2770a-3293-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Wall Street Squirms While Main Street Gets Relief
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 26: Pedestrians walk through a shopping district in Manhattan on August 26, 2022 in New York City. The Commerce Department announced on Friday that consumer spending only rose 0.1 percent in July, down from 1 percent in June. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) (Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America)
It’s been three months since the elevated May consumer prices report led the Federal Reserve to adopt a “whatever it takes” mentality to fight inflation. Markets are now bracing for an expected third straight 0.75% increase in the Federal Funds rate at the Fed’s next policy meeting. But a funny thing has happened as markets and the economy adapted to the new policy environment: Much of the pain that Main Street was feeling has shifted to Wall Street.
The two most significant changes unfolding in the real economy over the past three months are in energy markets and the housing market. Retail gasoline prices peaked at $5 a gallon in mid-June, and have since fallen by more than $1.25 a gallon. According to Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy, American drivers are about to be saving $500 million a day on gasoline compared with what they were paying three months ago. And with gasoline futures prices continuing to fall, those savings should increase for at least the next couple of weeks.
In the housing market, transactions have slowed to a crawl as mortgage rates jumped, and home prices have begun to fall in some of the metro areas where they rose the most over the past couple years. For the relatively small share of Americans looking to buy or sell a home right now, this has become a headache, but for the tens of millions of Americans who are perfectly content to stay in their home — with a mortgage rate that’s probably less than 3% — this is no problem at all.
The inventory of houses for sale is now falling, as homeowners face no financial pressure to sell their homes because their job outlook remains strong with persistent low unemployment.
Inflation is still causing pain, especially at the grocery store. And as the housing market cools, rental prices continue to surge.
But on the whole, Americans are encouraged by the recent turn of economic events as measured by a variety of surveys. Consumer confidence rose in August after three months of decline and is back to its levels from May, according to Conference Board data. The University of Michigan’s measure of consumer sentiment rose in both July and August after hitting a record multi-decade low in June.
Internet polling and data analytics firm Civiqs shows a similar improvement since June, with the plunge in gasoline prices and the steady labor market seemingly overriding the general tightening of financial conditions in terms of how Americans see the state of the economy.
The same cannot be said for investors. Strategists from Morgan Stanley to Bank of America still expect stock prices to remain under pressure given their views on the trajectory of both earnings and economic growth. In the gloomy S&P services sector survey released this week, the financial sector reported the most negativity.
Wall Street’s focus is on rising interest rates that are squeezing financial markets and what they think that means for the economy, while Main Street by and large sees a steady job market and falling gasoline prices as signs that conditions are no worse than they were in June, and perhaps even better.
For so long, we’ve become accustomed to looking to Wall Street as a guide for what’s likely to happen to Main Street. If investors were doing well, maybe a little of that would trickle down to workers. And if Wall Street was struggling, it inevitably meant stagnation or worse for workers. That mentality was at the root of the bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis – banks, corporations, and investors got backstopped rather than workers.
But in the current economic environment the relationship isn’t so straightforward. The stock market is on pace for its worst year in over a decade at the same time the US economy has added 3.5 million jobs. So the next time you see a negative economic outlook, stop and think about whether it’s truly likely to affect workers and consumers, or whether it’s just investors frustrated that they’re not making money as easily as they have in the past.
It’s possible that we’re just in the middle of a transition period in which consumers and workers get a little relief before the grim reality of tightening financial conditions spells doom for the labor market and economic growth down the road. But most of the squeeze that’s happening right now is on Wall Street rather than Main Street, and it’s also possible that inflation will ease up without any dire economic scenarios ever coming to pass.
It’s a Housing Slump, Not a Financial Crisis: Jared Dillian
Powell’s Looking Well Past the Next CPI Report: Jonathan Levin
Ready to Work Until You Die? America Needs You: Stephen Mihm | 2022-09-12T12:38:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wall Street Squirms While Main Street Gets Relief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/wall-street-squirms-while-main-street-gets-relief/2022/09/12/5d4d7e9a-328e-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/wall-street-squirms-while-main-street-gets-relief/2022/09/12/5d4d7e9a-328e-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
A basement hallway in an abandoned mental asylum. (Rob Dobi/Getty Images)
Filthy wards. Unlicensed doctors. Forced labor. Outdated treatments, or no treatment at all. For nearly a century after the Civil War, Black patients in segregated state psychiatric facilities in the South endured unthinkable conditions for no reason other than the color of their skin.
On Sept. 15 at 2 p.m. Eastern, a free virtual lecture will delve into the grim realities of those separate and unequal facilities — and explore their long-lasting effects in modern mental health care.
Medical historian Kylie Smith, an associate professor at Emory University, has spent years studying the history of racial segregation in psychiatric hospitals, particularly in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.
In her lecture, “James H. Cassedy Lecture in the History of Medicine: Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South,” she’ll share her research, such as the racist mentality that providers used to justify their treatment of Black patients and the ways post-Civil War segregation still affects psychiatric care throughout the South.
Most patients in these facilities were forcibly committed and couldn’t effectively contest their confinement in court. Instead, they were required to perform hard labor, disciplined harshly and denied evidence-based treatment in plantation-like conditions.
Psychiatric segregation didn’t end with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in facilities that receive federal funding. It took a long legal battle and inspections that revealed the appalling treatment of patients whose health was overshadowed by racist assumptions and fears of intermixing between Black and White people.
Smith sees those hospitals as battlegrounds for a society in flux, drawing connections between the ways Black patients were treated and an avalanche of modern disparities in health care. Even now, Black patients are less likely to receive treatment for mental health disorders and receive poorer mental health care.
Black patients are less likely to be offered talk therapy or evidence-based medication than the general population, according to the American Psychiatric Association. They are also more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and less likely to be diagnosed with mood disorders than their White counterparts, the APA says. And in one study, older White people in the South were nearly twice as likely to use mental health services than older Black people.
Presented by the National Library of Medicine, the hour-long lecture will also be archived on the NLM’s videocast website. Tune in at VideoCast.nih.gov. | 2022-09-12T12:38:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NIH lecture to delve into racism of mental health care in the South - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/12/racism-psychiatric-hospitals-lecture/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/12/racism-psychiatric-hospitals-lecture/ |
A TV actress got menacing letters for years. Her stalker is going to prison.
For more than 12 years, man threatened to rape, torture and kill ‘CSI: Miami’ actress Eva LaRue and her daughter, prosecutors say
Actress Eva LaRue in 2018. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
One of the first letters authorities say James David Rogers wrote to a “CSI: Miami” actress came with a vow: “I am going to … stalk you until the day you die.”
Six days later, another letter came with another pledge: “I am going to instill fear into every part of your life.”
For more than 12 years, federal prosecutors said, Rogers made good on his promises to Eva LaRue, an actress whose credits include seven seasons on “CSI: Miami” as Natalia Boa Vista and 138 episodes on “All My Children” as Dr. Maria Santos Grey.
Only being arrested stopped him.
Rogers, 58, was sentenced last week to three years and four months in federal prison for what prosecutors called his 12-year “campaign of torment,” in which he threatened to torture, rape and kill LaRue and her daughter. Rogers pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for Central California in April to two counts of mailing threatening communications, two counts of stalking and one count of threats by interstate communications.
Christina Grimmie’s murder shines light on the dark side of celebrity: deranged fans
Rogers’s “vicious and relentless harassment left emotional scars on Ms. LaRue and her daughter, the latter of whom has endured his abuse for most of her life,” Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said in an email. “We hope the victims will achieve some measure of peace and closure now that Rogers is going to prison.”
Rogers’s attorney, deputy federal public defender Waseem Salahi, did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Sunday. At his sentencing on Thursday, Rogers told U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt that he was abused and bullied growing up but is now receiving mental health treatment, CNN reported.
“I sincerely apologize for what I did for the last 12 years, putting you and your family through hellish behavior,” he said to LaRue, according to CNN. “I accept full responsibility. I hope you can put this behind you and at some point never think about me again.”
Mila Kunis’s stalker has escaped from a mental health facility
Between 2007 and his arrest in 2019, Rogers waged a “campaign of torment” against mother and daughter, prosecutors said. From the start of that campaign in March 2007 through June 2015, Rogers sent LaRue and her daughter some 37 handwritten and typed letters in which he threatened to rape, torture and kill them, court records show. LaRue’s daughter was 5 when Rogers started sending letters.
Rogers signed his letters as “Freddie Krueger,” misspelling the first name of the fictional serial killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street slasher films.
In a 2007 letter, Rogers told LaRue that the previous “Mother’s Day may be your last. I have been thinking how I am going to rape and kill you and your daughter,” court records state. Later in the letter, he said: “Maybe I must go see you in Los Angeles.”
In a 2015 letter to LaRue’s daughter, Rogers wrote, “I am the man who has been stalking for the last 7 years. Now I have my eye on you too,” according to court documents.
About four years later, he wrote her another letter, in which he threatened to rape and impregnate her, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 indictment.
“His letters were meant to terrify and intimidate, and [he] succeeded in that aim from the start,” prosecutors wrote last month in a memo in which they pushed the judge to sentence Rogers to nearly five years in prison.
Over an almost three-week period in October and November 2019, Rogers called the daughter’s school about 18 times, identifying himself to an employee as her father on at least three of them and asking whether she was at the school, prosecutors alleged. He left a voice mail at the end of one of the last calls. In that message, he identified himself as Krueger and threatened to “rape her, molest her and kill her,” according to court records.
Rogers’s “threats impacted the daily lives of his victims,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
For years, LaRue didn’t know the identity of the person sending her the threats. She and her daughter drove roundabout routes home, slept with weapons close by and talked with each other about getting help quickly if the stalker tried to hurt them. They moved several times over the years and avoided getting mail at their home address to try to hide from Rogers.
“To no avail. Each time they moved, [Rogers’s] letters — and the victims’ terror — would always follow,” prosecutors wrote in court documents. “And [he] knew it.”
The FBI caught on to Rogers’s trail after taking DNA found on the envelope of one of his letters and running it through a genetic genealogy database, according to CNN. That gave agents a list of the suspect’s relatives and led them to a small town in Ohio where they surveilled Rogers. After he threw an Arby’s bag in a dumpster, agents collected it and matched DNA from a soda straw to what they’d found on the letter, CNN reported.
They arrested Rogers at his home in November 2019.
At Thursday’s hearing, LaRue thanked Rogers for apologizing but called his stalking “beyond deviant behavior” that had stripped her and her family of their basic freedoms, according to CNN. Her daughter said that after Rogers contacted her school, she was afraid for her life and dogged by paranoia, a fear that endures nearly three years later. LaRue spoke of her own fear, not only in the past, but also for the future, after Rogers finishes his sentence.
“I am so worried,” she told the judge, “what will happen when he gets out.” | 2022-09-12T12:39:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James David Rogers sentenced to prison for threats against Eva LaRue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/12/eva-larue-csi-actress-stalker/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/12/eva-larue-csi-actress-stalker/ |
Climate law omits funding for resilience to weather disasters
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we're reading the Onion's tips on “what to say to someone who denies climate change.” One tip: “If sea levels rise, thousands of New Yorkers could relocate to your hometown.” 😂 But first:
Inflation Reduction Act includes zero dollars for resilience to climate disasters
The Inflation Reduction Act authorizes the biggest infusion of federal spending yet to tackle the climate crisis — roughly $369 billion to slash greenhouse gas emissions and bolster clean energy.
Of that $369 billion, one might ask, how much is devoted to ensuring that the nation's infrastructure is built to withstand mounting weather disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes and floods?
Not much. Zero dollars, to be precise.
While the landmark law contains historic investments in curbing planet-warming emissions, it provides no money for making infrastructure more resilient to disasters, even as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events across the country.
“It includes absolutely nothing to ensure that buildings are built to withstand natural hazards at a time when natural hazards are expected to increase because of climate change,” said Gabriel Maser, vice president of federal relations at the International Code Council, a nonprofit organization that develops model building codes.
To be sure, the climate law provides $1 billion for new and existing buildings to slash energy use and meet the latest energy codes. The bipartisan infrastructure law, which President Biden signed in November, also included investments in resilience.
Yet neither law would prevent new or retrofitted buildings from being swept away in floodwaters or burning down in a wildfire — the latter of which would release more emissions into the atmosphere.
“From our perspective, it's a suboptimal strategy,” Maser said. “It would be like putting a brand new Tesla motor in a 1990s-era Dodge Caravan pre-airbags and then providing subsidies for people to buy that.”
'Horse trading' on the Hill
In September 2021, as congressional Democrats began crafting the climate package, advocates sent a letter to lawmakers requesting $300 million for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support the implementation, adoption and enforcement of hazard-resistant building codes.
“The National Institute of Building Sciences estimates that modern building codes save $11 for every $1 invested,” said the letter, which was signed by more than 50 organizations representing engineers, emergency responders, manufacturers, contractors and insurers.
An earlier version of the climate package provided half the requested amount — $150 million — for hazard-resistant building codes. That version of the law, which passed the House in November, was appropriately called the Build Back Better Act.
But that provision was ultimately cut from the measure during private negotiations this summer between Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who insisted on trimming the package.
“It would have been better to have it in there, but I also understand that Senator Schumer had to do his horse trading,” said W. Craig Fugate, the former head of FEMA under President Barack Obama. “Once he got a deal, it was hard to add anything back in.”
Fugate, who previously led Florida's emergency agency during seven hurricanes, said stronger building codes can play a crucial role in helping structures withstand severe storms.
After Hurricane Charley in 2004, for instance, the results of stiffer regulations were on vivid display in Florida's coastal towns. Powerful winds razed or damaged thousands of older homes, while newer construction was unscathed.
Alice Hill, a former special assistant to Obama and senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council, called on Congress to prioritize hazard-resistant building codes, despite its packed agenda before November's midterm elections.
“It's an area that isn't particularly sexy, but it's actually foundational to our safety,” said Hill, a senior fellow on energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is landmark legislation that will help the country reduce emissions,” she added. “But I wouldn't call it a resilience or adaptation bill. We will need further action by the federal government to help all of us prepare for what we're already seeing outside our windows.”
Natalie Enclade, executive director of the BuildStrong Coalition, an organization that advocates for updated building codes, urged the Senate to pass the Resilient AMERICA Act, which would empower FEMA to support the adoption of stronger codes through its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.
The legislation, which was introduced by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), passed the House in April with bipartisan support. But the measure has since stalled in the Senate.
A House Democratic aide said DeFazio is now pushing for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over FEMA, to hold a hearing on the bill. The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
White House officials have grown increasingly alarmed about Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to cancel natural gas shipments to Europe, as the continent stares down an energy crisis ahead of winter, The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports.
After Western nations moved to put a cap on Russian oil prices to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, Putin said last week that he would retaliate by cutting off oil and gas shipments.
Some White House officials think that Putin's threat is at least in part a bluff, since Russia needs revenue from its energy exports to fund the war in Ukraine. But aides to President Biden have in recent days renewed their efforts to boost exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe, aiming to see whether American producers can help fill the gap, according to two White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
GOP drops gas price rhetoric from campaign ads as inflation fears fade
For months, Republicans have focused their campaign ads on rising prices at the gas pump, seeking to weaponize the issue ahead of November's midterm elections. But GOP officials have dropped that rhetoric as inflation concerns fade, with gas prices down by more than $1 a gallon since their June peak, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, The Post's Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Isaac Arnsdorf and Jeff Stein report.
Only about 1 percent of ads mentioned “gas prices” in early September, according to data from the tracking firm AdImpact, compared to 1 in about every 6 ads that mentioned those words in July.
Instead, “crime” has become a central message of Republicans, with the word being used in 29 percent of ads, up from about 12 percent in July.
Climate change has created a vexing paradox: Rising global temperatures are prompting more people to use air-conditioning units, which in turn accelerate global warming. The good news is that researchers and start-ups are racing to create cutting-edge AC units that are better for the planet, The Post's Shannon Osaka reports.
According to the International Energy Agency, the number of AC units in buildings across the globe could reach 5.6 billion by 2050, a big jump from the roughly 2 billion units today. Current AC units suck tons of electricity from the grid, and their chemical refrigerants can accelerate global warming.
But companies say that the next generation of AC units will emit fewer greenhouse gases and use less energy to operate, helping customers save money on their utility bills. Some newer AC units use different refrigerants that have less planet-warming potential, while others use “variable speed compressors,” which allow the units to run on different speeds, depending on the temperature outside.
Still, some of the new designs may take years to hit the market, according to Ankit Kalanki, a manager at Third Derivative, a climate tech accelerator co-founded by the energy think tank RMI. In the meantime, Kalanki recommended looking at three factors when buying a new AC unit: the type of refrigerant used, the efficiency rating, and whether the unit has a variable speed compressor.
The House is back in session this week. Here's what we've got on tap:
On Wednesday: The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold a hearing on the alleged role of public relations firms in helping the oil and gas industry spread climate disinformation and delay legislative solutions to global warming. The firms Singer Associates, Story Partners and Pac/West Communications were invited to testify but declined to attend, according to the committee.
The House Agriculture Committee will meet to discuss soil health practices and programs that support regenerative agriculture, which helps sequester carbon.
The House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will hold a hearing titled “The Legal Assault on Environmental Activists and the First Amendment.”
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will meet to consider the nomination of Shailen Bhatt to be administrator of the Transportation Department’s Federal Highway Administration.
On Thursday: The House Oversight and Reform Committee will hold a hearing on Big Oil’s contributions to climate change, focusing on the industry’s high prices, record profits, and commitments to reduce pollution and tackle global warming.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on the federal government’s role in supporting the commercialization of fusion energy, an environmentally friendly power source.
The House Natural Resources Committee will mark up four resolutions directing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to share certain documents with lawmakers, including documents related to the Interior Department's new five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing. The resolutions were all introduced by Republicans.
Cedar Creek Fire, one of 21 fires burning in Oregon, forces evacuations — Bryan Pietsch for The Post
To clean up the Potomac, engineers are digging a 2-mile tunnel under it — Teo Armus for The Post
The Gulf of Maine is simmering, but its lobsters seem fine — for now — Zach Rosenthal and Kevin Ambrose for The Post
Joseph Hazelwood, Exxon Valdez captain in oil spill disaster, dies at 75 — Brian Murphy for The Post
The green dream to rebuild a sustainable Ukraine from the rubble of war — Sebastien Malo for Politico
The ancient subarctic forests at risk from climate change and war — Alexandra Heal for the Financial Times
Just discovered that curly haired horses exist. In case you haven’t seen one, here you go. pic.twitter.com/1OVEipWZXe | 2022-09-12T12:39:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate law omits funding for resilience to weather disasters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/climate-law-omits-funding-resilience-weather-disasters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/climate-law-omits-funding-resilience-weather-disasters/ |
King Charles III inspects an honor guard at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Sept. 12. (Phil Noble/Reuters)
EDINBURGH, Scotland — There’s no question that the British royal family has the closest of ties to Scotland, and the people deeply respected the queen. But the question with her passing is what comes next?
The Scots hold complicated feelings about the late queen and the new king, about the monarchy and whether Scotland should be independent — or even a republic free of hereditary royals — and these feelings were on display here Monday as Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin was set to move from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St. Giles’ Cathedral.
The queen savored her royal estate in the Scottish Highlands, all 50,000 acres of it, where she spent her summers, on the vast moors and glens, shooting the occasional red deer stag. Her family called it “her happy place.”
Her son, King Charles III, attended boarding school in remote Scotland, Gordonstoun, with its cold showers and bullying, which he credits with teaching him about hard work. He established a hub for his Prince’s Foundation, and its sustainability advocacy, at Dumfries House in Scotland.
Charles even looks comfortable in a kilt.
The queen died at Balmoral Castle and her coffin — bedecked with white heather, dahlias and sweet peas, all cut from the royal gardens at her estate — made the 175-mile, six-hour journey to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on Sunday.
Thousands lined the roadways, taking photographs. Some were silent, some waved. After the cortege passed, bagpipes played, in spontaneous, very local moments.
When the procession entered Edinburgh, most mourners were silent, but there were also choruses of boos heard.
Reporters at the scene on Sunday evening witnessed police arrest a protester at St. Giles who held up a placard with a more obscene version of “down with imperialism, abolish monarchy.”
Someone shouted, “Let her go, it’s free speech!” Others urged onlookers to “have some respect.”
Live Updates: King Charles III tours the nation
In Edinburgh, Sophie Campbell, 63, retired shop clerk, was out early awaiting Monday’s procession. Expressing dual loyalties, Campbell said she would welcome Scotland becoming an independent nation, but keeping the king. “It would be the best of both worlds,” she said. “Old and new.”
Campbell said many Scots have no problem with the monarchy. “They’re part of our history.” But she explained, “people in Scotland have problems with the English,” with Boris Johnson and the ruling elites in London.
Daniel Wincott, professor of law and society at Cardiff University, noted that the leaders of the pro-independence Scottish National Party have been “fulsome” in their respectful comments and “praise for the queen” in her death.
But, he said, he could still envision that, after a short period of “coming together” upon the queen’s death, the ties that bind the United Kingdom together could “loosen.”
During the independence referendum in Scotland in 2014, which saw Scotland reject leaving the union, SNP leaders made clear that any newly formed nation would retain the monarch as head of state.
Deputy First Minister of Scotland John Swinney, a leader of the SNP, repeated the promise to BBC radio on Monday, that “His Majesty the King should be the head of state of an independent Scotland.”
He said, “and it's what we will continue to argue.”
Not all agree. The leaders of Green and Alba parties in Scotland say they want to part with the monarchy after independence.
A major survey in May, for the think tank British Future, found 45 percent in Scotland wanted to retain the monarchy — with 36 percent saying the end of the queen’s reign would be the right moment to move to a republic.
On the question of Scottish independence, the queen was mostly mute. But not quite.
At Crathie Kirk, the small Church of Scotland parish, where the royals attend Sunday service when at Balmoral, Elizabeth paused to speak to someone in the crowd before the 2014 referendum. She was overheard to say, “well, I hope people will think very carefully about the future,” widely interpreted as a nudge to vote against independence.
Tim Shipman, political editor at the Sunday Times of London, said this was no slip of the tongue. Reporters had been alerted to keep an ear out for her remark.
David Cameron, prime minister at the time, was caught on a hot mic saying the queen “purred down the phone” when he reported that his campaign against Scottish independence had succeeded. He later apologized for revealing a private conservation with the monarch.
Live updates: King Charles III in Edinburgh for queen’s coffin procession; Prince Harry remembers ‘granny’ | 2022-09-12T13:34:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles in Scotland for Queen Elizabeth lying at rest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/charles-elizabeth-scotland-united-kingdom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/charles-elizabeth-scotland-united-kingdom/ |
A woman wipes sweat from her face at her hut on a Hong Kong rooftop on July 28. Hong Kong is known for its sweltering heat and humidity, but this summer has been particularly brutal. (Louise Delmotte/For The Washington Post)
“Even when I turn on all three fans in the living room, it’s still too hot,” Au said, wiping sweat from his face as the mercury soared into the high 90s on a recent day.
Hong Kong’s suffocating summers are often made worse by an environment of concrete towers, concrete parks and roadside emissions.
On Au’s rooftop in the gentrifying neighborhood of Sham Shui Po, the metal hut traps heat inside the 300-square-foot space.
But even these circumstances are an improvement. For three decades, Au lived in a 60-square-foot hut where all four walls were made of tin. That was until he moved with his family to his current, larger hut on the same rooftop. On summer days at the old hut, he couldn’t stay inside at all.
“It was like an oven up there,” he said.
Some 220,000 people, or about 3 percent of Hong Kong’s population, live in cramped rooftop huts, subdivided apartments and cage homes, according to a 2021 government report. With the poor design of these structures, residents experience conditions that can be 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit (5 to 6 degrees Celsius) hotter than outdoors during a heat wave, according a July report by the Society for Community Organization, a nongovernment group focused on housing issues.
And while the warming climate makes summers worse, low-income families worry about soaring utility bills, said Sze Lai-shan, the group’s deputy director.
“In the short term, provision of air conditioners and electricity fee subsidies will be helpful,” Sze said. “But in the long term, provision of public housing is what they hope for the most.”
Climate experts, however, say bolder action on warming is needed. Hong Kong has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality before the middle of the century, though it has only a relatively modest target of reducing emissions by 26 to 36 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.
Kevin Li, researcher at environmental organization CarbonCare InnoLab, said the government’s latest climate action plan relies heavily on infrastructure projects to mitigate effects such as sea-level rise. But he said these failed to take into account the more immediate plight of disadvantaged groups, such as tenants of rooftop huts and subdivided apartments who face increasingly extreme heat waves and typhoons.
“The government departments only coordinate when large-scale extreme disasters occur, but under climate change, these events can happen anytime,” Li said.
‘Most unbearable’
The window in Tai’s room is useless for air circulation as it faces the door of another room. On hotter days, she can get some respite by spraying water on the rooftop with a hose to lower the temperature.
Tai Sze-lin and Hung Chi-fai share a rooftop hut with four other people. (Video: TWP)
To escape the heat on her day off, Tai, a restaurant worker, visits air-conditioned malls. “I moved to Hong Kong many years ago. This [summer] is the hottest and most unbearable,” she said.
“Now it’s so hot that it seems my head will explode,” she said.
Hung, a cleaner, moved to the rooftop hut in June. Previously, he lived in a “space capsule” pod of less than 20 square feet, one of 16 such pods in a single apartment.
Hung enters his home after spending time on the roof. (Video: TWP)
Hung cools down by visiting a nearby library to pore through newspapers and magazines, before heading home for a shower. “I will stay there for hours until it closes,” he said.
Not only were summers getting hotter, but “abnormal” shorter winters were becoming more common, Hung noted. He felt there was little he could do.
“It’s going to get hotter and hotter,” Hung said. “We can only try our best to adapt and live our lives.”
Wong Chung lives alone in a 50-square-foot room. (Video: TWP)
“I hope the government will help tenants, especially families with kids who had to study in such cramped, stuffy spaces,” he said. “It’s so sad.”
Reporting by Theodora Yu. Photos by Louise Delmotte for The Washington Post. | 2022-09-12T13:34:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change in Hong Kong worsens housing crisis for poor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/hong-kong-heat-roof-huts-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/12/hong-kong-heat-roof-huts-climate/ |
Meraxes gigas had similar body type to the T. rex, which lived almost 20 million years later.
An illustration shows what Meraxes gigas would have looked like in its natural habitat around 90 to 95 million years ago. The newly named species has similar short arms and large head as the T. rex had millions of years later. (Jorge Gonzalez)
The late-Cretaceous-Period predator of the Northern Hemisphere wasn’t the only dinosaur that had this weird body type. So did abelisaurids of the Southern Hemisphere, such as Carnotaurus. And so did a carcharodontosaurid called Meraxes gigas, also from the world’s Southern half but nearly 20 million years earlier, during the early Cretaceous.
They all had “really short arms and very massive skulls,” he says. M. gigas weighed nearly 4½ tons, and T. rex and Carcharodontosaurus weighed about 7½ to 8½ tons. Their heads grew to about 4 or 5 feet long, and their arms were about the length of an adult human’s.
“The fact that these lineages are so similar in their body plan just seemed to us like it couldn’t be a coincidence,” Makovicky says.
In the past, many researchers focused on what theropods used their tiny arms for. Makovicky says M. gigas shows that while their arms might have had purposes as they evolved to be smaller and smaller, such as helping the dinos lie on their stomachs, they probably became less important — at least for catching prey.
These different theropod lineages evolved over millions of years, and on different continents, “to look like that for some reason, and something about that [theropod] body plan [means] you have to make some trade-offs,” Makovicky says. “As their skulls get disproportionately bigger, their arms get disproportionately shorter and they’re transferring whatever the predatory function of the forelimbs is to the head.”
Patagonia has been a dinosaur hot spot for a long time, not just for giant theropods but also for rare small fossils and dinosaur tracks. Makovicky and his team found not just M. gigas but at least two other sauropod fossils at a site in the Neuquén Basin. “You just had this huge pile of bones that as you kept digging, more bones would show up,” he says. “At one point our meat-eating dinosaur started running into the skeleton of a big sauropod, so it became like a game of pickup sticks.”
Adding to the challenge was figuring out how to excavate things upside down. Says Makovicky, “Some of the bones had stuck to the rock layer above and formed a ledge. You actually had to crawl under and figure out a way to pop the bones out of the roof of this little space, which normally you don’t do. Normally you dig down and you lift up.”
Some of those discoveries still have to be studied and described, and there might be more new species in the mix. But Makovicky says he wants to investigate the theropod arms more. “The arm length does not get shorter than a certain proportion. Why is that?” he asks. | 2022-09-12T13:34:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Newly discovered dinosaur shows pattern of huge animals with tiny arms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/12/meraxes-gigas-tiny-arms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/12/meraxes-gigas-tiny-arms/ |
A new report credits Biden for his focus on equity, but says his inner circle does not reflect the constituency that elected him
President Biden and Vice President Harris applaud as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers remarks after her confirmation by the Senate. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
President Biden has sought to live up to his campaign promise of an administration that reflects America’s diversity with a slew of historic appointments: the first Black vice president, a Cabinet more diverse than his predecessors’, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
But a new analysis of Biden’s senior aides from an independent think tank concludes that the president has not done enough to ensure there is sufficient Black representation in key White House jobs that are less visible to the public, but whose holders often have an outsize influence on policy.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which is devoted to issues related to Black equity, examined the White House’s 139 commissioned officer positions — the most senior roles — and found that a total of 15, or roughly 11 percent, were held by Black staffers. In a report released Monday, obtained by The Washington Post before publication, the think tank faulted Biden, noting that Black voters made up 22 percent of his support in 2020.
The study credits Biden for a staff and administration that is more diverse than his predecessors’, a powerful symbol in a nation often riven by racial and cultural differences. But that diversity begins to thin when it comes to Biden’s most senior advisers, the study concluded, a dynamic similar to that often found in American corporations and other government agencies.
“Black folks can’t just be the pawns here. They’ve got to be the knights and the rooks here as well. They’ve got to be a part of the policymaking apparatus,” Overton said. “This can’t be a scenario of, ‘Hey we’ve included some Black folks and we’re doing better than previous administrations.’ Our goal here is that Black folks are in the room and are really integrated in decision-making processes.”
A White House spokeswoman stressed that Biden has a historically diverse administration and Cabinet, which includes “a record number of women and leaders of color,” as well as the first Native American Cabinet secretary and openly gay Cabinet secretary.
“Building an administration that looks like America has been a long-standing commitment of the president, and in alignment with the president’s commitment to diversity and pay equity, the White House has taken significant steps toward that commitment,” Erica P. Loewe, the White House’s director of African American media, said in a statement. “We also know we can continue to build on that historic progress, and President Biden and this White House remain committed to ensuring the White House staff reflects the diversity of the country.”
Biden’s defenders say the steps he has taken have been historic and have helped elevate a generation of Black leaders, and that he should not be faulted for not making everything perfect.
Of the 24 members of Biden’s Cabinet, seven are Black — from Vice President Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to budget director Shalanda Young. Others are Latino, Native American or Asian American.
But Cabinet officials do not necessarily meet often with Biden, and the Joint Center suggested that such prominent examples do not reflect the senior workforce of the White House itself. The commissioned officers — assistants, deputy assistants and special assistants to the president — “frequently convene with the president, influence his way of thinking, make recommendations and advise him on important personnel decisions,” the study says.
Biden’s place in history will likely be linked to the Black people he helped elevate — and the Black voters who helped elevate him. He was vice president to the nation’s first Black president, and in turn selected a woman of Black and Asian descent to be his vice president. He selected Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and another Black woman, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, is one of the most visible faces of the administration.
Cedric L. Richmond, who was a senior adviser to Biden until he left in May to become a senior adviser for the Democratic National Committee, dismissed the notion that Biden has fallen short on diversity, saying the Black people who work in the White House have significant influence — including most obviously the vice president, who frequently has lunch with Biden.
“The last person in the room is the vice president, and last time I checked, she’s Black,” said Richmond, who also co-chaired Biden’s presidential campaign. “We have a Black vice president who [Biden] picked. No one else picked her. He picked her. We have a Black female on the Supreme Court. We have a whole bunch of things we’re celebrating.”
He added, “There’s always work to do; you can always do better. My pushback and frustration is that we keep acting like the Black people that are there and that are involved don’t have a real say and a real role.”
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, has tracked diversity in presidential administrations since the Reagan era. Last year, her analysis found that women and racial minorities made up a higher percentage of confirmed appointees under Biden than any of his three predecessors’ administrations.
Among them was Austin, the first Black defense secretary, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first-ever Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.
Tenpas said the Joint Center’s study was too narrow and that without the broader context, it does a disservice to Biden’s record on diversity. “From my perspective, diversity in the Biden administration far surpasses his predecessors’ in so many different ways,” she said.
Still, members of the administration were dismayed when nearly two dozen Black staffers had left after a year in the White House, an exodus that garnered the internal nickname “Blaxit.” Harris’s initial chief of staff, chief spokeswoman and communications director were all Black women, and all were gone within 15 months of her inauguration.
Interviews with departed Black staffers — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a frank assessment and avoid sullying relationships — provided a nuanced view of what makes Black staffers leave. Some said there was a lack of good mentoring at the White House and they worried they would never break into the tight circle surrounding Biden. Beyond that, any job at the apex of politics means grueling hours and high pressure.
Symone Sanders, Harris’s former chief spokeswoman, left in November and ultimately became the host of her own show on MSNBC. Vince Evans, who also left the vice president’s staff last year, is now executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus. Trey Baker, a former senior adviser to the president, took a job with Barnes & Thornburg, one of the largest law firms in the country.
“Trey has a broad understanding of government developed through firsthand experience, from his work in local government, his involvement in Congress, and ultimately his service at the White House,” the chair of the firm’s Government Services and Finance Department said in announcing Baker’s hiring.
Whatever the reasons, Overton’s group said Biden has an obligation to fill the top ranks of White House with more Black people.
Black voters powered Biden to the White House. His final bid for the presidency hung by a tenuous thread after embarrassing finishes in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, and his fortunes only changed after his decisive win in the early nominating contest in South Carolina, a state with a large Black population.
Winning that state helped persuade Democrats Biden could build the diverse coalition needed to defeat former president Donald Trump. Voters in Georgia, another state with a large Black population, helped hand Biden’s party congressional majorities by voting for two Democratic senators that knotted the upper chamber at 50-50, with Harris holding the tiebreaking vote.
While many Black Americans still support Biden, some have been disappointed by his inability to pass legislation of particular importance to them: federalizing voting rights, reforming the criminal justice system and overhauling the country’s police departments.
Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, faced scrutiny early in his second term from those who believed he did not have enough women in top national security positions. Trump paid little attention to diversity, with only a handful of non-White Cabinet members or senior advisers.
Biden took office after spending 36 years as a U.S. senator from Delaware and eight as Obama’s vice president, and he has long relied on a team of close aides that is largely composed of White men. Tenpas said presidents have traditionally relied on a similar “kitchen Cabinet” which does not always reflect the diversity they have promised.
“That composition is a function of the different jobs they have held over the years in which they’ve acquired those people,” she said. “But those people are not public-facing, and there’s less concern about the composition of that, even though it’s something a president needs.”
But Overton said that if Biden’s aim is true equity, it should start with the offices closest to his.
“This is about having a system that’s truly diverse and multiracial,” Overton said. “That’s the goal we’re going for, and the symbols are important, but that that’s not the full goal. We’re really focused on the substance of representation where different communities are really, truly adequately represented, and at the table and interacting with one another, and moving our country forward.”
Analysis: Some Republicans are backing away from the strictest abortion bans
12:02 PMAnalysis: Campaign cybersecurity might be the weakest link in the midterms | 2022-09-12T13:52:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden has achieved historic diversity. A new study says more can be done. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/biden-diversity-inner-circle/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/biden-diversity-inner-circle/ |
Several miles of lanes opened Saturday; the remaining 13 miles are expected to open before the end of the year
The new express lanes Monday morning at the Balls Ford Road Park and Ride Lot in Manassas. New signs indicate no tolls are in effect and that larger vehicles will pay a higher toll. (Luz Lazo/TWP)
Traffic moved smoothly Monday morning on a section of Interstate 66 in Northern Virginia where new lanes opened over the weekend, adding another dimension to the busy route and giving commuters a choice to pay a toll to get to their destination more quickly.
The four high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes — two in each direction — are open free to all traffic during an adjustment period, allowing Monday commuters to test drive them and have access to five lanes in each direction. Tolls will go into effect before the end of the month, officials said, and rates will change depending on how much traffic is on the road.
The western nine of the 22.5 miles of the 66 Express Lanes — which stretch from the Beltway to Gainesville — opened Saturday. The remaining 13 miles are expected to open before the end of the year.
On the first commute since the lanes opened, Washington-bound traffic from Gainesville to Centreville moved slower on the three general lanes but still was generally free-flowing. The paced slowed significantly as traffic from the new high-occupancy toll lanes ended at Route 28 in Centreville and merged into the general lanes. From there, traffic moved into an active work zone, with uneven lanes and changing lane patterns through to the Beltway.
The lanes, on one of the region’s most congested highways, are billed as a way to help the state better manage traffic, foster carpooling and public transit use, and give commuters more options.
“Today’s opening of the 66 Express Lanes allows the Commonwealth and its partners to begin delivering long awaited relief to drivers who have dealt with daily congestion, unreliability and most recently, five years of heavy work construction,” Virginia Transportation Secretary W. Sheppard Miller III said at a ceremony Monday morning at a park and ride just outside the lanes in Manassas, marking the debut of the lanes. “There’s still a lot of work to be done between now and the end of the year to open the full 66 Express Lanes corridor and complete the many project features. Our team will not stop until our mission to transform.”
He said the early opening of the western section of the express lanes is a major milestone and another indication that “Virginia continues to lead our region and the nation making positive transportation improvements through innovative solutions.” He also praised the decision to open for a few weeks without tolls, as a “brilliant idea” to entice people to see what it’s like to drive on the lanes.
“It’s a marketing ploy. Not really,” he said, laughing. “But it’s good business to let them see what it’s like, how it works, where the exits are, where they are not, get used to it a little bit and get their E-ZPass and then they’re going to want to use it when it opens with a small toll.”
By growing its network of toll lanes, officials say, Virginia will increase the capacity of its transportation network and give drivers more options. Solo drivers will have access the two additional lanes in each direction if they are willing to pay. Having more people in the HOT lanes will help relieve congestion in the general lanes, officials say.
The benefit, according to state transportation officials, is a quicker, more reliable trip than they could get in the interstate’s regular lanes. Drivers who carpool will be able to travel free in the HOT lanes.
With tollbooths along the stretch, drivers traveling the route need an E-ZPass unless they are on a motorcycle. Drivers will also be able to pay online, by mail, by phone or at a customer service store in Manassas.
The remaining 13 miles of the 22.5-mile system are expected to open in December. The partial opening this weekend was intended to allow drivers to familiarize themselves with new traffic patterns along the route as the fifth year of construction wraps up on the $3.7 billion widening program. The new lanes are the latest addition to the region’s growing network of express lanes, of which now more than 70 miles are in Northern Virginia.
Ramps from commuter parking lots at University Boulevard in Gainesville and at Century Park Boulevard in Manassas provide direct access to the lanes.
Once the entire 22.5 miles are open by the end of the year, the lanes will connect with the 10-mile rush-hour, peak-direction lanes on I-66 inside the Beltway. They will also connect to the HOT lanes on the Capital Beltway, which connect to the 95 Express Lanes and 395 Express Lanes. | 2022-09-12T13:56:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I-66 toll lanes begin commuting shift in Northern Virginia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/12/i66-express-lanes-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/12/i66-express-lanes-virginia/ |
Carson Wentz and the Commanders rallied to beat the Jaguars after Washington’s 14-3 halftime lead disappeared. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
A look at the good (Hail!) and bad (Fail!) from the Washington Commanders’ 28-22 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in Sunday’s season opener.
Hail: Fast starts
Carson Wentz capped Washington’s first drive of the season with a three-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Curtis Samuel, who displayed some nifty footwork before diving inside the pylon. Washington’s second possession culminated with Wentz’s seven-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Jahan Dotson, who became the first Washington rookie receiver with two scores in his debut. It was an uncharacteristically fast start for an offense that didn’t find the end zone on its first drive until Week 13 last season. The last time the franchise scored touchdowns on its first two possessions? That would be 1991, when Washington built a 35-0 halftime lead en route to a 45-0 rout of the Detroit Lions. You know how that season ended.
Fail: Turnovers
According to Stathead, Washington had lost 34 consecutive games, including five under Ron Rivera, when it turned the ball over at least three times. Before Sunday, the last time the team overcame three turnovers to win was 2010, when DeAngelo Hall had four interceptions against the Chicago Bears. With Washington driving and looking to extend its 14-3 lead before halftime, Samuel lost a fumble on a run up the middle. In the fourth quarter, Wentz threw interceptions on consecutive pass attempts, and a two-point Commanders lead quickly became an eight-point deficit. Since the start of the 2000 season, Washington is 7-67 when it commits at least three turnovers. Teams better than the Jaguars will make the Commanders pay for being careless with the football.
Hail: Darrick Forrest
Forrest started in place of injured safety Kam Curl and played the game of his life. The second-year pro out of Cincinnati delivered a vicious hit on running back Travis Etienne that forced a fumble out of bounds shortly before halftime and broke up a third-down pass intended for Zay Jones in the end zone on the next play. In the second half, Forrest broke up a pass on a two-point conversion attempt and all but iced the win with an interception of Trevor Lawrence on a desperation heave with a little more than a minute to play.
Fail: Penalties
Sunday’s opener wasn’t the cleanest of games. Flags flew on the first three snaps, and the Jaguars and Commanders combined for 19 penalties. A roughing-the-passer penalty on defensive end Dawuane Smoot, one of 13 accepted infractions against Jacksonville, set up Washington’s second touchdown. An unnecessary roughness penalty on Forrest — one of the safety’s only mistakes of the afternoon — led to a Jaguars field goal in the third quarter.
Hail: The Carson Wentz Experience
Wentz has a little Rex Grossman in him, from his cannon arm to his questionable decision-making at times. Wentz became the first Washington quarterback to throw at least four touchdowns in a game since 2015, when Kirk Cousins did it — without throwing an interception — in back-to-back wins over the Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles. Wentz is the first Washington QB to throw at least four touchdowns and at least two interceptions in a game since 2010, when good ol’ Sexy Rexy did it in a 33-30 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. The last Washington quarterback to win a game with such a passing line was Sonny Jurgensen, way back in 1964. Wentz pulled off the comeback with a pair of touchdowns in the final 10 minutes, including the go-ahead strike to Dotson.
Commanders’ win send a message to Terry McLaurin: Help is here
Fail: Washington’s rushing defense
The Commanders limited the Jaguars to three conversions on 12 third-down attempts and got pressure on Lawrence throughout the game, but Jacksonville averaged 6.8 yards per carry and ran for 123 yards. James Robinson rushed for 66 yards, including a 22-yard scamper on the Jaguars’ opening possession, and Etienne added 47 yards on four carries. Washington will have its hands full in Week 2 with Detroit Lions running back D’Andre Swift, who ran for 144 yards in a loss to the Eagles.
Hail: State-of-the-art team store
The Commanders unveiled their new “state-of-the-art” team store at FedEx Field, which included an entire section of graphic T-shirts. The beautiful collection includes a Doug “The Grambling Gun” Williams shirt, a “Scary Terry” McLaurin caricature print and a Chase Young design modeled after the “NFL Blitz” arcade game. (The “state-of-the-art” aspect of the store the team touted apparently refers to its encryption technology, so you can upgrade your fall wardrobe without worrying about your credit card and other personal information being stolen.) Many of the other cosmetic upgrades to FedEx Field, including painted murals along the concourse and outside the locker room, looked sharp.
These shirts are pretty cool: pic.twitter.com/ScM0DpMiqN
Fail: Art of the state team mugs
Washington state, that is. NBC Sports Washington’s Pete Hailey tweeted a photo of coffee mugs featuring the Commanders ‘W’ logo inside a silhouette of the state of Washington. The mugs were available for sale at an officially licensed team truck located just outside the stadium before the game, until they were removed as Hailey’s tweet started to go viral. This isn’t the first time a sports collectibles manufacturer has mixed up its Washingtons. In 2017, NFL Shop sold state pride license plates with the logo of the Commanders’ former name inside an outline of the Evergreen State. The following year, Fanatics sold Wizards T-shirts with the team’s logo superimposed over an image of the state of Washington. | 2022-09-12T14:05:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Commanders highlights and lowlights from win over Jaguars - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/commanders-jaguars-highlights-and-lowlights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/commanders-jaguars-highlights-and-lowlights/ |
Safety Darrick Forrest was arguably the Commanders' most impactful defender during Sunday's win over Jacksonville, when he made his first career start. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
“I was trying to run home with it; I ain’t going to lie,” Forrest said.
Late in the fourth quarter, on third and 11, Forrest saw wide receiver Christian Kirk running an over route. Forrest started running with Kirk, and after a moment, he peeked back.
“The ball was floating,” he said. “I started running as fast as I could to it. I [saw] the receiver coming to me. [I hit the] toe-tap, and I just …” He paused. “I was ready to turn up.”
But right after the game, as Forrest left to celebrate, Brooks, the equipment manager, left to drive back to team headquarters in Ashburn. Later that night, as Brooks unpacked and cleaned, he came across the ball. He had a long night ahead of him, but by the time Forrest arrived at the facility Monday, the ball would be there waiting for him on the red, padded seat of his locker. | 2022-09-12T14:05:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Darrick Forrest impresses in first NFL start for Washington Commanders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/darrick-forrest-first-nfl-start-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/darrick-forrest-first-nfl-start-commanders/ |
WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 17: White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain speaks briefly with reporters at the U.S. Capitol following a lunch meeting with Senate Democrats on February 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. According to White House officials, Klain discussed the upcoming State of the Union and the pending Supreme Court nomination to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer in the meeting with Democratic lawmakers. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) (Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America)
One of President Joe Biden’s key skills is avoiding panic when things are looking down. We’re beginning to see just how important his coolheadedness has become to his presidency.
Biden has been getting a wave of positive media coverage over the last couple of months pegged to several events: His signature climate and health care initiative was signed into law along with several other pieces of legislation; gasoline prices are dropping and inflation appears to have peaked, while the job market remains healthy; and his foreign policy in Ukraine is well-regarded and far more successful so far than anyone expected.
Back when things were going badly, pressure began building on Biden to do something to turn his administration around. When an administration is perceived to be in trouble, often the first change presidents make is to bring on a new chief of staff.(1)And sure enough, in late January the Washington Post reported that Chief of Staff Ron Klain’s job was in trouble. At that point, the poorly regarded US evacuation from Afghanistan was still fresh in people’s minds. Meanwhile, inflation was building, and the big Build Back Better spending package (the one that eventually became the climate and health bill) was repeatedly pronounced dead.
Biden, to his credit, did not do something. He presumably knew that the case against Klain was weak and that his administration was reasonably well-organized and well-run. So he kept Klain on. It appears to have been the right decision.
Some caveats are in order, because the connection between how things are actually going within a presidency and how they are perceived is often loose indeed.
For example, the fact that Biden’s approval ratings have improved modestly doesn’t prove that keeping Klain around was a good decision. Indeed, a lot of why a president’s approval ratings rise and fall have to do with things over which the administration has little or no control. That might be the case with Afghanistan, where Biden took a lot of blame that probably should have fallen on former presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. At the same time, Biden may not deserve so much credit for the Ukraine successes — that belongs with Ukraine’s government and people.
Nor is Biden’s improved media coverage proof that all is well within the administration. The tone of media coverage tends to match outcomes — and pundits tend to change their interpretation of the same president’s traits depending on whether things are going well or badly.(2)Looking deeper at how the White House and the administration are being run, most indicators looked solid back in January and look just as good now.
The administration also continues to be as scandal-free as any in the last 50 years, so much so that scandalmongers have had to turn to one of the president’s children, and not White House staff or executive branch figures, to find anything to chew on. It’s hard to know how much credit a president should get for a productive Congress, but there certainly have been quite a few legislative successes, especially given the very small majorities Democrats have in both chambers. Back in January, Klain was blamed for what was said to be a bad White House relationship with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin that was supposedly sinking the legislative agenda. Guess not.(3)
Even when things weren’t going Biden’s way, negative leaks and infighting in the media certainly seemed to be well below average for an administration. Now that things are better, those tensions abated, as they usually do when things go well.
If Biden’s policies wind up failing or Democrats get walloped in the midterms, or even if events beyond his control start to pile up, a lot of assessments of the president and his chief of staff will turn negative again. But Klain has been a first-rate chief of staff, and Biden deserves credit for sticking with a team that was doing good work even when that wasn’t so obvious to outsiders. That’s the kind of presidential skill that’s apt to pay off going forward.
Boris Is Out. The Battle Over His Legacy Continues.: Therese Raphael
Don’t Blame the Chief of Staff for Biden’s Struggles: Jonathan Bernstein
(1) Sometimes, presidents replace a chief of staff because he’s doing a bad job. That was the case when Ronald Reagan replaced Donald Regan in 1986 and when Bill Clinton replaced Mack McLarty in 1994. Often, too, trouble for a president can wind up producing a scandal for the chief of staff that might not have been considered a big deal if things were going better - that happened with Sherman Adams in 1958 and John Sununu in 1991.
(2) Some people will always like or dislike a president for policy reasons. Those who dislike spending money on health care, abortion rights and gun control are going to dislike Biden whatever he does, just as those with the opposite positions will normally dislike any Republican president. Not only that, but partisans are apt to think that politicians from the other party are incompetent, regardless of objective evidence.
(3) Technically, the fact that a version of Biden’s Build Back Better bill passed and several other bills have become law doesn’t quite prove anything. Perhaps even more would have passed, with versions more in line with Biden’s preferences, and more quickly, had the White House’s legislative shop been better. But I’m inclined to believe that legislating is simply difficult, and we should expect a lot of bumps and bruises along the way - with people incorrectly blaming the White House for the normal difficulties of the sausage-making. | 2022-09-12T14:09:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For Presidents, Sometimes the Best Move Is No Move at All - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/for-presidents-sometimes-the-best-move-is-no-move-at-all/2022/09/12/6eba5aa0-3297-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/for-presidents-sometimes-the-best-move-is-no-move-at-all/2022/09/12/6eba5aa0-3297-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
New teeth, new me? Not exactly.
I floss religiously now. I flossed before, but regularly — which means I flossed once a day, with some skips. Now I floss at least three times a day, every day. Sometimes as many as five. It’s a necessity with Invisalign. The trays (one each for the bottom and top rows of teeth) need to be removed when you eat. When the trays are reapplied, food residue creates an imperfect fit and makes your teeth feel like you’re chewing on a sponge.
Since the trays must be worn at least 20 hours a day, I also had to be intentional about when and what I eat. Big meals are simple. Every snack, though, must be accessed with a roving calculus: Is that ice cream worth the time and effort spent sanitizing my hands before I remove the trays, and then removing the trays, and then brushing and flossing my teeth immediately after I’m done eating? (Depends on the ice cream. If it’s Leona’s, yes.)
And then there’s my teeth, which are noticeably straighter. The gaps that had developed, settled, and squatted in my mouth over decades are mostly gone. My teeth are not perfect. Without actual surgery — or The Post deciding to pay me enough to comfortably afford veneers — they will never be. But perfection was not my goal. Satisfaction was, and I am mostly satisfied with them. That “mostly” qualifier, though, is a linger. And a riddle, because I’m not sure why it exists, or how to solve it.
Invisalign at 42. Here’s why. (It’s about more than teeth.)
The 56 weeks of Invisalign did exactly what I paid for it to do. The before and after pictures of my smile look how before and after pictures are supposed to. But I don’t feel much different. I don’t know how I expected to feel, so it’s hard to determine what would’ve constituted different. I don’t think I expected a climax, though, so why does this feel so anticlimactic?
I think the answer is that my predominant anxiety about getting corrective cosmetic work on my teeth is that I was too old for this and should’ve accepted my teeth as is. I worried that it would be seen as vain, by other people. While that might be true, the feedback I’ve received has been unanimously positive. Compliments, curiosities, and some even shared that they felt similarly anxious about wanting to fix their teeth as an adult and were happy to know they weren’t alone. (Also, multiple people revealed that they were currently wearing Invisalign and showed me their trays — an act of fellowship that could’ve doubled as the most unsanitary meet cute ever.)
I was unprepared for what happened instead. I started Invisalign in 2021, but I’d already begun the process of being less self-conscious about my teeth. In 2019, I was on the road, in front of large crowds, for much of the year to promote my book. And in most of the footage captured at those events, you will see me smiling, uncharacteristically, but happily. My book was such a naked ventilation of my vulnerabilities and neuroses that still possessing a sheepishness about my teeth felt inane. Time-consuming. I’d also, by that point in my life, received a healthy amount of romantic validation. Which just means that enough women I was physically attracted to were also attracted to me. Which meant, to me, that they weren’t bothered enough by my teeth to not be. Of course, romantic validation shouldn’t impact my self-regard as much as it did. But it did — it does — and there’s no point in pretending it doesn’t.
And then there are the personality tics I’d honed over decades of attempting to conceal my teeth (a hand over my mouth while laughing, for instance). They’re still present, because you just can’t correct 43 years of life in 13 months, and I think they’re here to stay.
damon quote here teekay tk
What I’m trying to say is that while I’m glad I got work done, I waited too long for it to have a substantial impact on my life. If I would’ve got them at 22 or even 32, the impact on my emotional and spiritual chemistry would’ve been substantial. Today, though, I just smile more in Zooms.
I guess that’s not nothing. Especially since virtual meetings are my primary method of face-to-face communication now. And it’s an objectively good thing that I started feeling better about my teeth before they got better. I think that “mostly” is still going to linger, and I think I just need to accept that too. There I go, accepting uncomfortable things about myself again. I might make this a habit. | 2022-09-12T14:10:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New teeth, new me? Not exactly. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/12/new-teeth-new-me-not-exactly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/12/new-teeth-new-me-not-exactly/ |
Trump’s lawyers suggest seized documents may not be classified
In new court filing, lawyers for the former president push back on a Justice Department request to limit the role of a special master
A page from a FBI property list of items seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and made public by the Department of Justice. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
Lawyers for former president Donald Trump filed court papers Monday arguing against any pause in a judge’s order for a special master to review documents seized at Mar-a-Lago last month, suggesting that some of the documents in question may not be classified and that Trump may have the right to keep them in his possession.
“In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control, the Government wrongfully seeks to criminalize the possession by the 45th President of his own Presidential and personal records,” the Trump lawyers wrote, arguing that prosecutors are trying to limit any outside review of “what it deems are ‘classified records’.”
The filing was in response to the Justice Department’s request for U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon to temporarily suspend parts of her ruling appointing a special master to review the contents of more than two dozenboxes and other items seized at Trump’s club and residence on Aug. 8.
Federal prosecutors have asked that the judge withhold her prior ruling that the FBI not use the more than 100 classified documents seized in the search until they are reviewed by an outside legal expert. The government also asked Cannon to exempt the classified documents from review by the outside expert, known as a special master, saying that requiring such a review would unnecessarily complicate the national security issues in the high-profile case.
In the new filing, Trump’s lawyers disagree, charging that prosecutors are overstating the national-security concerns and that “there is no indication any purported ‘classified records’ were disclosed to anyone.”
For months before the Aug. 8 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the National Archives and Records Administration and the Justice Department tried to get Trump to return all White House and presidential documents still in his possession, according to court filings in the case.
In May, the government subpoenaed Trump, asking for all the classified documents he still had. His lawyers told the government in response to the subpoena that everything had been returned. But the search last month yielded an additional 27 boxes containing a mix of personal items and classified and unclassified government material. | 2022-09-12T14:57:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s lawyers suggest seized documents may not be classified - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/12/trump-classified-special-master/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/12/trump-classified-special-master/ |
No people were on board as the capsule’s emergency abort system kicked in to jettison it away from the booster.
From left: Oliver Daemen, Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos and Wally Funk discuss their flight experience aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket in July of last year. On Monday, an uncrewed launch of the rocket suffered a problem. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket appeared to suffer a serious problem after lifting off Monday morning, forcing the vehicle’s emergency abort system to jettison the capsule away from the booster.
No people were on board — only science experiments — in what was supposed to be another in a series of suborbital flights to the edge of space and back. The company, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, also uses the New Shepard system to fly paying customers and has flown several missions since Bezos himself flew on the first crewed flight last year. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Leading up to the launch, Blue Origin flight controllers called a series of holds, delaying the flight. It lifted off shortly before 10:30 a.m. Eastern from the company’s launch site in Van Horn, Texas. After clearing the launch tower, it entered what is known as “Max Q,” or the moment when aerodynamic pressure is greatest on the vehicle as it pushes through the atmosphere on the way to space.
Suddenly, at about one minute and five seconds into flight, the capsule’s emergency abort system kicked in, quickly shooting it away from the booster. The capsule’s parachutes later deployed, and it landed softly in the West Texas desert. It was unclear what happened to the rocket booster.
Blue Origin has said repeatedly that it designed the vehicle to ensure safety, and before it flew any people, it rigorously tested the abort system.
“Safety is our highest value at Blue Origin,” Wagner said. “It's why we built so much redundancy into the system.”
In all, Blue Origin has flown 31 people to space and was hoping to fly more later this year. That will likely be on hold, while the company investigates what went wrong on Monday’s flight. | 2022-09-12T15:41:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Blue Origin rocket suffers problem during uncrewed launch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/12/blue-origin-rocket-launch-abort/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/12/blue-origin-rocket-launch-abort/ |
‘Immortality’s’ flawed characters are perfect. The game, less so.
Review by Mikhail Klimentov
Available on: PC, Xbox Series X and Series S
Developer: Half Mermaid | Publisher: Half Mermaid
Spoiler warning: This review covers “Immortality’s” plot and mechanics in detail. Do not proceed if you want to preserve the story’s surprises.
Earlier this year, I learned of allegations of sexual misconduct levied against a musician whose work sparked my love of music. It was a bewildering revelation — in part because the musician had existed for me mostly in the abstract. He was a trenchant chronicler of teenage anxiety and suburban malaise, a prophet of 20th century alienation; still, I could scarcely imagine him as flesh and blood, a person with hobbies, habits, ticks, kinks and routines, let alone someone prone to faux pas, misunderstandings and much worse. In my mind, he was constantly in the mode of poet philosopher. Suddenly, the hazy image was jolted into focus: an unwanted kiss, a tongue forced down a younger woman’s throat.
How much can you really know someone through their art? That question is among the more trenchant posed by “Immortality,” a new video game by acclaimed art-game designer Sam Barlow. In “Immortality,” players navigate a piece of software that acts as a repository for the work of Marissa Marcel, a would-be movie star whose non-career and eventual disappearance from the art world makes up the game’s central mystery. By scrubbing through interviews, filmed rehearsals, chemistry tests between actors, behind-the-scenes footage and unreleased cuts from the three movies in which Marcel starred — none of which were ever released — players are told they can resolve the mystery of the actress’s disappearance.
Across these three movies, “Immortality’s” thematic preoccupations become apparent, identity and gendered violence chief among them. Each is turned over every which way, interrogated, reformatted into symbols and recurring motifs that are placed under harsher lighting and sharper cameras. But Marcel is, of course, not the characters she plays in her movies, and what’s captured on film is burdened with layers of performance and artificiality — complicating the core conceit of the software you’re operating. By the game’s midpoint, the morass of meaning exposes “Immortality’s” mystery as a mere on-ramp to more probing, existential questions.
But narratives need endings. As “Immortality” approaches its own, its desire to conclude with something resembling clarity — an answer — dulls its impact.
Ambrosio, Marcel’s first film, is an adaptation of a novel about the seduction of the holiest man in Madrid by the devil, and the sins and foibles that enable his downfall. The titular character’s eloquence and good standing mask his licentiousness. A servant of the devil, manifest as a woman made to resemble the Virgin Mary, disguises herself as a young boy to enter the church and tempt Ambrosio. Behind the scenes, an otherwise good-natured director, round and jolly, demeans his actresses during table reads and on-set. The actors, in the spirit of the New Wave, touch and kiss with abandon on set; Marcel boldly proclaims her comfort with and artistic interest in performing nude. Whether you believe her or not is another story. Can we know Marcel from how she behaves — let alone what she says — at work?
People are not quite who they appear to be, Ambrosio tells us. With the footage, too, all is not as it seems. Early on, ominous sound cues over certain clips beckon players to rewind the reels to find their source; doing so reveals ghastly alternate footage with different characters present: In the place of Marcel and her cast mates, two ethereal figures (Witches? Vampires? Angels? All of the above?) conduct a dialogue — about art, death, the resurrection of Christ, etc. — from a thousand year vantage.
This supernatural element is a compelling addition, until it isn’t. The two androgynous beings, credited as The One and The Other One, say things that frame and complicate certain characters, their behaviors and their arcs; the former is meant as a representation of creation, healing, love and Art, the latter a stand-in for control, destruction, fear and The Law. But while for much of the game, the conversation between The One and The Other One runs parallel to the central narrative, eventually “Immortality” attempts to draw explicit connections between the characters on-screen and the spirits haunting the footage. As the game approaches an “explanation” to its central questions, the frame provided by these beings transforms into a vise.
A plot twist for video game novels: As TV shows ascend, books fade
Take Minsky, Marcel’s second film, a sleazy detective movie about a murdered artist who lends the film its name. Minsky’s muse, played by Marcel, is suspect number one. The gumshoe assigned to the case falls for her, and his desire pulls him into a more sexually liberated underground culture. During production, Marcel accidentally kills Carl Goodman, the actor playing the detective, with a prop gun. The film is never released.
After discovering what happened to Carl, I became preoccupied with the question of why. At one point, I uncovered a clip in which Marcel, in hushed tones, confided to the director that Carl was concealing something: “He’s not who you think he is,” she says. At this stage, when the possibility space was wide open, I was all in on “Immortality.” I pored over clips, looking for errant glances or chilliness in Marcel’s approach to Carl on set.
But after a fruitless search, I was shocked to learn that the game’s actual answer was supernatural: “Carl was possessed by The Other One, which put him in conflict with Marcel, who was possessed by The One,” the game insists. There may be rich symbolic meaning there; I would challenge anyone to explain it in non-illusory terms. Put plainly, it was a disappointing resolution to a conflict that was more poignant in its real-life implications than in the realm of symbols. “Nothing interests me less than explanations,” The One intones in a hidden scene. I just wish “Immortality” committed to that idea.
Even when the mainline narrative flails, though, the moment-to-moment gameplay is vertiginous in all the best ways. In my journey through the Minsky footage, I found clips that gave the impression of Carl as a libertine — the good kind: rakish, fun and sex-positive. Much later, though, in an unguarded backstage clip, we see that he’s a chauvinist; he refers to Marcel as the director’s property, for example. Not only are the on-set sex-positive clips misleading, but the scripted film cuts, which make up the bulk of the Minsky footage, are too. Carl, playing a character who was progressively liberalizing, had convinced me somehow that Carl himself was an open-minded social liberal. This sleight of hand when it comes to characterization is “Immortality’s” most compelling feature. How much can you really know someone through their art?
The final film, Two of Everything, is a princess and the pauper tale mixed with a #MeToo revenge thriller; the footage from the project’s production caps a limited body of work that nonetheless has clear thematic priorities: Violence against women; how the notion of bad behavior by powerful men changes over the decades; cases of mistaken or assumed identity, and how those identities interact with one’s supposed “real” identity; public perception; rebirth. These are all great subjects for interrogation.
But eventually, I ran into the problem of having to play “Immortality.” Play is fun when the game is a mystery; much less so when it is a puzzle. In “Immortality” clips aren’t available by default, which brings players to the “match cut” mechanic. Clips can be paused at any point and scoured for points of interest: a face, a prop, a backdrop, etc. Click through, and you’re whisked to a different clip in the library with a similar element in it. (Selecting an actor will take you to a different clip with that actor in it; clicking on a flower in one movie might take you to a bouquet in the background of another). This mechanic is meant to draw attention to the game’s recurring motifs, but by the time I had seen around 95% of the library’s material, I was at a loss for where to go next. After clicking around for nearly an hour, I resorted to Reddit to find that I was missing one crucial snippet of footage right before the penultimate clip, which I had already unlocked.
Some writers have described “Immortality” as being about burnout or auteurism (the final few scenes can be read as evidence for that theory). But that’s not quite right, akin to saying Star Wars is about space. Artistry does not grant privileged access to decency or good nature. That is what the game is, not what it is about. It’s text, not subtext. For so long as “Immortality” uses that as a starting point to probe further, it is a high water mark for gaming in 2022. When the characters are allowed to be people — not vampires nor aliens nor angels but people who are tired, embarrassed, horny, funny, naive, voyeuristic, creepy and more — each frame’s richness is its own reward. | 2022-09-12T15:41:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Immortality review: Its flawed people are perfect, but the game is not - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/immortality-game-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/immortality-game-review/ |
Analysis by Chris Dolmetsch and Katharine Gemmell | Bloomberg
Discrimination against workers based on their age is illegal in many countries. Yet legal experts say that such unfair treatment, particularly of older workers, is widespread. Ageism is a growing concern for societies with advanced economies as their workforces grow increasingly old.
1. What is age discrimination?
Age discrimination is when someone is disadvantaged or treated unfairly because of age. Both young and older people can face it. In the US, the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 applies only to those 40 and older, although some state laws cover the young. The ADEA protects job applicants and employees against discrimination in hiring, promotion, termination, compensation, and the terms, conditions or privileges of employment. The UK’s 2010 Equality Act covers both discrimination that is direct, when an employee is treated differently from others because of age, and indirect, when work policies or procedures put an age group at a disadvantage. It also covers harassment -- humiliating, offending or degrading someone for their age -- and victimization -- treating someone badly for calling out age discrimination.
2. How common is it?
Polls suggest that age discrimination is very common in the workplace, and it appears to be especially prevalent in the technology and finance industries. In a survey conducted by the American Association of Retired Persons in 2018, 61% of workers 45 and older reported seeing or experiencing it. A study by the Urban Institute and ProPublica published that same year found that 56% of workers 50 or older were pushed out of longtime jobs before they chose to retire. Research suggests that discrimination against elderly job applicants is pervasive. When researchers have submitted to employers fictitious resumes designed to be as identical as possible except for age, older applicants received fewer callbacks than younger ones.
3. Are gender and race factors?
Yes. In one study using fictitious resumes, researchers found that discrimination is more severe and starts much earlier for older women than for older men. In the AARP poll, disproportionately high percentages of women and Black workers (64% and 75% respectively) reported witnessing or experiencing age discrimination. In the UK, discrimination complaints involving menopause are increasing, with more older women ready to challenge companies that are failing to recognize their health needs.
4. How common are lawsuits?
There were just over 14,000 age discrimination claims filed in 2020 in UK employment tribunals, which judge legal disputes concerning labor law. Some included additional complaints, for example concerning disability. According to the Justice Ministry, the number was elevated by the pandemic, which led large numbers of older employees to leave the workforce sooner than expected, some of them involuntarily. In the US, roughly 13,000 complaints were filed in 2021 under the ADEA; these numbers don’t capture cases filed under state laws. Legal experts say the number of complaints represents a sliver of the actual incidents.
5. Why are lawsuits relatively rare?
For one thing, lawyers say, many cases are settled out of court, largely through severance payments made to older employees who’ve been dismissed. In other cases, employees may not know their rights or are intimidated from filing suits. Job applicants may not have evidence that they were rejected because of their age.
6. Can age discrimination ever be legally justified?
Yes. In the UK, age is different from gender and race in that the law allows employers to discriminate on the basis of it if they can show their action was justified, for example for reasons of health and safety or fitness. For example, UK-registered pilots are forced to retire from flying at age 65, even though mandatory retirement ages aren’t generally allowed. In the US, the ADEA provides a similar exemption to a ban on compulsory retirement, as well as an exception for certain employees in executive positions.
7. How difficult is it to win a case?
Like any other discrimination case, ageism lawsuits can be challenging to win. At the England and Wales employment tribunals, the success rate of such cases in 2021 was around 2%, according to data compiled by the law firm GQ Littler. In the US, because of a 2009 Supreme Court ruling, it’s necessary to prove that age was the deciding factor in an employer’s action. Legislation introduced in Congress in 2021 would establish that it’s sufficient to show that age was one motivating factor, as is the case with race and sex discrimination suits.
8. How much money could you be awarded in a case?
Awards for unfair dismissal are usually capped in UK employment tribunals at just over £93,000 ($112,430). But if discrimination is proved, the cap doesn’t apply and damages are unlimited. A Citigroup Inc. banker who was dismissed after being called “old” at the age of 55 won an age discrimination suit in 2020 and was awarded nearly £2.7 million, although Citi in July successfully appealed to have the case reconsidered. The largest ADEA resolution to date is a case filed against the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, California’s pension plan for state employees, by 1,700 disabled police officers, firefighters and other safety officers whose disability benefits were reduced based on their age when they were hired, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a government agency that enforces federal laws against workplace discrimination. The pension manager agreed to pay $250 million to resolve the case in 2003.
9. How are aging workforces relevant?
It’s been estimated that about a quarter of all workers in developed countries will be over 55 by 2030. To ensure vacancies are filled in the future, labor experts argue, employers will need to reduce bias against this group. | 2022-09-12T15:41:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | All About Age Discrimination at Work and Why Successful Lawsuits Are Rare - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/all-about-age-discrimination-at-work-and-why-successful-lawsuits-are-rare/2022/09/12/bd6a7066-32ad-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/all-about-age-discrimination-at-work-and-why-successful-lawsuits-are-rare/2022/09/12/bd6a7066-32ad-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
You can’t get Zac Efron’s body. And you shouldn’t try.
Zac Efron attends the European premiere of "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" at the Curzon Mayfair in 2019 in London. (Getty Images)
“Former teen star talks body image” wouldn’t be a surprising headline in and of itself. But it’s definitely different when that grown-up actor looking back is a man — as Zac Efron, he of “Baywatch”-reboot fame, did in a recent Men’s Health profile.
In it, we learn of Efron’s overtraining, his restricted eating, his taking of diuretics to shed water weight and look ripped. “I started to develop insomnia,” he recalls, “and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time.”
That frankness feels like a bit of a watershed in an era in which actors have been strenuously honing themselves to meet the sort of narrow beauty expectations normally reserved for women. When Hollywood and social media have created a newly unobtainable standard for a rising generation of boys, it’s about time men and boys heard what feminists have long argued: Not everyone can contort themselves to achieve some bizarre ideal, and there are real dangers to trying.
Physical metamorphoses, of course, have long been part of the actor’s life and feature heavily in award-season narratives — though they’re often hailed as a form of art, not as a how-to manual.
When Christian Bale lived on about 200 calories a day to achieve a skeletal physique for “The Machinist,” the public admired his dedication but didn’t emulate it. Robert De Niro gained nearly 60 pounds in four months and walked away with an Oscar for “Raging Bull.” This year, Brendan Fraser is getting accolades for his performance in “The Whale” — in which he plays an isolated, grieving man who is eating himself to death — partly because the stigma against overweight people is still so intense that it’s considered brave for an actor to beef up.
But that’s all separate from body-as-ideal — the kind that has supposedly been “perfected” through dedication and discipline, and becomes an aspiration for others.
Back in 2011, Chris Evans acknowledged that training to play Captain America in Marvel’s superhero franchise meant living with persistent discomfort. “Every guy I know” who tries to get superhero-big “has some sort of freak injury in their body,” Evans told Men’s Health. A decade later, that candor didn’t prevent the magazine from offering readers insights into how they could replicate Evans’s regimen.
Even as they’re packaged as self-improvement content, these stories of transformation often leave something out. Chris Pratt began his career as a lovable, soft-bodied comedic actor before losing 60 pounds in six months to transition to action roles. On Instagram and in character on “Parks and Recreation,” he joked that the change was the result of giving up beer. But there was more to the story, involving a strictly monitored diet and intensive workouts with trainers, all neatly replicated in a guide for readers of Muscle & Fitness.
Chris Hemsworth, who got huge to play the Norse god Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has a sideline as a fitness entrepreneur. He posts workout videos to Instagram and runs Centr, a subscription service that promises users they can “transform your health, fitness and mindset with Chris Hemsworth’s team of world-class experts” — starting at “just $10” a month.
Although this trend has escalated in recent years, it has been building for some time. The standard for on-screen male shirtlessness rose in tandem with superhero movies after the turn of the century. A decade ago, the journal Pediatrics found that nearly 6 percent of middle and high school boys had experimented with steroids. Today, social media provides a feedback loop, letting ordinary teenagers turn themselves into fitness influencers.
Then there’s the potential role of steroids and human growth hormone in all this bulking up, a subject that is much discussed in Hollywood, but rarely above a whisper, and only then to suggest that someone else is sampling the forbidden fruit.
This is why it’s refreshing to hear blunt talk from high-profile stars about what it actually takes to achieve physiques that are themselves special effects.
“I wouldn’t recommend anyone do what I did,” Will Poulter said about training for his role as the genetically altered superhuman Adam Warlock in the forthcoming “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” His regimen, he added, which involved gorging and fasting to build mass and drop water weight, is “unhealthy and unrealistic if you don’t have the financial backing of a studio paying for your meals and training.”
Efron goes further, suggesting it’s not just the process that is undesirable, but the results, too.
“That ‘Baywatch’ look, I don’t know if that’s really attainable,” he told Men’s Health. “There’s just too little water in the skin. Like, it’s fake; it looks CGI’d.”
One interview can’t overpower the superhero movies dominating global pop culture. But Efron’s honesty is a welcome starting point for a conversation about male body ideals — what so-called perfection is worth, and what cost is too high to pay for it. | 2022-09-12T15:42:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | You can’t get Zac Efron’s body. And you shouldn’t try. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/zac-efron-male-body-image/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/zac-efron-male-body-image/ |
The Baltimore Orioles have emerged as the most charming team in baseball this season. (Doug Kapustin/For The Washington Post)
Adley Rutschman and his hugs
The home run chain
Félix comin’
Bullpen gardening
‘Call of Duty’ binoculars
Orioles Magic
‘Liftoff from here’
After five straight losing seasons, including three 100-loss campaigns, there’s light at the end of the Baltimore Orioles’ long and dismal rebuild. The O’s are only the sixth team since 1900 to lose at least 110 games one season and win at least 70 games the next, and with three weeks remaining in the regular season, they still have the faintest hopes of securing their first playoff berth since 2016. For a team picked to be among the worst in the league yet again this year, that’s real progress.
Baltimore’s chances of earning a wild-card spot dropped to 1.6 percent on FanGraphs after they lost five out of seven to the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox in Birdland last week, but Brandon Hyde’s squad has defied the odds all season, so don’t count them out just yet.
Ahead of their two-game series against the Nationals, who are in the early stages of their own rebuild, here’s a quick guide to the Orioles, the most surprising — and arguably most charming — team in baseball.
Baltimore finds reason to believe in Orioles' surprising season
The Orioles were eight games below .500 when they called up catcher Adley Rutschman — the first overall pick in the 2019 MLB draft and baseball’s top prospect — on May 21. Since then, they’re 57-43.
Rutschman has emerged as a rookie of the year candidate, thanks in large part to his defense. He’s hitting .251 with 10 home runs and 32 RBI and has a fWAR of 4.0, which ranks second only to Seattle Mariners phenom Julio Rodriguez among American League rookies.
During last month’s Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pa., the 24-year-old Rutschman revealed that his favorite athlete was former San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey, who won three World Series and was known for giving out some pretty great hugs. Rutschman has developed the same reputation in Baltimore, where fans have embraced him as the cornerstone of the team’s long-awaited turnaround.
It’s the hottest accessory of the summer. Since late April, Orioles hitters have celebrated home runs by donning a chain with thick gold links and an orange O’s logo attached.
So, where did the chain come from? It belonged to a fan known as “Fired Up Guy,” who gave it to Logan Sanders, the son of Orioles first base coach Anthony Sanders, during an early-season win over Boston. Logan brought the chain into the clubhouse, where it was an instant hit with the players.
“I’m into it,” Hyde told reporters. “I’d love to see it a bunch more.”
The Orioles, who take the chain on road trips, rank 15th in home runs. They’d have hit a lot more if they hadn’t moved the left field wall at Camden Yards back 30 feet during the offseason, much to the chagrin of Aaron Judge. Baseball’s home run leader called the redesign “a travesty” in May.
Despite being only three games out of a playoff spot, the Orioles dealt first baseman Trey Mancini to the Houston Astros and all-star closer Jorge López to the Minnesota Twins at the trade deadline. The moves were unpopular in the clubhouse and among many fans, but Baltimore continued to win, at least until last week.
While the Orioles certainly miss Mancini’s bat — they’ve averaged three runs and have been shut out twice over their last eight games — Félix Bautista has been dominant since assuming the ninth-inning role from López. The 6-foot-5 right-hander, who is known as “The Mountain,” boasts a 1.62 ERA and has converted 12 of 13 save chances. He also has one of the better closer entrances in baseball.
In homage to “The Wire,” the hit HBO series famously set in Baltimore, the distinctive whistling of “The Farmer in the Dell” by Omar, the character portrayed by the late Michael K. Williams, plays over the Camden Yards speakers. The stadium lights flash and the crowd goes wild as Bautista makes his way to the mound.
No matter that the 27-year-old Dominican has never seen “The Wire” and therefore doesn’t fully understand the reference.
The Orioles have a new introduction for their closer, Félix Bautista, complete with Omar's whistle and flashing flood lights: pic.twitter.com/gaqwu68Qxw
— Zachary Silver (@zachsilver) August 10, 2022
If you’ve watched an Orioles game on TV and caught a glimpse of the Baltimore bullpen, you may have wondered, ‘Are they growing tomatoes out there?' Yes, yes they are.
The tomato plant made its Camden Yards debut this season, but it’s a nod to a tradition from Memorial Stadium, where longtime Orioles groundskeeper Pasquale Anthony Santarone, a.k.a. the Sodfather, began growing tomatoes in foul territory down the left field line in 1970.
“People think groundskeepers are just ditchdiggers,” Santarone, who continued planting tomatoes at the Orioles’ former home until he retired in 1991, once told The Post. “I like to think of the job as an art form — a gardening art form.”
For many years, Santarone and Orioles Manager Earl Weaver had a tomato-growing competition. Santarone said Weaver was always a “tenacious little bleep,” but the groundskeeper usually came out on top.
Orioles bullpen tomatoes #Birdland pic.twitter.com/raX5YyA2sI
— Pat O (@DrRockt0pus) July 27, 2022
When an Oriole gets a hit, he turns toward the Baltimore dugout and mimes putting a pair of binoculars over his eyes. The tradition began in spring training, when Odor, Jorge Mateo and several other Orioles players spent some of their down time playing the video game “Call of Duty.” The binoculars are a reference to the precision airstrikes employed in the game.
The gesture is akin to the “Baby Shark” hand motions that Nationals players did during their run to a World Series title in 2019, and countless other celebrations that teams introduce to keep things interesting over the course of a long season.
“When you have those little things that create more energy in the team, the whole team comes together,” Odor told the Baltimore Sun.
No sequence of events has better characterized the chaos of Baltimore’s improbable season than the Orioles’ walk-off win against the Chicago White Sox on Aug. 25. Trailing 3-2 with two outs in the ninth inning, White Sox left fielder Adam Engel dropped a foul pop-up for what should have been the final out of the game.
Facing an 0-2 count, Orioles rookie Kyle Stowers took closer Liam Hendriks’s next pitch deep for the first home run of his career, which tied the score. Baltimore went on to win in 11 innings.
Infield prospect Gunnar Henderson, who, like Rutschman and Stowers was part of Orioles General Manager Mike Elias’s first draft class, was called up a week later and homered in his big league debut.
No player for any team had hit a game-tying HR on an 0-2 pitch with 2 outs in the 9th in over 4 years.
Then Kyle Stowers, who had zero big-league HR, hit this one, off Liam Hendriks - who had allowed 1 career HR on an 0-2 pitch.
(Last to do this: Michael Brantley - on 5/1/18!) https://t.co/DWiY5wrXcQ
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) August 26, 2022
Elias, the architect of the Orioles’ teardown and rebuild, said he plans to “significantly escalate the payroll” this offseason. There’s nowhere to go but up for a franchise that spent less than anyone this year.
“While I’m super excited about 2022 and what’s ahead of us and our chances, we’re going to continue with the plan of building for this bright, long future in the American League East,” Elias said at the trade deadline. “I think we’re right there. I think it’s liftoff from here for this team.”
In addition to the young players who made their big league debuts this season, Baltimore has a deep farm system, highlighted by right-handed pitcher Grayson Rodriguez. The Orioles used the first pick in this year’s draft to select high school infielder Jackson Holliday, the son of longtime major leaguer Matt Holliday.
The future is finally bright in Baltimore, even if the lights soon go out on the Orioles’ 2022 season. | 2022-09-12T16:16:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Orioles' memorable MLB season is drawing to a close - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/baltimore-orioles-fans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/12/baltimore-orioles-fans/ |
We now have two federal judiciaries
Federal Judge Aileen Cannon in a still image from a video interview during a nomination hearing on July 29, 2020. (Committee on the Judiciary)
In assessing the state of the federal judiciary, one is tempted to focus solely on the runaway, partisan Supreme Court. But the vast number of cases don’t get there. Just as important are the inexperienced, highly partisan judges in lower courts who are ready to tear up precedent, misread the law and help “their side.”
For evidence of this, one need look no further than the jaw-dropping decision from Aileen M. Cannon, the forum-shopped, Donald Trump-appointed judge in Florida who granted the defeated former president’s request for a special master to review the classified documents he hoarded at Mar-a-Lago. One could also look to the 5th Circuit, where a district court judge is managing to carve out an employer-friendly workaround for the Affordable Care Act’s insurance coverage requirements.
The presence of so many right-wing activist judges dedicated to churning out results-oriented opinions creates a slew of tough decisions for the Biden administration. The Justice Department had to ponder whether to take its lumps with Cannon’s shoddy decision or appeal it to the notoriously right-wing U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. (It seems to have chosen the latter.)
The Trump-damaged judiciary will also affect where and how Trump is charged for mishandling documents, if the Justice Department decides to prosecute him. As legal scholars Laurence H. Tribe, Philip Lacovara and Dennis Aftergut wrote for Just Security, “while the case could be indicted in Florida, that option is a non-starter for any responsible federal prosecutor.” The risk of drawing a Trump-protecting trial judge and equally biased 11th Circuit judge is simply too great in Florida. Moreover, in Florida “at least one or two members of Trump’s base would find their way into the jury box. There, they might ignore the law and nullify other jurors’ votes to convict, however powerful the evidence of guilt and the interests of justice.”
In other words, to get a fair trial the Justice Department will need to try any criminal case in D.C. — where the grand jury sits, where the original document snatch took place and where the National Archives is located. But if the Justice Department pursues a charge of obstruction, which would have presumptively taken place in Florida, it would run the risk of seeing the case transferred. Prosecutors must weigh that risk when they decide which charges to bring.
In other words, the federal judiciary has become Swiss cheese — riddled with holes where impartiality, common sense and fidelity to the law once kept bad actors from using the system to their advantage. This must be a consideration as the Justice Department chooses its venue for prosecution.
Republicans once bemoaned the practice of forum-shopping, whereby plaintiffs’ lawyers would seek juries prone to award robust damages. Now, however, we have two federal judiciaries — one populated with suspect, intellectually dishonest Trump appointees and the other with a mix of conservative and liberal judges who at least try to get it “right.” That means judge-shopping will become a critical feature in high-profile cases, with each side racing to its preferred set of judges.
This should make anyone uneasy about the independent judiciary and popular acceptance of court decisions. And for those who shy away from the suggestion that how a judge rules is determined partly by the president who appointed them, this is a dispiriting development. But with Trump has come a legion of extreme activist judges for whom the question is not “What is the law?” but rather “Who is asking me to rule?”
Shrinking the proportion of Trump-corrupted judges by expanding the lower courts should be a priority for Democrats — and for anyone trying to preserve the courts’ legitimacy. | 2022-09-12T16:33:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We now have two federal judiciaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/judiciary-judge-cannon-trump-special-master/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/judiciary-judge-cannon-trump-special-master/ |
The practice by some campaigns and outside groups this year has divided Democrats, with some in the party complaining that such tactics are risky and could result in the election of candidates who pose serious threats to democracy.
Republican candidate for Senate, retired U.S. Army brigadier general Don Bolduc, center, during a campaign rally at an American Legion Hall. (Josh Reynolds for The Washington Post)
Democrats have spent nearly $19 million across eight states in primaries this year amplifying far-right Republican candidates who have questioned or denied the validity of the 2020 election, according to a Washington Post analysis, interfering in GOP contests to elevate rivals they see as easier to defeat in November, even as those candidates have promoted false or baseless claims.
The practice by some campaigns and outside groups this year has divided Democrats, with some in the party complaining that such tactics are risky and could ultimately result in the election of candidates who pose serious threats to democracy.
The approach often involves TV ads suggesting that a far-right GOP candidate is too conservative for a state or district and drawing attention to the candidate’s hard line views on abortion, guns and former president Donald Trump — messages that resonate with conservative primary voters. In other cases, Democrats have run ads attacking GOP candidates seen as tougher to defeat in general elections in ways that could erode support for them in Republican primaries.
Total Democratic spending rises to roughly $53 million when a ninth state, Illinois, is added. There, the Democratic Governors Association and the campaign of Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) spent a combined $34.5 million successfully elevating a GOP candidate who has said it was “appalling” that party leaders in Illinois wanted Trump to concede the 2020 election.
See the ads Democrats are funding to boost far-right Republicans
Some Democrats explain their actions by saying they are simply getting a jump on attacking Republican candidates for the general election, while others openly acknowledge trying to secure weaker competition in the fall. But there is little dispute about the effect of altering the Republican primaries in ways that could affect the November matchups.
As primary season nears its Tuesday endpoint, Democrats are giving the strategy one more try in New Hampshire, in two congressional races. In the Republican Senate primary, Senate Majority PAC, a group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), is spending $3.2 million on ads that effectively enhance the candidacy in the GOP primary of ret. Gen. Don Bolduc, by portraying his more moderate rival, state Senate President Chuck Morse, who has trailed in GOP primary polls to Bolduc, as beholden to the party establishment.
In primaries earlier this year, some Democrats spotlighted the conservative bona fides of a GOP candidate for U.S. House in Colorado who convened a state legislative hearing into allegations of 2020 voter fraud despite no evidence of it; a Senate candidate in the same state who was outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and described the attack as a “peaceful rally”; and a Maryland gubernatorial candidate who tweeted “Mike Pence is a traitor” as the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob was happening. Their efforts magnified a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Nevada who said Trump “is still our president” months after Biden’s inauguration.
In one instance where Democrats helped fund a Nevada organization promoting a right-wing gubernatorial candidate, the organization’s leader, a Republican, told The Post he spent “excess” funds on downballot races Democrats hadn’t intended to finance — including a secretary of state primary in which an election-denying candidate prevailed.
Critics complain these investments undercut the party’s vow to be guardians of democracy. Worse yet, they say, in a difficult political climate for Democrats, they fear it might lead to electing the very candidates they perceive to present the biggest threats to the country.
“This is a deeply, deeply precarious and dangerous strategy to deploy,” said former Indiana congressman Tim Roemer, who organized a letter of former Democratic lawmakers criticizing their own party for using the tactic. “It risks elevating these liars and giving them a platform for another three or four months — even if they end up getting beat — to drumbeat their message into the electorate and further erode trust.”
Overall, the money used across the country has been spent largely on TV commercials, the Post analysis shows, at times making larger investments than the GOP candidates were able to scrape together. That happened in at least seven races, including a U.S. House race in California where Democrats spent more than twice the amount that the GOP candidate they bolstering; in Maryland, where Democrats spent nine times the amount spent by the Republican they sought to help; and in Colorado where Democrats spent at least 30 times as much as the Republican whose message they amplified, according to The Post’s data.
The Post tally of approximate spending comes from examining federal and state campaign finance disclosures along with estimates from ad tracking companies, including AdImpact. In most cases, the figures were confirmed by campaigns or outside organizations.
Defenders note that the tactic has been used in the past by both parties — albeit in more limited circumstances — and point to the strong head winds Democrats faced going into the midterms, saying that the difficult conditions justify seizing every possible advantage. As Democrats’ outlook has improved in recent weeks, some think their efforts could be vindicated if they enable the party to help hold the Senate or compete for a House majority on a shrinking map.
“Given the serious damage Republicans would do with a majority in either chamber of Congress or with the power of a governorship, no one needs to apologize for doing what they think will give Democratic candidates their best chance of winning,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster whose firm conducted surveys in at least one race in which Democrats have meddled.
Some Democrats argue that their efforts merely serve to inform voters about extreme views held by GOP candidates in advance of the general election. In some cases, they are running similar ad campaigns after the primaries have ended.
“In our mind what we have done across the country is start general elections early,” said Marshall Cohen, the political director for the DGA.
About $25 million from the DGA and roughly $9.5 million from Pritzker’s campaign went toward bolstering state Sen. Darren Bailey (R), the candidate who said it was “appalling” that party leaders wanted Trump to concede in 2020, according to ad tracking data obtained by The Post and Pritzker campaign disclosures. Mostly through TV ads, they attacked GOP gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin, the mayor of a Chicago suburb seen by Republicans as more electable. Some of the ads also highlighted Bailey’s conservative record, picturing him together with Trump and saying he “proudly embraces the Trump agenda.”
“Supporting Democratic candidates and causes remains a priority for the governor, and what organizations choose to do with donations is their prerogative,” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein in a statement.
Other Democrats see a more dangerous gambit.
“We are playing with fire,” said former House speaker Richard Gephardt, a Democrat who opposes using the tactic in the current political environment. “It is a red line. A candidate who is not for having elections anymore has got to be kept out of office. We have to protect the democracy. Democracy is a fragile thing.”
Some Democratic leaders critical of the tactic also say they believe that it will undercut a core message of the party — which Biden recently emphasized — that voters should put their party identity aside to preserve democracy.
“We’re all called, by duty and conscience, to confront extremists who will put their own pursuit of power above all else,” said Biden in a prime time address earlier this month. “Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy.”
When asked in a recent television interview if the Democratic interference in GOP primaries contradicts that pitch, Vice President Harris declined to answer directly. “I’m not going to tell people how to run their campaigns,” Harris said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
Beyond Illinois, Democrats ended up with the far-right Republican opponents they wanted to run against in two other gubernatorial races. In Pennsylvania, the GOP nominee is Doug Mastriano, who was a key part of the effort undo the 2020 election results in the state. The campaign of party nominee Josh Shapiro, amplified his message in the primary.
In Maryland, the GOP gubernatorial beneficiary of Democratic interference, Dan Cox, chartered buses to bring supporters to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and tweeted “Mike Pence is a traitor” as the insurrection was happening.
After spending about $1.7 million to draw attention Cox’s message during the GOP primary, Democrats in the state are now campaigning against what they say is his extreme record. A recent fundraising appeal from Maryland Senate Democratic Caucus asks for funds to defeat Cox, saying: “We have our work cut out for us if we want to protect Marylanders from the right-wing extremism we see infiltrating neighboring states.”
But in other contests, the outcome was different. In Colorado’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate, a group called Democratic Colorado PAC spent about $4 million on TV ads during the Republican primary, with some attacking businessman Joe O’Dea for supporting Democratic priorities including Biden’s infrastructure agenda. O’Dea won the nomination.
“Will the Democrats’ failed smear of Joe O’Dea in the primary be part of our case to ticket-splitting independent voters who decide elections in Colorado? You bet it will,” said Kyle Kohli, a spokesman for O’Dea’s campaign.
The strategy attracted criticism over the summer when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee engaged in a GOP primary in Michigan to highlight John Gibbs, who has falsely said there were “anomalies” in the 2020 presidential tally that make the results “mathematically impossible.” By interfering in the race, Democrats contributed to efforts to topple Rep. Peter Meijer, a Republican who had voted with Democrats to impeach Trump.
“There’s only one reason we spend money and that’s to elect a pro-choice majority,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N. Y), the chairman of the DCCC. “There are always debates about tactics but the bottom line is that race is more likely to be won by a Democrat,”
Among some of Maloney’s colleagues, the move did not sit well. In a text, Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), said he was “aghast about what the DCCC did.” He added, “It was morally wrong and tactically off-base at the very time our Select Committee on 1/6 is uncovering and sharing the story of Trump’s plot to overthrow our democracy.”
In California, where there is an all-party primary system, House Majority PAC, a Democratic group, ran ads informing GOP voters that Rep. David G. Valadao (R) voted to impeach Trump. Republican Chris Mathys, who made his loyalty to Trump a central plank of his campaign, came within about 1,300 votes of prevailing over Valadao. Mathys spent just $80,000 on his campaign, according to federal disclosures. The Democratic super PAC spent roughly $200,000.
Abby Curran Horrell, the executive director for the House Majority PAC, said in a statement that the group was founded to do “whatever it takes to secure a Democratic House Majority” and this year they are “taking the necessary steps to fulfill this vision.” The group also noted that they spent about $225,000 on positive ads for the Democratic candidate in the race.
In Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, the Democratic super PAC Patriot Majority spent about $300,000 amplifying Jarome Bell, a GOP candidate who downplayed the insurrectionists, saying they “basically went on a guided tour of the Capitol” and called for an audit of Virginia’s 2020 presidential election results. Bell, who would go on to lose, only spent about $255,000 on his own campaign. One ad called Bell an “America first conservative,” and frequently mentioned Trump, saying Bell “supports Trump’s election audit in all 50 states.”
The Democrat in the race is Rep. Elaine Luria, a member of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In Nevada, Democrats appeared to lose control of the strategy, providing funds to a group that used them more broadly than intended and put money into promoting an election-denying secretary of state candidate in the swing state.
There, a newly formed group called the Patriot Freedom Fund that was financed in part by an outside group called Home Means Nevada, which was started by former aides to Democratic Gov. Doug Sisolak, issued a mailer urging voters to back GOP secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant, who opposed the certification of Biden’s win in the state.
Truman Fleming, listed as the treasurer for Patriot Freedom Fund, told The Post he’s a Republican, and said that he pitched Democrats in the state on teaming up to bolster GOP gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert, a former professional boxer who was outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and has said that Trump is “still our president.”
In an email, Fleming offered some details about how his newly formed group received $685,000 from Home Means Nevada. “I mean it was pretty easy, I wanted Gilbert and they did too because they thought they had a better chance of beating him vs Lombardo,” Fleming said, referring to Joe Lombardo, the Clark County sheriff who prevailed in the GOP gubernatorial primary contest. “I used the excess of funds to help Marchant and others.”
An official with the Democratic group Home Means Nevada confirmed that the organization hadn’t intended for Fleming to use the money to boost Marchant. Instead it was meant “solely to support their effort to ensure Nevada voters learned more about Joe Lombardo and his position on issues, and that’s all,” said Tia White, who is listed as an officer with Home Means Nevada.
Marchant won the secretary of state primary. During an episode of a podcast hosted by former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, Marchant said like-minded activists need just a handful of victories to have a major impact.
“If we get just a few of the candidates that we have in our coalition, we save our country,” said Marchant. | 2022-09-12T16:46:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats spend tens of millions amplifying far-right candidates in nine states - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats-interfere-republican-primaries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats-interfere-republican-primaries/ |
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Writing for the Atlantic last year, David Brooks outlined the three groups that made up the right’s “intellectual wing,” the faction for which conservatism is predicated not on MAGA hats but on stacks of books (many, it seems, with uncracked spines).
There were the older folks who had been looped into conservative politics for a while but found themselves “radicalized by the current left,” as he put it. There were the political candidates — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), J.D. Vance — who recognized that steering their rhetoric in a new direction might reap rewards. And then there were young people, for whom the political space is, among other things, refreshingly contrarian.
Brooks’s categorizations were driven by his attendance at the National Conservatism Conference, a relatively new entrant in the seemingly endless cascade of right-leaning gatherings. He found the rhetoric alarming — but understood why it held appeal.
“America’s rarified NatCon World is just one piece of a larger illiberal populist revolt that is strong and rising,” Brooks wrote. It was, at its heart, the same sort of anti-establishment, anti-elite reaction that powered Donald Trump in the first place.
This has been a tension within the Republican Party for more than a decade. The party has its own establishment, intertwined with the media and the left in a way that much of its base came to find repulsive. The tea party figured out a pitch that appealed to that group and Trump figured out a better one. Now it comes in various flavors — forcing the party and its still extant establishment to learn a variety of new dance steps to join the party. That’s Brooks’s second category, and some are better dancers than others.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is not the party’s best dancer. But that’s probably because — like the party itself — he’s trying to do more than one dance at the same time.
Scott spoke at the third iteration of the National Conservatism Conference, held this weekend in his home state. He was one of several elected officials to do so, along with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). Otherwise, the lineup was a who’s who of a specific right-wing universe: Rod Dreher, Darren Beattie, various Federalist people, Hungary’s Balázs Orbán.
His speech contained the sorts of appeals you might expect, given the venue. The left is burning books, throwing open the borders and prisons and hollowing America out from the inside. But it was DeSantis who thrilled. The Florida governor was “a complete contrast to Rick Scott — and, frankly, Donald Trump,” Dreher wrote on Twitter. “DeSantis is not mostly talk; he gets things done.” The deployment of state power to advance conservative causes is a hobbyhorse of Dreher’s, so a grain of salt is useful. But it seems clear that the crowd was much more of a DeSantis one than a Scott one.
In part, that’s precisely because Scott’s power is limited in a way DeSantis’s isn’t. Sure, Scott can outline a broad agenda for his party and the country, as he did in his speech and as he did earlier this year. But DeSantis can sign new laws and take executive action. He’s also got a communications team that speaks the language of the online right in a way that few other politicians can. (His campaign’s rapid-response director, Christina Pushaw, was also on the speaker list at the conference.)
Scott also has that other constraint: He’s a literal part of the Republican establishment. He’s the head of the party’s Senate campaign arm, a role that he leveraged to unveil a policy platform loaded with old-school GOP positions earlier this year. It’s his job to get members of his party elected in red states and blue ones, tailoring messages that can work in November.
But, then, Scott also is clearly thinking about running for president. He was in Iowa over the weekend, offering his support to a Republican candidate. A House candidate. He doesn’t need to bolster the state’s Republican Senate candidate, Charles E. Grassley, who’s got a comfortable lead. And there’s only one reason that politicians make seemingly inexplicable trips to Iowa.
This is why he released that policy platform, of course: He wants to be the party’s thought leader. That Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was irritated by Scott’s articulating policy positions that allowed Democrats to have something to run against — as they did — was seemingly neither here nor there. More problematic for Scott is that he’s got a stable of Senate candidates whose November chances are weaker than the candidates they beat in the primary, like Herschel Walker in Georgia, for example. If the GOP doesn’t retake the Senate, Scott will bear a lot of the blame.
In the meantime, though, he’s trying to turn criticism of those candidates into an anti-establishment talking point.
“[M]any of the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle are now trying to stop us from winning the majority this time by trash-talking our Republican candidates,” he wrote for the Washington Examiner earlier this month, clearly referencing McConnell. “It’s an amazing act of cowardice, and ultimately, it’s treasonous to the conservative cause.” Complaints about candidates, he insisted, was just “contempt for the voters who chose them.”
Running against McConnell is a tried and true tactic for appealing to Republican voters. It’s not really clear, though, how it might help get Republicans elected. Particularly in the face of sluggish fundraising under Scott’s watch.
Senate candidates aren’t dependent on Scott for messaging, but his messaging has been almost exclusively centered on stoking enthusiasm from right-wing Republicans. Perhaps this is tactical, aimed at goosing turnout in the way that Trump did in 2016. Or maybe it’s just Scott using his platform to talk to Republican primary voters.
There he was this weekend, after all, trying to woo a right-wing constituency with growing clout but one that does not demonstrably move votes. He’s the establishment, fighting against the establishment. He’s looking to elect senators as he fights with the head of the Republican Senate caucus. He, like the GOP, wants to gain power by fighting the powerful of which he is an element.
But above all, he’s a politician with ambition. His speech at the conference, after all, wasn’t titled “Why We Need to Elect Republicans” or “How the Right Can Unite to Defeat the Left.” It was titled “My Plan to Rescue America.”
The latest: China competition spurs Biden’s push for domestic biotech subsidies | 2022-09-12T16:46:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Like the GOP itself, Rick Scott wants to be everything to everyone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/republicans-rick-scott-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/republicans-rick-scott-trump/ |
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