text stringlengths 237 126k | date_download stringdate 2022-01-01 00:32:20 2023-01-01 00:02:37 ⌀ | source_domain stringclasses 60 values | title stringlengths 4 31.5k ⌀ | url stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ | id stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
World leaders, including President Biden, are expected to join the British royal family Monday to pay their respects at the funeral for Queen Elizabeth II. On Sept. 19 at 3:00 p.m. ET, Washington Post senior writer Frances Stead Sellers speaks with David Miliband, former U.K. foreign secretary and International Rescue Committee president, about his reflections on the day’s ceremonies, the queen’s legacy and the past and future of the British monarchy.
Former U.K. Foreign Secretary
President & CEO, International Rescue Committee | 2022-09-15T21:29:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Queen Elizabeth’s legacy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/19/former-uk-foreign-secretary-david-miliband-queen-elizabeths-legacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/19/former-uk-foreign-secretary-david-miliband-queen-elizabeths-legacy/ |
Tina Ramirez, who founded acclaimed Ballet Hispánico, dies at 92
‘I wanted to keep them from having to dance in nightclubs,’ she said of Hispanic dancers. ‘They were serious dancers and deserved the opportunity to be treated as such.’
By Joel Lobenthal
Tina Ramirez at the Ballet Hispánico of New York in the 1980s. (Ballet Hispánico archives)
Tina Ramirez, who dedicated her career to showcasing the diversity of Hispanic culture, founding the dance company Ballet Hispánico in New York City in 1970 and shepherding it to international renown, died Sept. 6 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.
Verdery Roosevelt, Ballet Hispánico’s former executive director, announced the death but did not provide an immediate cause.
After an extensive performing career, Ms. Ramirez turned during the 1960s to teaching and developing inner-city cultural resources.
“We were all around New York City,” she told the Los Angeles Times, speaking of people of Latino and Hispanic heritage, “but people thought we were dishwashers, people washing the floors. We weren’t paid any attention. I wanted to say, ‘Hey, we have a beautiful culture.’ ”
“One of the things I’m interested in is risk-taking,” Ms. Ramirez told the New York Times in 1994, explaining her decision to commission a new work from choreographer Amanda Miller. “I said to her: ‘Would you like to do a dark piece? To Spanish music?’ ”
Ms. Ramirez said that she saw dance as “painting in space,” in which “emotions should come from the inside and be revealed by the body in motion.”
Ernestina Ramirez was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on Nov. 7, 1929. Her father was a bullfighter from Mexico, and her mother was from Puerto Rico. She accompanied her father throughout Latin America for his work. She mesmerized by him, later saying that his elegance of movement and flair for the dramatic as a bullfighter seeded her interest in dance. He provided her first dance lessons by having her balance on his feet.
Ms. Ramirez was 5 when her parents divorced, and she and her mother (who remarried) eventually moved into an apartment in Spanish Harlem. Her mother, who came from a family of educators, didn’t want her daughter to become a dancer. But Ms. Ramirez’s sister, Coco, was prescribed dance lessons as a way to improve her poor health.
After a year, their mother relented and allowed Ms. Ramirez, by now 12, to begin to formally study dance. Her principal teacher was Lola Bravo, a doyenne of Spanish dance who also believed in the importance of classical ballet; Ms. Ramirez went on to study with Ballets Russes ballerina Alexandra Danilova.
From the late 1940s through the early 1960s, Ms. Ramirez danced on Broadway, in modern dance troupes and with a concert group led by Federico Rey. She lived in Spain for two years and continued to study there. She and Coco teamed up for a nightclub act that toured the world with bandleader Xavier Cugat.
Ms. Ramirez returned to New York in 1963 to take over the studio of her former teacher Bravo, who was retiring. She saw firsthand what study after study has demonstrated — that arts education enhances students’ self-esteem and their performance throughout their standard academic curriculum, as well.
That concept inspired her to start Operation High Hopes, a professional performance-training program for underprivileged children from all five New York City boroughs. The city’s Office for Economic Opportunity awarded her $18,000 to start the program in the summer of 1967, before the grant money soon succumbed to budget cuts.
Some of her students from the program continued working with her and had set their sights on professional careers. She wanted to provide them professional opportunities, and Ms. Ramirez founded Ballet Hispánico with a $20,000 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.
It was a propitious moment for dancers of color. Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem had been established in 1969. Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater was now over a decade old. Yet then as well as now, ensuring stability was a continual challenge for even the most acclaimed troupes — let alone a pioneering start-up.
Arthur Mitchell, ‘Jackie Robinson’ of the ballet profession, dies at 84
Amid a New York City real estate market that has dramatically affected the vulnerability of arts organizations, Ballet Hispánico’s investment in purchasing its own building was key to its longevity. When it seemed as though the company might lose its studios on West 89th Street, the local community board stepped in to champion its purchase of the building as well as a house next door. Ballet Hispánico raised the necessary $1.3 million to buy and renovate the two buildings “dollar by dollar,” Ms. Ramirez recalled.
Ballet Hispánico began touring across the United States and internationally throughout its first decade of existence. Ms. Ramirez’s commitment to education radiated beyond the boundaries of her own school, as she sent the company’s dancers into the schools of New York City and local communities on tour stops.
In 2005, Ms. Ramirez received the National Medal of Arts, the highest government award for artists and art patrons.
In 2009, at age 80, Ms. Ramirez retired as Ballet Hispánico’s director, citing the way that consuming company responsibilities had swamped her wider appreciation for the arts. “I don’t see enough dance,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t see enough theater, I don’t go to museums. That has to change.”
Fundamental to Ms. Ramirez’s vision was the continuum, the shared impulse between folk culture and conservatory disciplines — a recognition of the shared roots of all movement to music. “I believe all dancing really comes from folk dance, even though I’m a trained dancer and love classical ballet,” she told the New York Times in 1994. “Even ballet came from folk. Dancers today may have a slick, fabulous technique, but it has to come back to that.” | 2022-09-15T22:26:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tina Ramirez, who founded acclaimed Ballet Hispánico, dies at 92 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/15/tina-ramirez-dance-ballet-hispanico-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/15/tina-ramirez-dance-ballet-hispanico-dead/ |
Move brings U.S. in line with European Union, which issued tight controls on fentanyl exports to Russia this summer
An example of the amount of fentanyl that can be deadly is held up after a news conference about deaths from fentanyl exposure. The illicit street drug also has legal uses as a prescription painkiller. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
The United States on Thursday strictly limited the export of fentanyl and related chemicals to Russia, saying that they “may be useful” as chemical weapons to support Russia’s “military aggression.”
The Commerce Department said sales to Russia of the powerful opiate will now require a U.S. government license. The rule also applies to exports to Belarus, whose leadership supports Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fentanyl is widely known in the United States as an illicit street drug that has caused thousands of overdose deaths in recent years. But it also has legal uses as a prescription painkiller. It is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Commerce Department didn’t respond to questions about why it took the step. But the move brings the United States in line with the European Union, which controlled fentanyl and related drug exports to Russia in June, saying that the substances “have been used as toxic chemicals … in the past by Russia.”
In 2002, Russian special forces used a gaseous form of fentanyl as a knockout agent before storming a theater where hostages were being held. The gas allowed the agents to enter and kill the Chechen militants who had taken hundreds of people hostage, but the powerful narcotic also killed more than 100 of the hostages.
Russian officials at the time wouldn’t identify the type of gas used, saying only that it was a nonlethal anesthetic. But U.S. officials said that tests done by U.S. embassy doctors on Americans present during the hostage-taking indicated that the gas was fentanyl.
The new U.S. export controls also apply to the precursor chemicals needed to make fentanyl, and to a group of compounds closely related to fentanyl.
The measure was one of a list of additional sanctions and export controls the United States adopted on Thursday in relation to Russia. It slapped new controls on the export of quantum computing technology to Russia. It also sanctioned additional executives in Russia’s financial sector.
And it adopted new sanctions on people it accused of supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine and committing human rights abuses, including Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov; a Russian neo-Nazi militia allegedly fighting in Ukraine, and a Russian official who the United States said has “led Russia’s efforts to deport tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.” | 2022-09-15T22:26:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. limits export of fentanyl to Russia, calling it a potential weapon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/15/fentanyl-export-russia-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/15/fentanyl-export-russia-ban/ |
Mexico arrests Army general in students’ disappearance
By Kevin Sieff
Family members of the 43 students who went missing from Ayotzinapa in 2014 march in Mexico City on Aug. 26 to demand justice. (Claudio Cruz/AFP/Getty Images)
MEXICO CITY — Mexico has arrested an Army general accused of involvement in the deaths of the 43 students who disappeared on their way to a demonstration in 2014, authorities said, a crime that shocked the country but remains unsolved.
Gen. José Rodríguez Pérez is the latest in a series of officials arrested for allegedly participating in or covering up the abduction of the teachers’ college students from the rural town of Ayotzinapa eight years ago this month. The remains of only three of the students have been recovered.
Jesús Murillo Karam, Mexico’s former attorney general, was arrested last month for his alleged role in a coverup. Taken together, the arrests show a rare effort by the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to hold security officials accountable for human rights abuses in Mexico.
Mexico arrests former attorney general in kidnapping of 43 students
Rodríguez Pérez is the highest ranking military officer arrested in the case. Warrants for three other were also issued this week, according to Mexico’s deputy security minister. Two of them were detained; one remains a fugitive.
“Four arrest warrants have been issued against members of the Mexican Army,” Mejía told reporters Thursday. “There are three people arrested, among them the commander of the 27th infantry battalion when the events took place in Iguala in September 2014.”
Rodríguez Pérez, who was a colonel at the time of the students’ disappearance, is accused of playing a significant role.
Six of the disappeared students “were turned over to the colonel,” Alejandro Encinas, Mexico’s undersecretary for human rights, said at a news conference last month.
Encinas said the six were “killed and disappeared on orders of the colonel, allegedly the then-Colonel José Rodríguez Pérez.”
The students were commandeering buses, a local custom, to travel to the demonstration in Mexico City. Encinas said they probably unwittingly stole a bus loaded with drugs or money.
Local law enforcement officials forced them off the vehicles. It’s unclear what happened next, but Encinas has said that state and federal officials neglected to stop the kidnapping and rescue the students, though they could have.
The disappearance of 43 students shocked Mexico, but under former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, no serious attempts were made to solve the crime. Instead, officials shielded the role that federal officials played in the disappearance.
López Obrador now appears to be pursuing the federal officials that his predecessor would not. That effort has been seen as a positive development by the victims’ families and human rights advocates. But some analysts have questioned whether López Obrador is motivated primarily by the opportunity it gives him to criticize Peña Nieto.
López Obrador’s decision to arrest a senior member of the military — one of the country’s most powerful institutions — does carry some political risk. He has leaned on the military for a range of objectives, from deploying soldiers across the country in a domestic security initiative to constructing a 900-mile train in southern Mexico. That reliance on the armed forces has raised concerns among human rights advocates.
Mexico’s attorney general’s office has issued more than 80 arrest warrants in the case. | 2022-09-15T22:26:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexico arrests Gen. José Rodríguez Pérez in Ayotzinapa missing students - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/15/mexico-missing-students-ayotzinapa-general-arrested/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/15/mexico-missing-students-ayotzinapa-general-arrested/ |
Driver who rammed Arlington pub likely had medical emergency, police say
Ireland's Four Courts pub and restaurant a day after a car crashed into the building, leaving more than a dozen people injured. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
An Uber driver who rammed his car into an Arlington pub last month, injuring more than a dozen patrons and staff, “likely experienced a medical emergency prior to the crash,” police said Thursday.
The driver, who has not been identified, was traveling on North Courthouse Road when his vehicle crashed into Ireland’s Four Courts pub around 6:45 p.m. on Aug. 12, police said. The sedan rammed the front entrance and struck patrons and workers inside, causing a blaze.
Police previously said that the crash was unintentional, and that alcohol was not suspected to be a factor. They said that the Uber driver was cooperating with their investigation.
Fifteen people were injured, nine of whom were hospitalized, in the Friday-evening crash in a busy area of bars and restaurants.
All have been released from the hospital, according to a news release Thursday by the Arlington County Police Department. The pub remains temporarily closed. | 2022-09-15T22:30:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Driver who rammed Arlington pub likely had medical emergency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/four-courts-arlington-crash-medical/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/four-courts-arlington-crash-medical/ |
An anesthesiologist faces charges for allegedly tampering with IV bags, resulting in the death of his colleague as well as several other cardiac emergencies, according to a criminal complaint. (iStock)
In June, a Dallas area doctor who was feeling unwell wanted to use a saline IV bag she had gotten from her work to try to rehydrate. She tapped it into her veins while at home. Minutes later, she suffered a major medical event and died, court records say.
Now, Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr., an anesthesiologist at her surgical facility, faces federal charges for allegedly tampering with IV bags in a way that resulted in the death of his colleague as well as several other cardiac emergencies, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. Northern District Court of Texas that was unsealed Thursday.
The complaint alleges that Rivera Ortiz Jr., who was arrested in Plano, Tex., this week, injected nerve-blockers and bronchodilators — asthma drugs that relax lung muscles — into patient IV bags. He is charged with tampering with a consumer product, and tampering with a consumer product causing death and/or serious bodily injury; and with intentionally adulterating drugs having a reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences.
Rivera Ortiz Jr. could not immediately be reached by The Washington Post. Court records do not list an attorney for him. He is expected to make his first court appearance in Dallas on Sept. 16.
The charges come less than a week after the Texas Medical Board temporarily suspended Rivera Ortiz Jr.'s license, after federal authorities alerted the disciplinary board that Rivera Ortiz Jr. was the subject of a criminal investigation “relating to serious cardiac complications and one patient’s death” at the north Dallas facility from May through September, according to the board’s news release.
Rivera Ortiz Jr., who is not board-certified and was licensed to practice medicine in Texas, also operates a group consultancy in Dallas, according to the order released last week.
On June 21, a 55-year-old anesthesiologist who worked at the facility, identified in court records as “Facility 1,” was at home because she was feeling dehydrated. The woman, identified in court records as “M.K.,” suffered a “major medical event” minutes after intravenously attaching the bag and died before medical responders arrived at her home, the complaint states.
An autopsy completed Aug. 24 by the Dallas medical examiner concluded that her death was caused by accidental bupivacaine toxicity, court records state. Bupivacaine, a “nerve block” agent used in local anesthesia procedures, was found in her bloodstream, the complaint says. Investigators found that the substance was stored at the Dallas facility, and the circumstances of her death indicated “M.K.” had no intent of dying by suicide.
The same day the autopsy was completed, an 18-year-old man listed in court records as “J.A.” who underwent surgery at “Facility 1” suffered unexpected complications when his heart started beating out of control and his blood pressure spiked above normal, the complaint states. The man, who needed CPR to save his life, was transferred to an emergency facility and intubated for some time, court records say. He spent four days in the hospital.
Investigators collected four IV bags from “Facility 1′s” warmer — a medical device used to heat fluids, court records say. Two of these bags were used during J.A.'s surgery and investigators suspected the other two had been compromised, federal authorities said. Upon further inspection, small holes were found in the clear plastic packaging bags that encase the IV bags, the complaint states.
“The bags with puncture holes appeared to have been physically tampered with, as there is no explanation for why a supposedly sealed IV bag would have a puncture hole in the packaging surrounding it,” the complaint states.
According to the Texas Medical Board’s suspension order released last week, security cameras at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare North Dallas, which is only named as “Facility 1” in the criminal complaint, caught the anesthesiologist walking up to a warmer sometime this year and placing several IV bags inside the device outside the operating rooms. Investigators obtained video showing Rivera Ortiz Jr. placing IV bags inside the warmer on multiple occasions, the complaint states.
The bag attached to “J.A.'s” arm tested positive for epinephrine, a potent pharmaceutical stimulant that could easily cause cardiac symptoms, along with bupivacaine and lidocaine, court records state. The bag was not labeled accordingly, and the other two suspected compromised bags also tested positive for bupivacaine and lidocaine, the complaint states.
Staff interviewed by authorities at “Facility 1″ said it was unlikely that “J.A.” and “M.K’s” incidents were isolated, adding that they thought that there were about 10 other “suspected incidents since late May 2022 where patients experienced unexpected cardiovascular complications during otherwise unremarkable surgeries,” according to court records.
Doctor accused of killing 14 patients with fentanyl acquitted of murder
Although Rivera Ortiz Jr. was the anesthesiologist at “Facility 1” during multiple surgeries since May, staff members told investigators that none of the suspected cardiovascular complications from IV bags had happened during any surgery in which Rivera Ortiz Jr. was the anesthesiologist. However, investigators found that Rivera Ortiz Jr., who had access to the IV bags and the substances found in the them, did perform services at the facility on or around days leading up to the surgeries in question, the complaint states.
The Texas Medical Board has disciplined Rivera Ortiz Jr. in the past.
In August, the board announced that another physician would monitor Rivera Ortiz Jr. after it found that he “failed to meet the standard of care for a patient during a procedure.” Rivera Ortiz Jr. was disciplined for that incident, including being fined $3,000, according to court records. The anesthesiologist also has a pending nonpublic investigation related to a patient identified in court records as “G.A.” who stopped breathing during a routine procedure under Rivera Ortiz Jr.'s care.
According to a review ordered by “Facility 1,” court records state, Rivera Ortiz Jr. “deviated from the standard of care by failing to maintain the patient’s airway and failing to document critical aspects of the incident.”
Matthew Olivolo, a spokesman with Baylor Scott & White Health, the surgery center’s larger health-care network, told The Post in an email that the north Dallas facility contacted authorities after discovering that an IV bag “had potentially been compromised.”
“It elected to close the same day, and it remains closed as we focus on assisting investigators. There is nothing more important than the safety and well-being of our patients,” Olivolo told The Post.
Rivera Ortiz Jr. was no longer a physician at the surgery center at the time the Texas Medical Board suspended his license, Olivolo said. | 2022-09-15T22:39:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas doctor Raynaldo Ortiz Jr. charged with tampering with IV bags - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/15/texas-doctor-charged-iv-bags-tampering/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/15/texas-doctor-charged-iv-bags-tampering/ |
Former Kansas City police detective indicted on sex assault charges
Roger Golubski, who is White, is accused of using his power as a law enforcement official to sexually abuse two Black women
A former Kansas City, Kan., police detective was indicted Thursday on federal civil rights charges, accused of sexually assaulting two women more than 20 years ago in a case that advocates have said starkly illustrates the need for greater police accountability.
Roger Golubski, who is White, faces six counts of deprivation of civil rights. He is accused of using his power as a law enforcement official to abuse the women, who are Black, multiple times between 1999 and 2002, allegedly raping and sodomizing them in their homes and in his vehicle, according to the indictment.
The FBI arrested Golubski at his home in Edwardsville, Kan. He faces a sentence of life in prison if convicted.
The charges come after years of pressure from civil rights activists who have said Golubski was the product of a department that failed to hold its officers accountable for misconduct and abuse, including arresting suspects and framing them based on false evidence. The advocates have pushed for criminal charges for Golubski, who retired from the department at the rank of captain in 2010; they also called on the Justice Department to launch a broader civil probe into the polices and culture of the local police.
“This is a beginning of some semblance of justice for these victims,” said Lora McDonald, executive director of the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, a local social justice group.
The details of the indictment do not identify Golubski’s alleged victims by name, but they match allegations made publicly by Ophelia Williams, who has said Golubski began abusing her after arresting her teenage sons, then 14, in a homicide investigation in 1999. Williams and another woman, identified in the federal indictment as S.K., testified in 2020 a civil case filed by Lamont McIntyre, who was wrongfully convicted of a double murder after being arrested by Golubski in 1994.
The indictment says Golubski abused the two women on several occasions, including allegedly raping them and forcing them to perform oral sex on him. The woman identified as S.K. said during her deposition in the McIntyre case that she was 13 and in middle school when Golubski began abusing her after falsely telling her she was a witness in a criminal case and threatening her that she could end up in jail.
McDonald said she spoke to Williams on Thursday about Golubksi’s arrest. “They got him. They just handcuffed Roger Golubski,” McDonald quoted Williams as saying. “I am so happy and stunned at the arrest of that man. I pray that after so many years we finally get justice, people can finally relax, and I can finally sleep at night.”
Golubski’s case has drawn national attention, including from entertainment mogul Jay-Z, whose social advocacy group, Team ROC, has filed lawsuits seeking information from the KCKPD and launched its own investigation into that department, according to local activists.
This year, Kansas City Star columnist Melinda Henneberger was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for columns in 2021 that exposed new details about Golubski’s case and put pressure on city officials and the police department to hold him accountable.
Advocates were galvanized in part by the 2017 exoneration of McIntyre, who spent 23 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted in a double murder case. Attorneys for McIntyre said Golubski framed him after McIntyre’s mother refused the detective’s sexual advances. The federal charges against Golubski do not include those allegations.
In a statement Thursday, McIntyre’s attorneys, Cheryl Pilate and Lindsay Runnels, said Golubski “stands accused of serious crimes committed against women while an officer sworn to protect and serve. We are hopeful the justice system delivers the accountability that the Kansas City, Kansas, community deserves.”
McIntyre sued the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan., and reached a $12.5 million settlement.
DOJ increases hate-crimes prosecutions, raising some questions about which it pursues
Police officials said last year that the accusations against Golubski dealt with actions that had allegedly happened many years earlier and suggested the department has moved on. Police Chief Karl A. Oakman, who is Black, took over after serving as deputy chief in the Kansas City, Mo., police department, and he has sought to build public trust while opposing a broader federal investigation.
“This indictment is an example that no individual is above the law,” Oakman said in a statement Thursday. “The department will continue to cooperate and offer any assistance needed by the FBI as this case moves forward.”
But Oakman’s efforts have not quieted the calls from activists, who have sent letters to the Justice Department’s civil rights division requesting a civil pattern-or-practice probe. Justice officials have declined to comment on whether they plan to pursue such an inquiry, which could lead to a court-approved consent decree outlining policing changes and accountability measures.
“We continue to stand in solidarity alongside the people of Kansas City, Kansas who have been patiently for justice and accountability,” said Dania Diaz, Team ROC’s managing director. “The arrest of Roger Golubski is a significant step toward creating a safer community.” | 2022-09-15T22:57:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Kansas City police detective Golubski charged with abusing Black women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/15/golubski-kansas-police-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/15/golubski-kansas-police-arrest/ |
Why did Democrats postpone the same-sex marriage vote?
Sen. Tammy Baldwin is trying to build support for a bill to guarantee marriage equality. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
After a great deal of cajoling and negotiating, Senate Democrats have delayed a vote on the Respect for Marriage Act until after the midterm elections. One way to look at this is that they have preserved the possibility that the bill could overcome a Republican filibuster and become law in the lame-duck session. Another is that they just let Republicans off the hook.
The bill’s purpose is to codify the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed the right of same-sex couples to marry anywhere in the country. When the court overturned Roe v. Wade, the logic it used made clear that Obergefell could be next. In a concurrence in the abortion case, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that it, too, should be nullified.
So the bill would make clear that same-sex couples have the right to marry even if the Supreme Court reverses itself on what the Constitution requires. It would require that every state legally recognize marriages that occur in any other state: Conservative states would have to respect same-sex marriages that took place in liberal states. It passed the House in July, with 47 Republicans voting for it. But Democrats need 10 Republican senators to defeat a filibuster in the upper chamber.
At first, the bill’s main purpose was seemingly to put Republicans in an embarrassing position, forcing them on record with an unpopular stance just before the elections. And their position is unpopular: Support for marriage equality is now over 70 percent in polls, but the adamant opposition of the GOP, and the vast majority of its elected officials, has not changed.
Instead, they’ve chosen to stop talking about it. You don’t see Republicans in close races airing ads about how they want to roll back marriage for same-sex couples.
But it turned out that although the Respect for Marriage Act may have had political utility as a weapon against Republicans, its sponsors — especially Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the first openly gay U.S. senator — are serious about passing it for its own sake, as protection against an activist conservative Supreme Court.
The trouble is that only three Republicans have gone on record in support: Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rob Portman of Ohio. So who are the seven Republicans who won’t vote for it now, but who will vote for it after the midterm elections?
One obvious one is Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who says she supports marriage equality but has not said whether she’ll support this bill. A few others, when asked about marriage equality, express some kind of live-and-let-live view, but that’s very different from voting on a high-profile bill.
And if we expect their votes to change between now and after the elections, that could mean only they feel it is too politically risky for them now but won’t feel that way in the lame-duck session.
That in turn would mean that they are personally in favor of codifying marriage equality but just don’t want to risk a right-wing backlash until after the elections. The question is: Why believe that enough Republicans feel that way and would indeed vote for the bill later?
According to a source familiar with Baldwin’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the choice broke down to this: Keeping alive the chance of getting the bill passed versus having no chance at passing it but extracting a political price right now from Republicans for that failure.
In this calculus, Republicans would definitely not vote for the bill after the elections if forced to beforehand. But there’s at least a chance that they’ll vote for it after the elections if they’re not jammed now.
And so, the source said, Baldwin doesn’t want to squander that chance of getting it done in exchange for putting Republicans on record on it before the elections. Even if that latter course might be desirable in some ways — after all, it might help Democrats keep the Senate, and that’s a big deal! — it’s still not worth trading away the chance of passage later.
Which means that, if Baldwin proves right and it does pass after the elections, this will all look very shrewd in retrospect. But if Republicans are blowing smoke — if they have no intention of voting for it after the elections and are just scamming to avoid a tough vote now — then there will be hell to pay among Democrats for failing to get them on record when they could have.
Knowing what we know about Republicans, that pessimistic scenario seems quite plausible. And it’s still hard to see where those extra Republican votes are going to come from. | 2022-09-15T22:58:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why did Democrats postpone a vote on the same-sex marriage bill? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/15/democrats-postpone-same-sex-marriage-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/15/democrats-postpone-same-sex-marriage-bill/ |
Will deterrence have a role in the cyberspace ‘forever war’?
(Washington Post staff illustration; Images by iStock/Getty Images)
At a time of growing concern about possible nuclear threats from Russia, some prominent defense strategists are arguing for a new theory of deterrence. They argue that military conflict is now so pervasive in cyberspace that the United States should seek to shift away from deterrence in this domain — and more aggressively exploit the opportunities it presents.
Beware, reader, in exploring this topic: Deterrence strategy is one of the wooliest and most abstract areas of defense analysis. In the early Cold War decades, it was the province of professors such as Herman Kahn at the Rand Corp., and Thomas Schelling and Henry Kissinger at Harvard — sometimes collectively known as the “wizards of Armageddon.” They “thought about the unthinkable” when it came to nuclear war, partly to dissuade the Soviet Union from ever launching an attack.
Times have changed, argues the new book “Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace.” Its three authors have all worked closely on cyber strategy for the Pentagon: Michael P. Fischerkeller as a cyber expert with the Institute for Defense Analyses; Emily O. Goldman as a strategist at U.S. Cyber Command; and Richard J. Harknett as a cyber expert at the University of Cincinnati and the first scholar-in-residence at Cyber Command.
The book isn’t an official policy document. But a foreword from Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, notes that the three authors have been “laying the foundations for the Command’s approach of Persistent Engagement” and that their book offers a “framework for understanding … operational effectiveness moving forward.”
To sum up the authors’ arguments: Cyberweapons fundamentally change the nature of warfare. Borders don’t matter much to digital code. And cyberwar is a continuum (and always happening at a low level), rather than an on-off switch. It’s a new domain, with new rules.
“Cyberspace must be understood primarily as an environment of exploitation rather than coercion,” the authors write. “Achieving strategic gains in the cyber strategic environment does not require concession of the opponent.” In other words, much of what we think we know about war doesn’t apply in this domain.
I had a chance to explore this esoteric subject in August, when the authors asked me to moderate a public discussion of their book at the National Defense University. The gathering produced a lively exchange among military cyber strategists.
To get an overview of the evolution of deterrence thinking, let’s start with Harknett’s vision of three phases in the history of warfare, culminating in cyber.
The first period, beginning in ancient history, involved “conventional” weapons — rocks at first, then eventually guns, cannons, battleships, bombers — to coerce the adversary into submission. Nation states zealously defended their borders, and the goal of warfare was coercion and victory. Deterrence involved having more and better cannons, bigger battleships, more planes. But obviously, looking at the two world wars in the 20th century, that version of deterrence didn’t work very well. The arsenals almost invited war.
That first period lasted until 1945, when the United States introduced nuclear weapons that, soon enough, were duplicated by the Soviet Union. With the potential to kill hundreds of millions of people in a quick exchange, these weapons could effectively destroy civilization. The culmination of war became not victory but doomsday.
Nuclear war, as was often said, cannot be won and should never be fought. So, the goal of nuclear strategy was not to win wars but to prevent them. This nuclear version of deterrence has worked quite well for 73 years and counting.
The third period involves cyberweapons, and the assumptions are fundamentally different. Weapons can’t be counted, identified, tracked or easily controlled. They are used in a borderless electronic world where traditional ideas of sovereignty don’t work very well. The authors argue that this domain is “micro-vulnerable (and inherently exploitable),” in that targets can be hit easily, but “macro-resilient (and thus stable),” because nations will persist, even if targeted.
Two lessons of the Ukraine war is that cyber defenses appear to work better than might have been expected, and that cyber offense works worse. That’s one explanation for Ukraine’s amazing resilience against the Russian onslaught.
The authors offer some suggestions for this new domain: Strategists should have rules for continuous engagement, rather than plan for contingencies; they should prepare for continuous operations not “episodic” ones, and they should seek “cumulative” gains, rather than final victory. As the authors wrote in a recent article in the National Interest: “Because of the fluidity of digital technology, security rests on seizing and sustaining the initiative.”
Cyberspace might prove to be the ultimate version of forever war. But if these strategists are right, it could be less dangerous, and ultimately more stable, than the convulsive explosions we’ve known as war for millennia. | 2022-09-15T22:58:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Will deterrence have a role in the cyberspace ‘forever war’? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/15/deterrence-cyberspace-conflict-new-strategy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/15/deterrence-cyberspace-conflict-new-strategy/ |
A visit to Kyiv reveals the secret of Ukrainian success
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, on Wednesday visits Izyum, one of the largest cities recaptured from Russia. (AFP Photo/Ukrainian Presidential Press-Service via Getty Images)
KYIV, Ukraine — At first glance Kyiv looked strangely normal. There were a few barricades here and there, but mostly the streets were busy, traffic was moving, shops were open and restaurants were full. You could buy French wines, American energy drinks and Swiss chocolates at the local grocery store. The city looked much as it had on my last visit a year ago, though getting there this time was far more complicated. I flew to Poland, drove to the Polish-Ukrainian border and then took a 12-hour overnight train to Kyiv.
But they are determined to carry on. Air raid sirens sounded off once or twice a day, but people paid little attention to them since they were precautionary. In contrast to the war’s early days, Kyiv is now well removed from the fighting. Ukrainians seemed determined to show that life will go on, that the Russian invasion has not brought their lives to a halt.
That is why the Victor Pinchuk Foundation decided to hold its annual Yalta European Strategy meeting on schedule as it has for 17 years. (The meeting used to be held at Yalta, but after the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, the venue moved to Kyiv, though the name defiantly remains the same.) Among those who attended in a show of support were Poland’s prime minister, Latvia’s president, Germany’s foreign minister, and a delegation of British members of Parliament from all major parties. U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan spoke via videoconference.
More impressive than any of the distinguished visitors, however, were the “Ukrainian heroes” who were highlighted throughout the conference. For example, a 15-year-old boy by the name of Andriy Pokrasa explained that he used his own drone to provide the Ukrainian army with the coordinates of Russian armored vehicles and tanks — thus reportedly helping to destroy 100 of them. Or Ukraine’s rock legend, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, who talked about going around the country and performing for free, even in the trenches, even when just a dozen soldiers were his audience.
The war in Ukraine pits a top-down attack against a bottom-up response. Russia’s invasion is largely one man’s decision. Russian society might approve but it does not appear enthusiastic. To get recruits, Russia is apparently recruiting from prisons, offering large cash bounties and employing mercenaries like the Wagner Group.
Ukraine’s response is society-wide, starting with its elected government but involving almost all the country’s citizens. One key aspect of the astonishing advance of Ukraine’s army in the east — and the astonishing collapse of Russian forces — is the gap in morale. Ukraine’s soldiers are fighting for their country and freedom. Russians are fighting out of fear and for money.
This divergence between a top-down invasion and a bottom-up defense may also apply to the wider response to the war. Vladimir Putin’s strategy is clearly to bet on the weakness of Western voters. As winter comes, he has warned that people in the European Union will freeze if he cuts off all energy supplies. He believes that at that point, Western governments will start to sue for peace.
I am not so sure. The Western public is unusually united on this issue. Large majorities of Americans and Germans support Ukraine. The numbers are not so different in most European countries. The right-wing coalition likely to win in the upcoming Italian elections does include parties that have been soft on Russia, but the probable next prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has wholeheartedly backed the Western response. And to the extent that there might be some faltering, countries on Europe’s eastern flank — Poland and the Baltic states in particular — are staunchly opposed to any relaxation of efforts.
It is always easy to underestimate the staying power of democracies. They are noisy, contentious and open. They air all their anxieties, doubts and critiques in public. When there is a sense that the struggle is not central or that the goals chosen by leaders are fundamentally flawed — as in Vietnam and Iraq — there are constant calls for course correction.
But when the stakes are high and the cause is just, democracies can stay the course. They did it for almost five decades during the Cold War. And they will do it for a couple of winters in this pivotal struggle.
Opinion|A visit to Kyiv reveals the secret of Ukrainian success
Opinion|Biden’s Ukraine policy may not win an election. But it matters anyway. | 2022-09-15T22:58:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A visit to Kyiv reveals the secret of Ukrainian success - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/15/ukraine-democracy-society-morale-advantage-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/15/ukraine-democracy-society-morale-advantage-russia/ |
Seahawks’ Jamal Adams placed on IR with reportedly season-ending injury
Seattle's Jamal Adams was carted off the field Monday during a home win over Denver. (Jane Gershovich/Getty Images)
The Seattle Seahawks placed star safety Jamal Adams on injured reserve Thursday with a quadriceps tendon injury he suffered in the team’s victory over the Denver Broncos on Monday night.
According to multiple reports, the injury is expected to end Adams’s season once he undergoes surgery. To fill his roster spot, the Seahawks signed defensive back Teez Tabor off the Atlanta Falcons’ practice squad.
The loss of Adams was a notable downside to Seattle’s otherwise crowd-pleasing win over the Broncos and their new quarterback, former Seahawks star Russell Wilson. Adams was injured when he went after Wilson on a blitz late in the first quarter. The sixth-year safety could be seen grimacing as he limped off the field.
“It means so much to him,” Seattle Coach Pete Carroll said of Adams Wednesday. “The frustration of having to go through not being healthy just jumped at him again. He’s questioning and wondering and all that, because he wants to be out here so much. He wants to be with the guys and doing what we do in every way you could possibly want to do that. It’s really frustrating for him.”
A variety of earlier injuries since he joined the Seahawks two years ago limited Adams to 12 games in both the 2020 and 2021 seasons. He was still able to notch 9.5 sacks in 2020, an NFL record number for a defensive back. That performance — and his play the previous three seasons with the New York Jets, who made him the sixth overall pick of the 2017 draft — spurred Seattle to sign Adams to a four-year, $70 million contract, with $38 million guaranteed, before the 2021 season. The pact’s average annual value of $17.5 million was a record at the time for a safety.
In a disappointing 2021 campaign, Adams had no sacks and a drop from 11 to four in tackles for a loss before missing the final four games with a torn shoulder labrum. In June, he expressed excitement about a split-safety scheme being installed by new Seattle defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt, calling the system “very aggressive to where we can be interchangeable, to where we can make a lot of plays on the back end.”
Analysis: For these NFL starting quarterbacks, the seat is already getting hot
Veteran safety Josh Jones replaced Adams during the Broncos game and could inherit his starting spot. Another option could be fifth-year safety Ryan Neal, who has filled in for an injured Adams over the past two seasons.
A three-time Pro Bowl selection, including twice with the Jets, Adams was traded from New York to Seattle in July 2020 for two first-round picks and a third-rounder, plus safety Bradley McDougald. The Jets also sent the Seahawks a fourth-round pick in the deal. New York used two of the picks from that trade to move up in the 2021 draft and select USC guard Alijah Vera-Tucker. The second first-round pick from the Adams trade conveyed this year as the 10th overall selection, which the Jets used to select Ohio State wide receiver Garrett Wilson. | 2022-09-15T22:58:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seahawks’ Jamal Adams placed on IR with reportedly season-ending injury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/15/jamal-adams-seahawks-injury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/15/jamal-adams-seahawks-injury/ |
A statue of Thomas Jefferson stands in front of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. (Norm Shafer for The Washington Post)
RICHMOND — The University of Virginia’s governing board is expected to vote on Friday to give students a one-time credit equal to its most recent tuition hike, an extraordinary step that comes amid Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s push to hold tuition flat at the state’s public universities.
Earlier this week, a finance subcommittee of U-Va.’s board of visitors recommended giving in-state undergraduate students a 4.7 percent credit on next semester’s tuition bill.
The giveback, which still needs approval from the full board, would amount to $690 per student and cost the university $7.5 million. The one-time rebate would not affect the university’s tuition rate and does not apply to fees. In a similar move, Virginia Tech in June approved a one-time scholarship to undergraduates to offset its tuition increase.
U-Va. Rector Whittington W. Clement said the board will likely accept the rebate recommendation at a meeting Friday. University President James E. Ryan and the school’s management team are on board with the change, which U-Va. spokesman Brian Coy said stemmed from additional state funding for higher education, cost efficiencies and Youngkin’s request that all Virginia public colleges and universities hold tuition flat for the current academic year.
U-Va. had approved its tuition rate in December before Youngkin (R) took office.
“The University is committed to excellence, access, and affordability and we have been working with the Governor and his team since he made his request earlier this year,” Coy said in a written statement.
With a combination of gentle public appeals, behind-the-scenes arm twisting and an unusually flush state budget, the Republican governor quickly convinced most of the state’s public colleges and universities to scrap plans to raise tuition and fees this year.
U-Va., the state’s flagship university, has been one of two holdouts, along with George Mason University. Two Youngkin administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential matter, said George Mason has indicated that it is working on rolling back its 3 percent hike.
Stephanie Aaronson, a spokeswoman for George Mason, wrote in an email, “We have been engaged in positive discussions with the Governor and we hope to reach a final decision soon.”
Higher education has not been a major priority for the governor, who assumed office in January more focused on topics such as K-12 schools, tax cuts and the elimination of coronavirus restrictions. But holding the line on college tuition fits neatly with his efforts to take the edge off inflation, including elimination of the 1.5 percent statewide grocery tax and a failed effort to suspend the state gas tax.
Of the state’s 17 public colleges and universities, only three institutions started the year intending to hold tuition and fees flat: Virginia Military Institute, the College of William & Mary and the statewide community college system. The rest had announced plans to raise tuition or fees, ranging from an 8.7 percent increase at Virginia State University, a historically Black institution in Petersburg, to a 2.9 percent bump at Longwood and Radford universities.
Most of the institutions backed off those plans by early July, after Youngkin and the General Assembly belatedly wrapped up work on a state budget flush with cash — including millions more for higher education. Education Secretary Aimee Rogstad Guidera made a round of calls to university presidents to nudge them along.
The board of visitors at Virginia Tech, which had approved a 3 percent increase to its base tuition for students, decided in June to give in-state undergraduates a one-time “scholarship” to offset the planned increase.
Meanwhile, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond announced a 3.2 percent increase in May but, with the state budget still up in the air, left some wiggle room by scheduling a special board meeting at the end of June. By then, Youngkin had signed the state budget with boost in funding for higher education; the board scrapped the hike at that meeting.
VCU Rector H. Benson Dendy III said the Youngkin administration’s nudge didn’t hurt, but it was just one factor that led the school to change course, along with feedback from students, the final budget numbers and some “sharpening of pencils.”
“The board was very interested in doing that if at all possible, and when they determined that could be done, we were supportive of it,” Dendy said.
But Peter Farrell, a VCU board member and former Republican delegate from suburban Richmond, tipped his hat to Youngkin.
“I give the governor credit,” said Farrell, who was first appointed to the board by Youngkin’s Democratic predecessor, Ralph Northam, and recently reappointed by Youngkin. “He really went to bat to get all the universities to keep tuition flat.”
Clement said U-Va. has wrestled with Youngkin’s request.
“We’re very respectful of the governor and his desire to help families deal with the spike in inflation,” Clement said. But the board has also been concerned about “not sacrificing the national reputation that U-Va. has earned,” he said. “And excellence has a cost.”
Youngkin reached out directly to university presidents and board members, with calls and in-person meetings. Clement said he and Ryan, U-Va.’s president, eventually agreed to reconstitute the school’s finance subcommittee on tuition to study the matter.
In a meeting Wednesday, the subcommittee voted to recommend the tuition credit to the full Finance Committee, which meets Friday morning. Clement expects the committee and the full Board of Visitors, which meets later in the afternoon, to accept the recommendation, although he expects some dissenters.
“We did not do this as a knee-jerk reaction,” Clement said. “We really thoughtfully went back to the drawing board. Yeah, we heard from the administration. They would ask if we were making progress. We think it’s the right thing for you to do.”
“The truth is, our fiduciary obligation is to the institution we serve,” he said. “Governors always have an influence, but we really approached this in a very thoughtful, deliberative way.” | 2022-09-15T23:23:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U-Va. board could approve tuition rebate as Youngkin calls for flat tuition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/15/uva-tuition-rebate-youngkin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/15/uva-tuition-rebate-youngkin/ |
Pieper Lewis gives her allocution during a sentencing hearing in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. Donations are pouring in to help the 17-year-old sex trafficking victim who was ordered by the court to pay $150,000 to the family of a man she stabbed to death after he raped her. (Zach Boyden-Holmes/AP)
Matthew Sheeley, one of Lewis’s lawyers, had argued in court that Brooks was more than 51 percent responsible for his death. Because of that, he said, she should not have to pay. He called the requirement cruel and unusual.
"That way you've got a buffer. You're acting at the direction in a judge, and that way you're covered."
In an earlier interview with The Washington Post, Sheeley and another member of Lewis’s defense team, Paul White, described her as full of limitless potential. She has dreams of becoming a designer, telling her story and advocating for other girls like her. | 2022-09-15T23:36:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Donors raise money for Pieper Lewis restitution to alleged rapist - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/15/pieper-lewis-gofundme/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/15/pieper-lewis-gofundme/ |
Robert Ferrante, exec who energized NPR’s ‘Morning Edition,’ dies at 87
He spotlighted reporters such as Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts and enlisted Ira Glass and David Sedaris to bring a creative edge to commentaries and features
Robert Ferrante in 2010. (Stephen Snyder/WBGH Public Radio)
Robert Ferrante, a broadcast executive who oversaw the overhaul and growth of National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” during the 1990s, bolstering its news operation and enlisting producer Ira Glass and humorist David Sedaris for commentary and features, died Sept. 15 at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87.
The cause was complications from a stroke, said his daughter, Donna Ferrante-Nuttall.
In a journalism career that spanned more than five decades, Mr. Ferrante reported live from Dallas when nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed presumed presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963; directed TV coverage of the riots outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; and helped create innovative public affairs programs in the 1970s for Boston’s public television station, WGBH.
He achieved even greater prominence in the media in the 1980s — revamping the “CBS Morning News,” a ratings success, and creating the network’s overnight news program “Nightwatch.” When he jumped to NPR in 1989, he was tasked with performing the same magic.
“Morning Edition” had labored in the shadow of the network’s signature afternoon news program, “All Things Considered.” Mr. Ferrante is credited with transforming it over the next nine years into the most popular morning news magazine in public and commercial broadcasting.
At NPR, Mr. Ferrante made the aggressive pursuit of the news part of a program that, by many accounts, had spent a decade searching for an identity. Public radio had a reputation for being “late and long,” according to Ellen McDonnell, a senior producer who served as Mr. Ferrante’s second-in-command and succeeded him as executive producer when he left.
It was assumed that listeners got their hard news elsewhere and turned to NPR later for lengthy analysis. The network was widely perceived as stuffy and effete. Mr. Ferrante, with his commercial broadcast news background, brought a new sensibility, cultivating a blend of hard news and creative features. Among his staff, he was known for his booming Boston accent and his ability to connect effectively with the show’s reporters.
“He was an all-around smart news executive,” legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg said. “I hold him responsible for making ‘Morning Edition’ succeed and for becoming the program it ultimately remains today.”
The show, hosted by Bob Edwards, had producers coming and going while it struggled to get a foothold. The newsroom was chaotic, and morale was low.
“It’s hard for listeners to understand where we were then,” said Adam Clayton Powell III, the former vice president of news at NPR, who hired Mr. Ferrante. “When Bob arrived, it was considered an ancillary news service — something you’d go to if you already knew what had happened. We did features, but obviously we did not have the resources the major networks had.”
Under Mr. Ferrante, the “Morning Edition” audience jumped by 25 percent, and financial support from corporate underwriting soared. He increased airtime for emerging star reporters such as Totenberg, Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer.
Mr. Ferrante’s encouragement also caused an abrupt change in Glass’s career. “He let me get my little radio experiments on their feet and in front of millions of people,” Glass said. “In fact, he egged me on to do more. He called them ‘ornaments,’ which he pronounced ‘ahnaments,’ and he told me more than once: ‘Ira, I’ve got great news coverage. But I need more than that. I need ahnaments! Give me more of those ahnaments!’ ”
The ornaments formed the foundation of “This American Life,” a weekly story-driven show that Glass created in 1995. The show went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and multiple Peabody Awards and became one of the most popular offerings on public radio.
Mr. Ferrante had left NPR a year earlier to become executive producer in Boston of the nascent global news show “The World,” produced by Public Radio International, Britain’s BBC and Boston public radio affiliate WGBH.
“He brought the highest journalistic standards,” said Lisa Mullins, who anchored “The World” during Mr. Ferrante’s tenure, “but he also had a common touch that attracted American listeners who didn’t have the international news exposure that a BBC audience had. He let us loosen up and take more chances. He urged us to bring a conversational touch to a kind of news that could be remote and obscure and difficult.”
Robert Edward Ferrante was born in Boston on Oct. 6, 1934, and he grew up in Arlington, Mass. His father was a bank clerk, and his mother owned and operated a beauty salon. He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University in 1957 before joining WNAC-TV, then the CBS affiliate in Boston.
He was the station’s news director in November 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He flew to Dallas to cover the aftermath and was among a throng of reporters in the nearby press room when, two days after the assassination, Ruby lunged forward and fatally shot Oswald in front of a stunned nation watching on live television. Mr. Ferrante immediately went on the air to report on the chaotic scene.
After later stops — at KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and WBBM-TV in Chicago — Mr. Ferrante oversaw the creation of public affairs programs at WGBH, including the Emmy Award-winning “Ten O’Clock News.” He subsequently went to CBS News.
Mr. Ferrante’s first marriage, to Anne Basti, ended in divorce. In 1998, he married Pamela Post. In addition to his wife, of Cambridge, a his daughter, from his first marriage, of Taunton, Mass., survivors include two stepchildren, Tyler Post of Hingham, Mass., and Whitney Otto of Cambridge; and eight grandchildren.
In the cutthroat media business, Mr. Ferrante earned a reputation for leading a collegial news operation without pretension, where his booming laugh was a sign of ultimate approval. According to Mullins, after a successful show, the news team welcomed his signature Boston-inflected declaration, “That’s a KEEPAH!” | 2022-09-15T23:36:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Robert Ferrante, exec who energized NPR’s ‘Morning Edition,’ dies at 87 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/15/robert-ferrante-npr-cbs-world-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/15/robert-ferrante-npr-cbs-world-dead/ |
U.S. general warns of China’s expanding nuclear arsenal
Spectators wave Chinese flags as military vehicles carrying ballistic missiles pass by during a parade in 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
President Biden’s nominee to take over the U.S. military’s nuclear arsenal and missile-defense operations warned on Thursday that China’s rise as a nuclear power poses historic threats and challenges requiring a reevaluation of current policies.
Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, told lawmakers reviewing his nomination to lead U.S. Strategic Command that the military’s assessment of China’s nuclear mettle had changed dramatically since 2018 when Beijing was judged as requiring “minimal nuclear deterrence.” At that time, the Pentagon’s nuclear posture review assessed China’s ambitions as being focused on “regional hegemony,” he explained.
The Pentagon’s latest nuclear posture review was transmitted to Congress in March and has not yet been made public, but Cotton appeared to foreshadow some of its top-line findings during Thursday’s testimony.
“We have seen the incredible expansiveness of what they’re doing with their nuclear force — which does not, in my opinion, reflect minimal deterrence. They have a bona fide triad now,” Cotton explained, meaning the Chinese military has nuclear-capable forces that operate on land, and in the air and sea.
The nuclear threat posed by China, he added, cannot be sufficiently addressed by duplicating the approach the United States has taken toward Russia, whose nuclear aims are familiar to the United States and date back decades to the Cold War. Beijing and Moscow, the general said, “act differently, from a doctrine’s perspective.”
After racing each other for years to build up their nuclear arsenals, the United States and the former Soviet Union struck several arms reduction pacts in the later part of the 20th century. Only one of those treaties — the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which applies to intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and nuclear capable bombers — remains in effect.
Historically, Beijing did not possess the arsenal of the two major Cold War superpowers, nor were its nuclear ambitions regarded in Washington with the same intensity as Moscow’s. China was also never a party to the arms-control regimes that have defined the nuclear relationship between the United States and Russia — a fact that politicians and advocates insist must be remedied going forward.
“We need to seriously consider that we are entering a new, trilateral nuclear competition era,” the committee chairman, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told Cotton. “You will be responsible for continuing to ensure that the United States and its allies can deter not one, but two near-peer nuclear adversaries, something your predecessors did not face.”
Cotton did not detail his plans for updating the military’s approach to China, but he acknowledged there was work to be done to correct the imbalance.
“We understand Russian nuclear theory and nuclear doctrine,” Cotton said, citing President Vladimir Putin’s decision to put his nuclear forces on high alert days after the invasion of Ukraine — a move met largely with indifference by the Pentagon, and one that so far has not resulted in any direct assault on NATO.
“We’re going to have to understand more deeply the Chinese nuclear strategy,” he added.
Cotton was resolute, however, in assessing that “at the end of the day, Russia and China both understand that we have a strong, resilient nuclear force that is offering deterrence to ourselves and extended deterrence to our enemies.”
But the United States must take seriously threats by Moscow or Beijing to use nuclear weapons, the general said — particularly when it comes to potential confrontation over Taiwan.
“If you have a credible deterrent, it would make them think twice before engaging with us,” Cotton noted.
China calls U.S. a 'bully,' vows to 'fight to the end' for Taiwan
Some senators challenged Cotton to say not only what he would do to expand and update the military’s portfolio of nuclear weapons, but how he would go about ensuring that U.S. proliferation won’t get out of hand.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hi.) asked Cotton to say whether he agreed with the Biden administration’s recommendation to scrap the development of sea-launched low-yield nuclear cruise missiles over concerns about the program’s cost and efficiency.
That position, which administration officials have said was informed by the most recent nuclear posture review, has inspired some controversy, with some fearing the program’s cancellation will negatively impact the U.S. military’s ability to compete with its adversaries’ nuclear capabilities.
Earlier this year, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley publicly joined those criticizing Biden’s decision. When asked for his take Thursday, Cotton demurred, saying he wanted an opportunity to conduct a full review of the program after his expected confirmation.
But when Hirono asked Cotton whether he believes the United States has a role to play in limiting the nuclear arms race, he answered: “I do.”
“Whatever treaty that we could do to prevent proliferation is good, with a caveat: that it incorporates every aspect of what the signing agreement would be. Weapons that are currently not seen as strategic weapons need to be added to that calculus,” Cotton elaborated, before concluding: “Any treaty that would prevent proliferation across the globe, I am for.” | 2022-09-16T00:02:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. general warns of China’s expanding nuclear arsenal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/15/china-nuclear-weapons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/15/china-nuclear-weapons/ |
Gun culture is terrorizing our nation, even when there are no guns
A "lockdown drill" sign is posted on the door to the main entrance of Jennie Dean Elementary School in Manassas, Va., back in 2000. (Tom Allen/The Washington Post)
America’s gun culture proved yet again there is no need for bullets — or guns, even — to terrorize a population.
In Wednesday’s case, the victims were a couple thousand high school students and teachers in one of the Washington region’s biggest and highest-profile public high schools, plus several thousand of their loved ones.
A student’s report of a possible gun sent Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School into lockdown and into the newly familiar, grotesque and self-inflicted American educational ritual.
“I genuinely thought someone was going to get shot, that I would hear gunfire, that I would hear them screaming,” said Lila Ben-Yehuda, a sophomore who spent the hour in a darkened classroom, blinds closed, quiet. “I thought that I would have to text my family goodbye.”
Many parents got those messages from their children, and they got dispatches from frightened kids crouched in tiny spaces, where they were told to stay completely still and silent, in the dark, for an hour. The way they had been trained.
“Do you know how long an hour is when you think you are going to die?” one student said.
An art teacher armed with a pole stood outside the kiln room, ready to defend the students huddled inside.
One boy late for class was locked out of his classroom and struggled to get back inside, out in the hallway where he’s been taught that he is a sitting target, knocking on the door, trying to convince his teacher asking “Who is it? Who is it?” that it was Zach, and not a gunman, my colleague Dan Morse reported.
How a school lockdown — even when there is no gun — can terrify
The school blasted out media alerts updating the situation. And parents started showing up at the school after their kids texted them from inside, most of them in the dark about what was happening outside their barricaded classrooms.
Later that day, administrators scolded them all.
“Today, students were texting each other and family members,” the high school’s principal, Shelton Mooney, wrote in a message to parents. “This heightened the anxiety and complicated matters for police and staff because many people arrived at the school and had questions about our safety procedures.”
But who can blame them? We’re not in the realm of theory anymore when it come to these tragedies.
Who hasn’t seen the gut-wrenching footage of parents standing outside the school in Uvalde, Tex., while some of their children bled to death inside, hundreds more were terrified, and scores of police officers stood around?
Damn straight those parents went to the school. Angeli Gomez is our nation’s new patron saint of parenthood, the way she jumped a fence after the cops briefly cuffed her and ran into Robb Elementary School to save her sons that day.
There were 376 law enforcement officers of officers outside Robb Elementary, dithering for more than an hour while fourth-graders bled and died, according to a Texas House of Representatives report.
Of course those Montgomery County parents were ready to Angeli Gomez their kids right out of those classrooms, if that’s what it came down to.
This is our nation’s reality, not a hypothetical.
“This is an American school,” said Lila, the 15-year-old sophomore, who reported jumping every time a door opened in her school the next day, every sudden movement catching her eye. “Of course it was about a gun.”
What she was experiencing was a mild case of PTSD. We did this to them. We are a nation that imposes a rating system on movies, music and video games to spare our children mental trauma, a nation with banned books and legislation that erases the word “gay” from classrooms, yet we require them to imagine and act out their own massacres on a regular basis.
Unlike the nuclear-attack school drills that the boomers will tell me they endured (“And we’re fine!”), school shootings actually happen. More often than you may know.
Millions of kids fear being gunned down at school. It's time for our nation to say 'enough'.
Besides the big ones that we know by one name — Sandy Hook, Parkland, Columbine, Uvalde — at least 311,000 kids have experienced gun violence in their schools since Columbine in 1999, according to The Washington Post’s database on school shootings.
There was a very brief lull in the carnage (thanks, covid), but 2021 was the most violent year in our database — with 42 shootings. Compare that with 12 in 2003 or 13 in 2016. There have been 24 so far this calendar year, just a couple of weeks into the new school year.
One was right here in Montgomery County, when a 17-year-old student shot a 15-year-old with a ghost gun in the bathroom at Magruder High School in January.
But the actual gunfire and those 311,000 are just a small part of the way we have agreed to bathe our children in gun problems. While the hundreds of thousands of kids who have been exposed to actual gunfire are scarred and traumatized, we include every American teacher and student in this travesty with every lockdown drill we put them through.
On Thursday, it was back to normal at the school, after a loudspeaker announcement telling kids to go see a school counselor if they want to talk about what happened.
“I feel really unseen,” Lila said. “You need to talk about this. We all needed to talk about it, but they’re going to pretend like nothing really happened.”
Shooting threats have been normalized, she said, “like a weather alert.”
This is what the adults in America aren’t getting — the bloodless lacerations that are a hidden cost of American gun culture.
“The people in positions of authority don’t listen enough to the people who have to live through these lockdowns,” said Lyric Winik, the PTA president at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.
If they listened, perhaps America would understand the deep psychic imprint that our gun problem has on a generation of kids — even when there’s no gun around. | 2022-09-16T00:02:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gun culture is terrorizing our nation, even when there are no guns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/lockdown-bethesda-chevy-chase-high/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/lockdown-bethesda-chevy-chase-high/ |
Man charged with murder in beating of 87-year-old that was caught on video
A 25-year-old man was charged with murder in the case, which authorities say began with an argument about damage to a vehicle’s door
A 25-year-old man has been charged with murder in the beating of an 87-year-old in a Beltsville-area parking lot — an incident that authorities say began over an argument about damage to a vehicle’s door and was captured on surveillance video.
Julias Wright, of Fort Washington, has been indicted on a common law murder charge in the killing of Johnny Lee Shepherd. Police said Shepherd was attacked in June, died in late July, and the case was ruled a homicide this month.
Wright and his girlfriend, Christina Felder, 44, of Beltsville, had previously been charged with assault in the case. Felder’s assault charges are still listed as pending in online court records.
Police said in charging documents that Wright “punched, stomped and slammed” Shepherd’s head to the ground multiple times after an argument that began because Shepherd opened his vehicle’s door and hit Felder’s vehicle, which was parked next to his.
Prince George’s police arrest 2 in senior citizen’s beating seen on video
Officers responded to the June 2 incident in a parking lot in the 11300 block of Cherry Hill Road for a reported assault about 7:30 p.m., police said in a news release. Shepherd was unresponsive and suffering from head and face injuries, according to charging documents.
Police reviewed surveillance video, which charging documents say captured an argument between Felder and Shepherd after Shepherd opened his vehicle’s door, which hit Felder’s vehicle. Police said the argument escalated into a physical altercation — with Shepherd pushing Felder, and Felder punching him in the face. Felder then called someone, and about 10 minutes later, Wright arrived in a white pickup truck, according to the charging documents.
The surveillance video shows a man, who police say is Wright, walking up to Shepherd and striking him in the face, causing him to fall backward. While standing over Shepherd, Wright then repeatedly strikes and stomps on the older man as he lies on the ground, the video shows.
Police said in charging documents that both Felder and Wright left the scene. A citizen called police.
Attorneys listed in online records for Wright and Felder could not be reached for comment Thursday evening. Family members of Shepherd also could not be reached for comment. | 2022-09-16T00:02:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Murder charge brought in beating of elderly man caught on video - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/murder-charge-videotaped-beating-vehicle/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/murder-charge-videotaped-beating-vehicle/ |
The president convened an array of civil, government and faith leaders at the White House in an effort to combat hate-fueled violence
President Biden and Susan Bro at the United We Stand summit on Sept. 15. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Warning that “this venom and violence cannot be the story of our time,” President Biden convened an array of civil, government and faith leaders at the White House on Thursday, hoping to ignite a society-wide effort to tamp down on violence sparked by hate.
Biden’s keynote at the White House’s United We Stand summit was aimed at combating the kind of hate-fueled violence that has scarred communities including El Paso, Buffalo and Orlando in recent years, and that the president warned can also stem from political divisiveness.
“There are core values that should bring us together as Americans,” Biden told a crowd gathered in the East Room. “One of them is standing together against hate, racism, bigotry and violence that has long plagued our nation.”
Biden said the themes of Thursday’s event are at the center of his presidency. He has long said that the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 — and President Donald Trump’s comments about there being “very fine people on both sides” — was “a wake-up call for us as a country” and inspired him to launch a third bid for the presidency. He has also blasted Republicans who participated in or condoned the Capitol riot as “MAGA Republicans” whose beliefs are dangerous and antithetical to American values.
“Unfortunately, such hateful violence and threats are not new to America,” he said. “There’s a through line of hate, from massacres of Indigenous people and the original sin of slavery, the terror of the [Ku Klux Klan] and then anti-immigration policies against the Irish, Italians, Chinese, Mexicans — so much of it is laced through our history.”
Still, as the midterm elections approach and Biden has sought to draw a line of demarcation between Democrats and Republicans, he has been accused of contributing to the divisiveness. At a speech in Philadelphia, Biden labeled some members of the opposition party “MAGA Republicans” reminiscent of fascists.
“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” he said in the prime-time speech on the “battle for the soul of the nation.” “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said at the time that Biden was “slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists.” And many Republican leaders have questioned how Biden can claim to unite the country by branding a large group of Americans as a threat to democracy.
Other critics have said that while the president routinely mentions the need to stand against hate-fueled violence, he has put forth few cogent actions to quell it.
“States need support from the federal government to respond to white nationalism and political violence, including clear condemnation of the anti-Semitic ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory and policies that tackle this threat head-on,” the Western States Center, a nonprofit that works to promote progressive policy change, wrote in an open letter to the administration in advance of the summit.
Thursday’s day-long event featured survivors of hate-centered violence, mayors and other civic leaders, members of the clergy, and a former member of a hate group. Before his keynote, Biden was introduced by Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed by a man who plowed his vehicle into a crowd of counterprotesters during the White supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
“Her murder resonated around the world, but the hate did not begin nor end there,” Bro said. “White supremacist organizers have worked for months here to create a culture of hate and dissidence with numerous rallies, marches and visits in Charlottesville.” One of the rallies, Bro said, happened just months after Heyer was killed.
In conjunction with Thursday’s event, the White House announced new initiatives and collaborations that it says will allow cultural institutions, schools and law enforcement agencies to better combat hate-fueled violence. Biden also called on Congress to pass part of his budget proposal that would increase funding to protect houses of worship from violence. And he said Congress should hold social media companies accountable for allowing hate speech to spread unchecked on their platforms.
Eric Ward, senior adviser at the Western States Center, said the summit was a good first step, but he emphasized that the fight to stem hate crimes has been going on in some American communities for years. The infusion of presidential support was helpful, but cities and towns need additional resources to make progress.
“We should all understand that local communities are already out there. Local governments are already out there around the country, attempting to build responses. What they need is support,” Ward told The Washington Post. “If Portland, Oregon, had received that type of assistance or coordination in 2017, in these early days, I don’t think that we’d be telling the stories about Portland, Oregon, that we are telling today.”
Biden characterized Thursday’s effort as a first step and said the White House should also invest in programs that help communities inoculate themselves against such violence, including “training election officials who really have become a target of political violence,” particularly volunteers from minority groups who “appear to be on the receiving end of more aggressive intimidation.”
He said the federal government should also invest in criminal justice information-sharing against perpetrators of hate crimes, who often travel across city and state lines to commit crimes.
When questioned at Thursday’s White House news briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the summit was not a panacea.
“Clearly, we believe these deliverables, this rundown of actions that I’ve provided, is a first step to getting us to a place where we’re dealing with real issues, where we’re addressing hate-fueled violence in these communities that we see.”
She also defended Biden’s words about “MAGA Republicans,” saying the president’s statements reflect the opinions of the bulk of Americans who oppose political violence.
“The president is hosting this event to highlight that the vast majority of Americans, despite our myriad differences, are united in opposition to hate-fueled violence,” she said. “This is a core American value that is shared by people of all faiths.”
In the Philadelphia speech, and in statements afterward, Biden sought to differentiate between mainstream Republicans and those who embrace extreme ideologies. “Not every Republican — not even a majority of Republicans — are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”
The Biden Justice Department has boosted federal hate-crime prosecutions under Attorney General Merrick Garland, filing 20 cases in the first half of this year, a pace that eclipses any single year of the Obama or Trump administrations. Although Biden has emphasized that he would not seek to influence the Justice Department, officials have held the prosecutions up as a way to show that his administration is addressing hate crimes.
Bro said much more needs to be done, especially because the voices of divisiveness are still active, even in the place where her daughter was killed.
“To this day, white supremacist stickers are often placed at the site of the murder and on the University of Virginia campus along with recruitment fliers,” Bro said.
“We’re here to share our experiences and our strategies to combat hate,” she said. “But it must continue beyond today. Governments, corporations, communities and organizations must continue to move forward in ways that pull us all together. We must shine the light of truth, justice and equity on this issue, and reject those who want us to live in fear of our fellow man.”
David Nakamura contributed to this report. | 2022-09-16T00:11:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden slams hate-fueled violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/15/biden-hate-fueled-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/15/biden-hate-fueled-violence/ |
The Florida governor told applauding supporters that he might send immigrants "to Chicago, Hollywood, Martha’s Vineyard. Who knows?”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) reportedly told supporters in a speech last weekend that he was considering sending refugees to Martha's Vineyard, among other places. (Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times/AP)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told the Republican Party’s top donors last weekend he was considering transporting migrants to places like Martha’s Vineyard — just days before he secretly started the flights to the Massachusetts island.
“I do have this money. I want to be helpful. Maybe we will go to Texas and help. Maybe we’ll send to Chicago, Hollywood, Martha’s Vineyard. Who knows?” he said to applause in a speech Friday evening at the Four Seasons in Orlando, where hundreds of the party’s top donors gathered to hear him, according to a detailed account by a person in the room.
The account was confirmed by a second person present for the speech. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of the private event.
DeSantis sent two planes full of migrants Wednesday to Martha’s Vineyard, a tony island enclave in Massachusetts, where several prominent Democrats, including former president Barack Obama, have homes. This followed similar efforts by the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona to offer migrants free bus rides to more liberal parts of the country.
“We’re not just arguing about tax rates. We’re not just arguing about normal policies. You know, we’re arguing about whether people that dissent from leftist ideology should have any voice in our government, in society at all,” DeSantis said, according to the people in the room. Of liberals, he said: “And they’ve been winning this fight for, I would say, the last five or ten years.”
DeSantis has built a massive political operation in recent months, raising more than $100 million as he zigzags the country to elite fundraisers. He is leading in his reelection race this year, and advisers want him to win by a large margin to send a signal to the national party, according to people familiar with the matter. He has repeatedly declined to rule out running against Trump, who has increasingly paid attention to DeSantis and his surge in the Republican primary polls, Trump advisers say.
DeSantis said in the speech that the point of sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and other enclaves was to send a political message, the people at the event said, and called similar efforts by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) “brilliant.”
The Trump administration — led by immigration adviser Stephen Miller — originally floated such a plan but concerns within Immigration and Customs Enforcement led them to scuttle the idea, which drew considerable backlash at the time.
Much of the speech was spent on his response to the coronavirus, where he bragged that Florida had stayed open and favorably contrasted his response with most scientific experts. He bragged about not allowing “vaccine passports” and not mandating the use of the vaccine in Florida, though the state initially promoted vaccine distribution and ran advertisements encouraging people to take it. He also raised questions about the safety of coronavirus vaccines.
Much of the speech seemed focused on national culture wars. He complained about statues of historical figures being taken down and attacked Disney for being too liberal over their feud with him over a Florida law restricting what teachers can say about gender and sexual orientation, which has been nicknamed the “don’t say gay” law by critics.
“You know, sad to say, we’ve had a lot of Republican governors over the years who have caved to the corporate pressure,” DeSantis said. “Well, here I stand. I didn’t budge any. I stood for what was right.”
He stoked fears about voter fraud and attacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for funding election administrators in 2020; Democratic billionaire donor George Soros for supporting more lenient prosecutors; and teachers who raise with young students the idea that gender is a choice. He criticized the New York Times’ “1619 Project” and the way race and racism is taught in many schools.
Floridians give DeSantis points for his covid stance. Will it hold?
“We need to be focusing on teaching these young kids to read and write and add and subtract and not have ideology shoved down their throat,” he said.
He also warned the crowd that Democrats planned to change the structure of the governing system in the U.S. if they continued to hold power. He included, as he described, efforts by liberals to add justices to the Supreme Court, add congressional representation for the District of Columbia, replace the electoral college with a popular vote system and loosen voter identification laws. Most Democrats are not united behind those efforts and lack the votes to pass them in the current Congress.
“Unless you bend the knee to their leftist agenda, they want to make you a second-class citizen,” he said. “Unity for them is to take everybody in the majority that disagrees with them, make them second-class citizens, and then unify whatever is left standing.”
He said the only solution was to fight back, and to be ready to withstand criticism from both Democrats and the media.
“We have strapped on the full armor of God,” he said. “We are standing strong.” | 2022-09-16T00:11:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeSantis gave GOP donors a glimpse of plans for migrant flights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/15/desantis-migrants-donors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/15/desantis-migrants-donors/ |
WASHINGTON — Rail companies and their workers reached a tentative agreement Thursday to avert a nationwide strike that could have shut down the nation’s freight trains and devastated the economy less than two months before the midterm elections. President Joe Biden announced the deal, which emerged from a marathon 20-hour negotiating session at the Labor Department and came just one day before the threatened walkout. “This agreement is validation of what I’ve always believed — unions and management can work together ... for the benefit of everyone,” Biden said at the White House. The deal, which includes a 24% pay raise, will go to union members for a vote after a cooling-off period of several weeks.
NEW YORK — Americans picked up their spending a bit in August from July even as surging inflation on household necessities like rent and food took a toll on family budgets. U.S. retail sales rose an unexpected 0.3% last month after falling 0.4% in July, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Excluding business at gas stations, sales rose 0.8%. The sales figures for August were largely boosted by higher spending on vehicles. Sales of purchases at motor vehicles and parts dealers rose 2.8% last month. Excluding vehicle sales, spending slipped 0.3%. Excluding both vehicle and gas spending, retail sales rose 0.3%.
NEW YORK — Amtrak on Thursday worked to accommodate travelers whose plans were disrupted this week ahead of a tentative railway labor agreement. Crowds were noticeably smaller at New Jersey stop on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line between Philadelphia and New York hours after the agreement was announced, customers said. Amtrak cancelled several of its long-distance routes this week because there would not have been enough time for them to reach their destinations before the strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. Friday. That strike would have disrupted commuter traffic as well as freight rail lines because Amtrak and other commuter train lines use tracks owned by major freight railroads.
WASHINGTON — Faced with a decline in the number of corporate criminal prosecutions over the last decade, a top Justice Department official on Thursday unveiled new sweeteners for companies that cooperate with the government and a $250 million Congressional budget request to expand its work. Every division that prosecutes corporate crime must now develop programs to incentivize companies to report misconduct, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a speech at New York University Law School. In some cases, no one will have to plead guilty to criminal charges if the violation was self-reported and the company fixed it.
NEW YORK — Stocks gave up more ground Thursday, leaving major indexes on Wall Street deeper in the red for the week. The S&P 500 fell 1.1% after another wobbly day of trading. The benchmark index is now down 4.1% for the week following the biggest pullback for the market in more than two years on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6% and the Nasdaq composite slid 1.4%. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies closed 0.7% lower. New retail sales data gave a mixed view of how consumers are coping with the hottest inflation in four decades. The government report showed that retail sales rose an unexpected 0.3% in August after falling 0.4% in July.
WASHINGTON — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates climbed over 6% this week for the first time since the housing crash of 2008, threatening to sideline even more homebuyers from a rapidly cooling housing market. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the 30-year rate rose to 6.02% from 5.89% last week. The long-term average rate has more than doubled since a year ago and is the highest it’s been since November of 2008, just after the housing market collapse triggered the Great Recession. One year ago, the rate stood at 2.86%. Rising interest rates — in part a result of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive push to tamp down inflation — have cooled off a housing market that has been hot for years.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — FedEx Corp. warned Thursday it will likely miss Wall Street’s first-quarter profit target and said it expects business conditions to further weaken in its fiscal second quarter amid weaker global volume. The Memphis, Tennessee-based package delivery company also scrapped its forecast for fiscal 2023 earnings, which it issued less than three months ago.
ARLINGTON, Va. — Boeing is stuck with more than 100 planes that it can’t deliver to Chinese airlines, so it’s going to resell some of those planes to other customers. Company officials said Thursday they have waited long enough for permission to deliver new Boeing 737 Max jets to China, and they can’t wait any longer. Max jets were grounded around the world after two deadly crashes, and China is the last big market that hasn’t let airlines resume using the planes. Boeing’s chief financial officer says China is an important market, but he thinks Boeing can find new buyers. Max jets start around $100 million, although airlines usually get deep discounts from list prices. | 2022-09-16T00:28:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Rail deal, retail sales - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-rail-deal-retail-sales/2022/09/15/12bb6b78-3552-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-rail-deal-retail-sales/2022/09/15/12bb6b78-3552-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
By Gillian Brockell | Sep 16, 2022
The White House announced a tentative deal between train carriers and labor unions Thursday, likely averting a national rail strike that could have tanked the U.S. economy.
Rail strikes and the threat of them have played a key role in American history, helping to bring about the eight-hour workday, federal recognition of Labor Day, and the advancement of Black civil rights.
Bettman Archive
Here’s a look at how other rail strikes have changed America.
The Great Upheaval, 1877
The Great Upheaval began after four years of economic depression, in July 1877, when railroad bosses announced a 10 percent pay cut, the second in eight months.
Workers in Martinsburg, W.Va., responded by detaching train engines and barring them from moving.
The strike spread to Pittsburgh and then much of the Northeast, eventually involving about 100,000 workers.
Strikers rioted and burned train stations; about 100 were killed by militias and the National Guard.
The strike collapsed in weeks due to a lack of organization. In the end, they accomplished little.
A group of men stand on abandoned railway cars during the Pullman strike in Chicago.
Kean Collection via Getty Images
The Pullman Strike, 1894
The Pullman Strike was a solidarity strike with the factory workers who manufactured Pullman Palace train cars.
Their boss, George Pullman, was also their landlord, and cut wages 25 percent while refusing to lower rents.
As many as 250,000 rail workers and switchmen responded by refusing to touch trains that included Pullman cars, paralyzing rail traffic west of Chicago.
Fotosearch via Getty Images
This was the first strike ended by court injunction. Labor leader Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned as a result.
Most historians agree that President Grover Cleveland made Labor Day a federal holiday as a concession to strikers.
President Woodrow Wilson speaks to a crowd from the back of a train in January 1916.
Adamson Act, 1916
President Woodrow Wilson signed the Adamson Act of 1916, establishing an eight-hour workday and overtime compensation for interstate railroad workers.
Unions representing 94 percent of railway workers were prepared to strike after railroad companies refused to grant an eight-hour workday — a key demand of the labor movement as a whole.
It is the first law regulating private-sector work hours. Companies challenged the law all the way to the Supreme Court but failed.
Illinois State troopers maintain order at railroad tracks during a railroad strike in 1922.
Railroad Shopmen’s Strike, 1922
By 1922, Congress had established a Railway Labor Board to mediate disputes between companies and unions. But when the board authorized a pay cut for railway shopmen (mechanics), they struck.
Many strikers wore their World War I military uniforms and carried signs reading: “We fought the world war so this country might live. Let us live.”
A guard is seated on a box by railroad tracks in D.C. during the railroad strike in 1922.
Companies aggressively countered the strikes, hiring private guards and nonunion “scab” workers. After two months, the strike collapsed; so did the labor board.
The Railway Labor Act of 1926, which strengthened arbitration procedures, passed in its aftermath.
A. Phillip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and chairman of the March on Washington Movement, speaks at the Fair Employment Practices Committee Day rally in New York in 1946.
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1928
After the Civil War and Emancipation, the Pullman Co. hired thousands of Black workers to serve as porters on its luxurious train cars.
These jobs offered a measure of stability to Black men and their families, but hours were long, pay was low and porters endured a lot of indignities, like being called “George” by passengers, regardless of their actual names.
Members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters celebrate the organization's 30th anniversary in 1955.
They unionized in 1925, led by civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, and became the first major African American labor union. Black workers were barred from joining most other labor unions at the time.
The brotherhood threatened to strike in 1928 but ultimately didn’t.
In 1937, the company finally negotiated its first contract with the brotherhood, giving members the highest pay increase they had ever received.
Strike wave of 1945-1946
In the years following the end the of World War II, more than 4 million workers participated in strikes, including approximately 250,000 railway workers.
Largely protesting wage decreases, it is the closest the nation has come to a general strike.
A Marine waits at a ticket window in Chicago during a rail strike in 1946.
In 1947, Congress responded by passing, over President Harry S. Truman’s veto, the Taft-Hartley Act, limiting the rights of labor unions to strike.
White-helmeted picketers walk away from a motors plant in Los Angeles after police used tear gas.
NYC transit strikes: 1966, 1980, 2005
New York City transit workers have struck three times, in 1966, 1980 and 2005, shutting down the subway (and buses).
Though it lasted 13 days and union leaders were jailed, the 1966 strike was considered a success by transit workers, who won most of their demands.
New York City police restrain commuters at Penn Station during the transit strike in 1966.
Truman Moore/Chronicle Collection via Getty Images
The 1980 strike was a failure.
The weather was better than in 1966, and Mayor Ed Koch encouraged people to commute by foot instead.
Women wearing business suits and sneakers were everywhere, a trend that persisted after the strike and became the quintessential look of the 1980s.
Commuters carry bicycles up the steps as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan on April 1, 1980.
Carole Rene Perez/AP
The 2005 strike lasted only two days — the weekend before Christmas, two of the busiest shopping days a year. Results were mixed; workers’ pensions were unchanged, but they won small pay increases and the right the use the restroom during a shift.
Union transit workers keep warm around a fire outside a facility in New York in December 2005.
Strikers at a CSX railway switch yard next to the Ford Motor Co. 1991 in Dearborn, Mich.
Richard Sheinwald/AP
1992 U.S. Railroad strike
The 1992 strike included only CSX Transportation workers, but since rail lines were so interconnected, the effects of it quickly spread.
The White House said it cost the economy $1 billion a day — $2.1 billion in today’s value. After only two days, Congress invoked a little-used law to force an end to the strike.
Striking railroad union members wave to passing vehicles as they walk the picket line outside CSX in Tampa.
This week, train companies made a key concession, allowing workers time off for medical emergencies without being fired or punished.
Union members still need to ratify the deal, but another rail strike has been avoided for now.
CSX Transportation freight trains sit parked in a railroad yard ahead of a potential freight rail workers union strike in Louisville this week.
Luke Sharrett for The Washington Post
Photo editing Monique Woo. Editing and production by Karly Domb Sadof | 2022-09-16T00:28:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The rail strikes that changed the American labor force 1877-2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/rail-strikes-history-1877-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/rail-strikes-history-1877-2022/ |
A Patagonia store in Atlanta. The decision this week by founder Yvon Chouinard to give away the company to help counter climate change and other environmental problems follows a pattern of political and environmental activism for Chouinard. (Erik S Lesser/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
While Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s decision Wednesday to give away the outdoor-apparel company to help tackle climate change and other environmental problems shocked some in the industry, many people familiar with Chouinard weren’t surprised.
“It seemed very Yvon to me,” said John Sterling, who was the director of environmental programs at Patagonia from 1996 to 2002. “When I worked there, it was a challenge to out-activist Yvon.”
Chouinard, a nature-loving rock climber turned businessman and reluctant billionaire, founded Patagonia in 1973 and has since been molding the company into a leader in responsible business. Giving Patagonia away marks the boldest act of environmental activism yet, after years of unconventional crusades ranging from a campaign against genetic engineering to suing a sitting president over protecting public lands.
Patagonia’s reputation isn’t “a conceived of strategy for the brand,” Sterling said, but rather it reflects Chouinard’s values. “He’s got a pretty clear sense of where he’s headed.”
In a 2012 interview, Chouinard, now 83, explained that the resources he has to “do good” come from his company.
Despite being “a relatively small company in the scheme of things,” Patagonia, he said, “has this tremendous power to change — well, I mean, I hate to be bragging, but change society and to change larger companies and lead by example.”
Here are a few of the radical pursuits Patagonia has undertaken during its nearly 50-year history.
For years, the company has provided optional nonviolent civil disobedience trainings to employees. The sessions, Sterling said, stemmed from a group of employees getting arrested in 1996 at a protest against logging ancient redwoods in a forest in Northern California.
Patagonia has also established a bail policy to help any employee who is arrested while peacefully protesting, provided that they have previously completed a civil disobedience class.
This policy of encouraging dissent is not confined to environmental issues. This summer, amid the nationwide debate over abortion, the company announced in a post on LinkedIn that all part-time and full-time employees receive “training and bail for those who peacefully protest for reproductive justice.”
“We don’t have a just society, and that’s when you need civil disobedience, absolutely,” Chouinard said in the 2012 interview.
Patagonia’s Environmental Internship Program offers employees the opportunity to take up to two months away from their regular jobs to work for an environmental group of their choice while continuing to earn their paycheck and benefits.
John Wallin, who worked at Patagonia from 1993 to 1999, did two internships through the program — an experience that he said inspired him to leave to the company and start his own nonprofit environmental organization.
“I did that because the internships both gave me a fluency in the issues and a desire to make a bigger difference,” said Wallin, who founded the Nevada Wilderness Project. “The Patagonia response, when I said, ‘I think I’m going to leave my middle management job in mail order and start this nonprofit because I think we can protect a lot of Nevada,’ was ‘That is so fantastic. Here’s a phone line and a desk in our service center in Reno.’”
According to Patagonia, 34 employees, 12 stores and one department took advantage of the program this year, which amounted to “almost 10,000 volunteer hours for 43 organizations.”
Efforts to remove dams
Patagonia has long supported the removal of dams, especially those that are “derelict and particularly harmful,” according to a 2014 company statement.
In the statement, Chouinard called himself “a lover of wild rivers.” “That’s why our company has been involved in trying to take out obsolete and damaging dams since 1993,” he said.
The company has advocated for the removal of four lower dams on the Snake River, placing four full-page ads in the New York Times in 1999 that called attention to the impacts of those dams on Pacific Northwest salmon populations, said Sterling, who was directing the company’s environmental programs at the time.
More recently, Patagonia funded a 2014 documentary film called “DamNation,” which aimed to mobilize support for demolishing dams to revive wild fish populations.
Patagonia has been donating money to causes it supports since the 1970s. But starting in 1985, the company pledged that 1 percent of its sales would go toward “the preservation and restoration of the natural environment.”
In 2002, Chouinard co-founded a nonprofit corporation called “1% for the Planet” in an effort to get other businesses to do the same.
“1% of sales is a hard number,” Chouinard said in the 2012 interview. “And I don’t look at it as charity. It’s our cost of doing business.”
Public lands advocacy
A fierce defender of public lands, Patagonia made headlines when Chouinard and the company became embroiled in a high-profile fight with the Trump administration over national monuments in Utah.
After President Donald Trump moved to drastically reduce the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in December 2017, Patagonia posted a stark message to its website: “The President Stole Your Land.”
“In an illegal move, the president just reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments,” the rest of the message read. “This is the largest elimination of protected land in American history.”
In the lead-up to December and after, Patagonia carried out a multipronged effort to support public land protections that went beyond assisting grass-roots environmental organizations.
The company orchestrated a publicity effort that included its first-ever television ad — a one-minute spot that featured Chouinard, who is known for being somewhat of a recluse, talking about the importance of public lands and “wild places.” Patagonia and other outdoor recreation companies also successfully moved a major industry trade show out of Salt Lake City to Denver.
A diminished monument: Trump's move to open Grand Staircase-Escalante to mining and drilling
Patagonia joined a coalition of Native American and grass-roots groups in a lawsuit aimed at forcing Trump to restore Bears Ears’ original boundaries.
The decision to sue a sitting president was “fairly unprecedented” for a company like Patagonia, said Josh Ewing, who worked with Patagonia on Bears Ears while heading the nonprofit Friends of Cedar Mesa.
The lawsuit and the effort to move the trade show “were steps that companies usually don’t take,” said Ewing, who now directs the Rural Climate Partnership. “They don’t take protest-like steps with their money because they’re afraid of their money, they’re afraid of losing their money if they get too active.” | 2022-09-16T00:28:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Patagonia's Chouinard and his long history of environmental activism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/15/patagonia-chouinard-environmental-activism-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/15/patagonia-chouinard-environmental-activism-climate/ |
A table before the start of a vaccination drive during the 2022 Charlotte Pride Festival in uptown Charlotte on Aug. 20. (Logan Cyrus for The Washington Post)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance Thursday recommending that TPoxx, the only drug available to treat monkeypox, be limited to people at high risk for severe disease even as the outbreak that has infected more than 22,000 Americans shows signs of plateauing.
Recently released data from the Food and Drug Administration suggest that broad use of TPoxx “could promote resistance and render the antivirals ineffective for some patients,” the CDC said in a statement Thursday. The antiviral, prescribed to tens of thousands of monkeypox patients, is approved for the related smallpox virus. Its use against monkeypox is considered experimental and tightly controlled by federal officials, although there is growing evidence that it benefits many patients.
But advocates who have called for TPoxx to be more widely available criticized the government’s guidance as too hasty, given ongoing unequal access to vaccination and treatment for a disease that spreads by close contact, including sex.
“There’s a theoretical concern that monkeypox virus may rapidly evolve resistance to TPoxx — but right now, that’s a theoretical concern,” said James Krellenstein, co-founder of PrEP4All, a group that advocates access to HIV care. “We need to see more concrete steps from both the [National Institutes of Health] and CDC to determine how much of a threat it actually is, through much better research and surveillance.”
At a White House monkeypox briefing Thursday, Anthony S. Fauci, medical adviser to President Biden, said resistance is always a risk when using antiviral drugs. He said a recently launched study of TPoxx will track signs of mutation that could lead to resistance. The study is expected to enroll more than 500 patients across 60 U.S. sites.
The updated guidance on TPoxx use comes at a time when the growth of new monkeypox cases is dropping in the United States and abroad as vaccination and education campaigns have improved, and individuals curbed risky sexual behaviors linked to spread, public health officials said. New cases in the United States have dropped nearly 50 percent since the peak in early August.
But “there are areas of the U.S. where the rate of rise in new cases is still increasing,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at the White House monkeypox briefing. On Monday, Los Angeles County health officials announced that a county resident with a severely compromised immune system had died, the first U.S. fatality from the disease. Texas health officials are still investigating the role of monkeypox in a Houston patient’s death last month.
Two otherwise healthy men in their 30s developed encephalomyelitis — inflammation of the brain and spinal cord — suggesting that neurological complications are a potential outcome of monkeypox infections, according to a CDC report last week. Both were treated with TPoxx and recovered but have difficulty walking.
FDA officials this week cautioned that a single molecular change to monkeypox “could have a large impact on the antiviral activity of TPoxx,” referring to its effectiveness.
Most healthy patients need supportive care and pain control and “do not need to be stepped up to antiviral treatment,” Sapna Bamrah Morris, a CDC official working on the monkeypox response, said during a recent call for clinicians hosted by CDC and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
TPoxx should be reserved for people with severely weakened immune systems — those with HIV that is not controlled, leukemia, lymphoma and solid organ transplants — as well as people who are pregnant or breastfeeding, children under 8, and people with skin that is vulnerable to injury, Morris said.
Jay Varma, an infectious-disease expert at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, said it is “reasonable” for the CDC to provide more explicit guidance on TPoxx prescriptions, particularly given the absence of a randomized clinical trial testing the treatment’s effectiveness in fighting monkeypox.
“The challenge comes during implementation,” Varma, a former New York City health official, added, cautioning about the risks of wrongly dissuading providers and patients from receiving treatment. He noted that it is “highly likely” that monkeypox infections will increasingly move away from large urban centers toward smaller cities and rural areas, where patients already face barriers when seeking care.
“Any limits on [TPoxx] prescribing could lead to the unintended consequence of people at high risk of or with severe disease not receiving it,” Varma said.
Health officials and patient advocates point to existing disparities in vaccinations against a virus that has disproportionately spread among communities of color and stressed the need to reach more deeply into Black and Latino communities.
Efforts to control the outbreak are entering a critical time, a “harder phase of the vaccination campaign,” Demetre Daskalakis, deputy coordinator for the White House monkeypox response, said in reference to the need to reach underserved communities.
Black Americans have received just 12 percent of the first doses of the two-shot Jynneos vaccine even though they make up 38 percent of new U.S. monkeypox cases, Walensky said.
The CDC announced a program Thursday to provide up to 50,000 doses to communities that may face barriers to vaccinations because of language differences, location of vaccination sites, mistrust of government, lack of access to online scheduling, immigration status and stigma.
Research from the University of Pennsylvania released Thursday shows that knowledge of the monkeypox vaccine has jumped from about one-third of Americans in July to more than 60 percent. The vast majority, 84 percent, know monkeypox spreads by close contact with an infected person, compared with 69 percent in July. Nearly three-quarters of Americans said they would get vaccinated if exposed.
More than 540,000 doses of the two-dose Jynneos vaccine have been administered in the United States as of Tuesday, according to the CDC. The vaccine was designed to prevent smallpox, and animal studies conducted by its Danish manufacturer have shown it works against monkeypox, too. But scientists and researchers don’t know exactly how effective the vaccine is in humans. A recent study from the Netherlands that has not been peer-reviewed found that two doses of the vaccine triggered relatively low levels of virus-fighting antibodies against monkeypox, raising concerns about effectiveness.
During the Senate’s first-ever hearing on monkeypox Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans pressed Biden officials over the administration’s initial struggles to ramp up testing and vaccinations as the virus rapidly spread in May and June.
“Frankly, too many missteps were made early on in the response, and a couple hundred cases turned into 21,000,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who chairs the chamber’s health panel.
“By every measure, the response from the Biden administration on [the] monkeypox crisis has been a catastrophic failure,” added Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), the panel’s top Republican. “You repeated each of the mistakes in the early days of the covid response.”
Biden officials, defending the administration’s response, said they had learned from the government’s coronavirus stumbles in 2020 to move quickly to procure medical countermeasures to fight the monkeypox outbreak.
Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services who oversees the national stockpile of emergency medical supplies, touted her team’s decisions to order tens of thousands of additional monkeypox vaccine doses in the earliest days of the outbreak.
“All of this was done to stay ahead of the virus, though case counts were very low in the United States,” O’Connell told the panel. | 2022-09-16T00:28:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TPoxx antiviral should only be given to high-risk monkeypox patients, CDC says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/15/monkeypox-tpoxx-antiviral-cdc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/15/monkeypox-tpoxx-antiviral-cdc/ |
Stabbed during a trail run, he wants to help catch his attacker
A 17-year-old’s family posted about 50 fliers near where the teen was stabbed, and stuffed about 100 more in residential mailboxes in the area.
Max’s parents and twin brother posted about 50 of these fliers along the Custis Trail and put about 100 more in mailboxes in the vicinity of the crime scene. (Family photo)
A teenager named Max, who considers himself fortunate to be alive, wants to help police find the man who stabbed him last month in an unprovoked attack as he was jogging in Arlington, Va. He said he’s worried that the assailant, if not caught, will eventually plunge a knife into another innocent victim and that person’s story will have a sadder ending than his own.
“I was really lucky,” said Max, a high school senior who spoke on the condition that his last name not be published, citing safety concerns. “Where I was at that time, I was able to run and get help quickly. If someone else has this happen, and they can’t run and get help, I don’t know if they’ll survive.”
Which explains why Max’s family posted about 50 fliers last weekend near the stabbing scene along a recreational trail in Arlington, describing the near-deadly assault, detailing Max’s wound and asking any witnesses to contact authorities.
The family also stuffed about 100 similar handbills in residential mailboxes in the area — what you might do for a lost pet, but with life-or-death urgency: “I would like to have justice, but I feel like there’s a possibility of this happening again,” the flier quotes Max as saying.
“Obviously we don’t want this to happen again to anybody,” Max’s mother, 53, said in an interview, also speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We want him arrested.”
At 8:47 p.m. on Aug. 27, Max, 17, was jogging along Custis Trail, a recreational path in Arlington, listening to Joy Division’s “Atrocity Exhibition” through ear buds. As he was approaching the end of his two-mile route, he said that he saw a man walking toward him on the opposite side of the trail, where it passes under Washington Boulevard near Interstate 66. It was dark and no one else was around.
“He suddenly just crosses over and actually then just runs up and sticks me with the knife,” said Max, who described his assailant as a bald man in his 20s, close to 6 feet tall, possibly Latino or South Asian, wearing short pants and “a Polo-type shirt” that looked to be green and yellow. If the man said anything, Max didn’t hear it with his ear buds in. “But his mouth never moved,” Max said.
Max’s father, 53, said doctors at Virginia Hospital Center later told the family that the attacker sunk the blade five inches into Max’s left side, between two ribs, piercing his spleen and cutting his diaphragm but narrowly missing more vital organs.
As the assailant ran off, Max staggered onto Washington Boulevard, pressing a blood-soaked hand to his wound while waving at passing motorists for help. Cars whizzed by without stopping, he said, but a resident came out of his house and led Max to the front porch.
“At that point, I could definitely feel the pain,” Max said. “It was really starting to hurt a lot. I don’t think I really had a grasp of how much blood I was actually losing.”
While the good Samaritan dialed 911, Max called his mother to tell her what had happened.
“He said, ‘Mom, I’ve been stabbed!’ ” she recalled. “Obviously, these words made no sense to me. They didn’t register. I said, ‘What?!’ … I mean, it was awful and scary, because my mind — I just couldn’t wrap my head around any of it, how bad it could be.”
While the attack remains under investigation, police said they do not believe it was connected to numerous incidents along the recreational Washington and Old Dominion Trail in Northern Virginia in which a man exposed himself and tried to grab women. According to police, there is no evidence of a weapon being used in those cases, in which a 42-year-old man was recently arrested.
After Max was discharged from the hospital, having spent two days in intensive care, his family decided to assist investigators by posting and distributing the fliers. His parents and twin brother did the work. Although Max wanted to help, he is still recovering and wasn’t physically up to it.
“Max is asking people with cameras facing the trail or nearby streets and sidewalks to check the hours around 8:47 p.m., Aug. 27, for possible images of the suspect,” the handbills read. “Trail users should please report anything suspicious they might have seen.”
The fliers include contact information for providing tips to Arlington police at 703-228-4180 or acpdtipline@arlingtonva.us.
On the morning after Labor Day, Max returned to school after missing the first four days of classes. He is an avid fencer, but athletics are out of the question until he regains his strength. He said he is immersed in preparing applications for college, where he plans to study political science. And he said one vexing part of the admissions process, the dreaded essay, might be solved.
That time he got stabbed while out for a jog — will he write 500 words on that?
“Probably, yeah,” he said. “Because it’s a crazy, life-changing story, and that’s what they want.” | 2022-09-16T01:42:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teen stabbed on Custis Trail wants to help catch his attacker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/custis-trail-posters-teenager-stabbed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/15/custis-trail-posters-teenager-stabbed/ |
This combination of book covers shows National Book Award nominees “Lost & Found: A Memoir” by Kathryn Schulz, from left, “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice” by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, “The Man Who Could Move Clouds” by Ingrid Rojas Contreras and “Ted Kennedy: A Life” by John A. Farrell. (Random House/Viking/Doubleday/Penguin Press via AP) (Uncredited/Random House/Viking/Doubleday/Penguin Press) | 2022-09-16T02:00:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Floyd biography among National Book Award nominees - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/george-floyd-biography-among-national-book-award-nominees/2022/09/15/f90b18c0-3558-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/george-floyd-biography-among-national-book-award-nominees/2022/09/15/f90b18c0-3558-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at a news conference with members of the House Freedom Caucus on Capitol Hill just before the incident. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Videos posted to Twitter by Greene and the Gen Z activist group Voters of Tomorrow show Greene leaving a news conference while being questioned by activists about gun violence. As Greene approaches a crosswalk, she appears to kick one of the activists, who was walking in front of her.
“Excuse me,” Greene says while at first appearing to step on the demonstrator, Mariana Pecora’s foot.
Greene’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The confrontation began around 5 p.m. Eastern, when the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus, of which Greene is a member, held a news conference to discuss a government funding bill being debated in the Senate.
As the legislators left the event, Santiago Mayer, the 20-year-old founder of Voters of Tomorrow, approached Greene, and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), another member of the caucus, asking to take a photo and claiming to be a “big fan,” a Washington Post reporter at the event observed.
But both members quickly recognized Mayer as an activist. Boebert pushed Mayor’s smartphone away and quickly exited. Greene instead jousted with the group of activists — and accused Mayer of abusing children.
Mayer told The Washington Post that accusation came after he asked her whether she had a plan to protect children from school shootings.
“You’re helping kids get shot in school,” Mayer said to Greene.
The lawmaker, who has been critical of gun-control regulations to prohibit firearms in certain public places, responded by saying he should just “move to another country.”
“I asked her if her official stance as a member of Congress was that I should just move to another country if I didn’t want kids to get shot,” Mayer said.
DeSantis gave top GOP donors a glimpse of his plans for migrant flights to Martha's Vineyard in culture war speech
He said Greene refused to answer that query. That’s when Pecora stepped in, and the videos appear to show the incident taking a physical turn. The congresswoman, Mayer said, also called the group of activists “cowards.”
Mayer, who is a Mexican immigrant, said he does not know if his slight accent tipped off Greene, leading to her suggestion that he move to another country. After the incident, however, Greene targeted Mayer and his nationality on Twitter, calling him a “paid political activist, who just so happens to be blessed to have immigrated to our great country.”
“He should respect and be grateful for American freedoms, like our 2A, instead of trying to destroy them,” she said. “If he doesn’t like it, he can go back.”
Mayer is a grass-roots organizer who founded Voters of Tomorrow at age 17 to encourage his American peers to vote and be more civically engaged. He said he, Pecora and other members of the Gen Z-run group were at the Capitol on Thursday to “talk to members of Congress about what Gen Z’s priorities are.” They had just left a meeting with the House Rules Committee when they ran into the Freedom Caucus.
Greene has a history of heated confrontations around the Capitol.
In 2019, before she was elected to Congress, she harassed David Hogg, a then-teenage gun-control activist and survivor of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, while he walked the grounds to meet with legislators.
Greene followed Hogg for several blocks while repeating falsehoods about the events at his high school, where 17 people were killed in the 2018 attack. As Hogg crossed a street, Greene turns toward another person filming the encounter and called Hogg “a coward.”
In 2021, Greene accosted Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) in a Capitol hallway and accused her of supporting “terrorists.” Two Post journalists witnessed the interaction, which led Ocasio-Cortez to call on congressional leadership to review its security posture to protect elected officials.
“You don’t care about the American people,” Greene shouted. “Why do you support terrorists and antifa?”
Ocasio-Cortez did not stop to answer Greene, only turning around once and throwing her hands in the air in an exasperated motion.
House Democrats have chastised Greene for her behavior, and voted in 2021 to strip her of committee assignments.
Greene previously said Black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party” and claimed that Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — the first two Muslim women elected to Congress — represented “an Islamic invasion into our government offices.” She also has repeatedly compared liberal lawmakers to Nazis, and continued to do so even after warnings from Republican leaders to cease. | 2022-09-16T02:26:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marjorie Taylor Greene kicks Gen-Z activist, video appears to show - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/15/video-appears-show-marjorie-taylor-greene-kicking-gen-z-activist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/15/video-appears-show-marjorie-taylor-greene-kicking-gen-z-activist/ |
L. Lowry Mays, builder of radio empire, dies at 87
His company, Clear Channel Communications, became the largest network of radio stations in the United States
L. Lowry Mays accepts an award from the National Association of Broadcasters in 2005. (Joe Cavaretta/AP)
L. Lowry Mays, a Texas investment banker who stumbled into the radio business with the purchase of a single local station in 1972 and over the next three decades built his company, Clear Channel Communications, into the largest radio empire in the United States, died Sept. 12 at his home in San Antonio. He was 87.
His family announced his death. The cause was not immediately available. Clear Channel Communications, which was sold in a leveraged buyout in 2008, was the predecessor company to iHeartRadio.
Mr. Mays had a Harvard MBA — and more knowledge of the oil industry than broadcasting — when his first radio property, the small San Antonio station KEEZ-FM, landed in his lap. According to an account in the magazine Texas Monthly, a group of investors had persuaded Mr. Mays to co-sign a loan for the purchase of the station but defaulted, leaving him the owner.
“I had no intention of getting into the broadcast business,” Mr. Mays told Forbes in 1992.
He formed a partnership with B.J. “Red” McCombs, a car dealer who later became an owner of athletic teams including the San Antonio Spurs, the Denver Nuggets and the Minnesota Vikings, and in 1975 purchased WOAI, an AM station also based in San Antonio.
WOAI was clear or “clear channel,” meaning that no other stations could operate on its frequency. The term gave their company its name, and Clear Channel Communications, which Mr. Mays led as chairman and chief executive, went public in 1984.
From the outset, Mr. Mays was set on expansion, because with every additional radio station purchased came greater advertising reach. “I’m in the business of selling automobiles and tamales,” he told Forbes magazine in 1997. He boosted his acquisitions through investment in his sales force and cultivated audiences through promotions including on-air giveaways.
The turning point for Clear Channel, and for the modern radio industry as a whole, came with the deregulatory trend of the 1990s that culminated with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which vastly reduced restrictions on how many stations a single owner could control in a particular market.
The law precipitated consolidation across radio broadcasting, and Clear Channel Communications became the largest owner of radio stations in the country.
Among other acquisitions, the company purchased Jacor Communications in 1998 — an acquisition that included the syndicated talk shows of Rush Limbaugh and Laura Schlessinger — and AMFM in 2000. In the Washington area, Clear Channel owned music stations including DC101 and Hot 99.5 as well as sports-talk WTEM-AM.
By 2004, Clear Channel owned more than 1,200 radio stations and more than 40 television channels in the United States, as well as radio stations around the world, reaching sales of $9 billion. The company ventured into billboard advertising and concert promotion with the purchase of SFX Entertainment in 2000. It became, in the description of the New York Times, “a media empire upon which the sun never sets, from gospel radio in Greensboro, N.C., to billboards in Beijing.”
“Lowry Mays [was] the great consolidator after the Telecom Act of 1996,” said Tom Taylor, a journalist who covered the radio industry for 30 years, including as editor of the newsletter Inside Radio. “It was a time when people felt they had to get bigger or get out, and Lowry had no doubt which camp he was in. He was going to get bigger.”
Clear Channel’s dominance increasingly attracted criticism from musicians and their advocates. who argued that consolidation had snuffed out the creativity that once flourished at local radio stations and placed artists at the mercy of massive corporations for airtime.
“To those listeners who long for the days when their favorite radio station was independent, eclectic in its programming and as responsive as a tripwire to breaking local news,” Jacques Steinberg, a New York Times media reporter, wrote in 2008, “Clear Channel is nothing less than the Evil Empire.”
Don Henley, a founding member of the rock band the Eagles and a representative of the Recording Artists’ Coalition, argued before the Senate Commerce Committee in 2003 that “airwaves belong to the public, just like national forests belong to the public.” Mr. Mays, who also testified in that proceeding, defended Clear Channel as having rescued stations that might otherwise have failed and provided listeners with broader access to popular formats.
Mr. Mays suffered a blood clot in 2004 and was succeeded as chief executive by his son Mark Mays. His son Randall Mays was chief financial officer, and his daughter Kathryn Mays Johnson was senior vice president of corporate relations. (Another daughter, Linda Mays McCaul, is an oceanographer and the wife of U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican.)
In 2008, after a lengthy negotiation process, Clear Channel Communications was purchased by Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners for $17.9 billion. The radio industry was evolving beyond the era that Mr. Mays had helped define, with competition from satellite radio and streaming services.
“It was best for the family to sell and take the chips off the table,” Mr. Mays told Texas Monthly.
Lester Lowry Mays was born in Houston on July 24, 1935, and grew up in Dallas. His father, who worked in the steel industry, died in a traffic accident when Mr. Mays was 10. His mother supported him and his sister as a real estate agent and later remarried.
With plans to become a wildcatter, Mr. Mays received a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University in 1957. He later served in the Air Force, traveling to Taiwan to help supervise the construction of a pipeline for the Chinese Nationalist government in a military exchange.
He received a master of business administration degree from Harvard in 1962 before returning to Texas to work in investment banking, starting his own firm in 1970.
Mr. Mays maintained a ranch near Spring Branch, Tex., where he kept exotic animals including zebras, kudus, oryx and bongos.
He established the Mays Family Foundation and was a prolific philanthropist, giving a total of $47 million to Texas A&M, where the business school is named for him and his family. The Mays family also supported the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, whose facilities include the Lowry and Peggy Mays Clinic in Houston.
His wife of 61 years, the former Peggy Pitman, died in 2020. Besides his four children, survivors include 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Mr. Mays was a 2004 inductee of the Radio Hall of Fame. “Perhaps no one has had a greater impact on radio in the 21st century,” the citation read, “than L. Lowry Mays.” | 2022-09-16T03:31:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Clear Channel radio founder Lowry Mays dies at 87 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/15/lowry-mays-clear-channel-radio-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/15/lowry-mays-clear-channel-radio-dead/ |
Freedom (Woodbridge) handles Unity Reed, looks poised to take next step
Freedom junior Aaron Duncan catches a first-quarter touchdown in Thursday's win over Unity Reed. (Spencer Nusbaum/TWP)
Coach Darryl Overton believed a state championship contender existed somewhere inside Freedom (Woodbridge) when he inherited the football program in 2015. Since its 2005 opening, the team had lost more than 80 percent of its games before he took over. Few others saw what he did.
By 2016, the Eagles had claimed their first winning record. The 2018 squad brought Freedom its first state title appearance. But last week’s romp over No. 14 Stone Bridge — which hadn’t lost since before the pandemic’s onset — and Thursday’s 42-0 win at Unity Reed (2-1) in Manassas reinforced the conviction that has driven Freedom (4-0).
“We’re not scared to take that step to be great,” senior guard Armand Tubbs said. “We’ve been putting in that work. We’re trying to get that ring. It’s been too long. We’re trying to bring one home.”
Thursday’s game, won in the trenches, was of the ilk that evaded last year’s group, which regularly depended on big plays against its toughest opponents. These Eagles swiftly established their approach — assistant coaches repeatedly yelled, “Physical!” before kickoff and the offense obliged, churning six, seven and eight yards at a time.
One run, two impacts: How a football play altered the trajectory of two lives
For all of Freedom’s early-season accomplishments, it remains a relatively young team, albeit one with plenty of varsity experience. The group still exhibits signs of youth — as evidenced by the backflip from junior Kameron Courtney, who scored in the first quarter, and a cluster of postgame celebrants who moved in rhythm with the team’s energetic band.
The Eagles, who have outscored their opponents 214-16, don’t see age as a detriment. Six players, all either sophomores or juniors, had a part in each Freedom touchdown. Many have been teammates since before high school.
“It’s ‘O.T.F.’ man, only the family,” said sophomore JuJu Preston, who scored the team’s first and final touchdown. “We’ve got the mind-set that we need to win it. We keep falling short every year. It’s time to step up.”
“We’ve known each other since we were babies,” Tubbs said. “Ain’t nobody new around here. Even if you are, you’re still family.” | 2022-09-16T03:31:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Freedom (Woodbridge) handles Unity Reed, looks poised to take next step - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/15/freedom-woodbridge-unity-reed-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/15/freedom-woodbridge-unity-reed-football/ |
MINNEAPOLIS — Carlos Correa’s solo home run in the first inning and Nick Gordon’s two-run shot in the second gave the Minnesota Twins enough to hang on for a 3-2 victory to finish a three-game sweep of the Kansas City Royals on Thursday night and gain ground in the AL Central race. | 2022-09-16T03:31:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Correa, Gordon power Twins past Royals 3-2 for series sweep - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/correa-gordon-power-twins-past-royals-3-2-for-series-sweep/2022/09/15/73000212-3568-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/correa-gordon-power-twins-past-royals-3-2-for-series-sweep/2022/09/15/73000212-3568-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Carolyn Hax: Estranged dad debates reconciling with ‘queen’ daughter
Dear Carolyn: I have been alienated from my daughter for 30 years. Her mother and I divorced and I remarried. She was in her late teens and early 20s at the time. For a time she lived with me, my new wife and a stepsister. She was an absolute “queen,” thought we should defer to her every wish. No help around the house and no rent. I finally asked her to leave. It was either get her out of the house or lose my new wife.
Later she married, and asked me to come to her wedding, but not bring my new wife. I told her, “Sorry I won’t be there.” She was angry at me and still is, according to her brother. I’ve just “written her off” but have been encouraged by a friend to try to reconnect. I think she has a grudge, like Hatfields and McCoys, and it would be useless to attempt reconciliation or, in the alternative, would open me up to more pain. I think she’s stuck in what happened 30 years back and isn’t about to let go. Your opinion?
— J.: My opinion: Instead of backing your daughter or being patient with her as she worked through the emotional fallout of having her family unravel — just as she was emerging into her own adulthood — you blamed her, dropped her for your new family, and never checked for damage on impact.
Then, instead of taking the wedding half-invitation as a hint to talk to your daughter and try to repair the damaged relationship, you merely dropped her again.
So I don’t concur with your friend. Not unless you’re ready to hold yourself as accountable for your errors as you’ve held her for hers, given you “wrote off” your own daughter pre-full-maturity and fresh off your divorce. Not unless you’re 100 percent sure you won’t dump her again.
Dear Carolyn: Our day-care center is putting art projects together for the kids that are “boy” and “girl” and the kids are separated as they do them. How can I politely object to this?
Anonymous: Yeah that is a head-to-keyboard special. I’m sorry.
In the interest of uniting, not dividing, and because these are people who do the thankless work of caring for small children, and because they are caring for your children, let’s take the organizer of this art project to be a well-meaning form of misguided. (Old habits left unexamined, say.)
Then appeal to those good intentions: “What is your plan if a girl prefers the designated boy project or a boy prefers the designated girl project?” It’s an entirely predictable outcome among children too young for pink-shaming to have taken hold. Just ask any parent during the boy-or-girl Happy Meal-toy era (RIP and good riddance), since the much cooler toy was always, always the one meant for the other sex.
How the center responds to that logical, justified query will tell you whether there needs to be a more formal next move, which can be as mild as keeping your kid home that day or as extreme as switching to a non-reactionary day-care provider.
This is all assuming you bother. The work of keeping kids out of arbitrary gender boxes is essential and ongoing, to allow kids to be comfortable in their own skin rather than jamming them into ill-fitting “shoulds” from judgmental adults. But this is not to be confused with asking every person to join every battle. You get to decide whether the gratuitous gender sorting is systemic or a one-off, harmful or merely annoying, worth or not worth taking on. | 2022-09-16T04:14:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Estranged dad debates reconciling with ‘queen’ daughter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/16/carolyn-hax-estranged-dad-reconciliation-daughter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/16/carolyn-hax-estranged-dad-reconciliation-daughter/ |
Another taboo in Europe is about to be broken. In Sweden, voters delivered a narrow mandate after elections on Sunday to a loose coalition of right-wing parties, including one with a neo-fascist past. On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, a center-left Social Democrat allied to other left and green parties, conceded defeat. Her party had won 30 percent of the vote — making it still the single largest faction in parliament — but their coalition secured three fewer seats than their rivals to the right.
The kingmakers in Sweden are the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), a party founded in 1988 by ultranationalist extremists and neo-Nazis. Over the past decade, they have moved from the fringes of their country’s politics into the mainstream. This week, they secured some 20 percent of the Swedish vote, enough to make them the second-largest party in Sweden.
But they may not formally be in power. Such is the political stigma around them that they may remain technically outside a government led by the center-right Moderates and Liberals, yet crucially not in opposition. Coalition politics carry many complexities and wrangling over the new government may take weeks. Whatever the outcome, it seems the far-right SD believes it has a major seat at the table in a country long known for its progressive ethos and policies.
“Now we will get order in Sweden,” SD leader Jimmie Akesson wrote Wednesday on Facebook. “It is time to start rebuilding security, prosperity and cohesion. It’s time to put Sweden first.”
Right-wing nationalists are marching into the future by rewriting the past
100% of districts counted
S-S&D: 30.3% (+2.0)
SD-ECR: 20.5% (+3.0)
M-EPP: 19.1% (-0.7)
V-LEFT: 6.7% (-1.3)
C-RE: 6.7% (-1.9)
KD-EPP: 5.3% (-1.0)
MP-G/EFA: 5.1% (+0.7)
L-RE: 4.6% (-0.9)
Akesson’s triumphalism has echoed across the continent. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Rally Party, hailed the SD’s success as a sign of nationalist resurgence. “Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!” she tweeted.
Le Pen, of course, knows her share of false dawns, having been repeatedly thwarted in elections no matter incremental gains in defeat. But far-right parties have in the past decade been the beneficiaries of the collapse of the so-called “cordon sanitaire” set up by more mainstream parties to block them from winning power, entering governing coalitions in Swedish neighbor Finland, Austria and Italy. And even when not in government, their agendas have made their way into governance — the center-left government in Denmark, for example, checked right-wing nativism by adopting the anti-immigration policies of their rivals.
Italian elections later this month are expected to deliver perhaps the most emphatic victory for a European far-right party: The Brothers of Italy, which draws its origins from Italy’s neofascist movement, is currently leading in the polls and its leader, the charismatic Giorgia Meloni, is poised to be become prime minister with the backing of a number of other right-wing parties.
Akesson doesn’t have the political alliances that Meloni does but shares an antipathy toward migration, Islam and the spectral “globalist” establishment that far-right campaigners across the West have harnessed in their bids for power. “They don’t include Islam in Swedishness,” said Andrej Kokkonen, a professor of politics at the University of Gothenburg, to my colleagues. “You don’t get to be a Swede and a Muslim at the same time.”
“They have few new solutions for today’s destructive economic and environmental crises,” wrote Pankaj Mishra for Bloomberg Opinion about the far right. “They can, however, channel social unrest to their advantage by reheating identities of race, religion and ethnicity, and retailing myths of national greatness.”
Far-right Italian politician Alessio Di Giulio posted a video last week with a Roma woman, telling voters that if they cast their ballots for the party in the election later this month they’ll “never see her again.”https://t.co/lO4OFSe5eV
Ahead of the election, Andersson pointed to the toxicity of the SD’s legacy. “There are rightwing populist parties in many European countries, but the Sweden Democrats have deep roots in the Swedish neo-Nazis and other racist organizations in Sweden,” she said last week on the campaign trail in an interview with the Guardian, highlighting an alleged incident where SD campaigners celebrated the Nazi invasion of Poland during World War II. “I mean, it’s not like other parties.”
But that has hardly dented their appeal. The SD emerged as a major political force in Sweden, siphoning off rural votes that once would have gone to parties on the other side of the political spectrum. “Treating nationalists as pariahs has not prevented their rise,” observed the Economist. “On the contrary: elections in Europe now are often a case of loudly pitting the mainstream against the supposedly unpalatable and hoping that not too many voters pick the ‘wrong’ side. Simply hoping the nasties go away has not, in fact, made them go away.”
For more mainstream parties on the right, finding accommodation with the far right has become, in some instances, the only path to power. “If you want a government that is not based on the Social Democrats you need to cooperate with the SD,” said Anders Borg, a former finance minister for the Moderates, to my colleagues. “I cannot see any other viable election strategy.”
“In Sweden,” he added, “we isolated the SD and yet they grew to 20 percent as a lot of ordinary voters drifted toward them. At the same time, the SD has moved away from a fringe position toward being a more ordinary political party.”
That is the narrative surrounding other ascendant far-right parties in Europe, including Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. Meloni angrily rejects accusations of fascism and has cast herself as part of the political mainstream — cooling her Euroskepticism, supporting sanctions against Russia and prioritizing, at least for now, economic relief for Italians over a hysterical culture war.
If the Italian right wins power, Meloni will have to translate all the years of populist rabble-rousing into effective governance. That’s no small matter given the thicket of problems facing her debt-ridden country. “I cannot say that, faced with such a responsibility, my hands aren’t shaking,” Meloni told my colleagues. | 2022-09-16T04:36:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sweden’s election marks a new far-right surge in Europe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/sweden-election-far-right-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/sweden-election-far-right-democrats/ |
Analysis by Mike Cohen | Bloomberg
A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in the Horn of Africa, which is in the grip of its worst drought in at least four decades. More than 20 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are struggling to find enough to eat, and over 1 million have fled their homes, according to the United Nations. With forecasters seeing a high risk of rains failing for a fifth consecutive season and aid flows falling short of what’s needed, the region is at risk of a famine that’s on a par with -- or even worse than -- one that Ethiopia experienced in the 1980s and claimed an estimated 1 million lives.
1. How dire is the situation?
Malnourishment is already widespread, especially among children, millions of whom need treatment. Millions of head of livestock have died, vast swathes of cropland have been decimated and rural communities have been torn apart as families migrate in search of food and grazing. Many parents can’t afford to keep their children in school, drop-out rates have soared and there are reports of girls as young as nine being married off for dowry payments or to ease economic pressure on households. The UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said he’d seen starving babies who were too weak to cry when he visited Somalia in September. The UN expects a famine to be formally declared in parts of Somalia in the last quarter of 2022. The classification is assigned to areas where at least a fifth of households face an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition and at least two out of every 10,000 people die daily from starvation or a combination of hunger and disease.
Climate change has resulted in extreme weather patterns, and nations across Africa have increasingly been contending with drought and flash floods. The coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have compounded the continent’s woes, making it more expensive and difficult to obtain supplies of food, fuel and fertilizer. Food prices have since eased, but relief has yet to filter through to most consumers. While Europe, parts of the US and other regions are also experiencing severe droughts, they are better equipped to deal with the fallout than cash-strapped African nations.
3. Are there other contributing factors?
Locusts, which thrive in hot and dry conditions, have wiped out crops across large parts of eastern Africa. Somalia and Ethiopia have also been contending with internal conflict that’s disrupted farming and made it dangerous to distribute aid. In Somalia, militant group al-Shabaab has been trying to topple the government since 2006 and impose its version of Islamic law. And in Ethiopia, the government and rebels from the northern Tigray region fought a civil war that dragged on for more than 16 months before a truce was agreed in March. Fighting flared again in September, raising fears of a return to all-out war. Kenya held presidential elections in August that may have diverted some attention away from the drought.
4. Who has been trying to help?
The US says it gave more than $6.6 billion in humanitarian and food assistance to Africa in the first seven months of 2022, which would make it the single biggest donor. The European Union, Canada, Sweden, Germany and the UK were also leading contributors. Kenya’s government has introduced corn and fuel subsidies but says it can’t afford to maintain them indefinitely. While Somalia needs $1.5 billion to help 7 million needy people -- almost half the population -- only 70% of that had been pledged by mid-September, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The shortfall was even bigger for Ethiopia, with just 40% of the $3.1 billion that’s required to help 20 million people committed.
5. What about the rest of the continent?
Several other sub-Saharan countries are confronting hunger crises of their own, among them South Sudan, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. The International Monetary Fund estimated in September that at least 123 million people across the region, or 12% of the population, won’t be able to meet their minimum food consumption needs, an increase of 28 million over just two years. Contributing factors included soaring food prices, depressed incomes, extreme weather events, insecurity and disruption of supply chains. | 2022-09-16T05:02:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why East Africa’s Facing Its Worst Famine in Decades - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-east-africas-facing-its-worst-famine-in-decades/2022/09/16/2fe63300-3574-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-east-africas-facing-its-worst-famine-in-decades/2022/09/16/2fe63300-3574-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Tourists walk through Asakusa, Tokyo, on Sept. 7. (Kimimasa Mayama/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
TOKYO — Japan is inching closer to a full reopening, with an announcement likely in the coming days. But the country’s prolonged closure during the coronavirus pandemic has done lasting damage to its reputation as a destination for international investors, academics and tourists, experts say.
Japan strictly limits foreign arrivals out of covid-19 concerns, a scientifically specious approach that has made the country an outlier among top economies and most Asia-Pacific neighbors that have reopened to tourists.
Xenophobia has festered as policymakers and news coverage have tied foreigners to the spread of the virus. Investors, academics and international students have diverted their plans elsewhere. Even after Japan began accepting group tours recently, the intense monitoring and bureaucratic hurdles have largely kept tourists’ interest at bay.
Now, Japan faces a credibility gap as it looks to rejoin the world. Figures in business, academia, policymaking and diplomacy are concerned the closure has punctured Japan’s image as a culture that values hospitality. Even with a full reopening, Japan would need concrete steps to restore its standing, these people said.
“In 2022, the extremes between the G-7 countries and even its own neighbors … have really exacerbated this perception gap,” said Joshua W. Walker, president and chief executive of the New York-based Japan Society, which works to promote U.S.-Japan relations. “There are so many other countries that have figured this out, whether it’s Britain, Singapore, even Taiwan or Korea, that have been more or less operating in a more normal fashion … and Japan is just now taking baby steps.”
Walker is among a chorus of professionals who have become frustrated by the country’s apparent lack of interest in the perception problems caused by its isolation. They worry that without a robust effort to market Japan as open to foreigners, there will be lackluster interest from abroad and continued concern about the domestic impact.
Public opinion polls over the past year have shown broad support for border closures, which analysts say made it politically difficult for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to fully reopen before July elections. A Nikkei poll conducted in late June found 49 percent in support of lifting the daily cap on visitors and 44 percent opposed.
“I really do believe that Japan can recover from this if it puts its mind to it. But I’m not convinced that it is fully there yet,” Walker said.
The concerns come as Japan grapples with a sluggish recovery from the pandemic and a depreciating yen, which hit a 24-year low against the dollar recently. Business leaders have argued that fully resuming inbound travel would invigorate the economy and that many tourists would be eager to take advantage of the weak currency.
But the country’s approach has fueled a perception of Japan as a place that is “too cumbersome and takes too much effort” to visit, the Japan Association of Corporate Executives said this week.
“Japan has disappointed many people who love Japan and have a potential to like Japan,” said Takakazu Yamagishi, professor of political science and health policy at Nanzan University in Nagoya. “The border closure not only made many tourists who had plans to visit Japan upset, but it also will make them more cautious of Japan at least for the next few years.”
How to navigate Japan's mandatory tours, travel restrictions and coronavirus protocols
After enacting some of the most stringent pandemic restrictions, Japan began gradually reopening to some foreigners this spring, with complex requirements. Foreign tourists can book trips only through an approved tour company and must have medical travel insurance that covers covid-19. Until last week, tourists needed to be chaperoned by a guide. Visitors must wear masks unless they are six feet away from another person and not talking.
In June, when group tours resumed, only 252 tourists entered, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. In July, the number rose to about 7,900.
But that is far from pre-pandemic levels: In 2019, Japan welcomed a record 32 million foreign tourists and had aimed to reach 40 million in 2020. Before covid, 80 percent of international visitors were individuals who were not part of group tours, according to the Japan Business Federation.
Tokyo is now considering a full reopening that could take place as early as October, according to Nikkei Asia. The prime minister’s office said in a statement that the country will ease borders to be on par with Group of Seven standards, “taking into account the infection situation and needs at home and abroad, as well as the border control measures of other countries.”
The closure has created cascading effects on academia that will last years, said Tomoyuki Sasaki, an associate professor of Japanese studies at William & Mary in Virginia, who conducted a survey of hundreds of academics and students of Japan studies in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Students dropped out of Japan studies programs and researchers lost funding because they could not fulfill grant requirements to conduct research in the country, threatening the closure of Japan studies departments in some schools, the survey results show. One professor at a top-tier university responded in the survey that they are now recommending students not to study Japan as their sole focus as a result of the travel barriers.
The number of international students studying in Japan fell by roughly one-quarter between 2019 and 2021, according to Japan’s Education Ministry.
“It took a long time for predecessors to build this field. But now, it’s really falling apart because of this Japanese government’s very strict border restrictions,” Sasaki said.
Tom Cruise in Japan? Okay. Ordinary tourists in Japan? Not okay.
Business leaders are pushing for a full reopening, warning of the loss of potential investment.
“Japan really has a golden opportunity to expand foreign investment into the country, something the government has had as an objective for most of the last 20 years,” said Chris LaFleur, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan. “The yen’s relative weakness at the moment, in principle, presents an incredible opportunity for those who might be interested in investing in Japan to consider it seriously.”
But domestic challenges stand in the way. Yamagishi said the government’s justifications for its border policies fueled public anxiety, stoking fears without providing facts — such as the low percentage of people testing positive at airports.
From restaurateurs to museum operators, many people fear foreigners would flout Japanese social expectations of mask-wearing and social distancing, leading to an increase in coronavirus cases.
“In foreign news, I often see images of foreigners not wearing masks,” one resident of Minato City in Tokyo remarked recently on the ward’s online public comments section.
“I would like you to think about how to deal with foreign tourists by calling attention to them in English, Chinese, Korean, and other languages,” the person wrote. “I would also like you to protect the safety of the lives of Minato City residents.” | 2022-09-16T06:08:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Japan is reopening, but strict covid rules keep tourists at bay - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/japan-covid-restrictions-tourist-xenophobia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/japan-covid-restrictions-tourist-xenophobia/ |
Every day, dozens of oil tankers cross the narrow waterway. It’s a linchpin of global trade. Shut it down and gasoline prices spike everywhere. Right now, geopolitical tension is high, and the navies of many great powers have warships patrolling it.
If you think we’re talking about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, you’re not remotely close.
No — welcome to the frigid waters of the Danish straits, the narrow waterway overlooked by Copenhagen that links the Baltic Sea to the North Sea and the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean. They matter now because they are a key conduit for Russian crude and refined oil products into global markets, making it a chokepoint for the Kremlin’s finances.
It’s where geography, history, and politics are clashing.
In early December, new European Union rules will make it illegal to provide maritime services to anyone exporting Russian crude – even to third countries. But the straits are a difficult passage: Storms are common, the waters are shallow, the coast rocky, and submerged sandbanks often move with the currents, reducing draft unexpectedly. That’s why the Danish government, and the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization, strongly recommend – although don’t require – every vessel, particularly oil tankers, to hire a Danish pilot for the crossing.
In theory, the new rules could keep Danish pilots from boarding tankers full of Russian crude, perhaps preventing them from sailing into the high seas. In Washington, officials have quietly flagged that risk as a reason why third countries – say, China and India – should accept the G7 oil price cap on Russian oil, allowing them to continue using the pilots.The reality is a bit more complicated.To understand it, one must delve into history, starting with the “Treaty for the Redemption of the Sound Dues,” signed in Copenhagen in 1857, which regulates to this day navigation through the straits. It says that Denmark should “supervise” the pilotage service through the straits, in effect creating an obligation to provide the service, according to Danish officials. I asked the Danish Maritime Authority whether the EU sanctions will prohibit the provision of pilots to tankers full of Russian oil. In an emailed statement, it said: “Vessels enjoy the right of innocent passage through the Danish Straits, as defined by international law. Furthermore, Denmark is required to make pilots available to ships in innocent passage.”“There is no obligation on ships to make use of pilotage services when exercising the right of innocent passage,” it added, insisting however that both the Danish government and the IMO, of which Russia has been a member since 1958, “highly recommend” the use of pilotage services.In the statement, the Danish Maritime Authority added: “In conclusion, Denmark cannot prevent oil tankers from passing from the Baltic Sea to the high seas.”
Copenhagen may ultimately reconsider its position, but its current approach seems right. Using the pilotage service to try to institute a de facto blockade on Russian oil exports would be wrong — and dangerous. European and US officials are right to try to strangle Russian oil revenue. Oil exports are financing President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and helping him to sustain local support for his regime. But there are other, and better, ways to achieve that objective without jeopardizing maritime safety. The EU sanctions package, which will stop buyers of Russian oil from using the European financial sector and its oil tankers, is the way to go. As with the vessels that shuttle sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan crude, Russian oil is increasingly moving into the world’s ghost fleet — rusting old tankers, flagged in countries with little appetite for safety inspections, and increasingly insured by dubious newly created operations. The owners are opaque shell companies. The crews are badly paid and often untrained. If Copenhagen were to refuse pilots to Russian oil tankers, the vessels would still be able to sail through the straits, exercising their international right of innocent passage, but at a much greater risk of a collision or, worse, even an oil spill.
• Putin Rips a Giant Hole in a German Balance Sheet: Chris Bryant | 2022-09-16T06:34:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Don’t Play Russian Roulette With Oil in the Baltic Sea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/dont-play-russian-roulette-with-oil-in-the-baltic-sea/2022/09/16/3ce146a4-357d-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/dont-play-russian-roulette-with-oil-in-the-baltic-sea/2022/09/16/3ce146a4-357d-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
An electricity tower and power cables in a sunflower field in Avoine, France, on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2022. French President Emmanuel Macron backed a EU-wide windfall tax on profits of energy companies, becoming the latest country to support the extraordinary measure to rein in the effects of a deepening crisis. (Bloomberg)
The foot soldiers of Europe’s wartime economy are on the move. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week paid tribute to those coping “courageously” with the effects of Russian gas shutoffs, citing Italian industrial workers who are now starting their shifts before dawn, when energy is cheaper.
Yet if there’s one modern-day “Rosie the Riveter” who could end up striking a blow against Russian President Vladimir Putin this winter, it’s the industrial welders, pipe fitters and assorted metal bashers tasked with getting a series of France’s aging nuclear power plants back online by 2023.
The job is a high-stakes one: 32 out of 56 reactors are offline, with about a dozen down due to corrosion problems. The outage has an economic cost of 29 billion euros ($29 billion) in lost earnings for soon-to-be-nationalized utility Electricite de France SA. But it has global ramifications too, depriving Europe and France of a fully functioning 61.4-gigawatt capacity of carbon-free electricity, exacerbating the effects of a natural gas crunch and sowing seeds of division among allies.
The repairs are fraught with challenges, with widespread skepticism on whether they will happen quickly or easily given the dearth of workers and materials. On top of the global staffing shortages exposed by Covid-19, welding in a nuclear power plant has its own skills, training and rules to follow due to the radiation risks. And its supply chain – including Italian factories making required piping materials – is under its own pressure from the energy crisis.
Given the urgent need for energy, the temptation might be to relax some of the red tape and maybe even delay certain repairs to get on with pumping electricity, especially if safety risks aren’t all at the same degree.
But even in wartime, these are repairs that shouldn’t be put off. Mark Hibbs, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program, notes that France’s great talent was in producing nuclear plants at scale based on the same design. It’s urgent that doesn’t become a downside if replicated failures cascade across the grid.
There’s also a broader need for the nuclear industry to regain credibility after a string of high-profile cost overruns and delays, including EDF’s next-generation Flamanville plant that’s more than a decade late. The longer plants stay closed, the easier it is for Green parties to criticize the sector’s cost and safety record despite its zero-emissions technology.
France should pull every lever available to get these repairs done and ease Europe’s energy crunch. It has opened a welding school called Hefais, a play on mythical god-of-the-forge Hephaestus, to train more workers. Talent has been brought in from eastern Europe, the Nordics and beyond to join the effort — rather like when this summer’s forest fires saw resources fly in from elsewhere.
One difficulty in training new industrial workers is overcoming the perception that this is unrewarding, difficult and low-value work — a challenge felt by many sectors after Covid-19. One obvious area is pay: Frederic Guimbal, chief executive officer of Groupe Fregate, says that current high demand for welders means the usual salary of roughly 3,000 euros a month may need to increase as a result. Considering the French state wants to pay the next CEO of EDF more than 450,000 euros annually to attract the best talent for a vital yet often thankless job, the same logic should apply.
Once the repairs are over and EDF’s nuclear output is back to an acceptable level, a long-term debate on the role of nuclear will be necessary. If the industry has lost talent over the years, it’s also because of the image over the years of a sector without a future – with the Fukushima accident in 2011 pushing some countries like Germany to exit it altogether. That now looks like a mistake, as even Germany seems to recognize, but we’re still a long way from Charles de Gaulle’s promotion of nuclear as “tomorrow’s” tech.
Although EDF and French President Emmanuel Macron clearly want to seize the opportunity of a new nuclear renaissance to meet climate targets and to secure energy independence, these are multi-decade plans that can run into short-term obstacles. Macron himself, under pressure from the Greens, once promoted nuclear cutbacks and closed France’s oldest plant in 2020. And EDF’s flagship European Pressurized Reactor, originally a symbol of Franco-German expertise, has since become a symbol of French political meddling and infighting among elite engineers.
That will come later. For now, the entire focus should be on firing up reactors. Maybe, in the future, von der Leyen will be talking up nuclear in her speeches – not only as an energy source that helps Europe reach its net-zero goals, but as a geopolitical defense against Putin. And, of course, the value of the welders in wartime. | 2022-09-16T06:34:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | French Welders Can Help Fight Putin’s Gas Crunch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/french-welders-can-help-fight-putins-gas-crunch/2022/09/16/3c899c06-357d-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/french-welders-can-help-fight-putins-gas-crunch/2022/09/16/3c899c06-357d-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Ukraine live briefing: Izyum mass grave under investigation; Biden to meet Griner’s wife
A group of Ukrainian servicemen looked around a burial site in a forest outside the recently liberated city of Izyum on Sept. 15. (Video: The Washington Post)
A mass grave discovered by Ukrainian authorities in the recently liberated city of Izyum appears to be the latest atrocity left by retreating Russian troops, adding to apparent war crimes in Bucha and Mariupol. Officials are expected to announce more details Friday on the burial site, which reports indicated could contain hundreds of bodies.
Also on Friday, President Biden is expected to meet with family members of two U.S. citizens held in Russia, WNBA player Brittney Griner and security consultant Paul Whelan. The United States considers them wrongfully detained though the White House indicated that negotiations on their release had not advanced.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the discovery of the mass grave in Izyum during his nightly address Thursday, saying that an investigation is underway and more information would be available Friday. A top police official for the Kharkiv region told Sky News that more than 400 bodies were discovered at the burial site.
The discovery recalls the atrocities uncovered in other areas liberated from the Russians. Officials in Bucha say they have accounted for more than 450 bodies left behind after Russia occupied the Kyiv suburb for a month. Izyum was under Russian control for more than five months. “We want the world to know what is really happening and what the Russian occupation has led to. Bucha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izyum,” Zelensky said Thursday. “Russia leaves death everywhere.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency called on Russia to “immediately cease all actions against, and at” the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in a resolution passed by its Board of Governors on Thursday. Twenty-six countries voted in favor, while only Russia and China opposed it, according to Reuters. Zelensky praised the resolution’s passage in his nightly address, saying the “complete demilitarization of the plant, the immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops from there is the only thing that can ensure the implementation of this IAEA resolution.”
The war in Ukraine is testing Russia and China’s “no limits” partnership. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Thursday that China had “questions and concerns” about the situation in Ukraine, in remarks before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan. Xi said Beijing was willing to work with Moscow to “inject stability into a turbulent world.”
Despite startling gains by Ukrainian forces against Russia, the Biden administration anticipates months of intense fighting with wins and losses for each side, spurring U.S. plans for an open-ended campaign with no prospect for a negotiated end in sight.
In Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russian efforts to advance continue but have mostly been thwarted, the Ukrainian military said Thursday. The recent losses have prompted the Kremlin to double-down on military recruitment efforts, according to the Institute for the Study of War Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
As Ukraine continues to regain territory, administrators in areas controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in Donetsk are being urged not to flee, according to ISW. Some civil servants and their families have been offered payment after injury or death — “demonstrating the bureaucratic fragility” of local occupying authorities, the think tank wrote Thursday.
Authorities in Kryvyi Rih — Zelensky’s hometown — are working to repair a reservoir dam that was damaged from Russian missile strikes on Wednesday. The blast led to extensive flooding in the area, but the water levels are now receding, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the presidential administration. That dam was probably targeted to “damage Ukrainian pontoon bridges further downstream,” according to the ISW.
The United States authorized an additional military aid package for Ukraine valued at $600 million, according to the Pentagon announced. It includes more ammunition for the HIMARS multi-rocket launch system which have been highly effective in hitting Russian targets from extended distances.
Germany will also aid Ukraine by supplying additional armored vehicles and rocket launch systems, Reuters reported. However, the country will not provide the battle tanks that Kyiv has long asked for, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Thursday.
Biden is expected to meet Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, and Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth Whelan, on Friday. “He wanted to let them know that they remain front of mind and that his team is working on this every day and making sure that Brittney and Paul return home safely,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday.
Germany has seized control of the German unit of Russian state energy giant Rosneft. Berlin cited the need to counteract an “impending threat” to its energy security.
The United States limited the export of fentanyl to Russia and Belarus, warning it could be used as a chemical weapon to support the invasion. Fentanyl, which has legal uses as a prescription painkiller, as well as certain chemicals needed to produce it, will now require a government license to be sold to Russia.
Pope Francis said it is morally acceptable for other nations to provide arms to Ukraine, as long as they are used for proportional self-defense against an invader, Reuters reported Thursday. He also urged Ukraine to maintain negotiations with Russia, despite the latter’s aggressions. “Sometimes you have to carry out dialogue like this. It smells but it must be done,” Francis said.
The letters left behind by demoralized Russian soldiers as they fled: On the ground in Izyum, The Washington Post’s Siobhán O’Grady and Anastacia Galouchka reviewed letters left behind by Russian troops amid their rapid retreat. The handwritten notes indicate soldiers stationed there were exhausted, demoralized and in need of medical aid. | 2022-09-16T07:39:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes threw two touchdown passes, rookie Jaylen Watson returned an interception 99 yards for the go-ahead fourth-quarter score, and the Kansas City Chiefs held on to beat the Los Angeles Chargers 27-24.
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers placed star outside linebacker T.J. Watt on injured reserve, meaning he will miss a minimum of four games while recovering from a left pectoral injury.
NEW YORK — On a Roberto Clemente Day particularly meaningful to both of them, Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco propelled the New York Mets past the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-1 to extend their slim lead in the NL East.
PHOENIX — Drey Jameson pitched seven shutout innings in his major league debut and the Arizona Diamondbacks hit three home runs in a 4-0 victory over the San Diego Padres.
NAPA, Calif. — Rickie Fowler shot a 5-under 67 and was among nine players who finished their rounds four shots behind leader Justin Lower at the Fortinet Championship.
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Ty Majeski scored his first career Truck Series win and locked a spot in the championship finale. | 2022-09-16T08:05:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thursday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/16/4eff0454-358f-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/16/4eff0454-358f-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
Roger Sherrington on his front porch in Windsor, near Sydney, where Sherrington is flying the Australian flag at half-staff in honor of Queen Elizabeth II. (Michael Miller/TWP)
WINDSOR, Australia — When Queen Elizabeth II is buried in Windsor, England, on Monday, this small town with the same name on the opposite side of the world will be watching — and worrying.
“The queen has been fantastic for the past 70 years,” said Mikki Piirlaid as he ordered a beer at the Royal Exchange pub, where televisions showed scenes of mourning more than 10,000 miles away in London. “She’s given us stability and good values — values that we’re now losing."
“Australia is probably going to go away from the monarchy," he added somberly between sips of Iron Jack lager. "And I don’t think that’s a good thing for our country.”
From the Caribbean to the Pacific, Elizabeth’s death has reignited debates over whether countries should remove the monarch as their head of state. For some, the accession of the less popular King Charles III — extending the reign of the House of Windsor — has sparked discussions of colonial history and what independence truly means.
But Australia has been here before. In 1999, a failed republican referendum revealed a nation deeply divided over the issue. Many urban areas voted in favor of the proposed republic, while more conservative places like Windsor rejected it. What killed the initiative, however, was that republicans couldn’t agree on how to choose an Australian head of state.
With center-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hoping to hold another referendum on the issue within six years, there is still little sign of consensus.
“The crown has done a lot of damage,” particularly to Indigenous people, said Ayeesha Ash as she waited outside a popular vegan restaurant in Albanese’s area of inner-city Sydney. The 30-year-old, who has Caribbean and Maori ancestry, said Australia’s becoming a republic would be a “good first step toward getting out from under the thumb” of those responsible.
Colonized by Britain in the late 18th century, Australia became a sovereign nation in 1901 but retained the monarch as its head of state. The crown plays a limited and largely ceremonial role, but it nonetheless became controversial in 1975 when the queen’s representative in Australia, the governor-general, exercised his power to dissolve a gridlocked Parliament, triggering a constitutional crisis and stoking republican sentiment.
Memories of “the Dismissal,” as it’s called Down Under, lingered when Australia held its republican referendum. Polls showed around 57 percent of people supported becoming a republic. But the referendum only garnered 45 percent of the vote because many republicans disagreed with the proposed model, in which Parliament would choose the governor general’s replacement.
“Those republicans wanted direct election of a head of state, so they campaigned against the referendum,” said Anne Twomey, an expert in constitutional law at the University of Sydney. “They thought, ‘Next year, we’ll get our version up.’ It never happened. We’ve been waiting a very long time since and most of them have died and never got to see the republic that they really wanted.”
The Australian Republic Movement has tried to build support since then for another model in which the legislatures of each of the eight states or territories would nominate a candidate for head of state, who would then face off in a national vote.
Queen Elizabeth’s death has thrust the issue back into the spotlight, while also making it temporarily hard to address, Twomey said.
“On the one hand, the death of the monarch and the automatic accession of a new king without any action being taken at all in Australia is a little confronting,” she said. “We would like to think we control these things in Australia in a political way, so that may start people thinking about more about a republic. And also the loss of a well respected queen might seem an appropriate end of an era and time to start thinking about change.”
Yet, Elizabeth’s death has also stirred some royal nostalgia in its far-flung former colony, she said, and the Australian ethos of giving someone “a fair go,” or opportunity, means many here will be reluctant to write off the new king.
“There is going to be a battle for public sentiment,” Twomey said.
Albanese, who is in England for the queen’s funeral, has said that now is a time for mourning, not for debating whether Australia becomes a republic. He has suggested he could take up the issue in his second term — should he win one — and only after holding a different referendum on creating an Indigenous “voice,” or advisory body, to Parliament. If that referendum fails, then it’s unlikely Albanese would pursue one on a republic, Twomey said.
Referendums rarely succeed in Australia, and the last time one did was nearly half a century ago. There is a sense of political inertia in this wealthy and stable country, where preferential voting pushes governments to the center and administrations are often voted out — due to mistakes — rather than in.
That inertia is strongest in places like Windsor, Australia’s third-oldest colonial settlement about an hour outside of Sydney. In 1999, 56 percent of people in the area voted “No” to the proposed republic.
“For many of us, she’s the only queen or monarch we’ve ever known,” said Sarah McMahon, mayor of the city of Hawkesbury, which includes Windsor and other nearby towns. “I think that does bring about some sort of sadness, because people always do question what change might bring, and what that will do for Australia.”
McMahon, a member of the conservative Liberal party, sits beneath a portrait of the queen in the city council chambers, where she recently led a minute of silence for the late monarch.
The river town was branded Windsor in 1810 because it reminded a colonial official of the royal town in England. But it wasn’t until 1970 that Queen Elizabeth II became the first monarch to visit the Australian spot sporting her last name.
Workers cut out a section of the fence surrounding the town’s sports ground so that Elizabeth and her husband could inspect a parade of cows and horses, according to the local newspaper. Around 3,000 people also crowded around St. Matthew’s Anglican Church, where the royal couple made a brief visit. The site is now marked by a small plaque where, on a recent day, a bouquet of white lilies had been placed with a card addressed: "To her late majesty.”
Downtown, an Australian flag hung at half-staff outside the house of Roger Sherrington. Sitting on his front porch with his retired greyhound, Digger, the 77-year-old declared himself a proud monarchist. He’d been born near London at the end of World War II, when a teenage Elizabeth had worked as a British Army mechanic, before moving to Australia in 1962.
“She was squeaky clean, no scandal,” he said when asked why he revered the queen so much he kept a portrait of her in his shed. “There was all sorts of trauma going on around her and she kept her cool.”
Australia would become a republic one day, he admitted. But he hoped it wouldn’t happen in his lifetime.
“It wouldn’t be disastrous," he said as he took his graying greyhound for a walk. “But if the system isn’t broke, why would you want to change it?”
Some republicans in Windsor wrestle with that question. Down the street at the Macquarie Arms, one of Australia’s oldest pubs, Ben Sullivan said he had voted “No” in 1999 because letting Parliament pick the head of state was “crazy.” Even now, the republican said his vote would depend on the details of another referendum.
“The queen hasn’t really done anything wrong," he said. “So you have to give people a good alternative.”
But in Albanese’s district of inner city Sydney, where almost two-thirds of residents voted “Yes” in 1999, there is less sympathy for the crown.
“It’s sad the queen died, but we need to get on with things,” said Ash, who added that she couldn’t forget accusations of racism against the royal family. She viewed the moment as an opportunity for Australia to start "forging our own identity.”
“We should have been a republic years ago,” agreed Jack Horton, 71, as he sat in the Charles Dickens Tavern in downtown Melbourne, where 71 percent of people voted “Yes” in 1999.
One thing most Australians do agree on is their dislike for Charles.
Back in Windsor, at the Royal Exchange pub, Piirlaid said he feared a few years of the new king would lead his country to cut its ties to the monarchy.
“You don’t like Prince Charles?” asked the owner, a Chinese immigrant, from behind the bar.
“He’s basically an adulterer,” Piirlaid, 44, said with a scowl. “I’m more of a traditionalist.”
Frances Vinall in Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report. | 2022-09-16T09:10:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Australia debates becoming a republic after Queen Elizabeth II dies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/australia-republic-queen-elizabeth-death-king-charles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/australia-republic-queen-elizabeth-death-king-charles/ |
How an Israeli raid on a Palestinian rights group unfolded
A screenshot taken from CCTV footage of an Israeli raid on the office of the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq on Aug 18. (Courtesy of Forensic Architecture)
The soldiers can be seen busting down doors and rummaging through documents. They casually take selfies and mockingly distribute business cards.
CCTV footage from an Israeli raid last month on the leading Palestinian human rights group sheds new light on the operation and challenges the official narrative about why the organization was targeted.
The Aug. 18 early morning raid on the Ramallah office of Al Haq, as well as six other rights groups, drew diplomatic backlash and international condemnation of Israel’s tightening restrictions on Palestinian civil society.
Israel designated six of the organizations as supporters of terrorism in October 2021, claiming they had ties to the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has organized deadly attacks against Israel. Al Haq and the other groups rejected the accusations, accusing Israel of targeting them for their work documenting alleged abuses against Palestinians.
Israel shutters Palestinian rights groups, drawing diplomatic backlash
“The Israeli occupation has done worse things than [raiding Al Haq],” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer representing the group in two challenges to its terrorism designation. “But there is something about crossing the line for targeting the organizations that are responsible for criticizing centers of power. It’s the height of subjugation and domination.”
The day of the August raid, diplomatic missions from 17 mostly European countries, including Britain and France, as well as the United Nations, condemned the Israeli operation and gathered at Al Haq’s office in a show of solidarity. The U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem did not participate.
Family of elderly Palestinian American who died after Israeli detention demands international inquiry
The month before, nine E.U. member states said they would renew suspended funds to Al Haq after Israel failed to provide sufficient evidence that it was supporting the PFLP.
The Forensic Architecture study group, which is based at the University of London and runs an investigations unit in partnership with Al Haq, mapped and synchronized footage of the raid from the office’s four CCTV cameras, and shared it exclusively with The Washington Post.
“The footage shows a real contradiction between what the [Israeli] Ministry of Defense is saying Al Haq and its sister human rights organizations are, and how its soldiers behave in the field,” said the report’s lead researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity over fears of backlash from Israeli authorities.
Al Haq’s main office is located in central Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The city is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but the Israeli military conducts armed operations there.
The CCTV footage captured the arrival of at least nine Israeli military vehicles carrying more than a dozen soldiers at 3 a.m. Soldiers can be seen busting through the door of an Episcopal Church on the building’s first floor before breaking into Al Haq’s office shortly after 3:20 a.m. The soldiers remained inside for more than an hour.
The footage shows them rifling through documents from a desk and cabinet and breaking into offices, including the director’s, and the IT and server room. They recorded events on their smartphones and took selfies and other photographs together. At one point, a soldier passed around Al Haq’s business cards from the reception desk. Others appeared to casually socialize as they wandered through the office’s white-walled corridors.
Israeli forces cut off the power and access to the indoor CCTV cameras about 40 minutes after the raid began, Forensic Architecture said, leaving roughly 20 minutes unaccounted for.
Outside cameras captured soldiers bringing a large metal sheet from a truck and welding it to shut the front door. They used the same tactic to seal the front doors of the other organizations raided that morning, which included Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and Addameer, which advocates for Palestinian prisoners.
“All of the organizations in question operate undercover and in agency of the PFLP in Judea and Samaria, as well as abroad,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement at the time of the raid, using Israel’s name for the West Bank.
Forensic Architecture has previously analyzed footage of Israeli house demolitions, strikes on Gaza and other incidents of violence against Palestinians. But the researcher said this was the first time they had seen footage of a military raid in such detail.
American reporter killed by IDF, network says; Israel calls for inquiry
An Al Haq employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their security, said it appeared no physical documents were taken from the office, though they could not be sure. Workers have returned to the office, but remain concerned about surveillance and digital security.
“It’s still not a safe environment,” the employee said. “We don’t really know the amount of the damages in terms of infiltration, bugs, and stuff like that.”
“It was a military operation against a civil society organization,” they added. “In which dystopia am I living?”
State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters after the August raid that the United States was “concerned” about the closures and had “conveyed the message that there must be a very high bar to take action against civil society organizations.”
Price told reporters this week that Israel had recently provided further information and they are “continuing to review” it.
The United Nations has condemned the raid and the designation of Al Haq as a terrorist organization, saying it “has not been accompanied by any concrete and credible evidence.”
Al Haq does not accept money from the United States Agency for International Development to protest U.S. support for Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories.
As Biden visits, Palestinians reminded of their descent into autocracy
“Unfortunately, we have not seen the United States standing in any way toward human rights or the protection of human rights defenders or even care about democracy and international law,” the Al Haq employee said.
Al Haq is the recipient of several international prizes. The organization also documents alleged abuses committed by the Palestinian Authority and by Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.
Sfard, the Israeli lawyer for Al Haq, said the legal cases have dragged on for months and Israel has repeatedly refused to provide the evidence it says it has against the group. His appeals have been rejected, and he says he has been threatened with seven years in prison for representing a terror-designated group without the government’s approval.
The military “will probably raid again,” the employee for Al Haq said. “It’s just a matter of time unless there is accountability for their actions.” | 2022-09-16T09:11:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Israel's August raid on Al Haq in Ramallah unfolded - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/israel-al-haq-raid-palestinians/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/israel-al-haq-raid-palestinians/ |
Following the Robert Sarver suspension, Adam Silver is facing the kind of backlash he has largely dodged during his eight-year run as NBA Commissioner. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Adam Silver is having his Roger Goodell moment. He’s discovering how it feels to have his body language dissected by those who distrust even the micro shrugs of powerful men. When he speaks haltingly or stumbles over his syllables while defending the indefensible, his shilling has been interpreted as a sign of weakness. He’s discovering what it’s like, finally, to have his every public moment scrutinized.
And these are new critics. Not the people already lined up in that tired and disingenuous camp who clutch their pearls any time the league reveals itself as pro-Black empowerment and who therefore seize on any sign of moral hypocrisy. No, Silver is receiving body blows from his constituents, the ones he has spent his entire tenure as NBA commissioner courting.
In 2014, he won them over with strong and decisive actions by banning Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, his first big move after years of working as David Stern’s underling. Now Silver is losing their trust and support with his handling of the punishment given to Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver. By love-tapping Sarver with velvet gloves and asking the public to take a full measure of a middle-aged man who willingly spewed racist language and made life hell for women in the workplace, Silver has declared open season on himself.
“Read through the Sarver stories a few times now. I gotta be honest … Our league definitely got this wrong,” LeBron James tweeted Wednesday night.
Brewer: Robert Sarver is racist, sexist ... and so rich it doesn't matter
Hours later, Chris Paul, the Suns point guard and former National Basketball Players Association president, shared his thoughts in a series of tweets.
“Like many others, I reviewed the report. I was and am horrified and disappointed by what I read. This conduct especially toward women is unacceptable and must never be repeated,” Paul wrote. “I am of the view that the sanctions fell short in truly addressing what we can all agree was atrocious behavior.”
James and Paul — in messages that can only be viewed as orchestrated — joined the angry voices livid over Sarver’s one-year suspension and $10 million fine. And they left Silver looking nothing like the businessman with a beating heart he has been built up to be. Instead, he appeared to be just another sports commissioner fluent in Goodellese.
The criticism reached new decibels Wednesday after Silver’s news conference in New York City.
Silver didn’t help himself by mishandling a tough and direct question about why there would be a different standard for an NBA employee who would have been fired for the same offenses levied against Sarver — i.e. saying the n-word at least five times, making inappropriate sexual or genitalia jokes and overseeing a franchise the independent law firm that investigated the Suns deemed “a difficult place for women to work.”
Silver spoke of the difficulties in taking someone’s team away from them and how the public shaming would do irreparable harm to Sarver’s reputation. But he also spoke of Sarver’s rights.
Rights? Sure. Someone who’s rich enough to buy an NBA franchise has the right to get away with being a reprobate and a bully.
But of course that’s not what Silver meant — which is why Mike Bass, the league’s communications boss, needed to play spin doctor and send a short statement attempting to clarify the commissioner’s words.
There was, however, no cleaning up Silver’s attempt to engender sympathy on Sarver’s behalf.
“I’d also say that I would like to think that all of us would want to be judged by the totality of everything they’ve done, good and bad. It may be that in certain cases something you’ve done is so bad, it doesn’t matter what all the other good things you’ve done,” Silver said. “But I think in this case, looking back over [Sarver’s] track record of hiring, his track record of support of particular employees, what the actual people said about him — remember, while there were these terrible things, there were also many, many people who had very positive things to say about him through this process.”
Silver suggests we view the totality of Sarver as an owner — the Suns employ the largest percentage of people of color in the NBA, although that now looks like a cover so that he can freely hurl the n-word around them. A similarly appropriate exercise would be weighing Silver’s eight-year run as commissioner in its totality.
Under Silver, the NBA workforce has found more lanes for free expression. It shouldn’t be considered a coincidence that with Silver as the leader of the league, coaches such as Stan Van Gundy, Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr became outspoken critics of former president Donald Trump following the 2016 election. When the reigning champion Golden State Warriors chose not to visit the White House in 2017, Silver said he was “proud” of the players speaking out on important matters. He once bragged about the NBA having the best relationship with its players of all American professional sports leagues. And recently, retirees Kevin Garnett and Kendrick Perkins hailed Silver as “the best f---ing commissioner” in sports.
The respect for Silver has extended to the fans. When most commissioners walk to the podium on draft night under a rain of boos, in 2014 Silver heard loud cheers, and he earned even more adoration with his surprising announcement the NBA would be ceremonially drafting Isaiah Austin, the former Baylor standout whose pro career stalled because of Marfan syndrome.
When Silver attended an early 2017-18 game in Philadelphia, one of the most hostile cities in the NBA, fans showered him with love. One asked for a selfie. Another asked Silver to take over the NFL.
But if Silver were overseeing America’s top sport, the moments when his good-guy advocacy falls short would receive even more blowback.
The NBA has become a leader on race issues, mental health and inclusion, for example, but it’s hard to explain it staging its 2019 All-Star Weekend to Charlotte. In 2017, Silver moved the game in response to North Carolina’s controversial HB2 law, which, among other things, required transgender individuals to use public restrooms that corresponded with the gender listed on their birth certificates. But the NBA’s glamour event returned to Charlotte, even though much hadn’t changed: A new state law went into effect that kept in place many of the same discriminatory practices.
Perspective from October: Sports commissioners are businessmen, not moral compasses. Stop hoping for more.
Then, after the Utah state legislature passed a bill that barred transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports, Silver pivoted from the NBA’s earlier honorable stand and announced Salt Lake City would still host the 2023 All-Star Weekend.
It’s even harder to excuse the league’s initial handling of the Daryl Morey and China morass in 2019. The NBA first called Morey’s pro-democracy tweet about Hong Kong “regrettable,” which fired up political rivals, especially on the right, who criticized the NBA’s business ties with a dictatorship.
Although he has enjoyed eight years of unprecedented popularity — beloved by the players, who have his personal cellphone number, and well liked by fans, who have viewed him as a friend of the people — Silver has certain responsibilities as a commissioner. He always will be indebted to the bottom line and to the billionaires whose water he’s paid to carry.
And because Silver has largely avoided becoming a punching bag and has appeared to be a decent human being rather than a soulless propagandist, his errors stand out that much more. They make you wonder whether his moral compass is still his guide or whether his wealthy buddies sometimes dictate which way the wind is blowing. | 2022-09-16T09:32:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adam Silver got the Robert Sarver punishment wrong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/adam-silver-robert-sarver/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/adam-silver-robert-sarver/ |
Georgetown’s Decatur house lists for $7.9 million
The six-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 7,400-square-foot house takes its name from Susan Decatur, the widow of Commodore Stephen Decatur Jr.
The Federal-style house is known as the Decatur house in Georgetown, not to be confused with the Decatur House on Lafayette Square. (HomeVisit)
Georgetown’s Decatur house — not to be confused with the Decatur House on Lafayette Square, which is home to the White House Historical Association — is on the market for $7.9 million.
Some date the Federal-style house on N Street NW to 1779. The D.C. Historical Building Permits database puts it at 1813. The architect is unknown.
The earliest known owner was James Sewall Morsell, a judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. Before he was appointed to the court in 1815, Morsell was a lawyer in private practice in Georgetown. He represented a number of enslaved families that petitioned the U.S. Circuit Court for their freedom.
Georgetown house | The Federal-style house is known as the Decatur house in Georgetown, not to be confused with the Decatur House on Lafayette Square. It is on the market for $7.9 million. (HomeVisit)
The six-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 7,400-square-foot house takes its name from Susan Decatur. She was the widow of Commodore Stephen Decatur Jr. The Decaturs moved to Washington in 1816, bought land near the White House and built the first and last private residence on Lafayette Square. They lived there only 14 months before Stephen was killed in a duel. After his death, Susan is said to have moved to this house in Georgetown.
Deering Davis, Stephen P. Dorsey and Ralph Cole Hall, who wrote the book “Georgetown Houses of the Federal Period 1780-1830,” are skeptical of the story.
“This house has persistently been associated with the name of Decatur, although no authentic sources for the legend are known,” they wrote. “It is said to have been erected in 1779 and is known to have been the home of Judge Morsell at one time. According to legend, Mrs. Susan Wheeler Decatur came here to live after the death of the Commodore in his duel with Captain James Barron at Bladensburgh [sic] March 22, 1820.”
Davis, Dorsey and Hall were much more complimentary of the house’s architecture, writing that it is “well known for its fine doorway.”
In the past 90 years, the house has been sold only twice. In 1932, Franklin Mott Gunther and his wife, Louisa Bronson Hunnewell Gunther, became its owners. Franklin was the last American minister to Romania before diplomatic relations were severed in World War II. He died in Bucharest of an illness in 1941, 10 days after Romania, allied with Germany, declared war on the United States. His diplomatic postings included Nicaragua, Portugal, Brazil, Norway, Holland, Italy, Egypt and Ecuador.
Because the Gunthers were often abroad, they frequently rented the house to tenants. Stanley Woodward, assistant chief of protocol at the State Department, lived in the house in 1937. He was followed by John Wesley Hanes, who had left the Securities and Exchange Commission to become an undersecretary in the Treasury Department.
Rodman Wanamaker II, heir to the Wanamaker department store fortune, moved into the house in 1940, and Hanes. J. Averell Clark, a World War II fighter pilot, lived there in 1943.
The Countess de Martino rented the house in 1945. Born Asta Berwind von Kleist, the countess was the daughter of Baron and Baroness Frederick von Kleist. She had come to the United States in 1941, and she served as a volunteer ambulance driver with the American Field Service in World War II.
After her husband died, Louisa Gunther returned to live in the house. In 1963, she married Mihail Farcasanu, a Romanian exile and the former editor in chief of Viitorul, a Romanian periodical. Following her death in 1974, Farcasanu remained in the house until 1987.
The next owners were Frederick H. Prince IV and his wife, Diana C. Prince. Frederick, who died in 2017, was co-trustee of the Frederick Henry Prince 1932 Trust, chairman of CMD Corp. and co-managing partner of F.H. Prince & Co. He was a member of the Orange County Hunt and a founder of Prince’s Court in McLean, Va., which is said to be the first court tennis court to be built in the United States in 74 years.
The entrance to the house is reached by a small set of stairs leading up from the brick sidewalk. The entry door is framed by a fan light and sidelights. A library with a wood-burning fireplace is to the right of the center hall. The ceilings on the main level are 12½ feet tall.
The 21-by-34-foot living room spans the back of the house. Four sets of French doors open to a porch. There is a wood-burning fireplace at each end of the room. The 17-by-29-foot dining room has a wood-burning fireplace and two triple-sash windows.
The kitchen is on the lower level. A family room, a wine cellar and a bedroom with en suite bathroom are also on this floor.
The owner’s suite is on the second floor. The bedroom has doors that open to a balcony. The bedroom and the dressing room each have a fireplace. This floor also has two additional bedrooms and bathrooms. The top level has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. An elevator runs to three of the four floors, but not the top level.
A brick path in the gardens leads to a large, circular fountain. Off-street parking for two cars is a half a block away.
2812 N St. NW, Washington, D.C.
Features: The Federal-style house is known as the Decatur house in Georgetown, not to be confused with the Decatur House on Lafayette Square. Some date the house to 1779, others to 1813. The house has been sold only twice in 90 years. It has a 21-by-34-foot living room that spans the back of the house and a 17-by-29-foot dining room. An elevator runs to three of the four house’s levels. Off-street parking for two cars is a half a block away.
Listing agent: Jamie Peva, Washington Fine Properties | 2022-09-16T09:37:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Georgetown’s Decatur house lists for $7.9 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/georgetown-decatur-house-for-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/georgetown-decatur-house-for-sale/ |
GOP lawmaker calls witness ‘boo’ at hearing, prompts Ocasio-Cortez apology
It was a House Oversight Committee hearing meant to examine how fossil fuel companies campaigned to stymie climate action. But Thursday’s debate took a turn after a contentious exchange between Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) and a witness prompted another lawmaker to apologize in a moment that made waves on social media.
What eventually became a shouting match with phrases such as “boo” and “young lady” being tossed, started with a question about petrochemicals. Higgins — who calls fossil fuels “the lifeblood of our modern society” — asked Raya Salter, the founder of the Energy Justice Law and Policy Center, an energy-focused public interest law firm, what her plan was to deal with the abundance of products that are made with chemical compounds derived from fossil fuels.
“Everything you have. Your clothes, your glasses, the car you got here on, your phone, the table you’re sitting at, the chair, the carpet under your feet, everything you’ve got is petrochemical products. What would you do with that? Tell the world!” Higgins told Salter, who is also a member of New York State Climate Action Council, a state government-affiliated environmental body.
Salter responded by saying, “If I had that power, actually I don’t need that power because what I would do is ask you, sir, from Louisiana … ” before Higgins interrupted.
The next two and a half minutes were marked by a tense back-and-forth in which Higgins and Salter attempted to speak over each other.
Salter asked Higgins to “search your heart and ask your God what you’re doing to the Black and poor people in Louisiana,” who she said were some of the most impacted by the pollutants released by petrochemical plants.
The Republican lawmaker responded by saying “my good lady, I’m trying to give you the floor, boo” and asking “okay, but what would you do?”
EPA announces ‘bold’ action to monitor pollution in ‘Cancer Alley’
“You’ve got no answer do you, young lady? About what to do with petrochemical products? So move on,” Higgins continued.
“We need to move away from petrochemicals, we need to shut down the petrochemical facilities in your state and move away from plastic,” Salter replied.
Louisiana produces more natural gas than all but two states nationwide, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The state’s 16 oil refineries, which are able to process some 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day, make up about 20 percent of the country’s refining capacity. Much of that infrastructure is are concentrated along Louisiana’s Gulf of Mexico-facing southern region — which forms part of the district Higgins represents.
Higgins noted that the liquefied natural gas projects in his district help reduce carbon emissions. LNG has been hailed as a transitional source of energy in the move toward carbon neutrality, and amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Biden administration is ramping up natural gas deliveries to Europe in hope of controlling the energy crisis. But while LNG produces less carbon emissions than fossil fuels such as coal and oil, it isn’t totally clean, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environment nonprofit.
The oil and gas industries ranked among the top five contributors to Higgins’s campaign in the 2021-2022 election cycle, according to data from OpenSecrets, a campaign finance watchdog. The Republican lawmaker has also advocated for the economic importance of fossil fuel. Last year he introduced a resolution challenging the Biden administration to operate the White House without using petrochemical-derived products. The bill was referred to a House subcommittee in February 2021 and hasn’t been discussed since.
“Modern life is not possible without the oil and gas industry. These energy sources fuel the world, and petroleum-based products are found in virtually everything everywhere,” Higgins said in a statement at the time.
That was the point he was trying to make Thursday — but the way he delivered his remarks shocked some Democratic members of Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) went as far as apologizing for the “conduct of this committee and what we just witnessed.”
“I just want you to know that in the four years that I’ve sat on this committee, I have never seen members of Congress—Republican or Democrat — disrespect a witness in the way I have seen them disrespect you today,” Ocasio-Cortez said to Salter. “I do not care what party they are in. I’ve never seen anything like that. For the gentleman of Louisiana and the comfort he felt in yelling at you like that, there’s more than one way to get a point across.”
“Frankly, men who treat women like that in public, I fear how they treat them in private,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
Higgins’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday. However, he told the Hill in a statement that he wasn’t going to let “leftist activists” run over him.
“When radicals show up in front of my Committee with an attitude talking anti-American trash, they can expect to get handled. I really don’t care if I hurt anybody’s feelings while I’m fighting to preserve our Republic,” he told the outlet.
Video footage of Ocasio-Cortez’s critical remarks — which were broadly echoed by liberals online — and the verbal back-and-forth trended on social media Thursday. One clip showing the exchange between Higgins and Salter had racked up more than 560,000 views on Twitter by early Friday.
On Thursday afternoon, the GOP lawmaker doubled-down on what he said, sharing a video of the back-and-forth and urging his followers to “watch my exchange with an unhinged climate activist from today’s [House Oversight] Committee hearing.”
Salter was unscathed, she said.
“Thanks for the support! I’m unbothered by fossil fuel cronies!!!” she wrote on Twitter. | 2022-09-16T09:37:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rep. Ocasio-Cortez apologizes after Rep. Higgins calls witness “boo” - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/salter-clay-higgins-aoc-climate-hearing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/salter-clay-higgins-aoc-climate-hearing/ |
“When we knew we were never going to hear from them, we just decided to go,” Greg Norman, shown in July, said of PGA Tour officials. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
“I know for a fact that many PGA players were and still are interested in playing for a new league, in addition [his emphasis] to playing for the Tour,” Norman wrote then. “What is wrong with that?”
In a memo to PGA Tour players last month following the lawsuit by LIV Golf players, Monahan continued to refer to that series as the “Saudi Golf League” while describing the legal action as “an attempt to use the TOUR platform to promote themselves and to freeride on your benefits and efforts.”
“What LIV Golf has provided is something new and unique, different,” he continued, “and with that to be said, there’s going to be some disruption and people aren’t going to like it, and I respect every single person that doesn’t think it’s good for the game of golf.” | 2022-09-16T09:37:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Greg Norman says LIV Golf has no more interest in talks with PGA Tour - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/greg-norman-liv-golf-pga-tour/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/greg-norman-liv-golf-pga-tour/ |
1927 stone house in Chevy Chase, Md., offered at $5 million
The six-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 7,900-square-foot home was updated by architect David Jones
The 1927 stone house was updated by architect David Jones. The formal living room has a wood-burning fireplace. (Tod Connell)
Before stepping inside this 1927 stone house in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chevy Chase, Md., Donna Eacho knew she wanted to own it.
“My husband was out of town, and I told him, ‘There’s a house coming on the market, and I’m going to buy it,’ ” she said. “He said, ‘Don’t you think you should look at it first?’ [She replied,] ‘Well, I’ll look at it, but I just want you to be prepared.’ That’s pretty much what we did. … I loved it from the minute I saw it from the street, from the minute I walked in. I’ve always loved that house.”
What she saw when she walked in the house didn’t dissuade her.
“The people who owned it had remodeled it using David Jones, who is one of my favorite architects, and then decided not to move in,” she said.
Kenwood house | The 1927 stone house was updated by architect David Jones. It is listed at just under $5 million. (Tod Connell)
Because it had been recently redone, the Eachos have only tinkered with the house since moving into it in 2000. They turned a closet on the lower level into a temperature-controlled wine cellar that can hold 1,400 bottles and the space above the garage into living quarters. Recently, they updated the kitchen.
The L-shaped house has an unusual entrance. Instead of facing the street, it is canted where the two sides meet. The inside is reminiscent of an English cottage that has been thoughtfully expanded.
To the right of the foyer is the formal living room with a wood-burning fireplace. The adjacent, large conservatory has a wet bar and French doors that lead to a secluded front terrace with a fountain. To the left of the foyer is a formal dining room. A bay window has a seating area.
The kitchen opens to another dining space and a family room with a gas fireplace. A butler’s pantry is next to the kitchen. French doors lead to a deck that overlooks a spacious backyard that backs onto Montgomery County parkland.
“There’s the huge yard, and beyond that is a big, thick woods,” Eacho said. “It doesn’t even back up to the hiker-biker trails, so it’s more secure than the ones that do have a trail going right behind them. It’s very private back there. … That was important to me. I had three boys, and I really needed room for them to run around.”
The second level has three bedrooms and three bathrooms, including the owner’s suite. The owner’s bedroom has a vaulted ceiling with skylights. The owner’s en suite bathroom has a skylight, a double vanity, a soaking tub and separate shower, a heated towel rack and radiant-heat flooring. This floor also has office space with a built-in desk and shelving.
The top level has two bedrooms, one bathroom and an office space with a built-in desk and shelving.
In addition to a wine cellar, the lower level has a spacious office with built-in shelving, a bathroom with a dog-washing station, and a family room with heated flagstone flooring, a gas fireplace, built-in shelving, a bay window and French doors that lead to a loggia.
Above the detached two-car garage are living quarters with a bathroom, a wet bar and skylights.
“My favorite thing [about the house] has been the way it has worked for everything,” Eacho said. “We’ve had huge parties, small parties. Every size gathering feels comfortable. When [her sons] were teenagers, there was room for them to go off with their friends without being underfoot but also [be] around so we could know where they were. And the nice thing also has been that now that they are grown and gone, the house is not so big that we feel like we have to move out because we’re rattling around.”
Donna said the reason they are selling the house is because they no longer live in Washington.
“The other thing I love, every single time I entertain, at least one person would pull me aside and say this is the most beautiful house,” she said. “It wasn’t the decor … but there’s something about the house. I think the proportions, the charm, the stone and the solid construction that they used in the ’20s, it just feels good.
“I also love that little front terrace and garden. It’s like a little secret garden. It’s so beautiful and it’s super fun during cherry blossom time.”
The six-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 7,900-square-foot house is listed at just under $5 million.
6223 Kennedy Dr., Chevy Chase, Md.
Features: The 1927 stone house was updated by architect David Jones. The kitchen has a five-burner gas range, double wall oven, warming drawer and butler’s pantry with a sink. Outdoor spaces include a front terrace, a deck off the kitchen, a loggia and an expansive backyard adjoining public parkland. The detached two-car garage has living quarters with a bathroom, wet bar and skylights.
Listing agents: Christie Weiss and Christopher Ritzert, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty | 2022-09-16T10:33:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 1927 stone house in Chevy Chase, Md., offered at $5 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/1927-stone-house-chevy-chase-md-offered-5-million/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/1927-stone-house-chevy-chase-md-offered-5-million/ |
Members of the public line up near Tower Bridge to see Queen Elizabeth II lying in state in Westminster Hall, on Sept. 15, 2022. (Carlos Jasso/Bloomberg)
“The Queue” — which began forming Tuesday before the start of the queen’s lying-in-state period — is officially five miles long, though in reality it is longer due to an uncounted section where it zigzags. It extends all the way from Westminster Hall in central London to Southwark Park, a more than 60 acre public park in south east London, according to a government tracker. Well-wishers have been warned they could face an at least 14-hour wait to reach Westminster Hall.
The news will surely come as a disappointment to the people who have traveled near and far to pay their respects to the queen.
As The Washington Post’s Karla Adam has written, waiting patiently in long lines is a uniquely British skill with its own set of rules — get a wristband with a number and obey that number. Stay in the queue. Do not push or shove. Do not cut. This line in particular has people willing to brave the cold and the rain because it is a historic national moment: The queen’s lying in state will end at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, the day of the queen’s state funeral.
On Friday, a spokesperson for Kensington Palace said the queen’s grandchildren — including Prince William and Prince Harry — will hold a 15-minute vigil by her coffin Saturday evening. Her children — Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward — are also set to hold their own vigil by her coffin at 7:30 p.m. local time Friday. Charles will also host faith leaders at Buckingham Palace Friday, following his return from Wales. | 2022-09-16T10:55:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queue to see queen lie in state at capacity, closed for 'at least 6 hours' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/queen-death-queue-paused-southwark/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/queen-death-queue-paused-southwark/ |
‘The Woman King’ is Viola Davis’s ultimate flex
Viola Davis as Nanisca, a grizzled army general, in “The Woman King.” (Sony Pictures/AP)
To play a grizzled army general in “The Woman King,” Viola Davis spent months putting her body “through hell.” It was all a part of her training to become a member of the Agojie — the real-life, elite, all-female attack unit that defended the Dahomey kingdom of West Africa (now Benin).
An actor’s physical metamorphosis will never not be fascinating. While the bodily limits they push past are often taken as tangible evidence of their talent and commitment to the craft, what the audience can’t measure is the mental preparation — the invisible athletics that steel an actor for what’s coming.
Dead lifts are hard and all, but what really got Davis ready for a fight was a book.
“I had to always prepare myself before I turned the page,” the Oscar winner said in a recent interview with The Washington Post about the emotional push-ups necessary to crack open “Amazons of Black Sparta,” which the film’s production used as one of its historical reference guides. One of few official reports on Dahomey’s female warriors, the book chronicles the accounts of early 19th- and 20th-century European ethnographers and therefore comes with all the associated racial baggage.
“We were referred to as bestial. And ugly. And overly masculine,” said Davis, leaving enough space between each adjective to let gravity pull them down. They were like extra weight added to the load the actress has been carrying around since she was a young girl growing up Black and poor in Rhode Island, and as an actress trying to break into Hollywood decades later.
With “The Woman King,” starring Davis as the fictional military mastermind Nanisca, the actress is flexing her muscle.
“This is my response. You will see a deeper side of femininity and womanhood in Nanisca and Nawi and Izogie and Amenza,” added said Davis, ticking off the film’s four main characters.
Review: Viola Davis reigns supreme in ‘The Woman King’
The actress called the role of Nanisca — a no-nonsense fighter who at one point tells her army of women that it’s better to slit their throats than be captured by men and slave traders — the most transformational of her career. But even though the four hours of martial arts five days a week was obviously grueling for the 57-year-old, the real transformation, Davis said, was about frame of mind.
“I had to tap into my warrior spirit,” she said.
One of the very first scenes in the film is a fight between the Agojie and the male troops of a different nation. Nanisca and her elite squad emerge from the cover of tall grass slick with palm oil, machetes and fingernails sharpened to killing points. There is zero hesitation when the general gives the go-ahead. The other guys never stand a chance.
Diving headfirst into the fray was not Davis’s “natural inclination.” When confronted with a 250-pound man coming at her with a sword, her actual fight-or-flight response leaned heavily on self-preservation. Whose wouldn’t? But like her character says in the movie, “A warrior must kill her tears.”
“My thing was just to be fearful and also to believe that I have nothing within myself to fight this huge human being because I’m a girl,” Davis said of the woman she was before filming began. “But I had to get over that.”
Nanisca’s bravery wasn’t something Davis could put down when director Gina Prince-Bythewood called cut. And what’s more, the actress didn’t want to.
“There was something about [that fear] that made me think how often I abandon huge challenges because I feel that I don’t have the weaponry to overcome it. How many obstacles I put in my path before I even step into the challenge. How often people have told me my womanhood and my Blackness has been more of a hindrance than an elixir,” Davis said.
The more battle scenes she did, the more comfortable she got with her own fearlessness.
“The more I had to wield my sword, I felt like I was wielding my inner sword. There’s a pride that I took in that,” she said.
And while Davis made it a point to emphasize that she herself is not a violent person, she noted that there is more to combat than brutality.
“It certainly became a great metaphoric challenge for me as a Black woman,” she said.
To fight?
“To fight.”
In fact, the entire process of getting “The Woman King” to screen was a six-year battle. First, it was casting. Davis, whose company JuVee Productions helped make the film, wanted actresses who weren’t major stars — yet. Nanisca’s trusted captains Izogie and Amenza are played by Lashana Lynch (last seen in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”) and Sheila Atim (“Bruised”), respectively. The Agojie’s newest recruit and wavemaker is Nawi (Thuso Mbedu). There was pushback from the studio. “Everyone was a fight,” Davis said.
Next came more of those infamous Hollywood “notes.” Was there some way a man could have a central role, preferably a White man? Then Davis had to lobby hard for a “proper budget.” (The epic African story ended up costing $50 million to make.)
“Life is a fight,” Davis said, “only made better by the people who are willing to do it.”
There’s Nanisca again.
“Every character that you get to play changes you, shifts you, teaches you a little bit of something about life,” Davis said. “There are characters you never want to visit again but then there’s others that really do make you better.”
She taken to calling “The Woman King” her “magnum opus,” the culmination of decades of work on and off camera, lifting weights seen and unseen.
“It’s sort of my big epic eff you, but at the same time an invite: that if we are dedicated to being inclusive and we’re dedicated to diversity, then this is what it should look like,” Davis said. “I want people to see us like we’ve never been seen before, but how we are. Because I don’t think that people see us.”
They were the world’s only all-female army. Their descendants are fighting to recapture their humanity.
The weight of representation is heavy, Davis said. “It’s an 800-pound gorilla on all of our backs as African Americans.” But she decided to shoulder the responsibility of taking ownership of stories that would otherwise go untold and providing opportunities for actresses who would otherwise be overlooked — “especially dark-skinned actresses, because colorism cannot be spoken about enough.”
If it all sounds like too much, like a burden that could threaten to weigh an artist down, Davis doesn’t think so. Getting older, the actress said, has offered her freedom. Looking at the scope of her career, Davis wants to go bigger, bolder, have more impact.
“I want to leave something behind for other actors like Miss [Cicely] Tyson did for me,” she said. “Within this movie is a story. And the story is wanting the matter. And the story is also about sisterhood. And it’s about tapping into your warrior spirit as women. That it’s not a history lesson. It’s a story.”
Now comes the inevitable deep question after an actor tees up that kind of broad vision for what amounts to their life’s work: What’s next? Her answer is just as all-encompassing.
“I want to tell whatever story I want to tell whenever I want to tell it,” Davis said.
“It could be small, it could be big. It could be bold. It could be messy,” she continued. “It could be an anti-hero. It could be a hero. She could be anything she wants to be. Because that is my birthright.” | 2022-09-16T11:08:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘The Woman King’ is Viola Davis’s ultimate flex - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/16/viola-davis-woman-king-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/16/viola-davis-woman-king-interview/ |
The state budget, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year, took advantage of what some critics describe as a stimulus loophole —- prompting renewed calls for a federal probe
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew two planes of immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, escalating a tactic by Republican governors to draw attention to what they consider to be the Biden administration's failed border policies. The flights were paid for by interest earned on federal covid aid. (Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times/AP)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) could turn to an unexpected funding source to help pay for his plans to fly migrants to liberal-leaning communities: the interest earned on his state’s federal coronavirus aid.
To set up the program, DeSantis took advantage of the fine print in the American Rescue Plan, a roughly $1.9 trillion stimulus law adopted by Congress at President Biden’s request last year. The measure, supported by Democrats over unanimous GOP opposition, included about $350 billion for cities and states to boost their economies and respond to the public health crisis.
The funds came with few restrictions, but the U.S. government imposed virtually no rules on the interest generated on that money while it remained unspent. In Florida, which received a total of $8.8 billion from the rescue package, state lawmakers earlier this year adopted a spending blueprint that redirected some of the interest toward DeSantis’s immigration policies, sparking a broad outcry and renewed calls for a federal investigation.
Vaccine bonuses, aid to businesses and . . . a golf course? Cities and states put $350 billion stimulus windfall to widely varied use.
The situation marked the latest instance in which federal coronavirus aid appeared to enable Republicans’ immigration crackdowns — a far cry from what congressional lawmakers had envisioned when they reserved stimulus money for the states.
Earlier this year, Texas officials took advantage of a separate, yet related, federal pandemic program to free up money for Operation Lone Star, an effort to police the U.S.-Mexican border. Texas similarly has sent migrants to Democratic-led communities, most recently dispatching two buses to the Naval Observatory — the Washington, D.C., home of Vice President Harris — on Thursday.
The Washington Post revealed the full scope of the budgetary maneuvering in Texas as part of a year-long series, the Covid Money Trail, that tracks the roughly $5 trillion in federal aid adopted since the start of the pandemic. The initial report soon prompted a federal inspector general to probe the state’s conduct.
In Florida, Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for DeSantis, confirmed in a statement that the state sent two planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, adding that other states, including Massachusetts, New York and California, would “better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration.”
But the governor’s office otherwise did not respond to questions about the source of the funds or whether the $12 million in interest on covid aid had been used for the flights to Martha’s Vineyard. Instead, Fenske added that the legislature had appropriated money to implement the program “consistent with federal law.”
Spokespeople for the Treasury Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Florida Department of Transportation, which oversees the relocation money, also did not respond.
The events this week marked the latest clash between DeSantis, a conservative firebrand with aspirations for the presidency in 2024, and the Biden administration. The Florida Republican previously has threatened to send migrants to the president’s home state of Delaware.
At times, the skirmishes have directly involved federal coronavirus aid. Florida has been among the most aggressive states in seeking to channel some federal money toward other, seemingly unrelated purposes. The budget DeSantis signed this year rerouted coronavirus stimulus funds to help finance a gas tax holiday in response to high fuel prices. Critics said the move ran afoul of federal law, which prohibits states from using the cash on tax cuts — a policy that Florida and its peers have repeatedly and successfully challenged in court cases nationwide.
With immigration, the legality is murkier. Under the law, cities and states can use their allocations to mitigate the pandemic’s economic impacts, help workers performing essential tasks, replace lost budget revenue and improve their local infrastructure. The categories are vast, opening the door at times for these governments to pursue a wide array of seemingly unrelated pet projects — including prisons, golf courses and others documented by The Washington Post.
Florida did not appear to use any federal aid money directly for the flights to Martha’s Vineyard or its other border-related initiatives. Rather, it wrote into law a plan to tap the interest it accrued on federal funds, which may allow the state to sidestep questions of misuse.
But local experts and advocates still said this week that the policy broke with the spirit of the coronavirus rescue package. Alexis Tsoukalas, a policy analyst at the Florida Policy Institute, said the money could have funded proposals to make housing more affordable, combat wage theft, reduce college costs and more — ideas to help “Floridians recover from the impact of the pandemic, not to support unhelpful and harmful initiatives” around immigration.
How federal pandemic aid helped Texas pay for its border crackdown.
In June, the plan drew the ire of the Southern Poverty Law Center, where Paul R. Chavez, a senior attorney, called on the inspector general for the Treasury Department to look into the matter. A spokesman for the watchdog did not immediately comment on whether it had opened such an inquiry.
On Thursday, Chavez acknowledged that Florida may have exploited a “loophole” in using interest accrued on the stimulus money. He warned that inaction would inspire other states to follow suit, perhaps reaping the benefits of federal dollars in a way congressional lawmakers did not intend.
“That’s definitely a concern,” he said. | 2022-09-16T11:09:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal covid aid could help Florida pay for migrant flights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/florida-migrant-immigration-stimulus-aid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/florida-migrant-immigration-stimulus-aid/ |
In Martha’s Vineyard, even the doctors can’t afford housing anymore
Essential workers can’t afford to stay on the island, putting basic services in jeopardy
Sharon Brown and her son, Carron, 14, restock the Island Food Pantry in Oak Bluffs, Mass. (Maria Thibodeau for The Washington Post)
Sharon Brown, the pantry director, greeted the woman at the front desk. As Brown logged details she needed to collect into her system, the woman’s story unspooled: After 18 years of living on the island, her rent had suddenly shot up.
“Well,” Brown began, “if you know anyone who has a year-round...” Her voice trailed off.
Even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) sent two planes full of asylum seekers to the summer haven this week to make a political point by funneling migrants to liberal communities, the dearth of affordable housing on the Vineyard had pushed the year-round community to a breaking point. Policymakers have chronically underinvested in affordable housing and allowed investment properties and short-term rentals to proliferate unchecked.
And then there’s Brown, who serves the island’s neediest, including the island’s growing population of seniors.
This hollowing out is nothing new in cities such as Los Angeles, New Orleans and Austin, where short-term rentals and investor home buyers have overtaken razor-thin housing markets and destabilized whole neighborhoods. But on an island where commuting means setting sail over temperamental waters, the Vineyard’s housing crisis is also an existential one.
In the winter, the 96-square-mile landmass of Martha’s Vineyard settles into stillness. The tourism industry’s grip on rental properties loosens, and the families who live here year-round rotate into more spacious winter homes for about six months. Only about half the island’s homes remain occupied all year, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
As the Vineyard thaws, what locals refer to as the “island shuffle” kicks into high gear. They pack up and move from those winter homes into summer rentals, where payments are made by the week and housing can mean anything from a shack with no kitchen or flushable toilet to a camper van or a room in someone else’s home. Cars with license plates from places such as New York, New Jersey and D.C. jam the island’s two-lane roads. Bars fill with bodies, crowds clog the beaches, and the Vineyard’s lone airport becomes the third-busiest in New England.
Brown had a steady winter rental when she moved to the island five years ago. Summers were tougher, she said, but usually she could find someplace to last her and her son, Carron, through the busiest months. Now, they are moving every few weeks — sometimes staying in a house for only a few days.
The island, experts said, is more than 10 years late to confront its housing crisis, and it is not moving fast enough to narrow the gap.
Between 2010 and 2019, the amount of housing on the island grew by over 4 percent, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. But any progress was eaten up by the vacation-rental market. In the same period, the Commission found, the number of units occupied year-round dropped over 8 percent.
The arrival of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 made things worse. Affluent remote workers flocked to the island’s salty air and tree-lined neighborhoods. Some who already owned property moved in full-time, depleting winter-housing options. Others bought up old homes and new builds, driving up the median cost of houses to $1.3 million as of April, according to the State House News Service. In the past year, home prices rose 33 percent.
None of the changes advocates have called for — zoning laws altered to protect year-round housing stock, long-term funding streams for affordable development and short-term-rental regulation — have been enacted island-wide. Earlier this year, the Vineyard’s six towns voted to approve a housing bank, a place to store money collected from large real estate deals that would fund affordable housing. But the island can’t create such a fund until the state moves to give local municipalities the authority to impose real-estate transfer fees.
“How do you recruit when rents are doubling from $3,000 a month to $6,000 a month?”
— Denise Schepici, CEO of Martha's Vineyard Hospital
Last session, the legislature failed to pass a measure to do so. But state legislators have vowed to push one through this year.
Roberts, who began working after graduating high school, juggles a side hustle and a fledgling music career with two full-time jobs running his own landscaping company and manning the bar at the Ritz so he can stay on the island to help his aging mother. He wants to avoid the fate that has befallen so many of his peers: Those who left rarely returned. Those who stayed have struggled to move out of their parents’ homes and make a life of their own.
Brown and Carron, now 14, have not lived in one place for more than 11 months at a time since. Asked how many times they have moved since arriving on the Vineyard, Carron needed two hands to count.
"The first thought that went through my head was, ‘I’m going to lose my housing,’ " said DiGiacomo, a kindergarten teacher who has taught the Vineyard’s children for nearly 20 years. “Then I realized: I’m going to lose my people; I’m going to lose my tribe; I’m going to lose my sense of place.”
“I’m going to lose my people; I’m going to lose my tribe; I’m going to lose my sense of place.”
— Lori DiGiacomo, 61, longtime teacher
Instead, DiGiacomo began to apply for teaching licenses in other states. She took to Google, sending a query into the ether: “Where to move at 60?” But then, she said, her school’s principal reminded her that if she can hold on for five more years, her pension would increase by five
“This is where I want to be. This is my home,” said DiGiacomo, whose lease expires next summer. "Hopefully, God willing, I might just be able to stay.”
As she and Carron loaded the car once more with clothes stuffed in trash bags and her set of purple suitcases filled to the zipper, she repeated a promise he had heard before. One Brown isn’t sure she can keep.
Story editing by Annys Shin. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Copy editing by Paola Ruano. Design by J.C. Reed.
He said he had a ‘vision’ of his fiancee’s death. It wasn’t what it seemed. | 2022-09-16T11:09:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Martha’s Vineyard housing crisis drives out hospital workers, teachers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-housing-rentals-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-housing-rentals-crisis/ |
Baseball honors Roberto Clemente, who broke barriers for Latino players
Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates is seen in Tampa, on March 3, 1963. Major League Baseball celebrated its annual Roberto Clemente Day on Sept. 15, honoring the Hall of Fame outfielder 50 years after his death in a plane crash while attempting to deliver relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. (Preston Stroup/AP)
Major League Baseball honored Roberto Clemente on Thursday night, paying tribute to a player who arguably did more to expand access to the sport for people of color than anyone but Jackie Robinson.
“Roberto Clemente is a figure for Latinos just like Jackie Robinson was for African Americans,” Puerto Rican shortstop Carlos Correa said in 2019. “Clemente didn’t just break barriers but inspired other Latinos to get into baseball.”
Both players faced discrimination — Robinson, after he broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, and Clemente, as a Black Latino who made his major league debut in 1955 and often spoke out against Jim Crow segregation.
Clemente, a Pittsburgh Pirates star outfielder, died in a plane crash at the age of 38 on New Year’s Eve 1972, when the cargo plane he had chartered to take relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua crashed in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The Black girl who defied segregation, inspiring MLK and Jackie Robinson
His death came just two months after Robinson’s on Oct. 24, 1972, at the age of 53.
In 1973, Clemente, who was born and grew up in Puerto Rico, became the first Latino player inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame, 11 years after Robinson became the first African American inducted. The Hall of Fame waived the normal five-year wait for Clemente; the only other player it did that for was Lou Gehrig. At the induction ceremony that summer, Clemente’s widow, Vera Clemente said, “This is Roberto’s last triumph.”
“As the patron saint of Latino baseball,” wrote Clemente biographer David Maraniss, “the first to reach the Hall of Fame, he ranks only behind Jackie Robinson among players whose sociological significance transcended the sport itself.”
Baseball retired Robinson’s number, 42, in 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his debut, but has resisted calls to do the same for Clemente. Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN a few years ago that the sport honored Clemente through its Roberto Clemente Award, presented to the player who best represents baseball “through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions, both on and off the field.”
An all-Black Little League team made history without playing a game
“We thought it was the most appropriate way to honor him,” Manfred said. “We do not think that we should have a one-size-fits-all approach to honoring our stars.”
On Thursday, the start of National Hispanic American Heritage Month, MLB celebrated its 21st annual Roberto Clemente Day, featuring retired players who had won the Clemente Award at Citi Field in New York, along with members of the Clemente family.
Roberto Clemente’s humanitarian streak has been well documented. He led Puerto Rican efforts to aid the Nicaraguan earthquake victims, and decided to travel there himself because he suspected profiteers were getting the supplies, the New York Times reported at the time. After the crash, Puerto Rico’s governor proclaimed three days of mourning for Clemente, who was beloved on the island.
He had capped a brilliant career just three months earlier with his 3,000th hit on Sept. 30 — a double into the left-center-field gap at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh against the New York Mets — becoming just the 11th player to achieve the feat. Mets star Willie Mays came over to the Pirates dugout to offer congratulations when Clemente came out of the game.
Clemente decided to rest the final three games of that season to prepare for the playoffs (although he did appear as a defensive replacement in one of those games), freezing his career total at 3,000. His career batting average of .317 was the highest among active players at the time. The Pirates lost the National League Championship Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
The ‘father of Black basketball’ transformed a White-dominated sport
He had made his debut two decades earlier as a 20-year-old in 1955, and had some decent but not spectacular seasons early on. Clemente began his peak years in 1960, when he hit .314 with 16 home runs and led the Pirates to a World Series title over the Yankees, batting .310 in the Fall Classic.
The following year, he won the batting crown with a .351 average — the first of four batting titles in a seven-year span — hit 23 home runs, and claimed the first of a dozen straight Gold Glove awards. He was one the best defensive right fielders of all time, with a howitzer for an arm.
“He played a kind of baseball that none of us had ever seen before. … As if it were a form of punishment for everyone else on the field,” wrote Roger Angell.
Clemente’s performance didn’t decline with age. In 1971, when he turned 37, he hit .341, then won the World Series MVP by hitting .414 in the Pirates’ seven-game win over the Baltimore Orioles. The next year, his final season, he hit .312.
He achieved these feats while adjusting to a society that wasn’t always welcoming.
In a 2015 story on Clemente, presidential historian Michael Beschloss wrote: “Clemente was not only Latino but also black. Encountering mainland American culture after what he considered to be the more racially harmonious Puerto Rico, he later said he felt like a double outsider.” | 2022-09-16T11:09:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roberto Clemente, pioneering Latino player, honored by baseball - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/16/roberto-clemente-honored-jackie-robinson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/16/roberto-clemente-honored-jackie-robinson/ |
An ode to the scrunchie, the ’80s fashion invention we never forgot
Scrunchie creator Rommy Hunt Revson passed away last week, but she was still alive to see its triumphant return as a stylish accessory.
An ode to the Scrunchie (Washington Post illustration; iStock)
In her 1993 tome “Mothers and Daughters of Invention,” the scholar Autumn Stanley argued that when assessing the value of an innovation, historians ought to consider not just the technological and economic impact but also the human, “the effect on people’s comfort, convenience, and quality of daily life.”
By that measure, Rommy Hunt Revson’s invention — neither a technological marvel nor an economic game changer — is a powerfully influential tool. Revson, a singer, songwriter and voice teacher who passed away Sept. 7, invented the scrunchie (the hair-tie with ruffly ruched fabric sewn around it that was originally called a “scunci”) in 1986, on the conviction that there simply had to be a better way to hold one’s hair together in a bun or ponytail. Until then, and even through the early years of the 21st century, most hair-ties were usually fastened together with metal aglets; those who can remember using them are wincing right now. And for those unfamiliar, just know that putting a rubber-and-metal instrument in long human hair could indeed get as gnarly as you’re imagining.
Scrunchies went in and out of fashion after their initial heyday in the ‘80s. In 2003, a “Sex and the City” episode found Carrie Bradshaw chastising her novelist boyfriend for describing a chic downtown Manhattan woman as wearing a scrunchie: “No woman who works at W Magazine and lives on Perry Street would be caught dead at a hip downtown restaurant,” she shrieked, “wearing a scrunchie!” Happily, its inventor lived long enough to see it triumphantly bounce and flutter right back into vogue (as well as into Vogue) in the late 2010s; at the time Revson died, the red-hot fashion label Balenciaga was retailing an “XXL” silk scrunchie on its website for $275.
But the scrunchie’s legacy remains bifurcated: At some points in history, it’s been a fashion statement, and at others, merely a home comfort item — like a bathrobe or a pair of slippers, to be worn outside the house only as far as the mailbox. Its utility is unflagging, its widespread appeal less consistent.
Our lives are full of innovations that, for some reason, really have it out for our hair — and others we use to defend it. We wear swim caps to protect it from pool chlorine, and slather oil on it to protect it from our blow dryers; a few generations back, glamorous women tied scarves under their chins to protect their coifs while they rode in convertibles. Scrunchies, for many, are just one more way to make the world a little safer for our tresses: Earlier this year, a Vogue editor wrote in a roundup of staffers’ “can’t-live-without” hair products that when it’s makeup-removal time at the end of the workday, she’s “always reaching for a damage-free silk scrunchie from Intimissimi. Crease and frizz, be gone!”
Kim Kimble, a Los Angeles-based hairstylist and the head of the hair department on HBO’s “Euphoria,” wears her hair in braids. So silk scrunchies are a go-to at home: “They don’t pull or snag,” the way other hair elastics would, she says. “For me, it’s a convenience.”
Kimble, however, has been styling hair for more than 30 years, and sees the scrunchie as a statement piece she’d only ever deploy to directly evoke the late 20th century. She’s aware, certainly, that it’s trendy once again. But on “Euphoria,” a show known for its edgy fashion and its keen awareness of up-to-the-moment beauty trends, she’s only ever put a scrunchie on-screen once: on the actress Maud Apatow, in a flashback to the 1990s.
Ted Gibson, another L.A.-based hairstylist who has massaged the scalps of people like Angelina Jolie, Serena Williams, Priyanka Chopra and Ariana Grande, has been amused (and delighted) to see scrunchies come back as a fashion statement. Gibson’s niece is a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, he says, “and last year, that’s all she talked about. Scrunchies.”
Gibson has put scrunchies in models’ hair for runway shows over the years, at New York Fashion Week and elsewhere. Sometimes it’s to add a spray of color or a coda of pattern to the top of an ensemble, and “sometimes because I want there to be a little bit more volume in a bun.”
It was off-duty models who, so the story goes, acted as a bellwether for the latter-day return of scrunchies: In 2017, scrunchies were bobbing around behind the scenes of runway shows, and by 2019 they were the runaway trend of the year. That same year, Jason Momoa even wore a scrunchie on his wrist that coordinated with his pink velvet Fendi Oscars tuxedo (and the author of this story split a pair of twin leopard-print velveteen scrunchies with her then-7-year-old niece, about which both parties were equally stoked). The following year, Serena Williams coordinated her on-court outfits at the U.S. Open with the colorful scrunchies in her hair.
Gibson started styling hair 34 years ago, in the late 1980s — and has seen other accoutrements people wore with scrunchies the first time around also come back into style. “Fashion and hair kind of dictate each other, and right now, extreme shoulder pads are in. Double-breasted suits. Wide-leg pants.”
In other words, perhaps the mighty little puff of frothy, tufty joy was just waiting for the right conditions to materialize. And now, once again, it’s everywhere. “What I love about the scrunchie is that it has those moments, not only in editorial, but also in movies, and on television. It can cross those all of those genres of pop culture,” Gibson says. “I think it’s done a great job.” | 2022-09-16T11:09:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An ode to the scrunchie, the ’80s fashion invention we never forgot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/16/scrunchie-inventor-rommy-hunt-revson-hair/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/16/scrunchie-inventor-rommy-hunt-revson-hair/ |
The history behind why a BYU volleyball game went viral
The university’s history frames allegations of racism from fans.
Perspective by Kyle Longley
John D’Anna
Duke’s Rachel Richardson, right, talks with Gracie Johnson during warmups before the Blue Devils’ game against East Tennessee State University in Durham, N.C., on Sept. 2. (Ethan Hyman/AP)
In late August, the only Black starting player on Duke University’s women’s volleyball team reported that an opposing fan hurled racist taunts, including slurs, during a match at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. According to social media accounts from the player’s godmother, nobody from BYU — neither the coaches, the staff nor the 5,500 fans in attendance — did anything to intervene.
After the episode became public, BYU launched an investigation, which it claimed found no “evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs.”
This was the second alleged incident of racism this year at BYU, the flagship university of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church. In February, a high church official who teaches ancient scripture classes at BYU, apologized after making insensitive comments about the role of African Americans in the early church.
While that situation received less publicity, the Duke incident ignited a swift backlash. Dawn Staley, the head coach of the University of South Carolina’s women’s basketball team, responded by canceling two games with the Cougars — one in Columbia and one in Provo. Numerous commentators have denounced BYU for its passive fans and slow response during the match. It has damaged the university and especially its athletic department.
While both episodes mirror the current racial climate in the U.S., they also reflect problems that have dogged BYU for more than a half-century, dating back to protests by opposing players and students against the school’s racist policies and behavior in the late 1960s. Change has occurred slowly at BYU, and in an age of social media, the school faces increased scrutiny, especially as it prepares to enter a major athletic conference.
In the LDS faith, every “worthy” man or boy can enter the priesthood, which does not signify leadership or clerical training. Initially, this universal opportunity included Black Mormons.
But in 1852, as Utah debated slavery, church president and prophet Brigham Young — who succeeded founder Joseph Smith and frequently espoused proslavery views — decreed that African Americans could be members of the church, but not priests. He based his decision on the biblical “Curse of Cain” that many groups used to justify slavery and discrimination.
A century later, this discriminatory policy drew attention during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And it wasn’t the only issue that BYU and the Mormon Church had with race. Fewer than 15 Black students attended the university at the end of the 1960s (and a number of those were African students). As late as 1969, a BYU dean, Lester B. Whetten, stressed: “The Negro of today is not, and cannot become compatible with B.Y.U. standards.”
While some students and faculty pushed for change, the administration and much of the student body remained either openly hostile or at least ambivalent to greater integration.
This sentiment spilled over into sports. In 1968, for example, BYU students and players hurled racist slurs and cheap shots at opposing Black football players from the University of Wyoming. At the end of the game as the Wyoming players mingled, someone turned a water sprinkler on them.
As campus activism intensified across the country in the late 1960s — primarily spurred by opposition to the Vietnam War, but also by racial discrimination — some opposing players began speaking out against BYU’s racism. Additionally, students at opposing schools pressured their universities to stop playing games against the Cougars.
In 1969, students at Arizona State demanded the cancellation of the school’s football game against BYU. Hundreds of students picketed outside the ASU stadium before the game, despite the university not being known for its activism and having a large LDS population — including its president and most of the senior administration.
Weeks later, 14 of Wyoming’s Black players approached their coach, Lloyd Eaton, and asked to wear black armbands when the Cougars visited Laramie to protest BYU’s racist policies. He lashed out at them, telling them to transfer to historically Black colleges like Grambling or Morgan State so they “could go back to colored relief.” He also suspended them, and they left the program.
Eaton and other White administrators resisted efforts to isolate BYU, often because of their own racism and anger toward the protest movements engulfing campuses during that academic year.
But there were exceptions. Stanford announced it would no longer schedule games with BYU, something San José State and the University of Washington considered.
Students and activists refused to back off as basketball season began. One of the first confrontations occurred on Jan. 8, 1970, when the BYU basketball team traveled to Tucson.
The University of Arizona’s president, Richard Harvill, refused calls by the NAACP and students to cancel the game, arguing that he did not believe BYU’s policies were discriminatory. The night before the game, someone broke into Arizona’s gym and started a fire at the free throw line, causing some minor damage. The following day, students — including several African American basketball players (with their coach’s blessings) — showed up at the gym entrance, some chanting: “Stop the game.”
The Arizona players wore black sweatbands during the nationally televised game. Shortly before halftime, nine protesters stormed the court. Police arrested them and charged them with rioting.
Afterward, more protests arose, designed to pressure Harvill. Ultimately, he accepted a meeting with Black student groups on campus and promised to further study the issue. He selected six students to visit BYU and report back on the issue. Unsurprisingly, the predominantly White group returned saying that BYU had no more discrimination than most universities.
The most confrontational incidents occurred later that month. At a basketball game at Colorado State, students rushed the court and threw raw eggs and other items at BYU players and cheerleaders. Ultimately, someone launched a Molotov cocktail, but people quickly put out the small fire.
While the local press tried to portray it as the handiwork of a Black mob, the students arrested and expelled were all White.
Such acts led to BYU players acknowledging the frustrations of opposing students and players. One of the university’s non-LDS basketball players, Larry DeLaittre, admitted: “I really do sympathize with the protesters … I want to grab hold of somebody and yell, ‘I’m Catholic! I’m Catholic!’ ”
Despite increasing pressure, many BYU supporters and the school’s administration remained defiant and often characterized the protesters as communists. One coach noted: “These people aren’t after us. They’re after America.”
The protests did, however, precipitate some changes. In February 1970, BYU signed its first Black football recruit, Ronald Knight. Yet, reflecting the culture at the university, Coach Tommy J. Hudspeth acknowledged: “A lot of people are mad at me right now because they feel we are giving in.” In December 1970, the university also hired its first African American faculty member, a part-time nursing adjunct to teach about “Negro culture.”
Over time, the protests quieted as the country grew weary of campus demonstrations, especially after the Kent State and Jackson State massacres in May 1970. But student bodies throughout the West continued to press their school’s administrations to punish BYU’s racism, and athletics remained a central topic.
The calls finally ended in 1978 when the LDS church made major changes and allowed Black members full access to the priesthood and rites.
Ironically, over the past decade, new protests have arisen over BYU’s draconian policies toward the LGBTQ+ community. Some people have circulated petitions and issued calls for boycotts, but the movement has never approximated the intensity that existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s over race.
The alleged recent volleyball incident has sparked a firestorm on social media, in particular. And BYU is slated to join the Big-12 conference in 2023, which will only focus a larger spotlight on its policies and culture.
Clearly, the changes regarding race that the school and the Mormon Church have made over the last century have not been enough to protect BYU athletics from scrutiny. Many people have memories of the past that blend with the present, and the most recent episodes have returned the racial issues to the forefront. | 2022-09-16T11:09:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The history behind why a BYU volleyball game went viral - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/16/history-behind-why-byu-volleyball-game-went-viral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/16/history-behind-why-byu-volleyball-game-went-viral/ |
U.S. Mexican independence festivities remind us of the cost of exclusion
Targeting this holiday with deportation campaigns weakens communities and instills fear in immigrants
Perspective by Mike Amezcua
Mike Amezcua is assistant professor of history at Georgetown University and author of “Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification.”
Aztec dancers perform during a special Cinco de Mayo show by the Lucha Vavoom ensemble in Los Angeles on May 4, 2017. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)
Sept. 16 marks the celebration of Mexico winning independence from the clutches of imperial Spain in the early 19th century. Over the years, its significance for the Mexican diaspora in the United States has increased, with celebrations now symbolizing ethnic pride in the U.S. cities and towns where people of Mexican descent have carved out spaces of dignity in the face of unwelcoming social forces.
From borderlands to barrios, Mexican communities become lively, loud and boisterous as the eve of Independence Day approaches. People join in the celebratory cry known as “El Grito de Dolores,” echoing the insurrectionist call made by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in the town of Dolores Hidalgo on Sept. 16, 1810. The cry has become an enduring feature of celebrations in communities with a significant Mexican population.
At times, the festive atmosphere of the Mexican diaspora gathering to celebrate Independence and other homeland holidays has been dampened by the threat of anti-Latino and anti-immigrant violence. For example, in 2017, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney lamented the cancellation of a public Cinco de Mayo celebration that would have attracted thousands, for fear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would send agents. Days before, the Trump administration had announced it was gearing up for a multi-city, large-scale raid of “sanctuary cities” in what ICE called “Operation Safe City.” The threat was chilling, forcing Mexican communities to weigh the joy and connection of celebrating communal heritage against the threat of dissolution and terror in the community.
This was not the first time that U.S. government officials used the occasion of Mexican patriotic holiday celebrations to apprehend immigrants. One of the most significant episodes in which a homeland celebration was turned into a mass deportation took place on the eve of Mexican Independence Day in Chicago in 1954. On that day, as the city’s Mexican community prepared for celebration and a parade down a major thoroughfare, agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) prepared to deport Mexican nationals in parts of the city where they resided. On Sept. 16, the roundups in Chicago began, as part of a months-long federal mass deportation campaign called Operation Wetback.
Earlier that year, Operation Wetback had deployed a similar military-style drive and campaign of fear to deport tens of thousands of immigrants from the country in cities such as Los Angeles and in communities across most of the Southwest. In the first three months of the operation, 93,913 Mexican nationals were arrested and presumably deported to Mexico.
It is unsurprising that Operation Wetback began in the Southwest. Large parts of the U.S. Southwest had been home to Mexican-descended peoples long before the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848. The U.S. conquest and annexation of northern Mexico did not always confer equal treatment to Mexicans under U.S. law, and they quickly became foreigners in their own land.
But Mexican-descended peoples settled elsewhere as well. In the first half of the 20th century, industrial capitalism, a revolution in the borderlands, two world wars, restrictions of other immigrants and a binational guest worker agreement known as the Bracero Program (1942-1964) all played a role in bringing new generations of Mexican immigrants into the United States for work and survival. In the process, these migrations created multigenerational, mixed-status Mexican communities composed of Mexican American U.S. citizens, alongside immigrants of both legal and unauthorized status — all building lives together from the West Coast to the Great Lakes region, and from the Rio Grande Valley to the Lehigh Valley.
By 1954, Attorney General Herbert Brownell was committed to stamping out what he believed to be an “immigration crisis.” Because of national security concerns during the Cold War, leaders like Brownell feared that enemies would perceive the United States as vulnerable if the country could not control its borders and prevent what he called “an influx of illegal aliens.” By this, he meant Mexican immigrants, even citizens and those in the United States legally.
After the Southwest campaign concluded, Brownell announced Chicago as his next target. He aimed to deport 25,000 to 40,000 undocumented Mexicans from the city. Mexicans began to make Chicago their home after 1910, fleeing the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. Soon after, more Mexican immigrants headed to the Windy City to find work in the steel mills, meatpacking, railroad and manufacturing industries. By the 1940s, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans had transformed an old port-of-entry neighborhood known as the Near West Side into the largest concentration of Mexicans in the Midwest, numbering in the tens of thousands. They used grand ballrooms, theaters and thoroughfares to celebrate Mexican patriotic holidays.
Chicago’s version of Operation Wetback was particularly ruthless for a few reasons, including the INS’s strategic decision to begin the campaign on a holiday. Sept. 16 was a day when the community would be out in public, not only to celebrate their homeland’s independence but to create community and pride in Chicago as Mexican Chicagoans. In addition, by targeting the street where the Mexican Independence Day parade took place, the INS dispossessed Mexican immigrant business owners of their storefronts and livelihoods.
INS Commissioner Joseph Swing warned that the great danger of the “alien influx” was not near the U.S.-Mexico border but instead in Chicago. That belief led the Department of Justice and the INS to direct an enormous amount of personnel and resources to the Windy City’s mass expulsion raids. The INS even planned for what to do if it ran out of space to detain Mexicans in the Cook County Jail. They contracted an old Studebaker car-manufacturing warehouse to temporarily incarcerate Mexican nationals, located conveniently close to Midway Airport, so they could more quickly deport Mexicans by plane.
Those who lived through this episode recalled tenement doors being kicked in by federal agents, movie theaters being raided and INS agents placing churches under siege.
One of the signature features of the federal operation was utilizing “a military mind,” as Swing called it, swiftly deporting immigrants through the use of military planes, boats and trains. Doing so allowed for deportations before any due process could take place in a court. Swing, a retired Army general, was committed to bolstering the image of the INS as “an aggressive, highly militarized law enforcement organization.” That included exploiting immigrant patriotic celebrations as a tactical strategy in the war against immigrants.
In 1955, the INS reported that from September 1954 to June 1955, the agency had deported “11,459 aliens” through airlift, but that did not include those who had been deported by rail or bus. And while it seemed that the INS had not met its stated goal of deporting 25,000 to 40,000 undocumented immigrants from Chicago, the agency nevertheless claimed that “the border [had] been secured,” which in the agency’s view included the roundups of migrants in urban centers.
Civil liberties groups such as the Midwest Committee for Protection of Foreign Born (MCPFB) and the American Civil Liberties Union attempted to mount a legal response to the mass deportations but felt paralyzed by the sheer number of arrests and the swiftness of the proceedings. Nathan Caldwell Jr., executive director of the MCPFB, admitted to a colleague in Los Angeles that “the attorneys here have had no previous experience before the Service [INS] or in the Courts around a drive of such mass character.” Chicago’s Mexican community was left devastated by the months-long raids of homes, businesses and workplaces, and it left a lasting feeling that their communities would continue to be persecuted by immigration authorities whenever the politicians found it to be convenient.
Today, the memories of what took place on Mexican Independence Day in Chicago in 1954 have faded. And celebrations of Mexican holidays remain important features of Latino life in communities throughout the country. Public displays of ethnic pride and cultural celebration are important to people, even as they also prompt heightened alertness about anti-immigrant sentiment and policies that target and criminalize immigrants. In the face of policies that have abused and terrorized immigrant communities, such patriotic festivities remain a space for mutual aid and visibility — and an opportunity to challenge exclusion in the United States. | 2022-09-16T11:09:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. Mexican independence festivities remind us of the cost of exclusion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/16/us-mexican-independence-festivities-remind-us-cost-exclusion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/16/us-mexican-independence-festivities-remind-us-cost-exclusion/ |
This image provided by the National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a satellite view over Alaska, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. A vast swath of western Alaska could see flooding and high winds as the remnants of Typhoon Merbok move toward the Bering Sea region. The National Weather Service had in place coastal flood warnings, beginning Friday, spanning from parts of the Yukon Delta in southwest Alaska up to St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea and to the Bering Strait coast. (NOAA via AP) (Uncredited/NOAA) | 2022-09-16T11:10:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Western Alaska braces for strong storm, possible floods - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/western-alaska-braces-for-strong-storm-possible-floods/2022/09/16/70bd519e-35a9-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/western-alaska-braces-for-strong-storm-possible-floods/2022/09/16/70bd519e-35a9-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
In the 1990s, the GOP got a hard push to the right
Pat Buchanan speaks at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. “There is a religious war going on in this country,” he told the delegates. “It is a cultural war … for the soul of America.” (Ron Edmonds/AP)
“In the long run, history will validate Donald Trump’s stand on a border wall,” Patrick Buchanan, the former Nixon and Reagan White House aide and Republican presidential candidate, wrote in 2019. “Why? Because mass migration from the global South … is the real existential crisis of the West.” Having proselytized for NAFTA’s repeal, isolationism and the “Buchanan fence” across the Mexican border decades before Trump burst into the political arena, Buchanan urged the president to fend off the “multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural” changes he had long railed against. The op-ed ended with a catchphrase with odious origins: “‘America First!’ is still a winning hand.”
Though Buchanan was years removed from the limelight, the fact that he parroted Trump’s agenda cast light on the improbable journey of the Republican Party away from Ronald Reagan’s principles to take shape as a far more conservative and partisan political force.
Identifying the causes of this radical transformation has engrossed political chroniclers for years. Nearly universally, scholars point to Barry Goldwater’s seminal role in the rise of modern conservatism in the 1960s. This was followed a decade later by the ascension of the New Right, which radicalized the party by stoking racial grievances and exploiting contentious social issues. As one of its leaders, Howard Phillips, explained at the time, “We organize discontent.”
In “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries who Remade American Politics in the 1990s,” Nicole Hemmer, a scholar at the Obama Presidency Oral History Project at Columbia University and a co-founder of The Washington Post’s daily historical analysis section, Made by History, makes an insightful contribution to this body of work by examining how a new breed of Republicans propelled the party further to the right in the 1990s, steering it away from Reagan even as they continued to pledge allegiance to the former president’s legacy.
Casting Buchanan as a beacon of this movement, Hemmer tracks the party’s adoption of his views and imitation of his pugilistic style despite Buchanan’s exile from the GOP after his surprising 1992 presidential run.
While Buchanan’s stridency displaced the GOP’s country club mores, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s brash demeanor and combative approach polarized Washington during the 1990s. Though politics had always been a combat sport, both parties had regularly collaborated, limiting their biggest confrontations to genuine and consequential disputes throughout the Cold War. Hemmer ably recounts the pitched battles between Gingrich and President Bill Clinton, culminating in Clinton’s impeachment, that shattered this status quo and led Republicans to demonize Democrats, which made coexistence with the opposition, let alone cooperation, repugnant. Gingrich’s “state of perpetual warfare” and “constant revolution” also purged the GOP of moderates and turned its focus away from governing to a fixation on obstructionism highlighted by multiple government shutdowns, a playbook followed by congressional Republicans since 2009.
A new generation of right-wing media pundits encouraged these tactics. As Hemmer points out, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Dinesh D’Souza and lesser-known copycats chastised Republicans for striking deals in a constitutional framework designed for compromise. No matter how intractable or mean-spirited they seemed, their capacity to induce outrage and deliver political entertainment skyrocketed their popularity on talk radio and cable television: Limbaugh, the most prominent of the bunch, emerged as the party’s kingmaker.
Considering Hemmer’s description of the GOP’s evolution, it comes as no surprise that by 2020, there were only remnants of Reagan’s legacy. Republicans maintained conservative positions on religious liberty, gay rights and other social issues, and espoused a strong military and lower taxes while paying lip service to a smaller government and budgetary restraint.
Unbending positions on other hot-button issues, however, bore little resemblance to Reagan’s. His willingness to raise taxes, support modest gun-control measures and grant amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants would have made him anathema among current Republicans.
Just as significant, the party’s populist rhetoric and isolationism turned its back on free markets and globalization, concepts it had erstwhile cast in divine terms.
From a stylistic standpoint, the differences were starker. Reagan, the “Great Communicator,” beamed with optimism when espousing America’s virtues as a “shining city upon a hill.” Gloomy, resentful and boiling with rage, conservative firebrands, on the other hand, approached politics with apocalyptic fervor. “There is a religious war going on in this country,” Buchanan declared at the 1992 GOP convention, for instance. “It is a cultural war … for the soul of America.”
No one personified this dramatic shift in temperament more than Trump. He gleefully belittled his opponents with pejorative nicknames, mocked venerated public officials such as John McCain, and made sexist, racist and xenophobic remarks. When protesters clashed with his supporters, his campaign rallies carried the vibe of professional wrestling events. In one instance, Trump urged the audience to “knock the crap out of them.” Despite the hand-wringing by party leaders like Paul Ryan, Trump’s dominance became evident during the 2016 Republican convention when the delegates — mimicking the rowdier crowds at his rallies — chanted “lock her up” in repeated calls to imprison Hillary Clinton.
While Hemmer and others — Dana Milbank’s “The Destructionists” comes to mind — have comprehensively explored the roots of the GOP’s metamorphosis over the past 60 years, the Democrats’ failure to effectively challenge this brand of conservatism has received less scrutiny. As Democrats moved to the right under Bill Clinton, they allowed Republicans to set the agenda and, with a few exceptions like the Affordable Care Act, spent most of their energy trying to preserve the liberal accomplishments of the Great Society rather than offering compelling alternatives. Their focus on national elections also ceded control of state governments to the GOP, allowing Republicans to enact ever-more extreme legislation on abortion and gun control over the past three decades.
The more pressing question is why the GOP’s base has been so willing to tolerate if not condone crass behavior, racist overtones, political violence and authoritarian threats to democracy even in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and Trump’s far-fetched stolen-election claims. This collective mind-set has granted him cultlike status: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he famously boasted in 2016. “It’s like incredible.”
Political observers have offered economic insecurity, racism, xenophobia, globalization, gerrymandering, misinformation, siloed media consumption, social media and authoritarian tendencies as a credible yet frightening list of explanations. For anyone studying the rise of right-wing extremism, the next step is to go beyond making these diagnoses to finding a cure for them.
The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s
Basic. 358 pp. $32. | 2022-09-16T11:10:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries who Remade American Politics in the 1990s by Nicole Hemmer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/1990s-gop-got-hard-push-right/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/1990s-gop-got-hard-push-right/ |
Want politics to be better? Focus on future generations.
To build a sustainable world for our descendants, we need to create institutions that keep their lives in mind.
Perspective by William MacAskill
Tyler John
A young climate activist holding a placard reading "Save our planet" during a protest march on the "Youth Day" at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, U.K., on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021. Climate negotiators at the COP26 summit were banking on the worlds most powerful leaders to give them a boost before they embark on two weeks of fraught discussions over who should do what to slow the rise in global temperatures. (Jonne Roriz/Bloomberg)
In 2015, the residents of Yahaba, a rural town in northern Japan, faced a choice. The town’s water infrastructure was decaying, but rebuilding it would be expensive and would probably require raising taxes. The residents had been unable to reach a decision. In a bid to break the deadlock, they gathered together to attempt a bold new experiment in political imagination.
The residents began the meeting by discussing their present-day priorities: keeping taxes manageable while maintaining a clean and affordable water supply. Next came something more unusual: They donned ceremonial yellow robes and underwent a kind of “mental time travel.” Together, they imagined that they were Yahaba residents from the year 2060, facing a water sustainability crisis brought on by their ancestors’ failure to properly invest in infrastructure. Struck by the vividness of this vision, Yahaba’s residents reached a consensus: They would raise the water tax rate by 6 percent, enough to future-proof the supply.
Japan’s Future Design workshops, now a worldwide phenomenon, always yield the same lesson: Made to see our decisions through the eyes of our descendants, we can and do extend the horizon of policymaking, thinking beyond the next few political terms. Yet most governments don’t institutionalize the perspective of future generations.
It’s easy to think of humanity’s future as a bloodless abstraction, but future people will live lives just as real as our own. Right now, none of these people have a say in the decisions we make that shape their world. The present generation rules like a clumsy despot over the generations to come. Our shortcomings on particular issues that imperil the future share this common cause: that future generations receive almost no consideration in our political decision-making. We should fix that.
The struggle to document covid-19 for future generations
Climate change gives a stark example of the need to consider future people. Carbon dioxide’s average atmospheric life span is in the tens of thousands of years. When the damage accumulates over many succeeding generations, we will have had plenty of advance warning.
Political shortsightedness goes far beyond climate change. One hope amid the devastation of the pandemic was that governments would at last meaningfully invest in pandemic preparedness. This has not happened.
Eventually, our unseriousness about pandemics will prove ruinous. We could see the coronavirus again, or worse, an engineered pathogen with greater infectiousness and lethality. And that’s not for want of promising strategies: We could bolster our international institutions for rapidly mobilizing a joint response. We could stockpile advanced personal protective equipment or invest in a global early-detection network for finding pandemic-potential pathogens in wastewater.
But we could also think toward the even longer term and protect future generations by institutionalizing their perspective in government. This won’t be easy. We can’t literally give them the vote or hear their voices. So we have to get creative. We will have to represent the interests of future generations like a parent looking after an infant who cannot yet make decisions about her future. We can start with our moral and political culture. Future people have little role in today’s public discourse and attitudes. That needs to change: We need to foster widespread public concern for our descendants.
In the case of climate change, this shift in thinking is already underway. Where governments have implemented environmental reform, it’s owing to sustained conversation and advocacy across the world — kindled in the 1960s in books like Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” up to today’s “Fridays for Future” youth protests led by Greta Thunberg. Environmentalists have championed ideas such as sustainability and rights for future generations, and shown us how the consequences of our actions, such as carbon emissions and species extinctions, will affect not just the present generation but many to come.
But beyond climate change, we lack a focused movement united around future generations. We almost never discuss, in sober terms, the extinction-level threats that could put our entire future at risk. And we rarely dare to look beyond the next few centuries to consider the fate of humanity across the fullness of time.
A movement for future generations could begin by championing the use of forecasting in political decision-making. In one major experiment conducted with U.S. intelligence agencies, subject-matter experts performed no better than chance on multiple-choice questions about the outcomes of major world events. But other people — known as “superforecasters” — reliably outperformed the crowd. The superforecasters often didn’t have impressive expert credentials; they included a retired pipe installer, a filmmaker and a former dancer. What they did have in common was a set of principles and techniques: eschewing vagueness in favor of quantitative estimates, extrapolating from general trends, paying attention to “base rates” and the “outside view.” Owing to these skills, public forecasting sites such as Metaculus — mostly frequented by forecasting hobbyists — were about a month ahead of the curve on predicting that the coronavirus outbreak would turn into a pandemic. Governments could create a forecasting agency staffed by people trained in these skills, delivering quantitative forecasts to other departments. Foresight in politics is a rare art; we could turn it into a science.
Kids are living with the climate catastrophe. That doesn't mean they believe in it.
Other concrete reforms could further help us care for future generations. Since emerging technologies are likely to shape the lives of those generations, we should ensure that our decision-makers understand them. In the United States, the congressional Office of Technology Assessment played this role for more than 20 years, producing more than 750 nonpartisan reports on topics such as medical innovations and space tech. In 1995, however, it was defunded. Today, major tech-related policy decisions in the United States are often shockingly ill-informed. That’s especially worrying given that we’re witnessing enormous changes — and potentially very dangerous ones — in fields such as AI and synthetic biology. But the solution is close to hand: We can revive expert advisory boards for consequential technologies.
We also need to make it someone’s job to represent the interests of future generations so that they cannot be ignored in political decisions. Could we scale up the Future Design experiments of Yahaba to the level of a country? Introduce a permanent citizens’ assembly for the future? A novel legislative chamber?
We’re not putting forward these suggestions with confidence. Any such proposals would need to be handled with enormous care. Proxy representation can easily be co-opted by lobbyists and special-interest groups. And bureaucratic complexity has real costs. California’s environmental impact assessments, for instance, require proposed building projects to meet environmental standards. It’s a noble idea — but this requirement can slow the construction of affordable housing, leaving an ever-larger number of people homeless or paying inflated rent. California’s homeless population is up roughly 40 percent since just 2015, making it the state with the largest homeless population and double the per population national average. If we’re not careful, creating a well-intentioned bill or office for future generations could easily make things worse, becoming yet another tool for parties to pursue their short-term interests, justified through opaque and partisan claims about the needs of future generations.
But the right response isn’t to throw up our hands and ignore future generations altogether. We need thoughtful institutional experimentation, undertaken in a spirit of humility, incrementalism and exploration. As the residents of Yahaba realized, it’s time for a politics of the long term. | 2022-09-16T11:10:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Want politics to be better? Focus on future generations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/future-design-yahaba-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/future-design-yahaba-politics/ |
The life of Jay Gould, America’s most cunning Wall Street wizard
Review by Dennis Drabelle
Financier Jay Gould in an early portrait. Gould made a fortune in the stock market, becoming one of 19th-century America's “robber barons.” (VCG Wilson/Bettmann Archive)
Jason “Jay” Gould (1836-1892) may have been the most astute analyst of stock markets in American history. He was also a brilliant strategist in any scrap over money. For a good example of Gould’s cunning, consider how he outgeneraled his fellow robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt in what might be called the Bovine War, as chronicled in Greg Steinmetz’s smart new biography of Gould, “American Rascal.”
For several years Gould had a controlling share of the Erie Railroad, and Vanderbilt owned its rival, the New York Central. At one point, Vanderbilt slashed his fee for transporting cattle across New York state to a paltry $1 a head. The Erie was already short of cash, and Vanderbilt set his price predatorily low in order to “bury the railroad and take Gould down with it.” Gould and his bumptious crony Jim Fisk fought back by buying cows in Chicago and, in Steinmetz’s words, “shipping them to market at Vanderbilt’s bargain rates.” An aide to the commodore reported that when his boss “found out he was carrying the cattle of his enemies at great expense to himself, he nearly lost his reason.” Vanderbilt begrudgingly called Gould “the smartest man in America.”
I showcase this incident because its relative simplicity sets it apart from most of Gould’s other financial machinations, which ran the gamut from convoluted to byzantine. His specialty was shorting stock, a deal in which you agree to sell shares you don’t yet own, at a specified price on a date certain, gambling that the price will go down in the meantime. If it does, you purchase the shares at the new, lower price and deliver them to your buyer, who must pay the previously agreed-upon higher price, thus giving you a profit. (If the stock is higher on the due date, however, you incur a loss.) The waiting period can be harrowing, but not only would Gould have done his homework on that stock, he was prepared to manipulate the market, legally or not, to get the return he wanted.
Of English Puritan descent, he was the son of a farmer who scratched out a living in the Catskills. Gould was not physically impressive (Steinmetz describes him as “short — almost elfin — and frail”), and his health was less than robust. But he was a bear for work, especially the work of educating himself, and precocious to boot. Commissioned to write a history of his home county, at the age of 18 he delivered a book that the New York Times called “admirable.”
After doing well in the tanning business, Gould moved to Manhattan with a clear sense of purpose. “There are magicians’ skills to be learned on Wall Street,” he wrote to a friend in 1860, “and I mean to learn them.”
Steinmetz, a partner in a money management firm, devotes several gripping chapters to what happened when Gould applied his magician’s skills to gold, taking advantage of conflicting views within the Grant administration on the gold standard for U.S. currency. It’s a saga with multiple players and ups and downs galore — the historian Henry Adams wrote that “the very hazard and splendor of the attempt [to make a killing] were the reasons for its fascination to Mr. Jay Gould.”
Fascinating or not, the endeavor culminated in a financial panic on Sept. 24, 1869, which became known as Black Friday. Gould profited handsomely but crookedly; he “escaped prison,” Steinmetz writes, “because of … his corruption, in collaboration with [William ‘Boss’] Tweed, of the New York judiciary.”
Railroads became one of Gould’s passions — he collected them until, in 1881, he owned or controlled 16,000 miles of track, “giving him 15 percent of the largest, most important industry in the country.” He acquired the New York World newspaper and bent it to the service of his deals.
In private life, Gould was a model of good behavior. He was faithful to his wife, doted on his children, and went to pieces on hearing that his frequent co-conspirator Fisk had been shot and killed by a rival for the favors of Fisk’s current floozy. And Gould can hardly be blamed for taking advantage of how lightly the stock markets were regulated in his day. Yet he engaged in inside trading and bribery on such a scale that few other financiers have fleeced the public more thoroughly.
Summing up, Steinmetz writes that Gould’s “takeover of Manhattan Railway robbed small investors who naively believed the scaremongering of [his] New York World. Taxpayers financed the dividends that Gould pulled from the Union Pacific [Railroad]. Farmers suffered the monopoly rates he demanded on short hauls. … His gold adventure nearly brought down a presidency.”
Gould died of tuberculosis at age 56 without having used some of his fortune to establish an atoning institution, such as the universities founded by his fellow robber barons Leland Stanford and Vanderbilt. His punishment is to have slipped into near-obscurity. Yet he did make one enduring contribution to the public weal, if unintentionally. Gould wreaked financial havoc on such a monumental scale as to demonstrate how badly American markets were in need of government policing.
Dennis Drabelle, a former contributing editor of Book World, is the author of “The Great American Railroad War.”
How Jay Gould Built Wall Street’s Biggest Fortune
By Greg Steinmetz | 2022-09-16T11:10:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street’s Biggest Fortune by Greg Steinmetz - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/life-jay-gould-americas-most-cunning-wall-street-wizard/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/life-jay-gould-americas-most-cunning-wall-street-wizard/ |
Sticklewort, or Agrimonia eupatoria L. from the family Rosaceae (Collection MNHN).
By closely examining them, photographer Thierry Ardouin says he found a better appreciation for life itself. They also inspired him to make a book with his images.
By Bronwen Latimer
Thierry Ardouin
Seeds are embryos.
Some are so tiny they ride on the wings of birds to distant places undetected. Others drop noisily to the ground, with infinitesimal leaves, stems and roots tucked tightly inside protective layers of nourishing endosperm and a fibrous coat. Some look almost like the mature plants they will grow to become, others just look like little balls. Seed vaults around the world house thousands of them as carefully as precious gems. At last count, Britain’s Millennium Seed Bank held 2.4 billion types of seeds representing almost 40,000 different species.
Photographer Thierry Ardouin, whose work appears here, did not intend to photograph seeds in 2009; instead, he wanted to create a story about French agriculture, an industry that accounted for 1.6 percent of the French economy in 2021, according to the World Bank. But as he went about his research, Ardouin discovered a French law that requires farmers to buy seeds from a seed catalogue assembled during World War II. Illegal seeds exist, but they are not considered viable, saleable food. Ardouin asked: If the law divides the seeds into two categories, does nature? Do they look different?
And so his seed project began. Ardouin met farmers, members of gardening associations, scientists and, eventually, the archivist at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris (Collection MNHN) in his quest to find answers. After he had collected and studied a range of seeds, he reflected on the larger project. “I thought my job was to show the beauty of the seeds,” Ardouin said. “Yes, there is a political aspect to them, but first is the beauty, the fragility, the precious quality they possess.”
He photographed many categories of seeds — vegetables, fruits, trees, evergreens and flowers. “There are over 500 different varieties of apples,” Ardouin says, “but we see only five or six in the grocery store.”
As Ardouin worked closely with the seeds, he began to see their attributes as personalities, their unique qualities as their strength. Seeds, as tiny or invisible as they may be, are life itself.
The French edition of Ardouin’s book, “Histoires de graines” (“Seed Stories”), was published in June by Tendance Floue with accompanying exhibitions. The photos here are reprinted from his book. | 2022-09-16T11:10:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thierry Ardouin reveals seeds are the answer to a better life for us - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/09/16/everything-begins-here-love-story-about-seeds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/09/16/everything-begins-here-love-story-about-seeds/ |
Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans are mapping out an expansive list of investigative probes that puts some of Trump and the far-right flank’s biggest priorities on the backburner
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as they walk to a news conference about the Biden agenda on Capitol Hill on Nov. 17, 2021. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
He has also started holding regular training sessions for members and staff. One session held earlier this summer for House GOP attorneys, titled “Oversight Education Series: Investigations 101,” laid out strategies for how such probes should be run. Last month, he held another that covered “how to conduct detailed depositions” in accordance with House rules.
“Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” McCarthy tweeted the day of the FBI search, suggesting his intent to subpoena Merrick Garland over what he called the Justice Department’s “intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”
The California Republican has been open about his ambition to ascend to the post of House speaker. But after four years in the minority, two impeachments of President Donald Trump, and a presidency embroiled in oversight investigations, McCarthy and some of his top allies are already facing a challenge to keep apace with members’ hunger to satisfy the base’s zest for retribution. His decisions related to Republicans’ investigative targets will need to be championed by members of his conference eager to motivate voters with evidence of investigative action, underscoring his tenuous path to the speakership.
McCarthy’s efforts to shepherd the conference toward various investigative priorities have conspicuously failed to include targets being championed by some of the loudest voices in the party. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), for example, issued a letter signed by 10 other Republicans earlier this summer calling on House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to “investigate the potential illegal activities revealed in the documentary film 2000 Mules.” And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced articles of impeachment against Biden on his first full day in office. Neither member is likely to have investigative authority in the 119th Congress.
“We’re not going to pick and choose just because somebody has power,” McCarthy said earlier this year regarding calls to impeach Biden. “We’re going to uphold the law. At any time, if someone breaks the law and the ramification becomes impeachment, we would move towards that. But we’re not going to use it for political purposes.”
McCarthy also has been cool to his members’ calls for investigations into Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with his thinking — an issue that puts him out of step with Trump, the far-right flank of the House GOP conference, and a vast slate of election-denying GOP candidates vying for a congressional seat. But he was bullish on the latest object of ire for the base, vowing to investigate the country’s top law enforcement agency after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago.
Just before leaving for August recess, McCarthy declined to say whether investigating the results of the 2020 election was on his oversight agenda, instead listing the economy, cost of living, price of gasoline, origins of the coronavirus and a handful of other items as investigative priorities if the GOP regains the majority. McCarthy also has been reticent to throw his support behind a counter-probe of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 and the lawmakers involved in that effort, according to people familiar with his thinking, and is wary of giving more oxygen to proponents of the “big lie.”
“You can be concerned about election integrity without going full Sidney Powell,” said a senior House GOP aide who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, name-checking the attorney who advised Trump on reversing the outcome of the 2020 election.
If Republicans take the House, McCarthy will be expected to make a number of other determinations that will shape the trajectory of GOP investigations — and the power of election deniers in the conference who have demanded plum committee assignments.
“This is the ‘do something’ Fox News crowd,” said a second senior GOP aide. “They just want scalps. They want [Democrats] to be subpoenaed, kicked off of a committee, and someone to be impeached. McCarthy is going to have to make a decision like that very early.”
After McCarthy was elected minority leader in 2018, he helped cement his relationship with Trump loyalists and House Freedom Caucus members, who are broadly aligned in their support of Trump and his top priorities, by appointing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to lead the House Oversight Committee. Freedom Caucus members have started floating Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), according to people familiar with the discussions, to fill the top open spot on the House Homeland Security Committee.
If Republicans take back the House, Jordan is set to occupy the party’s top spot on the House Judiciary Committee, which is uniquely equipped to investigate the executive branch. However, McCarthy would not say whether he would ultimately support Bishop to lead a committee that would handle investigations into the Southern border — a major priority for Republicans.
“There are multiple candidates running and the steering committee for the 118th Congress will decide that,” a McCarthy aide said in a statement.
The House Freedom Caucus is already trying to lessen the role House GOP leadership plays in picking the powerful committee chairs. One proposal, first reported by the Washington Examiner, outlines a set of rule changes that would give rank-and-file members more power, including a reshuffling of the Steering Committee, by adding more “regional representatives” to the group that chooses which members sit on which committees.
“The Steering Committee makes nearly all decisions on committee assignments for House Republicans, but its makeup does not reflect all House Republicans, and instead it is packed with party leaders and their close allies,” a memo outlining the proposal reads. “As a result, decisions are made based on who is loyal to leadership and who delivers the most fundraising — not who is best qualified.”
The ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (Tex.), hired an investigator last fall who prepared a preliminary report on the Biden administration’s oft-criticized exit from Afghanistan. The 120-page interim report released last month alleged that the Biden administration failed to adequately prepare for the withdrawal and evacuate many Afghan allies who supported U.S. troops.
The report also lays out the minority’s intent to subpoena the State Department for documents and interviews if Republicans win back the majority in November.
“Thirteen U.S. service members died during the Afghanistan evacuation and hundreds of American citizens and tens of thousands of our Afghan partners were left behind,” McCaul said in a statement. “But Congress has struggled since last year to get information from the State Department about what led to this failure. I want to make it clear to our veterans and to the Americans who were abandoned in the country — I will not let up until we get answers and people are held accountable.”
Jordan previewed his investigative agenda during a hearing this summer that featured testimony from Justice Department official Matthew Olsen, quizzing Olsen on whether the FBI targeted outspoken parents who protested coronavirus policies at school board meetings and whether the Justice Department has padded the number of domestic violent extremism cases. Jordan’s committee is also likely to have jurisdiction over the potential impeachment of Mayorkas and some of the most important investigative priorities for the party.
“That will help frame up the 2024 race, when I hope and I think, President Trump is going to run again and we need to make sure that he wins,” Jordan said during an interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference this summer.
Long a target for the right, the renewed scrutiny of Hunter Biden is viewed as a political boon for the House GOP conference — especially ahead of November midterms. “Our base wants us to look at Hunter Biden,” a senior GOP aide said.
Rep. James Comer (Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, has sent letters to banks and the Treasury Department requesting financial records related to the president’s son and his business associates, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Comer has vowed to investigate whether Hunter Biden’s international business dealings created conflicts for his father when he was a U.S. senator, vice president or presidential candidate. An investigation conducted by The Washington Post into Hunter Biden’s dealings with a Chinese energy conglomerate did not find evidence that his father personally benefited.
“This Republican obsession with Hunter Biden is a Fox News talking point,” said a Democratic aide who works on investigations and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “Unlike former president Trump and his family, who used their senior White House positions to advance their own financial interests — and whom Republicans have blindly defended — Hunter Biden is a private citizen who is not a member of the administration. Republicans’ hypocrisy is not lost on the American people.”
McCarthy is also likely create a select committee on China — a continuation of the work of the Republican-led congressional task force investigating China formed by McCarthy in 2020. The task force was initially designed to be bipartisan before Democrats ultimately opted not to join.
While the White House publicly maintains it has not made any assumptions about the midterm elections, the White House Counsel’s Office has staffed up in advance of the potential onslaught of oversight investigations.
The counsel’s office poached the top lawyer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Richard A. Sauber, to oversee responses to subpoenas and oversight efforts, and Ian Sams joined the counsel’s office as a spokesperson focused on responding to congressional investigations earlier this year. The office is likely to add more staff.
“As we have since the transition, we are ensuring the White House is prepared for the issues we are facing or will face in the future, and we have built and continue to build a strong legal team to conduct our work and serve the public and the President,” Sams said in a statement.
If Republicans have learned anything from the House Jan. 6 select committee, it’s the value in creating such a panel with members chosen by the speaker to conduct investigations on a particular topic or subject.
The approach may also highlight the bubbling schism in the conference as GOP firebrands angle to assume more prominent roles in the party’s major investigations if the majority flips. For example, Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) told Breitbart News in an interview last month that there have been discussions about creating a select committee to investigate the Biden family — even as Comer, who is poised to lead the Oversight Committee, has been laying the groundwork to investigate Hunter Biden.
“The House Oversight Committee has expansive oversight authority under House rules,” a Republican Oversight Committee aide said in response to Gaetz’s comments. “Next Congress, Oversight Committee Republicans will continue their investigation into the Biden family’s suspicious business dealings using the power of the gavel to get answers for the American people.” | 2022-09-16T11:10:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | From Afghanistan to Hunter Biden, GOP readies its investigations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/afghanistan-hunter-biden-gop-readies-its-investigations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/afghanistan-hunter-biden-gop-readies-its-investigations/ |
Chile’s new voting rules may have derailed the new Constitution
Many who voted ‘No’ still want a new constitution — just not this one
Analysis by Lautaro Cella
Eli Rau
High school and university students participate in a march demanding improvements in education and a new constitution in Valparaiso, Chile on Sept. 14. Photo by Adriana Thomasa/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (13391220b)
Earlier this month, just 38 percent of Chileans voted in favor of the country’s new constitution. That’s a significant drop in support from 2020, when 78 percent of voters in an October referendum voted in favor of drafting a new constitution. Why did support for replacing Chile’s Pinochet-era constitution fall by half between 2020 and 2022?
Public opinion soured on the new constitution amid disinformation campaigns and claims that the charter was too leftist. And Chilean President Gabriel Boric, who supported the constitution, has declining approval numbers. In the weeks leading up to the referendum, voters appeared to be more responsive to negative vs. positive information about the constitution.
Millennial politicians are shaking up Latin America. Here’s how they differ from the old guard.
But a major shift in election rules also shaped the result. Voting in 2020 was voluntary — but the government announced that voting in 2022 would be compulsory, so turnout jumped from 51 percent to 86 percent. Compulsory voting tilted the scales against the new constitution by boosting turnout among less-interested voters who were more likely to vote for the status quo, and reject the new constitution.
Not all of the turnout boost can be attributed to the compulsory voting rule, of course. The new constitution was likely to fail in any case — but probably not by such dramatic margins.
Chile’s protests help produce a constitutional convention
Chile’s current constitution was written in 1980, during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The military regime designed the constitution to consolidate a limited democracy where parties on the right and the military maintained veto power. A number of major changes in 2005 removed some of the most anti-democratic principles, but many shortcomings remained.
In 2019, frustration with Chile’s conservative institutions boiled over, and massive protests erupted across the country after a transit fare hike. The unifying theme was a call for “dignity,” and opposition to the country’s political elites. After a month of turmoil, almost all political parties in Congress agreed to call a referendum on whether Chile should pursue a new constitution.
In October 2020, citizens voted to begin the constitutional process. And in May 2021, voters elected a constitutional convention to draft the new charter, which included gender parity and guaranteed representation for Indigenous people.
Did voter attitudes change?
Some of the decline in support for Chile’s new constitution was perhaps inevitable. It’s easier to amass support for an abstract idea than for a concrete proposal. Once the constitutional convention put forth an actual draft, opponents could criticize the writing process and specific content, like the declaration of Chile as a “plurinational” country.
Across Latin America, citizens and governments are clashing over their countries’ authoritarian pasts
And voters were more responsive to negative framings of the constitution than positive ones. A study conducted in Chile in August found that framing the constitution negatively — suggesting it was too extreme and divisive — increased opposition. But framing the constitution in positive terms — suggesting it was a reasonable and consensus-driven document — failed to increase support. This study was conducted via an online Netquest panel of 1,204 respondents, a survey sample designed to be nationally representative.
Trust in the constitutional convention declined amid scandals and a perception that the convention’s work was too polarizing. Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP) surveys in 2021 and 2022 show that as the referendum approached, citizens grew more pessimistic about whether the new constitution would improve things, as shown in the figure below.
Why turnout in 2022 would not look like 2020
Alongside declining public opinion, turnout patterns also shifted. The overwhelming support for a constitutional convention in 2020 reflected, in part, an asymmetry in mobilization. Political parties and civil society organizations on the left and center-left were united in favor of drafting a new constitution, while those on the right were divided.
Partisanship is low in Chile, but it still mobilizes voters when parties send clear cues about their preferred outcome. In 2020, left-leaning Chileans reported turning out at far higher rates than right-leaning Chileans, by a 17-point margin. This large ideological gap in reported turnout was unusual for Chile.
But while those on the right were divided over drafting a new constitution in 2020, they were united against it in 2022. The left remained united in favor of the constitution, but the center-left was now divided.
In light of widespread negative attitudes towards political parties, non-governmental organizations formed by citizens took center stage in 2022. Both campaigns made an effort to appeal to moderate and non-ideological voters. Even if voting weren’t mandatory in this month’s referendum, voters probably would have turned out at relatively equal levels across the ideological spectrum — resembling 2017 more than 2020.
Mandatory voting did not help the new constitution
Compulsory voting probably tilted the scales against the new constitution. When voting is voluntary, undecided voters often stay home. But when voting is compulsory, they tend to vote in favor of the status quo — in this case, against adopting a new constitution.
This pattern also helps to explain why polls underestimated the margin of defeat. In the final weeks of campaigning, top-line poll numbers pointed to a victory for the “No” side with a 12-point lead. But the top-line results obscure an important statistic: the number of undecided voters.
Across these polls, 13 percent of respondents stated that they still didn’t know how they would vote as the referendum approached. If undecided voters broke for the “No” at a four-to-one rate, the polling numbers would line up exactly with the outcome, where 62 percent voted to reject the new constitution.
Despite the resounding defeat, the process won’t end here. Many who voted “No” want a new constitution — just not this constitution.
In a speech acknowledging the defeat of the constitution he supported, President Boric praised the democratic process and widespread participation. He immediately spoke about a new path forward in the effort to replace Chile’s dictatorship-era charter, focusing on achieving a broader consensus in the next constitutional process. What this process will look like remains to be seen.
Lautaro Cella (@lautarocella) is a PhD student in political science at the University of Chicago.
Eli Rau is a postdoctoral researcher at the Latin American Political Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University. | 2022-09-16T11:11:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What happened to Chile's new constitution? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/chile-constitution-mandatory-voting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/chile-constitution-mandatory-voting/ |
At first, areas dense with Black and Latino Americans were left behind. Now, counties dominated by Whites are the laggards.
Analysis by Cary Wu
Margaret LaRaviere gets a flu shot Sept. 9 in Chicago.
Since the beginning of September, the federal government has been rolling out the latest coronavirus shots, tailored to combat the most recent omicron subvariants. But who will actually get the boosters — or for that matter, the original vaccine? Growing evidence shows that in many parts of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities most likely to be exposed to the virus have been vaccinated at lower rates.
But we find something more complicated if we look county by county, over time. My research finds that at first, counties with more racial and ethnic minorities had lower vaccination rates; since then, counties with more Whites have been falling behind. Let’s explore why.
How I did my research
To look at how a county’s racial composition was related to vaccination rates, I looked at two sources: weekly covid-19 vaccination rates of adults 18 and over from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the racial composition of more than 3,000 U.S. counties, looking at Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites, as shown in the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey. Then I compared the vaccination rates of counties dominated by each different racial or ethnic group, and how that changed over time.
Counties with higher percentages of Asians were more likely to have had higher vaccination rates — and that increased over time. By contrast, counties with higher percentages of Blacks had lower vaccination rates at first, although those rates increased over time. At first, counties with higher percentages of Hispanics had low vaccination rates, but that flipped by the end of 2021. Finally, counties with higher percentages of Whites at first had high vaccination rates, but that flipped by late 2021.
You can see all these changes in the figure below.
Who gets to roll up their sleeves?
How do we make sense of these patterns? First, it’s clear that at first, vaccination rates rose more slowly among socioeconomically disadvantaged Black and Hispanic counties than among more affluent Asian and White counties.
Perhaps this is not so hard to understand. The supply of the coronavirus vaccines was limited during the initial phase of the rollout. The uneven rise showed which areas were allocated enough vaccine supply for those who wanted it. Across the country, vaccines were distributed at a much lower rate in disadvantaged areas.
In the United States, residential areas that are disproportionately populated by racial and ethnic minorities have long been disadvantaged in ways that harmed their health, in such ways as living farther from stores selling healthy food to having a harder time reaching hospitals and health care facilities. Perhaps not surprisingly, a recent study documented the fact that Black- and Latino-clustered Zip codes were less likely to include vaccine distribution sites and that proportionately fewer vaccine doses were distributed to areas with more Black residents. My analysis finds a similar pattern.
Paul Farmer's last book teaches us still more about pandemics
Once vaccines were widely available, political ideology mattered more
But why did heavily Black and Hispanic counties start showing higher vaccination rates — and heavily White counties showing lower rates — by the end of 2021? My analysis suggests that the answer comes from those different groups’ political ideologies.
Since April 2021, coronavirus vaccines have become widely available in the United States. But not all Americans want a shot — in large part because of political ideology. Political conservatives tend to be much more skeptical toward science, vaccines and government, a tendency that many conservative media figures have encouraged toward coronavirus vaccines. Republicans are much less willing than Democrats to get vaccinated. Across the country, communities with a high percentage of Republican voters show lower vaccination rates.
Political ideology varies significantly by race. Racial minorities, especially Black Americans, are much more likely to identify as liberal Democrats; and many White Democrats live in urban areas that have more racially diverse populations. In contrast, Whites are more likely to identify as conservative Republicans and to cluster in rural and suburban areas. As a result, counties with higher percentages of Whites who are more conservative have had vaccination rates slow down as time goes on. Meanwhile, when vaccines became widely accessible, counties with higher percentages of racial minorities — many of whom are more liberal — have had a faster increase in vaccination rates.
The pandemic hurt gender equality. A lot.
Omicron booster shots are ready
One key takeaway: Although many observers speculated early on that Black communities were skeptical about the vaccine because of a history of medical mistreatment, in fact, unequal access to vaccines was the biggest reason that, at first, those communities had lower coronavirus vaccination rates. Distributing the omicron booster shot equitably in disadvantaged communities should result in more widespread protection from the next coronavirus wave.
Second, political ideology is probably now the single best predictor of who will be ready to roll up their sleeves for the next shot. Getting everyone vaccinated will require effective political communication. As Robb Willer and David G. Rand explained here at TMC a year ago, having Republican elites endorse vaccination could make a difference.
Cary Wu (@carywoo) is a sociology professor at York University in Ontario, Canada. | 2022-09-16T11:11:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who’s getting vaccinated? The answer has changed since the first wave. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/racial-disparities-covid-vaccines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/racial-disparities-covid-vaccines/ |
On paper, the job of keeping the Senate looks pretty difficult for Democrats — and it is. Republicans need to net just one seat in November’s midterm elections to take back control of the Senate for at least the next two years.
Midterm elections are usually a referendum on the party in power — and historically, the president’s party usually loses. Biden’s approval ratings, though they’ve risen somewhat in recent weeks, currently hover in the 40s. But things have been looking up lately for Democrats, for a variety of reasons: the politics of abortion, lower gas prices and extreme Republican candidates.
Here are six races key to Democrats’ ability to keep the Senate, in order of likelihood. Polls show all of them being very, very close.
1. Keep: Arizona
The Democrats running for reelection in three swing states — Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — are the most vulnerable senators up for election this year. They’re all relatively new to the job, and though voters in these states chose President Biden over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, they did it narrowly.
The Democrat: Sen. Mark Kelly has an impressive résumé: He’s a former astronaut, a prominent gun-control advocate, and husband of former Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. He is also one of Senate Democrats’ best fundraisers, raising tens of millions of dollars for his reelection. He’s running for his first full term after being elected in 2020 to replace the late Republican senator John McCain, flipping the seat. Of all the vulnerable Democrats on this list, Kelly is the one Democratic strategists have the most confidence in. He generally keeps his head down and out of the news and frames himself as a moderate. But Republicans point out that he votes almost exclusively with Democrats and Biden (unlike the his fellow Democrat from Arizona, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema).
The Republican: Blake Masters is one of the most controversial Republican Senate candidates of this year’s midterms. He has embraced the call for denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election. (Biden won Arizona, but Republicans there have been especially committed to false election claims, demanding repeated audits and pushing for major changes in how elections are run in the state.) He also has a history of making inflammatory remarks: For example, 15 years ago on an online chat board, he praised the words of a Nazi leader. He also drove hard to the right on abortion, only to conspicuously try to come back to the center as it became clear that voters were turned off by more extreme ban proposals. (It became national news recently when his website no longer mentioned support for strict abortion bans.) And my Washington Post colleagues report that his top donors — former boss and tech baron Peter Thiel, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — have been fighting over who should have to fund his campaign in its last few months.
Suffice it to say, Republican operatives are pessimistic about Masters flipping this seat. “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell warned this summer. His super PAC later pulled millions of ads reserved for Masters.
The biggest GOP flip flops on abortion
2. Keep: Nevada
The Democrat: Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is the first Latina U.S. senator ever, and she’s found her footing in this election by running as a lawmaker standing between Republicans and a national abortion ban. “There is no doubt in my mind that the Republicans in the Senate right now — that some of them are writing a draft legislation to further restrict abortion in this country,” she said in July, The Post’s Hannah Knowles reports. (That turned out to be prescient.)
But voters in Nevada are notoriously hard to get to the polls. Many in Las Vegas only live there for a few years, or work long or odd hours. And there are signs that the state’s sizable Latino population isn’t as inclined to vote Democratic as it once was.
The Republican: Adam Laxalt is a fairly well-known name in Nevada politics. He is the grandson of a former Nevada governor and was the state’s attorney general. But he’s got views on the 2020 presidential election (he’s said it was “rigged”) as well as abortion (he’s called Roe v. Wade a “joke”) that could be a mismatch for a blue-leaning state. He’s working to broaden his appeal, by saying he does not support a federal abortion ban and by talking nonstop about inflation, which has hit Nevada workers particularly hard.
3. Keep: Georgia
The Democrat: Sen. Raphael G. Warnock pulled off a massive win in 2021 in a runoff for a special election. Now he’s running for the full, six-year term. What happens in his reelection will shed light on whether his and Biden’s narrow win in Georgia (alongside Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff) is something Democrats can replicate in this traditionally conservative state.
Warnock is Georgia’s first Black senator and a prominent pastor. He’s campaigning in rural areas on Biden’s bipartisan wins like more benefits to veterans. But his efforts to get Congress to pass a national voting-rights law — Georgia Republicans passed one of the most restrictive voter laws in the nation after the 2020 election — failed, disappointing many in his base.
The Republican: Herschel Walker is another controversial Senate candidate. (Sensing a theme with Republicans and these toss-up races?) The domestic violence allegations against him are getting a lot of attention. In an ad, his ex-wife recounts “the first time he held a gun to my head.” (Walker does not deny the assault, saying he struggled with mental health issues.) There are questions about his business dealings, a charity he’s involved in and whether he tried to hide the existence of three of his children. And then there are his gaffes: “Don’t we have enough trees around here?” he said recently, about addressing climate change. But Walker managed to get support from top Senate Republicans and Trump for his nomination.
If Democrats hold the three seats above (plus another that leans in their favor, Sen. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire), they can keep their delicate 50-50 majority. But they also have a chance to expand it by taking down some Republicans. Here are some other races to keep an eye on:
4. Flip: Pennsylvania
The Republican: It’s an open seat, with Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R) retiring. GOP voters nominated Mehmet Oz, a TV star doctor who has Trump’s endorsement. He comes across as awkward on the campaign trail and struggled to downplay his extreme wealth and questions about his ties to Pennsylvania. Yet he’s a Republican in a state that voted for Trump in 2016 and almost did so again in 2020.
The Democrat: John Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, cuts a singular figure in politics: He’s bald, 6-foot-9, tattooed and campaigns in a hoodie and gym shorts. He supports policies that align him with the liberal wing of his party, such as universal health care, which could be too liberal for this swing state. Another weakness may be that he suffered a serious stroke during the primary, originally downplayed it, and then had to take months off the campaign to recover. But he’s been a savvy campaigner, and a new poll shows him narrowly leading Oz.
5. Flip: Wisconsin
The Republican: Wisconsin is a tougher — but possible — win for Democrats. Sen. Ron Johnson (R) is his party’s most vulnerable senator. He is the only Republican senator running for election this year in a state that voted for Biden. He has also leaned into misinformation in the Trump era, from the coronavirus to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and it’s affecting his popularity in this swing state. (The Jan. 6 congressional committee revealed texts that showed Johnson’s staff tried to give Vice President Mike Pence a slate of illegitimate electors that day. “Do not give that to him,” the vice president’s staff responded.) In the past, observers have made the mistake of prematurely counting Johnson out, only for him to surprise nearly everyone and win reelection.
The Democrat: Barnes is Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor. He’s mostly liberal, young (35) and aiming to be the first Black senator from Wisconsin. While he inspires liberals in the state, he also once posed with an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt, and there’s evidence from a recent Marquette University Law School poll that independent voters are shifting away from Barnes.
6. Flip: Ohio
The Republican: This is an open seat too, held by a retiring Republican. J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and author, has Trump’s endorsement but has gained a reputation for out-there, right-wing rhetoric. His campaign for this open seat has struggled to gain momentum.
The Democrat: Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan has made inroads with independent voters, a recent poll shows, but he’s also a Democrat (who votes with Biden most of the time) in a state increasingly hesitant to elect Democrats statewide. Ohio, which used to be considered a swing state, is less and less often seen as competitive for Democrats — it voted for Trump twice. | 2022-09-16T11:11:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats can keep Senate control with these six crucial races - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/senate-control-midterm-elections-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/senate-control-midterm-elections-2022/ |
Friday briefing: Trump special master appointment; what’s happening in Martha’s Vineyard; mortgage rates; Roger Federer; and more
A special master was named to review documents found in Trump’s home.
What to know: A former federal judge will sort through material, including classified documents, taken last month from former president Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, before they can be used in an investigation.
In other news: The Justice Department issued dozens of subpoenas last week, showing it’s looking into just about everything related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
What else? Georgia’s 2020 election investigation may lead to prison sentences.
Dozens of migrants are stranded after Florida flew them to Martha’s Vineyard.
Why? It’s an escalation of Republican governors’ protests of U.S. immigration policy. Arizona and Texas have been busing migrants from the southern border to D.C. and other more Democratic cities for months.
What happened? The migrants thought they were headed to large cities with work and housing programs, instead of the remote Massachusetts resort island.
What now? The state, which didn’t know this was coming, is rushing to figure out how to help.
Ukraine discovered a mass burial site in a city it retook from Russia.
What we know: There could be hundreds of bodies at the site in Izyum, in the east, but officials are still investigating.
Intelligence snapshot: The U.S. expects months of intense fighting to come in the war, despite Ukraine’s recent victories.
The cost of borrowing money to buy homes keeps climbing.
What to know: Mortgage rates rose above 6% for the first time in 14 years, according to data released yesterday. They have nearly doubled over the past nine months.
Why? In part because the U.S. central bank has raised interest rates four times this year (with more expected) — one of the only tools it has to fight rising prices.
Why this matters: It’s making homebuying much more expensive (use this calculator to see for yourself) and cooling the housing market.
Older adults who get coronavirus may have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s.
How we know this: A new study that looked at the health records of more than 6 million Americans over age 65 found a link between the two.
Why this matters: It tells us more about the potential long-term consequences of the virus, although more research is needed.
Tennis star Roger Federer announced his retirement.
What to know: The 41-year-old Swiss athlete posted a video yesterday saying an event in London next week will be his last.
He’s one of the best of all time: Federer has 20 Grand Slam titles, including eight Wimbledon wins, over his 24-year career.
Holiday flights are going to be expensive this year.
What to know: Prices are expected to be the highest in five years — $350 round-trip on average for Thanksgiving and $463 for Christmas.
What you can do: Start tracking prices now and book soon. This month is usually the sweet spot for getting the best deals.
And now … some weekend advice: How to save money while grocery shopping. Plus, what to read: Five new thrillers perfect for the start of spooky season. | 2022-09-16T11:11:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Friday, Sept. 16 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/16/what-to-know-for-september-16/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/16/what-to-know-for-september-16/ |
Dancer and teacher Oleksandr Shapoval, a father of two who volunteered for the army, is remembered as “a pure and bright soul”
Ukrainian dancer Oleksandr Shapoval, in performance with the National Opera of Ukraine, retired from the stage in 2021. (National Opera of Ukraine)
The recent Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces has been hailed as a stunning success, offering a jolt of optimism in a grueling nearly seven-month-old war. But the battlefield death earlier this week of beloved Ukrainian ballet star Oleksandr Shapoval, a father of two remembered as “a pure and bright soul,” crystallizes the dreadful cost of the nation’s military victories.
Shapoval, along with countless Ukrainian civilians, joined the territorial defense forces, patrolling Kyiv’s left bank, according to a statement from the national ballet. Then the 48-year-old Shapoval stepped up his military commitment — by joining the army. He trained as a grenade launcher and was sent to the front, where he died Monday in mortar shelling, the company said.
‘You breathe the polluted air’: A dancer, director and conductor reflect on what Putin’s funding, and his war, mean for the arts in Russia
Moskalenko said she sees Shapoval’s sacrifice as a double tragedy: for his family — his wife, 22-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter — and for the nation and its culture.
When war hit Ukraine, dancers mobilized like never before
And in the tightknit world of ballet, where students learn from personal attention rather than from books, scripts or scores, the loss of even one teacher with the breadth of experience and personal qualities of Shapoval can leave a significant hole. It means one less artist participating in the vital, hands-on chain of transmission upon which ballet depends — a chain of human contact, through which the secrets of interpretation and technique are physically passed from teacher to student through time. And from the veteran artist to a new member of the corps de ballet.
“He was an example that it doesn’t matter what your occupation is but what kind of person you are inside. And in the case of Oleksandr,” Moskalenko said, “he was a true hero — not only on the stage, but in real life.” | 2022-09-16T11:12:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Death of Ukrainian dancer on battlefield underscores costs of war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/16/dancer-killed-ukraine-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/16/dancer-killed-ukraine-war/ |
How Miami became the center of America’s rental housing crisis
Limited land availability and high demand from Latin American investment buyers and migrants relocating for remote work are driving up rents
By Deirdra Funcheon
K. Brown, a middle school English teacher in Miami-Dade public schools, rents a one-bedroom apartment that is 20 miles from her job in downtown Miami and costs her $1,370 a month — about half of her take-home salary — and she shares its only bedroom with her teenage son.
She’s grateful, though. People signing new leases in the same complex are paying $1,500 to $1,700 per month, she said.
“When he was little, it was perfect,” the single mom said with a sigh. But now her son is 14 and still sleeping in a metal loft bed above her queen bed. The room is cramped by Target bookshelves and storage bins.
“He’s getting older,” Brown said. “I need to move.”
Across America, nearly 60 percent of tenants faced rent hikes in the past year, with about a third facing price increases of 10 percent or more, according to a Freddie Mac survey released in August.
Yet only 38 percent saw wages increase, and of those, 32 percent said the raise isn’t enough to cover their rent increase. In Miami, the median household income is $44,581. Yet rents in South Florida rose 24.61 percent between July 2021 and July 2022, to an average of $2,841, which works out to $34,092 over a year. RentCafe found that 97.6 percent of apartments in Miami-Dade County are occupied, and every vacant one has 31 prospective renters competing for it.
Buying is out of the question for many – the median asking price for a home in Miami is $600,000. At the end of June, U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Marcia L. Fudge declared the city “the epicenter of the housing crisis in this country.”
Brown, who spoke on the condition that her full first name not be used, hopes that by next year, she can find a two-bedroom in Miramar, north of the Miami-Dade county line. Otherwise, she’ll look at moving to the west coast of Florida, or Atlanta.
“I just hope that they start looking at the teaching profession as an actual profession, and start paying teachers and treat them differently,” Brown said. “They’re going to lose all the residents.”
The current rent crisis is a product of several forces converging on Miami.
South Florida is land-constrained between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades, with scarcity driving up prices for available parcels. The city has long been an investment magnet for Latin Americans from politically unstable countries who would prefer to park their money in real estate rather than banks in their homeland; recent elections that tilted left in Chile and Colombia set off a new wave of buyers.
Over the past few years, Miami has drawn an influx of high-profile financiers attracted by Florida’s lack of income tax as well as people who moved during the pandemic from other parts of the country, drawn by prospects of remote work. Meanwhile, construction costs are rising and insurance prices are skyrocketing.
But while there’s a huge demand for housing for the middle class, those forces combined make it challenging for private developers to build it.
“It’s like a perfect, perfect storm right now is happening in Miami,” said Masoud Shojaee, a real estate developer whose firm, Shoma Group, has been active in Miami since the 1980s developing everything from single-family residences to commercial properties.
As Florida home prices spike, middle-class residents wonder if they can afford to stay
While developers have tried to add housing supply, he explained, they face certain constraints.
On Aug. 1, the firm completed an apartment building called Shoma Village in the traditionally working-class, Latino neighborhood of Hialeah.
“We really wanted to give that city something for the [young adults] — so that they would stay within the city,” said Stephanie Shojaee, Masoud Shojaee’s wife and president of Shoma Group.
Rents at Shoma Village run about $2.90 per square foot, with studios starting at $2,060 a month.
Normally, Shoma lures tenants to properties by paying brokers commissions and giving tenants one free month rent. In the current market, that’s not necessary, and the firm has had to bring in extra leasing teams to handle the demand.
Rents have to be priced around market rate to enable developers to get tens of millions of dollars in financing to construct a building, Masoud said. “You’ve got to show a return. If the return is too low, it’s very difficult to get a loan because the lender is going to say, ‘Well, I’m risking so much. If something goes wrong, you don’t have any room to do anything.”
For Salim Chraibi, chief executive of Bluenest Development, a small firm that builds homes aimed at low- and middle-income buyers, the problem comes down to land.
His company builds homes that sell for up to $352,000 for buyers who make 80 percent to 140 percent of the area median income.
While the program, which works with the county, is a boon to eligible buyers — purchasers only have to make a 1 percent down payment and receive help with the closing costs — it has done little to ease prices in the rental market, he said.
The program operates “on the condition that that’s going to be their first home and that they’re going to be living there. So they cannot be renting them out.”
Ian Brice Eichner, who developed perhaps the most recognizable building on South Beach, the Continuum, agreed that unless governments provide property or other incentives, the private sector is unlikely to find solutions to the crisis on its own.
“It’s not even a question of, ‘Can you make any money?’ Can you simply get a lender to write or to do a loan?” he said. “If the land is a bloody fortune, and the density is [low] and interest costs are set, you don’t have to go to Harvard Business School to know it can’t work.”
Rents are rising everywhere. See how much prices are up in your area.
Albert Milo Jr., a senior vice president of Related Urban Development Group, which is focused on affordable housing, said his firm uses tax-exempt bond financing, low-income housing tax credits, city and county subsidy programs and more. “These transactions, they require four or five layers of financing to do. They’re pretty complex,” he said.
And while Florida has a trust fund that’s supposed to be used for affordable housing, legislators have taken about $2 billion from it since 2003 and directed it to other uses.
While supply is playing catch-up, then maybe demand will go down?
Ryan Shear, managing partner of Property Markets Group, says that’s unlikely.
PMG has multiple projects in the works, including a Waldorf Astoria condo development, where 85 percent of the units are already sold and what’s left starts at $4 million. But he’s also developed apartment buildings at a lower price point, such as X Miami and Society Las Olas, where individuals could rent a bedroom and bathroom in a shared unit.
“Our original thesis there, seven, eight years ago was, ‘Hey, rental rates are getting kind of expensive across the country. Let’s create a product where a three-bedroom [has] three individual leases versus one lease.”
The model worked so well that PMG is developing similar projects in Nashville, Atlanta and Orlando.
“Florida’s not going down,” he said. “I would be the first to tell you if we saw it. We get to see it on the front lines, just by the amount of people that walk into the sales center. … [August] has been nuts. And I just don’t see it changing.” | 2022-09-16T11:30:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Miami is hit the hardest in America’s rental housing crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/miami-center-america-rental-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/16/miami-center-america-rental-crisis/ |
Mom who told daughter to hit basketball rival must apologize, pay $9K
He said that because of the diversion, Hunt does not need to enter a plea, and he expects the case will be dismissed in the next six to 12 months. It’s unclear if Hunt’s daughter is facing charges. The district attorney’s office said in a news release that it is prohibited under state law from “discussing anything related to juvenile investigations.” Greenfield did not respond to a question about possible charges against Hunt’s daughter. | 2022-09-16T11:47:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mom who told daughter to hit another basketball player must apologize - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/16/latira-hunt-apology-basketball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/16/latira-hunt-apology-basketball/ |
Running together to honor sacrifices and achievements of African Americans
The Richmond event, created by the foundation of ‘Amistad’ actor Djimon Hounsou, will take participants past historic sites and celebrate unity in diversity
By Anna Katherine Clemmons
Djimon Hounsou, actor and producer, shown in 2019 during a visit to the Ark of Return at U.N. headquarters in New York. (Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)
Several years ago, actor Djimon Hounsou was visiting his home country of Benin. As he looked out on the West African coast, he thought about what it represented; specifically, its significance in the transatlantic slave trade.
Hounsou starred in the Steven Spielberg-directed historical drama “Amistad” in the mid-1990s. While doing so, the 58-year-old actor says he learned much more about the history of the African people and how, in the aftermath of the slave trade, many lost the knowledge of their families, origins and ancestry. “We are talking about a severe identity issue,” Hounsou said. “If you don’t know where you come from, you sure don’t know who you are.”
That realization was one of the inspirations behind his founding of the Djimon Hounsou Foundation in 2019 on Dec. 2, which the United Nations marks as the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. The foundation aims, in part, to reconnect the people of the African diaspora with their roots and culture, and to fight modern slavery and human trafficking.
On Saturday, as part of that vision, the foundation will host the inaugural Run Richmond 16.19 , the first in a three-part running and concert event series called Africa Reconnect. Planned with events on three continents, it was designed to illustrate how the past is connected to the future while celebrating unity in diversity.
“I thought, what brings a mass of people from a diverse world together?” Hounsou said. “And I realized, it’s only around sports and music that you can bring people from different backgrounds together.”
Richmond and the other two Africa Reconnect event locations — Liverpool, England, and Ouidah, West Africa — are host cities to the Reconciliation Triangle created by Liverpool-based artist Stephen Broadbent. When connected through straight lines, three sculptures form the Triangle of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Triangle of Hope. Each statue is inscripted, “Acknowledge and forgive the past. Embrace the present. Shape a future of reconciliation and justice.”
Participants in Run Richmond 16.19 can choose either a 6.19-mile or a 16.19-kilometer distance, with tiered pricing ranging from $35 to $105. Before each race begins on Saturday morning, the Elegba Folklore Society will perform a drum call and libation ceremony.
As of Thursday afternoon, nearly 600 people had signed up, organizers said.
Each route has runners passing historic points that, DHF Program and Marketing Director Max Plank said, speak to the Black experience and celebrate the impact of African and African American culture.
In designing the routes, Plank studied Richmond’s history and researched extensively online. The foundation collaborated with the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia and other local grass-roots organizations, educational institutions and Black-run businesses and individuals in planning the event festivities and course routes.
“In Richmond, we are fortunate to have a number of African American landmarks or landmarks related to African American history and culture,” said Monroe Harris, BHMVA board president and acting executive director. “But the people that are coming together probably would not be doing so if it weren’t for an event such as this. You are educating people who may not be aware of some of the accomplishments of Black people in culture and history — it increases our awareness and understanding of each other, which if we have that, it makes the world a better place.”
From there, the foundation worked with Sports Backers, a Richmond-area group that supports active lifestyles, to determine possible road closures and logistics in allowing for the participants to experience as many historic landmarks as possible. At three sites along the route, participants will be able to stop and watch a short video on the historical significance of the location; there will also be signs with headlines, a short description and QR codes at 12 different historic markers for participants to scan, listen and learn.
Some notable places — such as the length of historic Monument Avenue and the site of “Rumors of War,” American artist Kehinde Wiley’s bronze sculpture commemorating African American youth facing social and political injustices — couldn’t be incorporated into this year’s course Plank said. But Plank said the foundation hopes to be able to include them as the event grows in future years.
Many other important areas were included. The crossing of different bridges is present on both routes, paralleling the symbolism of the transatlantic slave trade crossing the Atlantic. The route also passes through the historic Jackson Ward neighborhood, Shockoe Bottom and several murals of the “Mending Walls” public art project.
“I’m hoping it will bring a certain journey of experiencing 400 years of Black history, where you can touch and feel,” said Hounsou, who will run the 6.19-mile distance.
Anthony and Tara Clary grew up in the Blackwell neighborhood of Richmond. Several years ago, they founded #WeOfftheCouch, a running group built to bring diversity to running and build community. It has grown to 80 people attending one of the group’s three weekly runs. The members, Tara says, “are people of all shapes, ages, sizes, backgrounds, paces, faces and races. It’s such a beautiful thing because somehow, we have struck a chord with so many different people.”
When they learned of Run Richmond 16.19 six months ago, they were on the phone with Plank that same day, as part of the foundation’s initial outreach to local African American organizations and companies. “That was beautiful to us because we know we hold a special space in this place we’re occupying,” Tara says. “Long-distance running has traditionally been available to upper-middle class Whites. It’s not traditionally a Black or Brown sport.”
Even though they regularly run the streets of Richmond and pass many of these historic sites, the Clarys look forward to the impact it will have. “To experience it in real time, it’ll be a beautiful thing,” Tara says. “It’s connecting African American descendants to their identity. Because of the transatlantic slave trade, we’ve been stripped of our identity in so many ways. This is to commemorate the sacrifices African Americans have made to our nation and world.”
Several of the community partners will set up tents on-site following the race’s finish, including the Afrikana Film Festival taking place the same weekend. The Experience Band and Show will also perform live at the post-race Finish Festival, as will the Elegba Folklore Society along with guest artist Jah Baba from Cotonou, Benin, Hounsou’s home country. Food and drinks will also be available. (The finish area is free to anyone, whether a race participant or not.) | 2022-09-16T12:27:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Actor Djimon Hounsou's foundation hosts run to celebrate unity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/16/richmond-run-djimon-hounsou/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/16/richmond-run-djimon-hounsou/ |
The 34-year-old pitcher, who was the 2019 World Series MVP, had a rib and two neck muscles removed in a surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome.
Stephen Strasburg has not thrown a ball in months. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
For 10 seasons, Stephen Strasburg arrived at Nationals Park with a single-minded focus. There were batters, there were baseballs, and there were all the ways for him to beat his opponents, whether with a pinpoint fastball or a change-up that seemed to fade off the face of the earth.
His 2010 debut was a 14-strikeout gem that showed a wary fan base what was possible between the chalk lines of a diamond. His performance in the fall of 2019 delivered a title for Washington and made him MVP of the World Series. He was dominant when healthy.
But since 2019, when he raised a trophy above his head — when his arms were only heavy because of the long climb to the top — Strasburg has not felt comfortable on a major league mound. And last summer, he literally gave parts of his body to baseball, having had a full rib and two neck muscles removed in a surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome that threatens his career.
He has not thrown a ball in more than three months. He’s not certain he will pitch again.
“I feel like every time I’ve had an injury, I felt like I was going to be the best there is coming back,” Strasburg, 34, told The Washington Post this week “ … This is the one that’s still definitely a big question mark.
‘It’s had some trauma’
To explain how he got here, to the point of not knowing what’s next, Strasburg goes back to 2018. The first sign of thoracic outlet syndrome was lingering tightness in his neck. He spent time on the injured list. After the season, he visited a specialist, who injected Botox into his neck to shut down the muscles and alleviate built-up scar tissue.
Strasburg then had his best winter in years, wondering why he could do so many biceps curls and throw without an aching shoulder despite his extensive injury history. Even before the title run, he made more than 30 starts for the first time in a half decade. He felt that maybe, just maybe, there was new life after all his health complications. But lurking beneath the surface, lending doubt whenever Strasburg stretched his neck or shook his right hand, was so much wear and tear on his neck, shoulder and the rest of his prized arm.
The coronavirus pandemic complicated his progress. When the sport returned from a shutdown, Strasburg felt a “zap” whenever he threw between simulated games. His hand tingled in the middle of the night, let alone whenever he pitched. A test revealed carpal tunnel neuritis, and Strasburg underwent surgery for it in August 2020. But he now believes the procedure could have delayed addressing the real issue of neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome.
The condition stems from the compression of nerve roots in the brachial plexus, a nerve network above the collarbone that provides movement and feeling to the arm and hand. It is most commonly diagnosed in pitchers, with specialists citing repeated arm injuries and high-effort throwing as main causes.
“Any time you don't have a clear diagnosis of a structural issue, you look at the shoulder and structurally, everything looks clean and fine, to some degree it is a leap of faith,” said Chris Young, who underwent neurogenic TOS surgery in 2013, pitched for four more seasons and is now the Texas Rangers’ general manager. His experience is a success story for the relatively new procedure. Others have not been as fortunate.
“There’s something wrong here, there’s pain here, I don't know what the root of the problem is, you're telling me everything looks fine but I'm telling you there's severe pain and I'm not able to throw a baseball,” Young continued. “So you either accept that, okay, your career is over because you had shoulder surgery and the damage is done. Or you say, okay, there may be an underlying cause of this that was actually the cause of the original pain.”
The season after carpal tunnel surgery, Strasburg’s problems came earlier and earlier in his starts. His neck was stiff. His shoulder was sore. He often took multiple cortisone shots, trying to last 100 pitches and stay on the field. But after five appearances, enough was enough. Strasburg flew to Texas to see Gregory Pearl, a leading surgeon for thoracic outlet syndrome, and had the procedure two days later.
This was July 2021. In the 14 months since, Strasburg has had three setbacks, tested positive for the coronavirus in April and this summer mourned the death of his father. He started for the Nationals on June 9 and immediately went to the injured list with a stress reaction in the second and third ribs on the right side of his body. Before landing there, he tried throwing a change-up after that lone outing in June, felt three pops in his shoulder and knew that meant trouble. He looks a lot like he did in his prime, a 6-foot-5 starter who detailed this saga in a T-shirt and shorts, his uniform for another daily rehab session. What plagues him is beneath his imposing figure.
Svrluga in June: Stephen Strasburg can’t pitch — again — so the mind goes to unpleasant places
“I’ve been doing very minimal exercises, and I’ve seen some improvements as far as the way my shoulder is sitting,” said Strasburg, who is at Nationals Park for every home game and coordinating with team medical staff when the club is on the road. “But I feel like the strength is not quite there, and I’m not really sure what the future holds.”
Strasburg’s most recent issue is with his upper brachial plexus. On a recent visit to Pearl, the doctor told him that TOS surgery doesn’t necessarily address the upper plexus — more the middle and lower — meaning Strasburg can only take time and hope it heals to full strength.
Those are the answers he’s working with at the moment: Time and hope. Strasburg just doesn’t know how much of either he has left to pitch.
“All the way down my arm, it’s had some trauma,” he said, pointing to the shoulder, biceps and forearm that once made him the first overall pick in the draft and recipient of his current seven-year, $245 million contract that runs through 2026. “You can only do so much. It’s not like you can train your nervous system to just work better.
‘The thing that removes your rib’
Given all these hours to think about TOS surgery, Strasburg has whittled the complications to this: When he had Tommy John surgery in 2010, a surgeon repaired a torn ligament in his elbow. When he underwent TOS surgery, Pearl removed a rib and the two scalene muscles from his neck, creating an imbalance that has made it hard to repeat his mechanics in the aftermath.
Another tricky part of TOS is that a diagnosis often comes after many other options are explored. Also, no two rehab processes are the same.
“It’s not uncommon for us to get referrals from people on teams where we’ve had other players get treated,” said Robert Thompson, a vascular surgeon and the director of the Center for Thoracic Outlet Syndrome at Washington University in St. Louis. “The team personnel are familiar with the condition, and for them, they may not hesitate to make that referral call.
“Others may not be familiar with it, maybe a little bit worried about that condition or kind of even frightened to make that diagnosis. And some of it has to do with the potential surgical treatment, the uncertainty maybe of the recovery and rehab and the return to play.”
Svrluga in 2020: Stephen Strasburg never moved on from Washington. He moved in.
Young didn’t know about TOS until after he had a pair of shoulder surgeries. Shawn Hill, another major league pitcher, had had two Tommy John surgeries, a nerve relocation procedure and then TOS surgery in 2012, telling Young to look into “the thing that removes your rib.” For pitcher Carter Capps, the pain was so sudden and sharp he thought he was passing a kidney stone.
The top of his neck had been a bit more achy than usual, but not much beyond the standard toll of a long season. Basic tests on his neck and shoulder didn’t reveal much, either. Inside Capps’s body, though, a blood clot was building up, leading to a pulmonary embolism that called for TOS surgery in 2017.
Players who have had the procedure want an increased awareness of the general symptoms: pain in the neck and shoulders, tingling down the arm and into the hand. Thompson believes that, the longer a player waits to confront TOS, the recovery can get tougher because of increased age and mileage on their arm.
Like Strasburg’s view of his carpal tunnel surgery, Clayton Richard, a former pitcher, believes he underwent an unnecessary shoulder procedure before visiting Thompson in St. Louis. Strasburg called carpal tunnel “a common misdiagnosis of TOS” and admitted he wanted to take the “path of least resistance” to return.
“It’s not that my second shoulder surgery was super detrimental or anything,” said Richard, who pitched in five seasons after undergoing TOS surgery in 2014. “But it did cost me some precious time in the back half of my career.”
“Unfortunately for this, unlike Tommy John surgery, there’s not an imaging study where you can see a tear of a ligament or a structural abnormality,” Thompson explained. “So we don’t have those kinds of tests that would say are ‘objective.’ And the diagnosis, for the large part, depends on the clinical evaluation.”
‘It wasn’t for a lack of effort’
Through every injury — through his Tommy John surgery, through the infamous shutdown in 2012 — Strasburg has always trusted that anything could be fixed with consistent mechanics. His velocity dipped well before he lifted the Nationals to a title. He evolved as his arm did, leaning more on deft skill than a generational ability to overpower hitters.
But his ongoing recovery goes beyond mechanics, which he says have been “haywire” for almost three years. In so many ways, his body is shutting down, making him confront the limits of an arm that’s defined his whole life. When he made a rehab appearance for the low-Class A Fredericksburg Nationals in May, he felt tightness between his wrist and thumb. He kept stretching his hand in the dugout, but it wouldn’t go away.
From the archives: An oral history of Stephen Strasburg’s unforgettable MLB debut
Strasburg’s reality, then, is both those pops in his shoulder and the smaller sensations that make it hard to pitch and live. Earlier this season, he couldn’t stand for long without his whole hand going numb. He was only comfortable when lying down, his right hand pressed against his chest. He grew used to using his left hand for basic tasks. Strasburg has pitched 1,525⅓ innings between the regular season and playoffs, each with the Nationals and only 31⅓ since 2019. His plan is to finish out the season trying to regain strength and range of motion in his shoulder. Then he will do another round of meetings with specialists to see if his outlook has improved. One of Strasburg’s worries, even before additional assessments, is the potential for long-term side effects.
“It wasn’t for a lack of effort or lack of putting in the work,” Strasburg said of his situation. “It’s just the way the cards are dealt sometimes.”
“My dad moved out here a year ago, and through this process, in a way I’m thankful that I was injured because I probably would have been on the road and not seen him,” Strasburg continued. “He passed away about three weeks after I initially had the stress reaction diagnosis. I was able to see him the day before. So being an only child and taking care of your dad’s affairs, that’s kind of been a focus for a big part of this stretch. Luckily, I was able to do a lot of that and be there with him, and spend some time with him toward the end, and now it’s back to focusing on the baseball aspect and seeing what I can do to get back to the mound — if I can.”
When Strasburg cleaned out his dad’s apartment in Northern Virginia, he found that his father had saved dozens of newspaper and magazine articles about him. There were stories going back to Strasburg’s days as a top draft prospect at San Diego State University. There was a fresh-faced Strasburg thriving for the Nationals.
There were all his accomplishments, all laid bare, making Strasburg wonder where the years went.
“Time has gone so, so fast,” he said. “A lot of guys that you played with that have moved on and they’re in the next chapter of their lives. It’s crazy to think about how short baseball careers can be.” | 2022-09-16T12:27:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Strasburg details thoracic outlet syndrome surgery, recovery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/stephen-strasburg-injury-recovery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/stephen-strasburg-injury-recovery/ |
What Biden can teach the king
King Charles III greets well-wishers in London on Sept. 10 during a day of public mourning following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. (Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News)
LONDON — One man scraped his way to the top. The other was born into a dynasty.
One man is an Irish Catholic who keeps a rosary in his pocket. The other lost his favorite great-uncle to an IRA terrorist attack.
One man’s mother told him to never bow down to the queen. The other’s mother was queen.
But when Joe Biden sees Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor in London on Sunday ahead of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, the two men might find they have a great deal in common, at least in this moment.
The two septuagenarians each see themselves as a bulwark against forces trying to overthrow everything they stand for. Biden says he ran for president because of the violence in Charlottesville and is laying the groundwork to run again in 2024 to save democracy from former president Donald Trump. Charles must fend off separatist movements in Scotland, Northern Ireland and across the commonwealth while his country’s government contends with the continuing challenges of Brexit, which was an ill-conceived economic divorce from Europe.
Both men know about waiting. Charles has been an understudy forever, the oldest person to ever ascend to the British throne in the millennium-long history of the royal family. He has been heir apparent since his mother became queen in 1952. Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history and came to the presidency on his third try overcoming staggering odds and the doubts of his own party.
Each grapples with unfavorable comparisons to his predecessor. Charles seems doomed never to be as popular as Elizabeth II, just as Biden chafes under the aura of awe that still surrounds former president Barack Obama (at least from Democrats). Both must now show uncharacteristic self-discipline to succeed as heads of state.
Both have known personal pain and heartache; both have complex relationships with their youngest son; both men had to look after young children who lost their mom in tragic car crashes.
Each earned a reputation as a gaffe machine. Biden ended his first bid for the presidency in 1987 after being caught plagiarizing from the speeches, and even the life story, of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. In 2012, he warned a Black audience in the South that Mitt Romney would “put y’all back in chains.” In his prime, he was notorious for turning brief addresses into hour-long stemwinders. In his twilight years, he’s learned to curb this habit and stop himself.
Charles said in 2010 that he talked to his plants, and that they talked back. In 1992, while still married to Princess Diana, he compared himself to a tampon in a leaked phone call with Camilla Parker Bowles, who is now queen consort. Over the years, Charles routinely sent private letters to cabinet ministers — dubbed “black spider memos” because of his spooky handwriting — on topics ranging from the Iraq War to organic farming.
Both are green — or, at least, greenish. Charles has been sounding the alarm about the planet since his first major speech on pollution in 1970. While environmentalism has never been central to Biden’s brand, the issue actually helped catapult his early political career. As a county councilman in 1971, he successfully marshaled opposition to kill a planned refinery in Delaware and ran commercials about the environment when he first ran for Senate. In the mid-1980s, he was one of the first senators to introduce climate change legislation.
Biden and Charles are likely transitional figures. Biden described himself during the 2020 campaign as “a bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders. Pundits here in London speak about Charles as a short-timer in tones similar to those that people across the pond use when speculating over whether Biden will run again.
Coming from two countries which share a “special relationship,” the two men have little or none themselves. Biden most recently saw Charles at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last fall. Then the Prince of Wales, Charles said the warming planet poses “an even greater existential threat” than the coronavirus pandemic and required “a warlike footing.” Biden praised his advocacy: “We need you badly,” he told the prince. “I’m not just saying that.”
The biggest lesson the American can offer the Brit now? More forbearance. Biden was dismissed as a political force several times in his long career, including as recently as just a few months ago. The president is stepping more confidently now, a 79-year-old example of how to play the long game. That’s something a 73-year-old, just starting out as king, can believe in.
Seeped in tradition: The ceremonial processions for Queen Elizabeth II pack more than 1,000 years of monarchical tradition and pageantry into a few symbolic miles. Each object and location reflects some aspect of the royal family’s place in British life, whether military, administrative or religious.
The ‘queue’: Forming a queue is what the British do. Americans like to call it a “line,” but that word doesn’t quite encompass the almost holy rule-bound nature the British have developed of waiting patiently behind someone to achieve a goal. Queen Elizabeth II’s death brought a queue for the ages.
The monarchy: Leaders across the Commonwealth, an association of 56 nations, most of them already republics, expressed sadness over the queen’s death. But many of those countries, former outposts of the empire, have also been engaged in a public reckoning over the legacies of colonialism, including calls for atonement, reparations and independence.
Commemorating the queen: Marking of the end of the longest reign by a British monarch opens up new opportunities for retailers and buyers, experts say. And for those who have collected rare items over the years, her death marks the start of those items’ expected rise in value. | 2022-09-16T12:31:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden and King Charles III are fraternal twins - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/biden-charles-twins-in-arms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/biden-charles-twins-in-arms/ |
‘U.S. and the Holocaust’ immerses viewers in the limitations that define tragedy
Members of the Messinger family aboard the St. Louis in May 1939. The ship, carrying nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, was turned away from several countries, including the United States. It eventually returned to Europe, where many of the passengers would die in the Holocaust. (1939/Courtesy of PBS)
As the documentary notes, the United States admitted about 225,000 refugees from Nazi terror, more than any other sovereign nation — fewer than it should have but more than public opinion favored. Before Hitler attained power, America’s receptivity to immigrants had waned, and antisemitism, especially in society’s upper reaches, had not. Today’s white nationalist anxieties about “replacement” recast the anxiety of the prominent eugenicist Madison Grant: “The man of the old stock is being crowded out.”
Ken Burns: Being American means reckoning with our violent history
In the 1920s, Henry Ford’s antisemitic newspaper had the nation’s second-largest circulation, according to the documentary. “In 1932,” it reports, “for the first time in American history, more people left the United States than were allowed in.” In the mid-1930s, more than 25 percent of the population listened each Sunday to Charles Coughlin, an antisemitic radio priest.
Alyssa Rosenberg: Ken Burns is an optimist. But he’s very worried about America.
By 1944, with 5 million Jews already dead, 70 percent of Americans now favored sheltering European refugees, temporarily. U.S. officials were neither wrong nor reprehensible when they argued that the best way to help the Jews was to win the war as quickly as possible. Bombing the killing camps would have diverted bombers from military targets, and — “precision bombing” was then an oxymoron — would have killed many Jews. | 2022-09-16T12:31:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' documentary includes Anne Frank tragedy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/ken-burns-holocaust-documentary-george-will/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/ken-burns-holocaust-documentary-george-will/ |
Businesspeople in the US have been complaining for more than a year about how hard it is to hire anybody. Their public-sector counterparts have had it worse, though, and it might not just be a pandemic thing.
To put it in numbers, nonfarm private-sector employment in the US was 885,000 higher in August than before the pandemic in February 2020, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. (That’s seasonally adjusted; without the adjustment it was 3.3 million higher.) Government employment was still down by 645,000.
This actually understates the private-public divergence. Last month, the BLS reported that its annual benchmarking of payroll jobs numbers against unemployment insurance tax records showed private-sector employment to be an estimated 571,000 higher than reported as of last March and government employment 109,000 lower. These numbers won’t be finalized and incorporated into the monthly jobs data until January, though, so just be aware that the government jobs declines are even bigger than shown in the charts here.As currently reported, the job losses have all been at state and local governments, with federal employment rising ever so slightly. (The short-lived government employment increase in the second half of 2020 apparent in the chart above was all about temporary federal census jobs.)
Most of these job losses came early in the pandemic, when state and local income and sales tax revenue plummeted and elected officials feared it would keep falling. Instead, both bounced back quickly while property taxes, the other main source of state and local revenue, never took much of a hit. The estimated $513 billion in seasonally adjusted state and local revenue in the first quarter of this year is 17% higher, adjusted for inflation, than in the fourth quarter of 2019.
So it’s not as if state and local governments need to reduce headcount. But even before the pandemic, government agencies were struggling to keep workers and hire new ones in the face of strong competition from private employers, and as of July there were 1.1 million job openings at the local, state and federal level — almost double the number just five years ago.
Shortages of public school teachers have been receiving the most attention, but local governments have also been struggling to hire enough police, firefighters, paramedics, garbage collectors and others. Worker “shortages” are, of course, generally an indicator that wages aren’t high enough, but governments have less flexibility than private employers do in adjusting pay and benefit packages to changing labor market conditions. A recent survey of state and local government human resources staff members by the MissionSquare Research Institute found that only 44% thought the wages they offered were competitive with the overall labor market. In 2016, the first year the survey was conducted, 61% did. That’s for jobs that during the pandemic have often been especially dangerous and stressful, diminishing their attractiveness relative to much private-sector work.
Health and retirement plans are another matter, with 85% of those polled saying the benefits their states or localities offered were competitive. But retirement plans that don’t kick in for decades and often aren’t portable from job to job may be less appealing than they once were given that layoffs early in the pandemic and during and after the Great Recession made clear that state and local government jobs aren’t necessarily forever.
That Great Recession retrenchment marked something of a turning point for state and local government employment, which peaked as a share of nonfarm payroll employment in the mid-1970s but held more or less steady from then until around 2010. Here’s employment at all three levels of government as a percentage of nonfarm payrolls, which hit its all-time high of 19.4% in July 1975 and was down to 14.6% in August — about where it was in the summer of 1957. The interruptions in that decline have come mainly from recessions, when private employment tends to fall faster than government employment.
The federal government is the smallest of the three in terms of employment and has followed a different trajectory from the other two. Its relative size peaked during World War II, fell more than 50% from 1957 to 2000, and has held more or less steady since (the little spikes every 10 years are for censuses).
In numbers rather than percentages, federal employment excluding the US Postal Service was 2.3 million in August and has been in that general vicinity since the late 1960s. The postal service, which I’ve excluded here because the non-postal workforce seems like a better reflection of what we mean when we talk about the federal government, employed 600,000 in August, down from a peak of just more than 900,000 in 1999. Active-duty military members aren’t included in the BLS jobs data, and if they were the decline shown above would be much more pronounced — there are about 1.3 million now, down from 2.8 million in 1957 and 3.5 million in 1968. The intelligence agencies aren’t included either, but with employment estimated at around 100,000, they wouldn’t make a big impact.
Also missing are the many non-federal employees whose paychecks are funded by federal dollars, but Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, produces estimates of their numbers. He’s quite confident of the contractor totals, which are calculated from detailed government procurement inventories, but says there’s “a little more squish” in the grant-employment estimates.
Increases in defense spending mean greater numbers of government contractors, which mostly explains the ups and downs in the chart, as defense spending rose a lot during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, fell during those of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and was close to flat during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Depressed private-sector job totals during or in the wake of recessions reduced the denominator and thus boosted the percentages in 2010 and again in 2020 and 2021, but even with that, the total federal employment in the 2021 fiscal year was smaller relative to overall employment than in the 1980s and early 1990s, and probably smaller than it was in the decades before then.
Still, by this metric federal employment is nearly as big as local government employment, some of which is funded by federal grants, and is significantly higher than it was 20 years ago. But is that too high? Too low?
It is interesting that the long decline in government employment as a share of total employment has coincided with an era of general dissatisfaction with government, although I’m not sure which was the cause and which the effect (probably a little of both). Federal spending hit a peacetime record of 31.3% of gross domestic product in the 2020 fiscal year, so it’s not as if government has shrunk in that sense. Washington’s regulatory reach hasn’t exactly receded either — the Federal Register, where new regulations are published, had twice as many pages in 2021 as in 1978. But maybe that’s the problem: We’re asking government to do more without hiring enough people to do it right.
• This Labor Market Exodus Is a Statistical Mirage: Justin Fox | 2022-09-16T12:40:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Does Anyone Want a Government Job? Anyone? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/does-anyone-want-a-government-job-anyone/2022/09/16/bc71b0a8-35b3-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/does-anyone-want-a-government-job-anyone/2022/09/16/bc71b0a8-35b3-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
A nursing professional, not a relative. (Photographer: Karen Ducey/Getty Images North America)
More than 15,000 nurses in Minnesota who staged a three-day strike this week aren’t just fighting for better pay and working conditions, they’re battling to secure public support — especially as evidence mounts that patients will die in their absence.
A century’s worth of sentimental blather about nursing as selfless women’s work has left Americans ill-equipped to grasp the severity of the current crisis, which has already fueled numerous nursing strikes before this week’s walkout. The history can help us understand why, unlike workers at Amazon.com or Starbucks Corp., nurses must confront decades of sexist attitudes that have condemned them for being anything other than tireless, self-sacrificing caregivers.
These new programs focused exclusively on training women. Though men had served as nurses during the Civil War as well, almost all the new schools refused admission to men. Nursing had become woman’s work.
Strikes were rare. The reliance on transient, unpaid student labor kept militancy to a minimum. So, too, did the fact that the nation’s burgeoning nursing schools — nearly two thousand in number by 1929 — guaranteed a surfeit of labor. In some cities in this era, 10% of female workers listed nursing as their vocation.
All of this collapsed in the Great Depression, when most families could no longer afford private nursing. Professional associations — particularly the American Nurses’ Association, or ANA — sought to address the problem by closing substandard schools and limiting the number of students. Equally important was a campaign to have hospitals hire former private nurses as part of their permanent staff.
This reform made nursing much more like other jobs. But the ANA continued to pay homage to the principle that female nurses must be selfless, giving creatures. In 1933, it opposed the eight-hour workday, claiming that “an arbitrary limitation on the hours of work violates the whole spirit of nursing.”
Once again, the ANA and its allies fought these developments. An editorial published in the American Journal of Nursing in 1938 declared that “the nurse as a professional and giver of comfort is in fundamental conflict with struggling for reasonable working conditions and economic security.” Or as one pithy summary of the ANA’s position put it: “A nurses’ union would be almost, if not quite, as absurd as a mothers’ union.”
So in 1942, as World War II put unprecedented strain on nurses, state organizations took the lead, with the California State Nursing Association in the vanguard. The group became the collective bargaining agent for California’s nurses, successfully winning them a pay raise.
Then in 1947, Congress muddied the waters when it inadvertently exempted workers at non-profits — in other words, many hospitals – from engaging in collective bargaining. The Taft-Hartley Act also meant that nurses were excluded from unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, and disability benefits.
Staffing shortages and intolerable working conditions are now leading to more strikes such as the one in Minnesota. Given that people’s lives are at stake, it may prove tempting to try to force nurses back to work. But the harsh reality is that patients are going to die anyway if the nursing shortage persists. And fixing that will require a significant expansion of nursing schools, subsidies to hospitals and other financial assistance — in other words, a great deal more than appeals to imaginary incarnations of Florence Nightingale.
Insulin Spending Caps Won’t Work, But This Would: Editorial
Fauci Proved an Unlikely Avatar of Polarization: David A. Hopkins
UK Rail Strike Is Cautionary Tale for US Labor: Clive Crook | 2022-09-16T12:40:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nurses Shouldn’t Be Treated Like Your Mother - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/nurses-shouldnt-be-treated-like-your-mother/2022/09/16/842d76b8-35af-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/nurses-shouldnt-be-treated-like-your-mother/2022/09/16/842d76b8-35af-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
The queen of their dreams
Many books have been written about Queen Elizabeth II. One of them explored how she frequently appeared to her subjects in their sleep.
A woman sleeping in London on Wednesday, when the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II was transported from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall for her lying in state. (Kevin Coombs/Reuters)
In 1927, the year after Queen Elizabeth II was born, Virginia Woolf set down some thoughts on the art of biography. The ideal, she wrote, should be to capture “that queer amalgamation of dream and reality, that perpetual marriage of granite and rainbow.” The granite of facts and the rainbow of personality: What did they do? and What were they like?
For Elizabeth, who for the best part of a century was one of the most famous people in the world, most of the granite is a matter of public record (though patches will remain under seal for many years to come). Among biographies, Ben Pimlott’s “The Queen” sits at the top of the pile: a historian’s biography, measured and rigorous, not just for royal watchers. First published in 1996, when, as Pimlott wrote, “royal stocks were at a low ebb,” it has been updated periodically, most recently in 2012, Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee year, by which point even old punks like Vivienne Westwood were declaring themselves as her admirers.
But observing the rainbow presents a problem: how to disentangle the personality from the public mood? I’m not sure — during Elizabeth’s lifetime, at least — that this disentanglement was ever possible. However, half a century ago — already a generation into her reign — a short book turned the problem on its head.
Instead of worrying about the personality of the sovereign, Brian Masters’s “Dreams About H.M. The Queen” (1972) treats her as a lens through which to examine the inner lives of her subjects. Masters interviewed a swathe of the British public — about a thousand people — asking them to describe any dreams they could recall having about the royal family. About a third were able to comply. Masters’s correspondents were from all walks of life. If they had one thing in common beside dreaming of the queen, it was that almost none of them had actually met her or had any reasonable expectation of doing so. The Elizabeth of their dreams — “Betty,” as Masters prosaically referred to her — was a creation purely of the imagination.
The result is a kind of collective dream diary, an account of a national obsession. (Two national obsessions, in fact: Masters observes that nearly half of the respondents’ dreams involved having tea.) Often the queen dream is an anxiety dream: Betty arrives unheralded on the doorstep, and the dreamer’s house is a mess or they are standing in the nude. Sometimes she needs a helping hand, allowing for the fantasy of rendering a service — lending her a hat; helping her across the road — which will be received with gratitude. Sometimes, as in the example below, shared by a male student, the idealization has something charged, even slightly thrilling, about it:
He was in a pub with the Queen and Prince Charles. The queen was dressed in full regalia, including the crown. It came to his turn to buy a round, so he bought himself and the queen a pint, and a barley wine for Charles. After this the queen told him to check the Rolls Royce which was outside, and when he came back, the queen had finished both his and her own pints of bitter. Then she said, “O.K. It’s time we went.” All three of them went out to the Rolls, the queen took the wheel and drove off.
I sincerely hope this dream had a sequel.
So the granite is there if you want it: Start with Pimlott and work outward. And maybe, in time, a clearer rainbow will start to appear. But Masters’s funny, peculiar book manages to succeed by recording something different. Not a history but a snapshot, registering the queen’s ambient presence, the subliminal effect she had on many millions of people she would never meet.
In the past few days it has been a cliche to remark that Elizabeth was a symbol. In fact, she was a whole dictionary’s worth of them. “The next time you dream of the queen,” Masters wrote, “ask yourself how you felt in the dream, how she treated you, how you behaved, what sensation was paramount in your heart when you awoke.” As the inadvertent messenger of her subjects’ unconscious, she could be giver of advice, fulfiller of wishes, alarm bell for stress. “In addition to all her accomplishments and skills, H.M. the queen is unofficial private psychiatrist … to a great number of her subjects,” Masters concluded. “She is queen of the British psyche.” In this role, she may prove irreplaceable.
Dennis Duncan is a lecturer in English at University College London and author of “Index, A History of the.” | 2022-09-16T12:40:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II as she appeared in people's dreams - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/16/queen-elizabeth-ii-people-dreams/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/16/queen-elizabeth-ii-people-dreams/ |
The way we talk about climate change can impact the solutions we develop, experts said
How we talk about climate change can shape the solutions we develop, experts said. (Washington Post illustration; Stuart Palley for The Washington Post; iStock)
Although a majority of Americans say they are concerned about climate change, it appears many aren’t really talking to their close friends and family about it.
According to a 2022 survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 64 percent of Americans reported being “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about climate change — but 67 percent of Americans also said they “rarely” or “never” discussed global warming with their friends and family, according to the report titled “Climate Change in the American Mind.”
That’s not ideal, some experts say.
“The first step to action on climate change is to talk about it, that’s the number one thing we can do,” said Lucky Tran, a science communicator at Columbia University who focuses in part on climate justice. “We can’t solve any problems, especially at the global scale, if we don’t talk about the problem and the best way to address it.”
And when it comes to the climate, he added, “How we talk about climate change really shapes what solutions we have for climate change.”
Here’s what Tran and other experts say you need to know about broaching climate-related issues.
Shift the focus
Climate change communication has historically focused on trying to convince people that global warming is real, happening and caused by humans. But public opinion polling shows that there are already “huge majorities in the country” who understand those things to be true, said Jon Krosnick, a social psychologist and professor at Stanford University.
Krosnick, who has researched American public opinion on global warming, argued that continued efforts that largely focus on persuading people about the realities of climate change “is going to be wasted money, wasted effort, wasted air.”
Instead, discussions about just how “green” the American public is, as well as general insights from polling that reflect people’s views on climate change, may do more to impact how government officials act, he said.
“The American public doesn’t realize how green it is, and even elected representatives don’t realize how green the American public is,” he said. “You don’t have to change anybody’s opinion. You just have to make the unanimities or near unanimities more salient for people.”
How climate change is discussed could also impact approaches to solutions, other experts said.
“It’s important for climate communication today to really focus on how to include different perspectives, different ideologies that can give viable hope — because there is hope — in terms of how to address climate change differently than what’s been proposed in the past,” said Hanna Morris, an assistant professor at the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, who researches climate change media and communication.
Embrace nuance
It sometimes seems as though climate change conversations can be divided into two narratives: People are either overly optimistic about solutions — or claim it’s “too late” to act.
In reality, Tran said, most people talking about climate change fall somewhere between those two extremes.
He cautioned against spreading messages that are too focused on fear or optimism, because both can lead to inaction.
“Why would you take action to solve something if you don’t think it’ll make a difference?” he said. “At the same time, if we think the problem is solved, why would we take any action to solve it?”
Tran noted the more pessimistic narratives can be traced to the fossil fuel industry or other special interest groups invested in maintaining the status quo. The drumbeat of negative scientific findings that continue to emerge can also reinforce this gloomy outlook.
What’s more, “doomism” views on climate change and the future aren’t grounded in reality, some experts say.
“It’s definitely not too late for each and every one of us to have a real meaningful impact on ... climate action,” said Kimberly Nicholas, a sustainability and climate scientist at Lund University. “There, fatalism really worries me because it’s not a scientific question of the technical details, ‘Are they possible?’ It’s a question of, ‘Will enough human beings actually undertake any of the necessary actions?’ ”
Fearmongering could also be dangerous, Tran said. “If we have no hope of having a better world, then it becomes a more divided world.”
It is, however, important to acknowledge and help people process their grief and anxiety around climate change, said Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, a climate nonprofit.
“A lot of people in the climate conversation are younger or new, which is great,” Foley said. “But not surprisingly, people who are suddenly paying attention to this are saying, ‘Oh my God, this is horrible.’ ”
“It’s kind of like finding out you have a serious illness,” he added. “It’s really a shock, and grief is part of the stages we go through when we hear bad news.”
The key, Nicholas said, is not to get stuck in the “doom” stage — and to use those feelings as a source of motivation to take action.
Climate change is a complex problem and proposing “simplistic, all-encompassing grand solutions” is not the answer, Morris said.
These types of fixes, she said, tend to oversimplify issues and could fuel the idea that there is a right and wrong way to address the climate crisis.
While experts said it’s critical not to entirely dismiss individual actions, they underline that certain actions matter more.
There are downsides, for instance, to the “every little bit helps” idea, Nicholas said. You should turn off the faucet every time you brush your teeth so you don’t waste water — but “that’s not a high impact action” when it comes to the climate, she said.
“Basically, the only things I talk about are flying, driving and eating meat, I actually think it’s not really worth spending much time on much else,” she said. “We have to focus on where most emissions are and focus on reducing that as quickly as possible.”
While it’s improbable that any one person is capable of single-handedly creating major change, actions can have “ripple effects,” Nicholas said.
She compared it to how cathedrals were built by hand — a process that involved hundreds, if not thousands, of people over years.
“History doesn’t really know their names, and many of them probably didn’t live to see it completed, and they didn’t know where all the pieces were coming from or where everything was going,” she said. “But they laid their stone or they made their window or they put the wood together. They did the one little piece that they were capable of doing and it did add up to this amazing thing that has really stood the test of time.”
But individual action should be seen as “part of an ecosystem of change that requires systemic level changes,” Tran said.
Messaging about solutions shouldn’t be limited to reducing emissions, he added. Social solutions that address inequities and environmental justice issues “need to go hand-in-hand” with discussions about physical or economic solutions to climate change, he said.
Think about equity
A key component of talking about climate issues revolves around making climate solutions equitable, said Beverly Wright, founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
“The people who have been most impacted by climate are people of color in general and poor people,” Wright said. “If we just addressed the question from the standpoint of, ‘Climate change is here, we have to reduce greenhouse gases,’ but don’t talk about how we do that, then you end up with communities being presented with what we call false solutions or our legislature being presented with false solutions.”
There should also be communication that gets those most impacted involved in the solutions, experts said. For one, Tran encouraged more trusted messengers to participate in the climate conversation.
“You need people who look like the people in the communities who are dealing with a problem to be able to motivate them to take action,” he said. “They understand what’s at stake. They understand how people are being harmed. They understand what solutions are needed to be put in place.”
“We need everyone to be a climate communicator and not just rely on one or two people or not just scientists,” he said. “Every person needs to talk about climate change.” | 2022-09-16T12:40:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | People don’t really talk about climate change. Here’s how to start. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/16/climate-change-conversation-action/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/16/climate-change-conversation-action/ |
Two proposed Louisiana petrochemical complexes would have emitted huge amounts of greenhouse gases
Plants in Donaldsonville seen from the Sunshine Bridge in St. James, La. (Camille Lenain for The Washington Post)
The environmental justice movement notched important victories in Louisiana this week by blocking two planned petrochemical plants — a move that will prevent huge amounts of greenhouse emissions from entering the atmosphere.
The petrochemical complexes would have both been built in St. James Parish, home to what is commonly known at Louisiana’s “cancer alley.” With the emergence of shale gas drilling over the past dozen years, many companies have flocked to the area to take advantage of inexpensive natural gas. There are now approximately 150 oil refineries, plastics plants and chemical facilities there.
But over the past few days, two of those projects — Formosa Plastics and South Louisiana Methanol — were shelved. Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court reversed the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to issue air permits to Formosa Plastics. And LDEQ said that South Louisiana Methanol failed to modify its permit within the time allotted.
The rulings’ consequences lie in these numbers:
$9.4 billion. The amount the Taiwanese company Formosa Plastics would have spent building a new petrochemical complex covering 2,400 acres — or about 1,818 football fields, counting the end zones.
$2.2 billion. The amount South Louisiana Methanol had planned on spending on its chemical plant.
13.6 million tons. That’s the volume of greenhouse gases that would have been emitted by Formosa Plastics every year. It’s equal to about three-and-a-half coal plants — more than the carbon footprint of Rhode Island or the District, according to Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management.
The South Louisiana Methanol complex would have been the largest in North America, emitting more than 2 million tons a year of greenhouse gases.
Formosa also would have emitted 800 tons of toxic chemicals a year.
Surrounded by fossil fuels, these Americans feel left behind by the new climate law
14. The number of air permits approved by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in 2020, despite 15,500 public comments submitted opposing the permits.
34. The number of pages in the opinion by the Louisiana 19th Judicial District Court judge Trudy M. White, who said residents who challenged Formosa’s air permits “could not have known that LDEQ would violate its duty.”
In the Welcome and St. James census tract, more than 87 percent of more than 2,000 residents living there identify as “Black or African American,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That tract that would have been most affected by the Formosa Plastics plan.
“The demographics of Welcome reflects its roots as a place once dominated by plantations, populated by the enslaved ancestors of present-day residents,” the judge wrote.
ProPublica reported that “the air around Formosa’s site is more toxic with cancer-causing chemicals than 99.6 percent of industrialized areas of the country” already. “If the complex emits all the chemicals it proposes in its permit application, it would rank in the top 1 percent nationwide of major plants in America in terms of the concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in its vicinity.”
Formosa Plastic has said that it expected to create 1,200 new direct jobs with an average salary of $84,500 plus benefits. But only a few would have gone to people living in the area, community leaders said.
Janile Parks, Formosa’s director of community and government relations, said in an email that the company “respectfully disagrees” with Judge White’s conclusion. She said the permits issued by the LDEQ “are sound” and that the agency “properly performed its duty to protect the environment.”
Parks said the company “intends to explore all legal options.”
Julie Teel Simmonds, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that “the ruling affirms our long-held conviction that it is completely contrary to the public trust and environmental justice to further pollute a Black community already living with unhealthy air for the sake of generating more throwaway plastic already permeating our planet.” | 2022-09-16T12:40:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two proposed chemical plants halted, in win for environmental justice activists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/16/louisiana-chemical-formosa-environmental-justice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/16/louisiana-chemical-formosa-environmental-justice/ |
When a young Charles was crowned Prince of Wales — and spoke in Welsh
By George Bass
In this photo taken on July 1, 1969, Queen Elizabeth II puts a crown on her son Prince Charles during his investiture as new Prince of Wales in Caernarfon. (AFP/Getty Images)
Under pale skies, thousands of admirers gathered to watch the young Prince Charles stride solemnly toward the stage. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, watched him kneel on a scarlet cushion, then handed him a golden rod, a kingly mantle, a sword, a girdle, a coronet and a ring.
The prince kissed his mother’s cheek and sat next to her in the middle of three thrones, the last of which was occupied by his father, the Duke of Edinburgh.
On Friday, Charles is paying his first visit to Wales as King of the United Kingdom. It’s a long way from his investiture as the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle on July 1, 1969 — a ceremony during which he brushed off controversy, spoke in Welsh and charmed the nation.
Queen Elizabeth II: Complete coverage
The Prince of Wales is a title reserved for the heir apparent to the British throne, and one Charles inherited in 1958 via letters patent before being formalized more than a decade later. Having a royal Englishman serve as Prince of Wales is a custom that dates back to Edward, son of King Edward I, who was granted the title in 1301. His Welsh predecessor in the role was Dafydd ap Gruffydd, who was killed on the order of the English king in 1283 to install the 16-year-old Edward in the role.
Charles’s assumption of the title was one very much in the public eye, though perhaps not entirely for reasons the royal family might have wanted. Ten days before his investiture, Britain’s two biggest television networks – the BBC and ITV – had collaborated on a behind-the-scenes documentary to mark the event, titled “Royal Family.”
Many British public figures were apprehensive about showing the Windsors in a “normal” light. The film was last aired during Queen Elizabeth’s silver jubilee in 1977 and has not been made widely available since (prior to an internet leak in 2021).
It wasn’t just the royals experiencing tensions before Charles’ investiture. A Welsh nationalist movement had been steadily growing since the queen’s coronation in 1953.
By 1955, a campaign to form a Welsh Parliament had been established. In April of the following a year, the British government was presented with a petition for Welsh independence, complete with 250,000 signatures.
It was therefore prudent that Charles prepare for his new title in earnest. He left his studies at the University of Cambridge at age 20 to move to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where for a term he received instruction from tutor Edward Millward on his new homeland’s history and culture.
Charles’ investiture speech – the first two paragraphs of which were delivered in the Welsh language – was sympathetic enough to his new subjects that George Thomas, the Welsh secretary of state, told Prime Minister Harold Wilson that the prince had “boosted Welsh nationalism.”
Globally, 500 million people watched the ceremony. In Britain, press coverage focused on the pomp and regalia, with newspapers proclaiming “Welsh go wild for Their Royal Prince” and “Proud Wales takes Prince to her heart.”
The investiture was one of Charles’ most prominent public appearances until his marriage to Lady Diana Spencer on July 29, 1981. That event was dubbed “the wedding of the century” and attracted a global television audience of 750 million viewers. In Britain, the day was commemorated with souvenir crown coins and street parties.
In the years following his marriage, Charles’s relationship with the British media became more turbulent. Chart-topping Welsh rock band the Manic Street Preachers recorded a controversial song titled “Charles Windsor” whose lyrics imagined the prince being deposed by “a rabble … the kind you’d hoped were dead.”
In 1989, a radio enthusiast was able to intercept a sexually explicit phone conversation between Charles and his now-wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, both of whom were still married to their spouses. The recorded call was leaked to People magazine in 1993, after Charles and Diana had separated.
Last week, Charles bestowed the title of Prince of Wales upon his eldest son, William, but not without another controversy. The new king has reportedly voiced concerns as to whether a Caernarfon Castle investiture ceremony is necessary.
Perhaps the new king’s feelings on his outgoing title are best described in a quote he once gave while discussing his family’s future: “Something as curious as the monarchy won’t survive unless you take account of people’s attitudes. After all, if people don’t want it, they won’t have it.” | 2022-09-16T12:41:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When Charles became Prince of Wales, long before Friday visit to Wales - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/16/charles-prince-wales-investiture-ceremony/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/16/charles-prince-wales-investiture-ceremony/ |
What to watch with your kids: ‘See How They Run’ and more
From left, teenage friends Roma, Drop and Toto in “Goodbye, Don Glees!” (Gkids)
Goodbye, Don Glees! (PG)
Touching coming-of-age friendship tale has a little edge.
“Goodbye, Don Glees!” is an anime coming-of-age adventure from writer-director Atsuko Ishizuka. The film, which is available with both an English dub and subtitles for U.S. release, follows three teenage friends — who dub themselves the Don Glees — who are accused of starting a forest fire and embark on a trip to prove their innocence. The dialogue features occasional insults (“moron,” “dummy,” “lame,” “hick,” etc.), but there’s no swearing stronger than “damn.” Teens make a few suggestive comments in person and on social media about “scoring” with people, dying a virgin and the attractiveness of three characters. Friends dress up as girls by wearing wigs and makeup and using water balloons as exaggeratedly large breasts. The main characters narrowly escape a few dangerous situations, including a fire and an angry bear, as well as unknown forest terrain. The movie is ultimately a testament to the importance of close friendships and seizing the day during the chaos of adolescence. (95 minutes)
Comic mystery keeps you guessing; drinking, violence, peril.
“See How They Run,” which stars Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan, deconstructs the whodunit by creating a fictional murder mystery while filmmakers work to adapt an actual Agatha Christie play into a movie. It’s a brilliant way of introducing the elements of writing a murder mystery. Expect violent moments: Strangling, shooting and struggles are intense, and there’s some blood. There’s kissing and drinking (sometimes to excess); language includes “goddamn,” “horses---” and references to infidelity. It’s set in the 1950s, and the cast of the play-within-the-film is all White, but filmmakers make nods to diversity in the form of a Black screenwriter, a mother taking on a career in a traditionally male field and the suggestion of a gay relationship. Classic cinema fans will eat this one up like buttery popcorn as the real cast of the 1953 West End production, including the likes of legendary actor Richard Attenborough, are made into characters/suspects. (98 minutes)
Memorable, historic, violent tale of African women warriors.
“The Woman King” is an empowering historical adventure drama that follows Nanisca (Viola Davis), the general of a 19th-century West African all-female royal guard called the Agojie. The Agojie of the Kingdom of Dahomey (what’s now Benin) — the inspiration for the Dora Milaje in “Black Panther” — fought off hostile tribes from bordering nations. Expect a high body count, with lots of fighting and intense, often bloody warfare. The Agojie use ropes, spears, finely sharpened fingernails and other weapons in scenes that show dead bodies. A few of the deaths are particularly upsetting. There are also flashbacks to sexual assault and one moment when a suitor strikes a young woman he’s courting. Language isn’t frequent but includes “b-----s” in subtitles. Adults drink; a man’s partially nude body (bare behind, back, chest, abs) is visible; and there are scenes that show embracing and imply that characters had sex. The film is a labor of love from critically acclaimed filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball” and “The Old Guard”). Families will want to research the history of the “Dahomey Amazons” to compare what’s been written about the elite army with the film’s plot. (146 minutes)
The Silent Twins (R)
Biopic doesn’t go deep enough; sex, violence, swearing.
“The Silent Twins” is a drama based on the real story of identical twins Jennifer (Tamara Lawrance) and June (Letitia Wright) Gibbons, who created an insular world for themselves and wouldn’t communicate with anyone else. The film — which is set in 1960s and 1970s Wales — has moments of violence, including fighting, attempted suicide, bullying, arson and more. There’s also strong language (“f---,” “c---,” etc.), sexual situations and partial nudity (from the waist up). Characters smoke and use drugs. (113 minutes) | 2022-09-16T12:41:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common Sense Media’s weekly recommendations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/16/common-sense-september-16/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/16/common-sense-september-16/ |
Looking for a royal fix? Hawaii’s sidelined monarchy may satisfy.
It’s got the palace and the princesses, but not the penchant for colonialism
Perspective by Lawrence Downes
Lawrence Downes is the co-author, with Linda Ronstadt, of "Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands," to be published by Heyday Books in October.
Iolani Palace in Honolulu — the only royal palace in the United States — was the residence of the rulers of the Kingdom of Hawaii. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
Elizabeth is dead. The corgis are dispersed. The regal torch she bore so long is quenched. The British monarchy seems suddenly diminished, its ancient and weighty saga shrunken, tabloidy, Twittery, wee. And now comes the reign of charmless Charles. We await his kingly disquisitions on classical architecture, gardening and homeopathy. Ahead the looming decades yawn.
Are you feeling bereft, craving a royal frisson, experiencing a monarchist yen you may not have known you had? No American should. But if you can’t help it and must scratch that itch, go west, to Honolulu, the most royal city in these United States, the historical seat of a genuine monarchy, long gone but in no way forgotten. Hawaii has spent more than half a century in the union, which its citizens enthusiastically and overwhelmingly voted to join. It’s hard to imagine anyone there wanting the islands to be a colony or territory again. Still, although it takes some effortful amnesia to detach a love of the British royal family from Britannia’s colonial adventuring, some Hawaiians — for heartfelt, anti-colonial reasons — do look fondly back at Hawaii’s lost kingdom.
Iolani Palace, no offense to Graceland, is the only royal palace in America. The palace, where royals once lounged on plush settees, is a Victorian music box in the center of Honolulu. Next door is the grandly modernist state Capitol. Across the street, a colossal statue of King Kamehameha I, known as the Great, who defeated rival chiefs and massacred as many Hawaiians as he had to, with the help of British cannons and muskets, so he could unite the islands and lead his people.
Hawaii was a unified kingdom from Kamehameha’s ascent, in 1810, to 1893, when Queen Liliuokalani, much beloved, abdicated to protect her subjects from bloodshed. American sugar planters and other businessmen led the coup. The United States took the spoils. A compressed Hawaiian history from Kamehameha onward might go: warring chiefs, unification, whaling, missionaries, Jesus, overthrow, annexation, colonial and cultural near-genocide, sugar, pineapples, immigrants, ukuleles, tourists, warships, Pearl Harbor, statehood, Don Ho, Five-O, Gabby Pahinui, Barack Obama.
Tucked in between statehood and Obama was a great cultural renaissance. In the late 1960s and into the ’70s, Native Hawaiians, the kanaka maoli, led a revival of interest in Hawaii’s history, language, music, dance and other traditional arts. This included the meticulous restoration of Iolani Palace, which had been left largely empty and shabby after serving for decades as the capitol of the republic, territory and state (and for a while as headquarters of the fictional TV police outfit Hawaii Five-O). It can be queasy-making to see, in reruns, the haole (White) top cop Steve McGarrett in his palace corner office, barking orders at his Hawaiian underlings. But not many complained at the time.
As a Black romance writer, I knew Meghan and Harry would flee British racism
The monarchy continues to be a through-line in Hawaiian history, even though it was dismantled just before the 20th century began. After visiting the palace (wearing booties to protect the hardwood floor) you can wander the grounds, where the Royal Hawaiian Band (founded in 1836 by Kamehameha III) plays every Friday at noon. You can visit the nearby Royal Mausoleum, where Liliuokalani and King Kalakaua and others are interred. Visitors with enough money can spend it at the Royal Hawaiian Resort, the Royal Hawaiian shopping center, the Royal Hawaiian Luau and the Royal Hawaiian Golf Club.
The royalist strain runs strong in the islands. A Catholic school in Honolulu is named for St. Damien of Molokai, the Belgian priest who cared for the sick in a leprosy settlement and died of the disease. Its sports teams are not called the Servants of the Poor but, inexplicably, the Monarchs, with jersey colors of purple and gold.
As you might expect, there is a robust community of Hawaiian royalists, royal descendants and some competing pretenders to the lost throne. They proclaim their pedigrees and lineage on websites like crownofhawaii.com. Well-born Hawaiians celebrate their connections and ancestry with organizations such as the Kaahumanu Society, named for Kamehameha I’s wife.
The royal descendant who historians seem to agree is first in line for the throne, should a restoration occur, is Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawananakoa, Liliuokalani’s great-grand-niece, who is in her 90s and frail after a stroke. There has been a bitter legal battle involving her estate, her (former) lawyer, and her companion, who in 2017 became her wife. The mainland tabloids have noted the controversy. Princess Abigail, a benefactor of Iolani Palace, is said to possess a considerable fortune, though she is also in the process of letting some of it go. The contents of her summer home in Punaluu, on Oahu — rare koa-wood furniture, exquisite shell jewelry and other regal artifacts — are being auctioned this month online.
A separate dispute involves a challenge to Princess Abigail’s claim to the throne by Owana Salazar, who also calls herself princess, and who in her everyday life is a Hawaiian steel guitar player. That issue, too, is unresolved, persisting — unlike in Kamehameha’s day — in sour but nonviolent disagreement.
To most people in the state — Hawaiians and residents of the islands who are not kanaka maoli — these battles royal are hardly the main problem. Far more urgent is the reality that more than 50 years of statehood, most of it under one-party, Democratic rule, have not led to redress for Hawaiians who were robbed of their kingdom. There has been no wholesale return of Hawaiian crown lands to the kanaka maoli, only promises and fitful attempts at restitution amid generations of wistful nostalgia and frustration. Meanwhile, the 50th state’s economic and political structures remain dominated by non-Hawaiians, including descendants of White missionaries, as they have since the 1893 overthrow.
Hawaiians suffer disproportionately from homelessness, poverty, poor health and other long aftereffects of colonial dispossession. But the islands remain a paradise for the few who can easily afford it. They include the lordly billionaires Larry Ellison of Oracle, who owns almost an entire island, Lanai, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has vast oceanfront acreage on Kauai, his own Sherwood Forest, which he works diligently to keep the peasantry away from.
It’s almost enough to make a peaceable Hawaii-born lower-case democrat like me want to grab a musket, throw out the usurpers and support the return of a kanaka to the royal throne.
As monarchies go, Hawaii’s wasn’t half bad. Kamehameha, after his last military victory, lost all warlike ambition. “He never fought another campaign,” the historian Gavan Daws wrote, “and one of his most famous decrees, Ke Kanawai Mamalahoe, kept his subjects safe from bloody and capricious death — ‘Let the old men, the old women, and the children sleep in safety by the roadside.’”
Nor did Hawaii’s monarchs aspire to be colonial overlords. They sent no plundering canoes or slave ships out into the vast Pacific. They stayed home, contending with jockeying imperial powers, pesky haoles (both missionary and military) and internal politics. Unlike their British counterparts, Hawaiians saw the sun set on their empire once every evening, between about 6 and 7. | 2022-09-16T12:41:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Looking for a royal fix? Hawaii’s sidelined monarchy may satisfy. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/queen-monarchy-hawaii-princess-abigail/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/09/16/queen-monarchy-hawaii-princess-abigail/ |
Sweden’s new governing coalition includes a party founded by neo-Nazis
That’s a first — but the right-wing parties forming the next government don’t necessarily agree on social and economic issues
Analysis by Anders Ravik Jupskås
Election workers count the last votes in the municipality of Stockholm at the Stockholm City Hall on Sept. 14, a few days after Sweden’s general election. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images)
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson resigned on Thursday, conceding a close election to a right-wing opposition bloc. In Sweden’s general elections last week, a group of right-wing parties — the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats — gained three more seats in parliament than their center-left rivals. That means that the leader of the conservative party, the Moderates, Ulf Kristersson, is likely to be Sweden’s next prime minister.
It’s not yet clear which right-wing parties will be formally part of the government, but this will be the first Swedish government ever to govern with the support of a far-right party, the Sweden Democrats. As I explain in a recent book chapter, in recent years the mainstream conservatives of the Moderate party have embraced a party founded by neo-Nazis.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of the Sweden Democrats’ rise
Public opinion suggests that Sweden is one of the most liberal countries in the world. Only four years ago, it was unthinkable that any party would collaborate with the Sweden Democrats, including the Moderates. Unlike other far-right parties that have come to power elsewhere in Europe, the Sweden Democrats began as a neo-Nazi party in the late 1980s.
Not only did Kristersson include the Sweden Democrats on his “side of politics” during this year’s elections, but his party campaigned on far-right issues, as well as the increase in energy prices. The party singled out crime and social issues popularly associated with immigrants, such as gang violence, sexual assault and welfare benefits dependency.
The Moderates used to be a cosmopolitan party
In the 1990s, the Moderates mostly focused on free markets and tax cuts. The party had begun in 1904 as a traditional conservative party but had moved away from nationalism to embrace Sweden’s role in the global economy. Two decades ago, the party was progressive on social questions such as LGBT rights, gender equality and cultural diversity. It became the leading party on the right, and in 1991, the party formed a minority government with Carl Bildt as the first Moderate prime minister in postwar Sweden. The party increased its share of the vote but couldn’t stay in office, and had to give power back to the dominant Social Democrats party.
The party then moved away from advocating tax cuts and deregulating labor markets, rebranding itself the “New Moderates.” In 2004, it was able to form a new coalition of parties, the Alliance, which challenged Social Democratic dominance. This coalition, led by Moderate leader Fredrik Reinfeldt, governed Sweden between 2006 and 2014. In 2010, the Moderates even gained more than 30 percent of the vote, challenging the Social Democrats’ position as Sweden’s largest party, for the first time in nearly a century.
How united is the West on Russia?
However, after the 2010 electoral breakthrough of the Sweden Democrats, the Moderates began to lose support, much like mainstream right parties in many other European countries. Voters who were hostile to immigrants were the primary supporters of the Sweden Democrats, though it was not a single-issue party. The coalition of mainstream conservative and centrist parties disagreed over whether they could form a minority government with tacit support from the Sweden Democrats.
Then the Moderates moved sharply to the right
At first, the Moderates doubled down on their socially liberal and cosmopolitan identity. But as support for the Swedish Democrats kept growing, the Moderates’ grass-roots supporters pressed them increasingly toward the right. In 2015-2016, when Europe saw a significant increase in asylum requests from refugees from Syria and elsewhere, Swedish public discourse became less favorable to cosmopolitan ideals.
That led the party to change its strategy. The Moderates moved away from cosmopolitan language and started to claim that it was the socially conservative party that could get things done.
Once, the Moderates tried to sell voters on a moral framework in which the Sweden Democrats were portrayed as “completely deviant,” with no legitimate place in Swedish politics. In recent years, they just claimed that they were more politically competent than the far right. For example, during a debate with far-right leader Jimmie Åkesson, the soon-to-be Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson argued that the Sweden Democrats had been “good at identifying problems,” but that the party “never presented concrete proposals that would really solve those problems.”
The party no longer ruled out formal collaboration with the Sweden Democrats. The Moderates had been defeated in 2018, and two parties in the former Alliance decided to support the incumbent Social Democratic prime minister to keep the Sweden Democrats away from power. One of those parties eventually switched back, but it was clear that the Moderates had no path to power without the support of the far right.
The new government faces challenges
The Moderates will be able to form a new government, but they face some vexing problems. Embracing the Sweden Democrats only seems to have strengthened the far-right at the expense of traditional parties. Now, the Sweden Democrats will be able to point to their power as kingmakers, without taking responsibility for solving the difficult social and political challenges that the new government faces. While the Sweden Democrats are not likely to be given a formal role in government, the party will be able to use its legislative clout to demand concessions on its core issues: law and order, immigration policies, lower gasoline prices and decreased foreign aid.
All this will create difficulties for the government coalition. The Moderates’ allies in government have somewhat different approaches to social and cultural issues. They may disagree on some of the Sweden Democrats’ demands.
Equally, the Sweden Democrats are substantially to the left of the government coalition on economic issues. They want to keep unemployment and sickness benefits, which benefit their supporters. That may create another source of dissension in this highly fragile coalition — where the government will be paralyzed if only two members of parliament decide to switch sides.
Anders Ravik Jupskås is deputy director at Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, where he is doing research on party politics and the far right in the Scandinavian countries. Find him on Twitter @arjupskas. | 2022-09-16T12:41:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sweden's elections produced a big surprise. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/sweden-election-conservative-parties-immigration/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/sweden-election-conservative-parties-immigration/ |
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! Remember how I said yesterday that Friday was “soon”? Told ya so.
Below: U.S. Customs and Border Protection reveals the existence of a massive database with travelers’ data, and the FBI seizes another election denier’s phone. First:
The White House spent the week on a flurry of cybersecurity undertakings
The capstones on this week’s cybersecurity bender arrived today, with the White House touting $1 billion in cybersecurity aid to state and local governments and a threat briefing for the aviation industry.
Earlier this week, the White House issued an executive order on vetting foreign investments in the United States for cybersecurity and other risks, published a memo on the development of secure software and followed through on a threat to take action against Iranian hackers.
But the steps have, in some cases, have gotten a mixed reception.
A billion-dollar pot of money
Today the Biden administration is spelling out the application process and award timelines and providing more details about implementing a $1 billion cybersecurity fund for state and local governments allocated in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Thursday.
“The grants will significantly improve national resilience to cyberthreats by giving state, local and territorial governments much-needed resources to address network security and take steps to protect against cybersecurity risks to help them strengthen our communities,” Mayorkas said. The tribal grant program will be released later in the fall, he said.
The four-year fund will release $185 million for fiscal year 2022, said Mitch Landrieu, White House infrastructure coordinator. Each state will be eligible for a minimum of $2 million to develop a cybersecurity plan and begin assorted projects (including, potentially, election security projects), and states must allocate at least 80 percent of the funding to local and rural communities and 3 percent to tribal governments.
State and local governments have been awaiting the administration to turn on the spigot for a long time, and many don’t believe $1 billion spread across the whole country to be nearly enough.
The administration will evaluate the execution of the state cybersecurity plans and consider further needs at the end of the second and third years of the fund, said a DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity as part of the rules of the reporter briefing.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who pushed for the funding. said this:
“State and local governments in Michigan and across the country often lack the necessary resources to defend against cyberattacks, which can cost taxpayers millions of dollars and compromise sensitive personal data. … Today’s announcement means that local communities will be able to obtain increased federal resources that will help them identify cybersecurity threats and mitigate the effects of online attacks.”
Threats in the skies
The White House met with representatives of the aviation sector on Thursday to share sensitive information with them on cyberthreats and talk about industry security mandates, said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity as part of the rules of the briefing. There is no specific imminent threat at this time, though, the official said.
The meeting “is part of our broader effort to work with the private sector — sector by sector — to show them where we see gaps in their cybersecurity, and then work together to close those gaps,” the official said.
The administration has had similar briefings for two other sectors so far: railroad executives, and oil and gas executives.
As far as industry security mandates go, though, they haven’t been well-received by the aviation sector.
President Biden signed an executive order Thursday expanding the national security factors a federal review panel should consider when deciding whether to authorize major foreign investments in U.S. companies.
One of them is cybersecurity. According to the order, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) should take into account whether foreign investors pose cybersecurity risks that could harm U.S. national security, as well as the cybersecurity practices of all parties in the transaction. The committee also should evaluate risks to the sensitive data of Americans, the order says.
The document had generated some hand-wringing from cyber experts before its publication, as Suzanne Smalley wrote for CyberScoop, and was largely seen as stemming from fears about China’s investments in U.S. companies.
Notably, “This E.O. does not change CFIUS processes or legal jurisdiction,” according to a White House fact sheet. Here’s Brandon Van Grack, a former federal prosecutor who is a partner at Morrison Foerster:
Nothing really new here on how US govt is going to regulate and review foreign investment. Clarity is always good and should be encouraged, but this does not signal a change in policy. #CFIUS https://t.co/c8CKX9JUwn
Iran, secure software development
Last week, the White House threatened unspecified action taking aim at Iranian hackers whom the Albanian government blamed for a July cyberattack. As I wrote Thursday, the Biden administration followed through with indictments, sanctions and more.
I also wrote this week about the White House’s Office of Management and Budget releasing a much-anticipated memo intended to steer agencies and government contractors toward complying with common cybersecurity practices.
Bloomberg News’s Katrina Manson captured some of the industry response to the memo, while FedScoop’s Dave Nyczepir explored the debate about the guidance calling for contractors to vouch for the cybersecurity of their products rather than using third-party auditors.
Massive trove of Americans’ data stored in Customs and Border Protection database
The U.S. government adds data from as many as 10,000 devices every year to a massive database compiled with devices seized at airports, seaports and border crossings, Drew Harwell reports. The data is maintained for 15 years and thousands of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers can access it without a warrant, raising alarm in Congress.
“CBP’s inspection of people’s phones, laptops, tablets and other electronic devices as they enter the country has long been a controversial practice that the agency has defended as a low-impact way to pursue possible security threats and determine an individual’s ‘intentions upon entry’ into the U.S.,” Drew writes. “But the revelation that thousands of agents have access to a searchable database without public oversight is a new development in what privacy advocates and some lawmakers warn could be an infringement of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
CBP conducts “border searches of electronic devices in accordance with statutory and regulatory authorities” and has rules to make sure the searches are “exercised judiciously, responsibly, and consistent with the public trust,” CBP spokesman Lawrence “Rusty” Payne said in a statement.
The system was revealed in a letter from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus. In the letter, Wyden criticized the agency for “allowing indiscriminate rifling through Americans’ private records” and called for stronger privacy protections.
FBI seizes phone from election denier with ties to Lindell
Ohio math and science teacher Douglas Frank, who claims to have found secret algorithms used to flip the 2020 election, said two FBI agents served him with a warrant as he stepped off a plane, Emma Brown and Jon Swaine report. The FBI’s Denver office acknowledged that a warrant approved by a court had been served, but it didn’t provide specifics.
Frank is an associate of MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, whose phone was seized by the FBI hours earlier. In April 2021, Frank met with Mesa County, Colo., clerk Tina Peters and “showed her how her election was hacked,” he previously told The Post. Frank told Peters that an upcoming update to Dominion voting machines could erase data needed to prove that the election was stolen, and he forwarded Peters’s request for help copying data to someone in Lindell’s circle, he said.
In March, Peters was indicted. She’s accused of helping an outsider copy sensitive data from the county’s elections systems in May 2021.
“I did nothing illegal,” Frank said when asked about the warrant served on Lindell. He didn’t respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Lindell told The Post he wasn’t involved in copying data from Mesa County’s election management system and didn’t meet with Peters during his August 2021 “cyber symposium.”
Senate confirms first ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy
Nate Fick will lead a new office at the State Department while juggling international diplomacy, threats and conflict. Fick has been a cybersecurity executive, author and Marine.
Fick will oversee three international policy units that are focused on the security of cyberspace, international communications policy and digital freedom. Jennifer Bachus, a career diplomat, has been leading the bureau since it launched in April.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a co-chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, called Fick’s confirmation a “historic, long overdue step to address our rapidly changing cyber environment.” Here’s Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.):
Congrats, Nate Fick, on advancing out of #SFRC by a bipartisan voice vote!
I’m also thrilled that #SFRC approved the Senate companion to the Cyber Diplomacy Act.
It’s long past time to codify this vital role into law. https://t.co/ENyq3TU3uB
Uber suffers computer system breach, alerts authorities (Faiz Siddiqui)
Record Chinese cyber breach spurs eruption in data for sale (Bloomberg)
EU wants to toughen cybersecurity rules for smart devices (Associated Press)
Today’s first @washingtonpost TikTok features rising mortgage rates https://t.co/Lhc9v9N4LJ pic.twitter.com/Ldnl9bL3ZX | 2022-09-16T12:41:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The White House is on a cyber bender - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/white-house-is-cyber-bender/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/white-house-is-cyber-bender/ |
We’re all born with the brain neurocircuitry to see another person as more special than anyone else
By Amir Levine, MD
Amir Levine is a psychiatrist and the co-author of the book “Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love.”
For humans, biologically speaking, soul mates are entirely real. But just like all relationships, soul mates can be complicated.
Of course, there isn’t a scientifically agreed-upon definition for “soul mate.” But humans are in a small club in the animal kingdom that can form long-term relationships. I’m not talking about sexual monogamy. Humans evolved with the neurocircuitry to see another person as special. We have the capacity to single someone out from the crowd, elevate them above all others and then spend decades with them.
In other words, soul mates are made possible for us because of the way our brain is wired.
What’s fascinating to me is that we are all unique. Our DNA is unique. Our faces are unique. Our brains are unique. And yet we all have the brain neurocircuitry to see another person as more special than anyone else. What happens when we make someone special like that is they become more valuable than others. There’s a lot more at stake whether they call us or don’t call us.
We take this ability for granted, but in the animal kingdom, it’s not that common. That neurocircuitry is called pair bonding. There’s a little rodent called a prairie vole that has a version of it. Prairie voles are grayish-brown, mouse-like creatures that don’t look particularly special. Unless, of course, you’re another prairie vole.
When one prairie vole finds another, they mate once, and that’s it. They huddle together and follow each other everywhere. What’s interesting is that there are very similar voles, the montane voles and meadow voles, that are promiscuous. The differences in the brains of these two rodents has become a classic way of studying the biology of monogamy and pair bonding.
It turns out prairie voles have more oxytocin and vasopressin receptors in their striatum, the area of the brain that’s associated with reward. These hormones are linked to feelings of trust, love and bonding. It’s a difference that allows prairie voles to create closeness with their mates.
But even within the species, prairie voles can form different levels of attachment. Some voles have more oxytocin receptors and some less. Some are more attentive to their partner — they groom and lick them more compared to other prairie voles. And there are wandering prairie voles that have “affairs.”
We see this variability in humans too. We can vary greatly in the strength of the bond we create. Some people have more caregiving tendencies; some people have less.
Sparks and smells
The million-dollar question is: How does the spark happen, and why do we get attracted to some people and not others? The laws of attraction are not fully understood. There are a lot of psychological theories, not at all backed by science. Some people say we’re looking for our parents. But studies offer a different view on this.
When you look at the neuroscience research, you see that for rodents that are monogamous, it’s smell that bonds them together. For humans, it’s probably about sight and smell.
We have a very developed visual system, and research has shown appearance is an important part of how we pick our mates. Their body odor becomes comforting to us and may even help maintain the relationship.
We look at someone, and smell them, and they just make sense to us.
Biologically speaking, close friendships are a type of soul mate too. People who become close friends often have an immediate affinity for one another. We know that close friends have similar brain patterns. A study this year found that close friends — the researchers focused on friends who immediately “clicked” — smell more alike than people who didn’t form close relationships.
In the study, scientists chose 20 sets of friends and collected body odor samples by asking them to wear the same T-shirt for a few days. The scientists used an electronic nose to determine the chemical fingerprint of each person’s body odor. They compared close friends and pairs of random strangers and found that the chemical signatures of the “click friends” were significantly more similar than people put together at random.
Yes, you can have more than one soul mate
The challenge with soul mates is that they can become etched in our brain. It’s a powerful biological system we have to respect, and it takes time to get over someone and heal, whether it be a breakup or a loss.
But here’s where it gets complicated. This ability we have to make someone special — our brains can do it again and again. That’s why we can have more than one soul mate in our lives.
My longtime friend and mentor, who died recently, had a relationship with a man for years. Then he died of cancer.
For decades, she lived alone without having a relationship. When she was 82, she started talking about this guy she had met. She started mentioning him more and more. And then she told me she had fallen in love, and he was moving in with her — after all those years.
For eight years, until her death, they lived together and traveled the world.
Some people believe there’s only one soul mate in our lives. But that stands in the way of thinking you can find someone else after a breakup and be happy.
The proof is everywhere you look.
It reminds me of these neighbors in my former building in Manhattan. I didn’t know them well, but I always thought they were such a cute couple. The husband was gregarious and friendly, and she was all smiles.
One day, I saw the wife, and she seemed different — gone was her smile, and she looked extremely sad. The doorman told me her husband had died suddenly of a heart attack. For a-year-and-a-half, she seemed grief stricken. It was heartbreaking. She got a senior golden retriever that followed her everywhere, and that got her out and about. But she continued to be sad.
Then I saw her walking into the building, and she was all smiles again. “She looks like a different person. It’s so good to see her happy again,” I thought. I mentioned it to our doorman. He told me she had met someone new.
A week later, I saw them in the elevator holding hands. It filled me with joy.
This ability to find a soul mate even after the loss of a great love is one of the reasons I love this field so much: There is so much hope. As a therapist and a neuroscientist, I help people with this indelible strong biology, because if we just know how to nudge it enough — to help coach people in the right direction — the work is largely done. Biology takes over and guides much of the rest. | 2022-09-16T12:42:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Are soul mates real? Do our brains make them? Here's what science says. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/16/soul-mates-real-science-research/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/16/soul-mates-real-science-research/ |
What good is 16 weeks in Congress? Mary Peltola is about to show us.
The first Alaska Native in Congress jumps into the remainder of the late Don Young’s term, while running for a full one.
By Dan Zak
Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) exits her ceremonial swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 13. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
On Monday she did an MSNBC hit, during which the host compared her to both Barack and Michelle Obama, then swore her oath of office around 6:41 p.m. Tuesday on the floor of the House while wearing the traditional fur-lined footwear of the Yup’ik people. Within the hour she cast her first three votes as a congresswoman, then shepherded her four children and three stepchildren and two grandchildren to a jubilant reception hosted by Alaska Native organizations and headlined by Nancy Pelosi — all while running, on the side, yet another campaign: to retain the office she was just elected to (Alaska’s sole seat in the House) past the Jan. 3 expiration of her new, current, abbreviated term.
“I’m really operating on adrenaline right now.”
11:33 a.m., Wednesday, her first full day as Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola (D-Alaska).
“I am feeling all of the cloud nine emotions," said Peltola, 49, posture perfect in a green leather chair. The soaring office walls, stripped of Young’s bumptious archaeology (including his vertical herd of taxidermy), had been repainted in the dull buttercream of Capitol Hill bureaucracy.
What can you do with fewer than four months in Congress?
Mary Peltola is about to show us.
“I’ve known Mary for a long time," said Lisa Murkowski, one of Alaska’s two Republican senators, as she walked into the ballroom. “She and I served in the statehouse together. I know the character of the woman. She’s tough. She’s got grit. I feel very proud today.”
Peltola was raised on the Kuskokwim River near Bethel, a 70-minute flight west of Anchorage, by a Nebraskan father and a Yup’ik mother, whose people have fished the area for 12,000 years. At 6 years old, Peltola began catching salmon commercially with her dad. In her mid-20s, after working for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Peltola won a seat in the statehouse in Juneau, where she earned a reputation as an independent thinker and a collaborative doer. After 10 years in the statehouse, Peltola focused on the Kuskokwim, helping to manage a nearby gold-mining project and advocating for imperiled salmon runs, which are the region’s economic arteries.
Her congressman, after nearly 50 years in office, died in March, triggering a crowded special election with 48 candidates including Peltola, Sarah Palin and Santa Claus. Peltola didn’t make national headlines. But she had credentials, and campaigned on the issues — “pro-jobs, pro-fish, pro-family and pro-choice” — with comity and grace. This set her apart from the sniping between Palin and the other leading Republican candidate, Nick Begich III, both of whom Peltola will face again in the general election Nov. 8.
Alaska is having the wildest election of 2022
“What it all boils down to is how she ran her campaign,” says former Young spokesman Zack Brown, who calls Peltola “a genuinely good person.” She “ran a positive, optimistic, policy-focused campaign that didn’t make personal attacks,” an “important” strategy in Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, which is designed to encourage civility in campaigning and deliver consensus winners. In the second and final round of ballot tabulation, enough Begich voters ranked Peltola second — and/or omitted Palin entirely — to push Peltola over the winning 50 percent margin.
Recently, rookie representatives have tried demagoguery and disruption in order to make a splash in Congress, but Peltola’s pledge is continuity and goodwill. She hired Young’s former chief of staff as her own, on an interim basis; her interim press secretary, who consulted on her campaign, also happens to be a Republican.
On Monday, when MSNBC host Joy Reid tried to enlist her in partisan combat, Peltola demurred.
“I am very sensitive about the way in which MAGA people feel disenfranchised, forgotten, left behind," Peltola told Reid, adding: “If you’re an American, I want to work with you. ... I try to stay away from messages of fear and hate.”
In her office Wednesday morning, Peltola was determined to avoid the capital contagions of cynicism and hostility.
“Old habits for me die hard,” she said. “And I default to that more gentle way of engaging, and the subtle ways of communication. I think that a lot can be expressed through body language and facial expressions and gentle words that are maybe even more impactful than being more forthright.”
Beneath the aura of idealism is a sudden and heavy workload: a backlog of constituent requests, a pile of Young’s unfinished legislative business, and a push for the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens act, which governs the management of fisheries in federal waters, plus trips home to Alaska every weekend, and the ongoing campaign to keep the seat.
Everything is temporary, as Peltola says, but how temporary will her time in Congress be? Whether Alaska voters affirm Peltola Nov. 8 or rank the candidates to reinstate a Republican, for this one week in Washington there was bipartisan joy over a single election. Alaska’s Republican senators hugged, smiled and stood with Peltola on the floor of the House during her swearing-in ceremony. The ensuing reception at the Kimpton Hotel Monaco had the warmth of a family reunion and the electric anticipation of a New Year’s Eve party.
“We’ve been here as indigenous people — we predate the government, any law, any congress," said Denae Benson, 26, a junior Hill staffer who approached Peltola for a photo. "Yet now, in 2022, this is the first time an Alaska Native is representing people in the body that governs them? It’s surreal that it’s taken so long, but it feeds into the hope that the country is changing and growing.” | 2022-09-16T13:58:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mary Peltola is sworn in as the first Alaska Native in Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/16/mary-peltola-alaska-native/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/16/mary-peltola-alaska-native/ |
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Sept. 16. (Sergei Bobylev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Vladimir Putin is waging a reckless war in an uncertain bid to recreate a superpower of the past. Xi Jinping is cautiously, carefully steering China to its certain destiny as a superpower of the future.
As the two presidents met in Uzbekistan on Thursday on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, the subtle undertones of the meeting revealed as much about this, and other key differences between the two strongman leaders and their respective nations, as it did about the commonalities that bind them in their self-declared “no-limits” friendship.
Putin and Xi each harbor resentments over past humiliations by the West. They dream of cutting the United States down to size, then taking what they see as their rightful places among several dominant world leaders. They are dictators, ruling “democracies” that lack any meaningful democratic features. And they both want to reshape global rules to suit themselves.
But Putin’s chaotic, tear-it-all-down approach, kicking down the territorial sovereignty of neighboring Ukraine and perpetrating the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, could not be more different from Xi’s careful, steady moves to bend global institutions to Chinese values.
The war has roiled global supply chains and set off global economic instability, impacting China, along with most of the world. It has irreparably harmed Putin’s reputation, exposed his country’s military weakness and triggered punishing sanctions, without producing a single notable benefit.
“The Chinese leadership believes that Putin’s foreign policy is like a hurricane,” said Alexander Gabuev, an expert on China and Russia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It’s absolutely illogical to them to attack Ukraine because the downsides have far outweighed any bonuses.”
Bobo Lo, former Australian deputy ambassador to Moscow and expert on Russian foreign policy, said that Russia and China had fundamentally different visions of the global order, with China wary of Russia’s destructive approach and its doubtful long-term prospects of success.
“Moscow, from the get-go, has had three aims: One is to destroy any idea of a sovereign independent Ukraine; the other is to rewrite the post-Cold War settlement in Europe, and the third is to basically trash any idea of a U.S.-led global order,” Lo said.
“Moscow is much more of a destroyer and underminer than a creator,” he said. “So it has the capacity to cause havoc, but it doesn’t really have the capacity to put in place any kind of alternative vision of global order. And I’m not even sure that it necessarily wants to.”
Beijing has struck a delicate balance over the war. It bestowed a measure of restrained moral support on its large, energy-rich neighbor, maintaining and expanding economic ties with Moscow, without supporting the war, sending arms, or breaching Western sanctions. All in all, it is far less than Putin would want from its most powerful ally.
At the same time, Putin’s meetings with Xi and other leaders at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan, sent a useful message to Russians at home about his continued global stature. But while Putin attended a dinner and posed for a photo of leaders on Thursday night, Xi skipped the meal and the picture.
The bilateral meeting between Putin and Xi on Thursday contrasted starkly with their last face-to-face encounter in February, to mark the Beijing Winter Olympics and trumpet their “no limits” friendship.
Putin’s visit then was a favor to the Chinese leader amid a diplomatic boycott of the games. Sports was clearly not at the top of Putin’s mind. He huddled alone in a dark coat at the Opening Ceremonies, eyes drooping shut in an apparent doze, just as Ukraine’s team entered the arena.
But in Samarkand on Thursday, the Russian president looked more of an earnest supplicant, conceding that China had “concern and questions” over the war, and promising to answer them.
Xi, in his public remarks, talked about “the responsibility of a major country to play a leading role and inject stability into a turbulent world,” in comments that seemed implicitly critical.
Putin also spoke about stability, but in the process sneered at the Western-led global order.
“The tandem of Moscow and Beijing plays a key role in ensuring global and regional stability,” Putin said. “We jointly stand for the formation of a just, democratic and multipolar world based on international law and the central role of the U.N., and not on some rules that someone has come up with and is trying to impose on others without explaining what it is.”
This ignored Russia’s flagrant violations of international law in Ukraine since 2014.
China has worked methodically to skew international institutions to its interests, confident of its inevitable rise as a global superpower and the world’s largest economy. Beijing has quietly flexed its economic muscle around the globe, building influence across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Russia intervened militarily in Syria, has deployed mercenaries in Africa, maintains a 1,500-strong force in Transnistria, Moldova, and has waged war on Georgia and Ukraine, controlling chunks of their territory through proxies. China, meanwhile, has projected its military power regionally by building military bases on artificial islands in the South China Sea, through naval and air patrols, and military spending second only to the United States. Last month it conducted aggressive military exercises near Taiwan, just after U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited the island.
“Russia knows that in any new global order it’s not going to be a significant player,” Lo said. “So its best bet is to be … an anarchist in the international system. In other words, it benefits from chaos and disorder and uncertainty and blurred lines and blank spots.”
Lo said Russia would lose out in any well-balanced global system.
“If you have a clearly-defined world order, whether it’s a U.S.-led order, a U.S.-China G2 type of thing or a multilateral rules-based regime or whatever, Russia’s relative influence would decline significantly in any of those orders. So the current global disorder is actually the best case scenario for Moscow.”
Last month, China imported more Russian crude oil than ever before
As a result of the Ukraine war and Western sanctions, China will now be in a position to extract punishingly advantageous energy contracts from Russia, as Moscow loses its biggest energy market in Europe.
Russia, meanwhile, resentful and insecure and increasingly dependent on Chinese for trade, can claim a place as a residual global heavyweight thanks only to its nuclear weapons, a legacy of the Soviet Union, and its permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Xi sent another subtle but unmistakable message to the Kremlin on Wednesday when he visited Kazakhstan before flying to Uzbekistan.
Xi met Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, vowing strong support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation that like Ukraine, is a neighbor of Russia with a significant Russian-speaking population and has been used regularly by Russian politicians since the 1990s to level oblique threats of action to “protect” them.
Putin’s failure to come away from Thursday’s meeting with Xi with any concrete achievement — such as signing of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline deal, a linchpin of Russia’s energy pivot to China — signaled China’s wary approach to Russia, as the messy, brutal war drags on. Last week, Putin said all the details had been agreed.
Still, the meeting was evidence that Russian and Chinese relations will continue on a pragmatic path, with China pursuing its interests, and Russia losing global clout.
“China is pretty skillfully for now balancing its interests to maintain relationship with Russia,” said Gabuev. “That’s a big neighbor, a P5 country, a like-minded authoritarian state, a common long-term U.S. adversary. And at the same time, it is appreciating how important what’s left over the relationship between China and the West is for now, and how important access to U.S. and European technology markets and investment is.
“China really wants to not cross the U.S. red lines with regard to sanctions,” Gabuev said.
Gabuev said Xi had chosen the occasion for his meeting with Putin carefully, a multilateral setting with plenty of leaders’ meetings on the sidelines. “The optics also matter. He doesn’t travel to Russia, per se, which would be viewed as direct support,” Gabuev said.
Andrei Kortunov, director of the pro-Kremlin Russian Council for International Affairs, said Western analysts portrayed China as the big bad wolf ready to devour silly, naive Russia, while Russian politicians, analysts saw China as a fairy godmother flying to Moscow’s rescue.
In reality, he said China and Russia at times share interests and at times diverge.
“Therefore, it is hardly fair to define Beijing’s approaches to international relations as pro-Russian or anti-Russian,” Kortunov said. “They have always been and will be primarily pro-Chinese.”
Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Lativa, contributed to this report. | 2022-09-16T13:58:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As war rages in Ukraine, Russia and China maintain an uneasy alliance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/putin-xi-russia-china-alliance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/putin-xi-russia-china-alliance/ |
How ‘Immortality’ developer Sam Barlow designs stories to haunt players
By Darryn King
In “Her Story” and “Telling Lies,” game designer Sam Barlow uses filmed performances of live actors to tell deeply involved and involving stories — just don’t call them “interactive movies.”
“That term would always slightly rub up against me,” he told The Washington Post in a recent video interview, speaking from his home in Brooklyn. He had, he said, even gone so far as to subtitle his “Telling Lies” script “an anti-movie.”
“What I was doing always felt quite different to me,” Barlow said. “The art of movies comes from the edit, from the control, and the experience of being sat there.”
He added that his latest project is, in a way, the product of his meditations on what a movie actually is: “I was like, well, okay, you're going to keep talking about movies? Let's talk about movies.”
Review: ‘Immortality’s’ flawed characters are perfect. The game, less so.
Released Aug. 30, “Immortality” is Barlow’s most ambitious and complex work to date. Like “Her Story” and “Telling Lies,” it sees the player sifting and sorting through the smithereens of a story, coaxing meaning from disparate fragments of a narrative jigsaw puzzle.
That story spans four decades and revolves around the character of Marissa Marcel, an actress who starred in three never-released films before her disappearance. The player has access to footage shot for Marissa’s films, as well as behind-the-scenes ephemera: audition tapes, rehearsals, table reads, late-night TV appearances, etc. The result is a cinephiliac bad trip — “a hall of mirrors,” as actress Jocelin Donahue, who stars in the game, described it — giving the feeling of being in a darkened editing room strewn with celluloid.
“Immortality” was shot from a 400-page script that was itself partly a compilation of portions of three feature screenplays written by Amelia Gray (“Telling Lies,” “Mr. Robot”), Barry Gifford (“Lost Highway”) and Allan Scott (“Don’t Look Now”). There are a few hundred clips and about 10 hours of footage in all — about the same amount of footage as for “Telling Lies.”
“But it spans a much greater variety of locations, eras [and] contexts,” Barlow said. “Our goal was to be generous.”
With “Immortality,” Barlow aims to terrorize and haunt the player’s imagination. Barlow particularly cites the influence of David Lynch’s “Inland Empire” and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure,” films that “don’t explain enough for you to be able to pack it away and walk out the cinema,” he said. “It is still going on inside you. I believe the official term for this kind of horror film is the mindf--- horror film.
“A thing that a lot of my favorite horror movies have in common also is that they feel slightly dangerous. The movies feel a little bit alive, a little bit infectious. I like horror movies that feel like they’ve snuck something into my brain. Definitely in deciding to embark on ‘Immortality’ we were interested in exploring how a game like this could feel alive, ways it could feel malevolent.”
Jes Negrón’s first game after suing Riot is about heritage and a haunted house
Barlow has long been obsessed with the goings-on in gamers’ heads. When he first decided to pursue a career as an indie developer in 2014, he had become disillusioned with the industry’s obsession over immersive, contiguous, 3D video game worlds. These were games, he felt, that bestowed a sense of limitless possibility, at the cost of not engaging what Barlow has called the sophisticated “simulation tech” of the player’s imagination.
By contrast, in Barlow’s games, a painstaking, almost manic intensity of imagination and focus is the whole point. Even as far back as “Aisle,” his interactive-fiction game from 1999, Barlow invited players to ponder or even obsess over the multitude of metaphysical possibilities contained in and unlocked by a single choice. Partly inspired by the experimental fiction of J.G. Ballard — who wanted, for example, the reading experience of “The Atrocity Exhibition” to be a kind of archaeology — Barlow wants players to be deeply involved and invested in the act of storytelling.
“I think the throughline in my work is finding ways to allow people to explore a story in the way you might explore a space in a conventional video game,” Barlow said. “To figure out ways to make the act of exploring or experiencing a story expressive for the audience.
“This sounds very abstract, but I think it aligns with the specific obsessions I always bump up against in my stories — identity, memory. Very novelistic concepts.”
In the end, filming flesh-and-blood actors rather than laboring to finesse CG performances is just the natural fit for the psychological depth and sophistication of Barlow’s storytelling — even if shooting for 11 weeks in California during a pandemic was less than ideal.
“Once I started getting to make games that had characters and stories at the forefront, it was apparent to me that the best way to tell those stories was with actors,” he said. “I don’t think you can beat telling a story using actors. The extent to which you can take a story and compress it and make it so succinct through how a talented actor might make a single expression — the joyful way that we are able, as humans with brains designed to do this, unpack all that story from the expression. It’s such a beautiful process.”
He added that, having witnessed the “obscene” amount of work that goes into in-game CGI and motion capture to render realistic-looking characters, “every day I work with live action feels like a blessing.”
Barlow is clearly fascinated by the inherent deceptions of acting itself: “Her Story,” “Telling Lies” and, now, “Immortality” all feature characters that are putting on performances of one kind or another. Fittingly for a story — and a storyteller — interested in the blurry boundaries between authenticity and artifice, the 11-week shoot for “Immortality” involved navigating multiple layers of reality.
When Los Angeles-based actress Manon Gage got a callback for the role of Marissa, the character whose disappearance the player is investigating, she ended her first conversation with Barlow with more questions than answers.
“I was like wait, so it’s a video game,” she told The Post, “but it’s also three art films? But also a documentary about filmmaking? But also an interactive mystery?”
As part of the role, Gage plays a corps of interrelated parts: a movie actress in the 60s, 70s and 90s, a woman disguised as a monk in 18th-century Spain, an artist’s muse in 70s New York, and a 90s pop star, as well as that 90s pop star’s identical body double. To prepare, Gage got a crash course in cinematic history; at Barlow’s behest, she watched “Black Narcissus,” Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Devils,” “Klute,” “Performance,” “Blow-Up,” “Lost Highway,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Bodyguard” and “Basic Instinct” — all works with both stylistic and thematic links to “Immortality.”
“Sam basically gave me a syllabus,” Gage said.
With so many roles, as well as those of the game’s other characters, at play, keeping everything straight proved challenging on set, her co-star Hans Christopher explained.
“There was an actor who was playing a director in one part of the game,” Christopher said, “who came to me thinking I was the director, and I was like, ‘No, no man, I’m not the director, I’m just an actor playing the director of one of the films in which you are an actor playing a director.’ That summed up a pretty typical working day.”
It occurred to many crew members involved with “Immortality” — as it had previously with “Telling Lies” — that it would have been a lot easier making a regular film. Plus, as director of photography Doug Potts said, “Sam’s scripts beg to be seen on the big screen.”
“Every time I finish shooting one of these complicated things, the cast and crew are like, ‘Can we just do a movie next time?’” Barlow said.
Darryn King is a freelance writer covering arts and culture based in New York City. | 2022-09-16T14:11:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside the mind of Sam Barlow, the dev behind Immortality and Her Story - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/16/immortality-sam-barlow-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/16/immortality-sam-barlow-interview/ |
A modern currency must meet the needs of a modern economy. Yet in an important way, the US dollar is failing: As currencies around the world become more user-friendly, it’s in danger of falling behind. The Federal Reserve is rightly working to remedy this, but the broader government must do more to ensure that the dollar remains competitive, within the country’s borders and beyond.
To its credit, the Fed is trying to address at least part of the problem: the country’s outdated “automated clearinghouse,” which processes by far the largest share of payments by value — more than $70 trillion in 2021 — but only in batches and during weekday business hours. In mid-2023, the central bank intends to launch a new service called FedNow, which will operate around the clock. If successful, it will complement and expand upon existing private services, enabling a wide range of instant payments among financial institutions, businesses and consumers.
So far, so good. But the rest of the world isn’t standing still.
Consider international payments. Governments can facilitate trust between banks within their territories, but things become more complicated across borders. Payments often need to travel convoluted paths among banks that have established correspondent relationships, adding delay, risk and expense. Workarounds such as Wise or Western Union don’t fully address the issue. The typical international remittance fee, for example, is about 5%, extracting billions of dollars a year from people sending money to family and friends.
One promising solution, borrowed from cryptocurrencies: Create a true digital form of cash. This could come in various forms, such as regulated versions of stablecoins tied to fiat currencies, or tokens issued directly by central banks. Much like bearer instruments, these wouldn’t require trust. They could be exchanged on platforms that transcend borders, making international transactions fast, secure and cheap. Among others, the central banks of Australia, China, France, Singapore and Switzerland have tested such platforms, and the International Monetary Fund is advocating a more robust version to connect payment systems worldwide.
The US hasn’t been entirely idle in this respect. The Fed has been exploring the possibility of a digital dollar — and to some extent, the issuer of the world’s dominant currency can afford to wait and learn from the experience (and mistakes) of others. That said, policy makers need to ensure that the US helps shape whatever legitimate payment infrastructure emerges. To that end, regulators should get a grip on stablecoins, insisting that any token purporting to be worth a dollar be backed by actual dollars. And Congress should grant the Fed the authority to issue a central bank digital currency if needed.
The next iteration of money has the potential to benefit billions, enhance global trade, and broaden access for previously marginalized people and places. The US shouldn’t allow itself to fall behind again.
• Excited About a Digital Dollar? Not So Fast: Darrell Duffie | 2022-09-16T14:11:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Money Is Evolving. The Dollar Needs to Keep Up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/money-is-evolving-the-dollar-needs-to-keep-up/2022/09/16/4ad86eca-35c0-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/money-is-evolving-the-dollar-needs-to-keep-up/2022/09/16/4ad86eca-35c0-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
New Metro GM: It’s your transit system
By Randy Clarke
Randy Clarke, WMATA's general manager and chief executive, began his first day of work on July 25 commuting from the Foggy Bottom Metro station. (Gaya Gupta/The Washington Post)
Randy Clarke is general manager and chief executive of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
Since I took the helm of America’s transit system and began asking customers, staff and stakeholders about Metro, I’ve heard tremendous support for our system as the region’s opportunity connector. Everyone wants us to deliver safe, frequent, reliable transit. The frequent questions are: What can be done about fare evasion, when is the Silver Line extension opening, when are the newest rail cars coming back and what can be done about funding Metro?
A few immediate actions to get the basics right are already making a difference on customer communications, cleanliness and service.
On Sept. 12, we ramped up the number of 7000-series (7K) trains in service per day. These are our newest and most reliable rail cars, and we are improving wait times to 10 minutes or less for most customers on all lines. In the core of the system, Blue, Orange and Silver Line trains will operate as often as every four minutes. The legacy cars that have been restored and well-maintained will continue to keep customers moving until all new rail cars return.
The newest cars are the most dependable in Metro’s history and are four times less likely to become disabled. The new inspection process that received Washington Metrorail Safety Commission concurrence this summer followed 24,000 inspections of 234 cars without any nonconforming wheel measurements. We based our plan on an analysis of 860,000 miles of travel with this train type, roughly the equivalent of 13,438 trips around the Beltway. Overall, the 7K fleet has traveled more than 400 million miles serving customers.
At the same time, we are taking important steps toward opening the Silver Line extension to Ashburn via Dulles International Airport, with final testing and employee training, and emergency drills in Fairfax and Loudoun counties. We are on schedule to seek concurrence on safety certification from the WMSC next month, and we continue to advance our new Potomac Yard station on the Yellow and Blue lines.
We are moving forward on our aggressive capital program, restoring Orange Line stations for our customers with new slip-resistant tiles, brighter LED canopy lighting, lighted handrails, passenger information displays and phone chargers. The station modernization program that began with platform rebuilding represents a billion-dollar investment in the system. That continues with the Yellow Line tunnel rehabilitation between the Pentagon and L’Enfant Plaza stations — among the oldest sections of the system — to ensure their use for decades to come. Though we understand the challenge that presents to our customers, we are adding additional Blue Line trains to provide rail alternatives, including bus shuttles, bike share and free commuter trains from our partners at Virginia Railway Express.
The capital improvement program reflects the region’s commitment to maintaining and improving your community’s $100 billion transit asset. The question of how best to fund Metro is an important one that requires thought leadership and extensive community input. It begins with “What do we want Metro to be?” Together with our board of directors, who represent our regional governing jurisdictions and the federal government, we are developing a strategic transformation that will address our funding future, fare policy and service equity and frequency, which we look forward to talking with customers about over the next several months to help us set Metro’s goals.
In the near term, we are supporting returning customers with more rapid social media engagement, and extended customer service hours Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. For frequent, new and visiting customers, we are piloting new signage, beginning with putting service information at street level at Metro Center. We are also going to test way-finding signage to the new Dulles station in 33 stations and seek feedback from the community.
Customer satisfaction starts with safety and security. We are enhancing police visibility, with officers riding trains and buses more frequently and regularly. We have more than 8,000 cameras that are monitored, keeping watch on the system. Also, the details matter to customers. We’ve embarked on a “clean sweep” program focused on rail stations and bus transit centers to repair lights, clean windowpanes, clean granite and tile floors, remove graffiti, pressure-wash benches and bus shelters, painting and other housekeeping — all in seven weeks. We are also piloting various fare gate modifications, among other efforts, to address customer concerns with fare evasion.
Everyone at Metro is focused on providing the excellent experience our customers and the region need and deserve. We are keeping customers at the center of everything we do. Operating safely isn’t a choice. It’s either safe or we won’t do it. I am empowering all staff members to own our service outcomes and to proudly represent America’s transit system.
As you travel the region this fall, I hope you will choose Metro. We beat traffic and gas prices, and we fight climate change. Though I am privileged to be the general manager, it’s your Metro, so please let us know how we can serve you better.
Opinion|Virginia AG Jason Miyares injects more theater into elections | 2022-09-16T14:12:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | New Metro GM: It’s your transit system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/metro-randy-clarke-capital-improvement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/metro-randy-clarke-capital-improvement/ |
By Jon Baron
Supporters of funding the Kirwan education bill gather in 2020 near the Maryland State House in Annapolis. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Jon Baron was a candidate for the 2022 Democratic nomination for Maryland governor.
In the classic movie “Groundhog Day,” a TV weatherman played by Bill Murray gets stuck in a time loop, reliving Feb. 2 again and again.
It’s a fitting metaphor for what Marylanders have experienced for years, as politicians from both parties have rolled out one plan after another to improve education, lift wages and help struggling families get ahead. Decades later, the needle has barely moved on these issues — in Maryland or nationally. In this election year, we have an opportunity to change our approach. Let’s finally do it.
Today, more than one-quarter of Maryland eighth-graders can’t read at even a basic level, and more than one-third can’t do basic math — the same as 20 years ago, according to U.S. Education Department measures. Census Bureau data show that more than a half-million Marylanders live in poverty, and that we haven’t reduced our poverty rate in more than 30 years. Even today’s problem of inflation eroding income gains is not new for many Marylanders: Census data show that, after accounting for inflation, the bottom 40 percent of households have seen stagnant earnings since 1979 as income inequality has soared.
Why are we stuck? The answer lies in the fact that Maryland, like other states, keeps rolling out well-meaning but unproven programs. This long-standing approach to social spending hasn’t brought progress for a simple reason: Many programs, no matter how plausible-sounding or well-intentioned, simply don’t work — they don’t improve people’s lives — as we’ve seen too often when the results are measured. The same pattern occurs in other fields, such as medicine and business: When new treatments or approaches are rigorously tested, only 10 to 20 percent are typically found effective.
Yet we keep rolling out untested social programs, expecting this approach to suddenly succeed where it has failed in the past. Hence, Groundhog Day.
The remedy lies in adopting a key lesson from other fields: To make progress, we must deploy solutions that don’t just sound good but have actually been tested in the real world and shown to improve people’s lives. That has been the standard procedure in medicine for more than 50 years, ever since the Food and Drug Administration started requiring pharmaceutical drugs be shown effective in rigorous randomized trials before allowing them to be marketed. The result has been amazing improvements in human health (think: vaccines for measles and the coronavirus, treatment for HIV/AIDS, and statins and antihypertensive drugs to prevent heart attacks and strokes — all proven effective in rigorous trials).
Could a similar approach work in social policy? Yes! In recent years, rigorous trials have identified a modest but growing number of exceptional social programs that produce big improvements in people’s lives, showing success is indeed possible. A leading example is Year Up, a job training program for disadvantaged young adults that focuses on fast-growing industries and provides paid internships with local employers. It increases average earnings by a remarkable $8,000 per year.
In education, KIPP — a network of college-prep public charter schools serving mainly low-income, minority students — increases reading and math achievement in kindergarten through eighth grade by five to 10 percentile points and college enrollment by seven percentage points. Another program, Bottom Line, which provides one-on-one advising to help low-income students get into and graduate from college, increases bachelor’s degree completion by eight percentage points.
Unfortunately, such programs have only a toehold in Maryland because government social spending in our state, as in other states, generally does not reward proven effectiveness. Instead, money is typically allocated through funding formulas or other processes that pay no heed to rigorous evidence, thereby supporting programs that sound plausible but are untested.
To make progress, we must rewrite Maryland’s laws governing social spending to incorporate two core principles. First, they should specify that programs meeting the highest standards for proven effectiveness receive top priority for funding to scale them statewide to benefit many thousands of people. Second, given the currently limited number of proven programs, the laws also should carve out funds to rigorously test innovative new programs — and promising existing ones — to grow the body of proven programs qualifying for scale-up.
If we continue on our current path, we will — like Murray’s TV weatherman — be here in 20 years, still mired in the same problems and listening to policymakers roll out the next new plan. Instead, let’s pioneer a new problem-solving approach in Maryland, using tested and proven solutions — just as in medicine — to finally ignite progress in education, economic opportunity and other areas affecting millions of lives.
Opinion|Prince George’s raised more questions by removing WSSC official | 2022-09-16T14:12:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | New election, same problems in Maryland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/new-election-same-problems-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/new-election-same-problems-maryland/ |
What Queen Elizabeth meant for White Christianity
On June 2, 1953, Queen Elizabeth II poses on her coronation day, in London. (AFP via Getty Images)
Whew, the last week has me royally exhausted. Apparently, multiple planets are stuck in Gatorade. So, if the vibes seem off, maybe that’s why.
Speaking of momentous shifts, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II has brought out a flood of emotion around the world, and it’s all been dizzying to process. For many, the queen and her family are symbols of the rapaciousness of the British Empire, which I discuss in my latest column.
As a former evangelical, though, I’ve also been thinking about the religious symbolism of Elizabeth.
The religiously devoted queen was “Defender of the Faith” and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. According to Tablet Magazine, a Vatican official called Elizabeth “the last Christian monarch.” Historically, monarchies like the United Kingdom’s have not just been symbols of empire — they have been symbols of a White, Christian global empire, with the divine right to help spread the kingdom of God to the “darkest” corners of the Earth.
We all know that Christianity was a central part of the colonizing mission to Africa. British Protestant missionaries made it their duty to “save” the souls of Africans. From the early 1900s on, British missionaries set up schools and received government support from British colonial offices. Africans were forced to disavow their own spiritual traditions and cultures. In 1957, on her first trip to America as monarch, Elizabeth made a Southern Baptist missionary to Nigeria, May Perry, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
But things are changing. While today Christianity broadly remains the largest religious tradition in Africa (with Islam second), more and more Black people and Africans are rejecting White colonial Christianity in favor of more African spiritual traditions.
On our side of the pond, Elizabeth had a long connection to White evangelicals. She developed a close relationship with the late fundamentalist pastor Billy Graham, who was known for his revival style of preaching and was one of the most important religious figures of our time. Graham is widely credited with merging White evangelicalism with politics beginning in the 1950s and '60s. Her religious devotion and relationship with Graham were certainly played up in the Netflix’s hit series “The Crown.”
But there’s another part to this, too. To many evangelicals — and far-right figures — Elizabeth represented an ideal picture of what a Christian woman should be.
In an intriguing essay for Baptist News, columnist Greg Garrett tackles the topic of the queen, womanhood and nationalism. Garrett cites the reactions of notable religious figures and conservatives to the queen’s death.
Albert Mohler, leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that Elizabeth stood against creeping immorality and liberalization. Conservative radio and TV host Dana Loesch called her the “unwoke Christian Queen.” Owen Strachan, formerly of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, said of the queen, “What an example of decorum, duty, dedication to traditional principles, toughness, womanhood, and British classiness.”
Garrett writes that conservatives’ “reverence for the queen allows them to freeze the image of womanhood in the 1950s, when Elizabeth assumed her crown. Even this powerful woman — the Queen of England! — did not speak out of turn or contradict her betters (that is, the men, who counseled and actually ran the country).”
And to that end, the queen never apologized for the colonial ills that were carried out in the name of the faith she was so devoted to.
Considering the rise of authoritarianism and Christian nationalism, and increasing restrictions on women’s bodies, it’s no surprise that to many far-right American evangelicals, Elizabeth was the perfect woman — a symbol of Christian imperial power who stayed largely quiet on politics and was deferential to men who did the “dirty work” of running the government.
Just as missionary schools in British colonies helped carry out the Christian agenda, evangelical, right-wing groups are attempting to install the Kingdom of God in America by influencing school board races, eliminating discussions of racism and LGBTQ issues from schools, and outlawing abortion. And on the extreme side, white supremacist groups in both the United States and Britain still continue to use Christian and English symbols to adorn their hate-filled agendas against non-white, non-Christian peoples.
Alas. A queen might be dead, but the legacy of white Christian supremacy lives on.
Global Radar: Giving back the Kohinoor diamond
Now that Elizabeth has passed, the internet has been filled with calls for the British to give back the loot they stole from their colonies.
Nations, everyone in England is distracted. It’s the perfect time to get your stuff back from the British Museum.
— Will Choy (@thewillchoy) September 8, 2022
People are recirculating a years-old clip of British comedian John Oliver addressing the controversy over Britain’s ownership of the famous Kohinoor diamond, which Indians say belongs to them. But the British are holding on to the massive diamond, one of the crown jewels, for dear life. As Oliver says, “All our greatest possessions are stolen,” he says. “The British Museum is basically an active crime scene.”
The Kohinoor’s history is complicated and bloody. Since its discovery in India in the 1300s, it has changed hands between Indian, Afghan, Iranian and other rulers as a result of invasion and conquest. Britain came into possession of it when 10-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh was deposed and the diamond was turned over to the British East India Company.
I’ve written about Britain’s selfish refusal to give back its colonial loot plenty of times before. And all jokes aside, it's a source of deep pain and humiliation for formerly colonized people to see their artifacts held hostage in their oppressors’ museums and crowns.
But now that the queen, whose reign overlapped with the end of the colonial era, is gone, should it not be time for Britain to relinquish some of its ill-gotten gains? I think so.
Home Front: Cheers and jeers for a Black mermaid
The trailer for Disney’s remake of “The Little Mermaid” is out, starring singer Halle Bailey as the fish-tailed, red-headed Ariel. We have crowned a new (fictional) underwater princess, and she’s Black! Watching the trailer almost made me cry:
The visuals are stunning, and on top of that, Halle’s Ariel is appearing underwater not just with reddish, hair but with locs!
Her hair might not seem like a big deal but it is. It takes me back to last year when the International Swimming Federation would not allow swim caps that accommodated natural Black hair or hairstyles for Olympic competitions. The message to Black swimmers? Their full Blackness did not belong in the water.
Mothers have been posting videos of their daughters reacting to the new Black mermaid. The girls’ responses are just adorable.
Watch the reactions of young Black girls seeing themselves in the Little Mermaid for the first time. pic.twitter.com/KPH2pSBJid
But there has been a racist backlash to the casting — of course there has — with claims that Disney is “messing up" a beloved tale by changing Ariel’s race. Others have doubted whether Black people can really be (fictional) mermaids. Excuse me? Generations of White slave traffickers tossed our ancestors into the sea, African migrants continue to be left to drown in the Mediterranean, and they have the gall to wonder whether Black people can transform into sea creatures. *ancestral eye roll*
Just like I wrote last week, it’s exhausting and probably futile to have to convince mostly White people that Black people can be and do anything and everything, in fiction and in the real world. And I’m already royally tired this week.
I encourage people to learn more about the West African traditions of Black female spirits and orishas (deities) of the water who existed long before Disney was a thing. Many of us grew up learning about Mami Wata spirits who exist in the ocean or lakes. In the Yoruba Ifa spiritual tradition, Yemaja is the orisha who rules over the ocean, motherhood and abundance. And Oshun is the female orisha who rules over love, sexuality and fresh waters, such as lakes and rivers.
So yeah, when it comes to water and the Black imagination, we Black/African women find ourselves right at home.
Cat’s Corner: Artemis is off to the vet
And he’s not too pleased about it. Don’t worry, he passed his checkup! | 2022-09-16T14:12:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What Queen Elizabeth meant for White Christianity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/queen-elizabeth-white-christianity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/queen-elizabeth-white-christianity/ |
We can — and should — end hunger before 2030
By Stephanie Berkowitz
Volunteers from Catch A Meal Community help give away items such as food, diapers, toys, coats, shoes and boots outside Sugarland Elementary School in Sterling, Va., on Feb. 27, 2021. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Stephanie Berkowitz is president and chief executive of Northern Virginia Family Service.
The White House recently announced the first national Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health in 50 years. “Too many families don’t know where they are going to get their next meal,” President Biden said in announcing the Sept. 28 event, which will bring together stakeholders from across the country to “catalyze the public and private sectors around a coordinated strategy to accelerate progress and drive transformative change” — with the ultimate goal of ending hunger by 2030.
By tapping into the knowledge, expertise and innovative approaches of local organizations such as Northern Virginia Family Service (NVFS), I’m hoping we can end hunger long before 2030.
I say that with people like the El-haj family in mind. The Manassas family of six regularly receives fresh and frozen food from NVFS’s Hunger Resource Center, or Centro de Recursos para Prevenir el Hambre (HRC).
“The cost of food keeps going up, a trend you can’t help but notice when you have a large family,” Bonaneh El-haj said after a recent visit to the HRC. “Everything at the grocery store is expensive, especially meat and fish” — items she picks up for free during her biweekly visits to the HRC.
Another Northern Virginia resident, Bettie Bailey, who is 83 and lives alone, is grateful that NVFS has been willing to deliver food to her home since the beginning of the pandemic. More recently, an illness caused her to lose her ability to drive. In addition, she is now on dialysis, so getting home-delivered food has made life easier during challenging times.
Food insecurity disproportionately affects people of color, older adults and people with disabilities. Persistent racial gaps rooted in a history of structural and systemic racism contribute to ongoing disparities. In addition, the coronavirus pandemic and rising food costs have further exacerbated the many challenges facing residents of our community and around the country. According to Feeding America, 658,470 Virginia residents are experiencing hunger; 182,170 of them are children, a heartbreaking statistic.
Some who come to the HRC are homeless; others say they fear they will become homeless as they struggle to cover the cost of essentials such as rent, utilities, food and prescriptions. In recent weeks, many have told us that paying for gas has become a new burden, one that frequently prevents them from getting to the HRC.
Rising food and fuel prices undoubtedly account for the increased number of families we are seeing. In August, we served more than 1,000 individuals, a 30 percent increase over last year. The numbers continue to climb with the arrival of new families and previous clients returning, again in need of food.
Thanks to the generosity of many donors — community members, businesses, churches, food chains with excess food and other partners — NVFS has so far been able to keep up with the demand. For some donors, such as Shelly Reagan, the cause hits close to home. “While we’ve never needed to ask for assistance, we have been between jobs and had to pinch the pennies very tightly a couple of times. It’s good to be in a position to help others in need,” Reagan said.
National leaders have much to learn from organizations such as NVFS, with our nearly 100 years of experience supporting families on their journeys toward economic independence. For instance, our partnership with nursing students at George Mason University means our neighbors can both pick up food at the HRC and stop in at our on-site health clinic for a free wellness check. Those who are diagnosed with high blood pressure, diabetes or other health challenges are referred by the nurses for further evaluation. In one case, a gentleman learned he had an enlarged heart. With our help, he got health insurance, an evaluation and medication. He credits these services with saving his life.
Our new bilingual intake and referral coordinator connects HRC clients who initially come in for food to other NVFS programs that, in turn, are addressing related challenges such as transportation, housing, jobs and health care. Affordable housing, a living wage, reliable transportation and access to health care are inextricably connected to food access and affordability. A new partnership with Amazon Web Services, for example, makes it possible for us to expand our food delivery to homebound seniors and neighbors with disabilities. Plans include pop-up satellite food centers in Northern Virginia neighborhoods where the need is greatest and launching a food prescription program to make it easier for families to access the fresh fruits and vegetables they need for balanced, healthy diets.
The Biden administration is looking for big and bold ways to end hunger. NVFS has big, bold ideas we are ready to share with the White House and communities around the country. Working together, let’s make sure no child or adult goes to bed without food. Let’s not wait until 2030 to do that. | 2022-09-16T14:12:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We can — and should — end hunger before 2030 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/virginia-hunger-charity-advice-white-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/virginia-hunger-charity-advice-white-house/ |
Clean energy just got a lot more cost-competitive, report says
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Happy Friday. We're excited to welcome our new colleague Scott Dance, who is joining The Washington Post as a climate and weather reporter after more than 10 years at the Baltimore Sun. But first:
Exclusive: Climate law makes clean energy much more cost-competitive, report says
The Inflation Reduction Act will cause the cost of renewable energy to decline dramatically over the next decade, according to an analysis shared exclusively with The Climate 202.
The analysis from ICF Climate Center, a global consulting firm, concludes that the climate law will make clean energy projects easier to finance across the country, quickening the pace of America's energy transition.
“At over 700 pages, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a dense piece of legislation,” the report says. “At the same time, its impact on the energy sector can be summarized succinctly: clean energy economics just got a whole lot better.”
The report's findings are a big deal. They're also very wonkish and technical. If you're not a climate economist or policy wonk, here's a quick explanation of the findings and why they matter for the nation and the planet:
Cost curves
The report's authors looked at the levelized cost of energy — the average cost of electricity generation over the lifetime of a facility — for various technologies in 2030 with and without the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
All of the technologies they analyzed would see double-digit percentage declines in their levelized costs of energy, including mature technologies such as wind and solar, whose costs have already plummeted over the last decade.
With the climate law, wind's levelized cost of energy in 2030 could be 38 to 49 percent lower than without the climate law.
Solar's levelized cost of energy could fall 20 to 35 percent. By 2030, solar could cost as little as $26.30 per megawatt-hour on average — down from a 2020 average of $34 per MWh, according to Energy Department research.
Emerging technologies could also see significant cost reductions, the analysis found.
Hydrogen could see the biggest cost decline — a whopping 52 to 67 percent — of any technology. Green hydrogen facilities that take advantage of the climate law's tax credits could become cost-competitive with new natural-gas-powered facilities by 2030.
Carbon capture and storage could become economical for the first time, with its levelized cost of energy falling 20 to 23 percent by 2030. (It's worth noting that some environmentalists oppose federal incentives for carbon capture and storage, which they view as a false climate solution because it could prolong the life of fossil fuel infrastructure.)
For context, the Biden administration on Thursday announced an effort to bring down the cost of offshore floating wind by 70 percent by 2035, to about $45 per MWh. (CNN's Ella Nilsen has more on the administration's offshore wind announcement.)
“We know the cost goal is pretty audacious,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on a call Thursday with reporters, adding that “the Inflation Reduction Act is a significant component in reducing costs of all kinds of energy.”
Ian Bowen, a co-author of the report and energy markets analyst at ICF, said the expected cost reductions will provide “certainty” to investors in renewable energy projects.
“We think that these large declines are going to really help provide certainty to investors over a long period,” Bowen said. “Hopefully that will be able to accelerate the transition.”
Still, the report comes with a notable caveat: The authors assume that policymakers will address other thorny challenges facing clean energy projects.
One challenge is NIMBYism, which refers to “not in my backyard” sentiments. Project siting could become increasingly difficult if these sentiments intensify and available land becomes scarce, the report says.
Another challenge is interconnection, which refers to the process of connecting new energy sources to the electrical grid. In the PJM Interconnection region stretching from D.C. to Illinois, more than 2,000 solar, wind and battery storage projects have already waited years to connected to the grid, according to Advanced Energy Economy, an industry association.
“If the goal is to increase deployment of renewable energy, then this [law] is absolutely a major step in that direction,” said Shanthi Muthiah, another co-author of the report and managing director of ICF's energy practice.
“But,” she said, “it's one of several steps that's needed.”
Schumer tees up Senate vote on treaty fighting climate super-pollutants
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D- N.Y.) on Thursday filed cloture on the Kigali Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, setting up a vote in the Senate as soon as Tuesday.
The treaty amendment would phase down hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are planet-warming gases used in air conditioning and refrigeration that are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide.
While the amendment will need bipartisan support to become law, the issue has attracted bipartisan backing in recent years. After the Trump administration declined to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification, Democrats and Republicans rallied around an agreement to slash the use of HFCs in 2020, paving the way for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the chemicals.
More than 120 countries are already party to the Kigali Amendment, including China and members of the European Union. President Biden submitted the treaty amendment to the Senate in November, following through on a promise he made just after taking office.
“HFCs need to be dealt with right away because they are thousands — thousands — of times more damaging to our atmosphere than carbon dioxide,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday. “So this is a very important opportunity for the Senate to make official America’s intention to phase these dangerous chemicals out of use.”
Senate Banking Committee grills SEC chair on climate rule
Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, defended his agency's stance on requiring all public companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from climate change during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Thursday, Pete Schroeder and Michelle Price report for Reuters.
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), the top Republican on the panel, warned that the SEC should be “nervous” about legal challenges if the rule is put in place, citing the Supreme Court’s recent decision limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb climate pollution from power plants.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) also expressed concern about the proposal's potential impact on small-business owners and farmers, whom he said could face significant supply chain disruptions if companies are forced to disclose their emissions.
In response, Gensler testified that the agency has the legal authority to enact rules that protect investors from significant risks, including the financial risks associated with climate change.
Oil companies are lying about climate goals, House panel alleges
Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee argued that oil company executives had privately disregarded their public commitments to combat climate change during a heated hearing Thursday.
According to a report released ahead of the hearing, oil and gas companies have continued to internally dismiss evidence that burning fossil fuels is accelerating global warming, despite their own scientists warning of the link, while relying on unproven technologies to dictate their climate strategies.
During the hearing, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) yelled at Raya Salter, executive director of the Energy Justice Law and Policy Center, calling her “young lady” and “boo,” our colleagues report for Post Politics Now. The confrontation began when Salter called for the world to “move away from” petrochemical plants — refineries that make chemicals from petroleum — which are often located in low-income communities of color and threaten the health of nearby residents.
“The world wouldn’t function! It’s insane!” Higgins yelled. “Do you care about the planet, good lady? From a biblical perspective … the lord gave us dominion over the planet.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) later offered an apology to Salter.
Meanwhile, environmental justice activists notched major victories in Louisiana this week by blocking two planned petrochemical plants, The Washington Post's Steven Mufson reports. The facilities would have been built in St. James Parish, home to what is commonly referred to as Louisiana's “cancer alley.”
White House directs agencies to buy low-carbon construction materials
The Biden administration on Thursday directed federal agencies to buy low-carbon types of steel, concrete, asphalt, and flat glass, which account for nearly half of carbon emissions from the U.S. manufacturing sector, Stephen Lee reports for Bloomberg Law.
The new rules will apply to federal construction projects, including ones funded through the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, according to a White House fact sheet.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, General Services Administration chief Robin Carnahan and deputy national climate adviser Ali Zaidi announced the rules while touring a steel plant in Toledo. The officials said the White House also plans to convene a meeting with state governments in November to help align their clean building policies with the administration's.
This past summer ranks as one of the globe’s hottest summers ever, with Europe and China both recording their warmest meteorological summers, according to data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Zach Rosenthal and Kasha Patel report for The Washington Post.
Worldwide, June through August tied 2020 for the warmest summer in records dating back to 1880, NASA’s data showed. At the same time, data from NOAA found that the same time period tied for the fifth-hottest summer in 143 years. Researchers explained that the disparity between the two data sets stems from how each treats temperatures in the polar regions, with NASA’s including more inputs from the Arctic and Antarctic — areas that are warming faster than the rest of the globe because of climate change.
Once nearly extinct, California condors take flight again — Alice Li, Kasha Patel and Melina Mara for The Post
Climate change worsened Pakistan’s devastating flooding, analysis finds — Kasha Patel for The Post
Shell's chief executive, Ben van Beurden, to step down — Stanley Reed for the New York Times
E.U. green finance advisers walk out in protest — Simon Jessop and Kate Abnett for Reuters
Bear conditioner is on full blast pic.twitter.com/UKWrxu9Y4Y
On our radar: Russia to figure prominently in pair of Biden meetings | 2022-09-16T14:13:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Clean energy just got a lot more cost-competitive, report says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/clean-energy-just-got-lot-more-cost-competitive-report-says/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/clean-energy-just-got-lot-more-cost-competitive-report-says/ |
Long-tail boats lined up along Railay Beach in Thailand. (Photos by Lily Radziemski for The Washington Post)
On the southwestern coast of Thailand, limestone cliffs tower over seawater against the backdrop of swaying trees. Long-tail boats — the only means of transportation to Railay Beach — sit parked in the distance, neon-pink-and-green flags swaying at the bow. Sand bubbler crabs dip above and below the surface, leaving their intricate designs at the mercy of high tide and flip-flops. I’m sitting in a bar on the beach, watching water droplets fall down my ice-cold Singha beer, looking at the sunset glimmer on the water. Picturesque doesn’t even begin to describe this. There’s just one question on my mind: How did I end up here?
A few weeks earlier, I was fantasizing about going somewhere — anywhere — far away. I craved the feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar city, soaking in its sounds, smells, energy. This led to casually browsing plane tickets to Southeast Asia, when a reasonably priced ticket to Bangkok popped up. Later that month, I boarded the plane with a friend who booked her trip a few days after mine.
While jetting across the world on a whim admittedly made me feel pretty cocky, it turns out I’m part of a larger trend.
According to data from the online travel company Skyscanner, demand focused on the Asia-Pacific region — and Thailand, in particular — has taken off since coronavirus restrictions began to ease in April. During May and June, for example, it was the third most popular long-haul destination from France, where I live.
Beyond the uptick in trips to the region, Matt Bradford, who analyzes trends and insights for Skyscanner, has identified short booking horizons — a window of 30 days or less between booking and takeoff — as a new behavior. He explained by phone that, in France during May and June, 39 percent of bookings made on the site were for departures within one month. (In the United States, that figure was 35 percent.)
Everything you need to know about traveling to Thailand
When the doors slide open at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, it hits you: wet, sweltering heat. Within one minute, my skin was covered in a slick film of humidity and sweat, dripping down the back of my neck as we hopped into a cab. We drove past roadside dumpling joints, skyscrapers and a seemingly endless string of stalls selling sex toy souvenirs.
The next afternoon, after a delicious lunch at Rung Reung Pork Noodle — a bare-bones, plastic-stool, fan-blasting haven for pork meatballs, noodles and broth — we set off toward Wat Arun, a temple built during the Ayutthaya era on the bank of the Chao Phraya River. Its “prang” towers more than 200 feet overhead, intricately decorated with porcelain pieces and walkways that snake up and around it. As we were strolling through the grounds, a lady approached us offering a boat ride around a nearby floating market.
Our boat driver soon led us through Thonburi’s network of klongs, or canals, lined with worn wooden houses, many tilting on the stilts holding them above water. A woman wearing a straw hat with bows clipped onto the band slowly approached us on her long-tail boat, offering bracelets, key chains and flowery hair clips. After we politely declined, she reached into her cooler, emerging with a grin. “Beer?” While this normally wouldn’t send me over the edge with excitement, Bangkok had banned alcohol sales for 24 hours during its election, and a cold Chang sounded pretty good in that heat. I bought one for myself and our driver, and we continued to drift through the canals.
The next two days would see endless heaps of sausages splattering into hot oil on street food carts, 3 a.m. massages on Khaosan Road and walks down the side streets of Sukhumvit. Then, after being seduced by travelers and locals raving about the south — they generally urged us to avoid Phuket, the notorious destination for tourists looking to get lost in the black hole of its nightlife — we hopped on a plane.
After the intense, electric urban energy of Bangkok, Krabi — a southern province on Thailand’s Andaman Sea — was a literal breath of fresh air. We hopped into a shuttle that made various drop-offs in towns throughout the area. The driver played American country music as we drove past lush greenery on winding roads, passing a shooting range on the way into Ao Nang. A tourist, probably in her 20s, was talking to the woman next to her. “We don’t really have a plan,” she said.
In Krabi, we set off by long-tail boat to explore the Ko Poda, Ko Thap and Ko Khai (or “Chicken”) islands off the coast, within the Phi Phi Islands national park. To say our first stop looked like a postcard would be a vast understatement. If you’ve ever imagined yourself on a deserted island, gazing out into crystal-clear waters under the shade of a mangrove tree on a white-sand beach, this was that.
When we finally connected the dots about our ailments, we strolled back to inspect the water. As it turns out, the deserted white-sand beach wasn’t deserted at all, but was instead full of massive translucent jellyfish, in the water and washed ashore, a small detail we didn’t register on our walk from the boat. Our driver didn’t seem too concerned, though. When asked whether the stings were dangerous, he laughed, shook his head and said, “No dead, no dead,” still chuckling as he returned to the stern.
Marijuana is now legal in Thailand. What does that mean for tourists?
On our last night, we returned to Railay Beach via long-tail boat, tilting dramatically against the waves, water splashing into the boat through the open sides. After wading through the water to get to shore, we dropped off our stuff and hit the beach bar. “Hotel California” played in the background as the sun disappeared over the horizon, revealing stars and the vast surrounding cliffs shining in the moonlight.
Suddenly, the lights came on. Almost immediately, the place that couldn’t have felt farther away from home made me think of the bars on Rue de Lappe, the notoriously rowdy party street in my Paris neighborhood, characterized by neon lights and flaming shots. Acoustic music quickly faded behind the Top 40 songs blasting on the stereo, and fairy lights blinked aggressively on the walls. It was time to go. The next morning, I left Krabi, already feeling nostalgic as that night shifted from reality into memory on the journey back to Paris.
I’m not advocating for always traveling without a plan. We missed a lot. The one thing we really wanted to do — travel by train from north to south — wasn’t possible without booking ahead. Our floating-market experience could have benefited from better research. We could have seen more sights. But if someone had asked me, “Would you like to take a rickety long-tail boat in high swells to this isolated beach town that will lose power, where you’ll be essentially stranded until morning?”
I’d say, “Why not?”
Radziemski is a writer based in Paris. Find her on Twitter and Instagram: @lilyradz.
Rung Reung Pork Noodle
10/3 Soi Sukhumvit 26, Khlong Tan, Khlong Toei, Bangkok
011-66-84-527-1640
Pork, bone broth and noodles are king here. It’s hot, crowded and delicious. Open daily, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mains from about $2.
Family Thaifood & Seafood
143 6 Ao Nang, Mueang Krabi District, Krabi
This is a no-frills restaurant serving up delicious, fresh classics and seafood. I’m still dreaming about the tom yum soup and fresh passion fruit juice. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Mains from about $3.
Ao Nang Landmark Night Market
Ao Nang, Mueang Krabi District, Krabi
The stalls in this night market have many options, such as dried squid skins, classic noodle dishes and freshly grilled squid. You can then eat at an open table. Open Monday to Saturday, 4 to 10 p.m., and Sunday until 10:30 p.m. Mains from about $2.50.
Luna Beach Bar
2RQ8+H64 Muang Mueang Krabi District, Ao Nang
This bar has a spacious terrace that opens onto the beach. Watch the long-tail boats come and go and the paddle boarders row into the sunset. There’s a full dining menu, and the food is fresh and delicious. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Bottle of beer from about $1.50.
Reeve Coffee
2RM9+HH5, Ao Nang, Mueang Krabi District
Delicious coffee shop with an outdoor terrace overlooking the water. It’s pricier than most cafes in the area, but the coffee with fresh coconut makes it worth it. Open daily. Coconut coffee from about $5.
Railay Beach
Mueang Krabi, Krabi
tourismthailand.org/attraction/railay-beach
A beach town with a laid-back vibe and stunning beachscapes. It also attracts people for its rock climbing. Despite not being an island, the beach is accessible only by long-tail boat; if you’re carrying luggage, you’ll need to take it through some shallow water to access the boats. Long-tail boat ticket about $3.
tourismthailand.org/home | 2022-09-16T14:13:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An impulsive traveler's plan-free trip to Thailand - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/16/thailand-travel-vacation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/16/thailand-travel-vacation/ |
On war, Putin says Russia will ‘do our best to stop this as soon as possibl...
On war, Putin says Russia will ‘do our best to stop this as soon as possible’
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. (Alexandуr Demyanchuk/Sputnik/Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that Russia would strive to stop the war in Ukraine “as soon as possible” but then blamed Ukraine for refusing to negotiate, though Putin ordered the invasion and his troops are still occupying a large swatch of Ukrainian territory.
Putin’s remarks came during an appearance with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where they are attending a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
“I know your position on the conflict in Ukraine, about your concerns that you constantly express,” Putin said. “We will do our best to stop this as soon as possible. Only, unfortunately, the opposing side, the leadership of Ukraine, announced its abandonment of the negotiation process, declared that it wants to achieve its goals by military means, as they say, ‘on the battlefield.’ Nevertheless, we will always keep you informed of what is happening there.”
Russia has suffered steep military setbacks in recent days as a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed Russian occupying troops out of the northeastern Kharkiv region. | 2022-09-16T14:29:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine strike on Russian occupying authorities in Kherson kills four - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/kherson-ukraine-russia-war-putin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/kherson-ukraine-russia-war-putin/ |
A Department of Justice photo released Aug. 31 shows a photo attached as evidence to a court filing by the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida of documents allegedly seized at Mar-a-Lago spread over a carpet. (U.S. Department of Justice/AFP via Getty Images)
Donald Trump called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Thursday to chat (in his characteristic style) about how the world was arrayed against him and how he nonetheless managed to triumph.
The assertion that made the biggest splash, understandably, was Trump’s warning that, if indicted, “you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” The former president has interwoven threats of violence into his politics since the early days of his 2016 campaign, so — while unsettling — this is hardly novel.
But it is useful to consider the context in which that comment came. Hewitt had asked whether Trump expected to be indicted immediately after he cleared the runway for Trump to wave away questions about the material the FBI seized in their search of his Mar-a-Lago facility last month.
A former aide, Kash Patel, has said that Trump declassified that material, Hewitt prompted. Did Trump remember doing so?
He did. What’s more, Trump added: “I have the absolute right to declassify, absolute. A president has that absolute right, and a lot of people aren’t even challenging that anymore.”
Hewitt then asked about possible indictment.
This claim, too, is familiar to anyone paying attention to Trump. Since the search became public, the presence of material marked as classified has been fodder for political commentary. But in insisting that he declassified it, Trump’s making a political claim, not a legal one. And he’s making a political claim, in part, to stoke precisely the sort of anger that he understands would erupt if he was indicted.
In the search warrant it obtained to retrieve material from Trump, the Justice Department delineated three statutes that it believed had been violated: 18 U.S. Code 793, 1519 and 2071. As has been noted in the past, at no point in any of the three does the word “classified” appear. What is alleged, it seems, is not that Trump had classified material but that he was in possession of material that was property of the government. The Presidential Records Act establishes that the product of Trump’s time as president is generally not his, but the office’s. His decision to bring it with him is, by itself, a potential violation.
Nonetheless, people are generally more familiar with the prohibitions surrounding classified information than they are documents that are slotted into not-classified-but-not-privately-owned ones. So reports that classified material was seized — and of course, that infamous photo of documents with classification markings splayed across the Mar-a-Lago carpet — spurred a lot of tittering about what Trump had and why.
It’s to combat that theorizing that Trump and his allies have been so fervent about trying to claim that he declassified everything. When news reports emerged this year that documents with classification markings had been turned over by the former president, Patel first made the assertion that all of it had been deemed fit for public consumption (and apparently, private storage). Patel later qualified this, noting that Trump’s blanket order ended up being watered down by opposition from the intelligence community (and though Patel didn’t say this, Trump himself).
Then the Mar-a-Lago search happened. Trump and his allies insisted that bulk declassification had occurred, though it’s not clear that anyone necessarily knew which things were included in his stash. Did he declassify just those things on his way out the door? Did he declassify nearly everything and take some subset with him? Did he have a standing order that things he grabbed became declassified, as he claimed? (A number of former administration officials expressed no familiarity with such a system.)
There are two interesting qualifiers to this whole line of argument.
The first, as The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has pointed out, is that Trump’s lawyers have not claimed in legal filings that the material was declassified. This might be attributed to the point that such a claim is largely irrelevant to the legal question, as indicated above. But the lawyers have not been shy about invoking a number of other claims about what Trump did, so the disinclination to elevate this particular claim is noteworthy. After all, there are very different ramifications between Patel making an unsupported claim to Breitbart and an attorney making an unsupported claim in a legal filing.
The other qualifier is perhaps the more important one. This week, a less-redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant was revealed, giving us a better sense of what the government was seeking. It adds new context to the weeks before the search — and in particular, a moment in June in which Trump’s team claimed that it had turned over all material with classified markings.
This is important. After learning that the boxes of documents Trump sent back to Washington in January were incomplete, the Justice Department subpoenaed “[a]ny and all documents or writings in the custody or control of Donald J. Trump and/or the Office of Donald J. Trump bearing classification markings.” Not “classified material.” Material “bearing classification markings.” So even if the Secret/SCI document prominently featured in the Mar-a-Lago photo was, in fact, declassified, Trump should not have had it after receiving the subpoena.
After all, in June, Justice Department officials had met with Trump’s team and received a packet of classified material that was still in Trump’s possession. Critically, Trump’s lawyers then asserted that no more “responsive” material was present at Mar-a-Lago — that is, no more material that met the stipulations of the subpoena.
At another point in the affidavit, the government notes that “When producing the documents, neither FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 nor INDIVIDUAL 2″ — Trump attorney Christina Bobb — “asserted that FPOTUS had declassified the documents.” (In a footnote, it adds that classification status is irrelevant to the statutes at issue anyway.)
Again, then, the question of classification status is, for legal purposes, irrelevant. It seems likely that 18 U.S. Code 1519 was cited because it applies to anyone who “makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence [an] investigation” — perhaps covering the scenario illustrated above. By focusing on classification, then, Trump’s trying to win over the public and not the judge.
Why? Because Trump prefers to move every fight to the public square, where his base of support is vocal and intimidating. He understands that he can use his supporters’ anger to influence the decisions being made by elected officials and government actors. Attorney General Merrick Garland is just as aware of the likely response to a Trump indictment as is Trump.
Put simply then: Arguing that he declassified the seized documents isn’t going to bolster his defense if he’s indicted. But arguing that he’s being railroaded because the government refuses to acknowledge that the documents were declassified? That might help keep him from being indicted in the first place. | 2022-09-16T15:34:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘The files were declassified’ is a political argument, not a legal one - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/trump-fbi-search-classified-documents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/16/trump-fbi-search-classified-documents/ |
Where does money come from? In the case of dollars, they are printed by the US Mint. For cryptocurrencies, the answer is more complicated. From the time of their birth, the digital tokens with the biggest market value, Bitcoin and Ether, were only issued to pay for tasks performed by so-called miners in what are known as “proof-of-work” systems. It’s an approach that has drawn increasing criticism for the large amounts of energy consumed and pollution produced. That changed on Sept. 15, when Ethereum, the platform that runs the Ether coin, switched to a system called “proof of stake” in a major upgrade known as the “Merge.” Proponents say the approach will cut Ethereum’s electricity use by 99%.
By changing the properties of Ether, the Merge will make it more akin to yield-bearing securities. Staked Ether will generate a return, expected to be around 5.2% right after the Merge, according to tracker Staking Rewards. Coupled with an expected net decrease in Ether token supply, possibly some months after the update, that should make the coin more attractive to investors. Today, only about 11% of Ether in circulation is used in staking on Ethereum. Eventually, around 80% of the Ether may be staked, meaning that it will be locked up for a period of time. That could have implications for Ether’s long-term pricing and liquidity. The token’s new status as a yield-earning asset could also lead financial regulators to start treating it as a security, a possibility raised just after the Merge by US Security and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. Such a designation would bring closer scrutiny. | 2022-09-16T15:43:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Ethereum’s Merge Means Crypto That’s Much Greener - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-ethereums-merge-means-crypto-thats-much-greener/2022/09/16/cefce8c6-35d3-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-ethereums-merge-means-crypto-thats-much-greener/2022/09/16/cefce8c6-35d3-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
FILE - Rapper and actor Common arrives at the 90th Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Feb. 5, 2018. Common will make his Broadway debut in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Between Riverside and Crazy.” Previews begin Nov. 30 and it will officially open on Dec. 19 at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-09-16T15:43:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rapper-actor Common to make his Broadway debut in November - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/rapper-actor-common-to-make-his-broadway-debut-in-november/2022/09/16/8c9e7f24-35d0-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/rapper-actor-common-to-make-his-broadway-debut-in-november/2022/09/16/8c9e7f24-35d0-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html |
They will be temporarily housed at Joint Base Cape Cod, according to Mass. Gov. Charlie Baker
By Maria Sacchetti
Ricardo Gallardo (center right) an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, is welcomed by Martha’s Vineyard resident Rebecca Mandelli (center left) outside of Saint Andrews Episcopal Church on Martha’s Vineyard. (Dominic Chavez for The Washington Post)
The state said “the island communities are not equipped to provide sustainable accommodation."
The military base is already used as an emergency shelter and officials said it can provide "safe temporary accommodation appropriate for the specific needs of families and individuals."
The facility also has space for access to legal services and healthcare. In the past the base has sheltered Louisiana residents who fled Hurricane Katrina and Massachusetts residents affected by covid.
State official’s said they had a plan to assist the migrants who decide to stay on the base, including shelter, clothing, personal hygiene kits, good, and access to health care, mental health, and counseling in their native language. The base is unable to accept donations, officials said.
Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston and Joanna Slater in Williamstown contributed to this report. | 2022-09-16T15:43:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Migrants sent by Gov. DeSantis to Martha’s Vineyard depart for Cape Cod - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2022/09/16/migrants-desantis-marthas-vineyard/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2022/09/16/migrants-desantis-marthas-vineyard/ |
Sweden’s populists have surged to power. Elites have only themselves to blame.
Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats, celebrates election results in Nacka, Sweden, on Sept. 11. (Stefan Jerrevang/AP)
A center-right coalition in Sweden narrowly secured victory on Wednesday, anchored by a national populist party called the Sweden Democrats. This has unnerved many in the West, but it shouldn’t. It’s simply yet another example of how the refusal of elites to deal with the legitimate concerns of voters is fueling populist backlash.
National populism, a term coined by British political scientists Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, is today found in virtually every Western nation. Its adherents tend to come from similar social classes — disproportionally middle-aged workers without high levels of formal education. They tilt male but include large numbers of demographically similar women. They swing to the left on economics, supporting strong welfare states, and to the right on culture. They are fearful of social and economic change that affects their standard of living and social status, and they organize to resist that change.
Immigration and crime are especially powerful issues with these voters, and sure enough that proved true in Sweden. The country took in more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in the European Union during the mid-2010s migrant crisis, and many of those came from Muslim-majority nations with very different cultures from Sweden’s. The decision to allow in so many refugees destroyed the government led by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party in 2014. Governments since, led by Sweden’s Social Democratic Party, have failed to control the ramifications of this surge of immigration, resulting in the toppling this week of Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
Crime has also become a real issue in Sweden. The nation has some of the highest homicide and gun violence rates in Europe. Swedish journalist Paulina Neuding has chronicled this sea change for many years, mostly caused by drug gangs. And as she has written, it’s impossible to ignore the political toxic reality that this violence is dominated by first- or second-generation immigrants, as the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported in 2017. Making things worse, a far-right provocateur has been burning Qurans in immigrant communities, resulting in rioting in April.
Perhaps the most shocking development has been the dramatic increase in gang-related hand-grenade bombings. Since 2018, there have been nearly 500 such attacks. The United States, with a population about 30 times larger than Sweden’s, reported 251 bombings in 2019, virtually none from hand grenades.
Whatever your views on immigration and the causes of crime, no one should be surprised that major changes such as these have an impact at the polls. Indeed, Sweden’s election returns show a divide between urban, educated regions and small-town rural areas similar to that seen in the United States and elsewhere.
The four center-left parties combined to gain vote share in Sweden’s four largest cities and their suburbs, compared with Sweden’s 2018 election. Their collective gains ranged from 4.6 percentage points in the capital of Stockholm to about half a percentage point in Uppsala County, just north of Stockholm. Together, these areas cast a bit more than a third of the total votes.
Norrbotten County is a perfect example. This far-northern province is a historic bastion of the left, dominated by working-class miners. Social Democrats and the former Communist Left Party typically took close to 70 percent of the vote there in the mid-1990s. In 2018, these parties plus the center-left Greens won 62 percent. This year, however, the left parties won only 57.5 percent of the county, and the Sweden Democrats soared to more than 20 percent.
This fact cannot be ignored by any party that wants to govern Sweden — and by extension many other Western countries. Establishment center-left and center-right parties have tried demonizing or excluding national populists from power for years. Nothing has dented their rise. National populism will stop growing only when the concerns of its supporters are seriously addressed.
It is important to note the understandable concerns that the Sweden Democrats are anti-democratic, but the truth is these are largely overblown. The party has grown massively since the days when it was a tiny fringe dominated by neo-Nazis — two decades ago. Leader Jimmie Akesson says he has purged the party of its racist and fascist elements, and most Sweden Democrat supporters today are frustrated people who want change. Their challenge is to prove to the rest of Sweden that their party has moved on from its ugly history. | 2022-09-16T15:43:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Populists have surged to power in Sweden. Elites are to blame. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/sweden-democrats-election-results-populists/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/sweden-democrats-election-results-populists/ |
Chile and Peru had claimed that defender Byron Castillo was born in Colombia, not Ecuador, and therefore should not have been allowed to play in the qualifiers. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
Soccer’s global governing body Friday rejected claims by rivals that Ecuador fielded an ineligible player in World Cup qualifiers, clearing the way for the South American country to play in the men’s tournament this year.
Almost nine weeks before Ecuador will face host Qatar in the opening match, FIFA’s appeal committee ruled that, “on the basis of the documents presented, the player was to be considered as holding permanent Ecuadorian nationality” and eligible to represent the country.
Chile and Peru, the top candidates to replace Ecuador in the tournament, had claimed that defender Byron Castillo was born in Colombia, not Ecuador, and therefore should not have been allowed to play in the qualifiers.
In announcing its decision, the FIFA appeal committee upheld a June decision by the disciplinary board that had cleared Ecuador of violating eligibility rules.
“This is a dark day for football and for the credibility of the system,” Jorge Yunge, general secretary of the Chilean Football Federation, said in a statement, which indicated Chile planned to send the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Chile and Peru do have that right, though the chance of winning the case at this point seems remote, at best.
Birthplace does not necessarily determine a player’s eligibility. If he is a naturalized citizen, it doesn’t matter where he was born. Many players on World Cup squads were born outside the country they represent.
It’s not unusual for FIFA to boot countries from the qualifying tournament for sporting or political reasons. (Russia was banned early this year after invading Ukraine.) But removing a team that has already qualified had never been done — and such a decision would come as teams and fans are preparing to descend on the Middle East emirate for the quadrennial, month-long tournament.
By finishing fourth in the South American qualifiers early this year, Ecuador clinched the continent’s last automatic berth and advanced to the World Cup for the fourth time in the past six attempts.
In May, however, Chile claimed Ecuador had violated eligibility rules by playing Castillo. He appeared in eight of Ecuador’s 18 qualifiers.
After an investigation, FIFA’s disciplinary committee in June cleared Ecuador of wrongdoing. Peru joined Chile in an appeal, and in recent weeks, fresh allegations questioning Castillo’s background were raised. FIFA’s appeals committee, chaired by former Obama White House counsel W. Neil Eggleston, heard from both sides Thursday.
Two of the eight games that Castillo appeared in were against Chile: an Ecuador victory and draw. By declaring those games forfeits, FIFA could have awarded five additional points to Chile, which would have moved from seventh place to a tie for fourth with Peru. (Castillo did not play in either of the qualifiers against Peru.) In the first tiebreaker, Chile held a superior goal differential over Peru.
Had FIFA declared forfeits in all of Ecuador’s qualifiers, Peru, which finished fifth in the standings, would have moved into fourth place.
Aside from playing Qatar on Nov. 20, Ecuador will face the Netherlands and Senegal in Group A. | 2022-09-16T16:17:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FIFA rules Ecuador can remain in World Cup field - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/world-cup-ecuador-byron-castillo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/16/world-cup-ecuador-byron-castillo/ |
The 26.2-mile distance can be daunting for runners of all abilities. Here are 7 tips from people who have done it before.
This fall, hundreds of thousands of runners will converge on streets around the globe for marathon season. Big-city races include the Chicago Marathon, the Baltimore Running Festival and D.C.’s Marine Corps Marathon, all in October, followed by the New York City Marathon in November.
Many runners will be attempting a marathon for the first time. The 26.2-mile distance can be daunting for runners of all abilities. Even elite competitors get nervous.
“I was terrified of the distance,” said Amby Burfoot, who made his debut at the Boston Marathon in 1965. He won the race three years later.
A runner’s first marathon won’t always go according to plan. But even the most successful have come away with lessons for the rest of us.
The Washington Post reached out to experienced runners, including an Olympic medalist, and asked them: “What do you wish you knew before you ran your first marathon?” Here are their responses.
It’s supposed to be hard
“There isn’t a single marathon that I haven’t wanted to drop out,” said Teal Burrell, an elite runner who competed at both the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and has run 18 marathons. Burrell ran her first marathon in college in about four hours, and now has a personal best of 2:39:11.
“Everybody is struggling with the same mental battle of, ‘This is really hard. I’m not gonna get through this,’ ” said Burrell, a 37-year-old mother of two living in Richmond. “I wish I had known that. It’s just like a universal truth of marathoning.”
Around the world in 26.2 miles
Julie Sapper, a Road Runners Club of America certified coach, agrees, and it’s something she wished she had known before running the 2000 Marine Corps Marathon.
“I think during the race, I was surprised by the pain, and I never experienced so much discomfort in my life through an athletic pursuit,” Sapper said. “And it really scared me for a little bit. Whereas now I understand that that’s part of the experience, that you feel discomfort.”
Be prepared for the crowd’s energy
Annie Frisbie, 25, wouldn’t change much about her first marathon. She finished the New York City Marathon last year as the seventh overall woman in 2:26:18.
But looking back, Frisbie, an elite runner who competes for Minnesota Distance Elite, realized that she was unprepared for how loud the spectators would be. At times, the crowd noise spurred her to pick up her pace, and it knocked her out of her zone.
“I wish I knew just how much energy the crowds would give you,” Frisbie said. “I definitely did get a little bit too much adrenaline at certain parts of the race. What I learned from that is just don’t get too excited when there’s really loud parts on the course, and really try to save that energy because you’re going to need it those last six miles.”
A first marathon taught him more than how to run a race
Stay patient until Mile 20
After failing to reach his goal of running a 2:12 marathon (by just 35 seconds,), Olympian Meb Keflezighi told people he never wanted to run the marathon again. In retrospect, the 47-year-old said, he understands he was just impatient and did not conserve his energy correctly or evenly. Instead of remaining patient at Mile 16 as his coach had instructed, Keflezighi went for the win.
“Be patient. Mile 16, you still got 10 miles to go,” said Keflezighi, who won a silver medal in the marathon at the 2004 Athens Olympics. By the time you reach Mile 20, you can take more risks, he said. “Make it a blazing” last 10K, he added.
Have your mantras ready
Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon champion and former executive editor of Runner’s World, did not believe in the power of mental preparation for the marathon in his younger years.
Now, at age 76 and retired, Burfoot has finished approximately 80 marathons and is an advocate for using mantras. Research has shown that motivational self-talk during exercise can improve endurance performance.
“The race is so much of a mental challenge, as well as a physical challenge,” Burfoot said. “So I tell people to have their mantras figured out in advance and have them rehearsed and ready to go when you need them.”
The quote “Pain is temporary, pride is forever” has kept Burfoot going during marathons. “I’m sure there have been many, many other runners who have used thoughts like that to keep themselves going,” he said.
Use the 20 degrees rule to decide what to wear
Tony Reed wore sweatpants, a sweatshirt, gloves and a hat to the start line of the 1982 Cowtown Marathon in Fort Worth. It was around 40 degrees that morning, Reed recalled. But two miles into the race, Reed started shedding his clothes.
Now Reed, a Road Runners Club of America certified coach, subscribes to what he calls the “20 degree rule,” something that he did not know about in 1982.
“If you look at what the temperature is going to be when you finish the marathon and add 20 degrees to it, that is the way you’re supposed to dress,” said Reed, the co-founder and executive director of the National Black Marathoners Association. He added that the rule may vary depending on the speed of the runner.
Winter running just isn’t for you? Maybe you’ve been doing it wrong.
Plan for crowded and messy hydration stations
Betsy Balgooyen Keller learned during the 2000 Chicago Marathon just how busy and crowded the hydration stations can get. Runners crowd together to grab a cup of water or sports drink. Discarded liquid and cups are scattered across the road.
Nowadays, Balgooyen Keller, a site coordinator for the Chicago Area Runners Association, brings a disposable bottle of water with her for the first few miles before discarding it.
“You can avoid the chaos of those aid stations and use your water,” she said.
Balgooyen Keller also cautions that the area around hydration stations can be very slick, especially for runners in the middle or back of the pack who arrive at water stops well after the front of the pack has made a mess. “You have to really take your time,” she said.
For Gene Demby, the co-host of NPR’s Code Switch and an avid runner, the excitement of his first marathon at the NYC Marathon in 2010, meant that he skipped the first few hydration stations. It contradicted his training, which included regular hydration. “There was no reason to start freestyling that day,” Demby said. “I should have stuck to the plan.”
Celebrate the journey
Runners only get to finish their first marathon once. Embrace the moment and celebrate the training it required to get to the start line. Whether you’re an elite marathoner hoping to stand on the podium or a first-time marathoner who just wants to finish, everyone starts and ends up at the same place.
“Your first marathon is very special because you don’t have expectations,” Sapper said. “So for folks who are getting out there to do their first marathon, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, not just because it’s your first step but because you get to go into something you’ve never done before with no expectations other than to do your best. There’s something really lovely about that.” | 2022-09-16T16:18:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Running a first marathon? Here are tips from veteran runners. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/16/fall-marathon-tips-running/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/16/fall-marathon-tips-running/ |
What Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis don’t understand about America
A woman who is part of a group of migrants who had just arrived in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard holds a child as they receive food outside St. Andrew's Episcopal Church on Sept. 14. (Ray Ewing/AP)
With reportedly no warning to local officials, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) surprised the island of Martha’s Vineyard by sending two planes filled with about 50 migrants, many of them from Venezuela. The migrants, who boarded the planes in San Antonio, said they were promised jobs, housing and education in an undisclosed location. Unable to read or speak English, most didn’t even know where they were when they landed.
It’s all part of an ongoing shift-and-dump campaign from Southern Republican governors who are using desperate people as political pawns to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies. It happened again Thursday when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) claimed credit for sending two surprise buses full of migrants to D.C., where they were dropped off near the residence of Vice President Harris carrying all they have in clear plastic trash bags.
These moves surely delight those in the Trumpian base who have taken to social media with glee. The surprise drops are meant to underscore the alleged hypocrisy of liberals by forcing them to deal with an influx of immigrants.
When people speak of Martha’s Vineyard, they usually refer to sprawling beaches, spectacular homes and marquee names such as the Obamas, the Clintons, Seth Meyers or Spike Lee. The island is known for its wealth, and, to be sure, there is a lot of that. But there is another Martha’s Vineyard that people don’t know much about, and it was on full display this week.
It’s an island that seesaws between overwork and underemployment. It’s a place where everything — gas, food, housing, toothpaste, you name it — costs more than it does on the mainland. It’s a place where 1 in 6 year-round residents is a registered user of the Island Food Pantry and one-third of schoolchildren receive free or reduced-price lunch.
It’s a place where organized groups go “gleaning” each week, picking produce left behind by farming machines so it can be used in the food pantry.
It’s a place where a free supper is held almost every night in one of the island churches during the winter months when seasonal work related to tourism has dried up, so no one has to go hungry.
It’s a place where an island benefactor arranged for the Great Oyster Giveaway at the height of pandemic in May 2020, when 16,000 pounds of fresh oysters were distributed to locals in 36-count bags to keep oystermen on the water and food on the table when supplies were running low at grocery stores.
It’s also a place that has over many decades opened its arms to various waves of immigrants, and it did so this week with no warning or preparation, standing up an emergency shelter within hours — finding food, clothing, inflatable beds, children’s toys, feminine hygiene products, linens and volunteer interpreters who speak Spanish.
Sadly, some of the tales those interpreters heard from the migrants underscored the layers of trauma they faced as they fled their home countries. One interpreter who grew up in a bilingual household nonetheless told me, “I’d never heard the word ‘rape’ in Spanish.”
“At heart, this is an island full of working families that pull together,” said Rebecca Haag, executive director of Island Grown Initiative, an organization that fights hunger here. “The people who sent those migrants here clearly did not understand this place.”
The some 50 migrants were living in a small shelter with only one bathroom and were being transported Friday to a military base on Cape Cod. Martha’s Vineyard, an island that’s in the business of welcoming people, had worked overtime to make them feel at home and safe.
We’ve seen this political gamesmanship before, during the Jim Crow era, when Southerners tried to retaliate against Northern liberals with so-called reverse freedom rides. When young civil rights workers were traveling by bus to places such as Mississippi and Alabama, Southern leaders recruited busloads full of unsuspecting Black families and sent them to Hyannis, Mass., under the ruse that President John F. Kennedy himself had arranged jobs and housing for them.
They are playing with people’s lives to impress their base.
It’s ugly stuff. And it underestimates the generous spirit of this country. | 2022-09-16T16:44:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Florida sent migrants to Martha's Vineyard. Its residents rallied. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-migrants-desantis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-migrants-desantis/ |
Manuel Canales
Sept. 16 at 12:52 p.m.
After more than 500 miles of travel, from the Scottish Highlands to Edinburgh, from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II will at last reach its final destination: Windsor.
On the estate stands St. George’s Chapel, a preferred locale for royal family celebrations — including weddings and christenings. It’s also where many royal funerals have been held.
Britain’s longest-ruling monarch will be buried within the chapel’s 15th-century gothic walls on Monday. A detailed itinerary from the palace offers a glimpse of what to expect during this final farewell.
The king and senior members of the royal family are expected to join the procession in the Quadrangle in Windsor Castle before the coffin enters St. George’s Chapel for a committal service.
St. George’s Chapel has long been a place of joy and sorrow in the royal family. Edward VII married Danish Princess Alexandra of Denmark there in 1863. Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, tied the knot at this chapel in 2018. And 24 members of the royal family are buried in a vault below.
The queen’s coffin will be carried up the steps through the nave.
The nave. Some members of the royal family will be seated here. Other guests will include Commonwealth realm leaders and staff who worked on the queen’s private estates.
In the quire, more royal family members will sit.
At 4 p.m., the coffin will be carried up through the nave to a platform in the quire as the service begins.
The coffin will rest atop a platform called a catafalque in the quire. Beneath it is the entrance to the royal vault. The service will entail prayers and hymns.
As the Dean of Windsor recites a final psalm, the whole platform will descend into the royal vault. Bagpipes will begin to play from a doorway and gradually fade as the piper walks away. The service will close with the singing of “God Save the King.”
At around 7:30 p.m., a private burial service including only family will take place at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, a small enclave within St. George’s Chapel that Elizabeth commissioned as a burial place for her father.
The queen will be buried with her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and with the ashes of her late sister Princess Margaret. The remains of her late husband, Philip, already in the royal vault, will be moved to rest alongside Elizabeth. | 2022-09-16T17:01:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where will Queen Elizabeth II be buried? A view of St. George’s Chapel - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/where-will-the-queen-be-buried/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/where-will-the-queen-be-buried/ |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.